Abstract

Jan Patočka’s interpretation of World War I in his Heretical Essays in the Philosophy of History, drawing on Heidegger’s historial questioning, nonetheless points to the limits of the Heideggerian perspective and proposes its radicalization, thereby revealing the solidarity between technology and war. Within the Patočkian perspective, which relies on Jünger’s and Teilhard de Chardin’s wartime writings, historial thinking and frontline narratives are mutually enlightening: the grasp of World War I as the “culmination of the reign of force” constitutes the necessary backdrop against which some experiences caused by the frontline can become visible, most notably the experience of sacrifice. Frontline experience contains the seed of an upheaval, of a “colossal and unparalleled metanoein,” which is the only way to weaken the foundations of the system that led to war and to lead the way towards a “true peace.”