Philosophy as a European way of life and the role of the European intellectual in the age of technical reason

In the aftermath of the disasters of the twentieth century, philosophers tried to piece together the sense of a shattered world and understand how the idea and ideal of Europe could have been so twisted and destroyed. This chapter examines Czech philosopher Jan Patočka's attempt to make sense of this from within the unfolding tragedy that was the division of Europe into western and eastern blocs. Patočka tries, in the face of an all-encompassing technological rationality that characterized both ideological spheres, to rethink the role of the European intellectual as opposition, and ‘spiritual person’. Patočka's interpretation of the new role of the philosopher is compared with French philosopher Jean-Francois Lyotard's account of the intellectual as knowledge worker in a new techno-scientific economy. The chapter ends by asking what lessons these visions of the role of the philosopher and philosophy might hold for the future of the European way of life.