Patocka, Jan, Plato and Europe

Kohák’s own description of the text gives a very fair indication of the problems that confront the reader. “Plato and Europe is not, strictly speaking, a book,” he wrote. “The text is an unedited, verbatim transcript of a series of informal seminars held in a private apartment. The conversation ranges to and fro over Patocka’s beloved topics, Plato, Aristotle, Husserl, Heidegger, myth, and philosophy. Two of the (eleven) sessions are free discussions; the whole is only loosely held together by a concern for what for Patocka is the basis of the European idea, the care of the soul” (117). If this text were not the record of a noble man’s resistance to oppression, a testament to how simply living the life of the mind with one’s friends can become a political act, few would now see a strong reason to publish it or read it. I had the uncomfortable feeling of someone who missed the wedding but is expected to enjoy the wedding video.