The brave struggle: Jan Patočka on Europe’s past and future

ABSTRACT

This article proposes to investigate Jan Patočka’s idea of “post-Europe”, in the context of his understanding of European contemporary history. Therefore, I first stress how important it is for Patočka to conceive a “post-European perspective”, i.e. a peculiar insight into historical problems and conflicts that would allow humanity to find a possible path out of the condition that characterizes the twentieth century. Second, I focus on the existential figure that, according to Patočka, is capable of engendering this perspective, and whose fundamental traits are equality, detachment, openness and courage. Thus, I consider Husserl’s idea of Europe, Arendt’s concept of the political and Bergson’s concept of the open soul as fundamental references for Patočka’s reconstruction. I conclude by showing how Patočka’s ethical stance on Europe and post-Europe can also be meaningful in light of the current European economic and political crisis.

Notes

1 See the introductory remarks in this issue.

2 Patočka, ‘Die Epochen der Geschichte’, 196. I’m quoting the German revised version of this essay, which in its first editions was also known as ‘Das Geschichtsschema’.

3 Patočka’s interest in the debate on social rationalization is already visible in his writings from the 1950s, where he often refers to Max Weber, as well as to Marxist and critical theory, with regard to this issue. See for instance Patočka, ‘Nadcivilizace a její vnitřní konflikt’ [The Supercivilization and its Inner Conflict]. Jóhann P. Árnason stressed how Patočka’s critique of existing societies is influenced by both critical theory and a more conservative conception of modernity. See Árnason, Civilizations in Dispute, 139. On the possible convergence between Patočka and critical theory, see also Lau, ‘Jan Patočka: Critical Consciousness and Non-Eurocentric Philosopher of the Phenomenological Movement’.

4 Patočka, Heretical Essays in the Philosophy of History, 113. See on this aspect of Patočka’s thought James Dodd’s analysis in Dodd, Violence and Phenomenology, 124ff.

5 Patočka, ‘Die Selbstbesinnung Europas’, 259. (“It really looks as though the regnum hominis has become a regimen hominum, in the objective genitive sense of the term, where the same accumulation of energy is the unrestrained ruler.”) Unless otherwise specified, all translations from German and Czech are mine.

6 Patočka, ‘Die Epochen der Geschichte’, 191.

7 Ibid., 199. On the importance of war and especially of the First World War in Patočka’s thought, see de Warren, ‘Homecoming. Jan Patočka’s Reflections on the First World War’; Hagedorn, ‘Europe’s 20th Century: History of Wars and War as History’.

8 I especially refer here to Arendt’s definition, according to which totalitarian politics deviate from mere antisemitism, racism, or imperialism, inasmuch as they “use and abuse their own ideological and political elements until the basis of factual reality”. See Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism, xv.

9 See Patočka, ‘Nadcivilizace a její vnitřní konflikt’, 263.

10 Analyses of this concept can be found in Árnason, Civilizations in Dispute; Homolka, ‘The Problem of Meaning in the Rational (Super)Civilisation’; Meacham, ‘Supercivilisation and Biologism’; Tava, The Risk of Freedom.

11 See Patočka, Heretical Essays, 116.

12 See Patočka, ‘Die Epochen der Geschichte’, 201–2.

13 Among the numerous investigations on the peculiar situation of Central Europe, also with reference to Patočka’s stance, see in particular, Garton Ash, ‘Does Central Europe Exist?’, as well as other important contributions by István Bibó, Zygmund Bauman, Czesław Miłosz, Predrag Matvejević, and others in Schöpflin and Wood (eds.), In Search of Central Europe. A more recent historical analysis of the “question of Central Europe”, in light of the origins and development of the idea of Europe, can be found in Mikkeli, Europe as an Idea and an Identity.

14 An excellent analysis of Patočka’s supposed Eurocentrism can be found in Novotný, ‘Europe, Post-Europe, and Eurocentrism’.

15 In addition to ‘Die Epochen der Geschichte’, see on this idea especially Patočka’s late essay ‘Europa und Nach-Europa’, as well as various other fragments to which I refer in the following paragraphs.

16 See on this especially Patočka, Plato and Europe, 71ff. On Patočka’s idea of the care for the soul, also in relation with the Europe concept, see in particular Gasché, Europe, or the Infinite Task, part III. On the role that Patočka’s concept of soul can acquire in the context of political dissidence, see Forti, ‘The Soul as Site of Dissidence’.

17 See Patočka, ‘[La genèse et la catastrophe de l’Europe]’, 272. English translation forthcoming in Meacham and Tava, Thinking after Europe.

18 See more on this in Tava, ‘Lifeworld, Civilisation System’.

19 Patočka, Heretical Essays in the Philosophy of History, 98.

20 Ibid., 118. (Translation partially changed on the basis of the original Czech text.)

21 Ibid.

22 Patočka, ‘Die Epochen der Geschichte’, 203. (“The historical reflection on history [geschichtliche Besinnung auf Geschichte] has become very rare”.)

23 On the relevance of this biologic element in Patočka’s reflection, see Meacham, ‘Supercivilisation and Biologism’.

24 This point has been thoroughly addressed by Kenneth Knies in his contribution to this issue, where he pointed out that, according to Husserl, European humanity, instead of using science as a tool to overcome its intellectual naiveté, received from it only worldly “prosperity”.

