Jan Patočka: filosof jako svědomí svého národa

• Authors: Walter Biemel

Title variants

EN

Jan Patočka: The philosopher as conscience of the his nation

• Languages of publication: CS

Abstracts

EN

The first part of the article is an interpretation of Patočka’s philosophy of history, with an emphasis on the essential connection of philosophy and a politics founding a new, historical life-form. The task of the philosopher, the model of whom is Socrates, is to question the sense of the world as hitherto given. The basic possibility of the historical person is, then, the possibility of freedom, liberation from being bound to life, and the assumption of responsibility for one’s own existence. In the modern world, however, determined as it is by the supremacy of the natural sciences, a loss of sense has taken place and there is a paradoxical return to pre-history. In the second part of the article the author concerns himself with Patočka’s reflections on Czech history arising from his philosophy of history, and with the personal relation of the philosopher Jan Patočka to his nation. The author emphasises, above all, Patočka’s distinction between the “little” and the “great histories”, that is between the historical epochs of the Hussites and the United Brethren, when the Czech nation showed it was able to take responsibility for universal ideas and its own existence, and the later and contemporary epochs when, out of fear for its own existence, it gave up freedom and its own responsibility. The author, in this connection, emphasises the urgency of the actualisation of the Hegelian dialectic of “lord and bondsman”, which Patočka’s considerations also point to, and highlights Patočka’s linking of philosophy and personal engagement in the spirit of Socrates.

Keywords

EN

philosophy of history; Jan Patočka

Discipline

• PHILOSOPHY: PHILOSOPHY

• Publisher: Institute of Philosophy, Czech Academy of Sciences
• Journal: Filosofický časopis (Philosophical Journal)
• Year: 2008
• Volume: 56
• Issue: 3
• Pages: 331-343
• Document type: ARTICLE

Contributors

author

Walter Biemel

• Filosofický časopis, redakce, Filosofický ústav AV ČR, v.v.i., Jilská 1, 110 00 Praha 1, Czech Republic