There are four possible philosophical positions regarding the relations between fact and value, "is" and "ought." In Book III, Part I of his Treatise of Human Nature David Hume distinguished ethical and natural properties and from this distinction deduced that it is impossible to deduce "ought" from "is." In the argument that ensued G. E. Moore and Russell held Hume’s view.1 Post-modernists hold that it is impossible to make a distinction between value judgements and judgements of "truth."2 Ethical naturalists like some utilitarians, pragmatists, and Searle hold that "ought" can be deduced from "is," that ethical judgments can be reduced to factual statement.3 Jan Pato…ka takes the fourth possible position, claiming the relative primacy of "ought". Pato…ka held that the knowledge of any truth, of any "is," presupposes the practice of "ought"; science and metaphysics presuppose ethics. Accordingly, "ought" corresponds with the Platonic "is"; it is absolute, eternal, and independent of the human subject.

Lyotard (following Levinas) claimed that Heidegger went wrong by promoting ontology above morality.4 Pato…ka’s "natural moralism" (the antithesis of ethical naturalism), holds that the knowledge of the truth presupposes the practice of ethics. This will be shown to have enabled Pato…ka, the spokesperson for Czechoslovakia’s Charter 77 of human rights, to escape the pitfall of ethical nihilism into which Heidegger so willingly fell, though Pato…ka’s metaphysics was influenced by Heidegger.5 Pato…ka claimed that human authenticity is moral, and our ability to live in the grand presence of truth assumes our authenticity. Hence, it is necessary to understand first what Pato…ka meant by human existence and human essence.

Pato…ka attempted to understand human existence as a movement:

. . . Let us try to understand existence as a movement, from the standpoint of a movement. What will its meaning be, what shall we gain thereby for understanding the phenomenon of existence? And in turn, what can existence contribute to understanding movement? (MHE 279)6

 

In a dynamic reformulation of Heidegger’s Being-in-the-world, Pato…ka attempted to understand human existence as a "movement in the world":

The "natural" world is a world of movement; the key to it is movement in the world, the movement of the worldly being. (NWP 269)7

 

Following his teacher, Husserl, Pato…ka attempted to abolish the Cartesian subject/object distinction between an objective world and a perceiving subject (MHE 277-279). Instead, he assumed the world to be constantly changing, a process or movement: "Our purpose here is to attempt a philosophy which takes movement as its basic concept and principle" (MHE 277).

Movement-in-the-world is a submovement within a whole that, like Heidegger’s Being-in-the-world, is capable of comprehending and understanding the truth of the whole. Pato…ka’s concept of "movement" begins from that of Aristotle: a dynamic realization of potentials and possibilities, a process of change toward a goal. Fusing Aristotle’s self-moving psyche and Heidegger’s Being-in-the-world, Pato…ka created the notion of human movement-in-the-world. In order to adapt Aristotle to Husserl’s phenomenological conceptual framework, however, Pato…ka had to change the meaning of Aristotle’s "possibilities" that are realized in motion. "Possibilities" can no longer be the range of changes that can occur to an unchanged objective substrate. Following Husserl’s understanding of the intentional aspect of human existence, possibilities in the course of realization are projections beyond the given, what Husserl called a "horizon." For Aristotle, self-movement is the essence of the human psyche. The same is true of human existence in Pato…ka’s interpretation:

Pato…ka’s concept of the movement of existence is divided into three movements (MHE 274): "acceptance," "defence," and "truth". Each has its distinct original form, thematic sense, dominating dimension of time, Jaspersian boundary situation8 of existence, and Heideggerian inauthenticity (EH, pp. 43-49).9

The realm of objectivity changes historically with the change of socio-economic formation. People engaged in this movement are reduced to the average anonymity of the social roles they play in pursuit of survival. The content of the roles changes from one historical period to another, according to the stage of historical development. But being reduced to their roles, people always are less than their complete selves; engaging in this movement is not human existence in its full scope. Yet, this movement goes beyond the pleasure-seeking instinctive first movement by being a self-abdication, accepting the risk of one’s life and work for the sake of others. The boundary situations of this movement are considered by Pato…ka to be inevitable: struggles, suffering, and guilt. Its inauthenticity is failure to understand oneself and others, loss in roles and anonymity. Work is forced on us, coerced by need; therefore it is not an expression of freedom. Existence proper and freedom can be found only in the third movement (MHE 276-278). Pato…ka notes explicitly that his concept of work as belonging to the second, which is less than the third fully human movement, opposes Marx’s concept of man.10

