The Czech philosopher Jan Patocka (1907-1977) is widely recognized as the most influential thinker to come from postwar Eastern Europe. This book presents his most mature ideas about the history of Western philosophy.

The Czech philosopher Jan Patocka (1907-1977), who studied with Husserl and Heidegger, is widely recognized as the most influential thinker to come from postwar Eastern Europe. Refusing to join the Communist party after World War II, he was banned from academia and publication for the rest of his life, except for a brief time following the liberalizations of the Prague spring of 1968. Joining Vaclav Havel and Jiri Hajek as a spokesman for the Chart 77 human-rights declaration of 1977, Patocka was harassed by authorities, arrested, and finally died of a heart attack during prolonged interrogation.
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"Patocka's contribution to philosophy and, in particular, to post-Heideggerian thought has shaped the European debate about the future of philosophy and phenomenology. Plato and Europe is one of the finest introductions to phenomenology. Its major thesis, however, is an extremely powerful and fascinating argument concerning the specificity and heritage of European thought: that European thought and civilization rests on the Platonic conception of the 'tendance of the soul'."