Asubjective Phenomenology: Jan Patočka’s Project in the Broader Context of his Work 9783883099934

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Ľubica Učník, Ivan Chvatík, Anita Williams (eds.) Asubjective Phenomenology

LIBRI NIGRI

41

Edited by

Hans Rainer Sepp

Editorial Board Suzi Adams ∙ Adelaide │ Babette Babich ∙ New York │ Kimberly Baltzer-Jaray ∙ Waterloo, Ontario │ Damir Barbarić ∙ Zagreb │ Marcus Brainard ∙ London │ Martin Cajthaml ∙ Olomouc │ Mauro Carbone ∙ Lyon │ Chan Fai Cheung ∙ Hong Kong │ Cristian Ciocan ∙ Bucureşti │ Ion Copoeru ∙ Cluj-Napoca │ Renato Cristin ∙ Trieste │ Riccardo Dottori ∙ Roma │ Eddo Evink ∙ Groningen │ Matthias Flatscher ∙ Wien │ Dimitri Ginev ∙ Sofia │ Jean-Christophe Goddard ∙ Toulouse │ Andrzej Gniazdowski ∙ Warszawa │ Ludger Hagedorn ∙ Wien │ Terri J. Hennings ∙ Freiburg │ Seongha Hong ∙ Jeollabukdo │ Edmundo Johnson ∙ Santiago de Chile │ René Kaufmann ∙ Dresden │ Vakhtang Kebuladze ∙ Kyjiw │ Dean Komel ∙ Ljubljana │ Pavlos Kontos ∙ Patras │ Kwok-ying Lau ∙ Hong Kong │ Mette Lebech ∙ Maynooth │ Nam-In Lee ∙ Seoul │ Monika Małek ∙ Wrocław │ Balázs Mezei ∙ Budapest │ Viktor Molchanov ∙ Moskwa │ Liangkang Ni ∙ Guanghzou │ Cathrin Nielsen ∙ Frankfurt am Main │ Ashraf Noor ∙ Jerusalem │ Karel Novotný ∙ Praha │ Luis Román Rabanaque ∙ Buenos Aires │ Gian Maria Raimondi ∙ Pisa │ Rosemary Rizo-Patrón de Lerner ∙ Lima │ Kiyoshi Sakai ∙ Tokyo │ Javier San Martín ∙ Madrid │ Alexander Schnell ∙ Paris │ Marcia Schuback ∙ Stockholm │ Agustín Serrano de Haro ∙ Madrid │ Tatiana Shchyttsova ∙ Vilnius │ Olga Shparaga ∙ Minsk │ Michael Staudigl ∙ Wien │ Georg Stenger ∙ Wien │ Silvia Stoller ∙ Wien │ Ananta Sukla ∙ Cuttack │ Toru Tani ∙ Kyoto │ Detlef Thiel ∙ Wiesbaden │ Ľubica Ucnik ∙ Perth │ Pol Vandevelde ∙ Milwaukee │ Chung-chi Yu ∙ Kaohsiung │ Antonio Zirion ∙ México City – Morelia.

The libri nigri series will be edited at the Central-European Institute of Philosophy, Prague. www.sif-praha.cz

Asubjective Phenomenology: Jan Patočka’s Project in the Broader Context of his Work Edited by Ľubica Učník Ivan Chvatík Anita Williams

Verlag Traugott Bautz GmbH

Bibliografische Information der Deutschen Nationalbibliothek Die deutsche Bibliothek verzeichnet diese Publikation in der Deutschen Nationalbibliografie. Detaillierte bibliografische Daten sind im Internet abrufbar über http://dnb.ddb.de

This book is supported by The Australian Research Council as part of the Discovery Project entitled Judgment, Responsibility, and the Life-World: The Phenomenological Critique of Formalism.

Verlag Traugott Bautz GmbH D-99734 Nordhausen 2015 Gedruckt auf säurefreiem, alterungsbeständigem Papier Alle Rechte vorbehalten Printed in Germany

ISBN 978-3-88309-993-4

In memory of Jan Patočka (1907–1977)

Contents Jan Patočka’s Project of an Asubjective Phenomenology, and the Movement of Human Existence................................................................................................. 1 Ľubica Učník, Anita Williams, Ivan Chvatík Part I: Jan Patočka Husserl’s Subjectivism and the Call for an Asubjective Phenomenology ....... 17 Jan Patočka Epochē and Reduction: Some Observations ....................................................... 41 Jan Patočka Part II: Asubjective Phenomenology Patočka’s Project of an Asubjective Phenomenology ........................................ 55 Ivan Chvatík Jan Patočka’s Transcendence to the World ......................................................... 71 Michael Gubser Part III: The Three Movements of Human Existence Phenomenology, History, and Responsibility for One’s Life ........................... 99 Josef Moural A World of Possibilities: The Cosmological World and the Movement of Existence in Jan Patočka ...................................................................................... 115 Inês Pereira Rodrigues Autonomy and Phenomenology: Patočka’s Approach .................................... 127 Émilie Tardivel

Part IV: Patočkian Reflections on Modern Society Three Perspectives on Politics and History: Patočka, Hayek and French Positivism ............................................................................................................. 145 Ciaran Summerton The Problem of Meaning in the Rational (Super)Civilisation: Patočka’s Interpretation of Modernity after World War II ............................................. 167 Jakub Homolka Life, Technology, Christianity: Patočka’s Sacrifice for Nothing and its Economic-Mythical Roots .................................................................................. 187 Riccardo Paparusso Patočka’s Observations on the Meaning of Beauty in Ancient Greece......... 199 Anthony Backhouse Part V: Patočka on Meaning Patočka’s Philosophy of Meaning in Human Life and History ..................... 213 Ivan Chvatík The Meaning of the Mathematical .................................................................... 227 Anita Williams Movement and Human Existence: The Mysterium of Mundanity ................ 253 Ľubica Učník Notes on Contributors Jan Patočka’s Life and Work ............................................................................... 275 Contributors ......................................................................................................... 277 Index ...................................................................................................................... 280

Acknowledgments The editors thank the authors of this volume for their contributions, including their commitment to preparing and editing their respective entries. We gratefully acknowledge the support of the Australian Research Council (ARC) for the 2010–12 research project, Judgment, Responsibility and the Life-World (which has been led by Ľubica Učník). We have also benefited from the support of Murdoch University, Australia; the Jan Patočka Archives at the Center for Theoretical Study at Charles University in Prague, and the Institute of Philosophy at the Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic; and University College Dublin, Ireland. In particular, we would like to express our gratitude to Matt Bower and Kenneth Maly for their work on the translations of Jan Patočka’s papers for this book; Darja Zoubková and Hana Matysková from the secretariat of the Center for Theoretical Study in Prague, for organising workshops as part of the ARC grant; and, finally, to Urszula Dawkins for her patience with copyediting the manuscripts.

Jan Patočka’s Project of an Asubjective Phenomenology, and the Movement of Human Existence Ľubica Učník, Anita Williams, Ivan Chvatík Phenomenology is a mode of philosophising that does not take ready-made theses for its premises but rather keeps all premises at an arm’s length. It turns from sclerotic theses to the living well-spring of experience. Its opposite is metaphysics – which constructs philosophy as a special scientific system. Phenomenology examines the experiential content of such theses; in every abstract thought it seeks to uncover what is hidden in it, how we arrive at it, what seen and lived reality underlies it. We are uncovering something that has been here all along, something we had sensed, glimpsed from the corner of our eye but did not fully know, something that ‘had not been brought to conception.’ Phenomenon – that which presents itself; logos – meaningful discourse. Only by speaking it out do we know something fully, only what we speak out do we fully see. That is what makes phenomenology so persuasive. 1

Jan Patočka, a Czech philosopher and phenomenologist, travelled to Freiburg in 1933 to study with Edmund Husserl and his research assistant Eugen Fink – Patočka was to be the last student of Husserl. His doctoral thesis (1931)2 had been a historical exploration of the concept of evidence, leading to the reappraisal of Husserl’s concept.3 His habilitation (1936) focused on another concept of Husserl: the natural world4 (based on Avenarius’ terminology, from his book, Der Menschliche Weltbegriff,5 where he formulates the term “der natürliche Welt-

1 Patočka, Body, Community, Language, World (Chicago and La Salle, Illinois: Open Court, 1998), 3–4, emphasis in original. 2 Patočka, “Pojem evidence a jeho význam pro noetiku [The Concept of Evidence and its Significance for Noetics]”, Fenomenologické spisy I: Přirozený svět. Texty z let 1931–1949 (Prague: Oikoymenh, Filosofia, 2008 [1931]), 14–125. 3 See Učník, “Jan Patočka: From the Concept of Evidence to the Natural World and Beyond”, eds Učník, Chvatík and Williams, The Phenomenological Critique of Mathematisation and the Question of Responsibility: Formalisation and the Life-World (Dordrecht: Springer, 2014). 4 Patočka, “Přirozený svět jako filosofický problém [The Natural World as a Philosophical Problem]”, Fenomenologické spisy I: Přirozený svět. Texty z let 1931–1949 (Prague: Oikoymenh, Filosofia, 2008 [1936]), 127–260. 5 Avenarius, Der Menschliche Weltbegriff [The Human Concept of the World] (Leipzig: O. R. Reisland, 1891).

Jan Patočka’s Project

begriff – the natural concept of the world”6). Patočka went to Freiburg ostensibly to attend Heidegger’s lecture course, as stipulated by his Humboldt scholarship; Husserl and Heidegger had a lasting influence on his thinking. From this time on, he attempted to rethink both master phenomenologists. Misleadingly, this influence is sometimes (by superficial readers) reduced to the question: ‘Who was the final influence? Is he a ‘Heideggerian’ or does he remain a ‘Husserlian’? As with many such speculations, some claim that Patočka has overcome Husserl’s Cartesianism; others maintain that he has always remained faithful to Husserl.7 Not surprisingly, Patočka’s work can be seen as giving some support to both of these interpretations. Here, we will posit that Patočka’s lifelong pursuit of both these thinkers leads him to rethink the phenomenological project by offering a reconceptualisation of sum, ‘I am’, as the movement of human existence, later expanded as the three movements of existence; leading him to conceptualise his asubjective phenomenology, which is neither Husserlian nor Heideggerian, but indebted to both while also transgressing the thinking of both. In other words, he remains faithful neither to Husserl nor Heidegger, but to phenomenology. Patočka’s project is a struggle between rejecting the transcendental ego as the explanatory ground of meaning constitution, and retaining the subject – but not as the last ground from which the world is constituted, rather as a real living being who is open to the world. Patočka’s rethinking is marked by unrelenting returns to Husserl and Heidegger and their phenomenological projects. Perhaps it could be said that Patočka attempts to rethink phenomenology as the study of manifestation, which was, he claims, Husserl’s original project. In “What is Phenomenology?”, Patočka proposes to recover Husserl’s maxim to return to ‘things themselves’,8 but in a way that overcomes the Cartesian remnants that led Husserl to his transcendental phenomenology.9 6

See Chvatík, “Patočkova kritika pojmu ‘přirozený svět’ [Patočka’s Critique of the Concept of ‘Natural World’]”, eds Velický et al., Spor o přirozený svět (Prague: Filosofia, 2010), 55–68, 56. 7 For further discussion, see Michael Gubser’s contribution to this volume. 8 Patočka, “Co je fenomenologie? [What is Phenomenology?]”, Fenomenologické spisy II: Co je existence. Publikované texty z let 1965–1977 (Prague: Oikoymenh, Filosofia, 2009 [1979]), 497–523, 499: “Předložený pokus však chce především sloužit k obnovení maximy ‘k věcem samým.’” 9 For the “concepts of phenomenology” and “Husserl’s maxim ‘going back to the things themselves’, which Heidegger changed slightly to ‘to the things themselves’”, see Herrmann, “Introduction”, trans. Maly, Hermeneutics and Reflection: Heidegger and

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In his “Afterword” to Husserl’s translation of the Cartesian Meditations, Patočka notes that Husserl’s transcendental phenomenology is the study of reduced phenomena, which amounts to the study of the world as the pure phenomenon of consciousness.10 The main problem of Husserl’s approach, as Patočka identifies it, is the idea of phenomenological reduction, derived from Cartesian methodical scepticism.11 In this way, the transcendental field of appearances becomes the structure of the individual ego, seemingly turned upon itself, an abstraction, eliminating fundamental layers of experience. The road to the transcendental field as given in the fifth Meditation attempts to incorporate, by very complicated procedure, other egos, in Husserl’s formulation of intersubjectivity. The Cartesian remnants obscure the original Husserlian project, whereby Husserl does not point to the certainty, as Descartes does, but to the meaning of what is revealed to us.12And this insight of Patočka’s is important. Husserl shows that we are given a ‘thing’ in different modes of appearing. As is typical of Patočka, he shows the historical trajectory of the constitution of meaning, starting (in this instance) with Plato’s Letter Seven, which he claims is the first philosophical reflection on the constitution of meaning. He also claims that Plato influenced the whole tradition by obscuring the field of manifestation – which he in fact discovered – by skipping over it directly to the revealed thing in its presence.13 Patočka never became tired of repeating that in the modern analysis Husserl on the Concept of Phenomenology (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2013), 5–9, 5. 10 Patočka, “Husserlova fenomenologie, fenomenologická filosofie a ‘Kartéziánske meditace’ [Husserl’s Phenomenology, Phenomenological Philosophy and ‘Cartesian Meditations’]”, Fenomenologické spisy II: Co je existence. Publikované texty z let 1965– 1977 (Prague: Oikoymenh, Filosofia, 2009 [1968]), 238–364, 248. 11 See also the translation in this volume, originally published in Czech as Patočka, “Epoché a redukce: Několik poznámek [Epoché and Reduction: Some Observations]”, eds Kouba and Švec, Fenomenologické spisy II (Prague: Oikoymenh, 2009 [1975]), 442– 452. 12 Patočka, “Husserlova fenomenologie, fenomenologická filosofie a ‘Kartéziánske meditace’ [Husserl’s Phenomenology, Phenomenological Philosophy and ‘Cartesian Meditations’]”, 250. 13 See, for example, Patočka, “Negative Platonism: Reflections Concerning the Rise, the Scope, and the Demise of Metaphysics – and Whether Philosophy Can Survive It”. edited and translated by Kohák. Jan Patočka: Philosophy and Selected Writings (Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press, 1989 [circa 1955]), 175–206; Patočka, Úvod do fenomenologické filosofie [Introduction to Phenomenological Philosophy] (Prague: Oikoymenh, 1993), especially Patočka, Platónova péče o duši a spravedlivý stát: Přednášky k antické filosofii IV [Plato’s Care for the Soul and the Just State: Lectures on Ancient

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of the constitution of meaning, the phenomenal field – when reduced to the structure of the subject only – simply means that the thingness of things (res extensa) is constituted by another thing: res cogitans.14 According to Patočka, in his “pensée, cogitatio” Descartes discovers the “phenomenal field” (as Patočka terms it): “what Descartes means here, is nothing other than that where what appears is appearing”.15 And this field is reduced to the structure of subjectivity, which Descartes immediately abandons, aiming at the certainty of res extensa. He discovers sum, I am, only to skip over it: in the subsequent tradition, sum is simply forgotten. For Patočka, the remainder is simply “a permanent, essential attribute of a thing, which I am”, reduced to something that can persist through time, “as long as I am I”, which is “taken as my determination”, as “the certainty of my being”. Furthermore, it is “what I must suppose as unmistakable and immediately present in all dealings with things, whether the said things are or are not, whether they actually have or do not have this or that determination”.16 The subject, reduced to ‘thingness’ is the remnant of Descartes’ splitting of the world into two substances. In the last instance, Cartesian doubt gives me certainty that in my cogitatio, I have secured the object, which is my own thinking.17

Philosophy IV], Sebrané spisy Jana Patočky. Svazek 14/4 (Prague: Oikoymenh, Filosofia, 2012). Also see the translation of Patočka’s “Husserl’s Subjectivism and the Call for an ASubjective Phenomenology” in this volume. 14 Patočka, “Husserlova fenomenologie, fenomenologická filosofie a ‘Kartéziánske meditace’ [Husserl’s Phenomenology, Phenomenological Philosophy and ‘Cartesian Meditations’]”, 252. 15 Patočka, “Subjektivismus Husserlovy fenomenologie a možnost ‘asubjektivní’ fenomenologie [The Subjectivism of Husserl’s Phenomenology and the Possibility of an ‘Asubjective’ Phenomenology]”, trans. German, Fenomenologické spisy II: Co je existence. Publikované texty z let 1965–1977 (Prague: Oikoymenh, Filosofia, 2009 [1970]), 379–396, 383: “Co zde Descartovi tane na mysli, není nic jiného než to, v čem se jevící zjevuje, fenomenální pole.” 16 Ibid.: “Co tedy zůstane jako stálý, podstatný atribut věci, kterou jsem, může být jen něco, co lze kdykoli, dokud já jsem já, pojmout jako mé určení, a to v jistotě mého bytí. Toto určení ale nebude nic jiného než to, co musím předpokládat jako neklamné a bezprostředně přítomné v každém zabývání se s věcmi, ať už dotyčné věci jsou nebo nejsou, ať už ta a ta určení skutečně mají nebo nemají.” 17 Patočka, Úvod do fenomenologické filosofie [Introduction to Phenomenological Philosophy], 56.

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Patočka writes, in Úvod do Fenomenologické Filosofie [Introduction to Phenomenological Philosophy], that this Cartesianism is the legacy of Brentano.18 Husserl’s phenomenology is timid: his epoché stops short of the sphere of subjectivity, as the sphere where meaning is being constituted, without asking how it is possible that the object – which I am reflecting on in the immanence of subjectivity – exists in its ‘fullness’; in other words, stands against me as such. Husserl’s supposition is that the transcendental subject has a noetic/noematic structure. For Husserl, this structure of the transcendental subject is simply given and never investigated.19 Yet, what makes phenomenology important, according to Patočka, is its changed focus. Instead of studying the internal structure and lawfulness of objects, it concentrates on manifestation on the side of immanence; in other words, within the structure of subjectivity.20 For Patočka, Heidegger’s move is to reject the immanent structure of consciousness derived from the ‘gaze’ turned inward – the postulate of the disinterested observer – instead proposing a different structure: he concentrates on the structure of sum – the relationship to the world.21 Yet, as Patočka asks, is the analysis of sum the best starting point to be able to ‘see’ the problem of understanding and truth?22 For Patočka, despite the attempt to avoid subjectivism, this position remains liable to it. Similar to Husserl’s reduction of the open sphere of manifestation – a sphere of possibility in which the world and the subject could meet – to the structure of subjectivity, Heidegger’s structure of human experience is still explained “as a ground…rather than that which is grounded on the original event of the openness of time”.23 In our opinion, the philosophy of Heidegger created the most important prerequisites for the formation of entirely new phenomenology, mainly because he revealed unexamined ontological presuppositions of Husserl’s phenomenology. However, because Heidegger’s own philosophy embarked on the path to discuss the topic of ‘revealing as such’ exclusively in connection with the problem of Being, Husserl’s problematic, since then, was never revisited. Yet, the appraisal of Husserl’s phenom-

18

Ibid., 84. Ibid., 73. 20 Ibid., 77. 21 Ibid., 107–108. 22 Ibid., 124. 23 Patočka, “Husserlova transcendentální filosofie po revizi [Husserl’s Transcendental Philosophy after Revision]”, 1969. See Chvatík, “Patočka’s Project of an Asubjective Phenomenology”, in this volume. 19

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All his life, Patočka circled around the question of what phenomenology is and how it can illuminate our everyday world; how it can clarify our presuppositions, to which we have become blind. His fight was to overcome the positivism of the modern age. In “What is Phenomenology?”, Patočka notes that we should take up and follow the work of Husserl and Heidegger by critically reflecting on the heritage of phenomenology, which was approached differently by these two thinkers. For Patočka, Husserl’s phenomenology is defined by his never-ending struggle against psychologism25: Husserl’s attempt is to clarify the problems of the subjective life, aiming towards universality of sense and meaning. 26 Heidegger, according to Patočka, takes up Husserl’s project but changes it utilising Søren Kierkegaard’s attempt to account for our human existence. Kierkegaard thinks the truth of human existence as being different from the objective truth, while Heidegger shifts Kierkegaard’s ontic focus from concrete human existence, to rethink it as an ontological problem. Heidegger, on the model of Husserl’s phenomenological reduction, thinks human existence as transcending all beings, as the ontological truth, as the space that allows pragmata, things we use, to unproblematically appear. The structure of human existence, Dasein (pobyt, as Patočka translates it), gives us an access to Being that is never manifested, as such, but lets all other beings manifest themselves. Humans are concerned about their own being, hence, they are the only ones who can understand Being. For Heidegger, the issue is not humans’ private existence, but their concern with Being.27 Seemingly, Husserl’s and Heidegger’s conceptions are so different that reconciliation is impossible. Patočka attempts to see what unites – despite common opinion to the contrary – Husserl’s and Heidegger’s phenomenology. As Patočka says, it would be bad for phenomenology if we could not bridge their different phenomenological methods and find the ground that nour24 Patočka, “Subjektivismus Husserlovy fenomenologie a možnost ‘asubjektivní’ fenomenologie [The Subjectivism of Husserl’s Phenomenology and the Possibility of an ‘Asubjective’ Phenomenology]”, 380. 25 For a similar claim, see Crowell, “Does the Husserl/Heidegger Feud Rest on a Mistake? An Essay on Psychological and Transcendental Phenomenology”, Husserl Studies 18.2 (2002). 26 Patočka, Věčnost a dějinnost: Rádlův poměr k pojetím člověka v minulosti a současnosti [Eternity and Historicity: Rádl’s Relation to Past and Present Conceptions of Man], Edice Oikúmené (Prague: Oikoymenh, 2007), 64. 27 Ibid., 74.

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ishes them both. The only way is to go back to things themselves and search for the motives that led both thinkers in their respective quests. The aim is not to construct some new, eclectic mix, but to see what is common in their different approaches by critically reflecting on their work.28 As noted above, Patočka’s answer lies in the movement of human existence, which he extends to his analysis of the three movements of existence and into his asubjective phenomenology. These themes are addressed in the contributions to this volume, which are tied together not only by their focus on Patočka, but also by their demonstration of his commitment to phenomenology and his drive to overcome what he understands as Husserl’s and Heidegger’s subjectivism.” According to Patočka, Husserl’s subjectivism stems from his making the world secondary to the subject who constitutes the meaning of things; while Heidegger’s subjectivism results from making the disclosure of the world dependent on Dasein. For Patočka, Husserl’s and Heidegger’s respective subjectivisms cast a shadow over what Patočka thinks is phenomenology’s most important contribution to modern thought: the revisiting of the problem of manifestation. The volume is divided into five parts. Part I contains translations of two of Patočka’s works. In Part II, Ivan Chvatík and Michael Gubser discuss Patočka’s asubjective phenomenology. In Part III, Josef Moural, Inês Pereira Rodrigues and Émilie Tardivel engage with Patočka’s three movements of existence. In Part IV, Ciaran Summerton, Jakub Homolka, Riccardo Paparusso and Anthony Backhouse present Patočkian reflections on issues facing modern society. In Part V, Chvatík, Anita Williams and Ľubica Učník tie together Patočka’s work to show that human meaning, which is often effaced by modern mathematical science, is the central concern of Patočka’s work.

28 Patočka, “Co je fenomenologie? [What is Phenomenology?]”, trans. Dimter, Idea fenomenologie a dva texty Jana Patočky k problému fenomenologie (Prague: Oikoymenh, 2001), 78–102, 79: “S věcí fenomenologie by to bylo zlé, kdyby se nemělo podařit překlenout protiklady dvou základních fenomenologických doktrín tak, aby se odkryl základ jejich diference, a to fenomenologicky, ve věcech samých, a pokud by o sporných bodech nemohla rozhodnout věc sama. K tomu musí být u obou myslitelů vyhledány motivy, které vykazují společné rysy; je třeba se pokusit vypracovat to, co je za jejich protikladem a co je sjednocuje. Tento jednotící moment nemá vest k eklekticismu, nýbrž má sloužit právě k tomu, aby bylo možné k oběma naukám zaujmout kritický postoj.”

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Part I: Jan Patočka Part I starts where Patočka’s work ends: with his asubjective phenomenology. Following a brief biographical note, this section begins with the first English translation of Patočka’s work entitled “Husserl’s Subjectivism and the Call for an Asubjective Phenomenology“. In this work, Patočka puts forward the case that Husserl’s phenomenology offers a principled way to reflect upon the problem of manifestation; yet, instead of remaining with the problem of manifestation, Husserl’s focus shifts to studying pure consciousness. For Patočka, studying ‘pure consciousness’ is impossible. Patočka’s call for an asubjective phenomenology is a call for phenomenology to stay with the problem of manifestation. Part I also contains the first English translation of “Epoché and Reduction: Some Observations”. In this paper, Patočka questions the epoché and the reductions in Husserl’s phenomenology. For Patočka, the epoché should be performed in a “wholly universal way”: in other words, the epoché should not stop short of grasping the existence of the self, but should bring into question the thesis of the certainty of the individual ego. Patočka argues that if we were to do so, we could encounter “the condition of the possibility of the appearing of the self” as well as the appearing of things: we would be able to bring into view the problem of manifestation. This problem of manifestation becomes the central problem in Patočka’s call for an asubjective phenomenology; hence, it is important that both papers be included in this volume, to be read alongside one another. Part II: Asubjective Phenomenology In Part II, Ivan Chvatík reviews Patočka’s asubjective phenomenology, describing it as an attempt “to disengage philosophical thought from the vestiges of traditional Cartesian subjectivism”. Husserl’s project is an attempt to overcome Cartesianism and, hence, Chvatík points out that “neither Patočka nor Heidegger set out to refute Husserl’s phenomenology”; instead, they wish “to identify the points in Husserl where he was – in good faith – unfaithful to his original project”. To this end, Chvatík shows that Patočka’s asubjective phenomenology pushes phenomenology to revisit the problem of manifestation; “to fully thematise what Husserl originally had in view, namely, how anything at all, including ourselves, appears”. Chvatík argues that Patočka’s asubjective phenomenology is a call to remember Husserl’s original problem: the problem of manifestation, which is the central motif of his asubjective phenomenology.

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Also in Part II, Michael Gubser puts forward a reading of Patočka’s asubjective phenomenology which makes sense of his “public defence of Charter 77” in terms of ‘human rights’. For Gubser, asubjective phenomenology is Patočka’s attempt to incorporate Husserl’s “epoché as an act of freedom” and Heidegger’s being-in-the-world; while attempting to overcome the subjectivism he sees in both Husserl and Heidegger. Gubser argues that it is Patočka’s commitment to human freedom, as well as to us as beings who are always engaged with our world, which explains his defence of human rights. Against the backdrop of modern mechanistic thought, which seemingly closes off the possibility of human freedom, Patočka ardently defends humans as free, as able to question and, therefore, also as able to transform the world in which they live. Part II emphasises the themes that are relevant to Patočka’s entire opus. Patočka’s asubjective phenomenology, as well as his work more generally, engages with both Husserl’s and Heidegger’s phenomenologies, seeking to highlight points of compatibility as well as difference. Patočka extends the work of both thinkers to make an original contribution to phenomenology: a phenomenology that stays with the problem of manifestation. Part III: The Three Movements of Human Existence Part III presents reflections on Patočka’s three movements of human existence, which show the relevance of Patočka’s earlier work to his final proposal for an asubjective phenomenology. Josef Moural begins Part III, emphasising, like Gubser, the importance of responsibility for both Husserl’s and Patočka’s work. Moural’s central argument is that responsibility is tied to the third movement of human existence, which is, in turn, tied to history. According to Moural, Patočka sees history as being important in its opening up of the possibility of the third movement: in other words, questioning, and rethinking accepted opinions and practices, requires history. Inês Pereira Rodrigues also reflects upon Patočka’s three movements of existence, but focuses on the importance of the world to Patočka’s theory, explaining it as “a movement which, at bottom, is relation to the ‘world as a whole’”. Pereira Rodrigues carefully explicates Patočka’s concept of ‘world’, showing its relationship to the three movements of existence and humans’ responsibility for meaning. Extending Gubser, Moural and Pereira Rodrigues, Émilie Tardivel focuses specifically on the importance of human autonomy for Patočka’s three movements.

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Tardivel’s key focus is the human relation to the world: humans’ role is neither to establish the world nor to constitute the world, but rather to reveal what is and make things explicit. Tardivel argues that Patočka acknowledges the role of humans in manifestation as well as the possibility of human freedom without “reducing the world to man”. In Moural’s, Pereira Rodrigues’ and Tardivel’s complementary accounts of Patočka’s three movements of existence, we are shown three equally important aspects of Patočka’s work as a whole; regarding history, the world, and human freedom and responsibility. Part IV: Patočkian Reflections on Modern Society Part IV shifts the focus of the volume to consider the relevance of Patočka’s work, not only for philosophy, but also for understanding problems facing modern society. Ciaran Summerton opens Part IV by discussing Patočka’s critique of modern technoscientific thinking and its relation to modern political thought, employing Patočka’s three movements of human existence to both understand and critique the technoscientific character of modern politics. Jakub Homolka shows that Patočka’s concept of ‘supercivilisation’ provides a crucial insight about modern society; and argues that Patočka’s considerations of ‘supercivilisation’ could be usefully adopted by modern sociology and, in particular, civilisational analysis. Riccardo Paparusso discusses Patočka’s work on sacrifice in the technological age, referring to Patočka’s notion of sacrifice for nothing. He argues that to sacrifice one’s life is theoretically incomprehensible within the technoscientific age, because technoscientific conceptions of life emphasise vitality – the prolonging of bare life – without consideration of its meaningfulness or, consequently, its meaninglessness. However, he suggests that sacrifice for nothing offers “the possibility of salvation”, because sacrifice for nothing reveals that life cannot be reduced to the mechanistic view. Anthony Backhouse discusses Patočka’s lecture on beauty and art. He explains that, for Patočka, beauty starts as a philosophical concept in Ancient Greece and “becomes ‘narrow’ and ‘psychologised’” in contemporary society. In the context of this volume, his argument can be summarised in terms of beauty becoming a subjective concept in modern society; a concept relegated to art and removed from philosophical concerns.

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Part V: Patočka on Meaning Part V presents Patočka’s work as a coherent body that brings into question the seemingly unstoppable application of modern science to understanding not only the physical world, but the human world as well. Patočka’s guiding concern is for human meaning, which stands to be obliterated by the march of technoscientific thinking. Ivan Chvatík traces the problem of meaning throughout Patočka’s oeuvre, up until his final work. Anita Williams draws upon Patočka’s work to trace the meaning of mathematics, back to the Ancient Greeks. Williams argues that Patočka understands Plato’s interest in geometry as stemming from Plato’s realisation that things manifest on the basis of something other than themselves; hence, for Patočka, Plato’s interest in geometry is ultimately connected to the problem of manifestation. Ľubica Učník closes the volume by drawing together Patočka’s proposal for an asubjective phenomenology and his three movements of human existence. She reads Patočka’s work as a sustained questioning of modern mathematical science and a consistent attempt to understand the problem of meaning, which has been all but excluded from technoscientific concerns. Učník’s analysis ends the volume where we began: with the idea that Patočka’s central motif is rethinking the idea of subjectivity, without either reducing the world to the subject or eliminating the subject from the world. Works Cited Avenarius, Richard. Der Menschliche Weltbegriff [The Human Concept of the World]. Leipzig: O. R. Reisland, 1891 Chvatík, Ivan. “Patočkova kritika pojmu ‘přirozený svět’ [Patočka’s Critique of the Concept of ‘Natural World’].” Spor o přirozený svět. Eds Bedřich Velický et al. Prague: Filosofia, 2010, 55–68 Crowell, Steven Galt. “Does the Husserl/Heidegger Feud Rest on a Mistake? An Essay on Psychological and Transcendental Phenomenology.” Husserl Studies. 18.2 (2002), 123–140 Herrmann, Friedrich-Wilhelm Von. “Introduction.” Trans. Kenneth Maly. Hermeneutics and Reflection: Heidegger and Husserl on the Concept of Phenomenology. New Studies in Phenomenology and Hermeneutics. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2013, 5–9 Patočka, Jan. Body, Community, Language, World. Ed. James Dodd. Chicago and La Salle, Illinois: Open Court, 1998 Patočka, Jan. “Co je fenomenologie? [What is Phenomenology?].” Fenomenologické spisy II: Co je existence. Publikované texty z let 1965–1977. Prague: Oikoymenh, Filosofia, 2009 [1979], 497–523

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Jan Patočka’s Project Patočka, Jan. “Co je fenomenologie? [What is Phenomenology?].” Trans. Tomáš Dimter. Idea fenomenologie a dva texty Jana Patočky k problému fenomenologie. Edice Oikúmené. Prague: Oikoymenh, 2001, 78–102 Patočka, Jan. “Epoché a redukce: Několik poznámek [Epoché and Reduction: Some Observations].” Fenomenologické spisy II. Eds P. Kouba and O. Švec. Prague: Oikoymenh, 2009 [1975], 442–452 Patočka, Jan. “Husserlova fenomenologie, fenomenologická filosofie a ‘Kartéziánske meditace’ [Husserl’s Phenomenology, Phenomenological Philosophy and ‘Cartesian Meditations’].” Fenomenologické spisy II: Co je existence. Publikované texty z let 1965–1977. Sebrané spisy Jana Patočky. Svazek 7. Prague: Oikoymenh, Filosofia, 2009 [1968], 238–364 Patočka, Jan. “Husserlova transcendentální filosofie po revizi [Husserl’s Transcendental Philosophy after Revision]”, Archiv J. Patočky MS 1992/004, 1969 Patočka, Jan. “Negative Platonism: Reflections Concerning the Rise, the Scope, and the Demise of Metaphysics – and Whether Philosophy Can Survive It.” Edited and translated by Erazim Kohák. Jan Patočka: Philosophy and Selected Writings. Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press, 1989 [circa 1955], 175– 206 Patočka, Jan. Platónova péče o duši a spravedlivý stát: Přednášky k antické filosofii IV [Plato’s Care for the Soul and the Just State: Lectures on Ancient Philosophy IV]. Ed. Jiří Polívka. Na ediční přípravě tohoto svazku se dále podíleli: Jan Frei, Ivan Chvatík, Pavel Kouba a Ladislava Švandová. Přednáškový cyklus ze školního roku 1971/72. Prague: Oikoymenh, Filosofia, 2012 Patočka, Jan. “Pojem evidence a jeho význam pro noetiku [The Concept of Evidence and its Significance for Noetics].” Fenomenologické spisy I: Přirozený svět. Texty z let 1931–1949. Sebrané spisy Jana Patočky. Svazek 6. Prague: Oikoymenh, Filosofia, 2008 [1931], 14–125 Patočka, Jan. “Přirozený svět jako filosofický problém [The Natural World as a Philosophical Problem].” Fenomenologické spisy I: Přirozený svět. Texty z let 1931–1949. Sebrané spisy Jana Patočky. Svazek 6. Prague: Oikoymenh, Filosofia, 2008 [1936], 127–260 Patočka, Jan. “Subjektivismus Husserlovy fenomenologie a možnost ‘asubjektivní’ fenomenologie [The Subjectivism of Husserl’s Phenomenology and the Possibility of an ‘Asubjective’ Phenomenology].” Trans. Jakub Čapek from German. Fenomenologické spisy II: Co je existence. Publikované texty z let 1965– 1977. Sebrané spisy Jana Patočky. Svazek 7. Prague: Oikoymenh, Filosofia, 2009 [1970], 379–396 Patočka, Jan. Úvod do fenomenologické filosofie [Introduction to Phenomenological Philosophy]. Prague: Oikoymenh, 1993 Patočka, Jan. Věčnost a dějinnost: Rádlův poměr k pojetím člověka v minulosti a současnosti [Eternity and Historicity: Rádl’s Relation to Past and Present Conceptions of Man]. Edice Oikúmené. 3 ed. Prague: Oikoymenh, 2007

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Ľubica Učník et al. Učník, Ľubica. “Jan Patočka: From the Concept of Evidence to the Natural World and Beyond.” The Phenomenological Critique of Mathematisation and the Question of Responsibility: Formalisation and the Life-World. Eds Ľubica Učník, Ivan Chvatík and Anita Williams. Contributions to Phenomenology. Dordrecht: Springer, 2015

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Part I: Jan Patočka

Husserl’s Subjectivism and the Call for an Asubjective Phenomenology 1 Jan Patočka Translated from German by Ivan Chvatík, Matt Bower and Kenneth Maly Edmund Husserl’s phenomenology aspires to become a first philosophy, capable of achieving an absolute justification of knowledge based on rigorously scientific foundations with evidence that can be reproduced and acquired by anyone. At the same time, phenomenology itself should be a science, the a priori science of the essential laws concerning the appearing of what appears [Erscheinen des Erscheinenden] as such. And this science should achieve what every transcendental philosophy since Descartes and Kant strived for, namely, to provide the ultimate grounding of knowledge, a grounding freed from any unjustified presuppositions, because it would thoroughly examine them all. Certainly, this sort of grounding of knowledge differs in principle from the grounding that classical critical idealism and the thinkers of the ensuing period envisioned. That is to say, it would not be an argumentative grounding that resorts to the I as the ultimate explanatory notion, but rather a ground-laying [Grundlegung] that reveals, exhibits and justifies the idea of grounding itself. The I appears here neither as a ground of objectivity nor as the exclusive principle producing the appearing world [Erscheinungswelt]. Rather, from the very beginning, the focus is on the correlation of appearing and what appears. Grasped as an essential necessity and intuited in evidence, this correlation is the ultimate ground for demonstrating 1

Translators’ note: The original text was written in German: Patočka, “Der Subjektivismus der Husserlschen und die Forderung einer asubjektiven Phänomenologie [Husserl’s Subjectivism and the Call for an Asubjective Phenomenology]”, Studia Minora Facultatis Philosophicae Universitatis Brunensis F 14–15 (1971). Second publication in Patočka, “Der Subjektivismus der Husserlschen und die Forderung einer asubjektiven Phänomenologie [Husserl’s Subjectivism and the Call for an Asubjective Phenomenology]”, eds Nellen, Němec and Srubar, Die Bewegung der Menschlichen Existenz (Stuttgart: Klett-Cotta, 1991 [1971]), 286–309. French translation: Patočka, “Le subjectivisme de la phénoménologie Husserlienne et l’exigence d’une phénoménologie asubjective [The Subjectivism of Husserlian Phenomenology and the Requirement of Asubjective Phenomenology]”, trans. Abrams, Qu’est-ce que la phénoménologie? (Grenoble: Millon, 1988), 217–248.

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beings [das Seiende] in their modes of givenness [Gegebenheitsweisen]. In this sense, one could rightfully pose the question whether phenomenology represents a transcendental philosophy in the traditional sense.2 Transcendental phenomenology abandons the idea of a subjective grounding, common in traditional transcendental philosophy, and in this way suggests the idea of an asubjective transcendental philosophy, one that is not beholden to a subject severed from the world. Husserl’s Logical Investigations were on the way to developing a principled analysis of objectivity in the ‘how’ of its modes of appearing [Erscheinungsweisen]. But that analysis in the Logical Investigations lacked the view of the radical philosophical question of universal grounding. This sort of questioning came later, in Ideas I, but with a strange repetition of transcendental idealism, without its core idea which is essential for the construction of the unity of the object, i.e., without a universal and identical I. It is true that here Husserl’s basic idea of a thoroughgoing correlation between appearing and what appears was not abandoned: on the contrary, it was sharpened and elevated to the level of methodological principle for Husserl’s entire philosophical program. But a curious combination of Cartesian and Kantian ways of thinking – coupled with Husserl’s original idea of an intuitive grounding of knowledge that transcended argumentation – leads to the idea of a ‘phenomenological reduction’ based on the pure immanence of consciousness. With that, objects became phenomena of objects [Gegenstandphänomenen], whose lawful modes of appearance could be studied in reflection with absolute evidence of their self-givenness. This noetic reflection supplied the ‘absolute being’ of the process of lived-experience [Erlebnisverlauf], while the object served as a guiding thread in the analysis of its modes of givenness. And even after phenomenology’s self-criticism of subjective givenness forced it to recant the claim of adequate evidence, the quest for a core of absolute givenness remained the guiding clue for the philosophical problematic of grounding. “Evidence and reflection are implications of verification”,3 reads a pithy formula of Husserlianism, which is interpreted by means of the Kantiantranscendental idea of grounding. And even if absolute self-givenness must be 2

Cf. Landgrebe, “La Phénoménologie de Husserl Est-elle une philosophie transcendentale?”, Études Philosophiques 3 (1954), 315–323. 3 G. Funke in his systematically conceived lecture at the phenomenological congress in Schwäbisch-Hall, 1969. Translators’ note: The cited text is published as Funke, “Bewußtswissenschaft [Science of Consciousness]”, ed. Breda, Vérité et Verification – Wahrheit und Verifikation, Akten des vierten Internationalen Kolloquiums für Phänomenologie (Schwäbisch Hall, Baden-Württemberg: Phaenomenologica, 1974), vol. 61 [the German text lacks quotation marks or page numbers for this reference].

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labelled an idea in the Kantian sense, and even if the reduction never comes to an end, nevertheless the reflexive turning of the subject back on itself is the basis for grounding [Begründungsboden] the thinking that aims at providing the account of itself. I. A critical reflection on the project of phenomenological transcendental philosophy has to start from the analysis of the notion of a being’s [des Seienden] modes of appearance. The study of modes of appearance was revived in a fundamental way by Husserl, advanced by Scheler in a series of studies critical of Husserl, emphasised by Heidegger as essential for phenomenology, and, recently, forcefully called to mind again by Tugendhat. It is likely that this reflection has to develop its theses by means of historical connections, as we will attempt to do in what follows. Here, we refer to a relevant section of Plato’s Seventh Letter,4 which is, in my opinion, quite inadequately interpreted when it is represented only as a theory about levels of knowledge. It is said that for every thing [Ding] – whether it be a geometrical figure like a line or a circle, a work of art or product of nature, or some property of that work – there are three stages that one must always pass through if one wants to acquire a perfect view (ἐπιστήμη [epistēmē]) of the thing [Sache] in its present self-givenness. Three, as it were, objective ‘entities’ [Entitäten] ‘outside’ the soul, and then a fourth ‘entity’ that has much of what belongs only to the soul and can happen only in the soul. What is important here are not only the ‘stages’, but also the fact that the thing [das Seiende] to be grasped can only manifest itself [sichzeigen] by means of and on the basis of certain modes of appearance, which, although not the thing itself, belong essentially to this manifesting [Zeigen] as such. Now, it is quite striking how these modes of appearance are described – they are nearly identical with the descriptions presented more than 2,000 years later in the Logical Investigations: (1) the name (a simple meaning [Bedeutung] mentally [geistig] pointing in the direction of a thing), (2) the logos (the proposition or rather the sense [Sinn] of the proposition harmoniously coordinated with this pointing), (3) the image [Bild] (the first intuitive fulfilling, the instance, the 4

Translators’ note: See Plato, “Seventh Letter”, ed. Cooper, Complete Works (Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing, 1997), 1659–1661, 342b ff.

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primary embodiment) – here what is indicated or merely supposed gradually passes over into fulfilment. And if it is brought (4) to an intuition [Veranschaulichung] originating not from ourselves but from the thing [Sache] itself, i.e., if its bodily presence is there, then the whole movement comes to a standstill, because it has reached its goal, that is, the thing [das Ding] itself is present, it is reached. To these things – which are here called (1) the simple meaning, (2) the sense of judgment, (3) what is intuitive, and (4) what is bodily present – correspond processes “that form a unity, not by virtue of the fact that they are expressed in linguistic utterances or bodily gestures, but because they have their seat in the soul [Seele].”5 And one could interpret these as (1) simple, one-dimensional opinion [Meinung], (2) the sense of judgment, meant in its multi-dimensionality, (3) fulfilment of opinion and (4) ‘bodily’ intuition, which one can also call the perfect view of the thing [Sache] itself (ἐπιστήμη [epistēmē]). This theory of the modes of appearing was not fully worked out in Plato because it was immediately interpreted in an objectivistic-metaphysical way: ὄνομα [onoma], λόγος [logos] and εἴδωλον [eidōlon] were seen as ‘sensuous’, as the opinion; ἀληθές δόξα [alēthes doxa] and ἐπιστήμη [epistēmē] as ‘belonging to the soul’ [Seelisches]; and ‘the thing itself’ [Sacheselbst] as ideal being. Thus the tremendously important attempt at a theory of the modes of appearance was not recognised. Every mode of being [Seinsweise] was interpreted as given in a uniform regard [Hinblick]. This of course had to lead to a levelling of differences that were actually seen. Rather than the same thing in different modes of appearance, what became the leitmotif of the interpretation were different things taken in the same manner of actual beholding [Erblickens]. In other words, the content of beings [der Gehalt an Seiendem] triumphed over what makes access to beings possible. Aristotle attempted to formulate the problem of the appearance of beings [des Seienden] in De anima.6 For things to appear, i.e., for their forms [Gestalt] to emerge and reveal themselves as such, a being of a particular nature is needed, namely, the ψυχή (psychē) – the vital principle [die Lebendigkeit]. Only when there is a vital principle can beings show themselves. But the vital principle is an active readiness-to-function of a non-artificial body, which is endowed with everything needed to keep it functioning. One of the essential functions or oper5

Translators’ note: ibid., 342c. Aristotle, “De Anima”, trans. Barnes, Complete Works of Aristotle (Princeton: 1984), 431b 20, ff. 6

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ations of the vital principle – that characterises animalia – is precisely the capability to let appear [das Erscheinenlassen]. This letting-appear, however, pertains on the one hand to what is changeable, inasmuch as it exists here and now, which one must therefore encounter in the here and now (αἴσθησις [aesthēsis]). On the other hand it pertains to that for which the ‘now’ has no meaning, which in this sense is transtemporal (noēsis [noēsis]). From the point of view of appearing, everything that there is (τὰ πράγματα [ta pragmata]) is divided into αἰσθητά [aesthēta] and νόητα [noēta], with regard to both possibility and actuality. Now, why is the soul [die Seele] unavoidably necessary for things to appear? Because, when the forms [die Gestalten] of things are not appearing, they are somewhere, i.e., in things, since there are clearly no forms without extension (παρὰ τὰ μεγέθη [para ta megethē]). When they emerge distinctly as forms, they again require some sort of place. This place must itself have a form, a peculiar sort of look – it must be something that is able to take other forms into itself. It must be a form of forms (εἶδος εἰδῶν [eidos eidōn],7 in order to become the place of forms (εἶδη [eidē]). To put it in a more modern way: This look must have a ‘noematic’ side, it must be able to set ‘what is objective’ [Gegenständliches] against itself, within the soul. Aristotle expresses this by means of a curious metaphor, saying that the soul is like a hand that is the instrument of instruments, i.e., just as it is only in the hand that an instrument becomes instrument – without the hand there is no instrument and every instrument becomes a tool only in the hand – so too it is the soul that actually fashions all forms into forms, i.e., into appearing. But in so doing the hand in no way alters what it handles. It remains what it was. On the contrary, it really only becomes that which it has carried within itself as disposition, as possibility. The same can be said about the soul: things appear in the soul without thereby losing their peculiar form, their essence. That holds for both αἰσθητά [aesthēta] and νόητα [noēta]. Both what is singularly encountered in a particular situation as well as what is general and transtemporal appear in the soul. But is it enough to be able to say that the soul is in a way (that demands investigation) the things? That is, the soul is no different from the things in how it enables appearing. In its handling of instruments, the hand itself surely remains distinct from them. It is not at all identified with the hammer and nail, whose discrete presence, on the contrary, it requires. There is a difference here, then. 7

Ibid., 432a2–3.

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The hand is indeed a good metaphor for the place of forms, but not for the identity of forms and soul – or, better, for the identification of both – which Aristotle nevertheless speaks of when he says: ἣ ψυχή τὰ ὄντα πώς ἐστίν [hē psuchē ta onta pōs estin].8 The identification that takes place within the soul would be unintelligible if it were not in the power of the soul to have the same thing in different modes and to carry out an identification within this framework. With his thesis that the soul is in some mysterious way all existing things, Aristotle captures not only the essence of so-called intentionality, but also the idea of the different modes of the same thing’s appearance. But these different modes of the same thing’s appearance are immediately restricted in Aristotle – in the same way as in Plato – by giving more weight to the being that appears than to the way in which it appears. The same thing that appears in different modes is interrogated on the basis of the relation of the aesthetic to the noetic, i.e., the relation of the particular being that is encountered to the being that has always already existed. Aristotle shows that, in order for the soul to detect that for which time is irrelevant, it must have had αἴσθησις [aesthēsis] and make use of it when modifying it by means of φαντασία [phantasia]. So, again, a theory about the levels of knowledge emerges from the theory of the different modes of the same thing’s appearance. The soul has to traverse these levels in order to raise itself up from the ‘sensuous surface’ of a being to the height of its essence. The speculations arising with the Scholastics – especially with the late Scholastics – concerning the esse intentionale in its identity to and difference from the esse reale are therefore in this respect of great interest, because they explicitly reflected upon the objectivity of the soul’s content as such. But the doctrine of the simultaneously intentional and representational [repräsentativen] character of the ‘idea’, i.e., ‘representation’ [Vorstellung] in the soul, as we have it in Descartes and his successors, was one of the inevitable consequences of these speculations. In hindsight, one can distinguish a number of particular difficulties within the problematic of the soul [Seele] as the place of appearing. First of all, there is the problem of the structure of the soul itself as something that relates to something else, as something having an objective (Husserl would say ‘noematic’) side. Fur8

Translators’ note: ibid., 686 [431b21]. Patočka leaves the Greek sentence untranslated. Here is Barnes’ rendering: “[T]he soul is in a way all existing things.”

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ther, there is what one could call the problem of a transcendent identification; the question of whether or not intentional being [intentionales Sein] is representative or not representative of the real belongs here. The third problem, then, would be the immanent identification which again divides into two problematic components. The first part of this third problem concerns the internal composition of the moments of the representation [des Repräsentanten] itself and its possible transformations. This side of the problem was subsequently given the greatest attention, because here in the analysis of ideas was found the basis for every kind of propositional truth. There is a second part to the third problem: although in the tradition it was never clearly distinguished from other aspects, the analysis of the different modes of givenness belongs here, or rather, the analysis of the possibility rooted in them to pass over from one mode of givenness to another, hence, the inner structure [Regelung] of appearing as such. Not only did the metaphysical tradition fail to precisely distinguish these aspects – as I have already emphasised but deserves repeating – but also, the structural problems of the soul and the problem of modes of givenness were largely brushed off in favour of that of transcendent identification and the analysis of representation – brushed off, neglected and even conflated with these problems. We are desperately in need of a thorough treatment of this whole problematic in relation to Descartes and the Cartesian epoch. In the absence of such a treatment, the following points should be noted. Descartes embraces the transcendent identification. Except in the case of the mind’s [des Geistes] self-certain securing of its existence as a res cogitans, this identification happens through the representation of the formal entities (which Descartes calls the ideas) that are objectively (intentionally [intentionaliter]) present in the human mind. In connection with that, ideas (but not judgments or propositions) are primarily taken to be ‘true’ if they are actually capable of performing this representational function. Such ideas then have the character of clarity and distinctness. They are internally articulated and are not confused with other ideas. The content of ideas is formulated in reasons, i.e., the meanings of judgments [Urteilssinne] that can form chains of evidences. These judgments’ meanings can – either on the basis of the content of its evidence or for other reasons – be affirmed or negated by the faculty of judgment, which depends on the freedom of will. Hence, the ‘objective’ or ‘noematic’ doxic properties, and perhaps other modes of appearance (i.e., being present/absent or clear/obscure) are implicitly distinguished from the act of judgment itself, although the scope of this distinction remains unclear. The always possible transition from insight to lack of insight is the principle object of Descartes’ deliberations. Here one has above all else to rebut the skepticism that

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can latch onto this change. This is why, as we know, Descartes deems it necessary to deal with the ontological argument. Descartes also remains faithful to the metaphysical tradition in his designation of clarity and distinctness as the internal characteristics of an idea. With that, the problem of the modes of appearance of beings was considered settled; and, in connection with that, the subjective was viewed as either simply seeing or not seeing, assenting or dissenting. Leibniz and the Leibnizian tradition are important in the further development of the problem. His essay De cognitione, veritate et ideis is the starting point for the modern discussion of the problem of the modes of appearance, which still appears there in the Cartesian guise as a problem about ideas. With Leibniz all four dimensions of the issue in question are exhibited, although not explicitly brought out. He seems least interested in the immanent-subjective, mental-structural [seelisch-strukturelle] side of things. Hence, he mostly uses the word ‘knowledge’, not in the sense of the knowledge process, but rather in the sense of its objective result, the (possible) truth. Although truth rests on a transcendent foundation or agreement with the things, it is only present in thoughts and thus needs a representation of things in the mind [Geist]. Ideas are this representation. Ideas contain the essence (essentia) of things. Therefore, if one strives for truth, i.e., knowledge of what exists, it is necessary to know the makeup of ideas and the order of their connection. With that, the transcendent identification is led back to the immanent analysis and (subsequent) synthesis of the moments of representations, to the way they are connected. Leibniz maintains that, in principle, this connection is transparent in an analysis that runs through nothing but identities. The genuine essence of the accomplishment of knowledge consists in this process of going through identities, in this formal identification. But now a question emerges that makes it necessary to take the dimension of modes of appearance into consideration, namely the question of how we know that we have ideas, given the original absence of such an analysis. For we often think that we find an idea in ourselves when all we have at our disposal is a word for describing a nonsensical, contradictory complex of representations. When we speak intelligently about a matter (i.e., understanding what it involves or what we mean, and we have a determinate meaningful intention that we can also reproduce in a listener), we believe that we must also have an idea. But such a meaning-intention can also be made up, which Leibniz calls a blind knowledge.

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When we trace this ‘blind’ knowledge back again to its ‘intuitive’ origin, we find that it has no counterpart there. This says implicitly that I can have the same object in two modes, i.e., at one moment it can be given in an unfulfilled intention, and at another it can itself be present. However, this implicit connection is not pursued any further, and the essence of the identity arising in it is not discussed. Rather, the following considerations are introduced. 1. One can refer to an unfulfilled intention as ‘blind representation’. It does not contain what enables our recognition of the object as we corporeally encounter it [den leiblich entgegentretenden Gegenstand] and our ability to distinguish it from other objects. Leibniz presumably does not mean by this that there is no relation between this obscure representation and the clear one that contains the identifiable marks of the thing in question [der Sache]. The clear representation emerges when we are brought before the thing itself [die Sache selbst]. Leibniz is thinking here of a sensuously present givenness. The object that is present then itself produces a clear representation. Leibniz does not distinguish the latter from the act of bringing something to intuition [einer Veranschaulichung], which he would likely also consider to be a kind of clear representation. A clear representation is therefore a meaning-fulfilling [bedeutungserfüllende] one. 2. However, the fulfilment of meaning [die Bedeutungserfüllung] is still not knowledge in the proper sense. The fulfilment of meaning is only a pseudoknowledge or a lower form of knowledge. The metaphysical theory of different levels of being and knowledge prevails again here. The fulfilment of meaning may still be a fictive one. Indeed, an intuitive but opaque representation may be inserted between us and things, i.e., a representation for which there is no way of seeing how it is related to what it represents. The structure of the representation itself gets lost in it. Only where the component parts of this structure are themselves present, only then is there talk of distinct knowledge; and only where the ultimate component parts are also distinct will knowledge be adequate. And when this distinct knowledge is not just symbolically suggested but genuinely accomplished (the distinction between unfulfilled and fulfilled meaning is found here again), we can speak of intuitive [intuitiven] knowledge. There is scarcely adequate and intuitive knowledge for us humans except where we approach it in the realm of numbers. The theory of modes of givenness thus emerges in two places, i.e., in the distinction between obscure and clear and the distinction between not adequately intuitive (symbolic) and adequately intuitive. The Cartesian opposition between the

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confused knowledge of the senses and the distinct knowledge of reason is fundamental. The clear does not exclude the confused, since sensuous clarity is a confused manifold. By contrast, the intellectual manifold can be analysed all the way to its ultimate units. Only in the intellect is there the simple; in the sensuous realm, the simple is in principle not there. The dominant epistemic opposition becomes that of intellectual simplicity and sensuous plurality. So returns the Platonic distortion of appearing over against that which appears. Bolzano is a significant figure in the Leibnizian school. He distinguished, more distinctly than Leibniz had, the objective character of representation over against the subjective act of representing, calling this: ‘representation in itself [an sich]’. By interpreting judging as positing [These], he unwittingly became the father of the doctrine of different possible intentional relations to the object. The proposition [der Satz] in itself accompanies the positing as its objective correlate. In distinguishing representing, representation, and object of representation, objective and objectless representation, judging and the proposition in itself – a theory of the object and content of representation gradually develops. For its part, this object or content is distinguished from the act of representing [vom Vorstellen] as a real mental process. These distinctions of Bolzano’s seem to us to be an indispensable precondition for Brentano’s theory of the intentional inexistence of the object, as well as for the Husserlian theory of the diverse characteristics of the appearing objectivity. We here pass over the problems of appearance and of appearing in critical philosophy and in German Idealism, interesting as it would be to pursue them. The tradition of German Idealism was not as fundamentally relevant for the Husserlian theory of the object in its modes of appearance as was the tradition indicated above, which runs from Plato and Leibniz through Bolzano and Brentano. In contrast to previous thinkers, Brentano developed the side of the subjectivemental structure. This occurred in the context of his striving to make philosophy a positive science on the basis of a scientific psychology. As a science, psychology needed to delineate the realm of phenomena peculiar to it. That is secured by separating ‘psychical’ from ‘physical’ phenomena. It takes place by distinguishing two traits. One traces back to Descartes, the other to Aristotle and the Scholastic tradition. The Cartesian motif states that the psychical phenomenon secures its own existence, because what appears also exists with certainty. The same cannot be said of physical phenomena, which, to begin with, exhibit only an ‘immanent inexistence’ in the psychical. However, the recourse to Descartes turns into a surpassing of him, the moment the multiplicity of the intentional relations to the object becomes an explicit theme. Brentano strives for a genuine

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analysis of this immanent relation, which he accomplishes with the help of the interpretation of judgment as positing, which already appeared in Bolzano. In Brentano, the motif of modes of appearing is also operative in the form of his distinction between blind judging and the evidence of judgment [Urteilsevidenz]. It is fundamental for his whole theory of knowledge, even though he did not succeed in freeing it from the connection with traditional metaphysics. As a matter of fact, what is evident is determined by metaphysical theses and is in no way substantiated by taking recourse to original modes of appearance themselves. So, for example, the late theory of Brentano that only things exist is an evident result of ontological theses. The problematic of the intentional led to an alternative, one discussed between Brentano and his school. What matters is the multiplicity of the relations of consciousness to a unitary objectivity or the multiplicity of objects with an identical relation to consciousness.9 Brentano’s late philosophy is defined by his decision in favour of the multiplicity of the relations of consciousness, which, for its part, was conditioned by a metaphysics of substance as well as a metaphysics of the soul. II. The significance of the second part of Logical Investigations consists in the fact that the full range of the problem of modes of givenness of the object of thinking – or rather of thinking’s objectivities – was elaborated within a limited – but what was at the time central for the problematic of grounding science – area of logical structures. Here a both/and was set against the either/or of Brentano’s school. Positing [thetisch] characteristics and modes of givenness were uncovered and studied as the universal structures of thought and experience [Erfahrung]. Still, certain problems remain unresolved here. The most significant burden by which Brentano’s definition of psychical phenomena as intentional acts encumbered the further development of our question was his definition of the psychical act as something itself given internally for itself [als etwas für sich selbst innerlich gegeben]. As I see it, this definition contributed essentially to the interpretation of the subjective as an inner object, one 9

This argument was developed by Tugendhat, Der Wahrheitsbegriff bei Husserl und Heidegger [The Concept of Truth in Husserl and Heidegger] (Berlin: de Gruyter, 1967), 28–32.