Pato…ka’s assumption that work is something less than fully human can be questioned. For example, Masaryk, the first president-philosopher of Czechoslovakia had a very different appreciation of work. Pato…ka disregards the possibility that work may be a fulfillment of human nature. Certainly, the work of the artist, the philosopher, the writer, and the inventor cannot be considered anonymous or inhumane. Pato…ka’s complaints about the reduction of human existence to role fulfillment in modern societies, echoing the writings of such other existentialists as Sartre, certainly have truth in them. Still, Pato…ka is more sweeping in his criticism, assigning all work to the second movement, irrespective of its character. Perhaps Pato…ka’s outrage against labor may be ascribed partially to anti-Marxist fervor, brought about by the legitimacy that Marxist ideology gave to the central control of work by state bureaucracy which indeed destroyed the possibility for self-fulfillment through work.

The negative element of human authenticity is eminently clear here, though its positive counterpart is quite vague. Yet, it is clear that transcendence is achieved through freedom and strife. Pato…ka assumed that free relationship is one of mutual threatening and that free life is a conflict. The conflict of Heidegger’s wakefulness is a provocation for counterattack:

In Pato…ka’s unpublished manuscript on Socrates, virtue is equated with the third movement, with being human. As an Heideggerian, human existence for Pato…ka is an absent place where things can appear, Pato…ka was aware of the problematic nature of his recommendation. Therefore, instead of prescribing a set of characteristics as "virtuous human nature," Pato…ka considered the activity of knowing, the awareness of being human as problematic and of seeking, to be the nature of humanity and the most basic virtue. Being aware of the problematic issue of human existence and seeking self-awareness is care for the soul, a term Pato…ka borrows from Socrates’s Apology:

The Delphic injunction to know thyself does not call for introspection and its results, but for an awareness of self as a task. The first step here is to recognize that the sense of being human is not obvious and self-evident, but rather something to be sought —the Socratic ignorance. The second stage is "the care for the soul" — the seeking of its good. . . . So it is not the possession but the seeking of the good that is the perfection of the human mode of being — and Socrates’s charge to all subsequent philosophy.11

 

Being human is not a biological given, but a kind of movement that has to be nurtured and protected by Socrates’ "care for the soul."12 For Heidegger "Care is the Being of Dasein."13 Still, there are basic differences between Socrates-Plato and Heidegger. In Socrates-Plato the care is of the soul, which is quite a different entity from Heidegger’s Dasein. Socrates described the mission of the philosopher as "searching into myself and other men," (Apology 28e) which is practiced by the Socratic method of arguing:

Pato…ka fused the two Socratic cares and argued that care for the soul as self-searching into human existence is virtue. For Heidegger, Dasein’s Being is care, concern with itself and other things. "Caring" and Dasein’s degree of authenticity and openness are co-dependent. Dasein cares about itself by achieving authenticity through confrontation with its finitude. Pato…ka’s "care for the soul" is much closer to Socrates’ than to Heidegger in three aspects: First, Pato…ka talks throughout Plato and Europe of "care for the soul" and not of "care as the being of Dasein;" second, Pato…ka accepted from Socrates and Plato that the practice of care for the soul, of search for the meaning of human existence, is the Socratic method:

What is this act of investigation? What is this call for reflection? Plato called it, after Socrates, care for the soul, through care for the soul, the soul becomes what it can be: one, without contradictions, excluding all possibilities of splitting into contradictory parts and, through it, stay in contact with that which is durable and stable. . . . Philosophy is care for the soul in its proper essence and the element to which it belongs. . . . The care for the soul is deployed through a questioning thought. It is it itself in the form of a dialogue . . . in which usually there are two participants, but it can also take place within the soul between me and myself.14

 

Third, Pato…ka accepts from Socrates the explicit virtue-ethical aspect of care for the soul, an aspect that exists, at most, implicitly in Heidegger:

It is true that Socrates is not provocative in his practice of care for the soul. He insists thus in The Apology; he-himself is not provoking, but the very fact of his existence is a provocation in the eyes of the community. . . . The man who is oriented, in the full sense of the term, toward the quest for truth, the man who examines that which is good, without knowing that which is good positively, but by simply refuting false opinions, will appear necessarily the most wicked and most obnoxious of men, although in reality he is the better. On the contrary, he who adopts the attitude of the crowd will appear to be the better, although in his most profound essence, he represents the worst. The conflict between the two cannot be terminated but in the ruin of the good man.15

