Jan Patočka’s Socrates as the Urgeometer of the Human Things

This paper argues that Patočka’s philosophy of history should be understood on the Husserlian model from the Origin of Geometry. The key figure in Patočka’s history is Socrates, the discoverer of care for the soul, which is the perennial model of individual as well as communal good life; Socrates thus understood is analogous to the Husserlian figure of the Urgeometer. Care for the soul formed the spiritual core of pre-modern Europe, and its forgetting lies at the heart of Patočka’s understanding of the crisis of modernity; care for the soul thus serves as the trans-historical standard by which Patočka evaluates historically contingent spiritual formations. It is therefore best understood on the basis of the Husserlian historical framework rather than on the basis of Heidegger’s radical historicism, despite Patočka’s own claims to the contrary in the Heretical Essays.