Jan Patocka 1907 – 1977

Jan Patocka was a Czech philosopher and the most important Czech phenomenologist of the twentieth century. A pupil of Husserl and Heidegger and a long-time editor of the Prague Husserl Archive, he was twice removed from his university chair, first under the German occupation and then under the post-1948 Communist regime. His Heretical Essays in the Philosophy of History articulated a philosophy of the care of the soul as the inheritance of Greek and Christian Europe and made him a moral authority among Czech dissidents. As a spokesman of the Charter 77 human rights movement he died after long interrogation by the secret police.