Jiří Michálek is a Czech philosopher and former pupil of Jan Patočka. In 1964, he graduated with a degree in chemistry from Charles University in Prague. In 1965, he began his doctoral studies at the Department of Philosophy within the Faculty of Science at Charles University, focusing on the philosophical problems of the natural sciences. As this department was dissolved in August 1968, Michálek could not defend his dissertation. In 1975, a special commission that investigated Michálekʼs political views was created. As a result, he was forbidden to teach and was forced to leave the University in 1977. The main reason was his long-term close relationship with Jan Patočka and other Charter 77 signatories. Michálek attended Patočkaʼs underground seminars and also participated in the rescue of Patočkaʼs documents after his death in 1977. After his dismissal from the university, Michálek worked as a labourer in a wrapping shop, and later as a specialist in the Department of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry in the National Health Institute. In 1984, he finished his distance study of Psychopedy at Palacký University in Olomouc. In April 1990 he was admitted to the newly created Department of Philosophy of the Natural Sciences at Charles University. In October 1994, he defended his dissertation in philosophy at Charles University. After the restoration of the Czechoslovak Philosophical Union in 1990, Jiří Michálek became a member of its presidium. He focuses on phenomenology and the thinking of Martin Heidegger after the “turnover” and the question of co-existence and philosophy of education of E. Fink.