Abstract
The present article proposes a ‘heretic’ reading of Jan Patočka’s last work, Heretical Essays in the Philosophy of History, usually considered as a profound philosophical reflection upon the nihilistic outcome of Western civilization and upon its chances of rebirth. In contrast to this common interpretation, the author construes Patočka’s work as a possible genealogy of the West, of philosophy, and of history itself in its most proper sense. On the one hand, the present work sheds some light on the analyses Patočka employs to reconstruct the origin of Western culture; especially, it underlines the decisive importance attributed to the birth of politics in the Greek experience of the polis, seen as a threshold from which philosophy itself can be established. On the other hand, it problematizes the very core of Patočka’s genealogical gesture, its conditions of possibility, as well as the blend of empirical and transcendental, of archaeology and teleology, which characterizes it. Finally, the author discusses the limits of Patočka’s reference to the political life to explain the philosophical gaze and discourse, and argues about the necessity of calling upon a change of the ways in which knowledge constitutes itself in relationship to the Greek revolution of writing.