Jan Patočka

Jan Patočka
Jan Patočka
	Jan Patočka (1971); Photo: Jindřich Přibík
Born	1 June 1907; Turnov, Bohemia, Austria-Hungary
Died	13 March 1977 (aged 69); Prague, Czechoslovakia
Notable work	Heretical Essays in the Philosophy of History (1975); Plato and Europe (1973); Body, Community, Language, World (1969); The Natural World as a Philosophical Problem (1936);
Era	20th-century philosophy
Region	Western philosophy
School	Continental philosophy; Phenomenology; "Asubjective phenomenology" / Existential phenomenology; "Negative Platonism"
Notable students	Bělohradský; Halík; Hejdánek; Palouš; Sokol;
Main interests	Aesthetics; anthropology; ethics; history; metaphysics; philosophy; politics; spirituality;
Notable ideas	Care of the soul, post-European era, natural world, three movements of human existence;

Jan Patočka (Czech pronunciation: [ˈpatot͡ʃka]; 1 June 1907 – 13 March 1977) was a Czech philosopher. Having studied in Prague, Paris, Berlin, and Freiburg, he was one of the last pupils of Edmund Husserl and Martin Heidegger. In Freiburg he also developed a lifelong philosophical friendship with Husserl's assistant Eugen Fink. Patočka worked in the Czechoslovak Socialist Republic for almost his entire career, but never joined the Communist Party and was affected by persecution, which ended in his death as a dissident spokesperson of Charter 77.

Patočka was a prolific writer and lecturer with a wide range of reference, contributing much to existential phenomenology as well as the interpretation of Czech culture and European culture in general. From his Czech collected works, some of the most notable have been translated to English and other major languages. These include the late works Plato and Europe (1973) and Heretical Essays in the Philosophy of History (1975), in which Patočka developed a philosophy of history identifying the Socratic-Platonic theme of the care of the soul as the basis of "Europe".

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