Europa als Sorge für die Seele

Abstract

* In this paper, I offer a synthetic presentation of Jan Patočka’s account of the spiritual roots of Europe. On this account, the most fundamental principle of Europe’s spiritual life is the so-called care for the soul ( epimeleia tés psychés ). From the very beginning, Patočka argues, the principle had two forms: the Democritean and the Socratic-Platonic one. The Democritean was characterized by an unworldly contemplation of the unchangeable principles of the universe. In the Socratic-Platonic form of the care for the soul, the contemplative element has only a subordinated role. At least as important was the ethical-political and the eschatological dimension. The ethical-political dimension centered around the idea of a just polis , in which “the philosophers will not have to die.” Key to the eschatological dimension was the question of the eternal destiny of the soul. In this eschatological vision, the soul acquired a new level of interiority and was set into relation to the fundamental moral order of good and evil. In the European spiritual history, the Democritean spiritual attitude prepared for a unilateral objectivist and depersonalized conception of the universe. By contrast, the Socratic-Platonic form of the care for the soul paved the way for later European ethical-political and eschatological ideals. The loss of this latter form of the care for the soul is, Patočka argues, the ultimate root of the spiritual crisis of modern Europe.