Dramaturgies at the Service of the Care of the Soul: Plato, Jan Patočka, Václav Havel

Abstract

This article wants to show the relation between Plato, Jan Patočka and Václav Havel through Patočka’s notion of care of the soul (péče o duši) and through the Platonism related to it. We will focus on the way this care is expressed through dramatic for  in Plato’s works –especially the Gorgias– and in Havel Vaněk’s plays (1975-78). We will analyse the genealogy of Patočka’s project of negative Platonism in his 1947-49 university courses on Socrates and Plato, and we will put it together with phenomenological and dramatic elements in Patočka’s own thinking. This will take us to the notion of a dramatic phenomenology of elenkhos in Patočka’s theoria and in Plato’s and Havel’s theatron.

Key words: Plato; Jan Patočka; Václav Havel; care of the soul; negative Platonism; dramatic phenomenology.