Milan Machovec

Philosopher who introduced the Communists to Christian-Marxist dialogue

Milan Machovec, philosopher: born Prague 23 August 1925; married Marketa Hajna (died 1978; one son, one daughter); died Prague 15 January 2003.

In the heady days of the 1960s, when anything seemed possible, and even formerly Stalinist states like Czechoslovakia were liberalising, the Czech Marxist philosopher Milan Machovec was riding the crest of a wave. In 1963 he brought into his Philosophy Faculty at Charles University in Prague an ecumenical seminar initially set up by the Protestant theologian Josef Hromadka to discuss the role of Christians in a Communist state.

The seminars soon outgrew their cautious origins to become a full-scale debating ground for reforming Marxists, intellectuals and believers, both Catholic and Protestant. Among foreign invitees were Erich Fromm and Karl Rahner. Christian-Marxist dialogue was born in the Communist world. Many outside the Eastern bloc viewed the development with suspicion, but the sincerity of Machovec and the wide range of participants won some over.

Such dialogue reached its peak with the meetings at Marianske Lazne in May 1967, the first time such encounters had been held in a Communist country. Machovec spoke on the dangerous topic "Christians and Marxists in a Common Quest for the Meaning of Human Life".

Machovec had joined the Communist Party as a student in the years immediately after the Second World War, before becoming professor of dialectical materialism and Marxism-Leninism. But by the 1950s he was already disillusioned by the type of Communism he had seen installed in his homeland. He sought a return to what he believed were authentic Czech roots in the humanistic ideas of the Protestant reformer Jan Hus and the pre-war president Tomas Garrigue Masaryk.

In the 1960s, Machovec published a series of works – including the first full-length biography of Masaryk in half a century and a biography of St Augustine – which which could not have been published at the height of the Stalinist era. His most influential book was published in English in 1976 as A Marxist Looks at Jesus, after 1972 publication in German. The book had a profound influence in Western Europe and Latin America, with translations into 15 languages. It was described by the German theologian Hans Kung as "the best book on Jesus from the Marxist-atheist standpoint".

Publication in Czechoslovakia was out of the question – the authorities had ordered the typesetting to be destroyed in 1970. The political, social, intellectual and religious liberalisation of the Prague Spring – and with it a human-rights group Machovec briefly led – had been crushed in August 1968 by the tanks of the Soviet-led invasion forces. In the "normalisation" that followed the invasion, Machovec was expelled from the Communist Party and from his job. He refused offers of university posts in Austria. "For me there was only one solution: neither exile nor collaboration," he later declared.

Ironically, he survived the years in the wilderness as organist of a Catholic church in Prague. He signed the Charter 77 petition demanding human rights and became close friends with many younger dissidents, helping educate students kicked out of higher education for political reasons. He was not able to return to the university until the revolution of 1989, when the Philosophy Faculty belatedly restored him to his old post.

Retiring in 1993, Machovec rounded off his career with a book on the question of God as a question of humanity. "We cannot live without God as the sum of the deepest human experiences and longings," he wrote. "We cannot live without God, who protects us from the egotistical and individualistic reduction of humanity."

Felix Corley