Slovakia, philosophy in

1. History and evolution

As early as the tenth century, Slovakia lost its political independence during the formation of new states in the Danube valley. Subsequently, until 1918, Slovakia was politically subject to Hungary and later was part of the Austro-Hungarian empire. Under these circumstances the Slovak nation had lived through centuries of almost uninterrupted national, economic and cultural oppression by foreign rulers. The feudal atmosphere retarded cultural development, as well as the spread of higher education. Many Slovaks thirsting for knowledge went abroad – many of these never returned.

At the end of the sixteenth century the situation began to change as waves of humanism and later-Reformation thought arrived in Slovakia. The first humanistic scholars from Slovakia are connected with this period. These worked abroad, however, and included Ján Sambocký of Trnava (d. 1584), translator of Plato’s dialogues, Vavrinec Benedikti of Nedožiery (d.1615), educational reformer and propagator of the ideas of Petrus Ramus, and Ján Jessenius (d. 1621), physician and supporter of Renaissance Neo-Platonist natural philosophy.