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that will then be understood, perhaps not as with Brentano as something constantly incidentally directed to itself, but nevertheless as something that at least in principle is graspable in a subsequent act of reflection. Brentano’s version of Cartesianism contains ontological presuppositions that continued to operate unnoticed. Husserl did view Brentano’s theory of the division of phenomena into the physical and the psychical to be erroneous and also criticised with compelling arguments Brentano’s theory of the psychical as something internally perceived (even if only in an oblique way). He saw in it an infinite regress. But there remained an unaddressed remnant of Brentano’s conception in the theses with which he corrected Brentano’s theory of the immanent object. If the intentional object is not immanent but precisely transcendent, then that necessarily entails a basic distinction between lived-experience [Erlebnis] and phenomenon, in keeping with Brentano’s interpretation of the psychical as an inner object. The livedexperience does not appear, it is simply present as something “reell” in the temporal flux. But it enables things to appear. The transcendences [Transzendenzen] appear on the basis of lived-experience. Lived-experiences can then themselves subsequently become objects of reflection, and indeed the original mode of reflection is an inner grasping of the object in the original. In it the livedexperience is bodily present and is at least grasped apodictically, if not adequately. The whole theory of the Logical Investigations can only be understood on the basis of two things. The first is Husserl’s significant discovery that what originally appears is in no way ‘physical phenomena’, but the things themselves, i.e., objectivities and what is transcendent in a physical/real or logical/ideal way. The second is Husserl’s adherence to Brentano’s dogma of an original access to the psychical in a kind of advertence to oneself as an object. As was already mentioned above, this access is conceived of differently in Husserl than in Brentano, who holds fast to the thesis of an original consciousness of the psychical and attempts to justify it by appeal to the oblique mode of consciousness’ orientation. However, Husserl never doubts the existence of acts as lived-experiences that are themselves originally accessible in reflection. He even makes them the basis of appearing. All understanding is acquired on this basis and all explanation of the world and of worldly beings can be traced back to it. We might even venture the thesis that it was the systematic execution of this task that led Husserl to pose the basic transcendental question in his own way, and that the Cartesianism often claimed to be what fatefully led Husserl to the theory of the absolute

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being of pure consciousness is nothing other than a piece of unresolved Brentanoism. Nothing is more characteristic in this regard than the way Husserl tries to disarm Natorp’s10 doubt about the givenness of something like a ‘psychical act’. Natorp says that “The being of the tone for me, that is my consciousness of it. If someone is able to catch hold of his consciousness in some other way than in the existence of some content for him, I am unable to do likewise.”11 In reply, Husserl tries to demonstrate and exhibit the givenness of an act with concrete examples. He attempts this by elaborating a conception of the “existence of a content for me”. There are several ways of noticing something. A content is present in a different way when it is merely implicit than when it is grasped as explicitly emphasised. Husserl then points to the difference between sensation and perception: “different acts can perceive the same object and yet sense [empfinden] different sensory data.”12 And, on the other hand, the same sensations can be apprehended [auffassen] in different ways. Yet the apprehension itself, Husserl says, is not an addition of new sensations, but rather something like the “character of an act [Aktcharakter]”, a “way of being conscious [Weise des Bewusstseins]”, a “state of mind [Zumutesein]”. In one example from the predominantly optical sphere of perception, Husserl speaks of a box that I see from different sides that remains the same in these different aspects. Here, we experience [erleben] a “consciousness of identity”, deeming [das Vermeinen] to grasp an identity. Husserl conceives of this in the following sense: in both cases (the two different positions of the box), different contents of sensation are certainly given, but they are apprehended in the “same sense”. The apprehension [Auffassung] (or apperception) with this “sense” is a characteristic of lived-experience [Erlebnischarakter], and this above all accounts for the “existence of the object for me”. – An example that illuminates a broader field is supplied by comparing perception with memory and the two of these with image-presentation [Verbildlichung], e.g., in pictures, statues, etc., but above all by expressions [von den 10 On the following, see also Kern, Husserl und Kant, Phaenomenologica, 16 (The Hague: Nijhoff, 1964), 360ff. The book is very persuasive but does not go far enough in its conclusions. Additionally, I note that here ‘noetical intentionality’ is understood and referred to as ‘constructive’. 11 Translators’ note: Natorp, Einleitung in die Psychologie nach kritischer Methode [Introduction to Psychology by a Critical Method] (Mohr: Freiburg, 1888). See also Husserl, Logische Untersuchungen [Logical Investigations], Husserliana XIX (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1984), 395. 12 Husserl, Logische Untersuchungen [Logical Investigations], 395.

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Ausdrücken]. What is the difference between an arabesque and the peculiar form of symbolic consciousness that is connected with the arabesque, but where the understanding of the expressed content of the arabesque overshadows it? What in particular does the empty consciousness of significance in a word that we hear in conversation consist in, when the content [Sache] it refers to is not made intuitive, and when we nevertheless understand what is involved in it? – The result: The sensations and the acts “apprehending” or “apperceiving” them are experienced [erlebt], but they do not appear objectively. They are not seen, heard or perceived by any “sense”. Objects, on the other hand, appear and are perceived, but they are not experienced [erlebt].13 But now we ask whether it is not the case that the different forms of the ‘existence of a content for me’ are different simply because something different appears here in different fields of appearance and equipped with different characteristics of appearance. When I am, so to speak, overwhelmed by sensation, e.g., when waking up, when I am passively given over to it, even before my livedexperience [mein Erlebtes] takes on the contours of things, does not something quite different from a thing appear here, namely, a fog, a chaos, but still something objective? Is the peculiar connection red-as-the-side-of-an-object, e.g., the red of a cigarette pack, not an objective structure? Where can something like an ‘act’ and a ‘lived-experience’ be observed here? Things appear to me with objective and other, e.g., thetic, characteristics. There is a difference here between those characteristics that I ascribe to the ‘thing itself’ and other characteristics, which are certainly also present but not belonging to it, but with whose aid, so to speak, or on the basis of which, it appears. However, characteristics of both sorts appear in the world, in the field of appearance ‘before’ me. They are in no way present as a lived-experience or something subjective. What appears originally are things and thingly characteristics, which appear on the basis of and together with other non-thingly but, all the same, objective characteristics that are situated ‘over against me’ [mir gegenüber]. That on the basis of which an object appears is itself objectively [sachlich] and not subjectively present. What Husserl brought into play, to oppose Natorp, i.e., the ‘lived-experience’ [das ‘Erlebte’], is not at all given. And it violates the ‘principle of principles’ (namely, that the ultimate court of appeals to which one can take recourse in matters of knowledge is the given, but only insofar as it is actually given) if Husserl in the analysis of appearing appeals to an alleged basis of lived-experience that is simply not given. 13

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Let us take the case of the “empty consciousness of meaning [des leeren Bedeutungsbewusstseins]”. What could that mean? Husserl himself also ultimately concedes that even in this case there is perhaps something more here, i.e., before us, than the sound of a word, an arabesque, etc. But this ‘more’ is nothing subjective. It is the thing [Sache] that is present – as Husserl himself will later say, in a deficient mode of givenness, it is there as ‘not itself’, but still indicated [anzeigt] in a way. That is, a sign [die Anzeige] of the thing is present, but not a lived-experience, not something subjective in the sense of belonging to the I [des Ichlichen]. It is exactly the same case with the thetic characteristics. The thing [Sache] first appears doubtful, then with the character of plain, unbroken certainty, then again, problematic. And, naturally, these thetic characteristics and characteristics of givenness are indicative of the fact that what appears appears for someone. Accordingly, we also do not attribute these characteristics to the thing itself as a component part of what appears. What we are arguing against, however, is the claim that one can make this basis of appearing into yet another object for a possible ‘inner perception’ that grasps it ‘originally’, or that one can grasp it in an alleged ‘reflection on pure lived-experience’. The ‘subjective’ quality of thetic characteristics and characteristics of givenness is precisely ‘out there’ (before me) like appearing things themselves. If it would not itself appear, Husserl certainly could not have spoken of it as a noematic characteristic in his late works. It is surely these characteristics that have the thing, as what it is, for their pretext and purpose. They keep the thing in view, so to speak, letting it draw near or go away, letting it be present in clarity or in concealment. Here, in the description of these processes, of this emergence [dieses Aufgehens] of things themselves, lie the genuine tasks of phenomenology. But how the opposite could be, how lived-experience could come to be the origin of the appearing of what is transcendent – that is fundamentally unintelligible. It is not and cannot be given. Phenomenology faces the danger here of surrendering, of abandoning its discoveries in the field of appearing (i.e., in the field of the modes of appearing) and embarking upon the terrain of a subjective construction. What does it mean to ‘apprehend different data in the same sense’ or ‘animate them by means of the same intention’? Certainly nothing other than that the different sides of a perceived object, e.g. a box, appear as sides of the same thing. But the thing that appears in these sides is obviously not an intention. It is a thing, something that perseveres through the different perspectives. It is what is understood in the perspectives and not the understanding itself. Certainly, an understanding must be present here; it is none other than this very appearing of

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the one thing. To draw from that the conclusion that it must be possible to grasp the understanding once more in the original, i.e., in reflection, is an arbitrary assumption. The appearing, i.e. the transparency [das Durchschauen] of the perspectives in relation to the one thing presented in them, is given. No ‘dataanimating intention’ can be grasped, exhibited, or given. Further, one can make the following observation: this seeing through perspectives, this transcending of what is given in the senses, is an accomplishment that someone must achieve. This accomplishment is for sure induced by recurrence [die Wiederkehr] – and in this recurrence something endures as identical and in this way becomes an object. All of this amounts to an accomplishment conceivable on the basis of a tendency to identity. That is certainly so, and these subjective accomplishments presuppose possibilities in which the subject lives and that it seeks to realise. But does it follow that these accomplishments themselves would be originally accessible in an objectifying act of reflection? Or can all of this only be gathered in precisely the same way from phenomena? Are they not as much appearances in a field of appearing as are things, which they let appear? In the field of appearing, things let what belongs to the I [das Ichliche] come to the fore [zum Vorschein] just as much as what belongs to the I, for its part, lets things appear. But what belongs to the I cannot be grasped in itself and in an ‘absolute way’. One must keep in mind that the phenomenal field is ‘subjective’ in a way that is different from what makes up the I, which itself appears in the phenomenal field. One would then have to ask: does not what belongs to the I itself have to be given in a way that grasps it immediately in its originality? Is it not that which is captured in the Cartesian cogito? Certainly, the ‘ego’ in ‘ego cogito’ is something immediately certain. But this certainty is not a certainty of content, but rather a mere certainty of being [bloss eine Seinsgewissheit] without any content, with the exception of one thing: it is that for which what appears appears. Appearing, the phenomenal field, is its appearing. There is nothing here that could be grasped ‘objectively’, but simply a possibility for realising the demands [der Forderungscharaktere] that in the field of appearing turn to the I and enable the I to appear as the one who realises [als Realisator] them. Instead of grasping the noetic side and the immanent study of lived-experience as such, instead of a reduction to a pure immanence, which contains noematic transcendence in itself, a study of the phenomenal field – a study of appearance in its appearing – would have to be established. This would be a study of the nature of phenomenal being [des phänomenalen Seins], which consists in reveal-

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ing beings [Seiendes], enabling them to appear; and which, in this appearing of beings [des Seienden] does not itself become a theme, hiding itself, so to speak, in the appearing of things. There is a phenomenal field, a being [ein Sein] of the phenomenon as such, which cannot be traced back to anything existent which appears in it. This field can never be explained on the basis of anything existent, be it objective in the manner of a natural thing or subjective in the manner of the I. The phenomenal field is in principle not autonomous. It is impossible for it to be an absolutely self-contained being [Seiendes], because its whole essence consists in manifesting, disclosing and presenting other beings. The intent of the phenomenological reduction properly aims at this field, at appearing as such, and not at what is ‘subjective’ in the sense of a livingexperience [eines Erlebens]. The self-revealing [Das Sichzeigen] of the phenomenal as it conceals itself [im Sichverbergen] in what enables it to appear makes superfluous the reflexive technique of ‘awakening’ what is latent. It is surely present, but it functions differently in cases where it is directed to something else than in cases where it is directed to itself. For the phenomenal field indeed does not have autonomous being, but does have its own being, which consists precisely in its revealing function [im Zeigen]. The objective sense on the basis of which we target an object of thought, the thetic characteristics, the characteristics of givenness – that above all led to the discovery of the important phenomenal relation [Erscheinungsverweisung] between deficient empty givenness and fulfilment through presence, i.e., bodily presence, i.e., the ‘self-presence’ [das ‘Selbstda’] of an object – these are not at all ‘subjective’ in the sense of a really inherent [reelen] lived-experience belonging ‘to me’ as some part of me. Rather, they belong in the phenomenal sphere in which I live and am acquainted with myself. Also, the content of my opinion [das Gemeinte], simply as its content, is not at all psychical in this sense, and likewise for the whole ‘process’ of the fulfilment or disappointment of an objective intention. All of that plays out, not in me but in front of me. In this field lie precisely the discoveries of the Logical Investigations, especially in Investigations V and VI of Part II. What belongs to the essence of my critique is the fact that I cannot embrace the Husserlian interpretation of lived-experience and acts, and hence also his concept of the intentionality of consciousness. There are further difficulties with the Husserlian interpretation worth mentioning. Husserl’s theory of really inherent lived-experience [reel Erlebtes] immediately gives rise to his theory of “original sensory data” or, as he also sometimes calls

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them, “hyletic data”, and their role in perception. For a long time this theory has been criticised, but not in a principled and consistent way by the majority of critics and thus without being overcome. In this connection, one should refer to Ingarden’s recollections of Husserl, where he sheds light on the tensions and inconsistencies Husserl himself must have sensed in his own theory. 14 For, on the one hand, a ‘sensory datum’ is sharply distinguished from an apprehending act. But, on the other hand, it is also included together with it in a unity. Later, in the Ideen, after the distinction of noesis and noema is introduced – i.e., on the one hand, living-experience [das Erleben], and, on the other hand, what is experienced [das Erlebte] – the status of the “hyletic data” becomes quite problematic. On which side should one look for them? Ingarden stresses that the data are difficult to fit into the three kinds of unities that Husserl distinguishes – i.e., the noetic, the noematic and the correlative. Indeed, Husserl does not explain how they are distinguished from one another. (And that is no accident, for noetic unity is, I think, simply a projection of a ‘noematic’ unity, a unity of what is given on the phenomenal plane.) In my view, when the data [Daten] are experienced [erlebt], for example as ‘free qualities’ or ‘muddled impressions’, they are actually a different sort of appearance – with an objective structure that is entirely distinct from the givenness of a real object that is spatially perduring, i.e., a real object persisting through different qualitative perspectives. Although, in the objective apprehension, the ‘data’ serve as a transition to something entirely different – which by no means arises in the data – it does not follow at all that here there is a common subjective basis for the two different ‘act qualities’, which would be at least partially responsible for the objective orientation [Richtung]. The ‘common subjective ground’ is not a phenomenological given [phänomenologisches Datum], but rather an assumption stemming from the naturalistic and psychological tradition. The working over of data on the basis of association, apperception and judgment belongs to the time-honoured tradition of the style of explanation by the various psychological schools of the 19th century. But one cannot even claim that the concept of act – as it appears in Husserl’s theory of ‘opinions’ [Vermeinungen], ‘sense bestowal’ [Sinngebungen] and ‘intentions’ [Intentionen] – is something that can be brought to light descriptively. In this respect, it seems to me that Natorp is right when he says that consciousness is nothing other than the existence of contents, characteristics and refer14

See Husserl, Briefe an R. Ingarden [Letters to R. Ingarden], Phaenomenologica, 25 (Nijhoff: The Hague, 1968), 123 ff.

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ences, for me. The question is, then, what this ‘I’ is for which things, characteristics and dynamic references are present and how one can apprehend it. As long as one looks for the I and its components as though it were a datum, a content, an objectivity of a peculiar sort alongside the sorts of things that do not belong to the I, it seems to me that every such attempt is in vain and allows constructions to emerge like those that we encounter in Brentano’s notion of ‘intentional inexistence’ and its legacy. On the one hand, an act is nothing other than the objective sense ‘in’ which an object stands before us, although it is a sense distinct from the appearing object as such. In this descriptive regard, an act cannot be distinguished from the characteristics of positing and givenness. On the other hand, it is possible to name the self-engagement [Selbstinanspruchnahme] – which does not appear objectively and can only be distorted in attempts at objective ‘perception’ – as an ‘act’. One can justify attributing this self-engagement to a ‘psychophysical subject’, as the addressee of the instances of givenness that themselves lie beyond the objectivity that we presuppose them to have in socalled ‘objective’ existence. But this is a notion of an act of a totally different sort than the one accepted by Brentano and Husserl. It is a notion of an act that is being understood and explained in itself, one that can never be directly demonstrated in an ‘inner perception’ or in an ‘act of reflection’. One could formulate the just-outlined critique of classical phenomenology as a transcendental philosophy grounded in an absolute grasping of the self in reflexive consciousness, by making use of a train of thought from Ernst Tugendhat 15 in the following manner. Classical phenomenology became a victim of its own discoveries and their imprecise formulation. The great discovery of the modes of givenness and, above all, givenness in the form of originality [Originarität] yielded the discovery of the perhaps genuinely universal structural relation of empty opinion and fulfilment. Husserl confused this pair of opposites [Gegensatz] with another, i.e., that of deficient givenness and intuition. But intuition connotes an object’s form of givenness, whereas fulfilment can take place even when no object, no existing thing or thingly process, can be exhibited. This quaternio terminorum led to the difficulties of a theory of categorial and eidetic intuition as the self-givenness of some objects of a categorial nature, or of universals à la Plato. We could now round out what Tugendhat says: something similar also happened with regard to the cogito. The self-certainty of the existence of the ego, of the sum, was inter15

Translators’ note: See Tugendhat, Der Wahrheitsbegriff bei Husserl und Heidegger [The Concept of Truth in Husserl and Heidegger], Teil 1 [Part 1].

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preted as presence; and this presence was understood as original self-givenness. But original self-givenness needs a corresponding object. So the conscious act, a noesis which can be grasped reflexively and originally, is now supposed to be this object. III. It is well known that Descartes spoke of the certainty of ego as the certainty of its existence and of the essence. The hyperbolic doubt has its insurmountable limit in the certainty of ego as the certainty of one’s own existence. The existence of the I always remains a presupposition for even the most extreme doubt. This existence cannot be the merely possible illusory appearance of something else, but here involves the appearance of existence itself, the essential existencein-appearing [Existenz-in-Erscheinung]. That is not necessarily the case at all with other existents [Existierenden], e.g., natural things. In this sense, one can elevate the certainty of the I into a philosophical principle. It is a presupposition for even the appearing of what itself is not an existence-in-appearing. It is indeed natural to interpret the connection [die Zugehörigkeit] of one’s own existence to the essence of appearing in the following ways: 1. As the thesis of the necessity of an objective appearing of one’s own essence. 2. As the thesis of the I as the necessary absolute ground for the whole [der Ganzheit] of appearing as such. But neither thesis is viable. The first arose with Descartes and the Cartesian tradition. Here the fact of existence’s appearing to itself is interpreted as the certainty of the always available objectivity of the internally available determinations of one’s own essence. I have tried to show above that this is a dead end. The second thesis arose in Fichte and in the tradition of transcendental idealism in general. Here an attempt was made to construct what confronts the I, i.e., transcendence, on the basis of the pure I. But that always leads back to the postulation of an unconscious activity that, being unconscious, cannot be demonstrated. Now, the question is whether, once one assumes existence to be a sum [‘I am’] transparent to itself, one is not thereby necessarily led back to a cogito that originally grasps itself? We venture the following answer. The step from the sum to appearing things cannot be phenomenally demonstrated, i.e., one cannot bring it

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‘before oneself’. On the contrary, what is phenomenally present would be the opposite, namely the important fact that not we but phenomenal being itself indicates for us what possibilities there are for our own being. The sum is not a thing, since it is never something independent [selbständig], but can essentially only appear in conjunction with and in a nexus of object-related [sachbezogen] actions. Hence, it always appears as an embodied I [ein Leibich], whose impulses the appearing body [Leib] is able to obey. That is, the body as the embodied I corresponds or tries to correspond to a phenomenal appeal, a demand of a thing [Sachforderung] that appears, that opens itself up before us (while what needs to be effected announces itself as an ‘objective’ characteristic, as something unfulfilled [Unerfüllheit]). Nexuses of action [Wirkungszusammenhänge], opportunities, things that present themselves ready-at-hand [Zeug], pull me toward or push me away. This attracting and repelling, which plays out in the field of appearance, is fulfilled – indeed, fulfilled by my lived-body. At the same time, the lived-body forms the non-given centre of a perspective that calls on me with its demands. Only in this way am ‘I’ – the corporeal being who never appears in perception in a complete manner and never at a distance from itself [distanzierbar] – awakened and called upon for any project. This enduring presence [dieses immer Präsente], this corresponding to the demands and exigencies of things or being able to fulfil them – this is my lived-body. Yet, despite that, I do not appear to myself as a lived-body, but in my lived-body, or by means of my lived-body. That is, I appear to myself no less in the demands to be fulfilled and directives of appearing things together with all the accoutrements of appearing, i.e., the characteristics of givenness that distinguish the everyday practical world. Appearing things ‘have something to say to me’, they tell me what to do. What is present in them, what they present, is surrounded by an aura of what is not present but possible, and possible as attracting, neutral or repelling; and all of this is given in advance. It is thus apparent that appearing things are originally those that are capable [fähig] of being handled, maintained, modified, used and tended to. They are nothing other than what is originally useful in an activity that knows how to do something with them and is related to itself in such a way by means of this active functioning. Thus I appear for myself in a field of appearance, as an unexpressed means/ends nexus in which appearing things and the lived-body, functioning as a fulfiller [Erfüller], are necessary and reciprocal moments of sense. The purposive nexus itself, however, does not appear again in its own right as a factual givenness, but rather in the constant dynamic of predelineation and fulfilment that follow on the heels of each other. So it can be said that I am present in this nexus, in its active functioning, although I am not

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given like an object. The I is a structured activity, some moments of which appear as given, which would make no sense and could not exist without a nongiven nexus. The whole manner in which the I functions, i.e., how it exists, is therefore fundamentally different from the things, states of affairs, processes and relations that appear in this functioning. This difference in their mode of being makes it impossible for an I to appear in an act of perception, since that would entail abstracting the I from the nexus of projecting and fulfilling and would make it into something in this nexus and on the basis of its appearing. Hence, it can also not be captured in an act of reflection, such as, perhaps, an ‘internal perception’, or be grasped bodily. Reflection on the I must have an entirely different, essentially practical character and an origin in the originally practical essence of our life’s context [Lebenzusammenhanges]. If the above considerations are correct, then the following conclusions can be added. It is no longer tenable to hold to the concept of phenomenon that emerged in Husserl’s transcendental phase, i.e. as a correlate of subjective processes “in which objects are constituted”. The phenomenon is not the accomplishment of subjective constitution. Rather, the ‘subjective’ possibilities themselves only become clear in phenomena. There is a phenomenal level that Heidegger calls an “understanding of Being [das Seinsverständnis]”, from which both appearing things and we ourselves take on those determinations that are characteristic of things and of us as beings. This phenomenal level is in no way our projection; it is not a product of our subjectivity. It is rather a field that we must presuppose as the ground of all clarity. There is no longer any sense here in trying to place this field ‘inside’ ourselves in order for it then to be projected outside of ourselves in the form of ‘freedom’. The understanding of being is not ours to do, but rather we ourselves – we who surely are existence-in-appearing – depend upon the understanding of Being. And it is misleading of Heidegger if he said at some point in his philosophising that it is only freedom that can enable the world to have a bearing on us. The world, i.e., the possibilities of our own being as essentially ‘ecstatic’, does not arise from our own freedom. On the contrary, freedom itself together with the world’s other appearing content is opened up on the basis of the understanding of Being. It is not we, our Dasein, that in projecting the world [im Weltentwurf] gives us to know the meaning of world-content, i.e., to which being we can relate and how. It is the understanding of Being, the phenomenon as such, that grants this; and it is neither possible nor necessary to look for more. The transcendence

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of Dasein is not a stepping out of oneself or projecting oneself somewhere outside oneself. In this sense, it is not a ‘project’, but an essential being-outsideoneself and finding-oneself [Sich-empfangen]. Abstract (by Jan Patočka) (Translated from Czech) The author presents here a criticism of Husserl’s phenomenology. Accordingly he sketches the history of the concept of ‘modes of appearing’ [Erscheinungsweisen] in the history of philosophy: in Plato, Aristotle, Descartes, Leibniz, Bolzano, Brentano and Husserl. He then explains that the concept of noetic analysis in Husserl is a mere construction and sketches a phenomenology that is purely ‘noematic’. To that end he also attempts to assess the problem of the givenness of the subject for himself in the world, and suggests a plane where appearing as such first becomes possible. Works Cited Aristotle. “De Anima.” Trans. J. Barnes. Complete Works of Aristotle. Princeton, 1984 Funke, Gerhard. “Bewußtswissenschaft [Science of Consciousness].” Vérité et Verification – Wahrheit und Verifikation, Akten des vierten Internationalen Kolloquiums für Phänomenologie. Ed. H. L. Van Breda. Schwäbisch Hall, BadenWürttemberg: Phaenomenologica, 1974. Vol. 61 Husserl, Edmund. Briefe an R. Ingarden [Letters to R. Ingarden]. Phaenomenologica. Nijhoff: The Hague, 1968 Husserl, Edmund. Logische Untersuchungen [Logical Investigations]. Husserliana XIX. The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1984 Kern, Iso. Husserl und Kant. Phaenomenologica. The Hague: Nijhoff, 1964 Landgrebe, Ludwig. “La Phénoménologie de Husserl Est-elle une philosophie transcendentale?” Études Philosophiques. 3 (1954), 315–323 Natorp, Paul. Einleitung in die Psychologie nach kritischer Methode [Introduction to Psychology by a Critical Method]. Mohr: Freiburg, 1888 Patočka, Jan. “Der Subjektivismus der Husserlschen und die Forderung einer asubjektiven Phänomenologie [Husserl’s Subjectivism and the Call for an Asubjective Phenomenology].” Studia Minora Facultatis Philosophicae Universitatis Brunensis. F 14–15 (1971), 11–26 Patočka, Jan. “Der Subjektivismus der Husserlschen und die Forderung einer asubjektiven Phänomenologie [Husserl’s Subjectivism and the Call for an Asubjective Phenomenology].” Die Bewegung der Menschlichen Existenz. Eds

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Husserl’s Subjectivism Klaus Nellen, Jiri Němec and Ilja Srubar. Stuttgart: Klett-Cotta, 1991 [1971], 286–309 Patočka, Jan. “Le subjectivisme de la phénoménologie Husserlienne et l’exigence d’une phénoménologie asubjective [The Subjectivism of Husserlian Phenomenology and the Requirement of Asubjective Phenomenology].” Trans. Erika Abrams. Qu’est-ce que la phénoménologie? Grenoble: Millon, 1988, 217–248 Plato. “Seventh Letter.” Complete Works. Ed. J. Cooper. Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing, 1997, 1659–1661 Tugendhat, Ernst. Der Wahrheitsbegriff bei Husserl und Heidegger [The Concept of Truth in Husserl and Heidegger]. Berlin: de Gruyter, 1967

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Epochē and Reduction: Some Observations 1 Jan Patočka Translated from German by Matt Bower, Ivan Chvatík and Kenneth Maly According to G. Funke, the two central thoughts of phenomenology are the phenomenological reduction and the motif of constitution.2 One could perhaps describe the relation between the two in a preliminary way as follows: there is no constitution without reduction, because only the reduction can establish the ground on which the systematic constitution of the nexus of sense [des Sinnzusammenhangs] of the pure phenomena can unfold. On the other hand, this nexus of sense in its own peculiar autonomy forms the sense [Sinn], goal and motif of the phenomenological reduction. That is, the reduction is not itself the goal, but is only a means by which it is possible to ground pure phenomenology and, through it, philosophy. Therefore, in a certain sense, the reverse of what was said earlier is also true: no reduction without constitution. Thus these two basic thoughts stand in a kind of contradirectional entanglement: the one being protective, the other constructive; the one possessing the function of discovery, the other venturing to gain a foothold in what has been discovered and to explore the newly discovered land. Doubtless the two guiding ideas formed for Husserl a systematic whole, a unitary grounding connection [Begründungszusammenhang]. Therefore the thought that came to one of the most

1 Editors’ note: The German text “Epochē und Reduktion – einige Bemerkungen” first appeared in Bucher, Drüe and Seebohm, “Epochē und Reduktion – Einige Bemerkungen [Epochē and Reduction: Some Observations]”, Bewußtsein. Gerhard Funke zu eigen (Bonn: Bouvier, 1975), 76–85. Later it was edited by K. Nellen, J. Němec and I. Srubar and published with the same title in the fourth volume of Jan Patočka’s selected writings (Patočka, “Epoché und Reduktion. Einige Bemerkungen [Epoché und Reduction. Some Observations]”, eds Nellen, Němec and Srubar, Die Bewegung der Menschlichen Existenz (Stuttgart: Klett-Cotta, 1991 [1975]), 415–423. This English translation is made in accord with the author’s original manuscript: in the Jan Patočka Archives in Prague, there is an author’s typescript of the text and two photocopies of it with minor corrections. After page 6 of the typescript, a hand-written page containing two paragraphs has been inserted by the author: see footnotes 27 and 28 below. 2 Funke, Zur transzendentalen Phänomenologie [To Transcendental Phenomenology] (Bonn: Bouvier, 1957), 56.

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recent interpreters3 is by no means only a clever idea, namely that constitution is reduction carried to completion and that it accords with letting consciousness emerge as something that follows after but originarily [die ursprüngliche Nachträglichkeit]. This interpretation also makes sense of both the peculiarity of the natural attitude as well as the possibility and necessity of the phenomenological reduction. One notices the dialectical element in this structure, and we are reminded that it was Hegel who first conceived of phenomenology as “path of natural consciousness…or as path of the soul…lifting itself up into spirit when, through full experience of itself, it comes to know what it itself is in itself”.4 And yet, this parenthetical reminder is not meant to give credence to a construing of phenomenology as ‘dialectical’. Rather its only intention is to highlight the aim of the following remarks by means of a historical parallel. Just as some have made it their task to conduct an analysis that disentangles those motifs in the defunct architecture of the dialectical systematic that have withstood its collapse, perhaps I – not being an advocate of the systematic intent of Husserl’s “Considerations Fundamental to Phenomenology”5 – can try to look at some of the themes in Husserl’s excellent line of thought, in order to ask whether here, too, there are perhaps themes that are suited to systematic aims other than those the author himself had set out for it. The idea of the systematic unity of the two motifs seems to be supported by the fact that there was a developmental stage of phenomenology where the reduction (which becomes a problem in its own right only by means of the onceabsent motif of the general thesis and with the rigorously defined epochē) arose 3

Schuhmann, Die Fundamentalbetrachtung der Phänomenologie [The Fundamental Consideration of Phenomenology], Phaenomenologica (The Hague: Nijhoff, 1971). 4 Hegel, Phänomenologie des Geistes [Phenomenology of the Spirit] (Hamburg: Meiner, 1988), 60. Translators’ note: NB Unless an English translation is cited or otherwise noted, translations of German texts quoted in this essay are by Matt Bower. The standard English translation of this work is Hegel, Phenomenology of Spirit (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1976). 5 Translators’ note: “Considerations Fundamental to Phenomenology” is the name of the second section of Ideas I (§§27–62), in which the reduction is introduced and discussed at length. Husserl, Ideen zu einer reinen Phänomenologie und phänomenologischen Philosophie. Erstes Buch [Ideas Pertaining to a Pure Phenomenology and to a Phenomenological Philosophy. First Book], Husserliana III/1 (The Hague: Nijhoff, 1976). The standard English translation of the work is Husserl, Ideas Pertaining to a Pure Phenomenology and to a Phenomenological Philosophy. First Book, translated by F. Kersten (The Hague/Boston/Lancaster, Martinus Nijhoff, 1983).

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initially as an integral part of constitution itself. In its first systematic presentation in the Idea of Phenomenology, the idea of “transcendence in immanence“ – or of “immanence in the sense of self-givenness“ – has a central place.6 Entire chapters are dedicated to outlining the constitutive problems of the temporal object, of idealities, etc., while what properly belongs to the reduction [das eigentlich Reduktive] is still entirely undeveloped. One could argue that the idea of constitution is not yet developed in this first work and that only in the Ideas does it receive its classical and systematic form, along with an abundance of genuinely phenomenological determinations, of which there is no mention in the Idea of Phenomenology. But the discussions of the idea of constitution simply become more extensive there – and this richness is even problematic at times – whereas it is only through specific clarifications that the idea of the reduction becomes what it is and only thus does it achieve its decisive depth. The whole Idea of Phenomenology shows an attempt to disclose the peculiar intention of Descartes’ meditation on the distinction of soul and human body [Körper]. Even though the starting point of both thinkers (metaphysical with Descartes, epistemological with Husserl) is as different as their endpoints (for the former, securing a beginning for modern physics; for the latter, a philosophical grounding independent of every ‘physics’), it is apparent to us that Husserl remains on common ground with Descartes as long as possible. Here we must once again stress that “for Descartes discovering and abandoning were the same”,7 and that Descartes was unfaithful to his basic intention, whose foundation was the sense of absolute givenness and its clarity. But at the same time, Husserl says that “all that we do is to grasp purely and formulate consistently what is already contained within this age-old intention”.8 In this way the idea of making no use of natural knowing [natürliches Wissen] and natural science is introduced,9 but the profound difference between this procedure and Cartesian methodological skepticism is left in the dark and basically not examined at all.

6 Husserl, Die Idee der Phänomenologie [The Idea of Phenomenology], Husserliana II (Nijhoff: The Hague, 1950). [For the English translation, see Husserl, The Idea of Phenomenology: A Translation of Die Idee der Phänomenologie. Husserliana II, Edmund Husserl: Collected Works. Volume VIII (Dordrecht, Boston, London: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1999). Hereafter, Husserliana volumes are cited with German page numbers, followed by page numbers from the English translation in square brackets.] 7 Husserl, Die Idee der Phänomenologie [The Idea of Phenomenology], 10 [66]. 8 Ibid. 9 Ibid., 6 [63–64].

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This non-use is then referred to as phenomenological reduction 10 and the expression ‘epochē’ is introduced for it.11 But is this “index of problematicity”12 not eminently suitable for concealing the distinction vis-à-vis traditional skepticism? Must the assertion – that the critique of knowledge must make use of this nonuse not only as a starting point, but must keep it all the time – then give rise to misunderstanding? Does that not foster the impression that it involves a renewal of the Cartesian attempt at universal doubt with exactly the same methodological means? And when one subsequently hears of Hume and his way of explaining away transcendence of knowledge as prejudice,13 does it not awaken the suspicion that we are dealing here only with a variation of Cartesian skepticism? The thinker of The Idea of Phenomenology hurries, as it were, away from what is preliminary and on to his result, to the absolute self-givenness of immanent selfperception and to the groundedness of any transcendence in the immanence of cogitationes: in short, to constitution. Things are quite different in the Ideas.14 Certainly, here in these brief remarks I cannot make any substantial analysis of the “The Considerations Fundamental to Phenomenology” and, beyond that, any comparison with the original concept of the Idea of Phenomenology. Here I emphasise only the following point: a clear distinction is made between the Cartesian attempt to doubt and the attitude [Haltung] that stands wholly in the domain of our freedom,15 in which there is 10

Ibid., 8 [65]. Ibid., 29 [23]. 12 Editors’ note: Husserl, Einleitung in die Philosophie. Vorlesungen 1922/23 [Introduction to Philosophy. Lectures 1922/23], Husserliana XXXV (Dordrecht: Kluwer, 2002), 65. 13 Husserl, Die Idee der Phänomenologie [The Idea of Phenomenology], 38 [29–30]. 14 Translators’ note: Husserl, Ideen zu einer reinen Phänomenologie und phänomenologischen Philosophie. Erstes Buch. (1st-3rd edition: Max Niemeyer, Halle/Saale 1913, 1922, 1928; 4th edition, Husserliana III: Martinus Nijhoff, Haag 1950, ed. Walter Biemel; 5th edition, Husserliana III/1 + III/2: Martinus Nijhoff, Haag 1950, ed. Karl Schumann). Patočka was using the 4th edition by W. Biemel. The English edition, E. Husserl, Ideas Pertaining to a Pure Phenomenology and to a Phenomenological Philosophy. First Book: General Introduction to a Pure Phenomenology, transl. F. Kersten, Collected Works: Volume II (Dordrecht, Boston, London: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1983 is a translation of the 5th edition Husserliana vol. III/1. Henceforth, the translators will keep Patočka’s reference to the 4th German edition and will add references to the English edition page numbers in square brackets following. 15 Husserl, Ideen zu einer reinen Phänomenologie und phänomenologischen Philosophie. Erstes Buch [Ideas Pertaining to a Pure Phenomenology and to a 11

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no attempt to modalise the thesis [of the world]. Rather, only this freedom of thought from every thesis – and at the same time its freedom to make use of it or not – is experienced.16 To have elaborated this attitude as unnoticed component or presupposition of the Cartesian attempt to doubt, and to have discovered it in Descartes’s thinking in a totally new way, after that had been traversed thousands of times before Husserl – this ingenious accomplishment is not yet present in the Idea of Phenomenology. Now, this attitude is named “epochē”17 and is explicitly distinguished from the process of the reduction, or rather “the reductions”.18 And Husserl immediately remarks that it is not an act of abstracting thought, not a setting aside of the contents of the theses [concerning the world], but rather that these contents remain unmodalised and that, as a result, no simplification or diminishment of what belongs to the mind [des geistigen Besitzes] sets in. Instead, with this move comes an enrichment of the mind. 19 Moreover, Husserl immediately observes that in a certain sense this performance of the epochē exceeds the reduction and goes beyond what is required for the purpose of grounding phenomenology.20 The epochē in its absolute generality would ultimately even make impossible every thesis about what is subjective. With that it would ‘accomplish’ far too much. In order to ground phenomenology, we cannot remain in this free-floating position [in der Schwebe] of freedom. It is necessary to incur a new bond [Bindung]. Now, how is this new bond to be brought about and what is expected of it? It is explicitly said that it involves gaining a new region of being, which has never before revealed its peculiar nature. This new region of being is, like every originary region, an individual mode of being [Seins] that is originally accessible in a mode of experience that belongs to it.21 The talk of an individual being [Sein] and of its corresponding experience apparently means that it has to do with an analogue of the experience of the world [der Welterfahrung], with an access to a being [einem Seienden] of a new kind, which then has to be characterised. The clarification of that point moves in the same direction, such that through the Phenomenological Philosophy. First Book], Husserliana III (The Hague: Nijhoff, 1950), 64-66 [58–60] 16 Ibid., 65 [58]. 17 Ibid., 67 [60]. 18 Ibid., 73 [66]. 19 Ibid., 65, ll. 23–25 [59, ll. 14–17]. 20 Ibid., 67, ll. 5–10 [60, ll. 27–31]. 21 Ibid., 70, ll. 19–22 [63, l. 17 – 64, l. 1].

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method of the epochē the experience that gives the psychological itself is changed into a new kind of experience.22 The ‘immanent’ sphere of being henceforth loses the sense of a real [real] stratum of human facticity and gains the sense of an absolute sphere of being, one that is in itself what it is, regardless of the question of the being or non-being of the world and the human beings in it. The phenomenological reduction, hence, has the task 23 of showing how this newly discovered sphere of immanence of “transcendental subjectivity” “bears in itself”24 all possible real worlds. That means that it must trace the world back to the constituting ground where it arose, despite the fact that we could not have any sense of it in the natural attitude. Epochē is only the first act of this procedure, and so it dare not extend to all and everything. The reduction is therefore methodologically organised into different steps of ‘suspending’ or ‘bracketing’. Hence, in Chapter 4 of “The Considerations Fundamental to Phenomenology” it is not reduction that is spoken of, but reductions. (Elsewhere, Husserl repeatedly applies this procedure, where it has to make transparent a specific transcendence, e.g., in the Fifth Cartesian Meditation.) With respect to the result achieved in the epochē, it must still be noted that the peculiar form of abstention that is accomplished in it, namely abandoning belief in the reality of the world without abandoning its contents, has precisely the major significance of a reduction without abstraction. What is precisely at issue here is this concretely lived world [erlebte Welt], with none of its fullness being stripped from it. This reduced world is now shown to be grounded in the accomplishments of a pre-worldly consciousness. The means of this analysis is therefore not abstract argumentation, but a concrete analysis of experience. By the thought of reduction, the non-causal structural analysis of consciousness guided by the idea of intentionality – first ventured in the Logical Investigations – is elevated to the dignity of a new form of transcendentalism. What now is the goal of this new kind of transcendentalism? According to our interpretation, the goal is not a ‘transcendental experience [Empirie]’ as such, but its fundamental analytic [Auswertung]. This analytic, too, is in large part new vis-à-vis the Idea of Phenomenology. Transcendental experience is now no longer interrogated simply in terms of transcendence and immanence. It is no longer confined to immanence in the sense of self-givenness. Rather self-givenness is 22

Ibid., 71 [64–65]. Ibid., 71, ll. 31–34 [65, 10–13]. 24 Ibid., 73, l. 5 [this passage was not included into the Schumann’s edition, hence it is mising in the English translation]. 23

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itself further differentiated, and access to two modes of being is sought within it: the fundamental accessibility of living-experience when reflection turns to it, i.e., its capacity for being fundamentally perceivable in the mode of reflection, is henceforth the mode of being of living-experience [des Erlebnisses].25 By contrast, the mode of being of reality consists in being always presented – by means of a certain stratum of living-experience, i.e., by means of the “hyletic data” – only incompletely and one-sidedly, even and precisely in its “self-presence” [Selbstda].26 Therefore, the reduction passes over into an ontology, and this ontology is grounded in the access to beings of two modes. A mode of being’s manner of appearing determines its basic ontological character. Consciousness itself, i.e., living-experience or subjectivity, appears immediately and enables everything else to appear. The real, on the other hand, does not appear on its own, but must be presented by means of living-experience. As one can easily observe, this ontology is not grounded in transcendental experience, but in reflection on the mode of access to that which is accessible within it. And there is something about this ontology that is strangely unsatisfying: it presupposes that reflection is an immediate act of self-grasping, without providing an account of its possibility. Others have already made mention of the fact that this recourse to the evidence of inner experience does not help much when it comes to grounding, but rather vitiates the concept of a pure phenomenology as a rigorously scientific grasping of the structure of pure phenomena. 27 By28 his desire for a twofold ontology (of objective or mediated being and of subjective or immediately accessible being), Husserl finds himself forced into an inconsistency with transcendental experience itself, which thus demands that he make further distinctions that are, however, not much more helpful. Transcendental object-experience is always only presumptive and never reducible to something purely present, something purely self-presenting. It always contains an element of anticipation and presents itself as a unity that is sustained in an indefinite series of presences [Präsenzen]. Now, the experience of inner streaming is not at all a ‘stream-transcendent’ unity. This hinges on the fact that this 25

Ibid., 105 [99]. Ibid., 96–97 [90–91]. 27 Aguirre, Genetische Phänomenologie und Reduktion [Genetic Phenomenology and the Reduction], Phaenomenologica, 38 (The Hague Nijhoff, 1970), 187. 28 Editors’ note: This paragraph and the one following it are Patočka’s handwritten remarks, intended to be inserted at this point in the text. 26

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unity is not something spatial like the experience of objects. Rather, it is precisely the unity of an overlapping [Deckung] or the striking through [Durchstreichung] of what is anticipated. For example, one must inquire whether in this respect the experience [die Erfahrung] of a melody and of a living-experience [eines Erlebnisses] are fundamentally distinct, whether the melody is in fact ‘adumbrated’ [abschattet] like a cup or a chair. Is lightning adumbrated? Does it make sense to speak of alterations in the atmosphere as the illumination of adumbrations? On the other hand, it is also hard to deny the fact that we seem to experience character traits, habitualities, etc., through what is experienced [durch Erlebtes hindurch] as kinds of transcendence. And so it is difficult on the basis of the characteristics of adumbration to really delimit the being [Sein] of the object and the being of living-experience or the sphere of living-experience. So it is understandable that in the Cartesian Meditations Husserl sought a different criterion for distinguishing the being of what is objective and what is lived in experience. For not everything that belongs to the sphere of objects can be characterised by adumbration and, on the other hand, there also seem to be ‘immanent transcendences’, i.e., transcendences that are not manifested in streaming living-experience [Erleben], lacking the possibility of being adequately ‘given’. It seemed to him that such a criterion is provided by a concept of the apodictic evidence of living-experience, i.e., by a certain characteristic necessity that does not require adequation, so that apodicticity may be present without adequation (although the reverse does not hold). Then it would be necessary to postulate for living-experience an apodicticity without adequation.29 Given that, we may now pose the question of what would happen were the epochē not brought to a halt in the face of the thesis of my own self [des eigenen Selbst], but made in a wholly universal way? In an epochē thus performed, I certainly do not doubt what is indubitable, i.e., the self-positing cogito. Yet I do not employ this, as it were, ‘automatic’ thesis, I make no use of it. But perhaps then by taking a step back in the face of this thesis, the ego-thesis will first become accessible in general in its enabling a priori. Perhaps the immediacy of the givenness of the ego is a ‘prejudice’; and self-experience, as well as objectexperience, has its a priori, which makes possible the appearing of the ego. In this setting, the epochē is not an access to some being or pre-being [Seienden oder Vor-Seienden], whether it is worldly or non-worldly, but perhaps it is then immediately an access to appearing as such, instead of to what appears. Instead 29

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of attending to what is manifest [das Manifeste], we suspend it in the epochē, in order to bring into view for the first time what makes manifest [das Manifestierende]. We thereby encounter the conditions of the possibility of the appearing of what appears and do not remain with what appears, but rather make appearing itself into an appearance. But then, through the universality of the epochē, it also becomes clear that, precisely in the same way that the self is the condition of the possibility of the appearing of what is worldly, the world – as the original horizon [Urhorizont] (and not as the sum of realities [Realitätenall]) – presents the condition of the possibility of the appearing of the self. What belongs to the I [das Ichliche] is arguably never perceived in itself and by itself, nor is it ever immediately experienced. Rather, I is only experienced as the organisational centre of a universal structure of appearance that cannot be reduced to a being as such, appearing in its particularity [Einzelsein]. We call this structure ‘world’ and are justified in calling it this, since it is that which is encountered in the epochē and thereby neither denied nor contested, but brought to light only out of its original anonymity. The self is only what it is in its being exposed [Auseinandersetzung] to the world. From this standpoint questions such as whether there is a ‘pure’ ego or whether consciousness is to be grasped as originally without ego [ichlos] are secondary. These questions are merely psychological and not ‘philosophical’ in the full sense of the word. If people have expressed astonishment about “the fact that Husserl never found it puzzling how the cogitationes are given to themselves, how, therefore, self-consciousness and reflection are to be understood”30 – then, for the above-presented reasons, this astonishment seems to us to be really quite justified: perceiving the cogitationes with the help of an ‘inner gaze’ [Blick], parallel to an external gaze as its inverted counterpart, is a myth. The self is experienced in the world and against the background of the world in exactly the same way that things are experienced, although in its essence the self is obviously not a thing and can never be approached like a thing. For no thing can accomplish what was aimed at in the Husserlian ontology of the duality of living-experience and the real [das Reale] but was not adequately grounded, namely to achieve a glimmer of clarity – as obscure as it may be – about itself and about things, and in this way to empower appearing as such [das Erscheinen ins Werk setzen]. The world is not only the condition of the possibility of the appearing of the real, but is also the condition of the possibility of a being [Seienden] that lives in 30

Tugendhat, Der Wahrheitsbegriff bei Husserl und Heidegger [The Concept of Truth in Husserl and Heidegger] (Berlin: de Gruyter, 1967), 209.

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self-reference [Selbstbezug] and through which appearing as such is made possible. So in one stroke the epochē leads to a universal a priori, which opens up the site of appearing for both the real and for the one experiencing it [Erlebende]. But it is not an access to an absolute ground of being [Seinsboden]. The epochē cannot be the basis for any reawakening of the Hegelian attempt of an absolute reflection. The universally carried out epochē does not lead to any being or prebeing that one can encounter in any kind of experience. Hence, this immediately pre-empts the question whether on the basis of the phenomenological reduction one does not encounter an absolute and discover a ground of being that is lacking any finitude. The epochē carried out consistently to its end does not lead to an infinite being, but to the a priori that can in no way be treated as being [seiend]. Rather, its function unfolds by making possible a self-relation, an ontological structure [Seinsstruktur], without which no appearing is possible. Thus by carrying out the epochē to the end, the alternative finitude/infinitude of transcendental consciousness – its ‘creative’ or ‘depictive’ [abbildlicher] character – is made away with and no longer needs to come up in phenomenology. Edmund Husserl sought to ground a pure phenomenology as first philosophy in the ‘phenomenological reduction’. But the just-mentioned considerations (the unclarified theory of reflection, the untenability of the fundamental distinction between being as living-experience and being as reality, on the basis of perceivability) make it seem doubtful whether one can really commit to this path without fundamental corrections and whether the goal of this great thinker, namely, that of founding philosophy as a rigorous science, can be achieved on this basis. On the other hand, Husserl himself illustrates that phenomenology as a theory of appearing as such (a problem that can never be posed, much less resolved, in the natural attitude and in the natural sciences, and that, accordingly, regardless of the division of the whole of knowledge into individual sciences, can arguably never be denied as belonging to philosophy) is not possible without an ontology of some kind. The theory of appearing as such is only possible by making the world-a-priori [das Weltapriori] – which originally functions anonymously – into a phenomenon. But this world-a-priori is at the same time what makes possible self-relation and thereby the self in its ontological constitution [in seiner Seinsverfassung]. But does the world thereby become something subjective? Only in a certain sense, for the term ‘subjective’ is ambiguous and signifies on the one hand what belongs to the structural makeup of a subject, comprising one side of it, but also, on the other hand, that to which the subject relates [verhält] as the horizon of its understanding. The world is subjective in this second sense, and it is the epochē that opens access to this aspect of the subjective. So perhaps a

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phenomenology without the reduction is possible, but not a phenomenology without the epochē. Such a phenomenological ontology would perhaps make good on the Husserlian project of maintaining the autonomy of what is commonly called the centre of living-experience, in contrast to reality, without thereby pointing beyond it to something absolute, in-finite [un-endlichen]. Insertion [das Eingefügtsein] into the world and thus into worldly beings would belong more to the ontological constitution [Seinsverfassung] of living-experience that understands and would first open up the possibility of a philosophical anthropology. For while the beings [das Seiende] that have the ontological constitution of ‘reality’ are something real or thingly, and ultimately material, the being of understanding is not instantiated by something purely ‘spiritual’ [geistiges], but by a human being. Such a phenomenology would necessarily have to be formulated as a philosophy of finite freedom, for even the possibility of the epochē will have to be understood on the basis of the ontological constitution of a self that is related to itself. This philosophy would be incompatible with the fundamental positions of traditional metaphysics of either materialism or idealism. For the clarification of the ontological distinction [des Seinsunterschieds] that appearing implies renders materialism impossible, while idealism would be ruled out by the insuperable facticity of finite freedom. Now, how one would proceed methodologically on the basis of an epochē thus construed, along with whether and in what sense the establishment of a philosophy as science has any promise of being realised – discussing these matters no longer belongs to the theme of this essay. Works Cited Aguirre, Antonio. Genetische Phänomenologie und Reduktion [Genetic Phenomenology and the Reduction]. Phaenomenologica. The Hague Nijhoff, 1970 Bucher, A. J., H. Drüe, and T. M. Seebohm. “Epochē und Reduktion – Einige Bemerkungen [Epochē and Reduction: Some Observations].” Bewußtsein. Gerhard Funke zu eigen. Bonn: Bouvier, 1975, 76–85 Funke, Gerhard. Zur transzendentalen Phänomenologie [To Transcendental Phenomenology]. Bonn: Bouvier, 1957 Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich. Phänomenologie des Geistes [Phenomenology of the Spirit]. Hamburg: Meiner, 1988 Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich. Phenomenology of Spirit Trans. A.V. Miller. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1976

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Epochē and Reduction Husserl, Edmund. Die Idee der Phänomenologie [The Idea of Phenomenology]. Husserliana II. Nijhoff: The Hague, 1950 Husserl, Edmund. Einleitung in die Philosophie. Vorlesungen 1922/23 [Introduction to Philosophy. Lectures 1922/23]. Husserliana XXXV. Dordrecht: Kluwer, 2002 Husserl, Edmund. The Idea of Phenomenology: A Translation of Die Idee der Phänomenologie. Husserliana II. Trans. Lee Hardy. Edmund Husserl: Collected Works. Volume VIII. Lee Hardy, an Introduction. Dordrecht, Boston, London: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1999 Husserl, Edmund. Ideas Pertaining to a Pure Phenomenology and to a Phenomenological Philosophy. First Book: General Introduction to a Pure Phenomenology. Trans. F. Kersten. Collected Works: Volume II. Dordrecht, Boston, London: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1983 Husserl, Edmund. Ideen zu einer reinen Phänomenologie und phänomenologischen Philosophie. Erstes Buch [Ideas Pertaining to a Pure Phenomenology and to a Phenomenological Philosophy. First Book]. Ed. Walter Biemel. Husserliana III. 4th ed. The Hague: Nijhoff, 1950 Patočka, Jan. “Epoché und Reduktion. Einige Bemerkungen [Epoché und Reduction. Some Observations].” Die Bewegung der Menschlichen Existenz. Eds Klaus Nellen, Jiří Němec and Ilja Srubar. Stuttgart: Klett-Cotta, 1991 [1975], 415–423 Schuhmann, Karl. Die Fundamentalbetrachtung der Phänomenologie [The Fundamental Consideration of Phenomenology]. Phaenomenologica. 42 vols. The Hague: Nijhoff, 1971 Tugendhat, Ernst. Der Wahrheitsbegriff bei Husserl und Heidegger [The Concept of Truth in Husserl and Heidegger]. Berlin: de Gruyter, 1967

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Part II: Asubjective Phenomenology

Patočka’s Project of an Asubjective Phenomenology Ivan Chvatík This paper gives a short review of Patočka’s personal contacts with Husserl, and reviews his position within the phenomenological movement by explaining what sort of criticism on Husserl Patočka develops in his own concept of an ‘asubjective’ phenomenology. As the title of Patočka’s project indicates, the task in question here is to disengage philosophical thought from the vestiges of traditional Cartesian subjectivism. Patočka sees this Cartesianism not only in philosophy but in the selfunderstanding of the whole of modern technical civilisation. Let us first briefly recall what Cartesian subjectivism is all about. Descartes’s ego cogito, ergo sum is a statement which is absolutely certain. It cannot be refuted. Its certainty lies in the fact that the content of its assertion is immediately evident. Whatever I think – however uncertain, vague or absurd it may be – the certainty that, in thinking it, I am, is indubitable. This knowledge depends on nothing else, I draw it directly from myself; it is, as Plato would have said – and as Patočka reminds us in one of his last finished texts, “Cartesianism and Phenomenology”1 – a mathēma. In the same passage, Patočka stresses that the significance of this cornerstone of modern rationality is not simply that it offers “a model of all certitude”, but also and above all, that it is the starting point of the mode of thinking “for which certitude is the very essence of truth, identical with it”.2

1

Patočka, “Karteziánství a fenomenologie [Cartesianism and Phenomenology]”, eds Kouba and Švec, Fenomenologické spisy II (Prague: Oikoymenh, 2009 [1976]), 453–496, 461: “Jistota Cogito předchází zajisté všecky ostatní; je to však nicméně jistota mathematická, protože nepřichází ‘zvenčí,’ zjišťuje se v samotné, čisté reflexi”. See English translation, Patočka, “Cartesianism and Phenomenology”, edited and translated by Kohák, Jan Patočka: Philosophy and Selected Writings (Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press, 1989 [1976]), 285–326, 292: “The certitude of the cogito precedes all others, surely; it is, however, a mathematical certitude nonetheless, because it does not come from ‘without’ but rather is ascertained in pure reflection”. Henceforth, English translation cited with English page numbers followed by Czech page numbers in square brackets. 2 Patočka, “Cartesianism and Phenomenology”, 292 [461].

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It is interesting that Descartes’ principle has “a peculiar ambiguity” about it, “consisting in its being the starting point of both modern subjectivism and [the] mathematical objectivism“3 that has not only triumphed in physics but has became a model for the scientisation of all other branches of human knowledge.4 Descartes’ next step is to ask, what is the ego which draws from its cogito the certainty of its own being? – and he answers, logically, that it is a res cogitans. He then concludes that everything that is not a res cogitans is necessarily a res extensa. This spatial determination of things has the advantage of being totally universal. It covers all material things and renders superfluous the need to take into account the more specific traits that distinguish them from one another and that are, according to Descartes, all fraught with the possibility of delusion. A much greater advantage is, however, that spatial determinations are a sphere of possible idealisation that can be handled with the same certainty discovered in reflecting on the cogito. Idealised spatial determinations are objects of geometry, and as both Plato and Kant have shown, geometrical knowledge is drawn from within us, it is a mathēma. Everything that can be reduced to spatial determinations is mathematisable: “coming to understand spatial relations is what opens our access to things…as capable of being construed and calculated. To construe and calculate means at the same time to predict”.5 The objectivism of the tendency towards mathematisation that asserts itself in all disciplines is thus, in last resort, founded subjectively. It is easier to understand how modern subjectivism in philosophy stems from Descartes’s certainty. Let us consider how Edmund Husserl succumbed to subjectivism and how this circumstance brought Jan Patočka to his idea of asubjective phenomenology. Patočka first met with Husserl and his philosophy while working on his doctoral thesis on stipend in Paris, in 1928. Husserl, recently emeritus, was invited at the same time to hold in Paris a series of lectures summing up his philosophical work. (The lectures were initially published in Emmanuel Levinas’ French translation under the title Méditations cartésiennes.) It was then that Patočka definitely chose phenomenology. His second meeting with Husserl was not matter of chance. In the academic year 1932–33, he was awarded a Humboldt Foundation scholarship and studied first 3

Ibid. Ibid., 290 [458–459]. 5 Ibid., 292 [460]. 4

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in Berlin, then in Freiburg, where Husserl found in him his only fellow countryman to show interest in phenomenology. (Husserl’s native town of Prostějov, or Prossnitz, is part of the same country as Patočka’s Prague.) Officially, of course, Patočka had to enrol in Martin Heidegger’s philosophy courses (at the time of Heidegger’s rectorship and compromise with National Socialism). The experience reaped during this year in Germany was extremely rich. Patočka not only witnessed Hitler’s coming to power but personally met both of the philosophical titans who were to determine his own work. He also struck up a lifelong friendship with yet a third great figure of 20th-century philosophy, Husserl’s then assistant, Eugen Fink, only two years Patočka’s senior. Patočka was then preparing his habilitation thesis on the ‘natural world’. Immersed in the detailed study of Husserl’s phenomenology, he also began to become acquainted with its critics. The most outstanding among them was, of course, Heidegger, though Patočka in the 1930s did not yet fully appreciate his critique. That was to come later. But in studying the problems of the Lebenswelt, he acquired a basis enabling him to take an active part in constructive criticism of Husserl. Basically, neither Patočka nor Heidegger set out to refute Husserl’s phenomenology. What they wanted was to distinguish and grasp the guiding idea thanks to which Husserl had succeeded in opening up an entirely new and extremely fertile horizon for philosophy; and to identify the points in Husserl where he was – in good faith – unfaithful to his original project. And then, of course, to suggest and work out alternative solutions to the ensuing problems. Heidegger’s grandiose attempt is now nearly completely available in the impressively long series of volumes of the Gesamtausgabe. It is, however, no easy read, and many believe that Heidegger, in time, betrayed Husserl’s project. Patočka, too, was partly of this opinion. Nonetheless, he took Heidegger’s philosophy extremely seriously, drew considerable inspiration from it, and set out to amend it, as well as Husserl’s. “Husserl’s phenomenology claimed to be a new beginning in philosophy”, states Patočka at the outset of his 1969/70 lectures on phenomenology at Charles University in Prague; “it was meant from the start to be an entirely new mode of empiricism in philosophy”.6 Why empiricism? Husserl was a mathematician by training. He had a sense of precision and an aversion to fantastic philosophical 6

Patočka, Úvod do fenomenologické filosofie [Introduction to Phenomenological Philosophy] (Prague: Oikoymenh, 1993), 5.

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speculations. He wanted to build solely on what he could really see; what presented itself to his eye in genuine, lived experience. He was used to this from mathematics. In mathematics we cannot accept as true anything that we do not directly see – see, of course, with the mind’s eye, with the eye of the soul. This is why Husserl, from the very start, had to broaden the concept of experience from the sensual sphere, in which we encounter individual things, to what he calls the categorial sphere, where we experience universals, generalities. He was, of course, obliged to distinguish here two kinds of generality. One is obtained by generalisation from many experiences of particulars, the other by considering and analysing one single case. The first kind is called empirical generality; it is, of course, hypothetical – there can always appear a black swan that will abolish the universality of white swans. Husserl calls the second kind of generality eidetic: what we see in a thing as valid for all things of the same kind is eidos, the general aspect; it obtains necessarily – not hypothetically – of all relevant particulars. It is, once again, a kind of mathēma. Only after this broadening is it possible to understand Husserl’s ‘principle of all principles’, which phenomenology is supposed to respect: every originary presentive intuition is a legitimizing source of cognition…everything originarily (so to speak in its ‘personal’ actuality) offered to us in ‘intuition’ is to be accepted simply as what it is presented as being, but also only within the limits in which it is presented there.7

What comes into play here is a difference we are familiar with from everyday experience, and whose importance had already caught Plato’s attention: namely, the difference between empty meaning and its fulfilment. It is clear that this difference makes itself felt both in the sensual and in the categorial spheres. And it is the main factor which led Husserl to the above-mentioned broadening of the concept of experience.

