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Socrates’ final argument in the Protagoras is premised on the surprising identification of the pleasant with the good and argues that virtue is the “art of measurement” that can be easily taught to the Many. The view that virtue can be taught is also espoused by Socrates elsewhere, notably in the Phaedrus. However, while the Protagoras identifies virtue with the art of calculating the greatest pleasure, which is identified with the greatest good, in the Phaedrus virtue is shown to consist in the ceaseless search for the good. I argue that the picture of virtue presented in the Protagoras is in agreement with that of the Phaedrus in that the Protagoras depicts the first stage of the process of learning genuine virtue, which is outlined as a whole in the Phaedrus. The argument of the Protagoras then works as a protreptic: it teaches an elementary way of thinking about the ends of one’s actions and opens up the way toward genuine virtue.

The article investigates the intrinsic interconnectedness of European culture with philosophy acting as its self-reflexive pillar, the foundations of which many derive from Plato. It is in the philosophical interpretation of Plato’s work that the author uncovers the analogous structures that represented one of the greatest challenges of the philosophical tradition: the implicit polemical relationship to another, different starting point, that precedes the explicit polemos – a war. The author recalls the influential attempts of European thought in the 20th century that tried to break free from a state of total confrontation. In the 1990s, however, he catches up with the Platonic interpretation, as is demonstrated by the detailed description of the “war of methodologies.” If in the background there is a connection with self-reflection in the process of the self-constitution of philosophy and the selfcomprehension of Europe, then according to the author the “Platonic revolution” is an effort to come to terms with the unprocessed implicit epistemological preformative, war. A possible solution is provided by the author‘s distinction between agon and polemos.

In the concluding part of Heretical Essays in the Philosophy of History, Jan Patočka thematizes the 20th century and claims that this entire period is a century of war. This paper identifies the main arguments supporting this thesis and examines Patočka’s reflections on how this essential character of the 20th century can be overcome. The article primarily focuses on revealing the ontological-anthropological framework that underlies Patočka’s argumentation, including the idea that polemos is the law of the world. More concrete analyses then demonstrate the problematic elements of Patočka’s concept.

Martin Koci es quizás uno de los exponentes más recientes de lo que ha sido denominado el “giro teológico” de la fenomenología contemporánea. Koci presenta una lectura desde una teología que recurre a la fenomenología para intentar dar razón de un Cristianismo posterior a la cristiandad. Aunque la referencia a Kierkegaard sea ineludible, Koci alude, sobre todo, a las implicaciones que supone la vivencia del Cristianismo en una época posmoderna. O, dicho más específicamente: una época post-cristiana. Para llevar a cabo su tarea, el teólogo checo establece un diálogo con uno de sus compatriotas más relevantes del siglo pasado: Jan Patočka. En su texto más reciente, Christianity after Christendom: Heretical Perspectives in Philosophical Theology, Koci amplía su diálogo con Patočka haciendo partícipes en la conversación a una serie de filósofos, conocidos todos por sus posturas heterodoxas o “heréticas” en lo que se refiere al Cristianismo. Entre estos se encuentran Jean-Luc Nancy, Gianni Vattimo, John D. Caputo y Richard Kearney. Junto con cada uno de estos autores, Koci asume el reto de hacer “la pregunta obvia, pero que en gran medida ha sido descuidada: ¿qué viene después del fin del Cristianismo?”.

Platonismo negativo es quizás uno de los textos de Jan Patočka que más atención ha recibido en el ámbito académico. Su importancia es pocas veces puesta en duda. Con todo, hoy nos encontramos lejos de agotar las implicaciones que conlleva la interpretación que hace de Platón el filósofo checo. Particularmente, la concepción de la Idea platónica que se deriva de la lectura patočkiana, no parece haber sido suficientemente confrontada con lo dicho por el mismo Platón en sus diálogos. Según el autor, parece existir una afinidad particular entre lo dicho por Diotima en su discurso en el Banquete y la interpretación patočkiana de Platón que, hasta el momento, no parece haber recibido suficiente atención en la literatura académica sobre estos dos autores. De manera similar a lo que plantea Patočka con la experiencia de la libertad como puerta que abre a la consideración de la Idea, Diotima ancla el reconocimiento de lo bello en sí con la experiencia de lo bello en el mundo. Este “anclaje” se daría gracias al camino en ascenso planteado en la scala amoris, en el que eros, siendo amor de lo bello, asume una función integradora en el interior del amante. Justamente, esta función integradora llevada a cabo por eros parece dar razón del vínculo que establece Diotima entre aquello que es bello en sí mismo y la virtud verdadera que el amante engendra al experimentarlo.

