Anybody ever read Vítezslav Gardavský?

[struggle4progress]

... The accumulated burden of information weighs on our consciousness, day in and day out, although scarcely anything has happened anywhere. And so something which is in fact intended to increase our political awareness and stir us to action becomes only too often a factor which turns the event into an everyday occurrence and allows us to become totally indifferent to it ... As conflicts and incidents are repeated, we become correspondingly less capable of coping with them ...

From their hiding place behind a screen or on a couch they see the world as hostile, irritating, dangerous -- and irrational ... They draw a magic circle of possessions round them ... They swear loud and long by gods both great and small ... Our age is not only the age of science, it is also the age of mythologies ...

So what can the Bible offer the Marxist? What does Jesus mean to us? ...

Write about the Bible! I must admit that the idea rather alarms me ... The idea of an atheist attempting to investigate the meaning of the Bible -- which is the position I am -- may look like a contradiction in terms ...

God is not yet dead
translated by Vivienne Menkes
1973

These were originally essays published in a Prague literary magazine in 1966/7, when Vítězslav Gardavský was still a professor of philosophy. He was later dismissed from his post, after the Soviet intervention

[snagglepuss]

1. Not yet but after reading the excerpt I would like to. nt

[struggle4progress]

2. So far, I think it's really quite good. Portions of the intro will

bore people completely uninterested in a Marxist view, though most of what I quoted above is (in fact) from the intro. The translation is in a clean and light English, easily read, and points-of-view new to me appear regularly. His perspectives in the first few chapters are clearly expressed and interesting

Gardavsky begins with chapters on Jacob, Jesus, Augustine, and Aquinas:

<from Chapter I:> ... Genesis is definitely not a cosmogonic theory ... The whole intellectual orientation of Judaism is fundamentally different from that of classical antiquity ...

<from Chapter II:> ... Christ's challenge questions our subjectiveness, our plans, our schemes, our practical activity. So our answer must consist of more than a mere 'refutation' of the legend ... In fact, the questions raised by the original version of Christianity are not of a religious nature ...

<from Chapter III:> ... A politically ambitious form of Christianity which allies itself with temporal power sins against belief, whether it likes it or not ...

<from Chapter IV:> ... The pattern of the questions posed by Thomas Aquinas can still interest us, though we are not in the least interested in the direction his answers took ...

Gardavsky is trying to bring other Marxist atheists to a roundtable discussion between Marxists and Christians, without any intent to ask them to relinquish either their Marxism or atheism

[struggle4progress]

3. This thread is another of my posts on Christianity and atheism; earlier instances include

Foundations of Christianity by Karl Kautsky (1908)
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=214&topic_id=183660

The Gospel of Christian Atheism (Thomas J.J. Altizer / 1966)
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=214&topic_id=101301

Some Reviews of Bloch's "Atheism in Christianity"
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=214&topic_id=227427

Opiate of the People? Marxism and Religion (2005)
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=214&topic_id=227232