Description
This paper explores the ethico-political significance of Jan Patočka’s work, focusing considerable attention on his best-known but most elusive text: Heretical Essays in the Philosophy of History. Patočka’s reflections on war, sacrifice, and the front-line experience in the sixth heretical essay have elicited a range of mixed responses from his interpreters, giving rise to some of the most conflicting interpretations of his thought. While some commentators have accused the Czech philosopher of glorifying war, others have found ample evidence in his writings to refute such charges. Taking as its starting point the ambivalent reception of the Heretical Essays in the Anglophone literature, this paper revisits one of Patočka’s most provocative claims in this text, namely, that despite the utter destructiveness of the front line there is nevertheless an element of positivity in the experience of war, something that can give rise to an alternative ethics and meaningful political action – what Patočka called the “solidarity of the shaken.” Through an examination of Patočka’s treatment of war and technology, and his inscription of both phenomena within the register of his philosophy of history, this essay seeks to bring more fully into view the political and ethical implications of his philosophical claims. My broader my aim is to examine what Patočka’s reflections might offer for the understanding of the nature of war more generally and our own century’s addiction to conflict in particular.
