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5 Politics and Ethics in the Twentieth Century In the last two Heretical Essays in the Philosophy of History, Patočka turns from developing a philosophy of history to applying its principles in the contemporary world. Here we have a clear expression of the political side of his philosophy. Although Jan Patočka became known as a dissident in Czechoslovakia in the 1970s, his political philosophy cannot accurately be characterized as “dissident” philosophy. Its focus is not resistance and its relevance is not limited to periods of ideological repression. The ground of Patočka’s political dissidence is a form of political morality and commitment to truth. Politics must be subservient, he argues in Charter 77, to something that transcends it and holds it accountable. While this may resemble a straightforward metaphysics of morals, the resemblance is deceiving. This type of foundation for politics is just what Patočka wants to avoid. His philosophical outlook, as we have seen in the preceding chapters , is based on an understanding of historicity and problematicity that explicitly denies the possibility of an objectivized metaphysics. And yet there is an unambiguous moral element to the political philosophy of Jan Patočka, an element that is the product of, not in conflict with, his ontological philosophy of history. In this chapter I examine Patočka’s political texts, including the final and most radical of the Heretical Essays, with the aim of illuminating their political and ethical implications. Patočka believes that an understanding of human ontology and historicity, as he has developed the concepts, will lead the individual to a mode of comportment that is inherently truthful and ethical. This behavior on the part of dedicated individuals, by extension, provides the greatest possibility for the genuine improvement of, not only political society, but Western civilization as a whole. The texts in question, the final two Heretical Essays as well as essays on the spiritual foundation of political activity and the appearance of a modern “supercivilization,” reveal not only Patočka’s understanding of political ethics but also his personal relationship to the tumultuous political 121 scene in Central Europe during the twentieth century. These texts will also lead to an examination of his experience with communism and his decision to act as a dissident, culminating in his involvement with Charter 77. PATOČKA AND POLITICS Governance in the contemporary world, Patočka argues, has the character of an “accidental rule” 1—accidental because it is rule infused neither by an understanding of humanity nor of history. This lack of understanding manifests itself in the politics of totalitarian movements, but also in the more conventional politics of the scientific age, where the individual is reduced to a mere role and conceived of as a “force” rather than a human being. “The question,” Patočka writes, “is whether historical humans are still willing to embrace history.” 2 Embracing history means understanding human historicity. Modern civilization fails to embrace history inasmuch as it treats it as a puzzle to be decoded, a problem to be solved. It is precisely in seeking to grasp history, to foresee its conclusion and thereby end its fatal uncertainty and contingency , that we abandon it and lose sight of own historicity. “Modern civilization ,” Patočka writes, “suffers not only from its own flaws and myopia but also from the failure to resolve the entire problem of history. Yet the problem of history may not be resolved, it must be preserved as a problem. [emphasis mine]”3 An age that reduces understanding to a mathematical equation cannot hope to understand history as a problem not subject to a solution. The recognition of history—of human life as problematic, and of the human being as historical—is precisely what contemporary, technological civilization denies. In the last two Heretical Essays, Patočka takes up the question of the twentieth century. His aim, after diagnosing the character of the century, is to consider the variety of responses available to the individual. The hope for a simple solution has already been rejected—it is contrary to our very historicity. Accepting this, however, is a difficult prospect requiring considerable struggle and fortitude. Again following Plato and Socrates rather than Heidegger or Husserl, Patočka locates hope not in history or in society , but in the individual, the “spiritual person” who is able to recognize and accept problematicity. Only through such people does the possibility exist for a “metanoesis,” a “turn” of the civilization as a whole.4 Though...

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