ABSTRACT This article examines Patočka’s concept of Supercivilization: the idea that the atomized, lonely individual is a structural presupposition of today’s societies. It argues that in historically tracing this conundrum of modern societies, Patočka points to a displacement of humans from the world that is concomitant with the birth of modern science.

ABSTRACT The paper deals with Jan Patočka’s conception of modern civilization and the difficulties arising from modernity’s reliance on rationalization as the basis for achieving universality. More than 70 years after their formulation, Patočka’s most relevant warnings concern the widespread misunderstanding of two fundamental values underlying the modern and liberal form of civilization: the search for truth is subordinated to instrumental rationality, while the notion of human freedom is reduced to the protection of individual rights from the interference of others. While such self-understanding allowed Europe to spread its own specific civilizational formation throughout the world, it was also the cause of its decline and withdrawal from the world leadership. What lessons can be drawn from Patočka’s critical assessment of the role that Europe might assume in the post-European era? What kind of universalism can Europe promote today, when all claims of ‘universalism from above’ are viewed with justified suspicion?

ABSTRACT In this article I discuss the transformation of Romanian diplomatic relations with the successor states of the USSR in the aftermath of the collapse of the Communist dictatorship in both countries. Following the seizure of power by the council of the National Salvation Front on 27 December 1989, the new administration in Bucharest decided to replace its ambassadors in Moscow, Washington, and Paris as part of Romania’s new foreign policy strategy. Given the transformations of Romanian society in the early 1990s (including in Romanian diplomacy), and the collapse of the Soviet Union, this article examines several questions: To what extent were changes made at the level of the Romanian diplomatic corps, especially in Eastern Europe? Who were the Romanian heads of mission in the USSR/Russian Federation and in the capital of states that became independent following the dissolution of the Soviet Union, namely the Republic of Moldova, Ukraine, and the Republic of Belarus? This article also focuses on the process of establishing diplomatic relations in some of the successor states of the USSR against the backdrop of international dynamics in Eastern Europe.

ABSTRACT This volume examines Jan Patočka’s philosophical response to totalitarianism, specifically his views on both Nazi and Communist rule in Czechoslovakia. Rather than offering a direct political critique, Patočka’s approach is rooted in philosophical inquiry, focusing on the broader existential and ethical implications of oppressive regimes. Central ideas in his philosophy include supercivilization, care for the soul, and the crisis of modernity. Patočka’s critique of technoscience and rationalization echoes contemporary concerns about individual agency and political life. The volume also explores his philosophical connections to thinkers like Max Weber and Michel Foucault, situating his work within the larger context of European intellectual traditions. By including previously untranslated writings, this collection provides new insights into Patočka’s philosophy and its relevance to current challenges.

ABSTRACT This article examines Jan Patočka’s early writings to explore his conception of philosophy as both a mode of thinking and a way of life. It argues that Patočka’s understanding of philosophical vocation, developed in his works from the 1930s and 1940s, centers on the concept of ‘being shaken’ – a state of existential uncertainty that later became crucial to his political engagement. Through analysis of previously understudied texts, the article demonstrates how Patočka positioned philosophy against both scientific rationalism and religious dogmatism, advocating instead for an autonomous form of philosophical thinking that embraces uncertainty while maintaining a commitment to truth. The paper traces how Patočka synthesized Socratic questioning with Christian traditions of existential struggle, developing a unique perspective on philosophical life as inherently incomplete yet oriented toward transcendence. The paper argues for the importance of Patočka’s early work and interprets his later civic activism, particularly his involvement with Charter 77, as a natural extension of his philosophical vocation rather than a departure from it.

ABSTRACT This article is an informative description of the Scientific and Artistic Forum ‘Muses are not silent!’ held by the Shevchenko Institute of Literature of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine online, on 20–25 June 2022. During the Forum, the latest trends of the general cultural and artistic situation, which developed in Ukraine during the extreme period after the beginning of the full-scale invasion of the Russian Federation into Ukraine, were presented and analysed. The forum revealed that ‘The Art of War’, as it has been termed, has been an influential factor in shaping the powerful narrative of the Victory of Ukraine, as well as an honest ‘chronicle’ of the war for future generations, and a record of the Russian invasion’s crimes for the future court of history.

ABSTRACT Jan Patočka devoted many of his writings to diagnosing the modern condition as an all-encompassing ‘technoscientific’ framework, one that reduces living to a bare life which can be calculated and controlled. In this article, I examine how this framework acts to foreclose the possibility of genuine political life, a life of openness that works against totalizing structures and modes of thought. I show how Patočka’s phenomenological distinction between bare life and political life, together with Foucault’s insights into biopolitics, can be used to better understand public health policy during COVID-19 and to raise critical questions about the direction of post-pandemic society.

ABSTRACT Old Vienna is today mostly associated with Klimt and coffeehouses, Freud and the fin-de-siècle. This article explores an entirely different aspect of Old Vienna, today mostly forgotten except on a series of public artworks haunting the façades of modern housing complexes. On the basis of a vast collection of photographic, artistic, and documentary materials preserved in the local district museum, it explores the complex entanglements between urban modernization and romantic mythologization that accompanied the gradual demolition of the old neighbourhood of Erdberg in Vienna’s third district in the early twentieth century, as ramshackle old hovels barely fit for human habitation were razed to make room for massive modern housing complexes. It is guided by the two-pronged question of why this neighbourhood was romanticized after it was deliberately demolished, and why a neighbourhood deemed worthy of romanticizing was demolished in the first place. Employing a microhistorical approach in marked contrast to the antiquarian sentiments expressed through the district museum’s materials, the article shows how the myth of Old Erdberg paradigmatically embodies the powerful tensions between urban modernization and romantic nostalgia for a vanishing Heimat.