7

Husserl, Ideen zu einer reinen Phänomenologie und phänomenologischen Philosophie. Erstes Buch [Ideas Pertaining to a Pure Phenomenology and to a Phenomenological Philosophy. First Book], Husserliana, III/1 (The Hague: Nijhoff, 1976), §24, 43. Cf. English translation: Husserl, Ideas Pertaining to a Pure Phenomenology and to a Phenomenological Philosophy. First Book: General Introduction to a Pure Phenomenology, Collected Works: Volume II (Dordrecht, Boston, London: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1983), 44. Henceforth, English translation cited with English page numbers followed by German page numbers in square brackets.

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Of course, things are not as simple as they may seem in this brief account. In reality, the task set here involves the questions: What is experience? What are its domains? What is its lawful structure? How does experience in general become possible? Experience is always experience with or of something. For experience to be experience this something must somehow be given to us, as stated in the principle of principles; we cannot just dream it up. Something must appear, manifest itself to us. To ask ‘what is experience?’ is thus to ask how things are given, how they manifest themselves to us. The study of appearance, as such, of manifestation, of the phenomenon – such is the task of phenomenology. This, of course, requires a method. For Husserl, as we all know, the method is that of phenomenological reduction followed by constitution. Patočka recounts in detail the history of the birth of the idea of reduction and constitution in the essay, “Epoché and Reduction”.8 In a first approximation, Husserl means to exploit Descartes’ doubts about the possibility of acquiring knowledge of the outside world, as opposed to the certainty of our cogito, our thinking, and, consequently, our cogitationes, our thoughts. Leaving aside the problematicity of ‘transcendent content’ (what we want to know about the things of the world in the naïve attitude), we shall study rather our thoughts about these transcendent things. We reduce transcendent content to how it appears in our cogitationes – this is what Husserl calls reduction. And that once done, we will be able to study how our experience is built in these cogitationes – this is constitution. According to Husserl, our thoughts are immediately at our disposal; they are given to us directly as such, we have but to take notice of them, to direct our attention at them in reflection. Husserl thus reduces the transcendence of things of the world to absolute self-presence in the immanence of consciousness. This is a lived-experiential structure given in original, so that it is possible to apply to it the principle of all principles. And, as we do not have original access to anything other than this structure, Husserl claims that the whole of the reduced world is founded in the accomplishments of consciousness which, in this sense, precedes the world.9 We would now expect him to do something like Kant – i.e., to show by his own means how what we understand as a transcendent, independent object is con8

Patočka, “Epoché und Reduktion. Einige Bemerkungen [Epoché und Reduction. Some Observations]”, eds Nellen, Němec and Srubar, Die Bewegung der Menschlichen Existenz (Stuttgart: Klett-Cotta, 1991 [1975]), 415–423. 9 Ibid., 419.

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structed in these subjective accomplishments of consciousness. But this, Husserl does not do. He does not want to repeat Kant’s procedure and logically construe what the synthetic activities of the subject must be like in order to result, as Kant says, in objective reality, in “the production of phenomenal objects for us”.10 Husserl studies only “factually observed eidetic structures”11 and finds in immanent self-givenness indications of two different modes of being. One is the mode of being of lived experience, which, as we have seen, is directly accessible in the original; the other is the mode of being of reality, which “presents itself always only one-sidedly and incompletely through a certain stratum of livedexperience, the ‘hyletic data’”.12 Patočka takes up here an objection formulated by others before him; namely, that this ontology “presupposes reflection as an immediate act of selfapprehension without accounting for its possibility”.13 What does this mean? What exactly is disputed here? Not that we apprehend in reflection our lived experiences. These are guaranteed by the Cartesian starting point. What is questionable is the presupposition that, in apprehending these lived experiences, I apprehend myself as experiencing, that my apprehension is self-apprehension. To put it differently, the self-certainty of my lived-experiencing, the cogito ergo sum, the certainty of the fact that I experience and, therefore, am, is taken as the certainty of immediate access to what I am qua experiencing, how I experience my experiencing. This implies, of course, an infinite regress: I experience that I experience that I experience… It can be seen as a vestige of Cartesianism. The experiencing ego is understood as a thing, as a res cogitans, which – unlike a res extensa – can be adequately viewed, in pure evidence. It is supposed to be the ultimate, absolute ground, on which alone true knowledge can be erected. Another Husserlian motif is connected with this, namely, the motif of epoché. The term was introduced as early as 1907, in the five lectures published under the title, The Idea of Phenomenology, as complementary to the motif of reduction to the immanence of consciousness: if we want to “know scientifically…what is knowledge”, we cannot let any pre-given knowledge obtain, we cannot “accept any being as pre-given” – except, of course, those that are absolutely certain – 10 Patočka, Úvod do fenomenologické filosofie [Introduction to Phenomenological Philosophy], 72. 11 Ibid., 73. 12 Patočka, “Epoché und Reduktion. Einige Bemerkungen [Epoché und Reduction. Some Observations]”, 420. 13 Ibid.

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i.e., our own cogitationes.14 The concept of the general positing15 of the world was first introduced in the Ideen I. It means the positing that we automatically accomplish in the natural attitude; the positing of the facts and things of the surrounding world – i.e., their apprehension as “factually existent actuality”. Only here, in the Ideen I, is ‘epoché’ explicitly distinguished from ‘reduction’ and it now means to abstain from this positing: “while it in itself remains what it is, we, so to speak, ‘put it out of action,’ we ‘exclude it,’ we ‘parenthesize it’”.16 We do not make use of the belief that these things of the natural attitude are transcendent beings, without thereby losing sight of their content. The content remains valid. Nevertheless, according to Husserl, we cannot perform this parenthesising universally, because we would then exclude from being “the whole world, including ourselves with all our cogitare”.17 This, of course, Husserl cannot admit. By doing this, he would lose the above-mentioned, absolutely existent ground of all knowledge. Therefore, epoché must be limited: “consciousness has, in itself, a being of its own which, in its own absolute essence, is not touched by the phenomenological exclusion”.18 However, once he refuses the possibility of an absolute reflection which could study this absolute ground of consciousness in the original, Patočka must also refuse the limitation of epoché demanded by Husserl. He is now determined to perform the epoché in a truly universal manner, so as to include livedexperiencing itself. In this case, it follows that we can no longer believe that the reflection of our lived experiences gives us access to our actual experiencing. Only then does it become possible to fully thematise what Husserl originally had in view, namely, how anything at all, including ourselves, appears. This ‘including ourselves’ is important. As long as Husserl supposed that we and our experiencing are immediately accessible in reflection, this accessibility was not included under the heading of appearing. On the contrary, all appearing – i.e., the accessibility of every content of our experience – was grounded in our 14 Husserl, Die Idee der Phänomenologie [The Idea of Phenomenology], Husserliana, II (Nijhoff: The Hague, 1950), 29-30. Cf. English translation: Husserl, The Idea of Phenomenology: A Translation of Die Idee der Phänomenologie. Husserliana II, Edmund Husserl: Collected Works. Volume VIII (Dordrecht, Boston, London: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1999), 22-23. 15 Husserl, Ideas Pertaining to a Pure Phenomenology and to a Phenomenological Philosophy. First Book: General Introduction to a Pure Phenomenology, §30, 56 [53]. 16 Ibid., §31, 59 [54]. 17 Ibid., §31, 63 [57]. 18 Ibid., §33, 65 [59].

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own accessibility, more precisely in the core of our subjectivity; the supraindividual ‘transcendental subject’. This is where Patočka begins his critique: in Husserl, appearing is based on a particular being and is not thematised in itself. According to Patočka, Husserl thus betrays his original phenomenological project. The universalisation of the epoché, its extension to the sphere of subjectivity, first makes it possible to study appearing as such; only thus do we “make appearing itself appear”.19 And since subjectivity is thus divested of the function of exclusive ground for appearing, Patočka calls his version of phenomenology asubjective phenomenology. In the universal epoché it becomes apparent too that, just as the self is the condition of possibility of the appearing of mundane things, so the world, as the horizon of horizons (not as the totality of realities), is the condition of possibility of the appearing of the self. The egoic is, of course, never perceived or in any way immediately experienced in and of itself but rather only as the organizational center of a universal structure of appearance which cannot be reduced to anything appearing as such in its individual being. For this reason, we call this structure the world. 20

The refusal of the absolute ground of consciousness entails the abolition of the difference between the transcendence of mundane things and the immanence of the lived experiences of consciousness. It becomes apparent that the world is not simply the sum of what appears to us but is rather a special a priori horizonstructure by means of which anything can appear to us, precisely in our lived experiences. This a priori world as the horizon of all horizons is, of course, nothing existent; or better, it is no existent thing, just as our lived experiences are not existent things. Both are necessary components of the structure of appearing. In our experiencing, which we are in principle always in a way secondarily aware of, we are with the appearing things. Without this possibility of secondary awareness, our experiencing would not be experiencing, nor would it be appearing. The structure of appearing thus implies the possibility for us to become aware of our experiencing. However, we stress once more that this does not mean that I can experience my experiencing self as something experienced. It must be understood that experiencing, as such, does not appear. If I want to say nonetheless, with Descartes, that I, the experiencing self, the cogitans, am – and this is clearly what I do want to say, this is where we started from, I am surely no mere nothing – I must necessarily say that I am otherwise 19

Patočka, “Epoché und Reduktion. Einige Bemerkungen [Epoché und Reduction. Some Observations]”, 421. 20 Ibid.

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than things; being does not mean the same thing for me as for things. Heidegger goes this way and attempts to describe this mode of being in explicit contrast to the mode of being of things. Patočka largely approves of his endeavour but demands that Heidegger’s “structures of experience – the self, freedom, possibility, corporeity, perception, the other… [be] explained not as a ground but rather as that which is grounded on the original event of the openness of time”21 – i.e., in a new, non-subjectivist way. What does this new, asubjective conception of the subject consist in? In order to answer this question, we shall have to consider, with Patočka, the manner in which anything at all appears to us. This ‘how’ of appearing is something he pays considerable attention to, describing it over and over again. Sometimes he starts from Plato’s Seventh Letter with its description of the steps leading to knowledge of the thing itself. Plato discovered in these steps different modes of appearance of an object, but Patočka criticises him for not having developed a doctrine of appearing as he himself would have it. Onoma, logos, eidōlon, alēthēs doxa, epistēmē – these are for Patočka different modes of appearance of the same thing. The difference can, of course, be further and more finely differentiated; distinguishing various sorts of recollection and imagination, all the multiple aspects in which real physical things show themselves to us, but, no less, our groupings in the sphere of idealities in attempting to grasp a constant eidos. This is the first step of the consideration: the same thing appears in different ways. The second step is fairly simple. The different modes of appearing, or characters of appearance, do not belong to the determination of what the appearing thing or ideality is. (For example, that rails converge in the distance or that we have wrongly visualised the steps of the demonstration of the theorem of Pythagoras and failed to prove it.) The third step is decisive: the different modes of appearing, which do not belong to the determination of what the thing is, are not something subjective, something of our own that we add to – or, in fact, more often subtract from – the thing. Rather, to quote Patočka: “characters of both kinds [i.e., those that belong to the determination of the thing and those that belong to its mode of appearance] appear in the world, in the phenomenal field ‘before me,’ they are not 21 Patočka, “Husserlova transcendentální filosofie po revizi [Husserl’s Transcendental Philosophy after Revision]”, 1969. See French translation: Patočka, “La philosophie transcendentale de Husserl après révision [Husserl’s Transcendental Philosophy after Revision]”, trans. Abrams, Introduction à la phénoménologie de Husserl (Millon: Grenoble, 1992), 225.

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there as lived experiences and things subjective”,22 as Husserl persisted in vain in conceiving them. Husserl insisted that the characters of appearance are a subjective accomplishment of apperception of the object, that such accomplishments are in fact “the origin of the appearance of the transcendent”,23 and that in phenomenology – i.e., after the reduction – these accomplishments can be made “again the further object of a possible ‘inner perception’ apprehending it ‘in original’”.24 This, Patočka refuses – and many others with him. In the fourth step of the consideration we ask, then, what the subject – as that to which appearing appears, as a component of the field of appearance – does, admitting that it neither appercepts, nor intends, nor throws a spiritual garb over hyletic data. This is where Patočka’s conception is least clear. It could perhaps be summed up as follows: the accomplishment of the subject in appearing consists in understanding that the same thing appears in different modes of appearance. He understands that appearance is “seeing through perspectives the one thing presenting itself in them… This seeing through the perspectives, this transcending of the sensibly given is, after all, an accomplishment that must be performed by someone, an accomplishment brought about by a recurrence and, in this recurrence, by the maintaining of an identical which then becomes the object”.25 One can see here a lack of clarity in that this accomplishment looks, at first sight, very like Husserl’s apperception, constitution, and so on. But we must read Patočka attentively. The main difference is that these subjective activities are not themselves “accessible in original by means of an objectifying act of reflection”.26 For Patočka, these activities of the subject are accessible only in what they contribute to – i.e., the progressive appearing of the thing as something identical in itself. The subject, of course, does not create the thing. The phenomenal characters themselves ask to be identified by the subject. There is in the subject, as such, “nothing that could be ‘objectively’ grasped, but simply a realizability of the demanding characters that address the ego in the field of appearance and make the egoic appear as realizer”.27 So once again: the ego cogito is 22 Patočka, “Der Subjektivismus der Husserlschen und die Forderung einer asubjektiven Phänomenologie [Husserl’s Subjectivism and the Call for an Asubjective Phenomenology]”, eds Nellen, Němec and Srubar, Die Bewegung der Menschlichen Existenz (Stuttgart: Klett-Cotta, 1991 [1971]), 286–309, 300. 23 Ibid., 301. 24 Ibid., 300–301. 25 Ibid., 301. 26 Ibid., 302. 27 Ibid.

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immediately certain but it has no content. Everything that seems to be its content takes place – as it does itself – in the field of appearance. The ‘phenomenal field’, the “being of the phenomenon as such…can neither be reduced to a being appearing within it, nor…explained on the basis of a being of whatever sort it may be, whether natural-objective or egoic-subjective”.28 *** In conclusion, I would like to recall an important passage of Plato’s dialogue, Theaetetus, where I believe Plato thematises our problem of appearing, I would go so far as to say, in a (perhaps) ‘asubjective’ conception. In this dialogue, Socrates is debating with the young mathematician, Theaetetus, on what is knowledge. Socrates refutes Theaetetus’ first answer – i.e., that knowledge is perception – by identifying it with the famous thesis of Protagoras that “man is the measure of all things, of the existence of the things that are and of the non-existence of the things that are not”29; then reformulating this in a sensualist manner, as if Protagoras meant to say that “individual things are for me such as they appear to me and for you in turn such as they appear to you”.30 This becomes problematic if we hold what appears differently to different people to be true knowledge of things in themselves (in accordance with Kant). Socrates attempts to dispose of the problem, which leads to contradiction, by taking up Heraclitus’ thesis that “nothing whatever is one, either a particular thing or of a particular quality; but it is out of movement and motion and mixture with one another that all those things become which we wrongly say ‘are’”.31 Things themselves continually change. Not only do they appear differently to different people, they are never the same, and hence Protagoras’ relativist thesis is valid. Of course, it does not apply to things in themselves. With everything in perpetual becoming and change, there are no such things. But perhaps it could apply to phenomena.

28

Ibid. Here and in the following, I quote (modifying where necessary) the English translation: Plato, Plato in Twelve Volumes (Cambridge MA: Harvard University Press, 1921), 154a. 30 Ibid. 31 Ibid., 152d. 29

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A phenomenon, according to Socrates, comes into being as a result of the mutual encounter of the motion of the thing with that of the sense organ. For example, the phenomenon of colour is neither in the thing itself nor in the eye nor in any other determinate place; rather, it arises from the impact of the motion of the eye on the motion of the thing and is, so to say, “something between” (metaxu ti)32; we could almost say in a kind of neutral phenomenal field which is neither purely objective nor purely subjective. But this still does not save the reformulation of Protagoras’ relativist thesis. Phenomena, too, are in perpetual change, since the person to whom things appear is “never exactly the same”33 – here Socrates is undoubtedly thinking of our corporeity. And here Theaetetus begins to hesitate as to his definition of knowledge as perception. When Socrates makes him see that even the domain of quantity, where the mathematician feels most at home, is not concerned with the properties of things themselves, since things become either large or small depending on the scale we choose to measure them, 34 he exclaims that he is “lost in wonder”.35 Socrates praises him for this and utters the famous statement, so often quoted, on the origin of philosophy: “this feeling of wonder shows that you are a philosopher, since wonder is the only beginning of philosophy”.36 This also confirms Patočka’s repeated statement that the problem of appearance is the fundamental task not only of phenomenology but of philosophy in general. There is, in the world, nothing fixed: “nothing exists as invariably one, itself by itself, but everything is always becoming in relation to something, and ‘being’ should be altogether abolished”.37 What is more, “we ought not, the wise men say, to permit the use of ‘something’ or ‘somebody’s’ or ‘mine’ or ‘this’ or ‘that’ or any other word that implies making things stand still, but in accordance with nature we should speak of things as ‘becoming’ and ‘being made’ and ‘being destroyed’ and ‘changing’”.38 But even this is still not exact. The fact is that all words tend to make things stand still; otherwise they could have no meaning. Since things cannot be made to stand still, it follows that it is altogether impossible to speak, and even more so to know, to come to know about anything. 32

Ibid., 154a. Ibid. 34 Ibid., 154c. 35 Ibid., 155c. 36 Ibid., 155d. 37 Ibid., 157a. 38 Ibid., 157b. 33

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That being the case, Socrates wishes once more to “look into the real essence of our thoughts”39 and inquire what the things we think about (ta tōn phrenōn) are in themselves. Inconspicuously, he thus shifts the inquiry from the changing whirligig of outward things, via the neutral sphere of phenomena, to the realm of thought. He wants to “consider again the nature of these appearances within us”,40 to ask what they are (hatta pot’ esti tauta ta fasmata en hēmin). He says that matters of thought are “something else than what can be grasped firmly with the hands”41 – they are invisible, yet it would be incorrect to “deny their participation in being” (hōs en ousias merei).42 We are surprised to learn that all the concepts we have been using in speaking of the things around us – becoming, arising, whirligig, activity, passivity, etc. – have their origin in the soul. To speak means to use words, to give names “to both particular objects and collective designations”.43 For example, to speak of “‘mankind’ and ‘stone’ and every animal and class”44 means to bring the whirligig to a halt and to say about the thing in question whether or not it is, and what it is or is not. This is precisely the task of the soul. The various bodily senses are mere instruments through which we perceive; they are not properly speaking that by which we perceive. The different sense perceptions must be somehow evaluated and compared, so as to ascertain that they have something in common – i.e., the thing they belong to. In order for this to be possible, all our senses must converge and “unite in one single form [eis mian tina idean], whether we should call it soul or something else, by which we perceive”.45 There must be “some one and the same power within ourselves by which we perceive black and white through the eyes, and again other qualities through the other organs”.46 “But through what organ,” Socrates now asks: Is the faculty exerted which makes known to you that which is common to all things…that which you call being and not-being (to estin, to ouk estin)…and likeness

39

Ibid., 154e. Ibid., 155a. 41 Ibid., 155e. 42 Ibid. 43 Ibid., 157b. 44 Ibid., 157c. 45 Ibid., 184d. 46 Ibid., 184d–e. 40

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Asubjective Phenomenology and unlikeness, and identity and difference, also unity and plurality…and the odd and the even, and everything else that is in the same category?47

Theaetetus himself then realises that “there is no special organ at all for these notions, as there are for the others; but it appears to me that the soul views by itself directly what all things have in common”.48 Strictly speaking, it is thus the soul that perceives. Only because the soul is continually one and the same 49 can it ascertain what is common to all perceptions, “reflecting within itself upon the past and present in relation to the future”50; and, on the basis of this reflection, by and through itself, 51 “in the process of reasoning about the sensations” (en tōi peri ekeinōi syllogismōi),52 constitute the thing – i.e., say whether it is or is not, whether it is beautiful or ugly, good or bad, 53 etc. For this reason, the soul can also ascertain that something changes, and say that change is. This actually means making change ‘stand still’ and thereby first letting it be change. So we can say that Protagoras’ thesis is valid in its original form. By his soul, man is indeed the measure of all things; he ‘decides’ by an act of his soul whether things exist or not. His decisions are, of course, not arbitrary. This is where dialectic – the Socratic art of discussion – comes into play. In this discussion, we reflect upon the past and present in relation to the future, 54 distinguishing cause and effect, and so on; we examine “in the process of reasoning”55 what comes to mind by itself along with our bodily sensations, and only “with difficulty and slowly, through many troubles, if at all”56 do we succeed in eliminating contradiction57 and acquiring the insight that all parts of our discourse are truly in agreement, fit and match one another. Only then can we call our discourse a definition and rightly believe that we possess knowledge. I would say that Plato thematises here, in his own way, the problem of appearance as such, and that the solution he proposes is similar to Patočka’s: the ac47

Ibid., 185c–d. Ibid., 185d. 49 Ibid., 184d. 50 Ibid., 186a–b. 51 Ibid., 186a. 52 Ibid., 186d. 53 Ibid., 186a. 54 Ibid. 55 Ibid., 186d. 56 Ibid., 186c. 57 Ibid., 186b. 48

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complishments of the soul are invisible, since, when all is said and done, they take place in the very object they identify; despite this, their existence cannot be denied, just as Patočka grants the empty ego cogito an indubitable existence and joins in Heidegger’s quest as to what this existence amounts to. We also see here quite clearly why the question of appearance is, in a certain sense, even more primordial than the question of being. Works Cited Husserl, Edmund. Die Idee der Phänomenologie [The Idea of Phenomenology]. Husserliana. Nijhoff: The Hague, 1950 Husserl, Edmund. The Idea of Phenomenology: A Translation of Die Idee der Phänomenologie. Husserliana II. Trans. Lee Hardy. Edmund Husserl: Collected Works. Volume VIII. Lee Hardy, an Introduction. Dordrecht, Boston, London: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1999 Husserl, Edmund. Ideas Pertaining to a Pure Phenomenology and to a Phenomenological Philosophy. First Book: General Introduction to a Pure Phenomenology. Trans. F. Kersten. Collected Works: Volume II. Dordrecht, Boston, London: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1983 Husserl, Edmund. Ideen zu einer reinen Phänomenologie und phänomenologischen Philosophie. Erstes Buch [Ideas Pertaining to a Pure Phenomenology and to a Phenomenological Philosophy. First Book]. Husserliana. The Hague: Nijhoff, 1976 Patočka, Jan. “Cartesianism and Phenomenology.” Edited and translated by Erazim Kohák. Jan Patočka: Philosophy and Selected Writings. Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press, 1989 [1976], 285–326 Patočka, Jan. “Der Subjektivismus der Husserlschen und die Forderung einer asubjektiven Phänomenologie [Husserl’s Subjectivism and the Call for an Asubjective Phenomenology].” Die Bewegung der Menschlichen Existenz. Eds Klaus Nellen, Jiri Němec and Ilja Srubar. Stuttgart: Klett-Cotta, 1991 [1971], 286–309 Patočka, Jan. “Epoché und Reduktion. Einige Bemerkungen [Epoché and Reduction. Some Observations].” Die Bewegung der Menschlichen Existenz. Eds Klaus Nellen, Jiri Němec and Ilja Srubar. Stuttgart: Klett-Cotta, 1991 [1975], 415–423 Patočka, Jan. “Husserlova transcendentální filosofie po revizi [Husserl’s Transcendental Philosophy after Revision].” Archiv J. Patočky MS 1992/004, 1969 Patočka, Jan. “Karteziánství a fenomenologie [Cartesianism and Phenomenology].” Fenomenologické spisy II. Eds P. Kouba and O. Švec. Prague: Oikoymenh, 2009 [1976], 453–496 Patočka, Jan. “La philosophie transcendentale de Husserl après révision [Husserl’s Transcendental Philosophy after Revision].” Trans. Erika Abrams. Introduction à la phénoménologie de Husserl. Millon: Grenoble, 1992

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Asubjective Phenomenology Patočka, Jan. Úvod do fenomenologické filosofie [Introduction to Phenomenological Philosophy]. Prague: Oikoymenh, 1993 Plato. Plato in Twelve Volumes. Trans. H. N. Fowler. Vol. 12. Cambridge MA: Harvard University Press, 1921

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Jan Patočka’s Transcendence to the World 1 Michael Gubser At the height of Czechoslovak normalisation, as the septuagenarian philosopher Jan Patočka reviewed a lifetime of professional isolation, the playwright Václav Havel and former Prague Spring official Jiří Hájek asked him to serve as cospokesman for the new Charter 77 dissident organisation. Despite Patočka’s initial hesitance, the invitation must have occasioned some excitement. Perhaps he even espied the potential for a political act to consummate his philosophical thought. His public defence of Charter 77 took the form of a plea for human rights, which was nothing more 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.2

In two manifestos, Patočka defended the public significance of ‘moral sentiment’ and ‘human rights’, of truth as a kind of tribunal born of private conviction, even as he characterised the Charter as “personal and moral”3 rather than political. Interestingly, the liberal vocabulary of rights did not appear elsewhere in his corpus; earlier manuscripts, in fact, characterised Western liberalism as an inessential political complement to modern rational civilisation; a useful framework for protecting ‘the rights of rationality’ but not a necessary partner.4 Did Patočka see his final defence of rights as the political expression of a career-long 1

This essay is a slightly revised version of one entitled “The Terror and the Hope: Jan Patočka’s Transcendence to the World”, Schutzian Research 3 (2011). 2 “This conviction,” he continued, “is present in individuals as well, as the ground for living up to their obligations in private life, at work, and in public. The only genuine guarantee that humans will act not only out of greed and fear but freely, willingly, responsibly, lies in this conviction.” Patočka, “The Obligation to Resist Injustice”, edited and translated by Kohák, Jan Patočka: Philosophy and Selected Writings (Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press, 1989), 340–343, 341. 3 Ibid., 342. 4 Patočka, “La surcivilisation et son conflit interne [Supercivilisation and its Inner Conflict]”, trans. Abrams, Liberté et sacrifice (Grenoble: Millon, 1993), 99–177, 151, 120. NB: I have cited English, German and French translations where available.

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philosophy, as recent commentary contends,5 or did he view it as the strategic deployment of a timely liberal vocabulary, introduced by the 1975 Helsinki Accords and cynically touted by the Husák regime? What, in other words, was the relationship between Patočka’s phenomenology and his ultimate dissidence? I contend that we should beware of binding the final act too tightly to earlier scripts. If the invocation of rights on the one hand simply recast Patočka’s career-long dedication to higher purposes, to a life of ‘amplitude’ over one of mere ‘equilibrium’,6 it also foreclosed his commitment to transcendental freedom based on a negative metaphysics of open human striving. A phenomenology of human freedom and self-transcendence could translate into public activism, but it need not have taken a human rights format. For Patočka, phenomenology was the moral philosophy of its age, albeit one that needed reorientation to correct the deficiencies of its founders. 7 Within the purview of a small group of specialists prior to 1989, Patočka has won new attention since the communist collapse, due in no small part to eulogies from notables such as Paul Ricoeur, Jacques Derrida and Václav Havel. But nearly 40 years post mortem, he is still outshone not only by more prominent phenomenologists but also by fellow Czech dissidents. Nonetheless, as scholars have begun to elaborate the various themes in his work, we can now locate Patočka in several historical narratives, most obviously the story of dissidence in Eastern Europe, but also the history of the philosophy and phenomenology he cherished. 8 5

“For Patočka, this authentic resoluteness [celebrated in his later writing] meant becoming a human rights activist.” Tucker, The Philosophy and Politics of Czech Dissidence from Patočka to Havel (Pittsburgh: Pittsburgh, 2000), 86. See also Laignel-Lavastine, Jan Patočka: L’esprit de la dissidence [Jan Patočka: The Spirit of Dissent] (Paris: Michalon, 1998) and Laignel-Lavastine, Esprits d’Europe: Autour de Czeslaw Milosz, Jan Patočka, István Bibó [Spirits of Europe: On Czeslaw Milosz, Jan Patočka, István Bibó] (Paris: Calmann-Lévy, 2005). 6 Patočka, “Equilibre et amplitude dans la vie [Life in Balance, Life in Amplitude]”, Liberté et sacrifice: Ecrits politiques (Grenoble: Millon, 1990), 27–39. 7 His English translator, Erazim Kohák, is correct to note the centrality of ethics in his thought. See Kohák, “Jan Patočka: A Philosophical Biography”, edited and translated by Kohák, Jan Patočka: Philosophy and Selected Writings (Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press, 1989), 1–135, 52. 8 In English, the starting point is Erazim Kohák, “Jan Patočka: A Philosophical Biography”, in Kohák, ed., Jan Patočka. Invaluable are also the essays of Ivan Chvatík, head of Prague’s Jan Patočka Archive, founded in 1990; these are cited below. Tucker highlights the relation between Patočka’s philosophy and dissidence in Tucker, The Philosophy and Politics

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Another preoccupation of the secondary literature on Patočka is its effort to unravel the Husserlian and Heideggerian strands of his thought. 9 An ardent disciple of both giants, Patočka was no mere epigone. Indeed, the attempt to bridge one of the greatest rifts in 20th-century Continental thought – that between the founder of phenomenology and his wayward student – meant that he could not be a simple heir of either. But heir he was. And his lifelong commitment to the renewal of a decadent technological civilisation drew direct inspiration from both men; from Husserl’s Crisis and Heidegger’s Dasein, Being-inthe-World. Patočka met Husserl during a 1929 student year in Paris, and received an invitation to work under him in 1933 in Freiburg, where he interacted mostly with assistant Eugen Fink.10 He famously became Husserl’s liaison for the 1934 Prague Philosophical Congress, transmitting the letter that first outlined the Crisis project. Despite this devotion, Patočka became a stringent critic of his mentor: the remnants of Cartesianism, he complained, led the master to an overly theoretical and even mathematical world view that focused on individof Czech Dissidence from Patočka to Havel. Edward F. Findlay interprets Patočka’s thought as political philosophy in Findlay, “Appendix: Patočka’s Reception in the English-language Literature”, Caring for the Soul in a Postmodern Age: Politics and Phenomenology in the Thought of Jan Patočka (New York: State University of New York Press, 2002), 185–205. And Rodolphe Gasché situates Patočka in the wider phenomenological arc of thinkers conceptualising Europe’s destiny in Gasché, Europe, Or the Infinite Task: A Study of a Philosophical Concept, Meridian: Crossing Aesthetics (Stanford, California: Stanford University Press, 2009). There is also a substantial literature in French, German and Czech. The French, in particular, recognised his importance quite early. Consider, for example, the essays collected in Tassin and Richir, eds, Jan Patočka: Philosophie, phénoménologie, politique (Grenoble: Millon, 1992). In Czech, see Rezek, Jan Patočka a věc fenomenologie [Jan Patočka and the Subject of Phenomenology] (Prague: Oikoymenh, 1993), and Blecha, Jan Patočka (Olomouc: Votobia, 1997). 9 Kohák and Tucker favour the Husserlian, while Richard Rorty prefers the Heideggerean; see Rorty, “The Seer of Prague: Influence of Czechoslovakian Philosopher Jan Patočka”, The New Republic 205.1 (1991). Rorty’s essay is reprinted in Hagedorn and Sepp, eds, Jan Patočka (Freiburg: Alber, 1999), 50–58. Findlay challenges the good-Patočka (democratic, Husserlian), bad-Patočka (dark, violent, Heideggerian) narratives of the Czech philosopher’s earliest English publicists. See especially Findlay, “Appendix: Patočka’s Reception in the English-language Literature”. 10 Fink’s influence was crucial for Patočka’s later asubjective phenomenology. See Fink and Patočka, Briefe und Dokumente, 1933–1977 [Letters and Documents, 1933–1977] (Freiburg, Munich: Alber, 1999). On Fink and Husserl, see Bruzina, Edmund Husserl and Eugen Fink: Beginnings and Ends in Phenomenology, 1928–1938, Yale Studies in Hermeneutics (New Haven & London: Yale University Press, 2004).

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ual phenomena rather than highlighting the dynamic interpenetration of subject and object, self and world.11 Paradoxically, this objectivism, the tendency to render the world in a set of discrete theoretical presences rather than as a protean field of presence and absence, was rooted in what Patočka saw as Husserl’s cardinal sin: an overdeveloped subjectivism that reduced the world to the egological mind. This charge, of course, is familiar to students of phenomenology, but Patočka rendered it in very Husserlian terms: while he celebrated the founder’s epoché as an act of freedom that emancipated humans from objective facticity and naïve reality, he condemned the later egological reduction of experience to the transcendental subject for turning the world into a distanced and reflective object-presence rather than a constant field of engaged activity. 12 The problem was twofold: not only did the move artificially sever the subject from the world it observed, but it also turned that world into a mere thesis of the transcendent subject, denying it ontological priority. Heidegger’s Being-in-the-World corrected these errors by emphasising the priority of our practical engagement with things over our theoretical observation of them; objects were zuhanden before they were vorhanden, to use his coinages. And yet Heidegger betrayed the promise both of his own insights and of Husserl’s late improvisations when he turned away from human worldliness in the quest for the authenticity of anxious solitude, rejecting others as the anonymous ‘they’ and retreating from the social world. Whereas Husserl held out hope for the ethical renewal of a fallen humanity, Heidegger forsook all hope for human responsibility and reform. If Husserl promised a worldly understanding that was restrained by Cartesian suppositions, Heidegger reneged on the very worldliness he had apparently championed. Ultimately, then, Heidegger foreclosed what Husserl left open, and the latter proved not only more humane than the former (as many critics aver), but also more human. For Patočka, however, only by combining and superseding the insights of these giants could a satisfactory phenomenology be achieved.

11

Chvatík’s Jan Patočka and his Concept of an ‘A-subjective’ Phenomenology, Center for Theoretical Study: The Institute for Advanced Studies at Charles University and the Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic (Prague: Center for Theoretical Study, 2005) is helpful here. 12 See, for example, Patočka, Body, Community, Language, World (Chicago and La Salle, Illinois: Open Court, 1998), 123ff. The critique of Husserl seems somewhat unfair, since it freezes at Husserl’s egological phase without acknowledging the life-world project that Patočka knew well.

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Phenomenology as a Philosophy of Freedom Like Edith Stein’s, Jan Patočka’s life is often defined by his death. In March 1977, the philosopher succumbed to a brain haemorrhage after an 11-hour interrogation by the Czech secret police, a tragically Socratic finale for a reluctant dissident. During a tumultuous life in which he enjoyed only a handful of years in his chosen teaching profession, the Prague philosopher presented a unique phenomenology of freedom admixing Husserlian, Heideggerian and Platonic themes. Indeed, he read a commitment to human autonomy back into phenomenological history, finding it at the origin of the movement: when Husserl died in 1938, his Czech acolyte eulogised him in uncommon terms as a philosopher of freedom: This conviction, that a human is free for the idea, free for truth, free to determine his own life, to the final objectives that he has the ability to reach, and is in no way subordinated to mere nature, is not simply an index of relations and fates – in this view Husserl fits within the great streams of thought who find their sources in Greek philosophy… And to the belief in these heights of human history, on the invocation of the wide power of ideas over all of life, it is to this that the work of Edmund Husserl commits us.13

Thirty years later, in his Introduction to Husserl’s Phenomenology, a samizdat mimeograph published in the hopeful days before the Prague Spring, Patočka again commended his mentor’s effort as “nothing less than a striving for freedom and complete autonomy for humankind”.14 The statement highlights the theme for which Patočka is best known: a concept of freedom entailing rejection of bonds of objectivity in favour of human ethical transcendence. Selfresponsibility, he maintained, keeping the Husserlian formula but incorporating Heideggerian worldliness, could transform modern men from mere objects or resources for technical manipulation into free beings with a renewed purpose and interest in the world, integrating “humankind into the global matrix of a wholly new framework”.15 If freedom entailed human moral regeneration and self-transcendence, the phenomenological itinerary was its philosophical expression. And as philosophy’s 13 Patočka, “Edmund Husserl zum Gedächtnis [In Memory of Edmund Husserl]”, eds Hagedorn and Sepp, Jan Patočka (Freiburg: Alber), 268–269. 14 Patočka, An Introduction to Husserl’s Phenomenology (Illinois: Open Court, 1996), 167. 15 Ibid., 166–167.

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most important prospect, phenomenological intuition opened “the perspective of the unity, of the mutual interlocking and interdependence of humans and the world, interdependence which will not let us consider the world without taking humans into account, or humans without taking into account the world”.16 Rejecting a technical world view that condemned men and women to statistical anonymity and fixed the world in mechanical terms, Patočka cast Husserl as an ethical thinker for whom philosophy cleared avenues to the natural world of experience. It seems fitting that Patočka would launch his most productive decade with a detailed ‘introduction’ to Husserl’s thought. The title, as Kohák notes, was overly modest, for the manuscript offered a novel reinterpretation highlighting the social and ethical significance of Husserlian phenomenology, drawing out themes that were provisional or muted in the Urtexts.17 In Patočka’s hands, Husserl became an activist thinker, a philosopher of free human responsibility, not simply a theorist of direct intuition; the founder’s phenomenology, he maintained, represented “a concurrent reflection about the meaning of things and about the meaning of human life”.18 And while Husserl never escaped Cartesian constraints, his eidetic and transcendental methods held tremendous emancipatory potential, for they liberated historically situated human beings from mere circumstance and brought them before essential truths. Thus, phenomenology recalled humans to the manifestation of the world as a meaningful relationship; a revelation that preceded its technical and scientific enframing, to use the Heideggerian term.19 Husserl’s early arithmetical work was not clear on these points because it reflected the sway of Brentano’s psychological empiricism, with its strong division between psychic and physical. The later texts, from Logical Investigations and Ideas onward, explained “how the subjective can and does reach the objective” by modifying Brentano’s model of introspection into a new form of worldly intuition.20 In classic Husserl, intentionality revealed not just factual presenta16

Ibid., 172. Kohák, “Jan Patočka: A Philosophical Biography”, 83. 18 Patočka, An Introduction to Husserl’s Phenomenology, 172. 19 Ibid., 14–17. 20 Ibid., 59. For Patočka, Brentano remained something of a taint on Husserl’s career; a staunch empiricist whose Cartesian leanings Husserl never fully escaped. For a thoughtful defence of Brentano against Patočka’s criticisms, see Mezei, “Brentano, Cartesianism and Jan Patočka”, Brentano Studien 5 (1994), 69–87. 17

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tions, but the eidos or essence of a phenomenon, its unified presence and meaning, a synthetic whole.21 He discerned not just the thing perceived, but the experience of perceiving that lent the phenomenon its meaning and significance. Thus, Husserl’s earliest liberatory move, his break with objectivising science, was the split from Brentanian psychologism and the embrace of an intuitive method for discovering essences, acts and laws beyond the confines of empirical fact. This intuition of essences, pace Adorno, was not a direct and controlling eidetic grasp but instead proceeded incompletely through particular situated instances. Human knowledge of essences and universals was therefore always situated in particular contexts.22 In this collocation of essence, object and act, averred Patočka, Husserl overcame the crisis at the heart of empirical science: its inability to achieve wider human meaning from strict empirical foundations.23 But it was Husserl’s epoché, for Patočka, that finally liberated man from the tyranny of circumstance, opening the emancipatory prospect of transcendence even from within the world. Liberation from the mundane assumption of reality broke men from the hold of mere things, mere biological need, and rendered the world as a project of open horizons and possibilities. The uncovering and the revealing of the world and of things in the world remains irreducible to the objective aspect of the world. This means that incarnate being is free with respect to the world, that it is not forced to accept it as finished, as it presents itself, but can also become aware how immensely it transcends everything given in that extreme distance which Husserl elaborated in his epoché. For the epoché is nothing other than the discovery of the freedom of the subject which is manifested in all transcendence – in our living in principle in horizons which first bestow full meaning on the present and that, in the words of the thinker, we are beings of the far reaches.24

To be sure, Patočka was deeply critical of his mentor: he accused Husserl of reducing the epoché to a mere methodological operation – and even worse, of transcendentalising it by treating it as the gateway for access to a purified aerie of the disinterested observer. Husserl exacerbated his error when, in rejecting

21

Patočka, An Introduction to Husserl’s Phenomenology, 63–64. Ibid., 41–55. 23 Ibid., 26. 24 Ibid., 135. 22

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objectivism, he fell prey to the counter-ill of reducing the world to the transcendent ‘I’, an outsized Fichtean subjectivity. 25 Along with Heidegger, Patočka rejected this subject-centred, ‘theoretical’ line, instead characterising the epoché as an anthropological-cum-ethical movement of human transcendence within immanence, of freedom from the world within the world, allowing the aspirant to move beyond quotidian immediacy to an open horizon of being. In Patočka’s hands, the epoché marked a human movement beyond facticity and a turn to the world beyond the self as a field of prospect and action. Freedom is a “distance”, he wrote in 1953’s “Negative Platonism”; a “remove” from all objectivities, a beyond from which the whole world became evident.26 Or as he put it in his introduction to Husserl, the subject’s “freedom is manifested in that, within its dependence and no less for it, it is capable of truth”.27 Man was not imprisoned by the relativities of his surroundings or the fragmented empirics of modern science. For in outward, ekstatic movements, humans approached truths beyond their mortal selves. And the world, newly understood in Patočka’s thought, stood beyond all things as their permanent horizon, irreducible to either subject or object status.28 Despite Husserl, the epoché was not a static concept or philosophical method, but a seismic historical event – indeed, it was history itself, as we will see below. Patočka found other bases for freedom in Husserl as well. Through the incarnate body, the “point zero” of experience, humans received the world, touching the near and seeing the far. As the corporeal basis of “the ‘I can’”, bodily kinaesthesia offered the “consciousness of freedom”.29 And from this locale, this localised subject, we make our first acquaintance with phenomena themselves – not scien-

25

See Patočka, “Cartesianism and Phenomenology”, edited and translated by Kohák, Jan Patočka: Philosophy and Selected Writings (Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press, 1989 [1976]), 285–326. See also Chvatík, Jan Patočka and his Concept of an ‘A-subjective’ Phenomenology. 26 Patočka, “Negative Platonism: Reflections Concerning the Rise, the Scope, and the Demise of Metaphysics – and Whether Philosophy Can Survive It”, edited and translated by Kohák, Jan Patočka: Philosophy and Selected Writings (Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press, 1989 [circa 1955]), 175–206, 196. 27 Patočka, An Introduction to Husserl’s Phenomenology, 159. 28 Ibid., 104–106. 29 Ibid., 141–142, 144.

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tific but intensely poetic and meaningful: the “merciless blue of the sky above”.30 Science abstracted from this primordial encounter. But the body, noted Patočka, “is essentially need-ful, and as need-ful it is finite and mortal”, embedded in and confined to straitened circumstances. 31 And the solitary one could not provide access to the wider world as trans-subjective horizon; the world beyond the self though not wholly other. 32 Only the recognition of others, of intersubjective community, could render subjective phenomena worldly, and thus open a horizon for activity. Moreover, in a rather more obvious point, only the primordial recognition of intersubjectivity could grant us society. For “what else is the intersubjective reduction,” asked Patočka, than the reassurance that anything that calls itself ‘I’ cannot be wholly alien, that, for all that separates it, it is not hopeless to attempt to approach another, to address one another, to understand one another. …In principle, no I stands outside the possibility of communication, no I is isolated, each is in its own way an inflection of all others as all others are inflections of its own.33

The point is crucial for moral awareness. An ethical society combined the recognition of far truths worth striving for with the essential nearness of community and locale. At once situated and transcendent, the ethical person sacrificed herself for community in the name of truth, which was not “a finished thesis but rather a process”, an ongoing encounter, an open idea. 34 And freedom, he wrote elsewhere, “does not mean only life for oneself alone”, but also “from oneself”.35 30

Ibid., 137. Ibid., 145. 32 Patočka adopted the concept of non-aliud, not-other, from Nicholas of Cusa and used it to describe the situation in which the world could neither be reduced to the subject nor entirely divorced from it. On Patočka’s relation to Cusa and other late medieval and Renaissance thinkers, see the essays collected in Hagedorn and Sepp, eds, Andere Wege in die Moderne: Forschungsbeiträge zu Patočkas Genealogie der Neuzeit [Other Ways to Modernity: Research Contributions to Patocka’s Genealogy of the Modern Era] (Würzburg: Königshausen and Neumann, 2006). 33 Patočka, An Introduction to Husserl’s Phenomenology, 160. 34 Ibid., 166. In an important post-war essay, Patočka distinguished ideas, which appeal to “our most personal inner core” and draw men to higher ethical goals, from ideologies, which “grasp” and “seize” men and subordinate them to a singular program. See Patočka, “Ideology and Life in the Idea”, Studia Phaenomenologica: Romanian Journal for Phenomenology VII (2007 [1946]), 90. 35 Patočka, “Filosofie výchovy [Philosophy of Education]”, eds Chvatík and Kouba, Péče o duši: Soubor statí a přednášek o postavení člověka ve světě a v dějinách. Stati z let 1929– 31

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Social life flourished when a generative historical community identified a new sense of purpose and responsibility by orienting itself toward the higher good, “awakening” from passivity to autonomy. Philosophy, he quoted Husserl as saying, prepared this transformation by “making possible humankind’s development into personal autonomy and into an all-encompassing autonomy for humankind – the idea which represents the driving force of life for the highest stage of humanity”.36 If these passages reveal the sweeping impact of Husserl’s late work, the reader finds plenty of Heidegger as well. The analysis of Dasein as a being who confronted Being through practical engagement convinced Patočka. Yet he was not unalloyed in his praise, for he detected a lingering subjectivism even in the Freiburg magus, notably in the conception of Dasein. “Contra Heidegger,” wrote Patočka in a manuscript from the early 1970s, there is no primary projection of possibilities – the world is not a product of liberty but simply that which makes finite liberty possible. The world is the universal instance of the appearance, the plan of universal appearance… I do not open my possibilities, but my situation in light of possibilities is disclosed.37

Heidegger, like Husserl, over-privileged the subject by making the world dependent on Dasein for its disclosure. Patočka, by contrast, sought to pioneer an asubjective phenomenology of worldly manifestation.38

1952. První díl: Nevydané texty z padesátých let (Prague: Oikoymenh, 1996), 363–440, 435. Cf. Findlay, Caring for the Soul in a Postmodern Age: Politics and Phenomenology in the Thought of Jan Patočka (New York: State University of New York Press, 2002), 104. 36 Originally quoted in Czech translation, the passage appears in Patočka, An Introduction to Husserl’s Phenomenology, 167. 37 Patočka, “Leib, Möglichkeiten, Welt, Erscheinungsfeld [Life, Possiblities, World, the Field of Appearance]”, Vom Erscheinen als solchem: Texte aus dem Nachlaß (Freiburg (Breisgau) and München: Alber, 2000), 87–100, 92–93. 38 For a fascinating analysis of the topic, see Novotný, “L’ouverture du champ phénoménal: la donation ou l’interprétation? Sur le problème de l’apparaître comme tel chez Jan Patočka [The Opening of the Phenomenal Field: Givenness or Interpretation? On the Problem of Appearing as Such in Jan Patočka]”, eds Sepp and Copoeru, Phenomenology (2005), 545–572.

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Ethics for a Post-European World “Europe has disappeared, probably forever,” declared Patočka starkly in 1974. It was destroyed by a hyper-rationalism that had killed the spirit of open inquiry, fuelled the project of overseas domination, and fired wars at home. 39 In the thaw before 1968’s Prague Spring, he had already anticipated a dawning postEuropean age, in which new cultures and peoples would become the civilisational avant-garde. Yet his devotion to Europe’s fraught legacy was too great to simply write its epitaph. For by the 1970s, and despite a dour political outlook, Patočka was advancing a desperate hope for European renewal, spearheaded by those who rose above the continent’s recent catastrophes. Patočka’s striking philosophy of history, developed over several decades of a fecund seniority, served as backdrop for his phenomenology of human existence. Although the historical project remains less well-known than the phenomenology of world and man, the two itineraries were closely intertwined; in fact, the fear of European demise may have fuelled his determination to articulate a redemptive phenomenology. Philosophy of history had attracted Patočka since young adulthood. In 1934, the 27-year-old declared that “history is incompatible with indifference”,40 because it concerned what it meant to be human; to be free but situated in the world. As the realm of anthropological self-comprehension, historical understanding was essential in helping men to avert humdrum routine in favour of “a new life” of liberty.41 A year later, he distinguished between a superficial history concerned with straight facts and a deep, philosophicallyinformed history that grasped the innate “ensemble of possibilities” forming each age.42 Starting in the 1950s, leading into the heady days of Czechoslovak political reform, and culminating in the bitter 1970s, he cultivated these seeds into a verdant historical philosophy of truth and insight. 39

On Patočka’s conception of Europe, see Gasché, Europe, Or the Infinite Task: A Study of a Philosophical Concep; Crépon, Altérités de l’Europe [Othernesses of Europe] (Paris: Galilée, 2006; Homp and Sedlaczek, Jan Patočka und die Idee von Europa [Jan Patočka and the Idea of Europe] (Berlin: MitOst e. V., 2003). 40 Patočka, “Quelques remarques sur les concepts d’histoire et d’historiographie [Some Remarks on the Concepts of History and Historiography]”, L’Europe après L’Europe (Paris: Verdier, 2007), 139–153, 145. 41 Ibid., 150. 42 Ibid., 165. On Patočka’s philosophy of history, see Chvatík, “Jan Patočka”, ed. Tucker, A Companion to the Philosophy of History and Historiography (Oxford: WileyBlackwell, 2009), 518–528.

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It was precisely world openness, Patočka asserted, that established Europe as a cultural and spiritual unity in ancient times, with Greek politics and philosophy its herald. The Greeks recognised world problematicity – the notion that the world is not a fixed presence but an open question – and celebrated human inquiry, establishing insight and responsibility as moral standards. This recognition, said Patočka, launched the historical age, for history was nothing else but the openness to being and the consequent questing for truth. “History arises,” he wrote in 1976, when people in a certain insignificant region of the earth cease to live for life and begin to live in order to conquer, for themselves and those who share their will, the space for their recognition, the space for freedom. That is politics in its original definition: life from freedom and for freedom.43

Social life in prehistoric societies took the form of a great household, exhausting its members in labour for monarch and kin. Mythic societies formed an important transition from prehistory to history by lifting man’s attention above the drudgery of life and fixing it beyond the world of things. But mythic peoples simply accepted external truths. By contrast, history began when man started to question previously accepted axioms and to embrace the inherent change and problematicity of their world – chronologically, in ancient Greece, with the joint birth of the polis and philosophy. The city-state demanded risk-taking men who moved beyond mere life-sustaining work – he credited Arendt with this insight – and into the realm of transcendent action and inquiry. 44 “Nothing of the earlier life of acceptance remains in peace,” Patočka declared. “All the pillars of the community, traditions, and myths are equally shaken. …In the moment when life renews itself, everything is cast in a new light.”45 Rejecting the “will to tradition”, the Greeks “reach[ed] forth” toward the “unsheltered life…[toward] a world that opens itself” to action and quest. 46

43 Patočka, “An Attempt at Czech National Philosophy and its Future”, eds Čapek and Hrubý, T. G. Masaryk in Perspective: Comments and Criticism (Ann Arbor: SVU Press, 1981), 1. 44 Patočka, Heretical Essays in the Philosophy of History (Chicago and La Salle, Illinois: Open Court, 1996), 15. 45 Ibid., 39–40. 46 Ibid., 35, 38, 39. On Patočka’s wide-ranging appropriation of the Greeks, see Poirier, “Patočka et les Grecs ou philosopher au fond de la caverne? [Patočka and the Greeks or to Philosophise at the Bottom of the Cave?]”, Cahiers Philosophiques 50 (1992).

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Modernity, by contrast, at once affirmed human freedom as its highest ideal and enslaved men to objectivity. The modern West, according to Patočka, produced the first universal or meta-civilisation [nadcivilizace], overcoming through rationalism the particularist religions of earlier epochs. 47 Yet this ecumenism, which afforded Western civilisation a worldwide reach, engendered sharp internal and external contradictions. For modern technocracy, by eroding cultural and religious allegiances, maintained a superficial moral hold on men and women. Recognising the emotional shortcomings of a calculating ethos, modern rationalists of the revolutionary era embraced the liberalism of rights and virtues as a heroic bulwark against irrationalist retrenchment, an ally that could stir the passions where sober rationalism only piqued the intellect.48 But this was finally a partnership of convenience, forged to defend the “rights of rationality”.49 And like most opportunisms, the alliance could be broken. Modern technical civilisation took two forms in Patočka’s eyes: an original, moderate, liberal technocracy and a radical response that rejected liberal pharisaism by pushing rationality to an extreme. In its moderate European mould, technocratic liberalism fostered a kind of “moral somnolence”,50 even nihilism, intensified by the increasingly heavy-handed scientific rationality that subordinated human life to objective forces. Rather than asserting their own spiritual potency, technocracies offered their members only an anodyne, agnostic faith that rejected particularism and banished the divine. 51 Yet empty liberty and instrumental proceduralism could not feed the moral imagination or fuel the quest for wider meaning. As Patočka lamented in 1966, modern man had a natural and a scientific world but no longer an ethical one.52 As a result, an atomised humanity faced a world voided of meaning. 53

47

Patočka, “La surcivilisation et son conflit interne [Supercivilisation and its Inner Conflict]”, 103–104. 48 Ibid., 120, 141, 151. 49 Ibid., 150. One need only recall the Enlightenment preference for despots to note the absolutist temptation in rational reforms. 50 Ibid., 126. 51 Ibid., 163–164. 52 Patočka, “L’epique et le dramatique, l’epos et le drame [The Epic and the Dramatic, Epos and Drama]”, Revue de métaphysique et de morale 90.2, 180. 53 Patočka, “La surcivilisation et son conflit interne [Supercivilisation and its Inner Conflict]”, 163–165.

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This spiritual contradiction was exacerbated by economic and political hypocrisy. In a startling reference from a 1950s essay on meta-civilisational conflict, Patočka praised Marx and Lenin for their insights into modern society, despite the recent excesses of Stalinism in Czechoslovakia. The harrowing inequities of capitalism and the grave privation suffered by many across the planet were appalling injustices – imperatives that modern civilisation seemed unable to redress despite its egalitarian promise and penchant for reform.54 Fatalism and anger came as little surprise. Nowhere was this brutal logic more apparent than under Western imperialism, which Patočka saw, again echoing Lenin, as a late 19thcentury “crisis of expansion”55 that transferred European inequities around the world.56 It was hard to imagine a more stark betrayal of the egalitarian norms of liberal rationalism than the brutal hierarchies of empire. These contradictions prompted a radical reaction internal to Western civilisation, one that rejected liberal cant and pushed egalitarian rationality to the brink. But the grim ratiocinations of Jacobinism and Marxism – Patočka’s premier examples of meta-civilisational radicalism – exacerbated rather than mitigated the central error of modernity, for they suppressed human morality in the name of mechanical control and planned dominion. 57 Soviet communism marked the apotheosis of radical technocratic dominion. But ultimately both bourgeois and socialist – moderate and radical – brands of modernity evinced meta-civilisational decline. 58 The great clashes of Patočka’s day – World Wars I and II and the Cold War – were the dying spasms of a broken order, fought by alter egos. At their root lay an overweening rationalism that substituted scientific construction for the intuited real world and dissolved human responsibility into neutral forces, obscuring

54

Ibid., 156. Never anti-Marxist, Patočka occasionally embraced dialectic methods. In Body, Community, Language, World, he even found dialectical thought lurking in Husserl. (Patočka, Body, Community, Language, World, 73). 55 Patočka, “La surcivilisation et son conflit interne [Supercivilisation and its Inner Conflict]”, 133. 56 Patočka, “Les fondements spirituels de la vie contemporaine [The Spiritual Foundations of Life in our Time]”, Liberté et sacrifice: Ecrits politiques (Grenoble: Millon, 1990 [1970s]), 215–241, 217. 57 Patočka, “La surcivilisation et son conflit interne [Supercivilisation and its Inner Conflict]”, 123, 126-129. Nazism was a different beast, a challenger to the challenger that aimed to discipline a slothful West and break Eastern radicalism. Ibid., 149. 58 Ibid., 103–104. Note here a theme that would appear in Havel’s better-known essays: the similarity between Eastern totalitarianism and Western mass society.

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the human life-world.59 Universal rationalism, Patočka lamented in the early 1970s, turned the world into a “gigantic inorganic body”.60 This danger, it should be noted, was not new; like Husserl’s rational Urstiftung, technocratic rationality was an ancient possibility that came to modern fruition. At its origins in the Greek polis, Europe cultivated an ethical responsibility for others and a soulful relation to being and truth. But the European ratio carried with it the impulse to domination and expansion as well – expressed potently in the Imperium Romanum but already evident in the Attican decline of Socrates’ day – that progressively reduced truth to mastery and worldliness to conquest. Technocratic enticements grew with the advent of Renaissance humanism, when rationalist subjectivism and technical instrumentalism were enlisted in the service of war. These mutations – from an ancient sense of aletheia as ontological openness to a modern, controlling rationalism – impelled the tragic Western toward blind faith in technical science and turned humanity into clay for moulding.61 Even Husserl was a sinner whose subjectivism swung too far inward in the effort to counter the objectivist threat. 62 Seeking to free phenomenology from the errors of its master, Patočka called for a new relation to the world and others; for the moral renewal of a modernity dulled by materialist indifference. Continued Western “titanism“ posed particular trouble for relations among peoples, because Europeans no longer understood cultural difference once they cast human interaction in a mechanical framework. 63 Understanding gave way to technical expedience, and European arrogance, subject-centred and supremely

59

Patočka, “Réflexion sur l’Europe [Reflection on Europe]”, 184–185. Patočka, “Europa und Nach-Europa. Die nacheuropäische Epoche und ihre geistigen Probleme [Europe and Post-Europe: The Post-European Epoch and its Spiritual Problems]”, eds Nellen and Němec, trans. Šrubař, Ketzerische Essais zur Philosophie der Geschichte und ergänzende Schriften (Stuttgart: Klett-Cotta, 1988), 207–287, 217–21; Patočka, “La surcivilisation et son conflit interne [Supercivilisation and its Inner Conflict]”, 201–203. 61 Patočka, “Die Epochen der Geschichte [The Epochs of History]”. 62 Patočka, “Europa und Nach-Europa. Die nacheuropäische Epoche und ihre geistigen Probleme [Europe and Post-Europe: The Post-European Epoch and its Spiritual Problems]”, 210–211. 63 Patočka, “La surcivilisation et son conflit interne [Supercivilisation and its Inner Conflict]”, 169, 172, 175; Patočka, “Réflexion sur l’Europe [Reflection on Europe]”, 211. Tomaš Masaryk introduced the term ‘titanism’ as a critique of modern moral subjectivism. 60

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rational, widened the gulf with others.64 The failure of intercultural dialogue was inevitable, as others tried to preserve their traditions in the face of European hegemony, a cause for which Patočka felt some sympathy.65 In this regard, he made a strong distinction between the (originally European) principle of insight, which he would soon designate as the care for the soul, and Europe as an (actual) geopolitical entity characterised by subject-centred rationality and a cult of dominance and superiority.66 Europe’s noblest vision – the ideal of a society based on constant seeking after insight and responsibility – led a fugitive existence in the continent’s actual history, regularly suppressed, often forgotten, occasionally renewed.67 The post-European world, Patočka hoped, might revive this legacy while rejecting its “decadent culture of subjectivism“ and “over-technicisation”. For “[o]nly when post-European peoples understand not to fall back into the errors of Europe will they achieve the prospect of solving their problems”.68 Patočka was not sanguine in believing that non-Westerners could resist the seductions of technology. Writing in the aftermath of the Prague Spring, he saw the history of socialism as a cautionary tale of how movements based on justified demands succumbed to the siren call of technocracy.69 Despite the mid-1960s hope that Czechoslovakia might birth a humane socialism, he came to see Marxism exhibiting the same technocratic fixity that poisoned modern rationality tout court; indeed, socialism intensified rational dominance in an effort to cure the ill of inequality.70 But more toxin had sickened, not healed, the patient. 64

Patočka, “Réflexion sur l’Europe [Reflection on Europe]”, 197. Ibid. 66 Patočka, “Europa und Nach-Europa. Die nacheuropäische Epoche und ihre geistigen Probleme [Europe and Post-Europe: The Post-European Epoch and its Spiritual Problems]”, 211. On this theme, see Gasché, Europe, Or the Infinite Task: A Study of a Philosophical Concept. 67 Patočka, “Europa und Nach-Europa. Die nacheuropäische Epoche und ihre geistigen Probleme [Europe and Post-Europe: The Post-European Epoch and its Spiritual Problems]”, 232. 68 Ibid., 215, 218, 221. It is worth noting that Patočka’s distinction of Europe from non-Western societies, while naïve and at times patronising, was a far cry from Husserl’s earlier description of Japan as a green branch of Occidental culture. 69 Ibid., 218-219. See also Crépon, Altérités de l’Europe [Othernesses of Europe], 113– 151, on the threats to the European idea. 70 Patočka, “Europa und Nach-Europa. Die nacheuropäische Epoche und ihre geistigen Probleme [Europe and Post-Europe: The Post-European Epoch and its Spiritual Problems]”, 223. 65

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Yet neither was his hope for a renewal led by non-Europeans and based on the original Greek principle of insight entirely in vain. 71 He appreciated the persistence of cultural variety across the globe despite Western hegemony, a resilience partly based in the strength of mythic cultures: if East Asian leaders such as Mao cloaked themselves in a Marxist mantle, he averred in a surprising reference, their vision was distinctly local, reaching back to a culture and mythology that European contact had never extinguished.72 Non-Europeans, he anticipated, might learn to trust their customary moral (sittliche) resources, not simply resort to modern Technik.73 For pre-rational mythologies, while phenomenologically naïve, provided an openness to transcendent being that could temper technocratic omniscience.74 Indeed, it was ultimately a European conceit to believe in a single mankind united under the hegemony of reason. 75 Other peoples retained continuous religious and cultural worldviews, but only Europeans – since the days when Greeks disparaged barbarians – had insisted on measuring all men against themselves, on generalising rather than particularising their experience, on turning humans into objective data for invidious comparison. 76 But in the end, the ancient European principle of insight retained value as a human possibility, not simply as European property. For it could transcend the geographies of its birth and encourage others to cultivate their particular worlds, regardless of the violations committed in Europe’s name.77 There were, in this sense, two Europes: a positive principle of insight available beyond the borders of the continent; and a negative history of domination associated with the continent’s past and present. The latter Europe had destroyed itself; the former could be passed to someone else.

