This discussion piece relates to Erazim Kohák’s book Domov a dálava (Hearth and Horizon), a book that has opened up an interesting and fruitful perspective for consideration of the question: What does it mean today to be a Czech? Inspired by Kohák’s emphasis on the attempt of the foremost Czech intellectuals to model their ideals of Czech culture in the context of the wider development of Europe as a whole, the author asks why Europe was the source of the nationalistic way of thinking and he considers how this thinking was the result of certain (unfortunate) conditions and decisions, and how the overcoming of this thinking is what may (paradoxically it would seem) be the new task of the Czech nation.