PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY AS HERESY OF CONTEMPORANEITY

Abstract

The first part of the article deals with the reason why Patočka names his philosophicalessays heretical. The motive for Patočka’s self-conscious heresy at first turns out to be areaction to the ruling canon of modern philosophy which rejects the possibility for the philosophyof history to become something more than “the middle range theory” As opposed to it, Patočkastands for a comprehensive philosophy of history, the function of which is creating a responsiblerelationship in the historical reality that came after world wars. Historical productivity ofPatočka’s concept of responsibility materializes itself in a paradoxical and heretically isolatedwill which directs us toward the deepening of our detachment and points us toward facing thelong lost confidence in the normative character of history. The second part of the essay thematizesthe concept of heresy with reference to relationship between phenomenology and philosophyof history. Patočka denies non-historical presuppositions of phenomenology by significantlymoving the focus of the concept of transcendence. Transcendence, according to Husserl, was theestablished, the logically emphasized and the cognitive, according to Heidegger, it was primarilyan existential achievement, while according to Patočka, it acquires markedly historical features.Those features are being analyzed in the third part of the essay where the Patočka’s thesis on the origins of European history according to Plato is being interpreted as a third type of heresywith regards to the standpoint of modern philosophy of history. Emphasizing that it is impossibleto reflect on Europe without considering Plato and Aristotle, Patočka suggests that we shouldeventually recognize our situation as being historically determined. This is why he insists on adifferent nature in the image of responsibility which does not form itself according to the realityof the natural world, but rather according to the reality of the historical world.