ABSTRACT
The ground themes of philosophy are more and less numerous than here discussed. While there can be no “progress” in philosophical speculation, every thinker has his own way of receiving external impacts and his own way of responding from the ever-newly discovered depths of his reflections and impulses. This is why there are many philosophies, each trying to bridge the inner man and the outside world, as well as the world of men. Different as they may be, all are tributaries of the one ground theme that the Prague philosopher, Jan Patocka, attributes rightly to Plato, at least in its original exploration. This ground theme is the impulse of thought to actualize itself as being, to accede to being. 1 This is also the road from dispersion to unity, from chaos to reason. It discloses our need to unify the vastness of experience, then to return to experience, armed with insight.
