Heretical essays in the philosophy of history
By: Jan Patočka ; translated by Erazim Kohák ; edited by James Dodd ; with Paul Ricoeur's preface to the French edition.
Contributors: Dodd, James, 1968-
Publisher: Open Court
Published: 1996
Place of publication: Chicago
Language: eng
Number of pages: 189
Subjects: History -- Philosophy.
Description: History begins inseparably with the birth of the polis and of philosophy. Both represent a unity in strife. History is life that no longer takes itself for granted. To speak, then, of the meaning of history is not to tell a story with a projected happy or unhappy ending, as Western civilization has hoped, at least since the French Revolution. History's meaning is the meaning of the struggle in which being both reveals and conceals itself.

Technological society represents both the triumph of historicity and its implosion, since here humans turn from reaching for the sacrum imperium - life lived in the perspective of truth and justice - to the mundane satisfaction of mundane needs, to life lived for the sake of catering to life.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references (p. 161-182) and index.