This is a translation of Patocka's final work in which he treats prehistory through the concepts of Husserl and Heidegger. He believes the technological society to be decadent, and in the 20th century, war has become the basic reality which prevails through apparent "peace".

History begins inseparably with the birth of the polis and of philosophy. Both represent a unity in strife. History is life that no longer takes itself for granted. To speak, then, of the meaning of history is not to tell a story with a projected happy or unhappy ending, as Western civilization has hoped, at least since the French Revolution. History's meaning is the meaning of the struggle in which being both reveals and conceals itself. Technological society represents both the triumph of historicity and its implosion, since here humans turn from reaching for the sacrum imperium - life lived in the perspective of truth and justice - to the mundane satisfaction of mundane needs, to life lived for the sake of catering to life.