25 Patočka, ‘Europa und Nach-Europa’, 230.

26 All the mentioned topics, which are recalled in ‘Europe and post-Europe’, constitute leitmotivs in Patočka’s work. The topic of myth and religion in Patočka has been addressed, for example, by Ludger Hagedorn, in ‘Beyond Myth and Eternity: On Religion in Patočka’s Thought’. On Patočka’s reflection on language, see Jervolino, ‘Reading Patočka, in Search for a Philosophy of Translation’. With regard to mortality and death, Derrida’s attempt to tackle Patočka’s understanding of this problem still deserves careful attention. See Derrida, The Gift of Death.

27 The figure of Socrates often recurs in Patočka from the 1940s, and acquires a remarkable role especially in his 1950s writings on the idea of ‘negative Platonism’. On this, see Patočka, ‘Negative Platonism’. About the meaning of Socrates in Patočka’s reflection, see Forti, The New Demons, 267ff.

28 Patočka, ‘Europa und Nach-Europa’, 282.

29 This element emerges in particular in the late 1960s, in correspondence with the rise of the reform movements that led up to the Prague Spring. See, for example, Patočka, ‘Inteligence a opozice’ [Intellectuals and the Opposition]. An English translation is forthcoming in Meacham and Tava, Thinking after Europe: Jan Patočka and Politics.

30 Patočka, ‘Fünf Bruchstücke zum Geschichtsschema’. A French translation by Erika Abrams of this and other cited fragments is available in Patočka, L’Europe et après.

31 Arendt, The Human Condition, 198.

32 See Heidegger, Being and Time, 107ff.

33 The locus classicus for Hegel’s thinking about recognition is, of course, the Master–Slave dialectic in the Phenomenology of Mind, which Patočka translated into Czech in 1960. See Hegel, The Phenomenology of Mind, 229ff. On the desire of and fight for recognition in Hegel, see Kojève, Introduction to the Reading of Hegel, 7ff. On the importance of Kojève’s interpretation for Patočka, see Paparusso, ‘The End of History and After’.

34 Patočka, ‘Fünf Bruchstücke zum Geschichtsschema’, 347.

35 Ibid.

36 Patočka, ‘The Spiritual Person and the Intellectual’, 63. I have partially changed the English translation here, on the basis of the original Czech text; see Patočka, ‘Duchovní člověk a intelektuál’, 366.

37 See Patočka, ‘The Spiritual Person and the Intellectual’.

38 See Patočka, ‘Die nacheuropäische Epoche und ihre geistigen Probleme’; ‘Was Europa ist …’.

39 See Bergson, The Two Sources of Morality and Religion, 34. Patočka has already referred to the idea of “open soul” in the 1960s, while dealing with the figure of Comenius. See Patočka, ‘Comenius und die offene Seele’.

40 Bergson, The Two Sources of Morality and Religion, 26.

41 Ibid., 27.

42 See on this again Novotný, ‘Europe, Post-Europe and Eurocentrism’.

43 See in particular Scheler, The Human Place in the Cosmos; Sartre, Being and Nothingness.

44 Patočka, ‘Die nacheuropäische Epoche und ihre geistigen Probleme’, 379. In this respect, Patočka’s position seems to be much closer to that of Levinas, and to Levinas’ conception of “Other”. See Levinas, Totality and Infinity.

45 Patočka, ‘Die nacheuropäische Epoche und ihre geistigen Probleme’, 380.

46 The phrase “Fortress Europe” was probably used for the first time during the Second World War, as a propaganda term, by both the Royal Air Force and the Nazi propaganda. See for example Blood, Hitler’s Bandit Hunters the SS and the Nazi Occupation of Europe, 99–100. More recently it became a slogan to which the Freedom Party of Austria and Alexis Tsipras referred, meaning by it, respectively, something to build and to dismantle.

47 The dynamics of exclusion and rejection in the ongoing immigration crisis in Europe, as well as a possible way to resist these dynamics, are analysed in Jansen, Celikates and de Bloois, The Irregularization of Migration in Contemporary Europe. About immigration politics, and the difficulties encountered by liberal democracies in handling this issue, see Hampshire, The Politics of Immigration.

48 See Cacciari, L’arcipelago. See also Géophilosophie de l’Europe: Penser l’Europe à ses frontières, with contributions on the same topic by Nancy, Lacoue-Labarthe, and others.

49 See Cacciari, ‘Europe or Philosophy’. On the impossibility of thinking of Europe’s “borders”, see also Balibar, ‘Borderland Europe and the Challenge of Migration’. About the role of the “Stranger”, in the Platonic sense of the word, in defining Europe, see Rodolphe Gasché’s contribution to this issue.

50 On Europe’s complexity, also with reference to Patočka’s position, see Morin, Penser l’Europe. About the necessity to reject any traditional idea of identity with regard to Europe, see Balibar, We, the People of Europe and ‘Out of the Interregnum’.

51 The juxtaposition between “fortress Europe” and “inclusive community” was proposed, for example, by Tsipras during his 2014 European election campaign.

52 Nancy also refers in a similar way to the idea of “being-with”, referring both to Heidegger and Levinas. See Nancy, The Inoperative Community, 103–5.

53 Zambrano, La agonía de Europa, 11 (my translation).

54 See Patočka, ‘Europa und Nach-Europa’, 231.

55 See on this Anya Topolski’s response to Balibar’s ‘Out of the Interregnum’. Topolski, ‘From the Idea of Europe to a Europe of Ideas’.

56 See Patočka, ‘Europa und nach-Europa’, 277ff. On Plato’s idea of thumos, see in particular Tarnopolsky, ‘Thumos and Rationality in Plato’s Republic’; Kraugerud, ‘ ‘Essentially Social’? A Discussion of the Spirited Part of the Soul in Plato’.