Questions of Identity

Download or read book Questions of Identity written by Robert B. Pynsent and published by . This book was released on 1994 with total page 264 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Questions of Identity treats four varieties of conceptions of individual and social identity. This interdisciplinary book describes and analyzes four trends of thought that have prevailed at one time in most of Europe over the last two centuries: the idea of the responsible citizen, the concept of patriotism or nationalism, the loss of self, and "suffering" as a formative element in the "national character." In a section devoted to Václav Havel, Pynsent treats Havel's notion of personal identity as expressed in personal responsibility. Another section concerning national identity looks in particular at two early nineteenth-century Slovaks who rejected Slovak nationalism and whose ideas ultimately had a profound impact on East European thinking on nationality up to the fall of communism. A third section deals with the beginnings of Modernism and the apparent disintegration of the self in West European and Czech writers. The final section addresses Vladimír Páral's expositions of the Czech cult of national martyrs since St. Wenceslas and the extent to which the "martyr" complex remains part of Czech self-identification.