71

He noted that Husserl’s undertaking in the Crisis had a “capital importance” for the problems of post-European humanity (Patočka, “Réflexion sur l’Europe [Reflection on Europe]”, 181). 72 Patočka, “Europa und Nach-Europa. Die nacheuropäische Epoche und ihre geistigen Probleme [Europe and Post-Europe: The Post-European Epoch and its Spiritual Problems]”, 225. 73 Ibid., 228, 230. 74 Ibid., 232–238. 75 Ibid., 226. 76 Ibid., 226, 230. 77 Patočka, Plato and Europe, Cultural Memory in the Present (Stanford, California: Stanford University Press, 2002), 221.

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Leaning out of the World What conditions might revive the ancient ideal in a fallen world? Patočka’s final long work, Heretical Essays on the Philosophy of History, written in 1975 and treated today as a kind of summa of his thought, was his most apocalyptic; but it also attempted an answer to the question above that differed from the postEuropean renewal of an earlier decade. 78 For in recalling Athenian achievement once again, Patočka discerned the possibility of a European renewal: although a decadent life of unexamined complacency was more comfortable than anxious incertitude, it was moments of great terror, when all familiar meaning collapsed, that gave birth to politics and philosophy as domains of transcendent human action. For in the “shaken situation” of conflict or war – Patočka employed the Heraclitean term polemos – humans embraced “new possibilities of life” and accepted their role as free creators.79 History arises and can arise only insofar as there is areté, the excellence of humans who no longer simply live to live but who make room for their justification by looking into the nature of things and acting in harmony with what they see – by building a polis on the basis of the law of the world, which is polemos, by speaking that which they see as revealing itself to a free, exposed yet undaunted human (philosophy).80

This dauntless history became the deep content – the terror and the hope – of Patočka’s phenomenology, revealing the conditions of human conversion, or metanoia, in the “shaking of accepted meaning” and the “transcendence of humans toward the world, to the whole of what is brought to light”.81 Ecstatically, humans “lean out of the world” and must “call within and towards it”.82 This ekstasis was not only, or perhaps even primarily, an individual act – a crucial chal78

The Heretical Essays have attracted particular interest among Patočka scholars (Patočka, Heretical Essays in the Philosophy of History). The analyses of Ivan Chvatík remain touchstones: “The Heretical Conception of the European Legacy in the Late Essays of Jan Patočka”, CTS-03-14 (2003); “Prolegomena to a Phenomenology of the Meaning of Human Life in the Late Essays of Jan Patočka”, CTS-04-18 (2004); and “The Responsibility of the ‘Shaken’: Jan Patočka and his ‘Care for the Soul’ in a ‘PostEuropean World”, CTS-09-06 (2009); all published as Working Papers of the Center for Theoretical Studies in Prague. See also Derrida’s highly appropriative reading of the Fifth Heretical Essay in The Gift of Death. 79 Ibid., 41. 80 Ibid., 43. 81 Ibid., 75, 62, 46. 82 Ibid., 115.

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lenge for those who would coopt East European dissidents to the Western liberal program.83 It is not only individual life which, if it passes through the experience of the loss of meaning and if it derives from it the possibility and need for a wholly different selfrelation to all that is, comes to a point of global ‘conversion.’ Perhaps the inmost nature of that rupture – which we sought to define as that which separates the prehistoric epoch from history proper – lies in that shaking of the naïve certainty which governs the life of humankind up to that specific transformation – and in a more profound sense really unitary – origin of politics and philosophy.84

Modern rational science denied these ecstasies, individual and collective, transforming men from beings open to the world into a mere force for manipulation and control.85 Patočka’s polemos – the conflict or war that stood as the “law of the world” – and his celebration of the front-line experiences of Ernst Jünger and Pierre Teilhard de Chardin have discomfited some of his interpreters. 86 In a benign reading, we could say that polemos characterised the constant turmoil of the world and the risky exposure of those who renounced comforting myths to struggle for truth. Yet this rendition is somewhat too easy, for Patočka also used it to characterise the European defensive battle against the non-European East that first gave rise to the ancient polis; an account that sullies the cultural expansiveness he displayed in earlier essays on the non-West. Perhaps the best we can say is that Patočka’s attitude toward non-European culture was fraught. For if his defence of a European line reflected the common East Central European complaint that their homeland was occupied by less cultured Eastern hordes, it demands a certain understanding but hardly great sympathy. The core of the Heretical Essays traced a “history of the soul”87 from Ancient Greece to the modern era, highlighting the struggle against decadent subservience to creaturely life. Here Patočka’s exemplar was Socrates, whose maieutic questing was appropriated and revised by phenomenology as the eidetic method 83

Reaganites preferred to see dissidents as freedom fighters advocating Western liberalism and ignore their warnings about the technocratic similarities between West and East. 84 Patočka, Heretical Essays in the Philosophy of History, 61. 85 Ibid., 116. 86 See, in particular, Erazim Kohák and Aviezer Tucker. As usual with Patočka, the transmission of the Heraclitean polemos likely came through Heidegger. 87 Patočka, Heretical Essays in the Philosophy of History, 103.

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essential to problematising the world and cultivating responsibility. Yet Socrates lived – and, more germane, died – at a moment when the Greek polis was striferidden and failing. The Hellenism that replaced it spread Greek idols across Eurasia (a project furthered by the Romans), demonstrating a schism at the heart of the Attican experience. While the Mediterranean empires fostered a spiritual impulse, their unity took the form of political domination, and the loyalty they demanded was no longer that of free citizens to an ideal good but of subjects to a positive state embodying good on earth. The Athenian epimeleia tēs psūches [care for the soul] slipped into the duality of subjective domination and objective subservience. And while latter-day neo-Platonism preserved a human relation to the mysterium, it also set the stage for the progressive removal of goodness and responsibility from the human realm. Christianity cinched this departure. If, on the one hand, Christian care called the soul to higher responsibility, it also cast the source of goodness wholly outside of the world and, in turn, threw the individual back on himself as individual, rather than as a citizen realising the Good through worldly social responsibility. Indeed, the world itself and the society of men were denigrated as temptations drawing one from divine regard. But as Husserl and Heidegger, so Patočka: it was only in the modern age that this dialectic utterly gave way to dominance. Modern technoscience, for all its achievements, inaugurated an age of meaninglessness, when man grew “estranged from any personal and moral vocation”.88 A “cult of the mechanical” replaced care for the soul, and man became a force majeure, not a free moral agent; savagely deployed in two world wars where Europe died along with its millions. Yet Patočka found a desperate glimmer in this battlefield demise. For the loss of all sense, the devastation of life and thought, shook some bold people from torpor and led them to protest the rule of death and join in the effort to renew man’s ethical vocation. This “solidarity of the shaken [solidarita otřesených]” allowed some men to understand “what life and death are all about”.89 And here Patočka’s narrative returned to its start. For the modern age, in effect, threw men back into pre-history, into a situation in which truths were externally imposed and man accepted alien forces rather than embrace his true vocation to question and co-create the world. History had ceased, but it might yet start again. And phenomenology became an agent of this renewal; a new philosophy of “living in truth [žít v pravdě]”, to invoke Patočka’s formula, which Havel later

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Ibid., 111. Ibid., 134–136.

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made famous.90 As in ancient times, humanity needed a renaissance of truth and meaning. This renewal would come from men prepared to face the open world and sacrifice themselves in the name of a higher good – the final expression of freedom from the tyranny of life and death and a rejection of the status of object. The act of sacrifice could shake others as well, bringing them face-to-face with human freedom and possibility. Only sacrifice could re-launch history, by 91 re-dedicating men to “the shaken certitude of pre-given meaning”. Like Marx, Patočka turned Hegel on his head: rather than the end of history, he called for history’s return. Conclusion “We always take hold of liberty,” wrote a young Patočka in 1934, “in a historical situation, while becoming what we are, unshakable, stronger than the world; by the act of making a decision, the human exceeds the world without leaving it.”92 In 1977, after a career thwarted by Czechoslovakia’s praetorian guards, he made a fatal decision to defend human rights against a regime that preached justice and practised violence. Their invocation stood in some tension to his open-ended advocacy of freedom; for a commitment to the new human rights “utopia”, with its minimalist but fixed metaphysics of human essence, seemed to limit transcendental problematicity. 93 Or perhaps the tension comes with our current understanding of rights, for Patočka may have meant nothing more by adopting the term than the defence of a negative metaphysical openness, whereas we understand the assertion of a particular liberal program. At any rate, if the letter of human rights law ill-accorded an open metaphysics, the act of protest surely fit Patočka’s philosophy in spirit: among a community of dissidents determined to resist the abasement of their fellows, he sacrificed his safety to prompt a moral response among citizens, acknowledging by his example that humans might transcend any historical hour.

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Patočka, Plato and Europe, 26. Patočka, Heretical Essays in the Philosophy of History, 118. 92 Patočka, “Quelques remarques sur les concepts d’histoire et d’historiographie [Some Remarks on the Concepts of History and Historiography]”, 152. 93 On human rights as a utopia, see Moyn, The Last Utopia: Human Rights in History (Cambridge: Harvard, 2010). 91

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Works Cited Blecha, Ivan. Jan Patočka. Olomouc: Votobia, 1997 Bruzina, Ronald. Edmund Husserl and Eugen Fink: Beginnings and Ends in Phenomenology, 1928–1938. Yale Studies in Hermeneutics. New Haven & London: Yale University Press, 2004 Chvatík, Ivan. The Heretical Conception of the European Legacy in the Late Essays of Jan Patočka. Center for Theoretical Study: The Institute for Advanced Studies at Charles University and the Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic. CTS03-14. Prague: Center for Theoretical Study, 2003 Chvatík, Ivan. Prolegomena to a Phenomenology of the Meaning of Human Life in the Late Essays of Jan Patočka. Center for Theoretical Study: The Institute for Advanced Studies at Charles University and the Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic. CTS-04-18. Prague: Center for Theoretical Study, 2004 Chvatík, Ivan. The Responsibility of the ‘Shaken’: Jan Patočka and his ‘Care for the Soul’ in a ‘Post-European World. Center for Theoretical Study: The Institute for Advanced Studies at Charles University and the Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic. CTS-09-06. Prague: Center for Theoretical Study, 2009 Chvatík, Ivan. “Jan Patočka.” A Companion to the Philosophy of History and Historiography. Ed. Aviezer Tucker. Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell, 2009, 518–528 Chvatík, Ivan. Jan Patočka and his Concept of an ‘A-subjective’ Phenomenology. Center for Theoretical Study: The Institute for Advanced Studies at Charles University and the Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic. CTS-05-03. Prague: Center for Theoretical Study, 2005 Crépon, Marc. Altérités de l’Europe [Othernesses of Europe]. Paris: Galilée, 2006 Findlay, Edward. “Appendix: Patočka’s Reception in the English-language Literature.” Caring for the Soul in a Postmodern Age: Politics and Phenomenology in the Thought of Jan Patočka. New York: State University of New York Press, 2002, 185–205 Findlay, Edward. Caring for the Soul in a Postmodern Age: Politics and Phenomenology in the Thought of Jan Patočka. New York: State University of New York Press, 2002 Fink, Eugen, and Jan Patočka. Briefe und Dokumente, 1933–1977 [Letters and Documents, 1933–1977]. Freiburg, Munich: Alber, 1999 Gasché, Rodolphe. Europe, Or the Infinite Task: A Study of a Philosophical Concept. Meridian: Crossing Aesthetics. Stanford, California: Stanford University Press, 2009 Gubser, Michael. “The Terror and the Hope: Jan Patočka’s Transcendence to the World.” Schutzian Research. 3 (2011), 185–202 Hagedorn, Ludger, and Hans Rainer Sepp, eds. Andere Wege in die Moderne: Forschungsbeiträge zu Patočkas Genealogie der Neuzeit [Other Ways to Modernity: Research Contributions to Patocka’s Genealogy of the Modern Era]. Würzburg: Königshausen and Neumann, 2006

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Michael Gubser Hagedorn, Ludger, and Hans Rainer Sepp, eds. Jan Patočka. Freiburg: Alber, 1999 Homp, Armin, and Markus Sedlaczek. Jan Patočka und die Idee von Europa [Jan Patočka and the Idea of Europe]. Berlin: MitOst e. V., 2003 Kohák, Erazim. “Jan Patočka: A Philosophical Biography.” Edited and translated by Erazim Kohák. Jan Patočka: Philosophy and Selected Writings. Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press, 1989, 1–135 Laignel-Lavastine, Alexandra. Esprits d’Europe: Autour de Czeslaw Milosz, Jan Patočka, István Bibó [Spirits of Europe: On Czeslaw Milosz, Jan Patočka, István Bibó]. Paris: Calmann-Lévy, 2005 Laignel-Lavastine, Alexandra. Jan Patočka: L’esprit de la dissidence [Jan Patočka: The Spirit of Dissent]. Paris: Michalon, 1998 Mezei, Balázs M. “Brentano, Cartesianism and Jan Patočka.” Brentano Studien. 5 (1994), 69–87 Moyn, Samuel. The Last Utopia: Human Rights in History. Cambridge: Harvard, 2010 Novotný, Karel. “L’ouverture du champ phénoménal: la donation ou l’interprétation? Sur le problème de l’apparaître comme tel chez Jan Patočka [The Opening of the Phenomenal Field: Givenness or Interpretation? On the Problem of Appearing as Such in Jan Patočka].” Phenomenology. Eds Hans Rainer Sepp and Ion Copoeru. Vol. Part 2, 2005, 545–572 Patočka, Jan. “An Attempt at Czech National Philosophy and its Future.” T. G. Masaryk in Perspective: Comments and Criticism. Eds Milič Čapek and Karel Hrubý. Ann Arbor: SVU Press, 1981 Patočka, Jan. Body, Community, Language, World. Ed. James Dodd. Chicago and La Salle, Illinois: Open Court, 1998 Patočka, Jan. “Cartesianism and Phenomenology.” Edited and translated by Erazim Kohák. Jan Patočka: Philosophy and Selected Writings. Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press, 1989 [1976], 285–326 Patočka, Jan. “Die Epochen der Geschichte [The Epochs of History].” Ketzerische Essais zur Philosophie der Geschichte und ergänzende Schriften. Eds Klaus Nellen and Jiří Němec. Stuttgart: Klett-Cotta, 1988, 183–203 Patočka, Jan. “Edmund Husserl zum Gedächtnis [In Memory of Edmund Husserl].” Jan Patočka. Eds Ludger Hagedorn and Hans Rainer Sepp. Freiburg: Alber, 1999, 268–269 Patočka, Jan. “Equilibre et amplitude dans la vie [Life in Balance, Life in Amplitude].” Liberté et sacrifice: Ecrits politiques. Grenoble: Millon, 1990, 27–39 Patočka, Jan. “Europa und Nach-Europa. Die nacheuropäische Epoche und ihre geistigen Probleme [Europe and Post-Europe: The Post-European Epoch and its Spiritual Problems].” Trans. I. Šrubař. Ketzerische Essais zur Philosophie der Geschichte und ergänzende Schriften. Eds Klaus Nellen and Jiří Němec. Stuttgart: KlettCotta, 1988, 207–287 Patočka, Jan. “Filosofie výchovy [Philosophy of Education].” Péče o duši: Soubor statí a přednášek o postavení člověka ve světě a v dějinách. Stati z let 1929–1952. První

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Jan Patočka’s Transcendence to the World díl: Nevydané texty z padesátých let. Eds Ivan Chvatík and Pavel Kouba. Sebrané spisy Jana Patočky. Svazek 1. Vol. I. Prague: Oikoymenh, 1996, 363–440 Patočka, Jan. Heretical Essays in the Philosophy of History. Trans. Erazim Kohák. Ed. James Dodd. Chicago and La Salle, Illinois: Open Court, 1996 Patočka, Jan. “Ideology and Life in the Idea.” Trans. Eric Manton. Studia Phaenomenologica: Romanian Journal for Phenomenology. VII (2007 [1946]), 89–96 Patočka, Jan. An Introduction to Husserl’s Phenomenology. Trans. Erazim Kohák. Illinois: Open Court, 1996 Patočka, Jan. “L’epique et le dramatique, l’epos et le drame [The Epic and the Dramatic, Epos and Drama].” Revue de métaphysique et de morale. 90.2 (1985) Patočka, Jan. “La surcivilisation et son conflit interne [Supercivilisation and its Inner Conflict].” Trans. Erika Abrams. Liberté et sacrifice. Grenoble: Millon, 1993, 99– 177 Patočka, Jan. “Leib, Möglichkeiten, Welt, Erscheinungsfeld [Life, Possiblities, World, the Field of Appearance].” Vom Erscheinen als solchem: Texte aus dem Nachlaß. Freiburg (Breisgau) and München: Alber, 2000, 87–100 Patočka, Jan. “Les fondements spirituels de la vie contemporaine [The Spiritual Foundations of Life in our Time] “ Liberté et sacrifice: Ecrits politiques. Grenoble: Millon, 1990 [1970s], 215–241 Patočka, Jan. “Negative Platonism: Reflections Concerning the Rise, the Scope, and the Demise of Metaphysics – and Whether Philosophy Can Survive It.” Edited and translated by Erazim Kohák. Jan Patočka: Philosophy and Selected Writings. Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press, 1989 [circa 1955], 175– 206 Patočka, Jan. “The Obligation to Resist Injustice.” Edited and translated by Erazim Kohák. Jan Patočka: Philosophy and Selected Writings. Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press, 1989, 340–343 Patočka, Jan. Plato and Europe. Trans. Petr Lom. Cultural Memory in the Present. Stanford, California: Stanford University Press, 2002 Patočka, Jan. “Quelques remarques sur les concepts d’histoire et d’historiographie [Some Remarks on the Concepts of History and Historiography].” L’Europe après L’Europe. Paris: Verdier, 2007, 139–153 Patočka, Jan. “Réflexion sur l’Europe [Reflection on Europe].” Trans. Erika Abrams. Liberté et sacrifice. Grenoble: Millon, 1993, 181–213 Poirier, Jean-Louis. “Patočka et les Grecs ou philosopher au fond de la caverne? [Patočka and the Greeks or to Philosophise at the Bottom of the Cave?].” Cahiers Philosophiques. 50 (1992), 167–200 Rezek, Petr. Jan Patočka a věc fenomenologie [Jan Patočka and the Subject of Phenomenology]. Prague: Oikoymenh, 1993 Rorty, Richard. “The Seer of Prague: Influence of Czechoslovakian Philosopher Jan Patočka.” Jan Patočka. Eds Ludger Hagedorn and Hans Rainer Sepp. Freiburg: Alber, 1999, 50–58

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Michael Gubser Rorty, Richard. “The Seer of Prague: Influence of Czechoslovakian Philosopher Jan Patočka.” The New Republic. 205.1 (1991), 35–40 Tassin, Etienne, and Marc Richir, eds. Jan Patočka: Philosophie, phénoménologie, politique. Grenoble: Millon, 1992 Tucker, Aviezer. The Philosophy and Politics of Czech Dissidence from Patočka to Havel. Pittsburgh: Pittsburgh, 2000

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Part III: The Three Movements of Human Existence

Phenomenology, History, and Responsibility for One’s Life Josef Moural This paper is a sequel to my “Husserl and the Future”,1 where I discuss Husserl’s conception of taking responsibility for one’s life. There, I attempted to show that this peculiar, quasi-moral demand, shared by late Husserl, early Heidegger, Patočka and others, is not a contingent and heterogenous addition to the more sober agenda of phenomenology; but rather that it quite naturally stems from the very core of Husserl’s phenomenological undertaking, from his study of temporality and constitution. In this paper, I will discuss the ways in which this conception plays a role in Jan Patočka’s philosophy. I begin by setting my topic within the larger context of the history of philosophy. Then, I shall summarise briefly my views on how the conception of responsibility for one’s life emerges within Husserl’s position. After that, I turn to Patočka and show what form that conception adopts in his theory of the three movements of human existence, and in his philosophy of history. Husserl and the Project of Critical Revision It is well known that there is a strong tendency in philosophy to question those beliefs and opinions that are usually taken for granted, that are being held without much – or any – thematised justification. One could argue that it is Socrates’ activity of such questioning that stands at the beginning of our philosophical tradition; and that, according to a very widely held view (to which I do not quite subscribe2), it is Descartes’ call for a systematic revision of all such uncritically

1 Moural, “Husserl and the Future: Temporality, Historicity and Responsibility in His Later Work (Essay 13)”, eds Cheung et al., Essays in Celebration of the Founding of the Organization of Phenomenological Organizations (www.o-p-o.net/essays/Moural Article.pdf, 2003), 1–5 2 See Moural, “Kognitivní psychologie a Lockův podíl na utváření novověké filosofie [Cognitive Psychology and Locke’s Contribution to the Shaping of Modern Philosophy]”, Filosofický Časopis 53 (2005); or Schütt, Die Adoption des “Vaters der modernen Philosophie” [The Adoption of the “Father of Modern Philosophy”] (Frankfurt am Main: Klostermann, 1998).

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adopted ‘contents’ that is the cornerstone of modern philosophy. And, of course, it is much the same spirit that animates Husserl’s thought. In order to understand better Husserl’s subscription to the project of critical revision of uncritically adopted contents, let me introduce three distinctions with regard to such a project. First, the critical inquiry can – but need not – be conceived as genetic; in other words, as examining contents on the basis of studying their genesis in the mind. This is a program that was launched by the first post-Cartesian generation; the two most influential figures connected with it are Arnauld and Locke (and with a bit of sympathetic digging, one could find anticipations of such a program in the Hellenistic schools, and perhaps even in Plato). Arnauld says clearly in the Port-Royal Logic that the question of the origins of our ideas is the most important one in philosophy. 3 Second, the project of critical revision can – but need not – be itself methodologically self-critical. To such self-criticism belong questions like: what kind of standpoint could there be from which all opinions can be criticised?; is not any criticism somehow bound to be based on some principles or data, if it is to be relevant? These are versions of the well known opposition between absolute and conditioned standpoint, connected with the notorious problem of the startingpoint in philosophy. Surely prejudices and uncritically accepted practices are something a philosopher has a tendency to criticise and reject – but it may turn out that without prejudices and uncritically performed practices there would be no way to begin and proceed with criticism. 4 Third, the project of critical revision of one’s opinions can – but need not – be conceived as having to do with the responsibility for one’s life. Obviously, uncritical acceptance of opinions and practices would make one very much a product of his or her social environment. This need not be the worst thing imaginable, if the social environment is nice enough; but (1) not all social environments are very nice; (2) without examination one simply could not tell which is which; and (3) there is a definite view according to which this would be, in an important sense, a disgrace regardless of the quality of social environment – a denial of what is the most precious task for us humans, i.e., to take personal responsibility for the 3 Arnauld and Nicole, Logic or the Art of Thinking (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), 17. 4 See Livingston, Hume’s Philosophy of Common Life (Chicago: The Chicago University Press, 1984); and Moural, Metafilosofie u Davida Huma: Zkoumání a přirozený svět [Metaphilosophy and David Hume: Inquiry and the Life-World] (Prague: Center for Theoretical Studies (CTS), 2006).

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goodness of one’s life (as constrained by circumstances, of course). As Socrates famously puts it, “the unexamined life is not worth living”.5 From the beginning of his philosophical career, Husserl emphasised the imperative of the radical examination of the seemingly obvious and well known; probably under the influence of his Berlin professor of mathematics, Karl Weierstrass. 6 But his understanding of such examination changed over time, and it is only the mature Husserl (and, of course, it was the mature Husserl that was influential for Heidegger and for Patočka) who understands the task as genetic and connects it with the problem of the responsibility for one’s life. On the other hand, while he considered the topic of methodological self-criticism of the task in question important,7 he was apparently reluctant to deal with it seriously, and ultimately he left it, unsolved, to posterity. 8 Constitution, Self-Clarification and Responsibility in Husserl Probably around 1916, Husserl discovered the role of protentions – of futureoriented unthematised intentions – in the sense-bestowing synthesis, and consequently in the constitution of each and every formation of sense we can ever be aware of. This might have led him – I am summarising here briefly what has been done more extensively elsewhere9 – to the question of the source of the content of protentions. This question points towards history, both in terms of past individual experience and of the socially accumulated tradition. And, of course, there is a serious danger connected with tradition, stemming from its distance and possible diversion from the original evidence. Thus, an inquiry into the traditions that are in some way formative for our own life projects becomes an important part of the all-important task of self-clarification. What makes the task especially urgent is the fact that nearly all of the sense-constitution within our 5

Plato, “Apologia Sokratis”, ed. Burnet, Platonis Opera (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1995), 17–42, 38a. 6 See Moural, “Edmund Husserl: Matematik filosofem [Edmund Husserl: The Mathematician’s Becoming a Philosopher]”, Vesmír 69 (1990). 7 See especially §13 of Husserl, Cartesian Meditations: An Introduction to Phenomenology (The Hague: Nijhoff, 1967). 8 This is best illustrated by the story of the Sixth Meditation. According to §13 and §63 of the ibid. it was meant to be the peak of the project, but Husserl himself never brought it to a satisfactory enough shape and subsequently abandoned it for good. 9 See Moural, “Husserl and the Future: Temporality, Historicity and Responsibility in His Later Work (Essay 13)”.

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intentional life is performed anonymously; which is at odds with our normal understanding of the responsibility for the life one leads. With regard to what Husserl says about the task of critical self-clarification, we can see that there is a shift between the Cartesian Meditations and the Crisis. (I focus here on the mature Husserl and leave out the previous shift towards a genetic conception of self-clarification, corresponding to our first distinction). The shift between the Cartesian Meditations and the Crisis corresponds to our third distinction: while in the Cartesian Meditations, self-clarification is demanded for the sake of doing philosophy properly (i.e., resisting the misguiding tendencies stemming from uncritical acceptance of traditional views), in the Crisis the concern is not only cognitive, but rather – and emphatically – it is the concern for the guidance of our lives. Let me quote a few characteristic passages. In the Cartesian Meditations, after some laments concerning the then-current situation in philosophy, Husserl suggests that such a pitiful state of philosophy occurs because “the radicalism of philosophical self-responsibility has been lost”; and suggests that the demand for the “absolute self-responsibility of philosophy belongs to the fundamental sense of the genuine philosophical project”.10 And, in the last section of the book, Husserl concludes: “There is but one radical selfclarification, namely the phenomenological. Radical self-clarification…is inseparable from the phenomenological method in the form of transcendental reduction, intentional self-explication of the transcendental ego….”11 On the other hand, in the Crisis, Husserl clearly emphasises the life-relevance of the critical inquiry. He suggests (and you may wish to remember this formulation, for we shall find a very similar one in Patočka’s lectures on Socrates) that a man’s “true being is not something he always already has, with the self-evidence of the ‘I am’, but something he only has and can have in the form of the struggle for his truth, the struggle to make himself true”.12 While the cognitive aspect of such struggle is in no way abandoned, it is now subordinated to the human “capacity to bestow both one’s individual and common human existence a sense”.13 10

Husserl, Cartesian Meditations: An Introduction to Phenomenology, 6, translation modified. 11 Ibid., 153, translation modified 12 Husserl, The Crisis of European Sciences and Transcendental Phenomenology: An Introduction to Phenomenological Philosophy, Northwestern University Studies in Phenomenology & Existential Philosophy (Evanston: Northwest University Press, 1970), 13. 13 Ibid.

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And in one of the texts appended to the Crisis, we read: “Human personal life proceeds in stages of self-reflection and self-responsibility from isolated occasional acts…to the stage of universal self-reflection and self-responsibility, up to the point of seizing in consciousness the idea of autonomy, the idea of a resolve of the will to shape one’s whole personal life into the…life of universal selfresponsibility.”14 We can see that, in this view, the phenomenological study of constitution emerges as not just one possible activity among others, but rather as the option that has to be pursued if we want to live responsibly. If we agree with Husserl that it is our protentionality that co-determines how we see the world and how we set our goals and projects, and if we agree with him that this is going on largely anonymously and without us noticing, the very first step towards assuming responsibility for the lives we live should be to try to uncover these anonymous, tacitly functioning intentional structures. Thus, Husserl’s turn towards cultural criticism in his later years is no caprice and no stepping off the straight path, explicable by historical circumstances; but, on the contrary, it is rooted directly in the very core of his mature position, in his doctrine of temporality and of constitutional analysis. The Three Movements and Critical Distance regarding the Already-Available With all this in mind, let us turn to Patočka. As far as I can tell, there is no trace in Patočka’s writings of his awareness of such a hypothetical reconstruction of late Husserl’s project as the one just summarised (and it is an open question how far it was clear to Husserl himself).15 However, we find in Patočka’s writings a number of motifs that are clearly connected with these issues. The most striking and recurrent among them is the contrast between the naive life, based on uncritically accepted opinions and practices, and the life based on critical examination. This topic figures rather prominently in a number of Patočka’s texts, start-

14

Husserl, “Philosophy as Mankind’s Self-Reflection: The Self-Realization of Reason”, trans. Carr, The Crisis of European Sciences and Transcendental Phenomenology: An Introduction to Phenomenological Philosophy (Evanston: Northwest University Press, 1970), 335–342, 338. 15 Klaus Held made this point, helpfully, in his discussion of my paper Moural, “Husserl and the Future: Temporality, Historicity and Responsibility in His Later Work (Essay 13)”at the OPO conference in Prague, 2002.

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ing in the mid-1930s and culminating in the Heretical Essays on the Philosophy of History, from 1975. Let me first look at how Patočka treats this in his important theory of the three movements of human existence, developed between 1965 and 1975.16 As you may know, Patočka’s texts on this topic are difficult and not entirely mutually consistent. And even if we focus solely on any one of them, it seems that Patočka is pursuing a number of distinct aims at the same time; that he wants to make his theory of three movements a knot in which a number of quite different philosophical threads are brought together. Thus, the following exposition is not meant as an attempt at an exhaustive analysis, but only as a clarification of a single aspect of the theory (whether it is the core aspect, or perhaps the one most fruitful for further philosophical use, it is too early to say).

16 The seven main texts containing versions of the three-movements theory are Patočka, “K prehistorii vědy o pohybu: Svět, země, nebe a pohyb lidského života [Notes on the Prehistory of the Science of Movement: The World, Earth, Heaven and the Movement for Human Life]”, Fenomenologické spisy II: Co je existence. Publikované texty z let 1965–1977 (Prague: Oikoymenh, Filosofia, 2009 [1965]), 192–201; Patočka, “Prirodzený svet a fenomenológia [The Natural World and Phenomenology]”, ed. Bodnár, Existencializmus a fenomenológia (Bratislava: Obzor, 1967), 27–71; Patočka, “Co je existence? [What is Existence?]”, Filosofický Časopis 17.5–6 (1969); Patočka, Tělo, společenství, jazyk, svět [Body, Community, Language, World] (Prague: ISE, Oikoymenh, Edice Oikúmené, ve spolupráci s Archivem Jana Patočky, 1995); Patočka, “Meditation sur monde naturel comme problème philosophique [Meditation on the Natural World as a Philosophical Problem]”, trans. Abrams, Le monde naturel et le mouvement de l’existence humaine (Dordrecht: Kluwer, 1988), 50–124; Patočka, Péče o duši: Soubor statí a přednášek o postavení člověka ve světě a v dějinách. Třetí díl: Kacířské eseje o filosofii dějin. Varianty a přípravné práce z let 1973–1977. Dodatky k Péči o duši I a II [Care for the Soul: A Collection of Essays and Lectures Regarding the Place of Man in the World and in History. Third Part: Heretical Essay on the Philosophy of History. Variants and Groundwork from 1973–1977. Supplements to Care for the Soul I and II], Sebrané Spisy Jana Patočky. Svazek 3 (Prague: Oikoymenh, 2002); and Patočka, “Postface de l’auteur à la traduction française du “Le monde naturel comme probleme philosophique” – Notes et fragments [Afterword to the French Edition of The Natural World as a Philosophical Problem]”, trans. Abrams, Papiers phénoménologiques (Grenoble: Millon, 1995). Two of these titles are available in English as Patočka, Body, Community, Language, World (Chicago and La Salle, Illinois: Open Court, 1998) and Patočka, Heretical Essays in the Philosophy of History (Chicago and La Salle, Illinois: Open Court, 1996); five are available in French and five in German. For details consult the online bibliography of the Jan Patočka Archives at http://www.ajp.cuni.cz/biblio.html.

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It is clear that in the life-project consisting of the combination of the first and second movements, tradition plays the decisive role. In the first movement, the already existing formations of sense are being accepted; and in the second, an active life is led on the basis of those accepted opinions and practices. Thus, Patočka says about this way of life, regarding the present things and tasks, “we are again [as in the first movement] under the sway of the…already existing. The second movement, although turned in a different direction [than the first], is thus…again covertly ruled by the past”.17 That is why the first movement is called the movement of acceptance, and the second the movement of reproduction or self-prolongation. The expression ‘self-prolongation’ here is ambiguous (probably intentionally): Patočka apparently has in mind that what gets reproduced or self-prolonged is also – if not primarily – the shared way of life; not only the lives of individuals. Concerning the third movement, Patočka is usually brief and cryptic, and also shifts positions more frequently than in the first two (even if most of the shifts have to do with the mutual division of labour – or rather, a redistribution of metaphors18 – between the second and the third). However, this much is clear: that, with regard to the present investigation, the decisive aspect of the third movement is that “the already existing ceases to determine what is possible”.19 Thus, the third movement is opposed to the aggregate of the first two; it is the most significant of the three, and it shows the life consisting of the combination of the first two movements as coming short of the full reality of human existence.20 In the appendix to the French translation of The Natural World as a Philosophical Problem, Patočka describes the third movement solely on the basis of the example of philosophical wonder: the thauma of Plato and Aristotle; the miracle of adopting a non-committal distance from what had previously been

17 Patočka, “‘Přirozený svět’ v meditaci svého autora po třiatřiceti letech [The Natural World Reconsidered Thirty-Three Years Later]”, Fenomenologické spisy II: Co je existence. Publikované texty z let 1965–1977 (Prague: Oikoymenh, Filosofia, 2009 [1969]), 265–334, 318. 18 Thus ‘sebevzdání’ (self-surrender) belongs to the second movement in the Heretical Essays (Patočka, Heretical Essays in the Philosophy of History. 19 Patočka, “‘Přirozený svět’ v meditaci svého autora po třiatřiceti letech [The Natural World Reconsidered Thirty-Three Years Later]”, 318. 20 Ibid., 329–330

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taken for granted; a distance which can be the starting point of a critical enquiry.21 Thus, we see that one rather clear and perhaps enormously fruitful aspect of Patočka’s theory of the three movements consists quite simply of the distinction between three basic ways of our dealing with formations of sense, each connected with one dimension of temporality. To sum up: (1) we take up formations of sense already available (past); (2) we pursue projects based on the formations of sense already taken up (present), and (3) we open ourselves to encountering formations of sense not yet available (future). Novelty in History and Self-Renewal So much for the abstract theory. We find a lot of further material relevant to our inquiry when we look at Patočka’s writings about history and the philosophy of history. However, before we can turn to these writings, we need to adopt a solution to a certain terminological problem in English: like Heidegger, Patočka distinguishes (not entirely consistently, but with a clear tendency) between Geschichte and Historie (between dějiny and historie in Czech), and what he is interested in are decisively Geschichte rather than Historie. And since in English we do not seem to have much choice here, I shall signal which of the two I have in mind by writing either ‘g-history‘ (for Geschichte) or ‘h-history’ (for Historie). What is the difference between them? We shall have an opportunity to encounter it in Patočka’s texts; but briefly and preliminarily stated, the topic of hhistory is anything in the past, and the topic of g-history is the past insofar as the third movement is involved (i.e., insofar as past happenings were making a difference, were bringing something new to the world). That is why Heidegger says that while h-history is oriented towards the past, g-history is oriented towards the future (since what arrives in the temporal happening of g-history is not just a prolongation of the already existing, but rather something that, at the very moment of arrival, is the entering of a future that is also new compared to what has been here so far).22 21 “Autorův doslov k francouzskému vydání ‘Přirozeného světa’”, in Patočka, Přirozený svět jako filosofický problém [The Natural World as a Philosophical Problem] (Prague: Československý Spisovatel, 1992 [1936]), 374–375. 22 See especially §13 of Heidegger, Grundfragen der Philosophie: Ausgewählte ‘Probleme’ der ‘Logik’ [Basic Questions of Philosophy: Selected ‘Problems’ of ‘Logic’], Gesamtausgabe 45, 45 (Frankfurt am Main: Klostermann, 1984).

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In any case, soon after returning from Freiburg (where he was a Humboldt stipendiary in the Summer Semester 1933), Patočka published, in 1934 and 1935, two papers on the concepts of g-history and historiography,23 in which he claims that: •

it is not appropriate to approach g-history through historiography, insofar as we do not look for the topic of that academic discipline, but rather for the phenomenon itself that gave rise to the need and creation of that discipline24;

•

g-history is not the result of directing our cognitive interest towards the past (for we are not undiscerningly interested in everything past);

•

g-history is such content in the past that is not indifferent to us (unlike last year’s proverbial snow);

•

we would not understand g-history if we were not beings that care for their being (and the space of its freedom, i.e., the environment of possible action); if we were pure intellect (for which everything is like last year’s snow).

Thus, Patočka advances from the question, ‘What is history?’, to the questions, ‘What are humans?’ and ‘What is it about humans that makes history possible?’; and his answer is – like Heidegger’s – that it is their historicity. While it is the case, says Patočka, that all the potentialities of our free behaviour are built out of what the past has set for us, it is also the case that by its thematisation we can adopt a distance from what is given; we can consciously pick up role models and topics of veneration. It is true that such decisions take place under the pressure of our worldly situation – i.e., of finitude and scarcity; and perhaps it is better to speak not about choice, but rather about response to a vocation, which addresses what the individual is, or rather what he or she is to be. What are not indifferent 23 Patočka, “Několik poznámek k pojmům dějin a dějepisu [A Few Notes on the Concepts of History and Historiography]”, Řád 2 (1934); Sebrané spisy Jana Patočky I, 35–45; and Patočka, “Několik poznámek o pojmu ‘světových dějin’ [A Few Notes towards the Concept of ‘World History’]”, Česká Mysl 31 (1935); Sebrané spisy Jana Patočky I, 35–45. I shall refer to the more accessible version, in Patočka, Sebrané spisy Jana Patočky [The Collected Writings of Jan Patočka] (Prague: Oikoymenh, 1996 onwards). 24 Patočka rephrases this point 40 years later in Patočka, Heretical Essays in the Philosophy of History, 28; Sebrané spisy Jana Patočky III, 42.

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to us in the past are above all the past’s thrown/free resolutions; the moments of self-finding in response to a vocation. That is, humans understand history because the world of history is a practical world essentially (eidetically) identical with ours, as a world of human action and of its environment – i.e., situations. The question, ‘Why did it happen?’, in ghistory, is not of the same kind as the analogical question in science; for in nature certain situational constellations lawfully produce their effects, while in ghistory there is no viable ‘explanation’, only the re-enactment of the relevant resolution (since it does not follow from the preceding situation; otherwise it would not bring something new), of course, in the environment of the powers that rule humans and their world. An important aspect of the study of the past is thus the study of the formation and transformation of such powers as rule and fulfil lives. Such powers are indeed possible only in certain historical situations; they belong always to the world of a certain historical community. The world is here understood as the pattern of potentialities that are open to a human being at a particular epoch, of potentialities by whose fulfilment he or she lives and to which he or she continually relates him- or herself in action. In order that a historian can interpret historical facts, he or she needs to understand the world to which these facts belong. Thus, the superficial h-history (a chronicle of past events) depends on the deep g-history, on the history of world-transformations in the sense just explained, which are what Patočka calls ‘world g-history’. For the sake of brevity, let me jump now directly to the late Patočka and to the Heretical Essays. You may remember the strange structure of exposition in the first two of the Essays. After 16 paragraphs of a crash course on Husserl, Heidegger and the Life-World, Patočka turns to the topic indicated in the title of the first essay – i.e., to pre-history. He characterises pre-historical life as a life in which ‘sense’ [Sinn] is given25; whose accepted sense is taken for granted. 26 It is life without problematisation; or more precisely, life in which each problematisation remains limited, momentary and subordinated to the unshattered dominance of the traditional, always-already existing formations of sense. Patočka shows how even the world of the first civilisations remains a world without ghistory; how even the annals or chronicles in such civilisations remain h-history

25 26

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without g-history.27 Why? Because the point of such chronicles and other writings is to support the continuation of the form of life in which sense is given and prescribed28: to petrify it and to oppose any innovation. 29 To sum up, prehistorical life is exactly the life limited to the combination of the first and second movements. (Patočka speaks here of the life limited to acceptance and transmission on the one hand, and defence and strengthening on the other). 30 When, in the third paragraph of the second essay, the turn to the topic of the origin of history is finally announced, what follows is a sudden switch to the abstract theory of the three movements. Apparently, in the Heretical Essays, the point of introducing the three movements is precisely to make clear how the origin of g-history is to be understood. However, the exposition gets complicated, because only the first two movements are discussed in abstracto; then, at the point where we expect Patočka to proceed towards the third movement, he returns to the description of the origin of history, from which we are perhaps expected to glean his latest abstract theory of the third movement. Patočka here contrasts life based on acceptance with life based on initiative – i.e., a life that freely determines itself: “here the life-form is not accepted as readymade, but rather renews itself entirely”.31 And again, more metaphorically: “Nothing of the previous life of acceptance remains as it was […] the modest yet secure and soothing meaning, though not lost, is transformed […] everything is cast in a new light. Scales fall from the eyes of those set free, not in order that they see new things, but that they see the old ones in a new way.”32 Such renewal, liberating from the rule of accepted tradition, occurs more or less simultaneously in the realms of praxis and of theory, and is marked by the emergence of politics on the one hand and philosophy on the other. 33 (It is also no coincidence that we also find the origins of historiography in classical Greece; for the emergence of politics generates the possibility of g-history, of the writing down and reflecting on the exciting happenings of the past – exciting because unpredictable and bringing forth the new). 27 One can watch, with sympathetic compassion, as the translator struggles with finding the English rendering of these sentences on the lower third of page 28 of the English translation; ibid., 28; Sebrané spisy Jana Patočky III, 42 28 Ibid., 29; Sebrané spisy Jana Patočky III, 42 29 Ibid., 35; Sebrané spisy Jana Patočky III, 47 30 Ibid., 29; Sebrané spisy Jana Patočky III, 42 31 Ibid., 38; Sebrané spisy Jana Patočky III, 479, translation modified 32 Ibid., 39; Sebrané spisy Jana Patočky III, 50–51, translation modified 33 Ibid., 40 and 41; Sebrané spisy Jana Patočky III, 51–52

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Conclusion: Socrates as the Model of Philosophical Self-Responsibility Let me conclude with a brief summary and a few further observations. As for Husserl, for Patočka reflections on history are no external and dispensable addition to serious philosophical work, no intellectual hobby; but are rather a field that must be investigated in order that we philosophers know who we are, and can proceed to do our job responsibly (i.e., not blindly determined by the inherited – accepted – set of problems and tools). Patočka himself wrote about these issues mainly in the 1930s and in the 1970s. There may be many possible explanations for this, but one seems rather obvious and uncontroversial: Patočka was not a man who would ignore the dangers of potential conflict with unscrupulous authorities.34 And since the views of history he favoured were at odds with both the Nazi and the communist ideologies, it seems quite a natural reaction that he would not publish seriously on the topic for most of the time between the Nazi occupation of Czechoslovakia and the 1970s (when he himself was already retired and his children grown up).35 Patočka’s theory of the three movements of human existence, formulated in the mid-1960s, certainly makes a difference with regard to how he formulates his views of history in the 1970s. But I suggest that we should not emphasise this difference too much, for we find also in the earlier writings views that quite clearly anticipate many of the views formulated in the Heretical Essays. Some further work will be needed to become clearer about the amount of agreement between the early and the late views. The core of Patočka’s position regarding the relationship between philosophy, history and responsibility is quite clearly inspired by Husserl and Heidegger. To live responsibly, one cannot remain simply the product of the traditions that one has been immersed in from infancy on. Traditions (or perhaps ‘tradition’ singular, for the pre-modern human) provide us with a choice of ready-made life projects; and within the framework of the first-and-second-movement combination we lives determined largely by the past, inauthentically and without the proper 34

See Moural, “Jan Patočka: A Bystander Turned Dissident”, eds Karsai et al., Classics and Communism: Greek and Latin Classics behind the Iron Curtain (Budapest, Ljubljana and Warsaw: Collegium Budapest, 2013), 107–128. 35 This is not to say that he did not write on the topic in private; but the manuscript notes that Patočka wrote without the prospect of publication – printed or in samizdat – tend to remain unfinished, both in terms of not quite reaching the end and in terms of not being brought to a reasonable degree of perfection.

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dimension of human dignity. The third movement, an adoption of distance with regard to the already given formations of sense, does not bring one into an entirely new realm: one does not see new contents (or, more precisely, one does not see only new contents, and new contents tend to be only tiny bits and areas against the background of the old – at least when they are new); but one does see the old ones in a new way. Patočka avoids quite well the danger of suggesting that the difference he is talking about is that between 100 per cent irresponsibility and 100 per cent responsibility. He does not manage to provide us with a way to estimate and/or discuss the degrees of responsibility between these extremes, and sometimes he seems to get somewhat too excited about the benefits of the third movement; but if there is a need to criticise him in this respect, I am inclined to think that we should be careful and distinguish between over-excited rhetoric and philosophical flaws. While there may be flawed arguments in Patočka’s writings on these topics (I believe I know of a few), I am convinced that the main point is very plausible and rather important. Patočka was fascinated by various aspects in which the figure of Socrates personifies the project of philosophical life: the very life-project of questioning and examining beliefs and practices that are taken for granted – i.e., that are held as products of anonymous sedimentation of already existing patterns of sense – comes to us as a part of a certain tradition. True, but Socrates escapes the danger of becoming just another dusty relic of the past by being very largely inaccessible to h-history. He did not write any doctrines, and the little we know well of his life does not seem to match the fascination that Socrates radiates throughout the epochs. In fact, Patočka argues, the most sober and scholarly way to understand Socrates consists in finding him not in the fragmentary and contradicting past evidence, but in our own future: in the experience of being shown mistaken or muddled about things we have taken for granted (the experience that traditionally is an important part of anybody’s initiation in philosophy). For Patočka, Socrates’ blessed life is evidence of the viability of the philosophical project. He has in mind the Socrates who shows that most people’s conviction that they know how to live (know what is good for them) “is a great and fundamental mistake”36; the Socrates who “invites people to have courage not just to live, but rather to know who it is within them that guides their lives”.37 36 37

Patočka, Sokrates, Souborné Samizdatové Vydání (Prague: 1977), 106. Ibid., 20

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Works Cited Arnauld, Antoine, and Pierre Nicole. Logic or the Art of Thinking. Trans. Jill Vance Buroker. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996 Heidegger, Martin. Grundfragen der Philosophie: Ausgewählte ‘Probleme’ der ‘Logik’ [Basic Questions of Philosophy: Selected ‘Problems’ of ‘Logic’]. Gesamtausgabe 45. Frankfurt am Main: Klostermann, 1984 Husserl, Edmund. Cartesian Meditations: An Introduction to Phenomenology. Trans. Dorion Cairns. The Hague: Nijhoff, 1967 Husserl, Edmund. The Crisis of European Sciences and Transcendental Phenomenology: An Introduction to Phenomenological Philosophy. Trans. David Carr. Northwestern University Studies in Phenomenology & Existential Philosophy. Evanston: Northwest University Press, 1970 Husserl, Edmund. “Philosophy as Mankind’s Self-Reflection: The Self-Realization of Reason.” Trans. David Carr. The Crisis of European Sciences and Transcendental Phenomenology: An Introduction to Phenomenological Philosophy. Northwestern University Studies in Phenomenology & Existential Philosophy. Evanston: Northwest University Press, 1970, 335–342 Livingston, Donald W. Hume’s Philosophy of Common Life. Chicago: The Chicago University Press, 1984 Moural, Josef. “Edmund Husserl: Matematik filosofem [Edmund Husserl: The Mathematician’s Becoming a Philosopher].” Vesmír. 69 (1990), 612–615 Moural, Josef. “Husserl and the Future: Temporality, Historicity and Responsibility in His Later Work (Essay 13).” Essays in Celebration of the Founding of the Organization of Phenomenological Organizations. Eds Chan Fai Cheung et al.: www.o-p-o.net/essays/MouralArticle.pdf, 2003. 1–5 Moural, Josef. “Jan Patočka: A Bystander Turned Dissident.” Classics and Communism: Greek and Latin Classics behind the Iron Curtain. Eds György Karsai et al. Budapest, Ljubljana and Warsaw: Collegium Budapest, 2013, 107–128 Moural, Josef. “Kognitivní psychologie a Lockův podíl na utváření novověké filosofie [Cognitive Psychology and Locke’s Contribution to the Shaping of Modern Philosophy].” Filosofický Časopis. 53 (2005), 23–32 Moural, Josef. Metafilosofie u Davida Huma: Zkoumání a přirozený svět [Metaphilosophy and David Hume: Inquiry and the Life-World]. Prague: Center for Theoretical Studies (CTS), 2006 Patočka, Jan. Body, Community, Language, World. Ed. James Dodd. Chicago and La Salle, Illinois: Open Court, 1998 Patočka, Jan. “Co je existence? [What is Existence?].” Filosofický Časopis. 17.5–6 (1969), 682–702 Patočka, Jan. Heretical Essays in the Philosophy of History. Trans. Erazim Kohák. Ed. James Dodd. Chicago and La Salle, Illinois: Open Court, 1996 Patočka, Jan. “K prehistorii vědy o pohybu: Svět, země, nebe a pohyb lidského života [Notes on the Prehistory of the Science of Movement: The World, Earth,

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Josef Moural Heaven and the Movement for Human Life].” Fenomenologické spisy II: Co je existence. Publikované texty z let 1965–1977. Sebrané spisy Jana Patočky. Svazek 7. Prague: Oikoymenh, Filosofia, 2009 [1965], 192–201 Patočka, Jan. “Meditation sur monde naturel comme problème philosophique [Meditation on the Natural World as a Philosophical Problem].” Trans. Erika Abrams. Le monde naturel et le mouvement de l’existence humaine. Dordrecht: Kluwer, 1988, 50–124 Patočka, Jan. “Několik poznámek k pojmům dějin a dějepisu [A Few Notes on the Concepts of History and Historiography].” Řád. 2 (1934), 148–156 Patočka, Jan. “Několik poznámek o pojmu ‘světových dějin’ [A Few Notes towards the Concept of ‘World History’].” Česká Mysl. 31 (1935), 89–96 Patočka, Jan. Péče o duši: Soubor statí a přednášek o postavení člověka ve světě a v dějinách. Třetí díl: Kacířské eseje o filosofii dějin. Varianty a přípravné práce z let 1973– 1977. Dodatky k Péči o duši I a II [Care for the Soul: A Collection of Essays and Lectures Regarding the Place of Man in the World and in History. Third Part: Heretical Essay on the Philosophy of History. Variants and Groundwork from 1973–1977. Supplements to Care for the Soul I and II]. Eds Ivan Chvatík and Pavel Kouba. Sebrané Spisy Jana Patočky. Svazek 3. Vol. III. Prague: Oikoymenh, 2002 Patočka, Jan. “Postface de l’auteur à la traduction française du “Le monde naturel comme probleme philosophique” – Notes et fragments [Afterword to the French Edition of The Natural World as a Philosophical Problem].” Trans. Erika Abrams. Papiers phénoménologiques. Grenoble: Millon, 1995 Patočka, Jan. “Prirodzený svet a fenomenológia [The Natural World and Phenomenology].” Existencializmus a fenomenológia. Ed. Ján Bodnár. Bratislava: Obzor, 1967, 27–71 Patočka, Jan. “‘Přirozený svět’ v meditaci svého autora po třiatřiceti letech [The Natural World Reconsidered Thirty-Three Years Later].” Fenomenologické spisy II: Co je existence. Publikované texty z let 1965–1977. Sebrané spisy Jana Patočky. Svazek 7. Prague: Oikoymenh, Filosofia, 2009 [1969], 265–334 Patočka, Jan. Přirozený svět jako filosofický problém [The Natural World as a Philosophical Problem]. Prague: Československý Spisovatel, 1992 [1936] Patočka, Jan. Sebrané spisy Jana Patočky [The Collected Writings of Jan Patočka]. Prague: Oikoymenh, 1996 onwards Patočka, Jan. Sokrates. Souborné Samizdatové Vydání. Prague, 1977 Patočka, Jan. Tělo, společenství, jazyk, svět [Body, Community, Language, World]. Ed. Jiří Polívka. Prague: ISE, Oikoymenh, Edice Oikúmené, ve spolupráci s Archivem Jana Patočky, 1995 Plato. “Apologia Sokratis.” Platonis Opera. Ed. Ioannes Burnet. Vol. 1. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1995, 17–42 Schütt, Hans-Peter. Die Adoption des “Vaters der modernen Philosophie” [The Adoption of the “Father of Modern Philosophy”]. Frankfurt am Main: Klostermann, 1998

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A World of Possibilities: The Cosmological World and the Movement of Existence in Jan Patočka Inês Pereira Rodrigues A World of Possibilities Jan Patočka, a student of both Husserl and Heidegger, aimed at developing a conception of the world that would correct the perceived mistakes of each of his teachers and would, above all, allow for genuine human action and freedom; Patočka searched for a conception of the world that could, in short, account for our relation with it. Patočka criticises Husserl’s conception of the life-world for being too bound to what is given positively, to presence. This seems to be a consequence of Husserl’s tendency towards a subjectivist phenomenology in which the privilege is awarded to what is given, to what is present. As a result, in Patočka’s view, Husserl’s phenomenology opposes, in too simplistic a form, the world as the total collection of factical entities on one side, and subjectivity on the other.1 What is missing in Husserl’s conception of the world, for Patočka, is the world itself as a project, as a complex of possibilities. “What is lacking in Husserl’s natural world isn’t anything ‘positive’, but rather the world itself, in its primordial project, that lies hidden behind the doxa.”2 For Patočka, the world is not a collection of given entities, but a field, or network, of possibilities. The world as a whole, or the world in its totality, must not be thought of as a result of the collection of given entities, but as what is presupposed by them. And what is presupposed in the appearing of individual entities is the event of their possibility.

1 Patočka, “La phénoménologie, la philosophie phénoménologique, et les méditations Cartesiennes de Husserl [Phenomenology, Phenomenological Philosophy and Husserl’s “Cartesian Meditations”]”, trans. Abrams, Qu’est-ce que la phenomenologie? (Grenoble: Millon, 2002), 149–188, 174J: “Chez Husserl, cette question très compliquée [l’évidence de l’étant subjectif et de l’étant du monde] est simplifiée de manière à opposer le monde comme totalité facticielle de tout ce qui existe, d’une part, à la subjectivité, d’autre part.” 2 Patočka, “Réflexion sur l’Europe [Reflection on Europe]”, trans. Abrams, Liberté et sacrifice (Grenoble: Millon, 1993), 181–213, 196. In quotations, emphasis is in the original unless otherwise noted.

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That is, we do not encounter a world of given entities, but an unfolding event. We participate in a situation where things show up for us as part of an activity, of a project. The computer, the couch, or my skates don’t appear for me as brute given things, but as invitations, as holders of ideas, plans, and other future openings. They are, themselves, possibilities for me. “The world is primordially the field of possibilities, not as represented, but insofar as they rule, in fact, in giving them sense, our actual experiences, our dealings with things and people.”3 The condition for the appearing of singular entities is the field of possibilities from which individual things appear for us. “[T]he world of Ideas should be understood as world in the sense of network (Gefüge) of possibilities.”4 The world is primordially, then, possibility; that is, it is a field of action and, therefore, of not-yet-being. This is, in contrast to an ontology of presence, a negative ontology. The world as an event in continuous unfolding has as its condition of possibility – that is, Being – the being-possible (which is non-being in an ontic sense); it is the negative incrusted in the given which allows for continuous becoming. Being, ontologically speaking, is not a given super-entity sitting above and which then determines all particular, lesser entities, but is, instead, beingpossible which is present as necessary in the appearing, but absent in given presence. If one does not understand the originary role of possibilities and, therefore, of the future, the primordial character of the world is lost, which is necessarily the case when one is fixed above all to the character of the given of the appearing.5

While this is remarkably close to Heidegger’s conception of the world (as well as Heidegger’s own criticism of Husserl), Patočka is also overtly critical of the view of this other professor of his, in the point that, for Heidegger, it is our project that opens up the possibilities of the world. For Patočka, instead, the project isn’t one we can throw onto the world, but is, rather, one we receive from it: “My hu heneka is, on the contrary, revealed to me from the outside, it is understood by me, it is one of the possibilities which the world is, a possibility which calls me, and from which I then understand myself.”6 3

Ibid., 194. Patočka, “Corps, possibilités, monde, champ d’apparition [Body, Possibilities, World, Field of Appearing]”, trans. Abrams, Papiers phénoménologiques (Grenoble: Millon, 1995). 5 Patočka, “Réflexion sur l’Europe [Reflection on Europe]”, 195. 6 Patočka, “Corps, possibilités, monde, champ d’apparition [Body, Possibilities, World, Field of Appearing]”, 118. 4

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We do not have the originary experience of projecting possibilities onto the world, but rather of being met, invited, provoked by possibilities. The world, the entities in it, appear as openings, paths we may travel, opportunities we may take up. There is a field of possibilities prior to the ones we develop, and in those we find ourselves already called for, participating. It is the world which is originarily a complex of possibilities, and my own project is received from it, rather than ‘projected’ onto it. My possibilities originate from the primordial event of the world, from its own unfolding. In Patočka’s words: It is not my being-possible which makes possibilities, instead my possibilities, together with the network of connections in which they appear, are given by the fundamental spatium of the possible – by the future – that is, by the negative, the not-yet as such.7

The world, here, is the complex of possibilities which is before and presupposed by our own project. To reverse this order of priority is still to be in a subjectivist stance, however much one may deny it – which is the case, according to Patočka, with Heidegger’s world, which is still ‘subjective’ insofar as its Being is rooted in our own. Heidegger qualifies of ‘philosophy’s scandal’ the fact that one has tried to prove the real existence of beings; but this is nothing more than a tour de force, a pirouette that tries to mask, with a verbal affirmation of realism, the fact that, deep down – given that the possibilities are subjectively projected –, he stays in an indeterminate idealism; things are known, it is true, but only in relation to the possibilities of my project.8

The Cosmological Alternative The concept of physis comes to us from the ancients and it expresses, precisely, the world as a whole and understood as an event, as becoming. Following Fink’s suggestion, Patočka seems to want to recover this concept.9 In the cosmological alternative of physis, the world isn’t opened by my existential project, but rather 7

Ibid., 121. Ibid., 125. 9 Patočka, “Meditation sur monde naturel comme problème philosophique [Meditation on the Natural World as a Philosophical Problem]”, trans. Abrams, Le monde naturel et le mouvement de l’existence humaine (Dordrecht: Kluwer, 1988), 50–124, 100: “Ne sera-t-il pas possible ainsi d’introduire dans le contexte ontologique le monde au sens fort du terme, le monde existant de manière autonome? L’ancienne phusis ne sera-t-elle pas restituée en tant qu’arché, gouvernant tout le singulier?”. 8

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the world is conceived as an opening of itself, prior to my own. In this case: “Things would be what they are, not from the secondarily human opening, but already from the primordial opening, of physis, of beings by Being.”10 The way things are, accordingly, would not be determined by our own understanding, but rather from an opening which is prior to and presupposes our own, and which is of the world. This opening is the possibility and realisation of the world itself, which is only then in relation to our being as realisation of possibilities. Physis is defined by movement. The movement of physis is a movement of individuation, of the particularisation of individual things from the original totality: “The manifestation of things, made possible by this framework, is not manifestation for the subject, but rather manifestation as entering into singularity, becoming.”11 Each particular thing would emerge and come to be, for a particular time, between emergence and disappearance, and then subside, or perish into nonbeing again (genesis-phtora). In one of his texts, Patočka describes the ancient physis: Originally, the Greek physis did not mean an aggregate of things but an activity, a majestic drama to which we ourselves belong and not as spectators, but rather that both we and things are expended for it and consumed in it. The emergence from the night of nonbeing, the interconnection and fusion of generation and perishing of beings which mutually, in their binding interrelation, make room for each other and destroy each other in turn, this primordial happening, primordial movement, and primordial process are the way in which the world emerges in Anaximander’s famous statement, in the reflections of his Ionian followers about generation and perishing, in Heraclitus’ vision of the world as fire.12

However, in Aristotle’s physis, the movement of the world’s becoming is possible only because of an unmoved mover. Being, understood ontologically – that is, as the condition of possibility for all individual beings – is conceived as stable and fixed and it is the ontic world of beings that is in movement. “What holds the

10

Ibid. Ibid. 12 Patočka, An Introduction to Husserl’s Phenomenology (Illinois: Open Court, 1996), 11

8.