 

Pato…ka interprets Plato’s concept of arete as the general excellence of being authentically human. Arete in Plato is equated with "essence." Thus every thing has its arete, but only human beings have the dualism of human choice either to realize their true essence or not:

In the early apyretic dialogues of Plato . . . arete, the excellence (it could be said also the "authenticity") in question . . . is objectively and intellectually inseparable from authenticity, from excellence in general. . . . Arete, authenticity, appears thus as in opposition to the multiplicities of weaknesses and inauthenticities. . . . The dualism of which one talks each time one mentions the name of Plato is in the first place the dualism of interior possibilities in which man always exists in a manner either of being truly, in its full sense, that which is in his essence, or to realize that essence only in a feeble and purely formal fashion, in a form that supports decline. An alternative analogy exists equally for other things, for the animal, the organ, the instrument; the animal also has its arete, an organ like the eye is either an organ that functions well, in its full sense, or a defective organ, and the same thing goes also for the instrument. Nevertheless, man exists in this duality in a specific manner, as he relates to it always expressly, as he possesses knowledge about it, and "responds" to it. But what is man in his essence? What constitutes his being? That question, without being explicitly posed by Plato, is constantly present in his thought. Our most important issue, the problem of our manner of life, is endowed with meaning as much as anything that is essential to us; the being within us, is tied to this question. We give to this core of essence in us the name psyche, soul. Likewise, philosophy, in its receiving of the task of posing explicitly, of experimenting and of resolving the question of our manner of life, can be defined as care for the Soul.16

 

This has to be differentiated from the existentialist assertion that there is no such thing as "human essence." By claiming that there is such an essence, that essence is virtue, and that there is a free choice either to realize that essence or not, Pato…ka is making a small and yet vital step beyond the pole of Heidegger’s philosophy that leads into the humanist camp. This small step is the source for the difference of philosophical, moral, and personal paths of Heidegger and Pato…ka.

Pato…ka divided "care for the soul," the third movement, into three grand currents, differentiated according to their distance from the self: First there is a general investigation of being, an onto-cosmological investigation of truth leading to life in truth." Second, care for the soul within the community is justice, the creation of a community in which search for truth is possible. Third, this care is elucidation of what the soul is. This study of the interior of individual life is achieved through confrontation with death and the question of meaning (PE, pp. 96, 105-107, 193).

For Pato…ka, following Heidegger, human beings are that part of Being to which it shows itself. (Though Pato…ka never uses Heidegger’s "Dasein," but instead uses Plato’s "soul," nevertheless he does so in a sense that has some of the characteristics of Dasein.) This soul, by its very essence, is oriented toward discovering and unveiling truth. The soul’s perception of truth lacks ulterior or utilitarian motives. By its very nature, the soul is presented by that part of Being which shows itself. If the soul repudiates this aspect of its essence, it will corrupt and lose itself. Pato…ka believed that care for the soul began with the discovery of truth as distinct from mere manifestation in pre-Socratic philosophy. Both the founders of idealism and its pre-Socratic materialism, Plato and Democritus, differentiated between truth as profound, total and eternal presence, and manifestations. Both see the task of the soul as transcending the crooked manifestations to reach the truth (PE, pp. 61-100).

Still, the source of the expression is not so important since Pato…ka gives it a new meaning. As the essence of personhood is the ability to apprehend the truth, as differentiated from manifestations, the choice to realize the potentiality for human life, to search for the truth, is the only authentic choice. A person who makes that choice to realize authentic nature, is living in truth. Since the soul is an a-subjective movement, the appreciation of the truth is not a passive appearance of truth in a perceiving subject, but a dynamic life in truth, a dynamic Being-in-a-true-world, as differentiated from alienated inauthentic life in falsity. Human authenticity as life in truth began with the Greeks. Democritus thought that truth is atoms and void, while Plato recognized truth to be at the top of the hierarchy of being, in the higher ideas. Nevertheless, the characteristics of truth (eternal, total) as well as the relation between truth and the soul, are common and thus constitute the foundation of Western civilization (PE, pp. 81-100).

