Tomas Masaryk
From Philosopedia
Masaryk, Tomás Garrigue [President] (7 March - 14 September 1937)
Masaryk, a Czech patriot, statesman, sociologist, and philosopher, believed that philosophy should not only contemplate the world but also should try to change it. He cared little for epistemology, but he accepted David Hume’s empiricism and Auguste Comte’s positivism.
After being professor of philosophy at the University of Prague, he led the independence movement from 1907 on, becoming Czechoslovakia’s first president (1918–1935) following World War I.
In 1923, the Liberal Fellowship was formed, and that led to the establishment of the Religious Society of Czechoslovakian Unitarians.
More a positivist than a freethinker, he believed in “the supreme moral and religious command to love men.” Although not a Unitarian himself, he was said to have found his wife’s Unitarianism congenial.
In his Ideale der Humanitat (1902), Masaryk professed agnosticism, according to Joseph McCabe, and he took part openly in the international freethought movement.
In 1938, Masaryk wrote Modern Man and Religion (1938).
