Is It Pavlov or Is It Canguilhem? On the Genealogy of Czechoslovak Socialist Defectology Cover Image

Je to Pavlov? Či snad Canguilhem? Ke genealogii československé socialistické defektologie
Is It Pavlov or Is It Canguilhem? On the Genealogy of Czechoslovak Socialist Defectology

Author(s): Jan Randák
Subject(s): History, Post-War period (1950 - 1989), History of Communism
Published by: Univerzita Karlova v Praze - Filozofická fakulta, Vydavatelství
Keywords: Czechoslovakia; Ivan Petrovich Pavlov; Miloš Sovák; Georges Canguilhem; defectology; vitalism; holism; Kurt Goldstein; circulation of knowledge

Summary/Abstract: This study examines the sources Miloš Sovák’s socialist defectology drew on. Sovák’s concept of defectology, published in 1953, was based on the doctrine of I. P. Pavlov, but at the same time resembled the teachings of the French physician and philosopher Georges Canguilhem on the “normal” and the “pathological”. The paper argues that at the roots of Sovák’s theory, politically relevant to the Czechoslovak revolutionary utopia of the 1950s, and thus accommodating the values and demands of the Czechoslovak communist dictatorship, lies the holistic and anti-mechanistic professional interest in and thinking about the individual/organism relationship and its totality, characteristic of the first years and decades of the 20th century.

  • Issue Year: 2023
  • Issue No: 1
  • Page Range: 40-55
  • Page Count: 15
  • Language: Czech