Opening up to the world and individual reflective experience are fundamental pillars in the phenomenological approaches of Landgrebe, Fink, and Patočka. In the special case of Landgrebe and his constructive phenomenology, he seeks to address the problems of metaphysics through the clarification of meanings through the phenomenological interpretation of questions of idealism. For Landgrebe, strict knowledge coincides with the absolute, which arises from the possibilities of meaning or sense. The recovery of metaphysics, innate in the human being, requires evaluating the metaphysical origin of the birth of man. In this way, Landgrebe proposes to initiate the phenomenological path by seeking the path to the absolute in the depths of subjectivity. This path leads us to face the intersubjectivity of the world as objective and the primacy of the "you" over the "I". Landgrebe's original metaphysical phenomenology seeks to overcome the dualism between consciousness and being, and between knowledge and belief. The analysis of the intentional structure of the horizon reveals an absolutist concept that goes beyond man and his knowledge, representing both the basis and the link between them. Movement becomes the unique and original connection between subject and world.

Jan Patočka elabora una crítica a la subjetividad absolutizada y cerrada sobre sí misma que constituye para él el núcleo de la crisis, no sólo de la ciencia, sino también de la cultura europea y que la fenomenología de Husserl no logra superar. Para ello, Patočka despliega, de la mano de Platón, la idea del alma abierta, de una subjetividad que no necesita buscar una salida hacia la realidad porque consiste justamente en esta apertura al ser; en primer lugar, al ser propio, que está siempre frente a la posibilidad de salir de sí y elevarse hacia horizontes que la trasciendan o de perderse en la caída de la clausura narcisista sobre sí misma. Esta idea de una racionalidad sustentada no en la subjetividad absoluta de la modernidad, sino en una constitutiva apertura al ser, que Patočka rastrea hasta los orígenes del pensamiento griego y, por tanto, en la raíz de la tradición occidental, es para él la clave de una comprensión de la existencia como cuidado del alma, que tiene profundas implicaciones éticas y políticas para el contexto presente

Jan Patočka elabora una crítica a la subjetividad absolutizada y cerrada sobre sí misma que constituye para él el núcleo de la crisis, no sólo de la ciencia, sino también de la cultura europea y que la fenomenología de Husserl no logra superar. Para ello, Patočka despliega, de la mano de Platón, la idea del alma abierta, de una subjetividad que no necesita buscar una salida hacia la realidad porque consiste justamente en esta apertura al ser; en primer lugar, al ser propio, que está siempre frente a la posibilidad de salir de sí y elevarse hacia horizontes que la trasciendan o de perderse en la caída de la clausura narcisista sobre sí misma. Esta idea de una racionalidad sustentada no en la subjetividad absoluta de la modernidad, sino en una constitutiva apertura al ser, que Patočka rastrea hasta los orígenes del pensamiento griego y, por tanto, en la raíz de la tradición occidental, es para él la clave de una comprensión de la existencia como cuidado del alma, que tiene profundas implicaciones éticas y políticas para el contexto presente.

In this study, the author investigates, analyzes and evaluates the philosophically and politically important, interactive role played by criticism in forming and maintaining the concept of a democratic republic, and which played a fundamental role in the philosophical and political works of T. G. Masaryk, Emanuel Rádl, Jan Patočka, Ladislav Hejdánek and Erazim Kohák. The study first describes Masaryk’s concept of a democratic republic, which originated in his philosophical, social and political criticism of the time, and then continues with Rádl’s criticism of nationalism, also linked to Masaryk; Patočka’s criticism of Masaryk’s and Rádl’s philosophy and politics; and Hejdánek’s and Kohák’s criticism of Patočka’s criticism. Philosophical criticism played an irreplaceable role both in the initial sustaining of Masaryk’s and Rádl’s concept of a democratic republic and in its renewal and modernization. In the conclusion, the critical discourse of the authors discussed in the study is summarized.

