Ján Lajčiak v úvahách a spomienkach
Ján Lajčiak in Reflections and Memories

Summary/Abstract: Ján Lajčiak in Reflections and Memories. The research of the history of social and sociological thinking in Slovakia, renewed after 1989, concentrates not only on the historical development and change of theoretical-methodological perspectives. It also turns attention to the works and thinkers that have been neglected up to now. The disregard to the work of Ján Lajčiak in the last forty years was caused by the fact he was a protestant pastor. This was enough sufficient for ignoring his liberal views and critical description of all shortcomings the Slovak society suffered by at the beginning of the twentieth century. Lajčiak, who received his doctoress degree at the Leipzig University and at Sorbonne in Paris was an exceptionally gifted and educated philologist. In 1905 he found himself as a pastor in a small mountain parish in central Slovakia far away from civilisation centres after he failed to find a job at some of the central European universities. Lajčiak, well informed about development of knowledge, attempted to analyse and understand Slovak society from the perspectives of modernisation requirements. In 1920 S.Š. Osuský edited his literary heritage and published the book Slovakia and Culture, which was the inspiring and personally sincere and straightforward answer to the need for the social change in Slovakia. Lajčiak especially evaluated sociology as the science which could disclose basic processes underlying Slovak society. He blamed the Slovak intelligentsia for restricting itself to literary development of Slovak culture and neglecting science and its critical application. Lajčiak preferred "evolution to revolution" and induction as the method of science. In Slovak culture he favoured and stressed individualism and individual activism. The colloquium which took place to his memory two years ago (see Sociológia No. 5-6/1995 and Sociológia No. 1, 3 and 4/1996) also emphasised the need of memoir texts which in a sense complete and substitute data from his literary heritage (which has not yet been found). The following articles by J. Filo and B. Choma can be classified as this kind of texts.

• Details
• Contents