Times Higher Education profiles Professor of Law’s new publication

Professor of sociology and philosophy of law, Jirí Pribán was recently profiled by the Times Higher Education (THE) to coincide with the publication of his new book.

Professor Pribán has released a collection of essays on contemporary European politics entitled The Defence of Constitutionalism: The Czech Question in Post-national Europe.

More than a century after the publication of Czech politician Tomáš Garrigue Masaryk’s study The Czech Question, Czech politics—instead of the nation’s historical struggle for survival and independence—has become a pragmatic question of democratic constitutionalism and civility.

Subsequently, Professor Pribán’s book demonstrates that this new understanding involves both technical questions of power making and critical questions of its meaning. Democracy is the process of permanent self-correction. It possesses both the capacity to respond to unexpected problems and crises and intrinsic tensions between principled arguments and everyday administrative processes.

Defending constitutionalism, therefore, draws on principles of civil rights and freedoms, limited government, and representative democracy, the validity and persuasive force of which are at stake not only in the Czech Republic, but also in the post-national European Union and our global society at large.

Professor Priban’s THE interview not only discusses his latest publication but also talks about the books he plans to read, those that have influenced him throughout his life (in and outside academia) and those he would share with others.