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essence in Aristotle is immobile; movement only occurs in the midst of beings, not in what determines them, their Being.”13 But, for Patočka, adopting the idea of physis would mean also to radicalise the conception of movement. Across many of his texts and lectures, Patočka proposes a radicalisation of Aristotle’s concept of movement. This radicalisation would consist of removing the stable substrate which, in Aristotle, not only defines each particular being, but is itself responsible for and determining of the movement occurring within it. Radicalised movement would, instead, be understood as the realisation of the Being of that being. This renewed concept of movement is originally introduced to characterise human existence as the realisation of its own possibility. In extending the radicalised conception of movement to the originary case of the cosmos, we would remove the unmoved mover from the idea of physis, and physis itself, in its movement, would be ontological. Physis (Being) would be the movement of its own becoming (rather than the becoming, or manifestation, of Being). With Patočka’s movement, the coming-to-be and passing-away would not be within the ontic qualities and within beings, but of the Being of beings, and this movement would then be ontological – beings would emerge as what they are from the opening of possibility of the world. This is the world event(ing). Physis, or Being, is then, simultaneously – since these would be, really, the same – the event of continuous unfolding and the opening or condition of possibility for anything to appear, which is the non-being of possibility. Being would be its own event, movement.14 If Being is possibility, or being-possible, it would be, instead of movement commonly conceived from the perspective of energeia, from the stand point of what is, to think of a movement from what is-not: “dynamis is always thought by means of energeia – which means that the definition of movement by means of

13

Patočka, “Postface de l’auteur à la traduction française du “Le monde naturel comme probleme philosophique” – Notes et fragments [Afterword to the French Edition of The Natural World as a Philosophical Problem]”, 31. 14 Patočka, “Notes de travail [Work Notes]”, 296: “Concept de mouvement comme fondement – mouvement conçu, non pas comme mouvement de l’objet, mais comme oeuvre de la physis, avant toute objectivation ou subjectivation – la physis comme essence qui est événement, essence qui advient.”

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dynamis is a negative definition: a definition through the non-being that is the ‘not-yet’.”15 The priority is here given to the negative, to possibility. In this way, the unity of the ‘totality’ of the world does not sit statically above (or at its base below), but is in the appearing itself: it is a unity of the event. This is the negative ontology, of Being as the non-being of possibility. Rather than already being determined, Being comes to be in the event of its own manifestation: Being is determined in its appearing. Physis would then be the event of manifestation; a continuous dynamic of selfnegating for the event of continuous becoming. Renaud Barbaras describes it as a: [s]tabilized explosion because it is the actualization of a depth that retains it always in its profundity, and therefore it can never come out of its own irradiating in the form of fully positive beings, actualization of that the infinity of which excludes all veritable passage to act, and that is why the irradiating of Being is forever. 16

We ourselves would also participate in this primordial movement of physis, of becoming: singular entities emerging and individualising to then perish into nonbeing. However, our individuation is particular: unlike other particular things, we are not indifferent to our own being or the being of things in the world. Our movement of realisation is one which is characterised by understanding. Our realisation of possibilities involves a certain understanding of the world and of ourselves. Like all other things, our being would also be a movement moving from emergence to extinction, a beginning towards an end. The characteristic of the movement which is specific to us would be the non-indifference to being, the interest in being itself, and with it, for the being of beings in general, on the basis of a new manner in which Being conditions beings – not only in their emergence and disappearance, but as clarity which allows the meeting inside, within the universe, clarity which reveals the universe in its connection to life…17

Therefore, in the movement of our individuation we have a relationship to the world. We are in relation to the world as a whole, and this is a possibility of the world which we realise. Instead of merely emerging like other singular things, in our movement, the world’s possibility of individuation, and the things particu15

Patočka, “Leçons sur la corporeité [Lessons on Corporeality]”, 40. Barbaras, Le désir et la distance [Desire and Distance] (Paris: Vrin, 2006), 162. 17 Patočka, “Meditation sur monde naturel comme problème philosophique [Meditation on the Natural World as a Philosophical Problem]”, 101. 16

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larised, become a theme within it. In our own movement, we create, as it were, a relationship of the world with itself. And in doing so, we bring ‘clarity’ to the world’s movement. The world as a whole is, then, also the possibility of meaning, of how things appear; what is called ‘understanding’ or Verstehen. In grounding all possibilities on my existential project, Heidegger eliminates actual understanding as the possibility of understanding something that is external to me, that transcends me and that I may reach, (and, perhaps, in so doing, transform myself).18 In Patočka, because of the priority of the world, it seems we are faced with meaning as a world possibility, of which we are a part, in which we participate. In this way, Being explains itself not only in things, insofar as it makes individuation possible, reality as such, but also insofar as it makes possible the meeting with and unveiling of things, of realities in the midst of the universe. 19

Being is movement in these two ways – on the one hand, a movement of coming to be, of the world’s continuous becoming; and, on the other, a particular movement of individuation that relates back to the world in understanding. The Possibility of the Movement of Existence The movement of existence is a movement which, at bottom, is a relationship to the ‘world as a whole’; and hence, to the condition of possibility for meaning. The way in which we set ourselves apart from totality is a relating to the totality and to the singularities in it. We do not set ourselves apart only within the universe, like other things, in relation to them, but in relating ourselves to the universe as a totality.20

We can relate to the world through singularities, where we are concerned with particulars, or we can relate to the ‘world’ as such, meaning the world as a whole. To relate to the ‘world as a whole’ or the ‘world in its totality’ is to relate to the

18

Patočka, “Corps, possibilités, monde, champ d’apparition [Body, Possibilities, World, Field of Appearing]”, 118: “Heidegger dit: la compréhension (des possibilités) a en elle-même le caractère du projet: par la, il annule le caractère du Verstehen – la compréhension, c’est la saisie de quelque chose que je n’ai pas crée, du moins pas de manière phénoménale, de manière que cette ‘création’ se montre à moi.” 19 Patočka, “Leçons sur la corporeité [Lessons on Corporeality]”, 116. 20 Ibid., 115.

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world as the ‘opening’ of meaning. To relate to the world explicitly is to relate to this opening as possibility. In other words, the movement of existence can be, Patočka tells us, implicit or explicit. Our understanding or, better said, our relationship to understanding, can be one in which we are, or are not, aware of it. That is, we can be unaware that there is an ‘understanding’ that determines how things appear for us. When we relate to things, other people and our relationships as having a function and determinate value – as is described, for example, in the context of the ‘technical era’ – we are not aware that there is an origin to the manner in which these things appear to us; that there is an opening that determines the particular meaning of these things. One of Patočka’s recurring and most discussed themes is the three movements of existence. These are three possibilities of human existence. They are interimplicated and it seems we could not conceive of a human life without them, but they are also capable of being distinguished from one another. The first movement is often called the ‘movement of anchoring’ or accepting, and it has to do with our bonds, both affective and those of dependence upon the world for nourishment; the second is the ‘movement of self-extension’ and it has to do with the world of labour and competition, in which we realise tasks and roles; and the third, called the ‘movement of breakthrough’ is the movement of existence proper, where existence can realise itself as itself. 21 So, in the first movement of existence, things and the world would appear to us animated, vivified, by their affective textures; we see the things and people in the world from the perspective of our bonds and needs. In the second movement, there is an understanding of things in the world in the guise of function and value; we see ourselves and others as fulfilling certain roles, things serving as instruments to ends. In these two movements, our relationship to the whole is implicit, done ‘indirectly’, in a way. We relate to the particulars as having a certain meaning, and this is, of course, a relationship to the totality, in the sense of an opening of meaning, but this relationship is not explicit, or assumed. The third movement of existence, on the other hand, is the possibility of an explicit relation to the ‘world’. The world, understood ‘in its totality’, to use Patočka’s term, is the world understood ontologically, and, as we saw, this 21

For a lengthier description of these movements, see Patočka, “Meditation sur monde naturel comme problème philosophique [Meditation on the Natural World as a Philosophical Problem]”107–24.

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means as possibility. The explicit relationship of existence to the world would then be a relationship to ‘meaning’ as possibility. It is the possibility of realising a relationship to ‘meaning’ as the condition of possibility for any meaning at all. This movement of existence means ‘to open the opening’, so to speak. And we’d sit on the edge, it seems, the world suspended. An Illustration In the essay ‘What is Existence?’, Patočka writes about the multi-levelled character of life and uses some literary examples to explain what he means. 22 In fact, the works he mentions do share the character of having several possible ‘layers’ of reading. The literary works mentioned are Dostoevsky’s The Idiot, Thomas Mann’s Doctor Faustus, and Faulkner’s Wild Palms. Dostoevsky’s The Idiot, to begin with, is a novel we can read simply at the level of a plot of affections, with its intrigues and love affairs and other examples of human relations; alternatively, we can read it as a social critique, attacking the Russian society of the time, with its greed and hypocrisy. These two readings are like the first two movements of existence. Each opens the novel in a specific way, shining a meaning on the particular things and events in it, portraying them in a certain light. The third level, of Good and Evil, of Prince Myshkin as Jesus (and Rogozin perhaps as Judas?), rules silently in the novel, shining darkly in the background, and is only ever alluded to and never mentioned explicitly (the spiritual connotations within the novel are mainly expressed through the description of religious paintings hanging on the walls of rooms). This third level is the ‘opening’: it is the ‘understanding’, or ‘meaning’, which determines the particular meanings. And this is why it is significant that it is not referred to directly, but that it is, at same time, what truly animates the novel, what is bringing it to being. The other two novels share this same levelled structure, including the third, silent and unmentioned force, which nevertheless guides the novel as if it were its undercurrent. Thomas Mann’s Doctor Faustus is the story of a genius composer, his life and (strange) relations to others, and it is a reflection on Germany in the two Great Wars. What is guiding these particular meanings, these discussions and reflections on instantiations or particulars, is the grand reflection upon death, evil and the eternal soul. In Faulkner’s novel – which is actually two sto22

Patočka, Qu’est-ce que la phenomenologie? [What is Phenomenology?] (Grenoble: Millon, 2002), 247–248.

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ries – we can again engage with the book at the level of human affairs and the contingency of human action, or we can see instead the social and political structure that determines events, or the opening that allows, and thus can disallow, for any of this to be as it is: the overpowering force of Nature, like the river that washes over and carries in its current these other lower layers of particulars. The possibility offered by Patočka’s third movement of existence is to relate explicitly to this ‘understanding’, to this undercurrent, which influences how things and events appear to us. And from Patočka’s perspective, it is also to understand this force as being-in-possibility. Perhaps, unlike in these novels, the meaning that can determine the other particular meanings is not already decided and, more importantly, occurs in the relation that we are. As such, we participate in it and we are, therefore, responsible in that relation. The ‘Turn’ to Meaning ‘Existence’, then, realised in the most proper sense, is to relate explicitly to the world as a whole. In a cosmological vision, we are the possibility of this relationship of the world to itself. We are the world’s possibility of meaning; the way in which it can relate to itself and ask, and open, the question of meaning. As this particular aspect of the world, and insofar as that this is where our freedom lies, we are infinitely responsible. ‘Existence’ is being in a relation of understanding regarding ourselves and the world. But then, there is a paradox: if the world as a whole is prior to ourselves and it transcends us, the meaning is not ours, but should be received; at the same time, we are saying that we are the ones who are responsible for meaning. So, what is our freedom and what is our responsibility? Patočka speaks of the possibility of a ‘turn’. In the relationship to totality, which is the relation to meaning as an opening, as possibility, we can act, or be a turn; we can be the realisation that shifts how things are, their appearing. This turn, however, occurs within a field of which we are already a part, existing as that relation. Existence is precisely the relation, from within the world, to the world as such; that is, to the world as a whole. Therefore, the turn occurring in and from the opening seemingly must be the realisation of a possibility that was somehow already present, or possible, as a possibility. This is the paradox. But this is also the paradox that we face when first confronted with Patočka’s concept of ontological movement: ‘movement’ is the realisation of a possibility

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that only comes to be in its realisation. Our own possibility in the relationship to meaning is to realise a possibility and, in that realisation, bring that possibility to being. And that realisation is also the realisation of our own existence, our own movement. We are responsible for meaning, but in such a way that it is not the product of our whims and fancies, nor something we passively receive, but it is a work in which we participate and make happen with the world, as a part of the world that we are. In this case, our turn does not move us away from the world nor elevate us above it, but rather changes the world of which we are a part, moving it to clarity, always within it.23 We are, at last, the possibility of the world as possibility. And so, of a shift, of a promise. And this is a grand responsibility. Meaning is that which we ourselves should take charge of, that to which we should devote ourselves. We are its shelter and its reality, which no doubt also allows, given the opening to the being of others and of things which meaning has entrusted to our care, to hope to see appear a new life, to see, perhaps, something divine. 24

Conclusion Jan Patočka’s conception of the world, achieved both from reformulations of his teachers’ concepts, as well as through the central concept of ‘radicalised Aristotelian movement’, opens a dimension of the world as possibility. This dimension is intertwiningly of the world’s emergence, the individuation of entities, and our own understanding in relation to it. The world itself is in possibility, and we can come to understand it as such. To understand that is to open and realise the world explicitly as possibility, as an opening we can participate in, and through that participation transform, open wider. What we see from this is our own possibility of relating to meaning and to the world in an explicit manner; in short, of realising our utmost potential. And we see also, that in relating so that we can experience the world shining brighter, we bring to the fore its own breadth of possibility. 23 Patočka, “Meditation sur monde naturel comme problème philosophique [Meditation on the Natural World as a Philosophical Problem]”, 122. 24 Patočka, “Autour de philosophie de la religion de Masaryk [On Masaryk’s Philosophy of Religion]”, trans. Abrams, La crise du sens (Paris: Ousia, 1985), 139–216, 177.

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Works Cited Barbaras, Renaud. Le désir et la distance [Desire and Distance]. 2nd ed. Paris: Vrin, 2006 Patočka, Jan. “Autour de philosophie de la religion de Masaryk [On Masaryk’s Philosophy of Religion].” Trans. Erika Abrams. La crise du sens. Vol. I. Paris: Ousia, 1985, 139–216 Patočka, Jan. “Corps, possibilités, monde, champ d’apparition [Body, Possibilities, World, Field of Appearing].” Trans. Erika Abrams. Papiers phénoménologiques. Grenoble: Millon, 1995 Patočka, Jan. An Introduction to Husserl’s Phenomenology. Trans. Erazim Kohák. Illinois: Open Court, 1996 Patočka, Jan. “La phénoménologie, la philosophie phénoménologique, et les méditations Cartesiennes de Husserl [Phenomenology, Phenomenological Philosophy and Husserl’s “Cartesian Meditations”].” Trans. Erika Abrams. Qu’est-ce que la phenomenologie? Grenoble: Millon, 2002, 149–188 Patočka, Jan. “Leçons sur la corporeité [Lessons on Corporeality].” Trans. Erika Abrams. Papiers phénoménologiques. Grenoble: Millon, 1995, 117–129 Patočka, Jan. “Meditation sur monde naturel comme problème philosophique [Meditation on the Natural World as a Philosophical Problem].” Trans. Erika Abrams. Le monde naturel et le mouvement de l’existence humaine. Dordrecht: Kluwer, 1988, 50–124 Patočka, Jan. “Notes de travail [Work Notes].” Trans. Erika Abrams. Papiers phénoménologiques. Grenoble: Millon, 1995, 245–272 Patočka, Jan. “Postface de l’auteur à la traduction française du “Le monde naturel comme probleme philosophique” – Notes et fragments [Afterword to the French Edition of The Natural World as a Philosophical Problem].” Trans. Erika Abrams. Papiers phénoménologiques. Grenoble: Millon, 1995 Patočka, Jan. Qu’est-ce que la phenomenologie? [What is Phenomenology?]. Trans. Erika Abrams. Grenoble: Millon, 2002 Patočka, Jan. “Réflexion sur l’Europe [Reflection on Europe].” Trans. Erika Abrams. Liberté et sacrifice. Grenoble: Millon, 1993, 181–213

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Autonomy and Phenomenology: Patočka’s Approach Émilie Tardivel Autonomy and phenomenology: bringing together the two concepts might seem surprising, particularly in regard to post-Heideggerian phenomenology, which appears to have discarded the idea that man could be autonomous – that is, at the same time subject and object of the law. For the modern appraisal of autonomy, substantially mobilising the Greek heritage, phenomenology appears to have substituted a postmodern appraisal of heteronomy: a “heteronomy of freedom that the Greeks did not teach us”,1 regrets, in fact, Levinas. It is precisely this that explains the integration within post-Heideggerian phenomenology (e.g. Levinas, Henry, Marion) of a different heritage than the Greek one, namely the Biblical heritage. In this tradition it is not man, but God, who is the true subject of the law. Better yet: man becomes subject, which is to say responsible, only by answering the call of the law – God’s law. But couldn’t this phenomenological critique of autonomy become in return a critique of phenomenology itself? Indeed, as Alain Renaut explains in L’Ère de l’Individu: [I]f subjectivity is pure subjection [this seems to be a minimal account of Levinas’ idea] then how can it also be responsibility? Is it truly possible, in thinking responsibility, to set aside the reference to a horizon of autonomy? In this resides the clearest separation point between the tradition of criticism and this phenomenological tradition which, in certain ways, is so similar.2

How can man be responsible if he is totally subject to a law he did not establish; if he’s determined by a law imposed upon him from the outside? And even before asking about the ethical, juridical or political problems, exactly how philosophically legitimate is this idea of man? At the same time, doesn’t Renaut agree that phenomenology allows a better comprehension of the idea of autonomy, as his own critical approach (openly inscribed in Kant’s footsteps) consists in an “approach careful to fecundate phe-

1

Levinas, De Dieu qui vient à l’idée [Of God who Comes to Mind] (Paris: Vrin, 1998), 48. 2 Renaut, L’ère de l’individu [The Era of the Individual] (Paris: Gallimard, 2001), 256.

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nomenology’s results”?3 Simply and generally put, phenomenology’s result here is to have acknowledged the constitutive passivity of autonomy. Or, to put it differently, phenomenology’s result is to have made possible the distinction between autonomy and auto-foundation – a distinction already known to Kant himself, as shown in spite of themselves by critics of Kantian autonomy (e.g. Hegel, Cohen, Krüger). But autonomy does not transform itself in heteronomy. This is why Renaut asserts that: “within the idea of autonomy the openness to the other is already included”.4 The question is, then, to know whether phenomenology – more precisely, postHeideggerian phenomenology – can indeed fecundate its own results – autonomy ‘and’ phenomenology rather than autonomy ‘or’ phenomenology. In fact, why should heteronomy be appraised when autonomy can, or rather must, be defined, as Levinas puts it, as “compossibility of freedom and of the other”?5 Devoted mainly to Patočka, this paper will aim to show that the Czech philosopher, disciple of Husserl and Heidegger, manages to reconcile phenomenology and autonomy by conceiving autonomy as “compossibility of freedom and of the other”, and essentially as ‘compossibility of freedom and of the world’.6 With Patočka, phenomenology assumes again the idea of autonomy as a necessary and dynamic relation of man and world. ‘Before Husserl and Heidegger’: the Autonomy of the World A student of Husserl and Heidegger, whose seminars he had followed in Freiburg-am-Brisgau at the beginning of the 1930s, Patočka, still not a very well known philosopher, is not an epigone of either of his teachers. Starting around the end of the 1940s, he developed his own phenomenology, whose culminating point can be placed at the beginning of the 1970s. And, as Renaud Barbaras points out, this phenomenology is not situated beyond Husserl and Heidegger, but rather “before, namely in that unformulated place where they rejoin one an-

3

Ibid., 257. Ibid., 255. In quotations, emphasis is in the original unless otherwise noted. 5 Levinas, Autrement qu’être [Otherwise than Being] (Paris: Livre de Poche, 2001), 4

197. 6

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other”.7 What is, then, “that unformulated place” where Husserl and Heidegger rejoin one another? Patočka finds it throughout a dialogue with what he calls, at the end of the 1940s, Husserl’s idealism, and at the beginning of the 1970s, his subjectivism. What is this idealism or subjectivism critiqued by Patočka? In Descartes footsteps, it consists in creating an asymmetry between man and world; in asserting that man’s existence, more precisely the ego’s existence, is a certain truth, while that of the world is not. Husserlian idealism or subjectivism is the act that consists in asserting the ego, in opposition to the world, as a certain, necessary truth. And Husserl arrives at this conclusion not through hyperbolic doubt (whose procedure has already been contested by the history of philosophy) but at the end of the phenomenological ἐποχή, which consists in the suspension of all existence theses, that of the world as well as that of the ego, and in examining what resists this suspension (see Ideen I, §31–32). For Husserl, that which resists is precisely the ego, not the empirical, but the transcendental I, the I that does not come from existence, but makes it possible, and thus the I within which the meaning of the world is constituted. In Husserl’s approach, the world appears to be completely subject to the ego in the constitution of its meaning. As a transcendental ego, man would then be autonomous in regard to the world, while the world would be heteronomous in regard to man. For Patočka, though, this conclusion does not come from the phenomenological ἐποχή itself, but from an idealist or subjective presupposition that spans throughout Husserl’s philosophy. Indeed, if one truly considers the phenomenological ἐποχή, in its original sense of ἐποχή without reduction of the world to the ego, what is its result? If one starts without presupposing any concept of the world, the phenomenological ἐποχή shows that, as Patočka writes, “the world thesis is just as un-modifiable in the reduction as is the thesis of the I”. The quote continues as follows: “I regard the world as a phenomenon, but in the meantime I see that if I certainly can replace and modify every inner-worldly being, I can never do the same for the world itself, the world in totality”.8 Thus, 7

Barbaras, Le mouvement de l’existence [The Movement of Existence] (Chatou: La Transparence, 2007), 30. 8 Patočka, “Phänomenologie als introspektive Bewußtseinslehre und als Lehre von der Erscheinung: Das Problem einer Epochè [Phenomenology as an Introspective Theory Consciousness and as a Theory on the Appearing of What Appears: The Problem of an Epoché]”, Vom Erscheinen als solchem: Texte aus dem Nachlaß (Freiburg (Breisgau) and München: Alber, 2000), 233–244; Fr. trans. Patočka, “La phénoménologie comme

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the phenomenological ἐποχή shows that the existence of the world is just as certain, necessary, as the existence of the I, but this is attained, of course, only by not presupposing any definition of the world later to be verified in and through the ἐποχή. The world uncovered by the ἐποχή is not a total objective unity, in other words the totality of real and possible objects that is the work of the transcendental I. The world uncovered by the ἐποχή is not an empirical totality, but a transcendental totality, not in the sense of “the subjects’ work”, but in the sense of “the field one must presuppose as the founding (Grund) of all clarity”.9 In Patočka’s approach, hence, the world is not completely subjected to the I in the constitution of its meaning. Meaning is the common work of both man as a transcendental I, and of the world as a transcendental totality – each being henceforth as autonomous as the other. Patočka thus rediscovers, at the conclusion of his criticism of Husserlian subjectivism, a field in which he sees the truth of Husserl’s project: “the intention of the phenomenological reduction was in reality aimed at this field, the appearing as such (das Erscheinen als solches), and not the ‘subjective’ in the sense of lived experience.”10 The phenomenological ἐποχή liberates, thus, ‘the appearing as such‘ by giving it back its autonomy in regard to that which appears; it liberates the world as such by giving it back its autonomy in regard to all beings. Meanwhile, the term ‘autonomy’ does not here account for a distinction that Patočka establishes in both German and Czech, in order to characterise the autonomy of doctrine de la conscience introspective et comme théorie de l’apparition [Phenomenology as an Introspective Theory Consciousness and as a Theory on the Appearing of What Appears: The Problem of an Epoche]”, trans. Abrams, Papiers phénoménologiques (Grenoble: Millon, 1995), 235–244. 9 Patočka, “Der Subjektivismus der Husserlschen und die Forderung einer asubjektiven Phänomenologie [Husserl’s Subjectivism and the Call for an Asubjective Phenomenology]”, eds Nellen, Němec and Srubar, Die Bewegung der Menschlichen Existenz (Stuttgart: Klett-Cotta, 1991 [1971]), 286–309; Fr. trans. Patočka, “Le subjectivisme de la phénoménologie Husserlienne et l’exigence d’une phénoménologie asubjective [The Subjectivism of Husserlian Phenomenology and the Requirement of Asubjective Phenomenology]”, Qu’est-ce que la phénoménologie? (Grenoble: Millon, 1988a), 217–248. Henceforth, reference to French translation provided with page numbers in the French translation followed by the original page numbers in square brackets. 10 Patočka, “Le subjectivisme de la phénoménologie Husserlienne et l’exigence d’une phénoménologie asubjective [The Subjectivism of Husserlian Phenomenology and the Requirement of Asubjective Phenomenology]”, 303 [239].

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the world as opposed to the autonomy of beings. The translation into French of the two texts devoted to the criticism of Husserlian subjectivism might involve in this respect a contradiction absent in the originals. Thus, in the translation of the 1970 text, the world’s autonomy as phenomenal field is mentioned three times: “the problem of the autonomous phenomenal field”; “conceiving the phenomenal sphere as something autonomous”; “considering the phenomenal field in its autonomy”.11 Quite the contrary, in the translation of the 1971 text, one can read that “The phenomenal field is, in its principle, devoid of autonomy”, “the phenomenal field has absolutely no autonomous being”12; and then again, in the translation of the 1973 seminar: “the phenomenon must remain phenomenon, an autonomous domain, non-real, of the universe”.13 This contradiction is completely dissolved if one goes back to the original writings. In German and in Czech, Patočka distinguishes between two concepts: autonomy as Eigenständigkeit or svébytnost (the concept that Patočka employs when asserting the autonomy of the world in the 1970 text or in the 1973 seminar); and autonomy as Autonomie or autonomie (the concept that he uses when denying the world’s autonomy in the 1971 text). How should one comprehend the distinction between these two concepts? Patočka explains it in the 1971 text, when he states: “The phenomenal field is, in its principle, devoid of autonomy (autonom); it is impossible as absolute being (absolut Seiendes), closed on itself; all its essence consists in manifesting something else”. And the quote continues 11 Patočka, “Der Subjektivismus der Husserlschen und die Möglichkeit einer “asubjektiven” Phänomenologie [Husserl’s Subjectivism and the Possibility of an Asubjective Phenomenology]”, respectively 280 and 281; Fr. trans. Patočka, “Le subjectivisme de la phénoménologie Husserlienne et la possibilité d’une phénoménologie ‘asubjective’ [Husserl’s Subjectivism and the Possibility of an Asubjective Phenomenology]”, respectively 208, 209 and 210. Henceforth, reference to French translation is provided with page numbers in the French translation followed by the original page numbers in square brackets. 12 Patočka, “Le subjectivisme de la phénoménologie Husserlienne et la possibilité d’une phénoménologie ‘asubjective’ [Husserl’s Subjectivism and the Possibility of an Asubjective Phenomenology]”, 239 [302–303]. 13 Patočka, “Platón a Evropa [Plato and Europe]”, eds Chvatík and Kouba, Péče o duši: Soubor statí a přednášek o postavení člověka ve světě a v dějinách. Druhý díl: Stati z let 1970–1977. Nevydané texty a přednášky ze sedmdesátých let (Prague: Oikoymenh, 1999 [1973]), 149–355, 178; Fr. trans. Patočka, Platon et l’Europe [Plato and Europe] (Lagrasse: Verdier, 1997), 41. Henceforth, reference to French translation is provided with page numbers in the French translation followed by the original page numbers in square brackets.

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as follows: “If the phenomenal field has no autonomous being, it has, nonetheless, a being of its own (eigenes Sein), which consists precisely in its manifestness”.14 The world’s autonomy is not the autonomy of self-enclosed beings, the autonomy of a monad, but is rather the autonomy of a being whose essence consists in manifesting something other than itself. As opposed to absolute beings (beings that deploy only their essence in what they manifest), the world deploys the essence of what it manifests in what it manifests. The world is the place, writes Patočka, “where beings of both an egological or non-egological nature are shown in what they are, where the two types of being can meet”.15 As Autonomie, self-enclosure, autonomy expresses precisely the opposite of the world, as the latter is not the closure, but the opening of being. And it is this opening that is named by autonomy as Eigenständigkeit. Eigenständigkeit, autonomy as outflow, as exit out of oneself, expresses the world as having its own being (eigenes Sein), and as manifesting other things in their own being. More precisely, it expresses the world as being the being itself, since “Within the own being, it is the being (Sein) which is at work”,16 and not the own (Eigen). To characterize the world, Patočka employs, thus, a concept of autonomy (Eigenständigkeit or svébytnost and not Autonomie or autonomie) in which openness to the other is already included. Hence, the world is not being in the metaphysical sense, in the sense of absolute, self-enclosed beings, but being in the phenomenological sense, in the sense of appearing, opened to the other. Man’s Autonomy as Answer to the Call of the World The preceding analyses show that Patočka identifies the world, in which he sees the truth underlining Husserl’s project, at the level, uncovered by Heidegger, of the comprehension of being; which is that space where “we receive, ourselves as well as the appearing things, the determinations that are our own”.17 For 14 Patočka, “Le subjectivisme de la phénoménologie Husserlienne et l’exigence d’une phénoménologie asubjective [The Subjectivism of Husserlian Phenomenology and the Requirement of Asubjective Phenomenology]”, 239 [302-303]. 15 Patočka, “Le subjectivisme de la phénoménologie Husserlienne et la possibilité d’une phénoménologie ‘asubjective’ [Husserl’s Subjectivism and the Possibility of an Asubjective Phenomenology]”, 208 [280]. 16 Ibid., 212 [283]. 17 Patočka, “Le subjectivisme de la phénoménologie Husserlienne et l’exigence d’une phénoménologie asubjective [The Subjectivism of Husserlian Phenomenology and the Requirement of Asubjective Phenomenology]”, 247 [308-309].

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Patočka, the unformulated place where Husserl and Heidegger are rejoined is the world as comprehension of being. Nevertheless, his criticism of Husserlian subjectivism does not conclude itself in a return to Heidegger’s philosophy. It ends, on the contrary, in surpassing Heideggerian ontology, namely through a critique of the privilege given to the problem of being: “the problem of being as formulated by Heidegger is a premature problem that needs to be entirely reconsidered from the standpoint of the appearing”,18 writes Patočka. Here, of course, the object is not to deny Heidegger’s surpassing of the scholastic ontology, in the modern sense of the word (because being is no longer viewed as the general structure of beings, but as their mode of apparition). What is at issue is criticising the maintained subjection of the problem of appearing to the problem of being, which exposes the comprehension of being to the risks of formalism and subjectivism. For Patočka, appearing must be viewed as the way of accessing being. That is precisely why the world becomes, for Patočka, the key to a non-metaphysical, phenomenological interpretation of autonomy: “The caring for the soul [the autonomy] comes in its core from this proximity between man and the appearing [the world]”.19 Indeed, if the appearing becomes the way of accessing being, and not the other way around, then relations are also inverted (at least in respect to Sein und Zeit): it is no longer man’s relation to himself (the autonomy) that is the base for man’s relation to the appearing (the opening to the world), but it is man’s relation to the appearing (the opening to the world) that establishes man’s relation to himself (the autonomy). This, however, does not mean that the appearing determines man in the sense of determinism. Far from implying man’s alienation, the autonomy of the world implies, rather, his liberation, his becoming autonomous; as the world unveils man’s essence to himself, thus allowing man to determine himself according to the law of his own essence, which is being autonomous. Being autonomous does not necessarily mean determining oneself ‘by oneself’ according to one’s own essence, but means first and foremost determining oneself according to one’s own essence, whether it be ‘by oneself’ or ‘by something other than oneself’. For Patočka, man is autonomous when he determines himself ‘by the world’ according to the law of his own essence. The fact that the relation to the world is the base for the relation to oneself does not imply that the world completely determines man according to a law imposed upon him from the outside; it means only that man’s autonomy is truly nothing but an answering to the call of the world: 18 19

Patočka, Platon et l’Europe [Plato and Europe], 187 [310]. Ibid., 35 [172].

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“subjectivity’s mission towards the world obviously implies the incompletion of this clarity, but also means a ‘call of the world’ to subjectivity, a call to clarity”,20 to a clarity about the world as well as about oneself. To quote Patočka again: “the subjective body (Leib), as egological, answers to a phenomenal call, it satisfies, or tries to satisfy the demand of the appearing thing that is opened before us (and within it, that which is to be accomplished is announced as an ‘objective’ character, as dissatisfaction)”.21 And the dissatisfaction that is at the base of man’s becoming autonomous is nothing but the trace of the appearing, the trace of the unity starting from which the ontological difference must be conceived. Patočka replaces, thus, Heidegger’s definition of man as Hirt des Seins, ‘being’s shepherd’, with an even more general one, which could be expressed in the following terms: man as Hirt des Erscheinens, ‘appearing’s shepherd’; or as Hirt der Welt, ‘world’s shepherd’. The relation between man and world is, for Patočka, a relation between two autonomies,22 or even a necessary relation between two autonomies, as the world’s autonomy already comprises in itself the openness to man,23 and man’s autonomy already comprises the openness to the world.24 Even though the world regains its autonomy, and with it its fundamentally un-constitutable dimension, man does not become, as such, a simple moment of the world. He remains the world’s condition of realisation: man is, asserts Patočka, an “accomplisher of reality (Realisator)”,25 or a “conditio realis”,26 which is to say he is “a reality with-

20

Patočka, “Analýza vnitřního vědomí času [Analysis of Internal TimeConsciousness]”, Úvod do Husserlovy fenomenologie, Filosofický Časopis XIV.3 (1966), 305; Fr. trans. Patočka, “Analyse de la conscience intime du temps [Analysis of Internal Time-Consciousness]”, trans. Abrams, Introduction à la phénoménologie de Husserl (Grenoble: Millon, 2002), 143–177, 177, emphasis added. 21 Patočka, “Le subjectivisme de la phénoménologie Husserlienne et l’exigence d’une phénoménologie asubjective [The Subjectivism of Husserlian Phenomenology and the Requirement of Asubjective Phenomenology]”, 245 [307], emphasis added. 22 See pages 136–138. 23 See pages 138–140. 24 See pages 141–142. 25 Patočka, “Le subjectivisme de la phénoménologie Husserlienne et l’exigence d’une phénoménologie asubjective [The Subjectivism of Husserlian Phenomenology and the Requirement of Asubjective Phenomenology]”, 239 [302]. 26 Patočka, Platon et l’Europe [Plato and Europe], 42 [178].

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in which the phenomenon is achieved”.27 Nonetheless, this achievement must not be understood as an act of establishment or of constitution, but as one of revealing and of explicitation: man does not establish the world, but reveals it, man does not constitute the world, but makes it explicit, which means he only brings to light a meaning already established, already constituted, and so preachieved. This idea of man as a condition of the world, and not just a moment of the world, finds its confirmation in the idea that man can always just as well refuse to answer the call of the world that requires him for its achievement. Patočka writes that “man has, by the fact that he stands between the phenomenon and the pure and simple beings, the possibility either to capitulate and to lower himself to the state of simple beings, or to accomplish himself like one for the truth, for the phenomenon”28 – one for the world. The fact that man can choose not to answer the call of the world means that man is not completely subject to the world. He conserves, thus, an autonomy in respect to the world, but one that is understood as his own legality (Eigenständigkeit), not as an absolute legality (Autonomie), because he still depends on the world for the accomplishment of this legality. This autonomy is, then, nothing but a ‘negative autonomy’, as true autonomy does not consist in not answering the call of the world, but in answering it freely. And to be able to answer freely the call of the world, and not just answer the call of the world, one must also have the freedom not to answer. Negative autonomy is, then, the necessary, although not sufficient, condition of true autonomy. We must also specify that man can choose not to answer the call of the world, as the call of being itself, without contradicting the world’s requirements. Indeed, in a text dating from the 1950s, Patočka notes that this silence “can come from genuine motivations, truthful ones, like the insight of another’s suffering” – while the other is precisely “l’étant par excellence”,29 to quote Levinas. Patočka concludes: “materialism [historical materialism] can be a silence about the essential, silence that is, nevertheless, the only appropriate expression”.30 So, if man 27

Ibid. Ibid., 45 [181]. 29 Levinas, Entre nous: Essais sur le penser-à-l’autre [Between Us: Essays on Thinkingof-the-Other] (Paris: Livre de Poche, 2004), 21. 30 Patočka, “Nadcivilizace a její vnitřní konflikt [Supercivilisation and its Inner Conflict]”, eds Chvatík and Kouba, Péče o duši: Soubor statí a přednášek o postavení člověka ve světě a v dějinách. Stati z let 1929–1952. První díl: Nevydané texty z padesátých 28

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can choose not to answer the call of being, without for that matter contradicting the world’s requirements, that means that the call of the world cannot be reduced to the call of being itself. To put it differently, the call of the world does not comprise a supremacy over any other call, but means, to quote Jean-Luc Marion, “that another call – the call of the other, most likely, – can destitute or submerge the original call launched by the being’s claim”.31 The call of the world is “the pure form of calling”,32 to which both being’s call and the call of the other can be reduced. To the question of knowing what deploys the call before or without being itself, Patočka gives his answer: it is the world as such. Patočka’s phenomenology surpasses the ontology of Heidegger, who never abandoned the privilege of the being’s call over any other call, even if it admitted its possibility, if not its legitimacy.33 And since man’s autonomy already comprises the openness to the world, it also already comprises the openness to the other and the openness towards being itself. From the Autonomy of Movement to the Becoming Autonomous of Man The relation between world and man is not only a necessary relation, but also a dynamic relation between two autonomies, since man’s autonomy already comprises the openness to the other and the openness towards being itself,34 which are not to be understood as two different opennesses, but as the deployment, throughout a lifetime, of a one-and-the-same openness: the openness to the world. The first instance of the openness to the world is, thus, the openness to the other, which takes place within the movement of sinking roots – the first movement of human life.35 The sinking of roots marks the beginning of human life as a let (Prague: Oikoymenh, 1996), 243–302, 297; Fr. trans. Patočka, “La surcivilisation et son conflit interne [Supercivilisation and its Inner Conflict]”, trans. Abrams, Liberté et sacrifice (Grenoble: Millon, 1993), 99–177, 170. 31 Marion, Reduction et donation: Recherches sur Husserl, Heidegger et la phenomenologie [Reduction and Givenness: Investigations of Husserl, Heidegger and Phenomenology] (Paris: PUF, 1989), 295. 32 Ibid., 296. 33 Ibid., 289–297. 34 See pages 142–144. 35 We have to specify that Patočka distinguishes between three constitutive movements of human life: (1) the sinking of roots; (2) life’s self-sustenance; (3) breaking through. See Patočka, “‘Přirozený svět’ v meditaci svého autora po třiatřiceti letech [The Natural World Reconsidered Thirty-Three Years Later]”, Fenomenologické spisy II: Co je

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movement of becoming autonomous, as it is the movement within which “man becomes first of all a center”36 and thus a geocentrical point that assigns a place to all things. And the fact that man becomes a centre means that the ego is not originally one, is not originally a geocentrical point that assigns a place to all things: “quite the contrary,” emphasises Patočka, “the I is originally the inside, that which, while being interpellated, answers, and not the interpellator”.37 The process of becoming autonomous begins with an interpellation because the ego is originally incapable of constituting itself by itself. Differently put: the ego is not self-founded, but always deploys itself within the horizon of autonomy. And it can only deploy itself in this horizon by first being interpellated by another ego, by a there who, pro-voking the ego’s answer, makes ex-plicit the here. The call of the other is thus the first constitutive process of the movement of sinking roots through which the ego becomes the here, the ‘zero-orientation-point’, the geocentrical point that assigns a place to all things. Contrary to the Husserlian ego, the Patočkian ego is not originally a centre, and contrary to the Heideggerian ego, the Patočkian ego does not become a centre ‘by itself’, but ‘through another’. It must also be specified that the call of the other is, for the ego, a traumatic event: “within the presence of the other is thus opened the event of interpellation, which has the fundamental trait of being personal and dramatic”.38 The call of the other is the event through which the ego comes to itself as ego by breaking something within itself, by separating itself from a part of itself. The movement existence. Publikované texty z let 1965–1977 (Prague: Oikoymenh, Filosofia, 2009 [1969]), 265–334; Fr. trans. Patočka, “Meditation sur monde naturel comme problème philosophique [Meditation on the Natural World as a Philosophical Problem]”, trans. Abrams, Le monde naturel et le mouvement de l’existence humaine (Dordrecht: Kluwer, 1988), 50–124. 36 Patočka, “Weltganzes und Menschenwelt. Bemerkungen zu einem zeitgenössischen kosmologischen Ansatz [The World as Whole and the Human World. Notes on a Contemporary Cosmological Approach]”, eds Nellen, Němec and Srubar, Die Bewegung der menschlichen Existenz (Stuttgart: Klett-Cotta, 1991 [1972]), 257–266, 263; Fr. trans. Patočka, “Le tout du monde et le monde de l’homme [The World as Whole and the Human World]”, 270. 37 Patočka, “Prostor a jeho problematika [Space and its Problems]”, Umění a filosofie (Prague: Archivní Soubor, 1985 [1960]), 4.1.2–55, 4.1.31; Fr. trans. Patočka, “L’espace et sa problématique [Space and its Problems]”, trans. Abrams, Qu’est-ce que la phenomenologie? (Grenoble: Millon, 2002), 58. Henceforth, reference to French translation is provided with page numbers in the French translation followed by the original page numbers in square brackets. 38 Patočka, “L’espace et sa problématique [Space and its Problems]”, 61 [4.1.31].

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of sinking roots is the origin of a constitutive separation within human life, separation that comes from the critical situation, originally unilateral, in which the other, who calls to me in person, constrains me to answer for myself. And by constraining me to answer for myself, the other constrains me to undertake all the possibilities I did not choose, but within which I am inserted. Through the interpellation, the other constrains me to undertake my being-thrown (Geworfenheit). Unlike Levinas, Patočka does not envision the sinking of roots as a simple movement of being accepted into the world, but also as a movement of interpellation originating from the world, which takes the shape of the other. This difference implies a major consequence, as it means that becoming autonomous, as self ap-propriation, necessarily takes place on the background of an expropriation, of an exiting out of oneself. Why should, then, the idea of autonomy be abandoned in favour of the idea of heteronomy, if autonomy implies a process of becoming autonomous necessarily comprising the opening to the other, the exiting out of oneself? Unlike Levinas, Patočka succeeds in thinking the sinking of roots as a movement or event that commits my liberty, from the beginning, to a responsibility towards that which precedes it – the world, the other. The process of becoming autonomous is thus always and simultaneously a process of becoming responsible. Patočka’s approach of autonomy allows its thematic survival, whereas the approach of Levinas seems to forever exclude it from phenomenology. The final instance of the openness to the world is the openness to being (while the second is the openness to things, within the movement of life’s selfsustenance), which takes place within the movement of breaking through – the third movement of human life. The movement of breaking through accomplishes man’s process of becoming autonomous. The openness to the other is concluded in the openness towards being itself, in the unsettling that constitutes openness towards ‘my own’ death. Patočka describes the movement of breaking through as an unsettling; or, to be exact, as a double unsettling. First there is the unsettling of man by a specific event: “man uncovers here [within the breaking through] its existence, not as accepted (přijatou) and with sunken roots (se zapuštěnými kořeny), but bare (holou)”.39 The breaking-through is the movement of bareness, of the annihilat39

Patočka, “K prehistorii vědy o pohybu: Svět, země, nebe a pohyb lidského života [Notes on the Prehistory of the Science of Movement: The World, Earth, Heaven and the

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ing of my existence. It’s the event of death, but as my own death. Of course, the event of my death does not mean the fact of my death, otherwise I could not experience it, but is the call of my death, a call to accept it in my own solitude; whereas within the sinking of roots the other accepts it for me, or at least with me. The breaking-through is an event identifying itself with a call, but one that no longer is, as in the case of sinking roots, a call of the other. Nevertheless, these two calls are not essentially different. They are the same call, the call to accept my death, my finitude, my being-thrown, but under two different shapes: (a) within the movement of sinking roots it is deployed as a call proceeding from one that is “l’étant par excellence”, and in this shape, although the traumatic aspect of the event is not erased, it is diminished, thus making possible a natural response of the ego; (b) within the movement of breaking through it is deployed as a call from that which is “not one of the beings” (“non-étant”), and in this shape the traumatic aspect of the event is not diminished, but enhanced. This is why the ego’s response in the movement of breaking through is no longer natural, affective, but is non-natural, reflexive, or, furthermore, heroic. Unlike the sinking of roots, the breaking-through constitutes an interpellation without acceptance, with no one to confront with me an event before which I uncover myself as irreplaceable. The breaking-through uncovers my irreplaceability before the event of my death, and uncovers as such also the irreplaceability of the other before the event of his death. The breaking-through is the uncovering of each and everyone’s irreplaceability before an out-come (à-venir) (Zu-kunft) that is both our own and common to all: the event of our death. If the breaking-through is first of all an event that unsettles man, it is also an event that unsettles the earth and the sky. Patočka writes that man “discovers at the same time that the earth and the sky have a trans, a beyond”, and he adds that this discovery is an “unsettling of the sky and of the earth”, emphasising the unsettlement of the earth: “although we could justly qualify man as earthling, the earth undergoes inside him an upheaval”.40 The event of our death is at the Movement for Human Life]”, Přirozený svět a pohyb lidské existence (Prague: Archivní Soubor, 1980 [1965]), 1.2.1–12, 1.2.9; Fr. trans. Patočka, “Notes sur la préhistoire de la science du mouvement: Le monde, la terre, le ciel et le mouvement de la vie humaine [Notes on the Prehistory of the Science of Movement: The World, Earth, Heaven and the Movement for Human Life]”, trans. Abrams, Le monde naturel et le mouvement de l’existence humaine (Dordrecht: Kluwer, 1988), 3–12, 10. Henceforth, reference to French translation is provided with page numbers in the French translation followed by the original page numbers in square brackets. 40 Ibid., respectively 1.2.9, 1.2.11 and 1.2.9 [10, 11 and 10].

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same time the event of a “beyond earth and sky”, an event itself of the world. That is why consciousness of our irreplaceability, self-consciousness, is at the same time consciousness of the world. For Patočka there is, hence, a compossibility of self-consciousness and of consciousness of the world, and thus a “compossibility of consciousness of freedom and consciousness of the world”. For as long as breaking through is not a movement that cancels out the other ones, but a movement that makes them intelligible to themselves, this “compossibility of the consciousness of freedom and of the consciousness of the world” is also “consciousness of the compossibility of freedom and of the world”. If the sinking of roots names this “compossibility of freedom and of the world”, the breaking-through names the consciousness of this compossibility: that is to say, the consciousness of this autonomy that already comprises in itself the openness to the world. The breaking-through names, thus, consciousness of autonomy as finite autonomy; which is to say, the consciousness of autonomy as horizon of autonomy. If man only becomes autonomous within the breaking-through, it is because the breaking-through constitutes this reflexive openness of man towards the horizon of autonomy – the openness through which man becomes an event for the world: upheaval. Man’s autonomy only truly comes to light within the consciousness of the horizon of autonomy, of an autonomy that already comprises in itself the openness to the world. Indeed, Patočka’s approach allows phenomenology to fecundate its own results on the concept of autonomy, since it recovers, by incorporating Heidegger’s and Levinas’ criticism, a requirement of its founder, of Husserl: the necessary selfopenness to being and the necessary self-openness to the other. What allows it to do so is none other than its renewed concept of world, acquired through a redefinition of the phenomenological ἐποχή as ἐποχή without reduction of the world to the self: without reducing the world to man. Works Cited Barbaras, Renaud. Le mouvement de l’existence [The Movement of Existence]. Chatou: La Transparence, 2007 Levinas, Emmanuel. Autrement qu’être [Otherwise than Being]. Paris: Livre de Poche, 2001 Levinas, Emmanuel. De Dieu qui vient à l’idée [Of God who Comes to Mind]. Paris: Vrin, 1998 Levinas, Emmanuel. Entre nous: Essais sur le penser-à-l’autre [Between Us: Essays on Thinking-of-the-Other]. Paris: Livre de Poche, 2004

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Émilie Tardivel Marion, Jean-Luc. Reduction et donation: Recherches sur Husserl, Heidegger et la phenomenologie [Reduction and Givenness: Investigations of Husserl, Heidegger and Phenomenology]. Paris: PUF, 1989 Patočka, Jan. “Analyse de la conscience intime du temps [Analysis of Internal TimeConsciousness].” Trans. Erika Abrams. Introduction à la phénoménologie de Husserl. Grenoble: Millon, 2002, 143–177 Patočka, Jan. “Analýza vnitřního vědomí času [Analysis of Internal TimeConsciousness].” Úvod do Husserlovy fenomenologie, Filosofický Časopis. XIV.3 (1966), 289–305 Patočka, Jan. “Der Subjektivismus der Husserlschen und die Forderung einer asubjektiven Phänomenologie [Husserl’s Subjectivism and the Call for an Asubjective Phenomenology].” Die Bewegung der Menschlichen Existenz. Eds Klaus Nellen, Jiri Němec and Ilja Srubar. Stuttgart: Klett-Cotta, 1991 [1971], 286–309 Patočka, Jan. “Der Subjektivismus der Husserlschen und die Möglichkeit einer “asubjektiven” Phänomenologie [Husserl’s Subjectivism and the Possibility of an Asubjective Phenomenology].” Die Bewegung der Menschlichen Existenz. Eds Klaus Nellen, Jiri Němec and Ilja Srubar. Stuttgart: Klett-Cotta, 1991 [1971], 267–285 Patočka, Jan. “K prehistorii vědy o pohybu: Svět, země, nebe a pohyb lidského života [Notes on the Prehistory of the Science of Movement: The World, Earth, Heaven and the Movement for Human Life].” Přirozený svět a pohyb lidské existence. Vol. I. Prague: Archivní Soubor, 1980 [1965], 1.2.1–12 Patočka, Jan. “L’espace et sa problématique [Space and its Problems].” Trans. Erika Abrams. Qu’est-ce que la phenomenologie? Grenoble: Millon, 2002 Patočka, Jan. “La phénoménologie comme doctrine de la conscience introspective et comme théorie de l’apparition [Phenomenology as an Introspective Theory Consciousness and as a Theory on the Appearing of What Appears: The Problem of an Epoché].” Trans. Erika Abrams. Papiers phénoménologiques. Grenoble: Millon, 1995, 235–244 Patočka, Jan. “La surcivilisation et son conflit interne [Supercivilisation and its Inner Conflict].” Trans. Erika Abrams. Liberté et sacrifice. Grenoble: Millon, 1993, 99– 177 Patočka, Jan. “Le subjectivisme de la phénoménologie Husserlienne et l’exigence d’une phénoménologie asubjective [The Subjectivism of Husserlian Phenomenology and the Requirement of Asubjective Phenomenology].” Qu’est-ce que la phénoménologie? Grenoble: Millon, 1988a, 217–248 Patočka, Jan. “Le subjectivisme de la phénoménologie Husserlienne et la possibilité d’une phénoménologie ‘asubjective’ [Husserl’s Subjectivism and the Possibility of an Asubjective Phenomenology].” Qu’est-ce que la phénoménologie? Grenoble: Millon, 1988b, 189–215

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Autonomy and Phenomenology Patočka, Jan. “Le tout du monde et le monde de l’homme [The World as Whole and the Human World].” Le monde naturel et le mouvement de l’existence humaine. Dordrecht: Kluwer, 1988, 265–272 Patočka, Jan. “Meditation sur monde naturel comme problème philosophique [Meditation on the Natural World as a Philosophical Problem].” Trans. Erika Abrams. Le monde naturel et le mouvement de l’existence humaine. Dordrecht: Kluwer, 1988, 50–124 Patočka, Jan. “Nadcivilizace a její vnitřní konflikt [Supercivilisation and its Inner Conflict].” Péče o duši: Soubor statí a přednášek o postavení člověka ve světě a v dějinách. Stati z let 1929–1952. První díl: Nevydané texty z padesátých let. Eds Ivan Chvatík and Pavel Kouba. Sebrané spisy Jana Patočky. Svazek 1. Vol. I. Prague: Oikoymenh, 1996, 243–302 Patočka, Jan. “Notes sur la préhistoire de la science du mouvement: Le monde, la terre, le ciel et le mouvement de la vie humaine [Notes on the Prehistory of the Science of Movement: The World, Earth, Heaven and the Movement for Human Life].” Trans. Erika Abrams. Le monde naturel et le mouvement de l’existence humaine. Dordrecht: Kluwer, 1988, 3–12 Patočka, Jan. “Phänomenologie als introspektive Bewußtseinslehre und als Lehre von der Erscheinung: Das Problem einer Epochè [Phenomenology as an Introspective Theory Consciousness and as a Theory on the Appearing of What Appears: The Problem of an Epoché].” Vom Erscheinen als solchem: Texte aus dem Nachlaß. Freiburg (Breisgau) and München: Alber, 2000, 233–244 Patočka, Jan. “Platón a Evropa [Plato and Europe].” Péče o duši: Soubor statí a přednášek o postavení člověka ve světě a v dějinách. Druhý díl: Stati z let 1970–1977. Nevydané texty a přednášky ze sedmdesátých let. Eds Ivan Chvatík and Pavel Kouba. Sebrané spisy Jana Patočky. Svazek 2. Vol. II. Prague: Oikoymenh, 1999 [1973], 149–355 Patočka, Jan. Platon et l’Europe [Plato and Europe]. Trans. Erika Abrams. Lagrasse: Verdier, 1997 Patočka, Jan. “‘Přirozený svět’ v meditaci svého autora po třiatřiceti letech [The Natural World Reconsidered Thirty-Three Years Later].” Fenomenologické spisy II: Co je existence. Publikované texty z let 1965–1977. Sebrané spisy Jana Patočky. Svazek 7. Prague: Oikoymenh, Filosofia, 2009 [1969], 265–334 Patočka, Jan. “Prostor a jeho problematika [Space and its Problems].” Umění a filosofie. Vol. IV. Prague: Archivní Soubor, 1985 [1960], 4.1.2–55 Patočka, Jan. “Weltganzes und Menschenwelt. Bemerkungen zu einem zeitgenössischen kosmologischen Ansatz [The World as Whole and the Human World. Notes on a Contemporary Cosmological Approach].” Die Bewegung der menschlichen Existenz. Eds Klaus Nellen, Jiri Němec and Ilja Srubar. Stuttgart: Klett-Cotta, 1991 [1972], 257–266 Renaut, Alain. L’ère de l’individu [The Era of the Individual]. Paris: Gallimard, 2001

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Part IV: Patočkian Reflections on Modern Society

Three Perspectives on Politics and History: Patočka, Hayek and French Positivism Ciaran Summerton In this paper, I will follow Jan Patočka’s thought in order to consider the way in which modern political concepts are framed by technoscientific thinking, as first described by Edmund Husserl and Martin Heidegger. I will use Patočka’s claims from various works in order to analyse and compare (and, finally, challenge) the thought of two key French Positivists, Henri de Saint-Simon and Auguste Comte, with certain positions put forward by the Austrian economist, Friedrich August von Hayek. Initially, I will follow an analysis Hayek himself offers of French Positivism. According to Hayek, the thought of Saint-Simon and Comte is the antithesis of his own political and economic position. Undoubtedly, there are evident contrasts between the Positivists and Hayek. However, there are also important similarities between their two positions. It is important to highlight that certain aspects of Hayek’s thought, as well as the thought of the Positivists, inform myriad contemporary political positions. The individuals and groups who hold these positions would in no way see themselves as having anything in common with the Austrian economist or the early 19thcentury Frenchmen. I will argue that this common ground is based on broadly accepted and unnoticed conceptions that stem from the technoscientific character of modern thought. In this respect, I suggest that the Positivists and Hayek can be seen as examples of more general trends in modern political thought. I will first show how both the Positivists and Hayek, by starting from particular conceptions of history and political life, come to conclusions about our common life that are, strangely, fundamentally apolitical. One of the consequences of this technoscientific framework, as I will argue below, is the reduction of politics to economic and material concerns. This curtailing of our political discussions is something we may want to reconsider. Doing so may prompt us to rethink politics and its relation to the historical character of human beings on different terms; for example, those offered by Patočka. I will refer to Patočka’s three movements of human existence in order to illuminate his understanding of history and political life. The Positivists (e.g., Comte) reduce history to progressive stages following historical laws, while Hayek reduces history to a process that follows general principles that secure the survival and expansion of groups. I suggest that the Positivists’ and Hayek’s understanding of politics, history and

Three Perspectives on Politics and History

human life result from an unacknowledged technoscientific framework – herein lies the heart of their commonalities. By contrast, by challenging the technoscientific framework and not using it as a model to analyse all aspects and periods of human existence and history, Patočka presents an alternative account of human life. Patočka grasps this human life in the fullness of its historical and political character, which challenges the apolitical and ahistorical understanding of modern political thought. The French Positivists In an article that first appeared in the journal Economica, Hayek contends that the Positivist thinking in early 19th-century France, coming out of the Ecole Polytechnique, was characterised by a belief in the applicability of the method of the natural sciences to political, philosophical and social problems.1 In particular, as Hayek stresses, the French Positivists believed that the scientific method was capable of elucidating determining laws in the realm of history and society, not unlike the laws of natural science. The Polytechnique, according to Hayek, was dominated by a practical spirit, so that the natural sciences were taught with their eventual applicability in mind, particularly for military and engineering purposes.2 In order to incorporate the phenomena of human life into the sciences, the Positivists adopted a method that assumed the perspective of a removed and impartial observer, able to objectively consider any psychological, moral, social or political problem. From this perspective, man would become an object of a universal and lawful science that resembled physics, chemistry or biology. The science of man, in keeping with the spirit of natural science, would not concern itself with questions of why a particular event takes place, but only with how it arises – it is assumed that the latter kind of knowledge is more easily applicable to projects of social organisation, industrial expansion and economic management. By subjecting social ‘facts’ to calculation, observation and experimenta1

Hayek, “The Counter-Revolution of Science”, Economica 8.29 (1941), 12. See the collection of essays in Hayek, The Counter-Revolution of Science: Studies on the Abuse of Reason (Indianapolis: Liberty Press, 1979). 2 In fact, most of the thinking described as Positivist, from whatever period of the modern era, has the tendency to evaluate knowledge using utilitarian considerations. See Kolakowski, Positivist Philosophy: From Hume to the Vienna Circle (Harmondsworth: Penguin Books Ltd, 1972).

