Marek Kettner

Czech philosophy of history has seemed to be stagnant ever since Patočka’s Heretical Essays (1975) that consider history to be stuck in times of crisis. However, important elements of a new theory of history can be found in Miroslav Petříček’s Philosophy en noir, which no longer views crisis as a defining feature of the history of the twentieth century. According to Petříček, modern history should be understood as “catastrophic.” To comprehend the twentieth century, one must comprehend the idea of catastrophe, not the idea of crisis. The situation is, in fact, darker than how Patočka envisioned it almost 50 years ago. By confronting the two chosen books, Marek Kettner sets out to show that significant progress has been made in the Czech philosophy of history, and that a theory which is highly appropriate to the events of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries can be developed out of the confrontation.