The discovery of the pure, eternal and total truth is achieved, according to Pato…ka but unlike Heidegger, by the Socratic method, by the dialectics of dialogue, internal or inter-personal (PE, pp. 96, 101-103). Life in truth is achieved in two stages, discernible in Platonic dialogues: First, as a skeptical analysis rejecting false assertions and contradictory arguments. In effect, this delivers the soul from confusion, discordance, and contradiction. As Socrates puts it in the Gorgias, he would rather endure anything than be in disaccord with itself or contradict itself. At the second stage the soul discovers the pure truth, through a gradual educational process as described in the Republic. The soul achieves more than knowledge in this process, more than skeptical intellectualism. That part of the soul that lives in truth becomes like it eternal and pure, as is discussed in the Phaedo.

The soul can choose whether to engage in an activity that leads it to pure truth, which would make the soul itself virtuous, possessed of arete: pure, free of confusion, unified and identical with its authentic nature. This releases man from his dependence on corporeality, from the infinite indeterminacy of desires, and the inevitable decline of his body, and leads him toward the pure eternal existence of truth. Since for Plato ideas are the measure of all things, knowledge of these ideas, of truth, leads to the virtue of being measured in our desires; it prevents their becoming infinite, and therefore unsatisfiable. Following Plato, Pato…ka claimed that as the ideal geometrical figures in geometry are limits of infinite surfaces, so the knowledge of ideas limits the infinite evil desires. The model for the man who lives in truth is Socrates. The model for the man who chooses to avoid truth is Callicles of the Gorgias: tyrannical, undisciplined, dissolute, unruly, like Danneides’s barrel that can never be filled (PE, pp. 229-230, 281-291).

Pato…ka adds here stipulations about the meaning of human existence beyond the strict interpretation of his definition of "care for the soul" as the posing of the question about the essence of man. Still, there is no reason to object to stipulating that the essence of man, besides asking the question about the essence of man, is his ability to distinguish truth from manifestations, unless one is a phenomenalist, i.e., an extreme empiricist who believes that sense data are reality. Further, even Heidegger accepts that Dasein learns about itself through Being-in-the-World, and hence the learning about the world teaches one something about oneself.

The implicit normative element in Heidegger’s philosophy becomes explicit as a humanistic ethics in Pato…ka’s thought. Pato…ka accepts that human authenticity is good, and inauthenticity evil. He also claims that human authenticity, the essence of man, as care for the soul is its ability to conceive truth, to live in truth. Hence, ethics has to protect the right to practice life in truth. In his Platonic moments, the practice of life in truth is the practice of dialectics. Hence, freedom of speech and argument is the foundation of justice.

Thus, "ought" is presupposed by the knowledge of "is". Without human rights such as freedom of speech, publication, argumentation etc., the truth or "is" can never be discovered. Pato…ka may be the only philosopher who assumes that "ought" is more basic than "is." In this sense, ethics is not the product of humanity; rather humanity is the product of ethics. Morality is necessary for life in truth, for human authenticity. Immoral humans, are inauthentic and vice versa. This view can be called "natural moralism," as the reverse of "ethical naturalism."

By making a humanistic leap beyond Heidegger, into defining the essence of man positively, and (at times) giving truth a Platonic meaning, Pato…ka created the ethics and ethical commitment that Heidegger never had. Its implication for the argument about Heidegger’s involvement with Nazism supports Ferry and Renaut’s argument against Lacoue-Labarthe, namely, that Heidegger failed morally because he was not humanistic, and not as Lacoue-Labarthe claims, following Derrida, because he was too humanistic.

When Pato…ka writes about the obligation of philosophers to search for the truth and create a society where care for the soul is possible, when he talks of the life, death and legacy of Socrates, there is, in light of Pato…ka’s own later personal moral undertaking, a touch of the Socrates of the Apologia, Crito or Phaedo. In hindsight, Pato…ka is explaining the reasons for his own death and his obligation to maintain his human virtue, his care for his soul, his life in truth, and attempt to create a community where care for the soul and life in truth are possible. Care for the soul as life in truth is the basis of the human movement in Pato…ka’s world. Yet, in some communities, care for the soul imperils the self it cares for. In such communities being human, caring for our souls and searching for truth may lead to death, as in the life of Socrates. Socrates’s care for the soul was not aimed at provoking the Athenians, but the very existence of care for the soul constituted a provocation in their eyes. Like Plato’s Socrates Pato…ka accepted that the struggle between the virtuous person who is oriented toward the truth and searches for the good and the worst person who maintains an appearance of goodness, must end with the death of the good (PE, p. 97). In effect, Pato…ka accepted that the struggle between himself and the Czechoslovak tyranny will end as Socrates’s struggle with the remnants of tyranny as it did in Athens. He accepted that his very practice of care for the soul, of search for the truth and for the good would constitute a provocation. This he said in underground seminars, collected and published later under the title Plato and Europe and yet he did not budge from being himself, caring for his soul as a human being and searching for truth as a philosopher.

