In Jan Patočka’s Heretical Essays, a central question that emerges in the analysis of our technological civilization is “whether historical humans are still willing to embrace history.” The question can only be understood, I suggest, in its significance and relevance to our age if viewed within a specific configuration of concepts that place in relief the distinctive place of history within Patočka’s project. While Husserl’s and Heidegger’s questioning revolves around the relationship between history and philosophy, for Patočka it is the unity of philosophy, politics, and history, which gives his reflection its specific orientation.
Technological civilization can best be understood, according to Patočka, as a historical and specific relation to truth, one that constrains and limits possibilities of freedom. He offers an extraordinarily striking phenomenological reading of the Xorismos in Plato which, I will argue, allows for the realization of the unity of philosophy, history, and politics, through what he is primarily known for, the care of the soul. The experience of Xorismos as negative freedom is what underpins history as an exercise of freedom.
History for Patočka is made; it does not happen. This view of history is what allows Patočka to propose the notion of sacrifice as a historical response to the dangers of technique. This is because care of the soul is itself always a practice of sacrifice. It is the place from which we can truly embrace history—meaning, in the most pragmatic sense, the place from which we can act rather than submit to unknown forces.