Czechoslovak republic was founded and grew as a parliamentary demo¬cracy whose theoretical ideological conception was Masaryk’s idea of democracy. Masaryk was convinced that democracy, expressing the meaning of modern Western humanity, could not find itself in a crisis as such. Only democrats could fail. However, the factual development of the Czechoslovak state in the 1920’s and 1930’s manifested signs of a crisis. The question thus became one of sustainability of Masaryk’s ideas. One of the serious attempts at their critical reflection is the structurally functionalist conception of crisis of democracy offered by Josef Ludvík Fischer, a sociologist and a philosopher, who saw the root of the problem in a structural pathology, not an individual failure. The crisis can be resolved, according to Fischer, by constituting a “composable society” which respects the order of reality. Masaryk and Fisher agree that democracy needs be built on a global understanding of what there is as a whole.
The author notes a lack of response to the work of J. L. Fischer and, using Fischer’s interpretation of Socrates, shows that Fischer deserves critical attention. He first analyses Fischer’s interpretation in terms of content. Fischer’s approach stems from the Scottish school and his analyses can still be productive. However, his idea of a “psychological analysis”, of Socrates proves rather problematic. The author goes on to analyse what Socrates means for Fischer philosophically, noting that fundamental premises of Socrates’ philosophy are exact opposite of the “composable philosophy” Fischer advocates. For Fischer, this means philosophy which can be composed – built up – of discrete observations after the manner of a scientific theory, at least as positivist thinkers conceived of it. Socrates offers a rationalist defence of autocratic rule. T e measure of all things is not the citizen but the expert. On such presuppositions, a general assembly would make no sense. Tus though his study poses as purely historical, Fischer manages to work his way to his central motif, the crisis contemporary democracy challenged by dogma “scientifi c ma¬terialism” which can be neither analysed nor refuted. Socrates is pre¬sented as democracy’s enemy, in wholly contemporary terms. Fischer’s presentation of Socrates, rather like Popper’s reading of Plato, thus re¬flects the experience of the twentieth century.