Publication Details

Abstract

In his political fight for freedom Patočka sacrificed his life. His action was in full accord with his teaching. The key concept of his philosophy of history was the upswing over the level of mere sustenance of life. In the ancient Greece, this upswing gave simultaneously birth to politics and philosophy. This was the starting point of history. Patočka’s concept “solidarity of the shaken” is interpreted as the solidarity of those who have lost their belief in the possibility of an absolute meaning of this world, those, who know, what is the meaning of history, namely facing up a slide into meaninglessness of the mere sustenance. If history is the history of upswings, i.e. the repeated fight against sliding into non-historicity, if it is an endeavor rooted in freedom, then the problem of history cannot be resolved once and for all; we have to make repeatedly our efforts to solve it.