The article addresses the theme of spectrality, the givenness of the other who remains here after departure as a ghost. It explores how this spectrality functions in Plato’s funeral oratory in the Menexenus dialogue. In the first part, the article discusses J. Patočka’s account of the specific givenness of the departed, which is experienced as a privation of a former intersubjectively intertwined life. The deceased other causes a twofold crisis. On the one hand, with the death of the other also comes the withering of part of myself, for I am unable to realise possibilities dependent on his or her presence. On the other hand, the meaning of the other’s project, which becomes institutionalised through participation in the events and re-formation of the world, is endangered if no one is willing to take on and realise this meaning as one’s own. The second part of the article discusses how Socrates’ oratory addresses this crisis through specific temporality of the speech, one in which the past provides the present with a paradigm for appropriate civic action which is to be imitated in the future. In this context, he creatively uses the concept of shame to induce an attitude of responsibility for the polis, whose greatness is grounded in the virtuous deeds of spectrally present ancestry.

The study presented here focuses on the transformation in the 1940s and 1950s of Jan Patočka’s interpretation of the relationship between Socrates and Plato. This shift is tracked in the context of Patočka’s dialogue with the philosophy of existence. While in the lectures from the 1940s and the climactic work from this period, Věčnost a dějinnost (Eternity and Historicity), Socrates – with his emphasis on subjectivity, human freedom and incompleteness – is seen in Patočka’s conception to be close to the main motifs of the philosophy of existence, in Negativní platonismus (Negative Platonism) Patočka’s position is already far from such an “existential Socraticism.” The text of the study shows that Patočka’s critical reception of the philosophy of existence is one of the historically important motives in the transformation of Patočka’s position between Eternity and Historicity and Negative Platonism.

This article discusses the relationship between Jan Patočka's and Václav Havel's political writings. By specifically focusing on Patočka's concepts a "life in the idea" and a "life in problematicity" and Havel's notion of a "life in truth", it seeks to draw out the differences and similarities between their respective understandings of the relationship between truth and politics. The paper argues that Havel reinterpreted Patočka's ideas in a way, which in the final analysis diverged from Patočka's original intentions. Finally, the article argues that Havel's, in many ways productive, reinterpretation gives rise to a highly problematic conception of ideology and politics since the "prepolitical" form of politics that Havel envisions ultimately tends to naturalize both truth and politics.

According to Václav Havel’s famous essay The Power of powerless life within a lie is at the core of the communist regime in Czechoslovakia. Life within a lie is characteristic for the great majority of people and is contrasted with life within the truth which is characteristic of dissent movement. In this paper, I will try to shed some light on the concept of “living within a lie.” I will show that Havel develops not one but two concepts of a lie: on the one hand, lie is deliberate pretence; on the other hand, lie is seduction by consumerist values. The first meaning of a lie is derived from Havel’s analysis of the specifics of the Soviet sphere of influence, namely central role of ideology with omnipresent demands on public support of the regime. The second meaning of a lie is heavily influenced by a critical assessment of modern society from the leading figure of the Czech underground movement Ivan Jirous and leading Czech philosopher Jan Patočka. This double meaning of a lie enables Havel to capture both specific problems of living under the communist regime and general problems of living in modern society anywhere in the world. In the final chapters of this paper, I will show that Havel is not clear about how these two meanings of a lie are connected and that there are problems resulting from these unclarities both for Havel’s analysis of the communism and his proposed solution of the crisis.

In in the second half of the 1940s, Jan Patočka emphasized the essentially negative character of human existence. He thus found himself in the neighborhood of Sartre’s existentialism, Heidegger’s philosophy of being, and Hegel’s dialectic, and at the same time in opposition to schools of thought which either completely reject the substantive use of “the nothing,” such as Carnap’s positivism, or relativize it, like Bergson. It is the latter polemic, Patočka’s with Bergson, which is discussed in this article. The concept of negativity in Patočka basically refers to the idea that human existence is defined by a capacity to adopt a distance toward what is pre-given, be it the reality of the physical world or the established habits and rules of a particular society. Negativity qua distance has in Patočka an absolute character. It is this claim that he defends in his critique of Bergson. The article attempts to reconstruct Patočka’s position. I claim that the wager on absolute negativity does not make Patočka a nihilist, but a philosopher of a negative holism, and, in a sense, even a moralist. Above a reconstruction of Patočka’s stance, I spell out some reservations focused especially on the systematic meaning of Patočka’s recourse to negativity. I suggest that negation is an indispensable part of a more complex existential structure Patočka is aiming at. The terms he uses for this structure include “thirst for the absolute,” “thirst for reality,” “restlessness of the heart” and “desire.” To translate these allusions onto a general plan, it is useful to talk about the capacity to establish differences that matter. As general as it seems, this turn of phrase can grasp both Patočka’s emphasis on negativity, and his emphasis on the absolute, the latter – nevertheless – not residing in a distance from being, but in differences established, maintained and abandoned by ourselves within being.

