Jan Patocka and the Idea of Europe

On the 13th March 1977, the 70 year old Czech philosopher Jan Patočka died under a final police interrogation. One of the founders of Charter 77 along with Vaclav Havel – who later acknowledged the spiritual influence of Patočka in both Charter 77 and the Velvet Revolution – Patočka was chased out of teaching at university no less than three times by the authorities and so gave his seminars clandestinely. The transcript of the final police interrogations read ironically like a testimony: one policeman asks Patočka about why he took on the role of spokesperson for Charter 77, and notes his response as ‘it is extremely unlikely that anyone else would have the courage to do it’.

Disciple of Husserl and phenomenology, Patočka is the most important post-war philosopher to have theorised the notion of ‘Europe’, elevating Europe to the status of an idea. Europe is the principles of its own history, which are to be found in its philosophical, scientific and literary heritage. The two world wars affected this idea in a paradoxical way: the wars manifested the defeat of Europe’s attempt to dominate the world, but at the same time gave the fruits of Europe’s technological and scientific invention to the whole world. Patočka was the first to see the predicament globalisation would throw Europe into: how to find justification for itself in a world that has appropriated Europe’s own technologies of development? This is the predicament for Europe in the post-European world. Patočka’s response is taken from the beginning of the European philosophical tradition. Employing the Socratic notion of ‘looking after the spirit’ or ‘care’, Patočka paints Europe’s role in the post-European world as that of changing the principles of development it itself gave to the world, mitigating their auto-destructive tendencies.

Looking after the spirit is necessarily a philosophical, political and existential. Philosophical, because Europe must renew its questioning spirit to interrogate its own principles; political and existential because it requires taking responsibility for the common good, the rejecting the easy comforts of making security one’s only concern, and the courage to place the liberty and dignity of men above the ‘chains that tie life to its own consummation.’

By uncovering its most deeply rooted philosophical traditions, Europe could again take on the role of changing the world in the post-European age of globalisation, not by ordering the world to its own ends, but by taking responsibility for the spiritual transformation and unification of the world through its caring for itself. The courage and foresight of Jan Patočka in urging Europe to take this responsibility makes him not only an essential philosopher for today’s Europe, but also an essential example of an engaged citizen.