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tion, the Positivists hoped to establish a science of society with the certainty already accomplished in the natural sciences. Having incorporated a social physics into the hoped-for universal science, the scientific direction of social activity would include a transformation of the political system, so that it could now be directed toward maximising the material benefits to be gained from a coordinated effort of extrapolating the gifts of nature, understood under the rubric of applied science. For the likes of Saint-Simon and Comte, these developments would occur not only because of their seeming advantages, but more importantly, in accordance with the lawful direction of human history in its positive phase. Developing Saint-Simon’s conception of a history of lawful progress, Comte introduces a systematic, three-part account (the law of the three stages) of the transition from the theological (or fictitious) stage to the metaphysical (or abstract) phase, and finally to the scientific, positive stage of human historical development, in which: [T]he human mind…gives up the search for the origin and destiny of the universe, and the inner causes of phenomena, and confines itself to the discovery, through reason and observation combined, of the actual laws that govern the succession and similarity of phenomena.3

Saint-Simon, Comte and their followers entertain a notion of human life and history that sounds very much like one of the ideas of man in modern philosophy that Patočka describes in the essay, “Life in Balance, Life in Amplitude”: [The first of these understandings in modern philosophy considers] Man as being essentially founded harmoniously; Man is called to happiness and a balance of all his forces… [History] always tends as if by law towards that natural human aim of balance and harmony, for which everything is prepared and oriented in human nature… [A]ccording to this orientation…there will come a time when human life will be so refined and organised that there will not be anything essentially unsteady and uncertain in this life, so that it will function ever more complex and artificial than the life of other creatures, but with certainty, straightforwardness, and accuracy. 4

It is the great dream of the Positivists to welcome the time when human life will have rid itself of all that is “unsteady and uncertain”, by turning all intellectual 3

Comte, The Essential Comte: Selected from Cours de Philosophie Positive (New York: Harper and Row, 1974), 20. 4 Patočka, “Life in Balance, Life in Amplitude”, edited and translated by Manton, Living in Problematicity (Prague: Oikoymenh, 2007 [1939]), 32–42, 32.

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pursuits and coordinating all societal efforts to preordained ends, under one large and harmonised system. For the Positivists, history unfolds according to laws of progression, whereby human society either follows such laws, reaping the supposed benefits, or acts in discord with these historical laws and becomes little more than an unfortunate relic from a previous phase of history. For the Positivists, with the organisation of human life in the positive phase and under such a coordinated system (as outlined above), prosperity becomes the driving purpose for all political and social activity.5 Positivism, as here represented by Saint-Simon and Comte, sprang from the earlier scientific revolution, with its corresponding metaphysics. The perceived universal legitimacy of the modern scientific outlook makes it an appealing (even obvious) model for our political and social situation. Hayek’s alternative to the Positivist position is equally imbued with the scientific spirit. As shown below, Hayek’s notion of the market6 and his idea of history both display an understanding of human life that has its roots – like Positivism – in the metaphysics of the technological age. 5 “[Adam Smith’s] work contained the proof that a nation, in order to acquire the comforts of life, must proceed in the same way as manufacturers, merchants, and all persons engaged in any kind of industry, and that a nation wishing to become free and rich should frame its budget according to the same principles as the budget of any industrial firm” – Saint-Simon, Selected Writings on Science, Industry and Social Organisation (London: Croom Helm, 1975), 178. 6 It is not always clear in Hayek’s writings, nor in many of those of the liberal and neoliberal schools, what exactly is meant by the ‘market’. Wishing to take issue with other aspects of Hayek’s thought in this paper, I will here only note this problem without expanding upon it. Philip Mirowski nicely summarises this problem: “It may seem incredible, but historically, both the neoclassical tradition in economics and the NTC have been extremely vague when it comes to analytical specification of the exact structure and character of something they both refer to as the ‘market’. Both seem overly preoccupied with what it purportedly does, while remaining cavalier about what it actually is. For the neoliberals, this allows the avoidance of a possible deep contradiction between their constructivist tendencies and their uninflected appeal to a monolithic market that has existed throughout all history and indifferently across the globe; for how can something be ‘made’ when it is eternal and unchanging? This is solved by increasingly erasing any distinctions among the state, society, and the market, and simultaneously insisting their political project is aimed at reformation of society by subordinating it to the market” – Mirowski, Never Let a Serious Crisis go to Waste: How Neoliberalism Survived the Financial Meltdown (London: Verso, 2014), 55, emphasis in original, here and unless otherwise noted.

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Hayek For Hayek, a society organised around the efficiency of economic production allows individuals to freely choose their own ends, giving them abundant means to do so.7 Thus, he argues that interactions between people should be organised in such a fashion as allows for the optimal functioning of coordinated economic interests; because he believes that material affluence serves as the great generator of means. In other words, improved material conditions allow individuals the means to select their own ends.8 Any politics that strives to achieve some common end errs: firstly, by attempting to pursue ends that would be better served by focusing on means (which a well-functioning market provides); and secondly, by coercing individuals into pursuing ends not of their own choosing. For Hayek, we can choose to pursue our own ends because of our legal liberty. 9 Liberty in this sense means, essentially, an absence of coercion from other human beings and institutions. The only acceptable coercion is that imposed on us by the legal system and administrated by government, and these laws must only be in place to curtail the possible coercion individuals might exercise on each other. This legal framework is important for the functioning of competitive markets. Law thus establishes confidence in individual market participants that they can rely on a certain set of rules and constraints that protect them from others and make possible the exercise of their entrepreneurial endeavours. The state and its laws exist to protect and reassure the individual as economic entre7

“When we defend the free enterprise system we must always remember it deals only with means. What we make of our freedom is up to us. We must not confuse efficiency in providing means with the purposes which they serve. A society which has no other standard than efficiency will indeed waste that efficiency” – Hayek, “The Moral Element in Free Enterprise”, Studies in Philosophy, Politics and Economics (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1967), 236. Yet, what other standard can there be when you reduce all political and economic considerations to questions of efficiency and accumulation? Moreover, Hayek seems to advocate the development of a society with “no other standard than efficiency”, and the final sentence of this quote is incongruent with what preceded it. Hayek theorises a society and political life reduced to little more than ‘efficiency of means’. Of course, I am ignoring here the hugely controversial claim that a society based around the sort of ‘free enterprise’ advocated by Hayek and his followers does indeed maximise the efficiency of providing means for all members of such a society – addressing this would take us too far afield. 8 Ibid., 229. 9 Ibid. See also Hayek, The Constitution of Liberty (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1960), 12–13, 71.

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preneur. The nature of these laws is essentially prohibitive – they establish what cannot be done, and laws govern the market in this sense. Thus, the ‘spontaneous’ order of the market actually requires a particular legal framework to ensure both its functioning and the likelihood of encouraging certain kinds of competitive behaviour. This notion of negative liberty – an essentially legal definition of freedom – and the notion of ‘economic freedom’ – the freedom to pursue whatever economic enterprise one might find appealing – are the two essential components of freedom in Hayek’s work. Hayek believes that the idea of freedom is essential if we are to hold individuals responsible. Responsibility, for Hayek, relates to each individual’s own personal, material condition. This is a common element of neoliberal thought often referred to as a kind of ‘just-world theory’: the world is just insofar as each individual is solely responsible for their particular material condition, and is accordingly deserving of praise or blame for that position.10 By locating the responsibility for material conditions in the individual, Hayek wants to discredit attempts to redistribute wealth, as this would be unjustified if none were to blame (or praise) for the condition of individuals other than those individuals themselves. 11 Hayek sees the existing distribution of wealth and resources as just and fair because it is a consequence of the merit (or lack thereof) of each individual market participant. So, for Hayek, responsibility is not a moral demand, but is invoked, rather, to justify a particular social order. [W]e believe that, in general, the knowledge that he will be held responsible will influence a person’s conduct in a desirable direction. In this sense the assigning of responsibility does not involve the assertion of a fact. It is rather of the nature of a convention intended to make people observe certain rules. 12

Or, responsibility is a kind of accounting of the proper use of our time and resources: “it is the discipline of the market that forces us to calculate, that is, to

10

Hayek, “The Moral Element in Free Enterprise”, 233. “we shall never build up a successful free society without that pressure of praise and blame which treats the individual as responsible for his conduct and also makes him bear the consequences of even innocent error”, ibid. “Above all, however, we must recognise that we may be free and yet miserable… It is true that to be free may mean freedom to starve, to make costly mistakes, or to run mortal risks” – Hayek, The Constitution of Liberty, 18. 12 Hayek, The Constitution of Liberty, 75. 11

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be responsible for the means we use up in the pursuit of our ends.”13 Like responsibility, Hayek also considers morality something that has benefits for particular social orders. Morality is valuable because of its ability to tame the primitive instincts of human beings and to maintain “the functioning of an order” – an order here being a social configuration at a particular historical moment. 14 In order to understand this notion of a functioning social configuration at a particular historical moment, we must turn to Hayek’s more general reflections on historical development. For Hayek, our inability to understand and control markets is similar to our inability to understand and control history.15 The market operates as a kind of natural selector in the evolutionary sense – given all the ‘knowledge’ it contains, it is best able to allocate resources and select those practices and materials that most benefit the system. A similar process is at work in the development of history, or what Hayek calls ‘cultural evolution’. It is hard to tell whether the market is used as a metaphor for the evolutionary process, or whether the evolutionary process is being used as a metaphor for the market. Either way, it is worth noting the passive fashion in which we inherit history, according to Hayek’s description. [I]n the process of cultural transmission, in which modes of conduct are passed on from generation to generation, a process of selection takes place, in which those 13 Hayek, Law, Legislation and Liberty (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1979), 168. 14 “moral rules do not directly serve the satisfaction of individual desires, but are required to assist the functioning of an order; and even to tame some instincts, which man has inherited from his life in small groups where he passed most of his evolution” – Hayek, “The Errors of Constructivism”, New Studies in Philosophy, Politics, Economics and the History of Ideas (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1978), 17. 15 As far as economics as a science is concerned, Hayek’s approach differs somewhat from the mathematical formalism of most of his predecessors. Because mathematical formalism implies an ability to predict with a great deal of precision, he worried that this would lead to attempts to govern the market to specific ends. What makes up the ‘knowledge’ of the market is the accumulation of knowledge, interests and desires of all the individuals acting in it – such knowledge is unattainable for any individual human or institution, and thus prediction with great precision is also an impossibility. “The fact that much more knowledge contributes to form the order of a market economy than can be known to any one mind or used by any one organisation is the decisive reason why a market economy is more effective than any other known type of economic order” – Hayek, “The Economy, Science and Politics”, Studies in Philosophy, Politics and Economics (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1967), 262.

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Hayek tacitly subscribes to the idea of progress, 17 because the selection process of cultural evolution is supposed to work according to whatever rules allow groups to survive and proliferate.18 These rules are transmitted through a process of “imitation”, allowing Hayek to account for the continuity of “acquired characteristics”, without relying on genetic transmission.19 Preceding causes and “a process of unconscious self-organisation” are what create our values and institutions at any particular time.20 For Hayek, custom and tradition, not purposive activity informed by reason, are the real drivers of history.21 However, this is nothing to be lamented, as it is precisely the operation of the forces of natural selection and the market-like competition between rules of conduct that have allowed civilisation to develop and prosper. Understanding this, we should now allow this process to unfold in our social, political and economic life. History and culture, for Hayek, end up being forces that unravel behind the backs of human beings: every now and again, some particular aspect will come before us as requiring scrutiny, but for the most part we are ignorant of the rules according to which we operate. Although Hayek rejects mathematical formalism in economic thought, downplays our ability to predict,22 and furthermore, rejects a purely genetic approach to the idea of cultural evolution, his description of human life is couched in nat16

Hayek, “The Errors of Constructivism”, 9. I say tacitly because Hayek does not use this term, though he very much describes a process that would accord with what he thinks are laudable developments. The following gives him away: “I have so far carefully avoided saying that evolution is identical with progress, but when it becomes clear that it was the evolution of a tradition which made civilization possible, we may at least say that spontaneous evolution is a necessary if not a sufficient condition of progress” – Hayek, Law, Legislation and Liberty, 168. 18 Ibid., 156–57. 19 Hayek, “Nature v. Nurture Once Again”, 291. 20 Hayek, The Fatal Conceit: The Errors of Socialism (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1988), 9. 21 Hayek, Law, Legislation and Liberty, 156–57. 22 Nevertheless, Hayek relies on some notion of prediction, given his claims about the beneficial outcomes of appropriate economic systems. He shies away from a prediction of particular outcomes because this would suggest that such outcomes can be actively pursued and thus planned-for – this is the great illusion of socialism, according to Hayek. 17

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uralistic terminology, reducing all worldly existence – much like the Positivists – to the one model. The following quote is illustrative: all enduring structures above the level of the simplest atoms, and up to the brain and society, are the results of, and can be explained only in terms of, processes of selective evolution, and that the more complex ones maintain themselves by constant adaptation of their internal states to changes in the environment… These changes in structure are brought about by their elements [e.g., humans] possessing such regularities of conduct, or such capacities to follow rules, that the result of their individual actions will be to restore the order of the whole if it is disturbed by external influences.23

Culture, and with it, history, are reduced to a process of passive reception and imitation, according to a criteria of success (itself reduced to the idea of survival) which operates without our conscious consent. Following the naturalistic trend in Hayek’s thought, the model of society is no longer that of a giant machine, but rather tends more towards a mixture of the biological and the computational. Reflecting on contemporary images used in economic and political thought, Alain Supiot says that society is no longer conceived on the model of a clock, as with the mechanical imagery associated with the industrial revolution; but rather, is now modelled on “the computer and its calculating power”. A world of this kind is peopled not by beings subordinate to forces that dictate their movements, but by programmed individuals who respond to signals they receive. The desire to extend the ‘scientific’ organisation of labour to the whole of society was already present in Lenin. But today this has as its model the algorithms of computing, rather than the laws of physics.24

And this, precisely, is the direction that Hayek takes economic thought; objecting as he does to the mathematical formalism of his fellow economists, only to replace it with a biological image which, to paraphrase Supiot, pictures a world in which certain tendencies in the human ‘environment’ organise and distribute information in an optimal fashion. Thus, although our knowledge of the functioning of markets and the ‘cultural evolution’ of history is imprecise, Hayek is still committed to the idea of what he calls ‘general principles’ (in order to avoid, I suggest, using the metaphysically loaded concept of ‘natural laws’) which organise the lives of individuals and communities according to the key standards of efficiency, survival, expansion, and so on. 23 24

Hayek, Law, Legislation and Liberty, 158. Supiot, “The Social State”, New Left Review 82 (2013), 111.

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History (now cultural evolution) is reduced to the mere protection and expansion of life. [A]s with every other organism, the main ‘purpose’ to which man’s physical makeup as well as his traditions are adapted is to produce other human beings. In this he has succeeded amazingly.25

Thus, history is nought else but the spontaneous formation and evolution of culture, which serves no other purpose than survival and expansion – goals which are now best served, according to Hayek, by a market economy. Commonalities in Hayek and the Positivists To return to my assertion that there exist certain commonalities between Hayek and the Positivists, I will sketch three commonalities that I consider particularly pertinent. Firstly, both Hayek and the Positivists reduce human life to one predominant concern. Hayek objects to the positing of common ends in socialist thought, yet there is a common end that defines his system also. In the case of Hayek, human activity is reduced to the logic of the market, but more importantly and broadly speaking, Hayek reduces history to the goals of survival and expansion; that is, material success. Consequently, human concerns are reduced to those pertaining to economic conditions, which for Hayek are best served by the expansion of competitive market interactions. Hayek, as much as the Positivists, focuses on improving the material conditions of human life. However, for Hayek, the improvement in material conditions will in part be the consequence of the performance of the individual in competitive markets. Not everyone can come out a winner in this game. Secondly, the moral domain is rethought by both the Positivists and Hayek. The Positivists wanted to make a science of morals, and thus incorporate it into their complete philosophy. However, with the spread of capitalist economies, moral discussion was altered so that it could be incorporated into, and benefit, the functioning of markets. Hayek’s reflections on morality serve as an example of this alteration of moral discussion. As mentioned above, Hayek’s real goal is the success of the overall system of accumulation, and he believes that we are better served by following general rules of conduct than we are by acting upon our

25

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direct concern for others.26 Morality, for Hayek, is a rule book that allows history to move and markets to function; there is no essential obligation between human beings. Responsibility, also, is little more than a check on behaviour and an incentive to act appropriately according to the requirements of successful market transactions. Finally, there are also commonalities in the Positivists’ and Hayek’s respective conceptions of history and the development of civilisations. Pierre Manent notes the simultaneity of the proclamation of man’s liberty and equality with the claim that there was some sort of necessity at play in history and society; society itself being the beneficiary of unmoveable historical forces that shift it through various improving phases.27 Manent observes that Comte and Marx are in agreement on this point, as are the liberals. In the eyes of the liberal there is an irresistible movement, a necessary progress of human societies. Diverse as they are, Constant, Tocqueville, or Chateaubriand are equally convinced that human history is happily ordered by the law of the progressive equalisation of conditions. In upholding the idea that an irresistible process is at work in history and society, liberalism and sociology agree on a fundamental point.28

Thus, history for the Positivists, the socialists and the liberals, is entering its final stage, and will continue in a state of peace and abundance. Hayek seems to hope for a similar outcome in which we will do no more than refine the process 26 This would seem to be necessary to accept the conditions of an indifferent market. As Paul Mattick claims: “in a capitalist economy, what causes suffering for individuals can be good for the system. As firms go bankrupt and production goods of all sorts go unsold, the surviving companies can buy up buildings, machinery and raw materials at bargain prices, while land values fall. In this way the money-representation of goods produced at an earlier time is recalibrated at a lower level. There is also market pressure for the design of new, more efficient and cheaper machinery. As a result, the cost of capital investment declines. At the same time, rising unemployment drives down wages. Capitalists’ costs are thus lower while the labour they employ is more productive than before, as people are made to work harder and on newer equipment. The result is a revival in the rate of profit, which makes possible a new round of investment and therefore an expansion of markets for production goods and consumer goods alike. A depression, that is, the cure for insufficient profits; it is what makes the next period of prosperity possible, even as that prosperity will in turn generate the conditions for a new depression” – Mattick, Business as Usual: The Economic Crisis and the Failure of Capitalism (London: Reaktion Books, 2011), 50. 27 Manent, The City of Man (Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1998), 52. 28 Ibid.

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of the market. It would appear that the liberal capitalists believe in historical determinism no less than the Marxists; only now, the inevitability resides in the rational market society and not the classless utopia of communism. The consequence of this supposed end of history is a kind of mass consensus on the core issues of politics. Jacques Rancière claims that after the collapse of the Soviet system there was a wide acceptance of the identification of formal democracy with the liberal economy. The end of the socialist alternative, then, did not signify any renewal of democratic debate. Instead, it signified the reduction of democratic life to the management of the local consequences of global economic necessity. The latter, in fact, was posited as a common condition which imposed the same solutions on both left and right. Consensus around these solutions became the supreme democratic value. 29

For Rancière, as for Patočka, consensus is a danger to politics, threatening as it does the ability to object to a given state of affairs and forgoing the conflict that makes politics possible. Here we enter the world of expertise and inevitability that excludes the conflictual, contingent and citizen-oriented nature of political life. There is thus a kind of de-politicisation of our common life, though not, of course, a removal of the operations of power.30 Politics becomes the nurturing of 29

Rancière, “Introducing Disagreement”, Angelaki 9.3 (2004), 4. For those concerned that describing a state of affairs as de-politicised suggests a removal of power, I think that Greta Krippner’s qualifications are helpful: “…the depoliticisation of the economy encompasses a number of processes occurring at different levels… If for something to be ‘political’ means that it is subject to human manipulation and control, then the most fundamental form of depoliticisation is to remove some question from the realm of active decision to the realm of fate where the exercise of human agency is neither possible nor desirable. The implementation of economic policy is replete with examples of depoliticisation that take this form, particularly when the market is invoked as a quasi-natural force that trumps all countervailing social considerations… [Another example of depoliticisation] involves the transfer of a given problem from the direct control of elected officials to nonelected officials or to the nongovernmental public… [which involves] the transfer of policy questions from arenas where they are subject to open deliberation to arenas that are insulated from such deliberation through legal protocols and layers of protective rules about who may access the proceedings. A classic example of this form of depoliticisation is the removal of monetary policy from direct legislative oversight through the establishment of formal central bank independence…[A]nother dimension of depoliticisation is concerned less with the social location of decisions than with their content. This is depoliticisation by technocratic expertise, which involves the attempt to imbue decisions with objective knowledge, creating a gulf between these decisions and those that are said to reflect questions of values to be re30

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the market and the management of issues whose terms are largely already agreed to. Patočka As noted above, in order to challenge the Positivists and Hayek (the reduction of politics to industrial organisation and economics; the reduction of history to progressive stages and evolutionary processes), I will turn to Patočka’s thinking, in which we find an alternative conception of history and politics that prompts us to reflect on some of the presuppositions of modern political thought. At the heart of Patočka’s notion of history and politics is a conception of human freedom. It is always a possibility that we can act as if we were an object like any other, as if we are determined by our surroundings, by the past, by the sensory given. No doubt, we are thrown into a world not of our making, and at no point – despite all our efforts – are we ever in a situation we have ourselves created – only a god could have such power. But we are not as passive as it would appear following accounts like those of Hayek or the Positivists. On the contrary, human beings transcend the given: I can relate to and interact with (use) objects in a number of ways (memory, imagination, doubt) – objects of everyday tasks, aesthetic objects, scientific objects; objects can show up in several of my concerned and interested possibilities, and I can relate to this relating itself. We are oriented towards the practical tasks that make up our practical concerns. Temporally, our present is informed by a relation to what has gone before, a retention of what has passed, and an opening to the future, anticipating and projecting what is yet to come. Fundamentally, our being is a task: something we must do, act out.31 Our transcendence of the immediately given is what makes us free in the sense Patočka describes in “Negative Platonism”. In this essay, Patočka emphasises

solved in public, quasi-public, or private settings… Claims of technocratic expertise depoliticise by imposing both social distance as the exclusive authority of the scientist over a problem area is established and temporal distance as facts are gathered, ordered, and acted on in a methodical process that is foreign to the rhythms of political life” – Krippner, Capitalizing on Crisis: The Political Origins of the Rise of Finance (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 2011), 145–46. 31 Patočka, Body, Community, Language, World (Chicago and La Salle, Illinois: Open Court, 1998), 95.

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that freedom is also the “experience of a risk we can take or avoid”.32 As long as we think of ourselves on the models offered by Saint-Simon and Hayek, we will always pass over that essential experience of freedom, the free possibility of bringing before us the relation to the world that we are – although even this passing-over is a possibility of our free being. As Patočka notes: “Humans create and labor out of freedom even when they turn their backs on it.”33 We are free in the sense of a remove, a distance from the given 34; and thus it is possible for us to hold before ourselves, and rethink, the historical ‘rules of conduct’ Hayek describes, seeing them as only one possible way of relating to the world, and in so doing rendering this relating problematic, robbing it of its absoluteness.35 As historical beings we thus have the possibility of standing against what is presented to us as just, necessary, natural, inevitable, moral, and so on. Patočka claims that we have the capacity to “break up what exists, to desecrate what considers itself sacrosanct, to condemn the actual in the name of that for which we long and which is not”.36 Such a capacity is essential to our political life, because to act politically is to take responsibility for the state of affairs that surrounds us, not as given or inevitable, but as requiring defence and justification, or challenge and dissent, prolongation or change. We can use Patočka’s account of the three movements of human existence to further clarify the way the French Positivists and Hayek view human life and

32

Patočka, “Negative Platonism: Reflections Concerning the Rise, the Scope, and the Demise of Metaphysics – and Whether Philosophy Can Survive It”, edited and translated by Kohák, Jan Patočka: Philosophy and Selected Writings (Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press, 1989 [circa 1955]), 175–206, 193. 33 Ibid., 194. 34 Ibid., 196. See also Patočka, Body, Community, Language, World, 33. 35 “A historical being…is not one who lives in eternity… Rather, it is a being who distinguishes among that which is given, that which is lost and irretrievably gone, and that which does not yet exist except in the mode of unfulfilment in what is present. A historical being leans on the past, using it to open up the horizon of the given, with its help overcoming the given and the present. He can do that, however, only if the power of dissociation is available to him, the power of dissociation from mere givenness and presence, the power of liberation from the purely objective and given.” – Patočka, “Negative Platonism: Reflections Concerning the Rise, the Scope, and the Demise of Metaphysics – and Whether Philosophy Can Survive It”, 199. 36 Ibid., 200.

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history; and to further illuminate Patočka’s alternative position, and the relationship he establishes between freedom, history and politics. Patočka’s first movement is a movement of acceptance, and is defined by a fundamental contingency – life is determined, here, by a series of contingencies, “biological, situational, traditional (customs), individual (skills)”.37 We depend on others to take care of us and provide for our needs, integrating us into the life and activity of the community. In the second movement, the movement of self-extension, there is something like a reversal of the acceptance of the first – here we operate as providers, and are not the passive recipients of care as we are in the first movement. This is the domain of work and production, in which there is a deferral of the gratification and immediacy of the first movement. It is a movement of self-extension in that, via work and production, we constitute “our inorganic body”,38 and build for ourselves a world. If the first movement is oriented temporally to the past, by a passive acceptance of what is given, the second movement is oriented to the present, to life’s tasks as we are daily confronted with them. When the emphasis falls on the present, in the second movement, we are not passive in the manner of the movement of acceptance; rather, the present is altered and modified by our action upon it. However, the second movement is still in the grip of “ready-made potentials…what holds sway over us is, once again, an alien, autonomous and already existing power”.39 Thus in 1970, Patočka claims that the second movement, despite being aimed outward toward things and tasks, is still ruled by the past, “a hidden rule, no longer immediate but mediated by things”.40 Here, in the world of work and production, in our engagement with things and the daily tasks that organise them, we are living in that common world in which tradition orients our practical activities. All these things and tasks have not yet become a problem – we are interested in them in a way that precludes the problematisation that is characteristic of the third movement: [E]xistence in this entire realm is an interested one. This is a realm of the average, of anonymity, of social roles in which people are not themselves, are not existence in

37

Patočka, Body, Community, Language, World, 149–50. Ibid., 150. 39 Patočka, “‘The Natural World’ Reconsidered Thirty-Three Years Later: Afterword to the Second Edition (1970)”, eds Chvatík and Učník, trans. Abrams, The Natural World as a Philosophical Problem (Northwestern University Press, forthcoming). 40 Ibid. 38

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And it is precisely to such roles, in relations of production or market relations of competition, that the French Positivists and Hayek reduce human life. Our roles, according to Patočka, are what, in the social domain, keep us apart, lead us to fear one another; but also cause us to be watchful for opportunities of exploitation. “The movement of self-extension is concerned only with things, sees only things, albeit in their utensility and not in their independence.”42 The encounter with things as somehow useful and manipulable, as components of a larger system in “networks of instrumental references”,43 is characteristic of the way SaintSimon, Comte and Hayek understand human relations. In a society of workers and administrators, or of entrepreneurs and customers, all human activity is understood as serving the purposes of instrumental projects. 44 However, apart from suggesting that Hayek and the Positivists imagine human life (and our political life as part of it) in terms similar to the dynamics Patočka describes as the second movement, I suggest that Patočka’s claims regarding the first movement are also instructive in coming to terms with Hayek’s vision. Specifically, we can better understand the way Hayek considers human life by reflecting upon the ideal of the first movement. The ideal of the first movement is oriented by an interest in what is pleasurable and immediate – it is the domain of an unreflective happiness. Happiness depends on a situation we do not control.45 This is why Patočka gives as an example the experience of luck – luck is the condition of wanting the most from the world, hoping that it will freely give me what I find immediately satisfying. 46 For Hayek, freedom is the opportunity – within certain minor constraints – to pursue whatever it is that I want, and this 41

Patočka, Body, Community, Language, World, 151. Patočka, “‘The Natural World’ Reconsidered Thirty-Three Years Later: Afterword to the Second Edition (1970)”, §III. 43 Ibid. 44 “To accomplish this [second] movement now means to bear the burden of the satisfying, to be seen, not with the kind of loving eye of acceptance, but rather in a cold appraisal of the way in which we can be put to use. We are now ‘useable,’ and in this usableness, at others’ disposal. As usable, we are, at the same time, put at the disposal of users. We are a community of using users”, ibid. 45 Ibid. 46 Patočka, Body, Community, Language, World, 158–159. 42

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can include that which I find most pleasurable. Essentially, it is the exercise of choice about what we want. Contrastingly, for Patočka, this choice does not express the essence of freedom. As Patočka notes: “There is no freedom in that since the goal, the orientation, is given by instinct. It is an extasis of our life which has already anticipated any free decision we might make, anchoring us in what is already given, already here in the structure of our life.”47 Although Hayek’s idea of the political domain can be explained by Patočka’s account of the second movement, I also think Hayek’s idea of freedom can be likened to this “aesthetic ideal”48 embedded in the first movement. The relationship between a technologically advanced system of production, and the idea of individuals seeking personal gratification, pleasure and happiness (goals coming from the ideal of the first movement and its relation to the past), is one that is essential to modern capitalism: here, the first and second movements are combined; the structure of the latter with the ideal of the first. According to Patočka, in the first two movements humans surrender to the power of the earth, to the already given, to the immediacy of things and tasks. The third movement attempts to free us from this power of the earth.49 In this movement we no longer relate to particular things, but rather face the whole that makes possible our encounter with particulars and the tasks that make up our everydayness. Although having the future as its temporal dimension, this movement is not a forgetting of the present. Rather, the third movement opens the horizon of the future and brings it into focus by problematising the certainties that allow us to lose ourselves in the present. The second movement is also (as is all human lifein-possibilities) future-oriented, but this orientation is directed by the already given; by what we have accepted about the objects and tasks that make up our everydayness. In the third movement, we confront the problematicity of human existence and no longer relate to the present as given, but relate to it rather as a problem; as something that can be thought of differently. When the third comes to the fore, our tasks, our engagement with others and our relation to the world that makes our lives and their concerns possible is brought under a new light. This unsettling of the rule of the earth makes possible not only philosophical responsibility – the attempt to constantly think anew all the meaning we have 47

Ibid., 158–59. Ibid., 158. 49 Ibid., 151. 48

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inherited – but also political life, in the sense of a life that is oriented according to principles of goodness and justice not exhaustible by definitions, models or calculations. It also makes possible an active caring for others that overcomes the loving-yet-passive acceptance of the first movement, and the instrumentality that penetrates human relations in the second. This is because the instrumentality typical of the second movement is robbed of its centrality in mediating human relations. Human relations are thus no longer assessed in terms of their usefulness and efficiency; there enters the demand that they also be good and just. If, as Hayek would have it, history, the market and our common life function according to general principles beyond our control or understanding, there can be no place for the requirements of justice. The demands of justice are, as Hayek himself states, simply inappropriate to a naturalistic evolutionary process… Civilisation is not only a product of evolution – it is a process; by establishing a framework of general rules and individual freedom it allows itself to continue to evolve… Though by moral conduct an individual may increase his opportunities, the resulting evolution will not gratify all his moral desires. Evolution cannot be just.50

For Patočka, history is not the process of cultural evolution Hayek describes, and the demand for justice is an essential component of the political life, which does not care simply for the prolongation of that life, but also for the very manner in which that life is lived. Hayek understands human history as essentially a progressive mastery of techniques of survival, and he is thus blind to those aspects of our history – for Patočka, the very core of history – that rise above this concern for mere life. The philosophical and political life that is engendered by the third movement – that upswing that counterbalances the movements of the earth – means that we encounter the world, our historical inheritance and our political life as a problem and a task. Problematicity is fundamental to the third movement. The upswing of the third movement helps us to make sense of Patočka’s account of the Greek polis. Patočka describes the beginnings of history proper (referring to political life in the Greek polis) as being characterised by “a permanent uprootedness, [a] lack of foundation”.51 In this state, human life is not sheltered by the certainties of the past or protected from the world by an organised effort of securing life. Human life is invaded by other possibilities and is charged with the task of con50

Hayek, The Fatal Conceit: The Errors of Socialism, 74. Patočka, Heretical Essays in the Philosophy of History (Chicago and La Salle, Illinois: Open Court, 1996), 38. 51

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fronting the disruption of traditional meaning; it is exposed to “its own finitude and the permanent precariousness of life”.52 The disruption of traditional meaning, and the willingness to embrace the uprootedness this disruption entails, requires a politics with conflict at its heart: The spirit of the polis is a spirit of unity in conflict, in battle […] Polemos is not the destructive passion of a wild brigand but is, rather, the creator of unity. The unity it founds is more profound than any ephemeral sympathy or coalition of interests; adversaries meet in the shaking of a given meaning, and so create a new way of being human – perhaps the only mode that offers hope amid the storm of the world: the unity of the shaken but undaunted. 53

The problematicity, precariousness and conflict of political life are anathema to the Positivists and Hayek, seeking as they both do a constant and unmovable foundation for human affairs. In this sense, they reduce human history and political life to the ‘everydayness’ Patočka describes: “to the frenzy of work and activity”.54 The fellow labourers and administrators of Saint-Simon, or the competitors and entrepreneurs of Hayek, are ideal types that escape the precariousness of political action and that avoid the fundamental conflict of politics. The Positivists replace conflict between people with the conquest of nature. Hayek avoids accounting for political conflict by organising all interaction through the supposedly naturally efficient organisation of resources accomplished by the market. As noted earlier, for Hayek, the legal framework is in place to support the functioning of the market and to protect the individual as entrepreneur – these goals are substituted for citizen participation in debates about the content and implementation of law. The Positivists and Hayek are not only apolitical but also ahistorical, in the sense that they would rob history of its essential rise above decadence. Advanced technologies and the coordinated exploitation of nature do not free us from the movements of the earth; they only lighten the burden of this domain. The lightening of this burden is precisely what we have excelled at in the modern age (for certain sections of the globe anyway, and, sadly, often at the expense of others). Precisely because of our success at this unburdening of ourselves we have become blind to any other human concerns. However, included in this unburdening and its concomitant mastery of nature and our surrounding world, humans are also viewed as resources from which to derive the maximum benefit 52

Ibid., 39. Ibid., 41–43. 54 Patočka, “Life in Balance, Life in Amplitude”, 37. 53

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for the system. Paradoxically, humans become mere means in a process whose purpose is supposedly the improvement of the human lot. If we have become masters of the world, it is at the price of finding ourselves incorporated into a planetary system that makes no distinctions and evaluates things (including humans) solely in terms of their expediency and efficiency. Patočka’s characterisation of the second movement shows how from the perspective of this movement of human life – and this is characteristic of the modern world – there is a focus on particulars and the perceived utility of whatever is at hand. In the technoscientific age, there are myriad and simultaneous projects of utility maximisation. These schemes are deprived of any explicit unifying purpose, despite the fact that they are often connected – a state of affairs that Hayek sees as both inevitable and desirable. Thus, our situation within the world as a whole is rendered invisible behind the short-term opportunity for some sort of material gain. Simultaneously (and, at first, seemingly in contradiction), particular optimising projects become the guiding concern of an apparently autonomous system of dispersed-though-often-connected opportunities of optimisation. In other words, the principle that guides our actions and lives is no longer based on any grand theological, philosophical or revolutionary ideal: our guiding principle is based on the notion of usefulness and extracting the maximum yield from whatever opportunities are presented to us. Put differently, life’s meaning becomes identical with the optimising project itself. As I have argued, the optimising project of modernity finds expression in seemingly divergent political outlooks such as those of the Positivists and Hayek. Conclusion In the modern age, the world is considered a resource for our projects; we see things in regards to their usefulness in particular tasks and concerns. The dominance of this understanding overshadows any attempt to consider the world in any other fashion. By contrast, Patočka’s third movement is characterised by the attempt to find clarity in our lives, to find unity in the disconnected, particular concerns of everydayness; and, thus, is a challenge to the ideals of efficiency and usefulness that orient much of the modern world. Patočka’s account of the rise of politics, history and philosophy illustrates how the simultaneity of these three events were attempts at breaking free from the everyday. The third movement can be understood as a transcendence of every-

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dayness. Additionally, political life can be seen as an expression of the third movement insofar as the attempt to live according to a just political order can be seen as a rising above decadence. In my discussion of Hayek and French Positivism, I aimed to uncover certain assumptions shared by politics of whatever stripe, and to suggest that in the modern world these assumptions are often drawn from an unacknowledged technoscientific framework. If the laws of natural science (in the model of Newtonian physics) were the ultimate arbiter and model for Saint-Simon and Comte, it is the laws or ‘general principles’ of the market (and the concomitant biological and computational metaphors) that hold sway for Hayek – neither account for what is essential to human existence, history, or political life. Patočka’s insights act as an important check to these kinds of positions, many aspects of which are so widespread in the contemporary world that they often go unnoticed and undebated. As Supiot claims: “Today, it is economic science that finds itself elevated as the mother of laws.”55 Perhaps then, politics now plays the role of handmaiden to economics; a role philosophy supposedly once played for theology. If we are to disturb this hierarchy, we will have to rethink what is proper to both politics and to the political life of historical beings; and the metaphysics (in this case, technoscientific) that shape many political ideas in the modern world. Works Cited Comte, Auguste. The Essential Comte: Selected from Cours de Philosophie Positive. New York: Harper and Row, 1974 Hayek, Friedrich August von. The Constitution of Liberty. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1960 Hayek, Friedrich August von. “The Counter-Revolution of Science.” Economica. 8.29 (1941), 9–36 Hayek, Friedrich August von. The Counter-Revolution of Science: Studies on the Abuse of Reason. Indianapolis: Liberty Press, 1979 Hayek, Friedrich August von. “The Economy, Science and Politics.” Studies in Philosophy, Politics and Economics. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1967 Hayek, Friedrich August von. “The Errors of Constructivism.” New Studies in Philosophy, Politics, Economics and the History of Ideas. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1978

55

Supiot, “The Social State”, 102.

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Three Perspectives on Politics and History Hayek, Friedrich August von. The Fatal Conceit: The Errors of Socialism. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1988 Hayek, Friedrich August von. Law, Legislation and Liberty. Vol. 3. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1979 Hayek, Friedrich August von. “The Moral Element in Free Enterprise.” Studies in Philosophy, Politics and Economics. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1967 Hayek, Friedrich August von. “Nature v. Nurture Once Again.” New Studies in Philosophy, Politics, Economics and the History of Ideas. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1978 Kolakowski, Leszek. Positivist Philosophy: From Hume to the Vienna Circle. Trans. Norbert Guterman. Revised ed. Harmondsworth: Penguin Books Ltd, 1972 Krippner, Greta R. Capitalizing on Crisis: The Political Origins of the Rise of Finance. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 2011 Manent, Pierre. The City of Man. Trans. Marc A. LePain. Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1998 Mattick, Paul. Business as Usual: The Economic Crisis and the Failure of Capitalism. London: Reaktion Books, 2011 Mirowski, Philip. Never Let a Serious Crisis go to Waste: How Neoliberalism Survived the Financial Meltdown. London: Verso, 2014 Patočka, Jan. Body, Community, Language, World. Ed. James Dodd. Chicago and La Salle, Illinois: Open Court, 1998 Patočka, Jan. Heretical Essays in the Philosophy of History. Trans. Erazim Kohák. Ed. James Dodd. Chicago and La Salle, Illinois: Open Court, 1996 Patočka, Jan. “Life in Balance, Life in Amplitude.” Edited and translated by Eric Manton. Living in Problematicity. Edice Oikúmené. Prague: Oikoymenh, 2007 [1939], 32–42 Patočka, Jan. “‘The Natural World’ Reconsidered Thirty-Three Years Later: Afterword to the Second Edition (1970).” Trans. Erika Abrams. The Natural World as a Philosophical Problem. Eds Ivan Chvatík and Ľubica Učník: Northwestern University Press, forthcoming Patočka, Jan. “Negative Platonism: Reflections Concerning the Rise, the Scope, and the Demise of Metaphysics – and Whether Philosophy Can Survive It.” Edited and translated by Erazim Kohák. Jan Patočka: Philosophy and Selected Writings. Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press, 1989 [circa 1955], 175– 206 Rancière, Jacques. “Introducing Disagreement.” Angelaki. 9.3 (2004), 3–9 Saint-Simon, Henri. Selected Writings on Science, Industry and Social Organisation. London: Croom Helm, 1975 Supiot, Alain. “The Social State.” New Left Review. 82 (2013), 99–113

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The Problem of Meaning in the Rational (Super)Civilisation: Patočka’s Interpretation of Modernity after World War II Jakub Homolka The work of Jan Patočka, probably the most important Czech philosopher of the modern age, is naturally interpreted within the framework of philosophy, especially through the phenomenological perspective developed in the 20th century. Nevertheless, Patočka’s philosophical thought was concerned with other disciplines as well. The aim of this paper is to describe Patočka’s philosophical dialogue with other fields of research. More precisely, I will focus on one concrete example of Patočka’s work – his interpretation of modernity after World War II – and link it to Max Weber’s sociology. My main concern is the concept of ‘supercivilisation‘, which is obviously rooted in Weber’s interpretation of the so-called ‘rationalisation’. Moreover, I aim to show that Patočka’s concept of supercivilisation can be put into the context of contemporary civilisational analysis and can thus be linked to the most recent discussions on modernity. Patočka’s Philosophy of History My attempt to introduce the concept of supercivilisation must be opened by a brief remark on Patočka’s philosophy of history in general. As we know, Patočka’s most famous and most complex lecture on the philosophy of history is presented in the Heretical Essays in the Philosophy of History (1975). Patočka’s main thesis could be expressed through the famous quotation: “History is nothing other than the shaken certitude of pre-given meaning.”1 In other words, the essence of our history lies in man’s ability to problematise the ‘everydayness’ of his life: i.e., to ‘overcome’ the level of mere ‘sustenance’.2 Patočka thus concentrates on the tension between the two poles of human existence – “mere life” and “life at the peak”3 – which has in each of the previous historical epochs – i.e., in

1

Patočka, Heretical Essays in the Philosophy of History (Chicago and La Salle, Illinois: Open Court, 1996), 118. 2 Ibid., 36ff, 102. 3 Ibid., 134.

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the Greek polis and in Christianity – its own, fruitful form.4 In this light, the Czech philosopher discusses the question of how the problem of meaning is constituted in modern society.5 Nevertheless, the Heretical Essays are the ‘mere’ peak of a program that was already planned out at the very beginning of Patočka’s career.6 In the 1930s, the young philosopher published a couple of articles in which he discussed the problems of historiography, the philosophy of history and history in general.7 This interest was not a coincidence. When we take a look at the book Přirozený svět jako filosofický problém (The Natural World as a Philosophical Problem) (1936) – Patočka’s habilitation treatise and probably his most famous work from the preWar period – we can observe that the philosophical analysis of the modern situation – i.e., the fact that ‘modern man’ lives in two worlds etc.8 – is linked to the problem of history.9 The philosophy of history thus constitutes an important task in Patočka’s work, where the problem of modernity is a crucial concern. My aim is to show that the post-War period represents one of its most notable chapters.

4

Ibid., 102ff, 106ff. Ibid., 110ff. 6 See Chvatík, “Jan Patočka”, ed. Tucker, A Companion to the Philosophy of History and Historiography (Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell, 2009), 518–528. 7 See Patočka, “Několik poznámek k pojmům dějin a dějepisu [A Few Notes on the Concepts of History and Historiography]”, Řád 2 (1934); Patočka, “Několik poznámek o pojmu ‘světových dějin’ [A Few Notes towards the Concept of ‘World History’]”, Česká Mysl 31 (1935), articles originally published in 1934 and 1935, in Patočka, “Zum Begriff der Geschichte und der Geschichtsschreibung [A Few Notes on the Concepts of History and Historiography]”, eds Nellen and Němec, Ketzerische Essais zur Philosophie der Geschichte und ergänzende Schriften (Stuttgart: Klett-Cotta, 1988), 318–330; Patočka, “Zum Begriff der Weltgeschichte [A Few Notes towards the Concept of ‘World History’]”, eds Nellen and Němec, Ketzerische Essais zur Philosophie der Geschichte und ergänzende Schriften (Stuttgart: Klett-Cotta, 1988), 331–345. 8 Patočka, Die natürliche Welt als philosophisches Problem [The Natural World as a Philosophical Problem] (Stuttgart: Klett-Cotta, 1990 [1936]), 25. 9 Ibid., 51. 5

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The Concept of Supercivilisation Interpretations of Patočka’s understanding of modern society usually place an emphasis on the conception of ‘industrial’ or ‘technological’ civilisation, which is mentioned in Heretical Essays,10 or they turn back to the conception of the ‘spiritual crisis of Europe’ – i.e., to Husserl’s critique of modern sciences and Masaryk’s critique of the loss of religion.11 In this paper, I aim to show that between these two concepts – i.e., between Patočka’s understanding of the spiritual crisis in the 1930s and his interpretation of modern civilisation in the 1970s – lies another attempt to explain the modern period: the concept of ‘supercivilisation’ (nadcivilizace). In order to introduce my approach to this area of Patočka’s work, it is helpful to begin by outlining some relevant historical points. The term ‘supercivilisation’ – as far as I know – first appeared in the 1940s in Patočka’s so-called ‘philosophical diaries’ (1946–50)12 and some traces can also be found in other texts.13 Patočka also uses the term later, in the 1970s, but only incidentally. 14 However, the only 10

Patočka, Heretical Essays in the Philosophy of History, 95ff. Patočka, “Masaryk’s and Husserl’s Conception of the Spiritual Crisis of European Humanity”. edited and translated by Kohák. Jan Patočka. Philosophy and Selected Writings (Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press, 1989 [1936]), 145–156. 12 See Patočka. Deník IX [Diary IX]. AJP 3000/074 = IX/76. The Jan Patočka Archive, Strahov, Prague, 1948. See the diary notes from 11–13 August 1948: the term ‘supercivilisation’ is used there as a synonym for ‘rational civilisation’. In addition, it is obvious that these notes were a groundwork for the future manuscript, “Nadcivilizace a její vnitřní konflikt [Supercivilisation and its Inner Conflict]”. For example, we can find in them the interpretation of Max Weber’s and Arnold J. Toynbee’s work that is later introduced in the first chapter of the latter work. 13 See Patočka’s distinction between ‘moderate’ and ‘radical’ humanism in the article, originally published in 1948, “Humanismus Edvarda Beneše [The Humanism of Edvard Beneš]”, eds Palek and Chvatík, Sebrané spisy 12: Češi I (Prague: Oikoymenh, 2006), 122– 126. 14 In the 1970s, the term ‘supercivilisation’ is mentioned in the article, “Duchovní základy života v naší době [The Spiritual Foundations of Life in our Time]” (1970) and in Patočka’s correspondence with Stanislav Sousedík. See Patočka, “Duchovní základy života v naší době [The Spiritual Foundations of Life in our Time]”, eds Chvatík and Kouba, Péče o duši: Soubor statí a přednášek o postavení člověka ve světě a v dějinách. Druhý díl: Stati z let 1970–1977. Nevydané texty a přednášky ze sedmdesátých let (Prague: Oikoymenh, 1999 [1970]), 9–28 and Patočka, “Dopis 7/70, Jan Patočka Stanislavu Sousedíkovi, 10. 5. 1970, bez udání místa [Letter 7/70 of Jan Patočka to Stanislav Sousedík]”, eds Schifferová, Chvatík and Havelka, Sebrané spisy 21: Korespondence s 11

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complete interpretation of this concept is presented in the work Nadcivilizace a její vnitřní konflikt (Supercivilisation and its Inner Conflict), a study written sometime in the 1950s and unpublished in Patočka’s lifetime.15 In the 1950s, Patočka – persecuted by the Czechoslovakian regime – could not freely publish his works. The study on supercivilisation, one of his most political writings, therefore remained in the form of an unfinished manuscript.16 This fact poses a few problems: for example, we cannot exactly say when the study was written. Thanks to other documents and manuscripts, we know that the study was at first a part of some greater, unfinished work covered by the concept of ‘Negative Platonism’.17 The more serious problem, however, is that Patočka seemed to be unsatisfied with it. He did not publish it even in the 1960s, when the social and political atmosphere in Czechoslovakia was much more liberal, nor later in samizdat. Moreover, Patočka does not use the term ‘supercivilisation’ in his later works. Instead, he prefers the term ‘industrial’ or ‘technological’ civilisation.18 These points raise doubts about the importance of the term ‘supercivilisation’in Patočka’s work. I claim, however, that this concept represents a fundamental part of Patočka’s heritage, which prefigures some motifs included in the famous Heretical Essays and other works. Thanks to the concept of supercivilisation, we can understand the development from the 1930s to the 1970s, from the ‘spiritual

komeniology I (Prague: Oikoymenh, 2011), 282–283. For the German translation of “Duchovní základy života v naší době [The Spiritual Foundations of Life in our Time]”, see Patočka, “Die geistigen Grundlagen des Lebens in unserer Zeit [The Spiritual Foundations of Life in our Time]”, 356ff. 15 Patočka, “Nadcivilizace a její vnitřní konflikt [Supercivilisation and its Inner Conflict]”, eds Chvatík and Kouba, Péče o duši: Soubor statí a přednášek o postavení člověka ve světě a v dějinách. Stati z let 1929–1952. První díl: Nevydané texty z padesátých let (Prague: Oikoymenh, 1996), 243–302. First published in 1987; See Patočka, Bibliografie 1928–1996 (Prague: Oikoymenh, 1997). 16 The study on supercivilisation was one of the manuscripts that were found after Patočka’s death in his flat; cf. Chvatík, “Geschichte und Vorgeschichte des Prager Jan Patočka-Archivs [The Story of the Events Leading up to the Establishment of the Jan Patočka Archives in Prague]”, Studia Phaenomenologica VII (2007), 173ff. 17 Patočka, “Rozvrh ‘Negativního platonismu’ [The Project of ‘Negative Platonism’]”, 443–445. 18 Patočka, Heretical Essays in the Philosophy of History, 95.

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crisis of Europe’ to the ‘post-European age’ and ‘industrial’ (or ‘technological’) civilisation.19 Patočka and Civilisational Analysis It is also necessary to mention that I am trying to read Patočka from the position of contemporary historical sociology, or rather, ‘civilisational analysis’. My approach to Patočka’s work is thus quite unusual. In brief, civilisational analysis, which can be understood as ‘a paradigm in the making’20 within contemporary historical sociology,21 continues in the tradition of civilisational research that can be seen in the works of classical sociologists (e.g., Max Weber, Emile Durkheim and Marcel Mauss) as well as ‘speculative’ historians (e.g., Arnold J. Toynbee, Oswald Spengler). In addition, it profits from the philosophy of history(e.g., Karl Jaspers).22 Nowadays, this approach is most notably represented by Israeli sociologist Shmuel Noah Eisenstadt, whose work systematically develops the

19 For these reasons we can say that it is no coincidence that the study of ‘supercivilisation’ is recently more and more in the spotlight of many thinkers and interpreters of Patočka’s work. See Hagedorn and Staudigl, eds, Über Zivilization und Differenz: Beiträge zu einer politischen Phänomenologie Europas [On Civilisation and Difference: Contributions to a Political Phenomenology of Europe] (Würzburg: Königshausen and Neumann, 2008); Arnason, Benyovszky and Skovajsa, eds, Dějinnost, nadcivilizace a modernita: Studie k Patočkově konceptu nadcivilizace [Historicity, Supercivilisation and Modernity: Studies towards Patočka’s Concept of Supercivilisation] (Prague: Togga, 2010), 132–139; Findlay, Caring for the Soul in a Postmodern Age: Politics and Phenomenology in the Thought of Jan Patočka (New York: State University of New York Press, 2002), 126– 131; Arnason, Civilizations in Dispute: Historical Questions and Theoretical Traditions (Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2003). 20 Arnason, “Civilizational Analysis: A Paradigm in the Making”, eds Holton and Nasson, World Civilizations and History of Human Development (UNESCO/Eolss Publishers, 2007), 1–34, 1ff. 21 See Wilfried Spohn’s attempt to describe the field of contemporary ‘historical and comparative sociology’ or the so-called ‘new historical sociology’: Spohn, “Historical and Comparative Sociology in a Globalizing World”, Historická Sociologie 1 (2009). 22 See Arnason, Civilizations in Dispute: Historical Questions and Theoretical Traditions; Arnason, “Negative Platonism: Between the History of Philosophy and the Philosophy of History”, eds Chvatík and Abrams, Jan Patočka and the Heritage of Phenomenology: Centenary Papers (New York: Springer, 2011), 215–227; Arjomand and Tiryakian, eds, Rethinking Civilizational Analysis (London: Sage, 2004).

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discussion on the ‘axial age’ and ‘multiple modernities’, with an emphasis on the civilisational dimension of human societies.23 Patočka was, without doubt, a philosopher; nevertheless, his work reflects development in other fields, primarily in history and sociology. The study on supercivilisation begins with an attempt to combine the work of British historian Arnold J. Toynbee – who tried to describe human history as a sequence of civilisations, which, according to some inner principles, rise and fall24 – with Max Weber and his theory of rationalisation. Patočka embraces Toynbee’s ‘pluralistic’25 civilisational perspective, but he refuses to subordinate rational civilisation to the category of mere civilisation. According to him, modernity has – thanks to its rationality – reached a new level. Whilst traditional civilisations were determined by their religious cores and were thus always particular, modern civilisation replaced this irrational core with ‘rationality’ and hence became the first truly ‘universal’ civilisation. That is why modern, rational and secularised civilisation does not seem to be a mere civilisation any more, but rather something like a ‘supercivilisation’, which is expected to absorb all its traditional predecessors. 26 For this reason, the problem of meaning in rational supercivilisation can be understood within the framework of what Johann P. Arnason terms a ‘civilisational paradox’. Arnason points out that Patočka’s study on supercivilisation shows that modern civilisation overcomes traditional civilisations; however, at the same time, modernity is, in comparison with these civilisations, incomplete.27 Arnason 23

See, for example, Eisenstadt, “Multiple Modernities”, Comparative Civilizations and Multiple Modernities (Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2003), 535–560; Eisenstadt, “Axial Civilizations and the Axial Age Reconsidered”, eds Arnason, Eisenstadt and Wittrock, Axial Civilizations and World History (Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2005), 531–564. 24 See Toynbee, A Study of History (London: Oxford University Press, 1945), 147ff, 189ff, 277ff; Somervell, A Study of History: Abridgement of Volumes I-VI (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1949), 579–585. 25 See Arnason’s distinction between the ‘unitary’ and ‘pluralistic’ ideas of civilisation, in Arnason, Civilizations in Dispute: Historical Questions and Theoretical Traditions, 1ff. 26 Patočka, “Nadcivilizace a její vnitřní konflikt [Supercivilisation and its Inner Conflict]”, 243ff. 27 Arnason, “Nadcivilizace a její různé podoby: Patočkova koncepce modernity ve světle dnešních diskusí [Supercivilisation and its Various Forms: Patočka’s Concept of Modernity in Light of Today’s Discussions]”, eds Arnason, Benyovszky and Skovajsa, Dějinnost, nadcivilizace a modernita: Studie k Patočkově konceptu nadcivilizace (Prague: Togga, 2010), 23–55, 27ff, 55.

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even observes that “the very attempt to complete modernity’s triumph over all other civilizations (and over civilizational difference as such) results in a particularistic regression which brings super-civilization closer to the condition of one civilization among others”.28 In this light, the link between the Czech philosopher and contemporary civilisational analysis should be more obvious. The most significant parallel is, of course, the civilisational perspective. What is, however, similarly important, is the effort to understand modernity through the turn to the roots of world history. This turn – which is already present in Patočka’s interest in Toynbee’s Study of History in the 1950s – is finalised in the Heretical Essays. As we know, Patočka finds the beginning of history – i.e., the moment when man first overcame the mere sustenance of life – in the Greek polis, or more precisely in the rise of philosophy and politics.29 Similarly, contemporary civilisational analysis develops the discussion of Karl Jaspers’ term ‘axial age’30 and tries to understand the break-through of modernity in the context of this period more than two millenia ago.31 The Inner Conflict of Modernity Furthermore, I would like to point out that the post-War period represents a significant shift in Patočka’s understanding of modernity. Precisely here, Patočka becomes aware of the fact –which he will develop later through the concept of the post-European age32 – that the problem of modernity is no longer

28

Arnason, Civilizations in Dispute: Historical Questions and Theoretical Traditions,

136. 29

Patočka, Heretical Essays in the Philosophy of History, 61ff. As we know, Jaspers’ aim was to find “an axis of world history”. He places this period between 800–200 B.C.E. and calls it the “axial age”; i.e., the age in which “were born the fundamental categories within which we still think today, and the beginnings of the world religions, by which human beings still live, were created”: Jaspers, The Origin and Goal of History (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1953), 2. See Arnason, “The Axial Age and its Interpreters: Reopening a Debate”, eds Arnason, Eisenstadt and Wittrock, Axial Civilizations and World History (Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2005), 19–49. 31 See Shmuel N. Eisenstadt’s term, “second axial age”: Eisenstadt, The Great Revolutions and the Civilizations of Modernity (Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2006), 126ff. 32 See Patočka, “Die geistigen Grundlagen des Lebens in unserer Zeit [The Spiritual Foundations of Life in our Time]”, 361; Patočka, “Europa und Nach-Europa. Die 30

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solely a problem of the West; in other words, that there could be other, multiple attempts to formulate the grounds of modern, rational society. Up until World War II, Patočka’s attention was – influenced by Husserl’s and Masaryk’s critiques of the spiritual crisis of Europe – turned to the situation of the West: to what he would later call the ‘moderate’ version of supercivilisation. However, after the War, Patočka realises that the original pattern of modernity has also its ‘radical’ alternative. This change in Patočka’s interpretation of modern society is most significantly formulated in the concept of supercivilisation, especially through the description of its ‘inner conflict’. Patočka reflects that the situation of modernity became more complicated: in the East definitively arose the alternative, socialist attempt to formulate the civilisational pattern of modernity, the Soviet empire, which was the supreme representative of what Patočka calls the ‘radical’ version of supercivilisation. Patočka observes, finally, that this ‘inner conflict’ leads to the ‘dialectic of decay’: the Western version of modernity failed because of its moral indifference; however, the other attempt, represented by the Soviet empire, was in no way a remedy and inevitably turned into totalitarianism.33 We should not forget that Patočka spent his whole life in Czechoslovakia and, therefore, was an eyewitness to all the inner contradictions of the Soviet regime (e.g., political trials, persecutions, etc.). His post-War attempt to interpret modernity is, consequently, based on personal uncertainty, confusion and doubt.34 As the Czech philosopher himself notes, the concept of supercivilisation is “our own attempt to understand and to solve the problems and confusions of our society”.35 Rationalisation and the Loss of Meaning According to Patočka’s philosophy of history, the modern epoch is – in contrast to the Greek polis and Christianity – mainly characterised by “the loss of absolute meaning”; in other words the loss of absolute values, absolute hope, and so nacheuropäische Epoche und ihre geistigen Probleme [Europe and Post-Europe: The Post-European Age and its Spiritual Problems]”, 211ff. 33 See Patočka, “Nadcivilizace a její vnitřní konflikt [Supercivilisation and its Inner Conflict]”, 260, 294. 34 Cf. Blecha, Jan Patočka (Olomouc: Votobia, 1997), 98ff. 35 Patočka, “Nadcivilizace a její vnitřní konflikt [Supercivilisation and its Inner Conflict]”, 291.

