Jan Patocka (1907-1977) is one of the most important representatives of 20th-century Czech philosophy. As a student of Husserl and Heidegger, Patocka uniquely combined phenomenological thinking with reflections on politics and history. Through his legendary underground seminars in Prague and his involvement in Charter 77, he became an intellectual and moral authority. In the heretical essays written in the last years of his life, Patocka's political and philosophical thoughts on history found their most concise expression. During the period of normalization following the suppression of the Prague Spring, Patocka reflects on Europe as a contradictory, always endangered, and never fully complete project—an as-yet-to-be-discovered way of thinking, the significance of which for Europe's self-understanding is only becoming apparent today.