Ivan Sviták

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Ivan Sviták (10 October 1925 in Hranice na Moravě – 20 October 1994 in Prague) was a Czech philosopher, critic, and poet who ranked among Europe's most prominent proponents of Marxist humanism. In a vast oeuvre of essays, Sviták addressed questions of democracy and socialism, of art in bureaucratic and consumer societies, and of the "unbearable burden" of political catastrophe in Czech history. In addition, Sviták wrote an extensive body of fiction and poetry, in which he "sought a unity of philosophy, literature, and politics, a unity of engagement, wisdom, and poetry." In this, Sviták consciously followed in the footsteps of the surrealist movement that he admired and critically defended on numerous occasions. These essays often self-published by Svitak were collected by Joseph Grim Feinberg and published in book form as “The Windmills of Humanity” by Charles H. Kerr Publishing Company in Chicago. In the 1960s, Sviták was one of Czechoslovakia's most vocal advocates of democratic socialism (a distinction he shared with Karel Kosík, Czechoslovakia's other prominent Marxist humanist philosopher). After the Warsaw Pact invasion of Czechoslovakia in August 1968, Sviták was stripped of his citizenship and sentenced to a lengthy jail term. Instead of serving the jail term, he chose to emigrate, first to New York City and in 1970 to Chico, California, where he was offered an academic position. Sviták worked at Cal State Chico until 1990, when he returned to Czechoslovakia after the end of Communist Party rule. In the early 1990s Sviták remained a staunch proponent of democratic socialism, turning his critical pen to the new, post-Communist regime. He died in Prague in 1994. (Source: DBPedia)