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on.36 My intention is to show that Patočka’s interpretation of this situation was inspired by the German sociologist Max Weber and his understanding of the process that is subsumed under the term ‘rationalisation’. In order to support the latter idea, it would be beneficial to begin with a quotation from the Heretical Essays: Transformations in the Christian spiritual core itself, the transition first from a Christianity of and for the nobility to an ecclesiastical autonomy and then to a lay Christianity, made it possible for Christianity – with [the] Reformation’s ascetic attitude to the world and with the pathos of personal certification by economic blessing – to contribute to the rise of that autonomy of the productive process that characterizes modern capitalism. That capitalism quickly sheds the constraints of its religious impetus and allies itself fundamentally with a superficial modern rationalism, estranged from any personal and moral vocation. It comes to be characterized by an immensely successful mathematical formalism. Its most successful aspect focuses on a mastery of nature, of movement, and of force. That is the modern mechanism which capitalism was only too glad to turn into a cult of the mechanical, so contributing to what came to be known as the industrial revolution. This revolution then penetrates throughout and ever more completely determines our lives. Given its differentiation of vocations and interdependence of interests, European humanity and by now already humanity as such simply are no longer capable of physically surviving but for the mode of production that rests increasingly on science and technology (and, of course, increasingly devastates the global, planetary store of energy), so that rational domination, the cold ‘truth‘ of that coldest of cold monsters, today wholly obscures to us its origin, eliminating our traditional ways of overcoming everydayness in a nonorgiastic and so truthful mode (a deeper form of truth which pays heed not only to the formal guise assumed by dominable nature but also to humans in their uniqueness and profound individuality) while posing as the All in All, the steward of the cosmos. So many spiritual themes ultimately conjoined in giving rise to an unspiritual, wholly ‘practical’, secular and material conception of reality as an object to be mastered by our mind and hands.37

There is little doubt that Patočka paraphrases Weber and his sociology of religion, especially the famous work The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism (1904–05). According to Weber, the capitalist way of economic activity was originally motivated by religious faith; however, this religious motive has, step36

Chvatík, “The Responsibility of the ‘Shaken’: Jan Patočka and his ‘Care for the Soul’ in the ‘Post-European’ World”, eds Chvatík and Abrams, Jan Patočka and the Heritage of Phenomenology: Centenary Papers (New York: Springer, 2011), 263–279, 275. 37 Patočka, Heretical Essays in the Philosophy of History, 111ff.

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by-step, vanished, and the run of modern economics has remained here as an “iron cage” (“stahlhartes Gehäuse”).38 Weber therefore concludes: “Since asceticism undertook to remodel the world and to work out its ideals in the world, material goods have gained an increasing and finally an inexorable power over the lives of men as at no previous period in history. Today the spirit of religious asceticism – whether finally, who knows? – has escaped from the cage. But victorious capitalism, since it rests on mechanical foundations, needs its support no longer.”39 In Patočka, however, the impact of Weber’s thought is most evident in the study on supercivilisation, in which, as I have already mentioned, Patočka appropriates Weber’s concept of ‘rationalisation’ as the ‘determining social factor’ of modern civilisation.40 I would further remark that the German sociologist, as well as Husserl and Masaryk, associates modernity with the rise of modern science. However, Weber shows that modern science is (together with modern capitalism, modern bureaucracy, etc.) just a part of some more complex process of change, which can be subsumed within the term ‘rationalisation’. Generally, we can say that Patočka accepts Weber’s thesis “that precisely, and only, in the Western world certain cultural phenomena emerged which, as at least we like to think, represent a direction of development of universal significance and validity”.41 Thus, after World War II, Patočka reflects that the problem of the spiritual crisis has to be put within a more complex concept, which could subsume all the processes and aspects of modernity. I claim that Patočka comes to the conclusion that the essence of the modern period is described in Weber’s concept of rationalisation, which can subsume the most notable aspects of Husserl’s critique of modern sciences, as well as of Masaryk’s analysis of religion. In other words, it is the concept of rationalisation that most properly represents the image of a new, materialistic, secularised world void of any absolute meaning, which also provides a foundation for his future concept of ‘industrial’ (or ‘technological’) civilisation. 38

Weber, The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism (London and New York: Routledge and Taylor & Francis, 2005), 123. 39 Ibid., 124. 40 Patočka, “Nadcivilizace a její vnitřní konflikt [Supercivilisation and its Inner Conflict]”, 246ff. 41 Weber, Selections in Translation (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007), 331.

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Supercivilisation and the Concept of Rational Action The central focus of the study of supercivilisation is, then, the modern search for some kind of overcoming of this ‘relativistic’ and ‘nihilistic’ situation. The core of Patočka’s concept of supercivilisation is, hence, formed by the following question: how can modern man deal with this situation? How can we live in the absence of absolute meaning? Patočka observes that in the history of modern society, since the French Revolution, two possible answers developed – i.e., a ‘moderate’ and a ‘radical’ approach. Very briefly, the first of them, ‘moderate’ supercivilisation, respects the fact that rational organisation is a mere ‘framework’ for life – i.e., a framework for human autonomy, for the plurality of interests and even for the heritage of previous civilisations – and nothing more. On the contrary, ‘radical’ supercivilisation believes that rational organisation can create a ‘new’, ‘total’ life, completely distinguished from traditional civilisations. In radicalism, rationality is thus related to some kind of absolute authority.42 It was not a coincidence, then, that Patočka’s attention turned to Max Weber, because his sociology seems to represent an attempt to understand the reality of modernity; in other words the reality of the world, where the meaning of social action seems to be something more and more unclear and ambiguous. In the first quarter of the 20th century, Max Weber formulates the basis of his sociology, which should be “the science whose object is to interpret the meaning of social action and thereby give a causal explanation of the way in which the action proceeds and the effects which it produces”.43 Besides other things, Weber formulates his famous distinction between four “ideal” types of social action: (1) “traditional”; (2) “affective”; (3) “rational in the sense that it is an attempt to realise some absolute value (‘wertrational’)”; and (4) “rational in the sense of employing appropriate means to a given end (‘zweckrational’)”.44 Crucial is Weber’s distinction between the two types of rational action. Weber observes that “a person acts rationally in the ‘means–end’ sense when his action is guided by considerations of ends, means and secondary consequences; when, in acting, he rationally assesses means in relation to ends, ends in relation to secondary consequences,

42

Patočka, “Nadcivilizace a její vnitřní konflikt [Supercivilisation and its Inner Conflict]”, 250ff, 255ff, 260. 43 Weber, Selections in Translation, 7. 44 Ibid., 28.

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and, finally, the various possible ends in relation to each other”.45 On the other hand, “an example of someone who acts wholly rationally in the sense of attempting to realise an absolute value is a man who, without any concern for foreseeable consequences, acts out of a conviction based on what duty, honour, beauty, religious doctrine, piety or the importance of any kind of ‘cause’ seem to him to require”.46 In addition, Weber points out the problematic character of wertrational action: he observes that “from the standpoint of the ‘means–end’ kind of rationality, however, the other kind is always irrational, and the more so the more it elevates the value by which action is to be guided to the status of an absolute value”.47 When we take a look back on Patočka’s definition of the two versions of rational supercivilisation, we can see that his distinction ‘moderatism’/‘radicalism’ is indirectly related to Weber’s ‘zweckrational’/‘wertrational’ ideal types of social action.48 Whilst moderatism admits the plurality of multiple ends, radicalism is strictly related to some absolute value. Therefore, it is not a coincidence that Patočka hoped that moderatism – in spite of the fact that Western liberalism failed and turned into an ‘atomised’ individualism49 – still had a chance to be the true form of rational civilisation.50 However, Patočka’s definition of moderatism goes beyond Weber’s distinction. The key potential of moderate supercivilisation lies in the ability to admit that modern society is impossible without an integration of ‘something’ that stands outside the frontiers of rationality. 51 In this way, Patočka opens up the question – which he will develop later in the 1970s – of whether modern society, forsaken by God, has the potential to overcome the level of mere rationality – i.e., the level of mere

45

Ibid., 29. Ibid. 47 Ibid. 48 See Bělohradský, “Absolutno uprostřed všedního dne [The Absolute in the Middle of a Mundane Day]”, eds Arnason, Benyovszky and Skovajsa, Dějinnost, nadcivilizace a modernita: Studie k Patočkově konceptu nadcivilizace (Prague: Togga, 2010), 173–200, 174. 49 Patočka, “Nadcivilizace a její vnitřní konflikt [Supercivilisation and its Inner Conflict]”, 275, 285, 292ff. 50 Ibid., 254ff, 281ff, 285ff. 51 Ibid., 275, 285. 46

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everydayness – and to start a new search for meaning that is not relative and that no longer needs any absolute support. 52 Conclusion: Supercivilisation as a Key to Patočka’s Work? Finally, I would like to draw my main conclusions. Firstly, I have to add that I understand Patočka’s work as a living stream of thinking. As other interpreters have noted,53 Patočka was continuously rethinking and reinterpreting his own concepts. His work therefore does not include any ‘final’ definitions or any ‘final’ terms, but rather living attempts to formulate crucial problems. The problem of modernity is undoubtedly one of these questions that can be followed through the entirety of Patočka’s work from the 1930s to the 1970s. Predominantly, there can be found four concepts of modernity: (1) the spiritual crisis of Europe; (2) rational supercivilisation; (3) the post-European age; and (4) the industrial/technological civilisation. I have briefly shown that supercivilisation is a logical link between Patočka’s 1930s and 1970s interpretations of modernity. This concept mirrored Patočka’s unique post-War experience of the confrontation with two different and somehow failed versions of modernity – Western liberalism and Soviet totalitarianism. Moreover, I have to point out that the term ‘supercivilisation’ – in comparison with the term ‘industrial’ civilisation, which was popularised by the French sociologist, Raymond Aron54 – is Patočka’s very own and original contribution to the discussion of the civilisational dimension of modernity. Secondly, from my point of view, it is necessary to add that the main motif of Patočka’s supercivilisation – the incompleteness of the modern period, the civilisational paradox – can also be found in classical sociology, in the works of authors such as Auguste Comte or Emile Durkheim. However, in my paper, I have 52

See Chvatík, “The Responsibility of the ‘Shaken’: Jan Patočka and his ‘Care for the Soul’ in the ‘Post-European’ World”, 275ff. 53 Cf. Karfík, “Die Odysee des endlich gewordenen Absoluten: Patočkas systematische Versuche zwischen 1936 und 1964 [The Odyssey of the Absolute that became Finite: Patočka’s Systematic Attempts between 1936 and 1964]”, Unendlichwerden durch die Endlichkeit: Eine Lektüre der Philosophie Jan Patočkas (Würzburg: Könighausen and Neumann, 2008), 32–54, 32; Rezek, “Jan Patočka”, Spisy VIII: Démanty české filozofie (Prague: Jan Placák–Ztichlá Klika, 2011), 183–184. 54 See Raymond Aron’s lectures on the ‘industrial society’ from the 1960s, Aron, Dix-huit leçons sur la société industrielle [Eighteen Lessons on Industrial Society] (Paris: Gallimard, 1962).

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turned attention to Max Weber because the German sociologist, in comparison with those authors, did not rely on any (more or less positivistic) ideal of a new religion.55 On the contrary, Weber, in his famous writing, Science as a Vocation (1919) observes that the challenge of modern man is “to live in a godless and prophetless age”56; he must be “able to cope with an everyday life like this”.57 Weber has sympathy for the human need for faith, but he warns us that “attempting to devise new forms of religion without new, genuine prophecy, will lead to the creation of something inwardly similar that is sure to be even worse in its effects”,58 and that there is also a danger that “the many gods of antiquity, disenchanted and hence assuming the form of impersonal powers, rise up out of their graves, reach out for power over our lives and begin their eternal struggle among themselves again”.59 This could be the reason why Patočka’s analysis of supercivilisation is found to be especially in line with Weber’s work. In my paper, I have pointed out two motifs. (1) It is obvious that Patočka knows Weber’s sociology of religion. He accepts Weber’s famous thesis that capitalism has its origin in the Christian cradle. Weber’s concept of rationalisation thus becomes the crucial element of Patočka’s understanding of modern civilisation. (2) In addition, Patočka was probably also inspired by Weber’s methodology. The distinction between the two principles of rational civilisation seems to be grounded in Weber’s ‘zweckrational’ and ‘wertrational’ types of social action. Thus, through the descriptions of ‘moderatism’ and ‘radicalism’, Patočka defines his own ‘ideal’ types of modernity, which can be applied to particular modern societies. In general, Patočka’s perception of Weber’s sociology seems to be an important yet unexplored issue. Despite the fact that the Czech philosopher explicitly and repeatedly mentions and interprets Weber’s work,60 this influence is, in literature 55

See Durkheim, The Elementary Forms of Religious Life (New York: The Free Press, 1995), 429ff ; Comte, The Catechism of Positive Religion or Summary Exposition of the Universal Religion in Thirteen Systematic Conversations Between a Woman and a Priest of Humanity (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009), 1–26. 56 Weber, “Science as a Vocation”, ed. Dreijmanis, trans. Wells, Max Weber’s Complete Writings on Academic and Political Vocations (New York: Algora, 2008), 25–52, 49. 57 Ibid., 45. 58 Ibid., 52. 59 Ibid., 45. 60 See Patočka, “Nadcivilizace a její vnitřní konflikt [Supercivilisation and its Inner Conflict]”, 247; Patočka, “Kapitoly ze současné filosofie [Chapters of Contemporary

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on Patočka, suppressed or at least underrated. In this light, the study of supercivilisation could be a key to this unexplored theme in Patočka’s thought. Thirdly, Patočka’s concept of supercivilisation includes many links to the issues of contemporary civilisational analysis: (1) Patočka – thanks to Arnold J. Toynbee – adopts the civilisational perspective and sees modernity as a new civilisation. (2) Furthermore, Patočka implies that modernity finally leads more to a plurality of what is nowadays called ‘multiple modernities’, rather than to some monolithic unit. Modernity, therefore, brings us neither an ‘end of history’, nor any ‘clash of civilisations’,61 because the real ‘clash’ is happening between two principles – ‘moderatism’ and ‘radicalism’ – which finally cause the inner plurality of a supercivilisation. (3) However, this does not mean that the cultural foundations of traditional civilisations are no longer relevant. Patočka’s interpretation of what Johann P. Arnason terms ‘civilisational paradox’ shows us that, thus far, no form of rational civilisation has been capable of resolving the problem of meaning that arose in the cultural shift from tradition to modernity. In this way, we can link Patočka’s work to the issues of contemporary discussions on modernity.62 Fourthly, my interpretation of Patočka’s civilisational approach to modernity should prepare the ground for a later explanation of the link between Patočka’s phenomenological studies and his philosophy of history. In general, our Philosophy]”, eds Chvatík and Kouba, Péče o duši: Soubor statí a přednášek o postavení člověka ve světě a v dějinách. Stati z let 1929–1952. První díl: Nevydané texty z padesátých let (Prague: Oikoymenh, 1996 [1936]), 85–100, 94ff; Patočka, “O filosofii dějin [Notes on the Philosophy of History]”, eds Chvatík and Kouba, Péče o duši: Soubor statí a přednášek o postavení člověka ve světě a v dějinách. Stati z let 1929–1952. První díl: Nevydané texty z padesátých let (Prague: Oikoymenh, 1996 [1940]), 107–115, 111–112; Patočka, “Masaryk’s and Husserl’s Conception of the Spiritual Crisis of European Humanity”, 148. 61 As we can see, Patočka’s concept of supercivilisation could be a ground for the critique of Fukuyama’s and Huntington’s popular concepts from the 1990s. See Fukuyama, The End of History and the Last Man (New York: The Free Press, 1992); Huntington, “The Clash of Civilizations”, Foreign Affairs 72.3 (1993); Huntington, The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1996). 62 For example, using the theses and conclusions presented in this paper, we can demonstrate Patočka’s contribution to the contemporary discussion on development of the so-called ‘process of secularisation’. cf. Homolka, “Proces sekularizace v ‘době poevropské’: K vybraným motivům Patočkova výkladu náboženství [The Secularisation Process of the ‘Post-European Age’: Selected Motifs of Patočka’s Interpretation of Religion]”, unpublished.

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thoughts can be developed in the following directions: (1) First of all, we can turn our attention to Patočka’s early works and explain the role of the philosophy of history in the author’s philosophical program. One of our main concerns is Patočka’s term, ‘deep’ history (distinguished from ‘superficial’ history), and the following discussion on the variability of historical consciousness. 63 (2) Next, we can focus on the selected topics mentioned in Heretical Essays. In the third essay, Patočka implies the possibility of a parallel between ‘individual life’ and ‘the life of humankind’. He observes that some experiences – such as ‘loss of meaning’ or ‘conversion’ – can be seen on the individual as well as the collective (or social) level of human existence. 64 (3) In addition, this parallel can be applied to Patočka’s famous theory of ‘the three movements of human existence’. In the second essay, Patočka implies that in various historical epochs each of the three movements has its own form. 65 It is, therefore, our next task to discuss how Patočka’s interest in the civilisational dimension of history is connected with his philosophical analysis of human existence and his philosophical program in general. In this light, the concept of supercivilisation – understood as an important theme in Patočka’s thought – represents a remarkable challenge. It seems to be one of the crucial keys to Patočka’s thought, which invites us to think about the development and complexity of Patočka’s work, to uncover the richness of its influences, to consider the impact of historical circumstances and to analyse its potential contributions to contemporary discussions. My paper must be considered as a preliminary outline of the crucial questions, rather than a comprehensive response. Works Cited Arjomand, Saïd Amir, and Edward A. Tiryakian, eds. Rethinking Civilizational Analysis. London: Sage, 2004 Arnason, Johann P. “The Axial Age and its Interpreters: Reopening a Debate.” Axial Civilizations and World History. Eds Johann P. Arnason, Shmuel N. Eisenstadt and Björn Wittrock. Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2005, 19–49

63

Patočka, “Zum Begriff der Weltgeschichte [A Few Notes towards the Concept of ‘World History’]”, 331–345. 64 Patočka, Heretical Essays in the Philosophy of History, 61. 65 Ibid., 29ff.

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Jakub Homolka Arnason, Johann P. “Civilizational Analysis: A Paradigm in the Making.” World Civilizations and History of Human Development. Eds Robert Holton and William Richard Nasson: UNESCO/Eolss Publishers, 2007. 1–34. Vol. 1 Arnason, Johann P. Civilizations in Dispute: Historical Questions and Theoretical Traditions. Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2003 Arnason, Johann P. “Nadcivilizace a její různé podoby: Patočkova koncepce modernity ve světle dnešních diskusí [Supercivilisation and its Various Forms: Patočka’s Concept of Modernity in Light of Today’s Discussions].” Dějinnost, nadcivilizace a modernita: Studie k Patočkově konceptu nadcivilizace. Eds Johann P. Arnason, Ladislav Benyovszky and Marek Skovajsa. Prague: Togga, 2010, 23– 55 Arnason, Johann P. “Negative Platonism: Between the History of Philosophy and the Philosophy of History.” Jan Patočka and the Heritage of Phenomenology: Centenary Papers. Eds Ivan Chvatík and Erika Abrams. New York: Springer, 2011, 215–227 Arnason, Johann P., Ladislav Benyovszky, and Marek Skovajsa, eds. Dějinnost, nadcivilizace a modernita: Studie k Patočkově konceptu nadcivilizace [Historicity, Supercivilisation and Modernity: Studies towards Patočka’s Concept of Supercivilisation]. Prague: Togga, 2010 Aron, Raymond. Dix-huit leçons sur la société industrielle [Eighteen Lessons on Industrial Society]. Paris: Gallimard, 1962 Bělohradský, Václav. “Absolutno uprostřed všedního dne [The Absolute in the Middle of a Mundane Day].” Dějinnost, nadcivilizace a modernita: Studie k Patočkově konceptu nadcivilizace. Eds Johann P. Arnason, Ladislav Benyovszky and Marek Skovajsa. Prague: Togga, 2010, 173–200 Blecha, Ivan. Jan Patočka. Olomouc: Votobia, 1997 Chvatík, Ivan. “Geschichte und Vorgeschichte des Prager Jan Patočka-Archivs [The Story of the Events Leading up to the Establishment of the Jan Patočka Archives in Prague].” Studia Phaenomenologica. VII (2007), 163–189 Chvatík, Ivan. “Jan Patočka.” A Companion to the Philosophy of History and Historiography. Ed. Aviezer Tucker. Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell, 2009, 518–528 Chvatík, Ivan. “The Responsibility of the ‘Shaken’: Jan Patočka and his ‘Care for the Soul’ in the ‘Post-European’ World.” Jan Patočka and the Heritage of Phenomenology: Centenary Papers. Eds Ivan Chvatík and Erika Abrams. New York: Springer, 2011, 263–279 Comte, Auguste. The Catechism of Positive Religion or Summary Exposition of the Universal Religion in Thirteen Systematic Conversations Between a Woman and a Priest of Humanity. Trans. R. Congreve. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009 Durkheim, Emile. The Elementary Forms of Religious Life. Trans. K. E. Fields. New York: The Free Press, 1995

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The Problem of Meaning in the Rational (Super)Civilisation Eisenstadt, Shmuel N. “Axial Civilizations and the Axial Age Reconsidered.” Axial Civilizations and World History. Eds Johann P. Arnason, Shmuel N. Eisenstadt and Björn Wittrock. Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2005, 531–564 Eisenstadt, Shmuel N. The Great Revolutions and the Civilizations of Modernity. Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2006 Eisenstadt, Shmuel N. “Multiple Modernities.” Comparative Civilizations and Multiple Modernities. Vol. 2. Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2003, 535–560 Findlay, Edward. Caring for the Soul in a Postmodern Age: Politics and Phenomenology in the Thought of Jan Patočka. New York: State University of New York Press, 2002 Fukuyama, Francis. The End of History and the Last Man. New York: The Free Press, 1992 Hagedorn, Ludger, and Michael Staudigl, eds. Über Zivilization und Differenz: Beiträge zu einer politischen Phänomenologie Europas [On Civilisation and Difference: Contributions to a Political Phenomenology of Europe]. Würzburg: Königshausen and Neumann, 2008 Homolka, Jakub. “Proces sekularizace v ‘době poevropské’: K vybraným motivům Patočkova výkladu náboženství [The Secularisation Process of the ‘PostEuropean Age’: Selected Motifs of Patočka’s Interpretation of Religion]”, unpublished Huntington, Samuel P. “The Clash of Civilizations.” Foreign Affairs. 72.3 (1993), 22–49 Huntington, Samuel P. The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1996 Jaspers, Karl. The Origin and Goal of History. New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1953 Karfík, Filip. “Die Odysee des endlich gewordenen Absoluten: Patočkas systematische Versuche zwischen 1936 und 1964 [The Odyssey of the Absolute that became Finite: Patočka’s Systematic Attempts between 1936 and 1964].” Unendlichwerden durch die Endlichkeit: Eine Lektüre der Philosophie Jan Patočkas. Würzburg: Könighausen and Neumann, 2008, 32–54 Patočka, Jan. Bibliografie 1928–1996. Prague: Oikoymenh, 1997 Patočka, Jan. Deník IX [Diary IX]. AJP 3000/074 = IX/76. The Jan Patočka Archive, Strahov, Prague, 1948 Patočka, Jan. “Die geistigen Grundlagen des Lebens in unserer Zeit [The Spiritual Foundations of Life in our Time].” Trans. I. Šrubař. Ketzerische Essais zur Philosophie der Geschichte und ergänzende Schriften. Eds Klaus Nellen and Jiří Němec. Stuttgart: Klett-Cotta, 1988, 353–378 Patočka, Jan. Die natürliche Welt als philosophisches Problem [The Natural World as a Philosophical Problem]. Trans. E. Melville and R. Melville. Eds Klaus Nellen and Jiří Němec. Stuttgart: Klett-Cotta, 1990 [1936] Patočka, Jan. “Dopis 7/70, Jan Patočka Stanislavu Sousedíkovi, 10. 5. 1970, bez udání místa [Letter 7/70 of Jan Patočka to Stanislav Sousedík].” Sebrané spisy 21:

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Jakub Homolka Korespondence s komeniology I. Eds Věra Schifferová, Ivan Chvatík and Tomáš Havelka. Prague: Oikoymenh, 2011, 282–283 Patočka, Jan. “Duchovní základy života v naší době [The Spiritual Foundations of Life in our Time].” Péče o duši: Soubor statí a přednášek o postavení člověka ve světě a v dějinách. Druhý díl: Stati z let 1970–1977. Nevydané texty a přednášky ze sedmdesátých let. Eds Ivan Chvatík and Pavel Kouba. Sebrané spisy Jana Patočky. Svazek 2. Vol. II. Prague: Oikoymenh, 1999 [1970], 9–28 Patočka, Jan. “Europa und Nach-Europa. Die nacheuropäische Epoche und ihre geistigen Probleme [Europe and Post-Europe: The Post-European Age and its Spiritual Problems].” Trans. I. Šrubař. Ketzerische Essais zur Philosophie der Geschichte und ergänzende Schriften. Eds Klaus Nellen and Jiří Němec. Stuttgart: KlettCotta, 1988, 207–287 Patočka, Jan. Heretical Essays in the Philosophy of History. Trans. Erazim Kohák. Ed. James Dodd. Chicago and La Salle, Illinois: Open Court, 1996 Patočka, Jan. “Humanismus Edvarda Beneše [The Humanism of Edvard Beneš].” Sebrané spisy 12: Češi I. Eds Karel Palek and Ivan Chvatík. Prague: Oikoymenh, 2006, 122–126 Patočka, Jan. “Kapitoly ze současné filosofie [Chapters of Contemporary Philosophy].” Péče o duši: Soubor statí a přednášek o postavení člověka ve světě a v dějinách. Stati z let 1929–1952. První díl: Nevydané texty z padesátých let. Eds Ivan Chvatík and Pavel Kouba. Sebrané spisy Jana Patočky. Svazek 1. Vol. I. Prague: Oikoymenh, 1996 [1936], 85–100 Patočka, Jan. “Masaryk’s and Husserl’s Conception of the Spiritual Crisis of European Humanity.” Edited and translated by Erazim Kohák. Jan Patočka. Philosophy and Selected Writings. Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press, 1989 [1936], 145–156 Patočka, Jan. “Nadcivilizace a její vnitřní konflikt [Supercivilisation and its Inner Conflict].” Péče o duši: Soubor statí a přednášek o postavení člověka ve světě a v dějinách. Stati z let 1929–1952. První díl: Nevydané texty z padesátých let. Eds Ivan Chvatík and Pavel Kouba. Sebrané spisy Jana Patočky. Svazek 1. Vol. I. Prague: Oikoymenh, 1996, 243–302 Patočka, Jan. “Několik poznámek k pojmům dějin a dějepisu [A Few Notes on the Concepts of History and Historiography].” Řád. 2 (1934), 148–156 Patočka, Jan. “Několik poznámek o pojmu ‘světových dějin’ [A Few Notes towards the Concept of ‘World History’].” Česká Mysl. 31 (1935), 89–96 Patočka, Jan. “O filosofii dějin [Notes on the Philosophy of History].” Péče o duši: Soubor statí a přednášek o postavení člověka ve světě a v dějinách. Stati z let 1929– 1952. První díl: Nevydané texty z padesátých let. Eds Ivan Chvatík and Pavel Kouba. Sebrané spisy Jana Patočky. Svazek 1. Vol. I. Prague: Oikoymenh, 1996 [1940], 107–115 Patočka, Jan. “Rozvrh ‘Negativního platonismu’ [The Project of ‘Negative Platonism’].” Péče o duši: Soubor statí a přednášek o postavení člověka ve světě a v dějinách. Stati z let 1929–1952. První díl: Nevydané texty z padesátých let. Eds Ivan

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The Problem of Meaning in the Rational (Super)Civilisation Chvatík and Pavel Kouba. Sebrané spisy Jana Patočky. Svazek 1. Vol. I. Prague: Oikoymenh, 1996, 443–445 Patočka, Jan. “Zum Begriff der Geschichte und der Geschichtsschreibung [A Few Notes on the Concepts of History and Historiography].” Ketzerische Essais zur Philosophie der Geschichte und ergänzende Schriften. Eds Klaus Nellen and Jiří Němec. Stuttgart: Klett-Cotta, 1988, 318–330 Patočka, Jan. “Zum Begriff der Weltgeschichte [A Few Notes towards the Concept of ‘World History’].” Ketzerische Essais zur Philosophie der Geschichte und ergänzende Schriften. Eds Klaus Nellen and Jiří Němec. Stuttgart: Klett-Cotta, 1988, 331–345 Rezek, Petr. “Jan Patočka.” Spisy VIII: Démanty české filozofie. Jan Placák – Ztichlá klika. Prague: Jan Placák–Ztichlá Klika, 2011, 183–184 Somervell, David C. A Study of History: Abridgement of Volumes I-VI. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1949 Spohn, Wilfried. “Historical and Comparative Sociology in a Globalizing World.” Historická Sociologie. 1 (2009), 9–27. http://kops.ub.uni-konstanz.de/bitstream/ handle/urn:nbn:de:bsz:352-144073/spohn_historical.pdf?sequence=3 Toynbee, Arnold J. A Study of History. Vol. I. London: Oxford University Press, 1945 Weber, Max. The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism. Trans. T. Parsons. London and New York: Routledge and Taylor & Francis, 2005 Weber, Max. “Science as a Vocation.” Trans. Gordon C. Wells. Max Weber’s Complete Writings on Academic and Political Vocations. Ed. John Dreijmanis. New York: Algora, 2008, 25–52 Weber, Max. Selections in Translation. Trans. E. Matthews. Ed. W. G. Runciman. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007

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Life, Technology, Christianity: Patočka’s Sacrifice for Nothing and its Economic-Mythical Roots Riccardo Paparusso The Techno-Life Power In his analysis on the “epoch of technology”, Patočka – following Heidegger’s lead – identifies the essential core of technology in “nothing technological”, but rather in the Gestell.1 The term Gestell indicates the particular configuration of human experience of Being as interpellation, which calls man to liberate and accumulate, as we read in the Heretical Essays,2 “all the effectiveness potentially contained in the things”3; in order to reduce the world as a reservoir of potential forces or energies, to be used for an ever-increasing expansion of life. As Patočka explains in the 1973 text, Four Seminars on the Problem of Europe,4 we human beings, provoked by Gestell, “no longer have before us objects that allow themselves to be known […] that stand before us as independent objects of perception”.5 Our relationship with reality exhausts itself fairly comprehensively in an “order that concerns itself exclusively with obtaining a result [výkon], from things”.6 “Gestell is simultaneously the creation of a humanity that does nothing other than carry out these orders […] to the point that he loses sight of

1

Heidegger, The Question Concerning Technology and Other Essays (New York: Harper & Row Publishers, 1977), 3–35, 20. In quotations, emphasis is in the original unless otherwise noted. 2 Patočka, Heretical Essays in the Philosophy of History (Chicago and La Salle, Illinois: Open Court, 1996). 3 Ibid., 116. 4 Patočka, “Čtyři semináře k problému Evropy [Four Seminars on the Problem of Europe]”, eds Chvatík and Kouba, Péče o duši: Soubor statí a přednášek o postavění člověka ve světě a v dějinách. Třetí díl: Kacířské eseje o filosofii dějin. Varianty a přípravné práce z let 1973-1977. Dodatky k Péči o duši I a II (Prague: Oikoymenh, 2002 [1973]), 374–423, 374–423. See the French translation: Patočka, “Séminaire sur l’ère technique [Seminar on the Technical Era]”, trans. Abrams, Liberté et sacrifice (Grenoble: Millon, 1990), 277–324. Henceforth, French translation referenced with page numbers of the French translation followed by the original page numbers in square brackets. 5 Patočka, “Séminaire sur l’ère technique [Seminar on the Technical Era]”, 278 [388]. 6 Ibid.

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everything that does not fit into this system, which is not an order capable of 7 ensuring the common, ordinary functioning of needs and of their satisfaction.” In the light of this quotation, we could affirm that the technological world seems to bring life to its prehistoric level, where, on the basis of mythical narration, it understands and accepts itself as being absorbed by providing for sustenance. Therefore, we could understand Patočka’s analysis of technology as the result of the integration of Heidegger’s idea of Gestell with the Arendtian conception of contemporary, secularised human life as life the only contents of which are “the desires, the appetite and the unconscious needs of its body”.8 If, on the one hand, Patočka develops, as we said above, his reflection on technology on the basis of Heidegger’s notion of Gestell, on the other hand, he distinguishes its own thematisation from the Heideggerian one by establishing a necessary relation between the technological understanding of world and the submission of humanity to the power of a merely economic life: natural life exclusively oriented to fill the emptiness dug by its own needs. In a certain sense, we could say that the Gestell analysed by Patočka is a specific understanding of Being as what calls the human existence to consecrate itself to the prehistoric condition of exclusive care of self-consuming life. “Gestell exercises its power on us by our life, by what binds us to life”.9 Namely, techno-power provokes the human life to hold itself to life, to reduce itself to the level of mere living life; which, by using the paradigm coined by Giorgio Agamben in Homo Sacer, we could define as bare life (zoé): life undressed of any qualifications. 10 Therefore, the Patočkian reflection on Gestell invites us to consider that the technological interpellation imposes upon humanity the integration of nature into a “system of universal computation, prevision”11; in order to – fundamentally – guarantee the maximum degree of satisfaction in life and so, extend as much as possible the range of its needs and the horizon of its possibilities. The result that is aimed at by technological understanding coincides therefore with the

7

Ibid., 282 [391], emphasis added. Arendt, The Human Condition (Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press, 1998 [1958]), 320–321. 9 Patočka, “Séminaire sur l’ère technique [Seminar on the Technical Era]”, 282 [391]. 10 Cf. Agamben, Homo Sacer: Sovereign Power and Bare Life, Meridian. Crossing Aesthetics (Stanford, California: Stanford University Press, 1998). 11 Patočka, “Séminaire sur l’ère technique [Seminar on the Technical Era]”, 296 [401]. 8

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reinforcement of life and the extension of the possibilities of its satisfaction. The technological return is the return of life to itself. The most evident proof of the thesis proposed above lies in the reflection on war in the 20th century offered by Patočka in the Sixth Heretical Essay, Wars of the Twentieth Century and the Twentieth Century as War 12: here, Patočka conceives the war of the 20th century as the necessary condition for the understanding of Being as provocation, Gestell. The First World War is the decisive event in the history of the twentieth century. It determined its entire character. It was this war that demonstrated that the transformation of the world into a laboratory for releasing reserves of energies accumulated over billions of years can be achieved only by means of wars. Thus it represented a definitive breakthrough of the conception of being that was born in the sixteenth century with the rise of mechanical natural sciences. Now it swept aside all the ‘conventions’ that inhibited this release of energy – a transvaluation of all values under the sign of power. Why must the energetic transformation of the world take on the form of war? Because war, acute confrontation, is the most intensive means for the rapid release of accumulated forces. Conflict is the great instrument which, mythologically speaking, Force used in its transition from potency to actuality. 13

Now, what distinguishes, essentially, the war of the 20th century lies for Patočka in the fact that it is approached only from the point of view of the economicvital dimension: “from the perspective of peace, day, life, excluding its dark nocturnal side”.14 To be more specific, World War I reconfigures war as a collective sacrifice enacted for the “intensification and the extension of life’s possibilities”.15 Peace and the day necessarily rule by sending humans to death in order to assure others a day in the future in the form of progress, of a free and increasing expansion, of possibilities they lack today. Of those whom it sacrifices it demands, by contrast, endurance in the face of death […] That self-sacrifice, that surrender, is what is called for. It is called for as something relative, related to peace and to the day. 16

To get to the point, it could be said that in Patočka’s thought, Being puts itself over as Gestell – as reduction of nature to an available reservoir of forces – by a 12

Patočka, Heretical Essays in the Philosophy of History, 119–137. Ibid., 124–125. 14 Ibid., 120 15 Ibid., 130 16 Ibid., 129 13

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more fundamental appeal to carry out an intensification of the sacrifice exclusively enacted for the interests of a vital dimension completely deprived of problematicity: for a merely bare, natural life. From Self-Sacrifice to Sacrifice for Nothing As we can read in the 1973 text, The Dangers of Technicization in Science According to E. Husserl and the Essence of Technology as Danger According to M. Heidegger,17 the possibility to deactivate the domain of the techno-vital domination of return lies, according to Patočka, in the renewal of a sacrifice that is not directed to something or someone – “sacrifice for something” – but is accomplished for nothing and nobody. It is a “sacrifice for nothing” (Opfer für nichts).18 On the ontological-economic level, as we have said, the Gestell provokes the drawing of a return, a result from everything and everybody, in order to increase the available force and expand life’s satisfaction. On the ethic-politic hand, dissent from the obligation to the process of vital result finds a way of expression in self-immolation, self-castration for a higher aim. Nevertheless, this way of protest reproduces by a socio-ethic shape the mythic-religious sacrifice by which, in spite of the voluntary loss of something or someone, the mythical sacrificer gains divine favour for the conservation – and on the other hand for the expansion – of its life.19 17

Patočka, Die Gefahren der Technisierung in der Wissenschaft bei E. Husserl und das Wesen der Technik als Gefahr bei M. Heidegger [The Dangers of Technicization in Science According to E. Husserl and the Essence of Technology as Danger According to M. Heidegger] (Prague: Archive Material, 1979); English trans. Patočka, “The Dangers of Technicization in Science According to E. Husserl and the Essence of Technology as Danger According to M. Heidegger”. edited and translated by Kohák. Jan Patočka. Philosophy and Selected Writings (Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press, 1989 [1973]), 327–339, 327–339. 18 Patočka, Die Gefahren der Technisierung in der Wissenschaft bei E. Husserl und das Wesen der Technik als Gefahr bei M. Heidegger [The Dangers of Technicization in Science According to E. Husserl and the Essence of Technology as Danger According to M. Heidegger], 19. 19 Cf. Patočka, “The Dangers of Technicization in Science According to E. Husserl and the Essence of Technology as Danger According to M. Heidegger”, 336: “the idea of sacrifice is mythico-religious in origin. Even there, where it has already been obscured and covered over by later motivations, there speaks in it the will to commit oneself, by self-

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What other entity does this self-sacrificer gain? We suppose that the answer is, in Hegelian terms, recognition (Anerkennung) by the other. If the mythical sacrificer was assured of the favour of the divine, in the era of techno-power, the sacrificer obtains the restitution of the life that he loses, in the form of recognition from the other, for whom he immolates himself, of his higher ethic-politic level. Although the sacrificer can have a nobler scope than the techno-economic increase of resources, he is absorbed, in some way, by the same ontological process that rules the epoch of technology: the circular, economic movement of the result, of the extension of life. It is a self-sacrifice for something that repeats the same economic, metaphysic movement of return, of reflection, that in the Gestell’s epoch reaches its own peak. The ethic-politic self-sacrificer is naïve; namely, he unconsciously feeds the absorption of life into natural life, for the following reasons: it repeats and so confirms the same movement of return that rules the techno-economic sacrifice of life for life. At the same time, by renewing – under a new shape – the mythicreligious sacrifice, the self-abnegation for something higher again throws down, paradoxically, the human being onto the soil of prehistory, where man understands himself – in the light of mythical narration – as life destined to conserving life. Now, as I have stated above, the human being can spring up from its subordination to technological understanding by an act of “repetition” of sacrifice that “presupposes a voluntary self-sacrifice, just as in the case of the naïve sacrifice, but not only that”.20 More specifically, Patočka invites the accomplishment of an act of radicalisation of sacrifice, which stresses the movement of self-immolation until draining it of “any positive content”.21 In other words, the radicalised sacrifice destitutes the self-renunciation of the intentional act aimed at the return, the restitution, both vital and ethic-social. The radicalising operation of repetition dissolves the act of self-renunciation into a sacrifice that directs towards no thing, towards no being. It is a matter of a sacrifice that offers to man the possibility to open a crack inside the techno-vital power, in the measure of which – by lacking the calculation of any result – it suspends the supremacy of return that life establishes through technological provocation. abnegation and self-castration, to something higher and, as result of reciprocity so provoked, to bind that something higher to oneself and be assured of its power and favor. The paradoxical conception here is that man gains by a voluntary loss.” 20 Ibid., 338 21 Ibid.

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There are good reasons to think that Patočka’s thematisation of sacrifice for nothing brings as its important theoretical reference point the kenotic event, the self-sacrifice accomplished by Christ. Indeed, in The Dangers of Technicization, immediately after the definition of the radical sacrifice as sacrifice for nothing, for “any being”, we can read: [S]uch an understanding of sacrifice might basically be considered that in which Christianity differs from those religions which conceived of the divine always as a power and a force, and of a sacrifice as the activity which places this power under an obligation. As we might perhaps think, Christianity placed at the centre a radical sacrifice in the sense of the interpretation suggested above and rested its causes on the maturity of the human being.22

In any case, the most evident sign of the Christian original event on Patočka’s radicalisation of sacrifice lies in the Four Seminars. Here, discussing the crisis spawned by the process of absolute technologisation of the world, Patočka identifies the renewal of the abandonment caused by Christ’s self-sacrifice as the possibility for overcoming the supremacy of “availability” and of “mere presence”. Why have you abandoned me? The answer is in the question. What would have happened if you had not abandoned me? Nothing would have happened. Something happens only when I abandon myself. You abandoned me so that there would be nothing, no thing that I could still hold onto.23

By a theoretical gesture similar to that of Girard,24 Patočka conceives Christ’s sacrifice as the immolation that demystifies the mythic sacrifice by bringing about a radical rupture of sacral, orgiastic religion.25 The Christian immolation – bearing a message addressed to everyone and everything, and therefore to no one – accounts for an undetermined ‘other’ that, unlike the mythological divinity, disappoints the expectation of restitution. Christ, nailed to the cross, bemoans the incomprehensibility of the abandonment, its lack of direction, because a sacrifice aimed at nothing has been resolved upon; a 22

Ibid., 339 Patočka, “Séminaire sur l’ère technique [Seminar on the Technical Era]”, 310–311 [413]. Emphasis added. 24 Cf. Girard, Sacrifice (East Lansing, Michigan: Michigan University Press, 2011). 25 For a deep study on the relation between Christianity and myth in Patočka, see Hagedorn, “Beyond Myth and Enlightenment: On Religion in Patočka’s Thought”, eds Chvatík and Abrams, Jan Patočka and the Heritage of Phenomenology: Centenary Papers (Dordrecht, Heidelberg, London and New York: Springer, 2011), 245–261. 23

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sacrifice that overcomes the myth insofar as it exposes the thoughtless abyssal state of nothing[ness], thereby indicating the phenomenal nothing that mythical humanity inhabits, without, however, recognising its signs. Indeed, one line after the already quoted expression, “you abandoned me so that there would be nothing, no thing that I could still hold onto,” Patočka writes: “No thing [žadná věc] but it does not mean that this nothing does not contain the All, as the poet said”.26 All this does not result from the sum of beings. On the contrary, it indicates the phenomenal totality from which every being can come into the light of manifestation. It is a matter, here, of “the primordial fact of Being that all together manifests”.27 The sacrifice for nothing, indeed, is such, “if one understands nothing only as what is not a being”.28 In this sense Patočka claims that a sacrifice, an authentic sacrifice: means precisely drawing back from the realm of what can be managed and ordered, and an explicit relation to that which, not being anything actual itself, serves as the ground of the appearing of all that is active and in that sense rules over all. Here Being already ‘presents’ itself to us, not in a refusal but explicitly.29

Therefore, consequent to the previous reflections, it could be possible to affirm that in Patočka the ontological gesture, or, said better, the existential openness to the phenomenal field, emerges from a process of deactivation of the economic circle. By the giving up of the thing – res – the sacrificer for no-thing opens itself to that which does not coincide with the simple presence of a mere being – that which is no-being – to the measure in which it is not-reifiable, it does not confuse itself with any-thing. Traces of Nothing in the Economic-Mythical Dimension As we observed throughout the analysis above, in the conversion of renunciation into a sacrifice directed towards no thing lies the possibility to undermine the 26

Patočka, “Séminaire sur l’ère technique [Seminar on the Technical Era]”, 311 [413], emphasis added. 27 Ibid., 288 [395]. 28 Patočka, “The Dangers of Technicization in Science According to E. Husserl and the Essence of Technology as Danger According to M. Heidegger”, 339. The quotation has been adjusted on the basis of the German original version. 29 Ibid., 332.

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dispositive of restitution by which the Gestell exercises its power upon the human life. The sacrifice for nothing can also be defined as repetition in the measure in which it inherits the radicalness of the original event of Christianity, and the demythologising capacity of the self-sacrifice enacted on the cross. Specifically, on the one hand the sacrifice for nothing releases the possibility to overcome the techno-economic understanding of the world; and on the other hand it permits the emancipation of contemporary, post-secularised humanity from the reconfigurations of prehistoric-mythic elements – of which the naïve sacrifice is an example. Nevertheless, through the following final reflections I will propose a thesis according to which Patočka’s conception of sacrifice does not invite humanity to accomplish a net abandonment of its economic-mythical ground. Rather, some of Patočka’s considerations lead us to thinking that the radicalisation of the sacrifice – as the Hegelian Aufhebung – can realise itself only by going through the economic-mythical ground, to bring to manifestation the original mark of the incalculable nothingness which already cuts through that ground. At the same time, Christianity is called upon to recapitulate the mythical roots of demythologising movement triggered by its own original, kenotic event. In order to achieve the demonstration of the thesis here proposed, we should start by focusing our attention on a short and fleeting definition of sacrifice, of economic sacrifice, which Patočka offers in The Dangers of Technicization. “A person,” Patočka writes, “does not sacrifice something that is indifferent to him, something that does not concern him: a genuine sacrifice is always a sacrifice either in an absolute sense or in the sense of sacrificing that which intensifies our being, rendering it rich, content-full, fulfilled.”30 Here, we have to focus our attention on the term something, which Patočka repeats twice. Therefore, the sacrifice that Patočka considers here is an economic sacrifice, a sacrifice for a fulfilling content which as such is always – already – absolute, directed towards the radicalness of an incalculable nothingness. Well, on the basis of this last quotation, it could be possible to affirm that among the assets at its disposal, the economic life sacrifices only that to which it is not indifferent; something that touches it and opens it to an absolute space, to the absolute dimension of no-being, of nothingness. The sacrificer points to the intensification of his own natural life by something that, appearing precisely among the folds of mere economic life, aims at what belongs most profoundly to 30

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Ibid., 336, emphasis added.

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the man: his own being. Before starting to develop his proposal of absolute, incalculable sacrifice he recognises in the notion of sacrificing for something or someone the capability to indicate, to uncover the ontological difference. “A sacrifice for something or for someone,” writes Patočka, “presupposes the idea of a difference of order between human being and the being of things”; and, consequently, the difference between Being and beings. 31 So, in the full space of technological non-differentiation, within which humanity is reduced to mere resource as everything, every instrument, the sacrifice for something or someone already indicates the phenomenal field, from which both things and humane existence come to light. In a certain sense, the sacrifice for something or for someone already announces the manifestative nothing to which is aimed the absolute sacrifice; prepares the conditions for that deactivation of the calculability enacted by the radical sacrifice. On the other hand, indeed, the absolute sacrifice realises itself in a not-reifiable space already dug by the economic sacrifice. At the same time, Patočka establishes an analogic relation between contemporary self-immolation and the mythic-religious sacrifice, from which the first inherits its own economic counterbalance of loss. The idea of sacrifice is mythico-religious in origin. Even there, where it has already been obscured and covered over by later motivations, there speaks in it the will to commit oneself, by self-abnegation, and self-castration, to something higher to oneself and be assured of its power and favor.32

By explaining the sacrifice for something as an action which presupposes the distinction of order in an authentic sense, Patočka proposes a parallelism with the religious sacrifice, which “presupposes a difference of order between divine and non-divine being”.33 So, the ontological difference presupposed in contemporary economic sacrifice is already announced, even if in a veiled way, in the mythical dimension. Mythical humanity, indeed, inhabits the not-reifiable phenomenal nothingness, to which the absolute sacrifice is aimed; by enacting, as Patočka explains in the Second Heretical Essay, an ontological metaphor, on the basis of which Being manifests itself through divine images.34 31

Ibid., 336. Ibid. 33 Ibid. 34 Cf. Patočka, Heretical Essays in the Philosophy of History. 32

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I am referring, in particular, to Plato and Europe,35 where Patočka understands three myths of humankind’s origin – those of Gilgamesh, Oedipus, and one on the tree of life – as the original expression of the “harsh revealing of our revealedness/nakedness [odhalenost]”,36 as the original expression of existential openness to the not-reifiable dimension of appearing, to nothingness. Ancient myth is the metaphor of human openness to the veiling in unveiling; for which, in the era of techno-power, the authentic sacrificer has to aim in order to deactivate the process of return. Indeed, in the epoch of technicisation, myth – true myth – can indicate the direction for a radical sacrifice. To be clearer, we could look at Patočka’s text dedicated to Pre-Socratic philosophy, The Oldest Greek Philosophy (1945–47). Here, in the first chapter dedicated to the origin of philosophy, Patočka defines myth as that in which appears “all the being but not in the full force of its insistent [naléhavé] presence [přítomnost]”.37 Indeed, we could affirm that mythicalness can show the way for sacrifice to suspend that meaningfulness – that on the other hand coincides with the emptiness of meaning – into which technological civilization has fallen. By way of conclusion, the possibility of salvation from the absolutisation of calculability provoked by Gestell lies in the refusal – invoked by the (Christian) sacrifice for nothing – of living, the economic pretention of restitution. This sacrifice lacking directionality triggers a movement of human liberation. Nevertheless this movement is called to recover and renew its original emergence from the emptiness of nothingness; from the nothingness of the (mythic-) vital dimension that is incalculable and unassimilable by the computational dispositive of techno-life power. Works Cited Agamben, Giorgio. Homo Sacer: Sovereign Power and Bare Life. Trans. Daniel HellerRoazen. Meridian. Crossing Aesthetics. Stanford, California: Stanford University Press, 1998 35

Patočka, Plato and Europe, Cultural Memory in the Present (Stanford, California: Stanford University Press, 2002). 36 Ibid. 37 Patočka, Nejstarší řecká filosofie: Filosofie v předklasickém údobí před sofistikou a Sókratem. Přednášky z antické filosofie [The Oldest Greek Philosophy: Philosophy in the Pre-Classical Period Prior to the Sophists and Socrates. Lectures from Ancient Philosophy] (Prague: Nakladatelství Vyšehrad, 1996), 24, emphasis added.

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Riccardo Paparusso Arendt, Hannah. The Human Condition. Second ed. Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press, 1998 [1958] Girard, René. Sacrifice. Trans. Matthew Pattilo and David Dawson. East Lansing, Michigan: Michigan University Press, 2011 Hagedorn, Ludger. “Beyond Myth and Enlightenment: On Religion in Patočka’s Thought.” Jan Patočka and the Heritage of Phenomenology: Centenary Papers. Eds Ivan Chvatík and Erika Abrams. Dordrecht, Heidelberg, London and New York: Springer, 2011, 245–261 Heidegger, Martin. The Question Concerning Technology and Other Essays. Trans. William Lovitt. New York: Harper & Row Publishers, 1977 Patočka, Jan. “Čtyři semináře k problému Evropy [Four Seminars on the Problem of Europe].” Péče o duši: Soubor statí a přednášek o postavění člověka ve světě a v dějinách. Třetí díl: Kacířské eseje o filosofii dějin. Varianty a přípravné práce z let 1973-1977. Dodatky k Péči o duši I a II. Eds Ivan Chvatík and Pavel Kouba. Z magnetofonového záznamu zredigoval Ivan Chvatík (transcript from sound recording, ed. Ivan Chvatík). Sebrané spisy Jana Patočky. Svazek 3. Vol. III. Prague: Oikoymenh, 2002 [1973], 374–423 Patočka, Jan. “The Dangers of Technicization in Science According to E. Husserl and the Essence of Technology as Danger According to M. Heidegger.” Edited and translated by Erazim Kohák. Jan Patočka. Philosophy and Selected Writings. Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press, 1989 [1973], 327–339 Patočka, Jan. Die Gefahren der Technisierung in der Wissenschaft bei E. Husserl und das Wesen der Technik als Gefahr bei M. Heidegger [The Dangers of Technicization in Science According to E. Husserl and the Essence of Technology as Danger According to M. Heidegger]. Prague: Archive Material, 1979 Patočka, Jan. Heretical Essays in the Philosophy of History. Trans. Erazim Kohák. Ed. James Dodd. Chicago and La Salle, Illinois: Open Court, 1996 Patočka, Jan. Nejstarší řecká filosofie: Filosofie v předklasickém údobí před sofistikou a Sókratem. Přednášky z antické filosofie [The Oldest Greek Philosophy: Philosophy in the Pre-Classical Period Prior to the Sophists and Socrates. Lectures from Ancient Philosophy]. Eds Ivan Chvatík and Pavel Kouba. Prague: Nakladatelství Vyšehrad, 1996 Patočka, Jan. Plato and Europe. Trans. Petr Lom. Cultural Memory in the Present. Stanford, California: Stanford University Press, 2002 Patočka, Jan. “Séminaire sur l’ère technique [Seminar on the Technical Era].” Trans. Erika Abrams. Liberté et sacrifice. Grenoble: Millon, 1990

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Patočka’s Observations on the Meaning of Beauty in Ancient Greece Anthony Backhouse At the Municipal Library in Prague in October in the year 1971, to a public audience gathered on the occasion of a series of lectures on aesthetics, Jan Patočka delivered a presentation entitled “The Birth of European Thinking about Beauty in Ancient Greece”.1 Due to its public nature, the anticipated lecture would presumably have been targeted at a quite general level. However, as reported by Ivan Chvatík, the audience was left somewhat bewildered. 2 Patočka’s short presentation could only be considered a dense and fast-flowing account on the meaning of beauty, crisscrossing themes of the headline subject matter with cosmology and the origin of philosophy itself. My primary aim in this paper is to briefly reconstruct some of these themes of the lecture. My focus, however, will centre on the concept harmonia, which is foregrounded in the presentation. This, I suggest, might provide interesting insights into other areas of Patočka’s work; for example in his reading of Plato, where the idea of harmonia could be considered more implicit. *** Patočka’s lecture begins in reminding us that our modern understanding of the beautiful and its relationship to the so-called ‘fine arts’ was essentially a late historical development. Stemming from the Italian Renaissance, classical considerations of aesthetics “synthesise” theoretical categories, particularly beauty, with the discipline and methods of art practice and “stand on the basic conviction that both these tasks are essentially one and the same”.3 In Patočka’s summation, here, “Art is the organ of beauty and the aesthetic attitude and beauty manifests primarily, to the strongest degree in art”.4 However, according to Patočka, this Patočka, “Zrod evropského uvažování o kráse v antickém Řecku [The Birth of European Thinking about Beauty in Ancient Greece]”, eds Vojtěch and Chvatík, Umění a čas: Soubor statí, přednášek a poznámek k problémům umění. Druhý díl: Nepublikované texty, recenze, náčrty (Prague: Oikoymenh, 2004), 243–253, 245. 2 Ivan Chvatík, personal communication, Prague, 2013. 3 Patočka, “Zrod evropského uvažování o kráse v antickém Řecku [The Birth of European Thinking about Beauty in Ancient Greece]”, 243. 4 Ibid. 1

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synthesis, at least in attempting to discern its historical genesis, poses problems. What is ordinarily considered the subject of aesthetics is the historical development of a plurality of ideas and practices whose unity of themes ought to be reflected upon. Patočka’s position is thus that the “conceptual unity” of aesthetic theory and practices of art arise from the genesis and transformation in the idea of beauty in Ancient Greece. More specifically: [A]lthough the Greeks did not really have a concept of art in our sense, and…their concept of beauty is on one hand wider, and on the other hand, narrower than ours, Greek art and Greek reflection about art are nonetheless responsible for ensuring that such a thing as aesthetics in the modern sense could have arisen—but was not established—in ancient Greece.5

The Greeks had no concept of art, in our sense, Patočka explains, because although the Greeks naturally reflected on subject matters such as art and beauty, “they did not create from them a doctrinal corpus”, but rather “considered each case separately” and even “considered independent art groups completely independently”.6 In particular, the Greeks had three different regions of art practices that were related to different regions of human life: poetry, music and dance, and the plastic arts.7 With this, Patočka suggests that the understanding of art practices as a unified whole, in that we today believe “something such as poetry, music, creative and applied arts, essentially belong together”, was for the Greek thinkers “something absolutely foreign”.8 5

Ibid., 245. Ibid. 7 Patočka points out that originally the disciplines of poetry, music and dance, and the plastic arts such as painting, sculpture and architecture, were understood as distinct disciplines. The reason for these distinctions is “related to the Greek conception of the origin and nature of these human activities”, where, for example, “poetry is the manifestation of divine inspiration”. Likewise, music, song and dance, which Patočka names under the Greek heading ὄρχημα, are essentially related to the original meaning of μίμησις, in that for him this term in its origins signifies not imitation or representation, but most significantly, “inner expression”. The third group of ancient Greek practices is the “plastic arts”. Primarily, for Patočka, this realm is defined by the “result precisely of skill (technique), they are the result of the application of certain rules, certain laws, certain proportions” (ibid., 246). Importantly, it is to this latter group that the term technē was most suitably applied. 8 Patočka, “Zrod evropského uvažování o kráse v antickém Řecku [The Birth of European Thinking about Beauty in Ancient Greece]”, 244. 6

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Patočka then inquires into the reason that such a conceptual unity of aesthetics could have arisen, but was not established, in Ancient Greece, and how this conceptual unity arrived at the concept of beauty.9 Dispelling any myths of a systematised aesthetics, Patočka poses the question whether the Greek understanding of τὸ καλόν (the beautiful) is what is meant in aesthetics or whether some other concept better approximates our modern understanding of beauty. Thus, in actuality it is not the term καλόν that Patočka for the most part analyses; rather, he sees a closer conceptual link to our modern grasp of beauty in the Greek idea of harmonia. This could easily be justified: for example Joseph J. Kockelmans notes in his book, Heidegger on Art and Art Works, that through the Middle Ages the central idea of beauty in both nature and art “consists in harmony and clarity” and that aesthetics in its essential modern development with Baumgarten “becomes simply the metaphysics of the beautiful” in which beauty includes the characteristics of “perfection, harmony, and order”.10 Notably, regarding Baumgarten, “these characteristics are in his view no more than reflections of the infinite perfection, harmony, and order of God”.11 Patočka argues, “[c]onversely, for what we call beauty, the Greeks used other terms such as τὸ ἁρμόττον, τὸ εὔρυθμον… ἁρμονία”.12 Hence, it is Patočka’s conviction that if we are to avoid the “projection of our questions and our concepts into ancient times”, the genesis and semantic analysis of such ideas ought to be brought to our attention.13 *** But it is precisely here that Patočka’s lecture seemingly takes a sharp turn. Before speaking directly about art and harmonia, the relation of beauty to harmony, Patočka’s speech at this point suddenly moves to the central philosophical question in whose pursuit Greek reflection grew. Patočka notes that “Greek philosophy arose in that it was asking a specific question, the widest and most general of all possible questions”; essentially the question of what it means to be ‘anything’.14 This general question of how anything ‘is’ reveals the question of ‘all 9

Ibid., 245. Kockelmans, Heidegger on Art and Art Works (The Hague: Nijhoff, 1985), 18. 11 Ibid., 26. 12 Patočka, “Zrod evropského uvažování o kráse v antickém Řecku [The Birth of European Thinking about Beauty in Ancient Greece]”, 245. 13 Ibid. 14 Ibid., 246–247. 10

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things’, to what ‘all this is?’, to the ‘All’—to the whole.15 For Patočka, this defining question of Greek thought speaks no longer of a particular or partial encounter with a thing, but rather penetrates to the question of how each and every thing is related and is capable of being revealed. Hence, we encounter or experience things because they are somehow “opened up”, “accessible”, which precisely presupposes ‘a relation’ to “a whole”: a World in which we encounter these things; the ‘place’ in which they come ‘to happen’, ‘to be’, and from which they will inevitably disappear. All things, including human beings, are thus in some relation to each other. For Patočka, this question of the whole as we encounter it in modern times is “difficult to understand in its full strength”.16 The question turns on how all this is possible: that things show up in experience, that we experience ourselves, that all this presupposes some connection. In this sense, Patočka continues: “[it] means that things not only are, but also as if to them there was some sort of key, a key that is opening them in some whole”.17 Patočka’s point appears to be that there is “something deeper”18 than the basic assumption that the whole is simply what we encounter as a totality of objects, a summation of things; rather, he suggests that there is something encountered in our basic experience of any particularity in its relation to ourselves and other things, a region that goes beyond merely what is given. There is this ‘opening’ that intimates a sort of ‘key’ to which a genuine experience of a whole can be relayed. Thus, there are, so to speak, the particular things that we encounter, the whole in which these things are placed, and some key that mediates this relationship. Patočka’s account then continues by explaining that things do not simply appear out of themselves as if in a vacuum, but are rather ‘placed’, joined, constituted in 15

Patočka here is thus keeping with the theme that is arguably most central to his work. This confirms that, for Patočka, all questions, including those of aesthetics, lead back to this central problematic expressed in his 1936 dissertation, in which “The problem of philosophy is in the world as a whole”. See, for example, the discussion of this in the Editorial Comments in Patočka, Umění a čas: Soubor statí, přednášek a poznámek k problémům umění. Druhý díl: Nepublikované texty, recenze, náčrty [Art and Time: A Collection of Essays and Lectures Regarding Problems of Art. Second Part: Unpublished texts, Reviews and Sketches], Sebrané spisy Jana Patočky. Svazek 5 (Prague: Oikoymenh, 2004), 369. 16 Patočka, “Zrod evropského uvažování o kráse v antickém Řecku [The Birth of European Thinking about Beauty in Ancient Greece]”, 247. 17 Ibid. In quotations, emphasis is in the original unless otherwise noted. 18 Ibid.

