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In his critical examination of Sartre’s philosophy, Patočka locates its inadequacy at two levels : phenomenological and ontological. His objections are aimed first at the central elements of Sartre’s description of subjectivity, notably its translucidity and instantaneity, which do not allow us to grasp its inherent dynamic, and in particular to think the historicity of existence. Patočka then argues that these descriptive inadequacies stem from the ontological framework built up by Sartre, and above all from the dualism of the in-itself and for-itself. By making the in-itself the being par excellence and pushing the for-itself back into “non-being”, Sartre remains dependent on the postulates of traditional philosophy. Patočka is thus led, on the one hand, to provide a new description of the beings we are, in which historicity will play a central role; on the other hand, it allows him to carry out a radical reversal of Sartre’s ontological framework : far from being a “useless passion”, doomed to be lost in the massiveness of the in-itself, the emergence of subjectivity results in a radical and irrevocable transformation of the ontological landscape.