One of the prime tasks of philosophy, according to Pato…ka, is to create a community that makes care for the soul possible, in which people who practice care for the soul can survive. Freedom within the community is freedom for the truth. Pato…ka interpreted Plato’s project in the Republic as exactly that: creating a state based on care for the soul and its main component, life in truth. Plato’s ideal state is dominated by an ascending-vertical movement toward the psyche’s proper being, spiritual, eternal and authentic. This was also the task of the Stoics who attempted to create a universal state founded on care for the soul. Pato…ka therefore admonished Democritus for being an egoist, an intellectual isolationist, because he had advised a person who wants to preserve the purity of his soul to avoid practical matters, not to distinguish himself in the community, and hence not participate in the creation of a community where care for the soul can be practiced (PE, pp. 91, 98, 115, 296-297).17

Justice is the idea of a community where the care for the soul and the search for the truth are possible, and where philosophy and philosophers can survive. This has been challenged numerous times in history, from the Athenians who committed legal murder against Socrates, to contemporary dissidents. Yet, Pato…ka was committed to the Socratic injunction to prefer suffering injustice to acquiescing in it. As much as truth is eternal and absolute, so is justice the precondition for the discovery of truth. Therefore Pato…ka’s natural act of justice was to attempt and create a just community in the unjust social environment in which he found himself. Pato…ka’s factual assumption in his discussion of ethics is echoed in the philosophy of Popper, who otherwise differs from Pato…ka as much as one philosopher can differ from another. But Popper also argues that a free community of scientists is necessary for the falsification of theories.18 Under totalitarian regimes, such a free community is impossible, and hence scientific progress also, as the Lysenko affair proved in the Soviet Union. Pato…ka reached his normative conclusion by making three assumptions:

Popper, I suspect, may be sympathetic to assumption 2, and postulate his own description of scientific methodology instead of Platonic epistemology in 3. However, since Popper did not discuss human authenticity, he has no ethical system comparable to Pato…ka’s.

That ethical system explains fully Pato…ka’s support and involvement with Charter 77 in Czechoslovakia. In 1977, at the Socratic age of 70, Pato…ka, Vaclav Havel, Jiri Hajek, and others, many of whom were either philosophers or had training in philosophy, signed Charter 77, a document written primarily by Pato…ka, calling for the implementation of the Helsinki covenant on human rights in Czechoslovakia. Human rights, of course, include freedom of speech, freedom of the press and freedom of gathering; therefore they allow the practice of the Socratic method, and hence life in truth and care for the soul.

The event that led immediately to the creation and signing of Charter 77 was the arrest of the members of the rock group "The Plastic People of the Universe." The lyrics of their songs were, as was said in the USA of another "musical" group, "2-Live-Crew", explicit and offensive. The Czech authorities, like those in Florida decided to stop the corrupting influence on Czech youth of this politically incorrect group by arresting them. The Charter called for their release according to universal and absolute principles of justice, human rights are which ensure care for the soul in the community:19

If human development is to match the possibilities of technological instrumental reason, if progress of knowledge is to be possible, humankind needs to be convinced of the unconditional validity of principles which are in that sense "sacred," valid for all humans and at all times, and capable of setting out humanity’s goals. We need, in other words, some-thing that in its very essence is not technological, something that is not merely instrumental: we need a morality that is not merely tactical and situational but absolute. . . .

 

No society, no matter how well-equipped it may be technologically, can function without a moral foundation, without convictions that do not depend on convenience, circumstances, or expected advantage. Yet, the point of morality is to assure not the functioning of a society but the humanity of humans. Humans do not invent morality arbitrarily to suit their needs, wishes, inclinations and aspirations. Quite the contrary, it is morality that defines what being human means.20

 

Being human, the fundamental virtue for Pato…ka, means to care for our souls by living in truth and creating a just society where care for the soul is possible. This is what defines, and is presupposed by, being a human being absolutely. It is important to note here that the Pato…ka of the Charter is Husserlian, not Heideggerian. He argues that science and technology cannot create morality, not that they prohibit its possibility. We are told that morality is the basis for knowledge, that is, absolute human rights and freedoms are necessary for the discovery of the truth through dialectical argumentation.