The article looks at the foundations of Jan Patočka’s philosophy of negative Platonism. On the one hand, it pursues the negative-Platonic question of the essence of metaphysics and, on the other, Patočka’s analysis of the ontic-ontological difference as the fundament of the whole negative-Platonic project. The author points out that the expression of Patočka’s borderline position between metaphysics and philosophy is the ambiguousness of negative Platonism, with which, however, the negative-Platonic requirement of a clear ontic-ontological difference does not correspond. He seeks a possible solution to this problem in Patočka’s study “Nadcivilizace a její vnitřní konflikt” (“Supercivilisation and its Inner Conflict“), especially in the notion of “large distinctions”. He understands this as a historical archetype of the difference from later texts devoted to negative Platonism, interpreted as chorismos.

Neste artigo apresentamos as análises fenomenológicas sobre a dor que Jan Patočka desenvolveu nos anos 40. Nelas, o filósofo aponta para uma posição interessante sobre a dor como uma experiência do mal. Em particular, a dor é uma intenção negativa, onde existe um objeto peculiar que aniquila todos os objetos possíveis aos quais os desejos humanos aspiram. Esta tese do filósofo checo, além de esclarecer todo o seu trabalho, enquadra-‑se plenamente nos atuais debates filosóficos e interdisciplinares sobre a dor.

Jan Patočka, who drew inspiration for his own philosophy not only in the important phenomenologist Hannah Arendt but also in Greek philosophy, at one point in his philosophical development, surprisingly turned away from Socrates and Plato and inclined to Aristotle and his concept of action. As with Arendt, this concept forms the pillar of his thinking, and the aim of this text is to indicate the possible connection of this leaning towards Aristotle with the study of Patočka’s friend and colleague Eugen Finek called PHRONESIS und THEORIA. It is these Aristotelian concepts that prove to be crucial for the further development of Patočka’s thought and his concept of action. In addition, there are similarities, but also differences in Patočka and Fink’s concept of human finitude, which is very closely related to the act.

The article deals with the problem of human rights in the context Jan Patočka’s philosophy. In philosophical discourse this issue usually emerges as the problem of grounding of human rights in Patočka’s later phenomenology and is closely and legitimately connected to a vision of his political involvement that unites philosophical theory with living practice. This article approaches the problem of human rights from a different perspective and finds reasons why Patočka was not only a proponent of human rights, but also a critique of their potentially decadent forms originating in inauthentic understanding of human freedom. For this reason the article focuses on Patočka’s critique of liberalism.

As Karl Löwith suggested, modern philosophy of history secularizes Christian Heilsgeschichte by turning the eschaton into an immanent telos of the historical process. This article agrees with Löwith that there is an essential relation between the modern understanding of history and the Christian model. Yet, in drawing on the philosophy of history of Jan Patočka, it shows that for modern philosophy of history, there is a second option of dealing with the eschaton. Just as the Christian eschaton constitutes history also in urging to make a decision for Christ here and now, modern history constantly calls for making a decision concerning its meaning. According to Patočka, however, the ultimate meaning of history cannot be specified. Rather, meaning realizes itself in the question of meaning. One might speak here of a “crossed-out eschatology” (durchgestrichene Eschatologie) that stands in opposition to the idea of human self-redemption, even if it is thoroughly modern.

Along with the notion of war in general, the so-called war on terror has been, since its inception in 2001, the subject of much debate and theorization. French thinker Gilles Andréani discusses the appropriateness of the term "war" to apply to the present conflict; Antonio Negri has argued how the State's use of the concept of peace justifies its engagement in warfare in general. I approach the conversation, however, by presenting the thoughts of 20th century Czech philosopher Jan Patočka on the relationship between war and peace. Here, I utilize his views, formulated in the context of Soviet control of Eastern Europe, to deconstruct the Bush administration's declaration of war on a concept; in this case, terror. In what follows, I delineate the main aspects of Patočka's understanding of continuous warfare in the 20th century, after which I apply them to some of the central features of the Bush administration's war rhetoric. Additionally, I suggest that Patočka's notion of the solidarity of the shaken may provide a starting point from which all of those involved in the conflict may begin to move forward.