Ladislav Klíma: The Czech philosopher who lived as if he were God

Ideas & Philosophy · Published 3 October 2026 Swipe more like this →

In short: Ladislav Klíma was a radical thinker who rejected all social conventions, lived in poverty, and believed the individual creates reality through sheer willpower. His life was a daring experiment to prove his philosophy, culminating in the defiant declaration that he was, in fact, a deity.

Born in 1878 in Domažlice, Klíma was a provocative figure whose life and work challenged the foundations of bourgeois society. Expelled from school in 1895 for insulting the State, the Church, and the Habsburgs, he spent his adulthood in a state of intentional non-conformity. He avoided steady employment, relying on occasional royalties and the support of friends to sustain a life that eventually descended into extreme poverty, where he lived in a hotel, ate vermin, and survived on spirits.

Klíma’s philosophy, often categorized as subjective idealism or existentialism, was deeply influenced by Berkeley, Schopenhauer, and Nietzsche. While Berkeley argued that to be is to be perceived, Klíma pushed this further, asserting that the individual creates the world through their own will. Unlike Schopenhauer, who advocated for the denial of the will, Klíma insisted that realizing one’s own will was the ultimate achievement. This led him to adopt the mantra 'Deus sum'—'I am God'—and to test his perceived divinity by stripping away all societal constraints.

His most famous work, 'The Sufferings of Prince Sternenhoch' (1928), mirrors his own obsession with the extremes of human experience. The novel follows a nobleman’s descent into madness and suffering, ultimately reaching a state of blissful salvation. Klíma’s own existence was a similar, albeit darker, performance. He destroyed many of his manuscripts during his lifetime, leaving behind a fragmented legacy that was only fully appreciated posthumously. He died of tuberculosis in 1928, leaving a body of work that remains a testament to his uncompromising, if eccentric, pursuit of self-control and absolute individual power.

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