The relevancy of Charter 77 and Pato…ka’s ethics on which it is based go far beyond the confines of Czechoslovakia. Contemporary philosophies of human and civil rights attempt to find the correct balance between the right of free expression and other rights, such as the right of privacy or the right to be unharassed verbally. This ethics claims that the right to argue about the truth, verbally or in print, far exceeds all other rights because arguing about the truth, or life in truth, is the essence of the human. Therefore Pato…ka would have objected to all restrictions on freedom of expression, from speech-codes at universities to restrictions on artistic expression, as in the "2-Live-Crew" case, and to gag rules on the press. He would recommend to those who find certain expressions "offensive" to argue against them and thus become authentically human.

The inability to risk, in extremis even life itself to save what gives it meaning and a human dimension leads not only to the loss of meaning but finally and inevitably to the loss of life as well.21

 

The idea of human rights is nothing other than the conviction that even states, even society as a whole, are subject to the sovereignty of moral sentiment: that they recognize something unconditional that is higher than they are, something that is binding even on them, sacred, inviolable, and that in their power to establish and maintain a rule of law they seek to express this recognition.22

 

This is why Charter 77 struggled to implement the Helsinki covenant on human rights, which Czechoslovakia’s communist government had signed and given the force of law.23

5. On the relation between Pato…ka’s philosophy and political commitment and sacrifice see: Aviezer Tucker, "Sacrifice: From Isaac to Pato…ka," in Telos, No. 91 (Spring 1992), pp. 117-124 and Aviezer Tucker," Pato…ka vs. Heidegger: The Humanistic Difference, Telos, No. 92 (Summer 1992), pp. 85-98.

6. Jan Pato…ka, "The Movement of Human Existence: A Selection from Body, Community, Language, World (MHE), in Erazim Kohak, Jan Pato…ka: Philosophy and Selected Writing (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1989), p. 279.

7. Jan Pato…ka, "The "Natural" World and Phenomenology," in Erazim Kohak, Jan Pato…ka: Philosophy and Selected Writings (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1989), p. 269.

8. Kohak, in his anthology of Pato…ka, translates what is translated in the English translations of Jaspers as "limit situations," as "border situations". I use the two expressions interchangeably.

9. Jan Pato…ka, Essais heretigues sur la philosophie de l’histoire (EH), trans. Erica Abrams, (Lagrasse: Editions Verdier, 1981). See my review of Essais heretiques in History and Theory, Vol. 31 No. 3 (1992), pp. 335-363. On the three movements see also Jan Pato…ka, Le monde natural comme un problem philosophique (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1976), pp. 176-178.

10. Pato…ka purposefully assigned what Marx regarded as the essence of man as secondary, even animalistic. Cf Marx’s homo faber: "Men can be distinguished from animals by consciousness, by religion or anything else you like. They themselves begin to distinguish themselves from animals as soon as they begin to produce their means of subsistence, a step which is conditioned by their physical organization. By producing their means of subsistence men are indirectly producing their actual material life. (The German Ideology, part I).

14. Jan Pato…ka, Platon et L’Europe, (PE) trans. Erica Abrams (Lagrasse: Editions Verdier, 1983), pp. 96, 101.

17. Jan Pato…ka, "Negative Platonism: Reflections Concerning the Rise, the Scope, and the Demise of Metaphysics — and Whether Philosophy Can Survive It (Circa 1955)" in Kohak, p. 182.

20. Jan Pato…ka, "The Obligation to Resist Injustice," in Kohak, pp. 340-341.

22. Jan Pato…ka, "The Obligation to Resist Injustice," in Koha, p. 341.

23. Vaclav Havel’s ethics is derivative from Pato…ka’s. However, he discusses in further detail human rights which he calls "absolute authentic values," or "the aims of life," like the right to live in dignity, free expression of being, a sense of transcendence over the world of existence, the right to express individual, group, or spiritual interests, the right to avoid humiliation, the right for privacy, freedom of expression, and the right for legal security. Havel’s absolute values are a return to responsibility and the giving of meaning to terms like justice, honor, treason, friendship, infidelity and courage, which are the hidden source of all the rules, customs, commandments, prohibitions, and norms that hold within us. See Aviezer Tucker, "Vaclav Havel’s Heideggerianism," in Telos, No. 85 (Fall 1990), pp. 63-78.