Continuous online reading from the works of John Amos Comenius called "Reading Comenius Universally", which starts on Saturday night, is an original way of commemorating 350 years since this thinker's death. Academics and enthusiasts promised to support this 24-hour initiative by their reading. Passages from Comenius's philosophical and educational treatises but also personal correspondence will be read in 17 languages, thus accentuating this thinker's world-wide renown.
Stream video will be available at Comenius online Youtube channel.
You can find the detailed list of participating persons and time schedule here.
Department of Comenius Studies and Early Modern Intellectual History
Jilská 1, 110 00 Praha 1
tel.: 221 183 337
e-mail:
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Department of Comenius Studies and Early Modern Intellectual History
The department focuses on Comenius studies and various aspects of the early modern intellectual history of the Czech lands and Central Europe. Its main long-term project is the critical edition of Comenius's works J. A. Comenii Opera omnia. It also publishes the international review of Comenius studies and early modern intellectual history Acta Comeniana (indexed by Scopus).
Among the most important recent outcomes are six monographs dealing with Comenius's project of universal language, his drama, his use of biblical quotations, the anthropological consequences of changes in early modern cosmology, and concepts of evidence. Three volumes contain pioneering editions of Comenius's correspondence, his metaphysical writings, and the important philosophical work De luce mentium by Valerian Magni.
Five major projects have dealt with philosophy and knowledge in the Czech lands and in the broader European context, with Comenius's philosophy, forms of Humanism in literature of the Bohemian lands and early modern encyclopaedism. They also included cooperation on the European COST Action project Reassembling the Republic of Letters which discussed digital methods and tools for studying European intellectual networks. Cooperation on the exhibition „An Invisible Bridge. Milada Blekastad 1917–2003" (presented in the Czech Republic and Norway) features among the department's outreach activities.
The history of the present department goes back to the early 1990s when part of the team based previously in the Institute of Education moved to the renewed Institute of Philosophy. The continuity of the interdisciplinary research of Comenius's life and work and editorial activities within the Academy of Sciences dates, however, from the mid-1950s. Thus the current team continues the work of some of the outstanding scholars in the field active in the Academy of Sciences, such as Jan Patočka, Antonín Škarka and Julie Nováková.
Department of Comenius Studies and Early Modern Intellectual History © 2014–2019
