Work · Phenomenology & Hermeneutics
Heretical Essays in the Philosophy of History
History begins with the shaking of accepted meaning in the Greek polis and philosophy; the twentieth century’s wars call for a “solidarity of the shaken”.
Introduction
Patočka wrote the six essays in the early 1970s, when he was barred from teaching; they circulated in Czech samizdat from 1975, and a French translation with a preface by Paul Ricœur appeared in 1981, a German one in 1988. The essays ask when history begins. Prehistorical life, bound to work and the household, becomes history when the Greek polis and philosophy open a life that no longer accepts given meaning but questions it; Europe grew out of this care for the soul. The last essay interprets the world wars as the defining experience of the twentieth century and proposes the “solidarity of the shaken” as an answer. Jacques Derrida’s “The Gift of Death” (1992) read the essays as a heretical account of Christian responsibility; the war essay, with its use of Ernst Jünger and Teilhard de Chardin, remains disputed.
Connections
Builds on
- Being and Time1927 · Martin Heidegger
More works by Jan Patočka
As of November 2026 · Improve this page · How Agora is made