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This article analyzes the lectures and texts from the last period of Czech philosopher Jan Patočka, one of the last disciples of Edmund Husserl, the founding father of phenomenology. The point of departure is Patočka’s critical reception of Husserl’s concept of the crisis of European mankind. There are, however, two other elements distinctive of Patočka’s thought essential for this interpretation. First, he was a classical philosopher aiming at Socratic ‘care for the soul’. Second, he approached the theme of universal human history from his own unique historic position: as a Czech philosopher, involved in the Socratic manner primarily with his own Czech national community, for whom the big question of the future of European mankind and its legacy at the end of its golden modern age is inseparably connected with a ‘small’ one: the question of Czech national existence – the question of the future of his nation in a changing world and the issue of its freedom. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The study is a synthetic presentation of the positions adopted by a number of leading intellectuals--Valéry, Patočka, de Rougemont, Bernanos, Have—with regard to the spiritual and axiological crisis experienced by postwar European society and to its implicit consequence, demoralization and the lack of motivation, in an attempt to identify the mechanisms of a cautious and reflective optimism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The series of Velvet revolutions in 1989, which brought about the collapse of communism in Europe, seem to have vindicated those political theorists and activists who believed in the possibility of non-violent power. The relative success of the 1989 revolutions has validated a new paradigm of revolutionary change based on the assumption that radical changes were attainable through moderate means. Yet the legacy of these non-violent revolutions also points towards the limits of political strategies fundamentally opposed to violence. The article shows that the key architects of non-violent revolutions in 1989 were well aware of the contingent nature of all political actions, and were thus willing to take risks in their pursuit of freedom. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]