O pošetilosti života i smrti – Brouk Bohuslav (2009)

The subject of interest for Bohuslav Brouk in his essay On the Folly of Life and Death is the phenomenon of intentional death, or suicide. The author is interested in both the phenomenon itself, its history, and the development of opinions about it. In his typical, uncompromising, and readable style, he gradually examines suicide from psychological, ethical-religious, philosophical, sociological, and legal perspectives in four chapters. As Jindřich Štyrský notes, Brouk is guided in his thinking and creation by his 'courage to think everything through to the end, the courage to break social prejudices, to fear neither brutality nor cynicism, for only a completely free, unbound intellect is capable of penetrating into the most intimate corners of our soul,' and therefore it holds true that 'a fundamental feature of Brouk's critique of intentional death is absolute impartiality of thought, absolute freedom of reason, which does not stop before any moral dogmas.' Based on such an approach, Brouk arrives at many logical, yet bold and overly provocative conclusions for his time - evidenced by the judicial seizure of the book shortly after its publication in 1936, which found that the essay 'publicly incites to crime.'