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an enmeshment with other things in relation to the whole. The ‘key’ can then be thought of as that force that latently places, connects or joins one thing in relation to all others and thus to the whole as such. Patočka here cites Anaximander’s extant fragment in which τὸ χρεών, translated as ‘necessity’ or perhaps ‘coercion’ or ‘compulsion’, can be thought of as this ‘force’ which can also mean the “the way that things fit together”.19 The second point that Patočka makes here is that given this coercion and necessity that he reads in Anaximander, things are in their being always in danger, so to speak; they are in contest, in proximity to disappearing. And through this condition of ‘disappearing’, ‘fading’, of their ‘unhappening’ (odestávání),20 they always already stand in relation to what will fill their place21, what will come next, “according to the order of time”.22 From this perspective of things in the context of the whole, a “thing persists, so to speak, only as long as it is not displaced from its being”.23 “Standing in place” is then “something like a movement”, but one that is characterised by a certain tension and struggle in its need to persist. 24 It appears that for Patočka this ‘struggle’, as he interprets Anaximander in this instance, intimates the hidden relation of all things to the whole, that key that opens them up amidst themselves. The relation of this sudden exposition of the proto-thought of Greek philosophy to his initial thesis on beauty and art begins to be apparent. Patočka notes that the terms used to describe this ‘struggle’ in which any extant thing is essentially a “fitting into place”, that rhythmic movement of disparate things continuously being conjoined together, are indeed “expressions quite reminiscent of the word, ἁρμόττον, ἁρμονία”.25 The ‘key’ to the whole, in its most ancient evocation, has within it the intimation of harmonia as that which is at work in the coming to be and passing away of things in the world. Harmonia, in its most general usage in Ancient Greece, as Thomas J. Mathieson reminds us, is “a unifiPatočka, “Zrod evropského uvažování o kráse v antickém Řecku [The Birth of European Thinking about Beauty in Ancient Greece]”, 248. 20 This is also an unusual term in Czech, which approximates essentially the opposite of happening. 21 Notably, Patočka’s terminology is here quite forceful; for example, he uses the term ‘vpadnout’, which can mean ‘invasion’ or ‘breaking in’, for characterising the transition of one thing to another. 22 Patočka, “Zrod evropského uvažování o kráse v antickém Řecku [The Birth of European Thinking about Beauty in Ancient Greece]”, 248. 23 Ibid., 247. 24 Ibid. 25 Ibid. 19

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cation of things that appear on a lower level to be dissimilar or unrelated or lacking in order”.26 For Patočka, this sense of the term is at work in the very oldest philosophical statement, which pertains to what any one thing ‘is’ and its relation to all that is, to the whole. But it is in Heraclitus, Patočka continues, that harmonia becomes “explicitly” referenced and where its meaning becomes amplified to precisely “this key to all, the key to that things are in a definite whole”.27 For Patočka, in Heraclitus, “the origin and reason for this is ἁρμονία”. It is “Ἁρμονία in the sense of this mutual requiring and mutual fitting together”.28 Patočka’s suggestion, as I understand it, is then to make clear that this idea of harmonia that is at work in these proto-philosophical accounts is something quite different to that in which we ordinarily think of ‘harmony’ in relation to beauty in aesthetic terms. This deep cosmological concept of harmonia is the key to the revealing of the World, to the whole; and is echoed and relayed in the struggle and movement of things becoming apparent and being displaced, “in accordance with the order of time”. Hence, for Patočka: We see that at the very beginning the term ἁρμονία is related in some manner with the most basic philosophical question, and it is not therefore an aesthetic question in the strong sense of the word.29

The connection to his prior discussion on the history of aesthetics now becomes clearer. The historical tracing of the idea of aesthetics can be said to include and derive its themes from concepts of order, balance and harmony from Ancient Greece. Harmonia in this sense, as Patočka had pointed to earlier, closely resembles our modern idea of beauty; however, from Patočka’s point of view, this is a transformation and distortion of its original significance. The genesis of the term harmonia from the ‘key to the whole’, the struggle of mutual conjoining, somehow takes a turn towards the more placid idea of concordance, equilibrium and balance associated more particularly with beauty, in this sense of ‘delight’ and ‘pleasure’, in terms of our sensory awareness. The ‘key’ is gradually lost and replaced with a sensualism of aesthetic value. This is the problem now at hand, and it is here that Patočka returns more specifically to the relation between beauty and harmony. 26 Mathiesen, “Harmonia and Ethos in Ancient Greek Music”, The Journal of Musicology 3.3 (1984), 266. 27 Patočka, “Zrod evropského uvažování o kráse v antickém Řecku [The Birth of European Thinking about Beauty in Ancient Greece]”, 248. 28 Ibid. 29 Ibid., 249.

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*** It is, for Patočka, the Pythagoreans who, in distinction to Heraclitus, begin to narrow the concept of harmonia to “something that causes pleasure” or “something that means this or that emotion”, especially in the areas of certain technical skills—primarily the plastic arts and music. 30 Patočka’s account implies that this ‘narrowing’ of the concept in relation to pleasure and emotion is the first moment at which harmonia is quasi related to beauty and what we might now recognise in aesthetic terms. However, he is clear that “the Pythagoreans had, however, also a concept of harmony broader than simply aesthetics”, in that “their concept of harmony is also generally a philosophical concept. Harmony is responsible for that things are”.31 Patočka, nonetheless, focuses on the Pythagorean schema of harmony as it is articulated by the fundamental principle of number. For the Pythagoreans, that everything consists essentially of number accounts for the ‘binding’ in which things are in relation to each other, specifically in numerical relationships of ratios and proportions. From this perspective, the beauty of harmony is in the measure; is accessible or visible through the relations of observed natural phenomena.32 Harmonia is this principle that fits together things in terms of numerical ratios, and in which the cosmos itself articulates in

30

Ibid. It should also be noted, of course, that Patočka is speaking rather generally about Pythagoreanism and not Pythagoras specifically. From a chronological account, the Pythagorean doctrine ought to be older than or at least contemporaneous with Heraclitus’ dicta. Patočka leaves unsaid, for example, Heraclitus’ taunt of the older Pythagoras’ purported knowledge as simply ‘foul tricks’ in Fragment B 40. Of interest, on this, Riedweg speculates, “as so often happens when one deals intensely with a position one dislikes, Heraclitus may not have remained uninfluenced by the Pythagorean body of thought. At least this is suggested by the importance of the ‘invisible harmony’ (harmonie, also ‘fitting together’) of opposites which in B 54 D.–K. is contrasted with the measurable and ‘visible harmony’, privileged by the Pythagoreans” (Riedweg, ed., Pythagoras: His Life, Teaching, and Influence (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2008)). 31 Patočka, “Zrod evropského uvažování o kráse v antickém Řecku [The Birth of European Thinking about Beauty in Ancient Greece]”, 249. 32 Primarily, Pythagoras was purported to have first understood the simple numerical ratios of the Western musical harmonic scale through experimentations on a simple onestring instrument known as the monochord. This discovery was then universalised to a cosmic significance. As Reidwig notes, “Pythagoras not only found this relationship in music but also considered it basic to the entire construction of the cosmos”. Riedweg, ed., Pythagoras: His Life, Teaching, and Influence; see also Fideler, ed., The Pythagorean Sourcebook and Library (Michigan: Phanes Press, 1987), Kindle Edition.

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its divine movements.33 This also accounts for conditions of the human soul and our emotional and dispositional affects. 34 The corollary of this, Patočka suggests, is that from here onwards the realms of art practice equally become understood in terms of proportion and regularity, with the grasping of things in ratios made concrete with mathematical laws as the application of this principle. 35 Here the sense of beauty as order, symmetry and balance, evoked in an absolute harmony in terms of exact and determinate proportions, is equated with this Pythagorean influence. From Patočka’s point of view, however, “this concept originally philosophical” becomes “narrow” and “psychologised”.36 The problem would appear to be that ‘the key’ as a harmonia that Heraclitus evokes is gradually overtaken by functions of correct proportion and symmetry seen more and more from the technical applications of creative arts and practices. In a certain manner, the deep harmonia that places all things amidst the whole is conflated with the whole itself, conceived as the perfect unification of everything amidst an absolute harmonious spiritual plane. Patočka continues to expose the concretisation of this through Democritus37 and the Sophists,38 in which these originally Pythagorean

33

Guthrie summarises the doctrine by saying: “The ultimate elements of everything are numbers, and the whole cosmos owes its character as something perfect, divine and permanent to the fact that the numbers of which it is made up are combined in the best possible manner according to the rules of mathematical proportion as Pythagoras’ students had revealed them. In short the cosmos owes all these desirable qualities to that fact that it is a harmonia and this harmonia is therefore found above all in the majestic movements on a cosmic scale of the sun, moon, planets and fixed stars. The heavens do not declare the glory of god, for the cosmos is a living god, welded into a single divine unity by the marvellous power of mathematical and musical harmony.” Guthrie, History of Greek Philosophy: The Earlier Presocratics and the Pythagoreans (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1962), 308. 34 For this reason, the Pythagoreans believed that beautiful music could heal the soul though the balancing of its discordances and perturbations. 35 Patočka cites Polykleitos’ Canon as an example of this concrete practice in the 5th century BC. 36 Patočka, “Zrod evropského uvažování o kráse v antickém Řecku [The Birth of European Thinking about Beauty in Ancient Greece]”, 249. 37 See ibid., 250. 38 Patočka notes that for the Sophists, “the beautiful is what we find pleasant on impressions of sight and hearing. Such analysis attempts to determine the specific pleasure that operates precisely in these perceptions and no other”. Hence the notion of beauty as

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ideas are then taken further, dislocating the idea of harmony from its philosophical origins, and affirming it as a sensory and pleasurable ‘nature’ of things in their lawful alignment with one another. From the perspective of Patočka’s opening thesis, this is the historical genesis in which the idea of beauty, which becomes understood in terms of this surface harmony, begins to become a unifying category from which our modern understanding of aesthetics takes its cue. *** In summary, harmonia, for Patočka, can be seen as a distinctive concept in the characterisation of art and beauty from Ancient Greek times. Its gradual development through the practice of numerical and ‘rational’ applications can be thought of as a preamble to the modern understanding of the term, making beauty synonymous with proportion, balance and symmetry. However, if we trace the history of the concept of beauty as ‘harmony’ to its origins, we find that the idea of harmonia is not at all an aesthetic term, but, rather, has its roots in philosophical reflections on the All, in cosmology. It is primarily to do with the way in which things are fitted together in the whole, the key in which things are conjoined. Here we find Patočka distinguishing a different type of harmony, one much more difficult and characterised by struggle and conflict; in which the whole is reflected through the mutual tension and persistence of things in their being alongside each other. From my perspective, these two different senses of harmonia provide a valuable insight not only into Patočka’s understanding of aesthetics but into his philosophy more generally. The first of these conceptions of harmonia is characterised by visible relations, a unison of ratios, proportions, symmetry, in which the whole is resolved in an absolute—philosophically, the task is often to return to the eternal rhythm and divine place, and is often associated with technique and practice. 39 The other is the deep harmony of a conflicting force, a struggle in which beings are subject to persist and abide in their relation to each other, in which the threat of time and fluctuation always exposes what is concealed and other. Patočka, in the lecture, thematises this difference in reference to the Heraclitean fragment in which the

being aroused in a sensuous medium of pleasure gained in the aesthetic experience. See ibid., 251. 39 The Pythagoreans, for example, are reported to have been committed to a life of meditation and practices in which the goal is that the individual soul resolves itself to the divine All.

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“invisible harmony is stronger than the visible”.40 For Patočka, “the meaning of ‘harmony’ is ‘composition’”.41 However, that “things are composed of their components”, that components are operative or conditional on their being, “this is the φανερὴ ἁρμονία, this is the visible composition”.42 “But things in their being, in that they are…this means persisting in harmony—they have in themselves something other, what is not apparent; they have what causes them simultaneously to be in decline”.43 This second meaning, for Patočka, is what is meant by the ἁρμονία αφανής—the invisible harmony. It is what still remains to be seen, in order that “the key through which what is close as is what is far, to what is here as well as what is beyond our experience”, in some manner, would still speak to us.44 With this perspective we can gain an insight into Patočka’s final comments, in which his thesis on Ancient Greek beauty returns suddenly to Plato. For Patočka, Plato is a thinker for whom the “philosophical problem sounds similar to that of the proto-thinkers”.45 Plato also inquires into the fundamental question of ‘what all this is’. According to Patočka, Plato also understands this question from the standpoint of fitting together, of conjoining, of a harmony of sorts. This harmony is manifest in the relation of things to their Ideas: the phenomenal relation of that which is only apparent and manifest to that which determines its essence—a vertical harmonising of ephemeral and fleeting shadows towards that which they truly are, solid and unified. From Socrates, Patočka notes, Plato brings the dimension of that which is ‘beautiful’ essentially into alignment with what is appropriate and suitable for one’s being. From the standpoint of human life, the Ideas are what is appropriate. This is because “in their inner character is a relation to our thinking, they are able to manifest to our thought, they are ‘good’ for our thinking”.46 From this perspective, the peculiarity of human life, its essential essence, finds itself in this relationship to what determines things in their inner being, in their persisting, in their ‘ideal’. This is the unique realm of human life because it bears witness to this harmony, ‘this key’, in which a genuine experience of the whole might be echoed. Patočka, “Zrod evropského uvažování o kráse v antickém Řecku [The Birth of European Thinking about Beauty in Ancient Greece]”, 251. See also note 29 above. 41 Ibid., 248. 42 Ibid. 43 Ibid. 44 Ibid., 249. 45 Ibid., 252. 46 Ibid. 40

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Finally, it is only here that we see Patočka return to that idea of the wide meaning of the Greek term τὸ καλόν (the beautiful) that he has referenced at the beginning of his presentation. Patočka asks, “what is it that thus underlies this all, that truth reveals to us and we are able to tell the truth about things”? Patočka’s answer is “τὸ πρέπον [the well fitting], it is το ἀγαθόν [the good]”. “This is what constitutes the unity between us and what Plato called the Ideas”.47 “And this ἀγαθόν is at the same time τὸ καλόν [the beautiful]”.48 To equate the ‘good’ with the ‘beautiful’ in Plato is, arguably, false,49 Patočka’s brief summary does not go into detail in order to provide a clear understanding. It seems only to point to the idea that in Plato something like the ‘beautiful’ is in many ways still conceived in relationship to foundational philosophical questions. 50 But perhaps most significantly, we find in Patočka here a description of Plato in which this ‘key’, this harmonia, is not at all an aesthetic accounting of proportion and symmetry, balance and equilibrium. Rather, judging from this, Plato’s philosophy can be seen also as an attempt to discern the deep ‘invisible harmony’ that is defined in its ruptures and its struggle, its conflict and tension. Human life, as privileged with the key to that which joins the particular to the universal, can seek the good, the beautiful, the just, only in its care of this type of harmony. Hence, I suggest, this thematic can give weight to Patočka’s reading of Plato in regards to care of the soul as well as more broadly on history and politics.51 However, I will have to leave this question for a further study.

47

Ibid. Ibid. 49 I thank Ivan Chvatík for pointing this out and refer to his paper entitled, in English, “But from Thine Eyes My Knowledge I Derive… Diotima on Love, Beauty, Good and Immortality in Plato’s Symposium”, Philia and Sophia: Ten Years of Phenomenology in Hong Kong (Research Centre for Phenomenology and the Human Sciences: The Chinese University of Hong Kong, 2006). 50 Patočka’s account of Plato is only brief, and seemingly rushed. It cuts off quickly, presumably because of time constraints. From one perspective, Patočka accepts the complex relationship Plato has to art from the point of view that simulations are furthest from truth, furthest from true being; from the other, this account again confirms Patočka’s initial thesis that ancient Greek conceptions of art and beauty are much broader in reach than modern thought on aesthetics. See Patočka, “Zrod evropského uvažování o kráse v antickém Řecku [The Birth of European Thinking about Beauty in Ancient Greece]”, 252. 51 This idea of a deep harmony of struggle (which also can be read in proximity to the related term polemos), I propose, runs throughout Patočka’s work, even as early as 48

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Works Cited Chvatík, Ivan. “But from Thine Eyes My Knowledge I Derive… Diotima on Love, Beauty, Good and Immortality in Plato’s Symposium.” Philia and Sophia: Ten Years of Phenomenology in Hong Kong. Research Centre for Phenomenology and the Human Sciences: The Chinese University of Hong Kong, 2006 Fideler, David R., ed. The Pythagorean Sourcebook and Library. Trans. Kenneth Sylvan Guthrie (and compilation). Kindle ed. Michigan: Phanes Press, 1987 Guthrie, W. K. C. History of Greek Philosophy: The Earlier Presocratics and the Pythagoreans. Vol. I. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1962 Kockelmans, Joseph J. Heidegger on Art and Art Works. The Hague: Nijhoff, 1985 Mathiesen, Thomas J. “Harmonia and Ethos in Ancient Greek Music.” The Journal of Musicology. 3.3 (1984), 264–279 Patočka, Jan. “Life in Balance, Life in Amplitude.” Edited and translated by Eric Manton. Living in Problematicity. Edice Oikúmené. Prague: Oikoymenh, 2007 [1939], 32–42 Patočka, Jan. Umění a čas: Soubor statí, přednášek a poznámek k problémům umění. Druhý díl: Nepublikované texty, recenze, náčrty [Art and Time: A Collection of Essays and Lectures Regarding Problems of Art. Second Part: Unpublished texts, Reviews and Sketches]. Eds Daniel Vojtěch and Ivan Chvatík. Sebrané spisy Jana Patočky. Svazek 5. Vol. II. Prague: Oikoymenh, 2004 Patočka, Jan. “Životní rovnováha a životní amplituda [Life in Balance, Life in Amplitude].” Umění a čas: Soubor statí, přednášek a poznámek k problémům umění. První díl: Publikované studie. Eds Ivan Chvatík and Pavel Kouba. Sebrané spisy Jana Patočky. Svazek 4. Vol. I. Prague: Oikoymenh, 2004 [1939], 53–61 Patočka, Jan. “Zrod evropského uvažování o kráse v antickém Řecku [The Birth of European Thinking about Beauty in Ancient Greece].” Umění a čas: Soubor statí, přednášek a poznámek k problémům umění. Druhý díl: Nepublikované texty, recenze, náčrty. Eds Daniel Vojtěch and Ivan Chvatík. Vol. 2. Prague: Oikoymenh, 2004, 243–253 Riedweg, Christoph, ed. Pythagoras: His Life, Teaching, and Influence. Trans. Steven Rendall. Kindle ed. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2008

1939. For example, see the article, ‘Life in Balance, Life in Amplitude’, where Patočka seemingly opposes a visible harmony of symmetry and balance with a deep ‘amplitude’ that arises from Socrates and Plato’s philosophy. See, in English, Patočka, “Life in Balance, Life in Amplitude”, edited and translated by Manton, Living in Problematicity (Prague: Oikoymenh, 2007 [1939]), 32–42; in the Czech original, Patočka, “Životní rovnováha a životní amplituda [Life in Balance, Life in Amplitude]”, eds Chvatík and Kouba, Umění a čas: Soubor statí, přednášek a poznámek k problémům umění. První díl: Publikované studie (Prague: Oikoymenh, 2004 [1939]), 53–61.

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Part V: Patočka on Meaning

Patočka’s Philosophy of Meaning in Human Life and History Ivan Chvatík In his last essay1 Patočka attempted, in his own words, “a history of the philosophy of the meaning of human life from Kant on”.2 This was done primarily with a view to setting forth, in conclusion, a revision of these attempts and at the same time summarising his own views on the subject, already of crucial importance in the considerations on the philosophy of history developed in his Heretical Essays. I shall attempt here, based on Patočka’s historical analysis, to present his personal viewpoint, as I understand it, and to assess its plausibility. At the beginning of his essay, Patočka points out that “we often fail to appreciate fully the immense significance of the demise of rational theology, as brought about by Kant, for philosophy as well as for life”.3 When scientific research was freed, largely thanks to Kant, of the last remnants of the bonds that once linked science to theology, it became a sphere in which cognition could discover nothing but mechanical processes governed by relentless causality. The new, rational science was orphaned. It became an “exclusively materialistic doctrine of nature as essentially bare of all meaning”.4 Never again would one and the same manner of insight warrant freedom of will, the immaterial and immortal soul, the existence and veracity of God, as well as the possibility of acquiring knowledge of the created world of nature. After Kant, one could no longer regard nature as a book written by God in order to tell us something; that is, something other than what we see anyway (that is, that its components are linked by relentless mechanical laws). It became clear that if nature is a book it contains no letters combining into symbols referring to some meaning beyond; it is not a text about God and

1 Patočka, “Kolem Masarykovy filosofie náboženství [On Masaryk’s Philosophy of Religion]”, Tři studie o Masarykovi (Prague: Mladá Fronta, 1991 [1976]), 53–119. In this paper, I am quoting from the French translation: Patočka, “Autour de philosophie de la religion de Masaryk [On Masaryk’s Philosophy of Religion]”, trans. Abrams, La crise du sens (Paris: Ousia, 1985), 139–216. 2 Patočka, “Autour de philosophie de la religion de Masaryk [On Masaryk’s Philosophy of Religion]”, 204. 3 Ibid., 140. 4 Ibid., 139.

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his aims concerning the world and mankind. Immortality, freedom, God – these things are not to be found in natural science. Kant’s “immense significance”, to quote Patočka, lies in his having presented this fact, known long before, in a rational, irrefutable way. Anxiety gave way to a terror that has us in its grip even now, as attested, in my opinion, by Patočka’s own attempt at a philosophy of history. Kant, first of all, could not refrain from addressing the condition of reason that he himself so fundamentally disclosed. Faithful to his rationalism, he developed an imposing attempt to save Christian faith by linking it to the sphere of ethics. It is not faith any more in God Almighty, who demands unconditional obedience to his commandments. On the contrary, we ourselves are able, through our own reason, to grasp God’s commandments as right and just; that is, as commanded by our reason as such, inasmuch as we are what we are – rational beings. Insight into the fact of reason entitles us to regard ourselves as free beings. Yet this rational autonomy, as expressed by the categorical imperative, is wholly formal, abstract, and so to say unfeeling, given the purity of its rational character, on which the empirical circumstances of our life have no bearing. It is unconditional in and of itself. In this sense it is entirely autonomous. Borrowing a non-Kantian term, one could say that such an action is meaningful in itself; in other words, it is meaning, and absolute meaning at that. However, such activity disregards precisely that in which it is accomplished; that is, its insertion in an empirical time sequence. Considering again the empirical world, we see that moral action will never succeed in attaining the summum bonum in the empirical sphere of nature, the sole sphere in which it is active. This points to the remarkable and disturbing fact that moral action, despite its formal inner meaningfulness, may be meaningless from the viewpoint of achieving its goal. Confronted with this fact, and aware that although theoretical reason is in this sphere capable of cognition, it is fundamentally unable to find any ultimate purpose, practical reason is forced to postulate God as moral author of the world, as a guarantee that this world really aims at the summum bonum. Practical reason is further compelled to postulate an immortal soul, in order that a morally active creature, beyond the limits of earthly life, in the vanishing point of eternity, can – as a reward for its moral actions – achieve bliss, a necessary attribute of the summum bonum. There is a moral God, and the soul is immortal: these, then, are postulates of practical reason that require belief, not findings of theoretical reason, deducible from principles. They articulate the demand for a harmony bridging the antinomy between nature and morality. Thus, although they are not

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rational findings, they are something very rational indeed: reason puts them forward to be believed in order to reconcile the abstract unconditionality of the moral imperative with the empirically conditioned and mortal bodily existence of the entire human being. Moral theology is thus called to rescue faith, while at the same time reconciling it with reason – for it is reason itself that requires faith as something necessary. Now, Patočka says: “The fact that Hegel and Schelling, as Kant’s followers and opponents, resumed onto-theo-logical metaphysics, has greatly obscured the insight that beginning with Kant, the metaphysics of eternity has assumed a new style, one guided by the meaning of the world and life…”.5 Patočka understands Kant’s rationalistic attempt to rescue faith as an implicit project of a metaphysics of the meaning of human life within the overall meaning of the universe: “No human endeavour is possible without meaning; …and on the other hand…without an absolute and total meaning, all [particular] granting-ofmeaning collapses”.6 Only Kant’s conscientious effort to ensure that the successful mathematical-mechanistic project of nature, rendered meaningful only by relative human aims and finding absolute grounding in a transcendent God, raises in full force the question of the meaning of the world and life. So far, there had been no need to ask a question like this – it was a priori answered in the Holy Script. However, Kant’s solution to this metaphysically framed problem did not take firm root. What has stayed with us to this day is its metaphysical articulation, with its demand that all ‘relative’ projecting of meaning in particular situations of human life necessarily find an ‘absolute’ support; that is, faith in the postulates of practical reason. Patočka’s next halt in his journey through the history of the phenomenology of meaningfulness is with Dostoevsky.7 Patočka shows how Kant’s solution to the problem of meaning came to be challenged: “If the purpose of the world and life is to be fastened onto the juncture of ultimate harmony, as pursued by an infinite striving after moral perfection, it presupposes an acknowledgement of dis-

5

Ibid., 142. In quotations, emphasis is in the original unless otherwise noted. Ibid., 147 and 148. 7 Concerning Dostoevsky, Patočka quoted Golosovker, Dostoevskij i Kant (Moskva: Izdatelstvo Akademii Nauk CCCR, 1963). Patočka found a conceptually incisive discussion of Kant’s moral theology in Part II, Book 5, Chapter “Rebellion”, Dostoevsky, The Brothers Karamazov: A Novel in Four Parts with Epilogue (London: Vintage Books, 2004). 6

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harmony and evil as facts”.8 From Ivan Karamazov’s argument it follows that the acceptance of moral postulates carries no absolute necessity with it; rather, it is contingent on our intention to act in general and on our expectation of bliss as a reward. Once we opt for such a meaning, evil has been acknowledged, and one can even claim that “this is the price to be paid for the moral meaningfulness of the world. If there is to be something such as moral merit, there must be suffering and injustice… Yet is it necessary that the world be morally meaningful?”.9 Patočka stresses this question and shows that Dostoevsky’s argument against moral meaningfulness “runs parallel to Kant’s argument against rational theology. Kant’s refutation of onto-theo-logy is based on the impossibility to grant any content to the concept of a necessary being, and in the same way Ivan’s refutation of moral theology is based on the impossibility to prove that the moral purpose of the universe is apodictically necessary”.10 Ivan Karamazov does not reject belief in God, but rather the God of moral postulates. However, since he holds on to the way the problem of meaning has been articulated by the metaphysics of morality, there are only two choices left open for him: “Either there is some other meaning, one we cannot yet understand, or there is no meaning whatsoever…and…everything is permitted”11 – we would now say: anything goes. Fundamentally, Dostoevsky’s entire oeuvre is devoted to the drama of choice between these two alternatives. Patočka presents a detailed analysis of Dostoevsky’s “man from the underground” as a sceptic, veering from one alternative to the other. This figure strongly recalls Heidegger’s “public anonymous” (das Manselbst, das Man), yet with the difference that the “underground man” is aware of his nihilistic downfall and, though suffering immensely from it, finds himself unable to escape it. The short story, “The Dream of a Ridiculous Man”, was considered by Patočka to be “the most comprehensive depiction of overcoming this underground stage”.12 Patočka observed in it a parallel with Heidegger’s notion of a possible turn from base pedestrian attitudes, via anxiety as the experience of the nothingness of all that-which-is, to the authentic “inner metamorphosis, capable…of uncovering the background of this seemingly obvious stream-of-events”.13 The 8

Patočka, “Autour de philosophie de la religion de Masaryk [On Masaryk’s Philosophy of Religion]”, 150. 9 Ibid., 153. 10 Ibid., 154. 11 Ibid., 156. 12 Ibid., 159. 13 Ibid., 166.

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metamorphosis undergone, after his dream suicide, by Dostoyevsky’s “ridiculous man”, in the form of an encounter with the Sun whose light illuminates everything and brings it to life, is interpreted by Patočka as a disclosing of this “background”; as a discovery of the difference between Being and that-which-is; as a recognition of the “miracle that everything is”.14 This miracle of being, manifested when all human aims and purposes disappear as worthless, “this miracle thanks to which we stand in the midst of…that-which-is, is a joining and an opening that can therefore be called ‘love’”,15 and this “love has its place, not among worldly things and contents, but rather on the side of immortal Being”.16 Patočka attempts an existential understanding of the religion of love that Dostoevsky set against Kant’s moral theology. “Harmony, which the world’s moral purpose thrusts off into infinite distance, is present all of a sudden, here and now”.17 Evil has not disappeared from the world and life, nor are people free of suffering and death, yet they have come to know fullness and are reconciled. The refusal of infinite continuation brings with it a refusal to keep account of offences, a denial of revenge and, moreover, the willingness to take guilt upon oneself for each and all – an element seen by Patočka as a parallel to Heidegger’s “will to conscience” from Being and Time. The world is not rid of tragedy and nonsense, yet these are now relative matters. Death itself becomes meaningful: the encounter with our finitude makes it possible for us to open ourselves to the “nonbeing” source of meaning. Still, meaning will not become manifest as “a reward for merits, as requital and righting of wrongs. Meaning is something to which we must individually commit and devote ourselves”.18 Needless to say, Patočka did not claim to set out Dostoevsky’s own standpoint. On the contrary, he stated explicitly: “Dostoyevsky has thus discovered a new continent of as yet unknown meaning, where he himself believes to have found merely a new way to reach known lands… Christian theology speaks of love, and so does Dostoyevsky…but are they both speaking of the same thing?”19 No less important is Patočka’s critical stance towards Nietzsche. He presents him as a prophet of nihilism who saw the crisis of modern humanity in the fact that the entire metaphysical interpretation of the world and life, from Plato up, 14

Ibid. Ibid., 167. 16 Ibid., 168. 17 Ibid., 167. 18 Ibid., 177. 19 Ibid. 15

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through present-day Christianity, “attempts to project beyond this world its desire for a granting-of-meaning to reality…to consign all value…to a ‘true’, ideal world”.20 Christianity, however, owing to its respect for truth as one of these absolute values, has itself revealed the falsity of its own world view, and thus come out into the open as the actual source of all nihilism. For Patočka, Nietzsche was an advocate of “anthropomorphism laid down as a metaphysical principle”.21 Having overcome otherworldliness, man prevails over nihilism as well by means of a new positivity aiming at ruthless subjugation of the planet. “The world will be conquered by a creative yet bestially harsh animality”.22 Patočka, like Heidegger on Nietzsche, speaks here of a “subjectivism of flesh and earthliness”.23 Patočka appears to fail completely to come to grips with Nietzsche’s idea of the ‘endless return of the same’. Patočka endeavours to conceive of it merely as a “refutation of Kant’s first thesis, and consequently of the doctrine of the antinomy of pure reason in general”.24 The ‘endless return’, according to Patočka, “leads to a notion of the universe as a combinatorial game which admits neither freedom nor the very understanding of the world’s existence as will”,25 with the result that Nietzsche “solves the problem of meaningfulness in a way that radically banishes all meaning”.26 Surprisingly, Patočka ends his critique of Nietzsche as follows: “Nietzsche’s call echoes in our increasing understanding of earthliness not as a mere fact but rather as a commitment, something we must face with open eyes, something to be considered, not as indifferent, but rather as an achievement paradoxically linked to deeper meaning”.27 Patočka thus regards present-day nihilism as “the self-evident conviction that only relative meaning exists, that is, relating to human life. Since human life as such is…necessarily precarious, all meaningfulness can be shaken, and if it has 20

Ibid., 195. Ibid., 196. 22 Ibid., 197. 23 Ibid., 200. 24 Ibid., 198. Cf. Kant, Critique of Pure Reason (Indianapolis/Cambridge: Hackett, 1996 [1781]), 458 (A426/B454). Thesis: “The world has a beginning in time and is also enclosed within bounds as regards space.” Antithesis: “The world has no beginning and no bounds in space, but is infinite as regards both time and space.” 25 Patočka, “Autour de philosophie de la religion de Masaryk [On Masaryk’s Philosophy of Religion]”, 198. 26 Ibid., 200. 27 Ibid., 201. 21

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not yet been questioned, it will be soon”.28 Nietzsche’s diagnosis remains valid. Contemporary humanity has no expectations of eternal bliss or punishment granted to the immortal soul by an almighty creator. Kant’s postulates are but empty words, and in the process the moral imperative too has lost its unconditionality. Man is left to himself. In order not to see the loss of overall meaning, he resorts to an increasingly varied medley of relative meanings; to the anonymous impersonality of Pascal’s divertissement. Patočka agrees with Nietzsche on this diagnosis. He traces the main cause of the nihilistic crisis back to Kant who, as we have already mentioned, thought out his moral theology without taking into account the concept of meaningfulness. Kant’s doctrine of postulates is entirely based on the notion of end or purpose: the “summum bonum”, being an end, is something to be attained, a coming reality, be it in an infinite future. It is something-that-is, something ontical. In our discussion of Dostoevsky, we have already taken note of Patočka’s attempt to come to a new understanding of meaningfulness, showing how overall meaning appears to the shaken “underground man” an as ontological phenomenon, source of all things existing, although it cannot itself be said to exist. In the background of Patočka’s considerations on meaningfulness, one can make out the definition formulated by Heidegger in Being and Time29 and quoted by Patočka in his essay, “Does History Have Meaning?”: “Meaning is that on the basis of which something becomes comprehensible”.30 However, “meaning as a formal-existential structure of disclosure, belonging to understanding”31 is no particular being (Seiendes). It is therefore improper “to deduce meaning, with the self-evidence of something unproblematic, from purpose and purposiveness – since, in our life, purposes arise out of a reflexive grasping and fixation of that which has and grants meaning”.32 We may perhaps escape the nihilistic crisis by ceasing to understand meaningfulness in terms of purposes, by going about a 28

Ibid., 202. Cf. Heidegger, Sein und Zeit [Being and Time] (Tübingen: Niemeyer, 1929), 151. 30 Patočka, Péče o duši: Soubor statí a přednášek o postavení člověka ve světě a v dějinách. Třetí díl: Kacířské eseje o filosofii dějin. Varianty a přípravné práce z let 19731977. Dodatky k Péči o duši I a II [Care for the Soul: The Collection of Essays and Lectures Regarding the Place of Man in the World and in History. Third part: Heretical Essay on the Philosophy of History. Variants and Groundwork from 1973-1977. Supplements to Care for the Soul I and II], Sebrané spisy Jana Patočky. Svazek 3 (Prague: Oikoymenh, 2002), 62. 31 Heidegger, Sein und Zeit [Being and Time], 151, my translation. 32 Patočka, “Autour de philosophie de la religion de Masaryk [On Masaryk’s Philosophy of Religion]”, 212. 29

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“revision of the philosophy of the meaning of human life on the whole…from Kant on”.33 In this endeavour, Patočka makes use of Heideggerian motifs. He is fully aware that “Heidegger himself did not raise the question of meaning explicitly…in its full extent, nor did he take up the issue of partial and overall, relative and absolute meaning”.34 So what does Patočka suggest? The first important point is that meaning is not something man grants himself, as with Kant’s postulates of practical reason. One must encounter meaningfulness in a way similar to that described by Dostoevsky, “beyond the limit of significances relating to human life”.35 Such a turn is described as follows by Heidegger in his lecture entitled “What is Metaphysics?”: through the experience of ‘nothingness’ we discover the ontological difference, the distinction between Being (Sein) and any particular being (Seiendes); we are brought face to face with the positivity of the fact of being, fascinated by its immensity. This positivity is the actual source of all meaningfulness, for Patočka: “All significance, all value, all ends are ultimately grounded in the understanding of this ‘is’, ‘there is’, ‘is given’, ‘is open’, ‘is present’, uttered before all that concerns the hustle and bustle of one’s own life.”36 “Meaningfulness is an ontological category that originally, in its primordial being, has nothing to do with human values, concerns and purposes… Meaningfulness as the source of all understanding is the Urdifference between Being and any particular being”.37 Overall meaning is, in short, unrelated to man, and this brings us to another important feature: “It is conditioned by something which is neither human nor an aspect or property of man, inasmuch as it has no existence, as it is no particular being”.38 It cannot therefore go the way of all metaphysical ends and values, liable to be refuted; rather, it is a “meaning that, disclosed by collapse, does not itself collapse but, non-real and non-being, remains intact in the catastrophe

33

Ibid., 204 Ibid., 210 35 Ibid., 204 36 Ibid., 205 37 Ibid., 209 38 Ibid., 210 34

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overtaking the meaning of all things real”.39 In this respect, one can term it “absolute”.40 This absoluteness does not mean, of course, that there is a metaphysical last truth. As we remarked at the very beginning, overall meaning is revealed in a historical manner. Rising above meaning relative to human life is an endeavour we must undertake over and over again. For Patočka, the granting of meaning “with the aim of living only for life” marks “the zero point of human historical striving”.41 His questioning proceeds at all times within the dichotomy of upsurge and downfall, the ‘zero point’ being equivalent to downfall: life for life alone is a life that vegetates within the precincts of the downfall. Its opposite is a movement aiming at liberation from downfall: upsurge or élan. This élan is led by a striving for “life in truth”42 – truth being taken neither as adequation, nor as something mystical, the knowledge of which would bring about a disentanglement from the whirl of life and the world; but rather as something close to the Heideggerian truth of Being, the historically modulated unfolding of the open sphere in which that-which-is is brought to appear; the sphere in which phenomenalisation takes place. For Patočka, striving after life in truth is, again and again, the endeavour to make oneself at home in this open sphere, to make it into a phenomenon, to disclose, over and over again, the manner in which thatwhich-is appears to us. The reason for this repetition and constant resumption is that the fundamental finitude of human being – indeed, of Being as such – applies even here, in the sphere of the ontological phenomenon. Even here, something essential is withheld in that which is disclosed: “Such a disclosure, while freeing that-which-comes-to-the-surface, conceals something equally essential, and would indeed be unthinkable without this concealment, inherent in the phenomenon.”43 Even with ontological phenomena, the structure of appearing implies the concealment, beyond the appearing phenomenon, of that which makes it appear, thus requiring a continually renewed striving after disclosure. The 39

Ibid., 206. Cf. Patočka, Péče o duši: Soubor statí a přednášek o postavení člověka ve světě a v dějinách. Třetí díl: Kacířské eseje o filosofii dějin. Varianty a přípravné práce z let 19731977. Dodatky k Péči o duši I a II [Care for the Soul: The Collection of Essays and Lectures Regarding the Place of Man in the World and in History. Third part: Heretical Essay on the Philosophy of History. Variants and Groundwork from 1973-1977. Supplements to Care for the Soul I and II], 81. 41 Ibid., 456. 42 Ibid. 43 Ibid., 455. 40

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structure of appearing – or, as Patočka says, “the phenomenon” – is for this reason “the fundamental element of history”, the spring that keeps history running.44 History is the history of our efforts to discover ontological phenomena as they come forth out of concealment in ever new ways. Discovering ontological phenomena, while at the same time being referred to the fact that they themselves appear to us and in the manner in which they do so – such is the way in which we attempt to understand the process of disclosure, to grasp where we are with regard to it. Our aim in delving into ontological phenomena was of course merely to understand the manner in which that-which-is appears to us, that is, to understand ontical phenomena. We wanted to grasp why particular beings at a given time appear to us exactly the way they do and not otherwise, as they did at some other time, or as we wish they would. In this regard, Patočka’s idea differs markedly from Heidegger’s. Whereas Heidegger advises us to wait, devoutly meditating on the historical forms of the ontological phenomenon and prepare for the moment when Being will have mercy upon us and show itself otherwise than in the wretched constellation of the Gestell, Patočka wants to directly connect the disclosure of ontological phenomena with historical action: if, as is the case, we are able to understand the ontological phenomenon, if we are able to understand why ontical phenomena (particular beings, das Seiende) appear to us the way they do, then we can and indeed must act in accordance with what we disclose – if we wish to avoid cowardly downfall and uneventful living for living’s sake. Despite its ‘absoluteness’, the meaning granted us in disclosure of the ontological phenomenon remains problematical. It is problematical, on the one hand, because we can never be sure that we have truly opened ourselves to the revelation of the ‘truth of Being’ in such a way that Being can manifest itself as it wishes. We cannot be sure that we really let it be and let it show itself without adding to its appearing ‘subjective’ admixtures that garble it. We cannot be sure “whether we are capable of understanding its inconspicuousness as the mysterious presence of immense riches, or whether we are merely trying to snatch from it some gift, some message that would allow us to set ourselves up as masters of our surroundings…”.45 ‘Absolute’ meaning, on the other hand, is problematical

44

Ibid., 453. Patočka, “Autour de philosophie de la religion de Masaryk [On Masaryk’s Philosophy of Religion]”, 209. 45

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because, as we have seen, it “appears as a fruit of darkness, irrepressibly spreading in the very foundations of the universe”.46 History is thus, according to Patočka, a process of disclosure of meaning, yet a process “of problematic nature, quite unlike a safe path one can walk without effort”.47 It is a path on which one must sustain “constant unsettling of the naive perception of meaningfulness” 48 and “open one’s eyes to obscurity, problematicity, contradictions”,49 realising that one is “presented with an unshakable gift, incommensurate with anything relative”.50 Patočka said: “Man faces an immense task: to claim the meaningfulness of the universe not for himself and his own profit, but rather to understand himself as a creature existing on the basis and for the sake of meaning, living in order that a meaningful world may come to be, expending himself so that meaning, the foundation of which ‘is’ beyond all thatwhich-is, may come to dwell and multiply in that-which-is”.51 From what I have said so far, it is clear that Patočka, in searching for meaning, was mainly concerned with its overall character or, as he said at times almost apologetically, its “absoluteness”. Patočka’s starting point was an insight he shared with Wolfgang Weischedel: “All partial and conditional meaning depends on total and unconditional meaning, which phenomenally takes precedence over it”.52 “All particular meaning refers to the overall, all relative meaning to the

46 Patočka, Péče o duši: Soubor statí a přednášek o postavení člověka ve světě a v dějinách. Třetí díl: Kacířské eseje o filosofii dějin. Varianty a přípravné práce z let 19731977. Dodatky k Péči o duši I a II [Care for the Soul: The Collection of Essays and Lectures Regarding the Place of Man in the World and in History. Third part: Heretical Essay on the Philosophy of History. Variants and Groundwork from 1973-1977. Supplements to Care for the Soul I and II], 81, note a. 47 Ibid., 455. 48 Ibid., 69. 49 Ibid., 81, note a. 50 Patočka, “Autour de philosophie de la religion de Masaryk [On Masaryk’s Philosophy of Religion]”, 213. 51 Ibid. 52 Patočka, Péče o duši: Soubor statí a přednášek o postavení člověka ve světě a v dějinách. Třetí díl: Kacířské eseje o filosofii dějin. Varianty a přípravné práce z let 19731977. Dodatky k Péči o duši I a II [Care for the Soul: The Collection of Essays and Lectures Regarding the Place of Man in the World and in History. Third part: Heretical Essay on the Philosophy of History. Variants and Groundwork from 1973-1977. Supplements to Care for the Soul I and II], 65; Weischedel, Der Gott der Philosophen [The God of the Philosophers] (Darmstadt: Buchges, 1971), 165–182.

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absolute”.53 Hence, the query: is overall or absolute meaning thinkable after Kant and Nietzsche? At first glance this question would seem to have been successfully answered by the identification of overall meaning with the ontological sphere. Evidence has thus been produced for an overall and, in a certain sense, absolute, meaning of life and history. The notion of overall meaningfulness as problematical has, moreover, demonstrated an understanding of the historicity of this meaning and the necessity of human action in history. Yet I believe there is a difficulty connected here with the focal point of the entire conception: that is, with the very demand of an overall or absolute meaning. If we are to identify overall meaning with the source of the light in which all things appear, if we proclaim it one with the “primordial truth, presupposed by all various truths and untruths, falsities and errors to which life is exposed”,54 we fail to notice that, just as this ‘primordial truth’ is the source of truths and untruths, falsities and errors, it too is a source of both meaning and meaninglessness. Of course, the meaningfulness or meaninglessness we speak of here is relative, referring to the situation in which man takes action. In Kant’s moral theology as well as in historical activity based, as Patočka says, on the “unshakable gift, incommensurate with anything relative”,55 he who takes action must make a decision, based on “judgment” (Urteilskraft), which is necessarily hermeneutical in character. However, whereas in Kant’s moral theology, the categorical imperative had a right of veto and thus exceeded the hermeneutical situation of action in an absolute manner, we in our present situation have nothing of the sort at our disposal. “Primordial truth”, the way in which – and, more importantly, the fact that – our situation opens up for us, is no doubt constitutive of our comprehension of it, yet cannot help us to escape from the meaninglessness of the particular situation in which we may happen to be. In fact, the explicitly proclaimed problematicity of ‘overall meaning’ does not belong in the ontological sphere but is a necessary characteristic of meaningfulness as such: meaning is not meaning if 53 Patočka, Péče o duši: Soubor statí a přednášek o postavení člověka ve světě a v dějinách. Třetí díl: Kacířské eseje o filosofii dějin. Varianty a přípravné práce z let 19731977. Dodatky k Péči o duši I a II [Care for the Soul: The Collection of Essays and Lectures Regarding the Place of Man in the World and in History. Third part: Heretical Essay on the Philosophy of History. Variants and Groundwork from 1973-1977. Supplements to Care for the Soul I and II], 66, 67. 54 Patočka, “Autour de philosophie de la religion de Masaryk [On Masaryk’s Philosophy of Religion]”, 206. 55 Ibid., 213.

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it is not liable to being shaken or lost, if it is not directional, orientated at all times with regard to a certain form of meaning-less-ness.56 Patočka assumed ‘overall meaning’ to be an exception from this directionality. As non-being, it is indestructible. It is explicitly opposed to the precarious finitude of human existence. Indeed, it is said to appear in the very same basic existential state of anxiety in which we are faced with our “ultimate and utmost possibility, impossible to anticipate and impossible to share, the possibility of utter non-existence”.57 As if the discovery of an ‘overall meaning’ could nip in the bud, abolish or dissemble the meaninglessness of death – death nonetheless remaining that from which the finite and mortal creature draws all its weightiness. Putting ‘overall meaning’ above the relative meaningfulness or meaninglessness of our situation leads ultimately, as in metaphysical onto-theo-logy, to a levelling of the situational difference between (relative) meaningfulness and meaninglessness. We are, in a way, asked to choose between overall and absolute (ontological, non-objective, and unshakable) ‘meaning’ on the one side; and relative, purely ontical, and changing forms of meaningfulness and meaninglessness on the other. Does this not come down to concealing anew the precariousness of potential meaninglessness? Does it not come down to concealing the fundamental existential feature without which the temporal structure of our being would not be possible; stretched, as it is, between a past that cannot be undone and that grants our present irrefutable meaning, and a future that, with all its uncertainty, makes possible the projection of a different meaning for which the present may be sacrificed? I am sure Patočka was well aware of these questions. The fact that they were not answered satisfactorily is, I would argue, one of the main reasons why, after Heretical Essays, he focuses himself again on the theme of meaning in the Two Studies on Masaryk.

56

Cf. Kouba, Die Welt nach Nietzsche [The World after Nietzsche] (München: Fink,

2001). 57

Patočka, “Autour de philosophie de la religion de Masaryk [On Masaryk’s Philosophy of Religion]”, 206.

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Works Cited Dostoevsky, Fyodor. The Brothers Karamazov: A Novel in Four Parts with Epilogue. Trans. Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky. London: Vintage Books, 2004 Golosovker, Yakov. Dostoevskij i Kant. Moskva: Izdatelstvo Akademii Nauk CCCR, 1963 Heidegger, Martin. Sein und Zeit [Being and Time]. Tübingen: Niemeyer, 1929 Kant, Immanuel. Critique of Pure Reason. Trans. Werner S. Pluhar. Indianapolis/ Cambridge: Hackett, 1996 [1781] Kouba, Pavel. Die Welt nach Nietzsche [The World after Nietzsche]. München: Fink, 2001 Patočka, Jan. “Autour de philosophie de la religion de Masaryk [On Masaryk’s Philosophy of Religion].” Trans. Erika Abrams. La crise du sens. Vol. I. Paris: Ousia, 1985, 139–216 Patočka, Jan. “Kolem Masarykovy filosofie náboženství [On Masaryk’s Philosophy of Religion].” Tři studie o Masarykovi. Edice Váhy. Prague: Mladá Fronta, 1991 [1976], 53–119 Patočka, Jan. Péče o duši: Soubor statí a přednášek o postavení člověka ve světě a v dějinách. Třetí díl: Kacířské eseje o filosofii dějin. Varianty a přípravné práce z let 19731977. Dodatky k Péči o duši I a II [Care for the Soul: The Collection of Essays and Lectures Regarding the Place of Man in the World and in History. Third part: Heretical Essay on the Philosophy of History. Variants and Groundwork from 1973-1977. Supplements to Care for the Soul I and II]. Eds Ivan Chvatík and Pavel Kouba. Sebrané spisy Jana Patočky. Svazek 3. Vol. III. Prague: Oikoymenh, 2002 Weischedel, Wolfgang. Der Gott der Philosophen [The God of the Philosophers]. Darmstadt: Buchges, 1971

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The Meaning of the Mathematical Anita Williams Martin Heidegger, Jan Patočka and Jacob Klein follow Edmund Husserl’s interest in the origins of geometry as well as philosophy. Like Husserl, Heidegger, Patočka and Klein see modern science as defined by a shift in our understanding of the mathematical and its relation to the world. Modern mathematical science takes mathematical thinking as the way to understand the world because nature is mathematical: hence, understanding the mathematical is crucial for clarifying our current way of thinking. My paper will focus on the way Heidegger and Patočka extend Husserl’s analysis of the mathematical character of modern science as well as the origin of geometry. As I will show in this paper, Husserl argues that Galileo turned tradition on its head: the geometrical ideas of Plato became the real world for Galileo, which ultimately led to a universalising formalism that strips human life of meaning. Galileo pronounces that nature is mathematical and this leads to the idea that the whole of the natural world can be mathematised. Each secondary quality has its cause in the primary qualities of things: the heat we feel, the secondary quality, is caused by the primary quality of motion. According to Husserl, this means that we lose the life-world origin of geometry. Heat, which we do experience, must be the basis for indirect mathematisation because we cannot experience the mathematical notion of motion. Yet, Galileo posits that quantitative motion is what explains the sensation of heat. The method of indirect mathematisation becomes a technique applied universally to know all things. Hence, for Husserl, the world of experience is lost under a garb of mathematical ideas, which means that we lose sight of the meaningful human world because we replace the world in which we live with an empty, formal conception of the world. To challenge the universal formalism that comes to supersede the meaningful human world, Husserl suggests a return to the origins of geometry, in order to clarify the original meaning of geometry, as well as reason. Although he points to a way of returning to the origins of our tradition that would not reduce mathematics and reason to historical relativism, he does not give a comprehensive account of the origins of geometry and philosophy. Heidegger and Patočka follow Husserl’s lead and return to the Ancient Greek origins of our tradition of thinking.

The Meaning of the Mathematical

Heidegger traces the concept of the mathematical back to the Ancient Greek concept of ta mathēmata. He explains that ta mathēmata refers to what we must be familiar with in order to gain a better understanding of the thing; in order to learn about the thing. Ta mathēmata does not relate solely to numbers. Numbers are the clearest example of ta mathēmata because they are a straightforward example of what we bring to things that does not come from the thing itself; but, for example, the ‘plant-like’ of plants, the ‘animal-like’ of animals, and so on, are also ta mathēmata. Heidegger argues that modern science narrows ta mathēmata to the numerical as well as transforming our understanding of the mathematical and its relation to things. For modern scientists, the mathematical is not what we bring to things, but what things are, outside of any influence from the way they are perceived. For Heidegger, the mathematical character of modern science means that things are conceived as numerical; that is, things are conceived as uniform, homogenous and interchangeable. Importantly for Heidegger, this means that modern scientists no longer relate to things as they are encountered, but only to things as they are constructed in thought. Patočka follows Husserl’s and Heidegger’s lead and, with the help of Jacob Klein, returns to the meaning of number in Plato’s dialogues. Patočka argues that modern mathematical science changes not only our understanding of things but also our understanding of conceptual thinking, by reducing thinking to mathematical thinking only. Patočka’s central claim is that numbers are important to Plato because they open up the possibility to contemplate ideas as well as providing a way to understand the relation between ideas and the world of flux. Patočka’s return to Plato shows the importance of Patočka’s contribution to phenomenology: he turns phenomenology into a historical project; one that is a renewing return to the origins of our tradition, because this return opens the possibility to think differently. For Patočka, Plato’s engagement with Pythagorean arithmos is an early recognition of the problem of manifestation: mathēmata relates to that which makes appearing possible but is not part of what appears. Hence, Patočka’s phenomenological return to the origin of our tradition opens up a new way to consider the relation between our thinking, the things we encounter, and the world in which we live.

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Husserl on Galileo and the Origin of Geometry For Husserl, geometry is an idealisation from the life-world. To clarify, it is emphatically not an inductive generalisation:1 we do not come to a geometrical theorem by observing many triangles to eventually posit the general idea of a triangle. Inductive generalisation can only ever lead to probable statements. Geometrical theorems, on the other hand, are not probable, they remain identical throughout time. As Husserl states, “the Pythagorean theorem…is identically the same in the ‘original language’ of Euclid and in all ‘translations’”.2 Hence, geometrical theorems cannot be based upon inductive generalisation; instead they must be based upon a special act of idealisation. According to Husserl, geometry has its basis in the life-world, “the pregeometrical, sensible world and its practical arts”,3 but we require a special act to arrive at the geometrical ideal. The privileging of certain shapes that form part of the practical art of measurement is not enough to arrive at the “new constructions”, the new “ideal objects” of geometry.4 Husserl writes that “this new sort of construction will be a product arising out of an idealizing, spiritual act, one of pure thinking”.5 Even though idealisation is an act of thinking, idealisation remains connected to the world of practical concerns. It is through perfecting the “thingshapes” we encounter as part of our practical life that we can arrive at the ideal geometrical shapes.6 It is this aspect that separates idealisation from the mathematisation that characterises modern science: idealisation retains its meaningful foundation in the life-world, while the new mathematical sciences lead us to overlook the life-world as the necessary foundation of meaning for these sciences. 1 Husserl has two concepts of generalisation: inductive generalisation and eidetic generalisation. See Ivan Chvatík’s Patočka’s Project of an Asubjective Phenomenology in this volume. Although there is a difference between eidetic generalisation and idealisation, this distinction is not relevant to the discussion here. 2 Husserl, “The Origin of Geometry”, trans. Carr, The Crisis of European Sciences and Transcendental Phenomenology: An Introduction to Phenomenological Philosophy (Evanston: Northwest University Press, 1970 (1936)), 353–378, 357. 3 Husserl, The Crisis of European Sciences and Transcendental Phenomenology: An Introduction to Phenomenological Philosophy, Northwestern University Studies in Phenomenology & Existential Philosophy (Evanston: Northwest University Press, 1970), 29. 4 Husserl, “The Origin of Geometry”, 375–377. 5 Ibid., 377. 6 Ibid., 376.

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For Husserl, modern mathematical science is Galilean science.7 Modern science starts with Galileo’s mathematisation of nature.8 Galileo collapses the distinction between spatial temporal bodies, which are imperfect, with the ideal spatial shapes of geometry, and takes geometry as the starting point for his new physics.9 For Husserl, the “intuitively given surrounding world” is the “sphere of the merely typical”; things are merely similar, while the geometrical sphere is marked by perfection – the triangle is identical and perfectly repeatable throughout different time periods and acts of thinking. 10 Hence, pure geometry must be distinct from the sensuous shapes we encounter. However, for Husserl, Galileo fails to make this distinction in his famous dictum that: language is written in mathematical language, and its characters are triangles, circles, and other geometrical figures; without these it would be humanly impossible to understand a word of it, and one wanders around pointlessly in a dark labyrinth.11

Galileo’s pronouncement that nature is mathematical outlined what was to be taken as the real world. Henceforth, the real world is understood as composed of primary qualities – i.e., the mathematical qualities of length, breadth, depth and motion. Galileo’s declaration also means that secondary qualities become understood as subjective, sensuous qualities severed from the ‘real’, mathematical world. In The Assayer, Galileo distinguishes primary from secondary qualities. To do so, he uses the example of a feather touching our bodies. Galileo describes that the feather can tickle “the soles of the feet”, “the armpits”, “the knees”, but “produces an almost intolerable titillation” when brushed between “the eyes”, “on the nose” or “under the nostrils”. He concludes from this that “the titillation is entirely in us and not in the feather”.12 From this example, Galileo postulates that objects are defined by their geometrical qualities – length, depth, breadth and motion – while the secondary qualities – e.g., “tastes, odors, colors, and others” – are nothing more than the felt effects of primary qualities on the sen7 Husserl, The Crisis of European Sciences and Transcendental Phenomenology: An Introduction to Phenomenological Philosophy, 23. 8 Ibid. 9 Ibid., 24. 10 Ibid., 25. 11 Galilei, “From The Assayer (1623)”. edited and translated by Finocchiaro. The Essential Galileo (Indianapolis, Indiana: Hackett Publishing Company, 2008 [1623]), 179–189, 183. 12 Ibid., 186.

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suous body.13 To illustrate further: the motion of the feather is taken as a primary quality of the feather, while the varying ‘titillations’ experienced by the sensuous body are taken as secondary qualities. Furthermore, secondary qualities become understood as underpinned by an exact mathematical correlate, which in turn relies upon universal causality. 14 Husserl explains that the secondary qualities, now taken as sensuous qualities, are understood to have a cause in “a counterpart in the realm of shapes”.15 He admits that, “put this way”, his analysis seems “almost fantastic”.16 However, once we reflect upon our contemporary understanding of “colors, tones, warmth and weight”, we simply accept that these subjective characteristics are underpinned by an objective physical reality, a physical reality which we take to be mathematical.17 To explain further, I shall take Galileo’s example of heat. Galileo uses heat as another example to explain the difference between primary and secondary qualities. He explains that motion is a primary (i.e., mathematical) quality, while heat is a secondary quality. He extends his explanation by saying that motion, the primary quality, “is the cause of heat”; it is the “motion that burns arrows and the wood of catapults and liquefies the lead of gunshots and other metals” as well as explaining our experience of heat.18 Although we would currently understand Galileo’s concept of heat as something outmoded, we see the seeds of the modern understanding of warmth and temperature in Galileo’s explanation of heat and motion. While I may feel warm and another person cool in the same room, we take it for granted that the objectively measured temperature remains the same no matter how it is felt. The law of thermodynamics strictly and predictably relates heat to the rise of mercury in a tube. The mercury is measured according to a scale, which we now refer to in ‘degrees’.19 The degree is simply accepted as the objec-

13

Ibid. Husserl, The Crisis of European Sciences and Transcendental Phenomenology: An Introduction to Phenomenological Philosophy, §9c. 15 Ibid., 36. 16 Ibid. 17 Ibid. 18 Galilei, “From The Assayer (1623)”, 189. 19 Of course, there are different scales for degree – Fahrenheit, Celsius and Kelvin – but these are only different scales; they are not substantially different methods of meas14

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tive correlate of warmth. In its turn, temperature is taken for granted as the cause of our experience of hot, warm, cool, cold, and so on. While temperature is a more sophisticated understanding of heat than Galileo’s own, the modern concept of temperature continues to resemble Galileo’s concept of motion and heat: warmth is the felt effect of a real quantitative change in temperature. Yet, on Husserl’s account, without the experience of warmth we would not seek a method for its measurement. For Husserl, the just-presented understanding of temperature is the result of indirectly mathematising the quality of warmth. For Husserl, sensuous qualities, such as heat, are, to a certain extent, amenable to indirect mathematisation because they appear in “gradations”.20 However, the exactness of temperature does not come from experience or an actual objective correlate; instead the exactness of temperature stems from our method of measurement. To suggest that the exactness of temperature is objectively part of the phenomenon of warmth is, for Husserl, to mistake method for reality. When we posit temperature as the ‘cause’ of our feeling of warmth, we forget that warmth must be the basis of temperature in the first instance. Indirect mathematisation of nature – the idea that “specific sense-qualities must have [their] mathematical index”21 – leads to a forgetting of the “intuitively given surrounding world” because indirect mathematisation is no more than a hypothesis.22 Husserl argues that indirect mathematisation lacks verification by experience and a priori self-evidence. Hence, indirect mathematisation remains a hypothesis that is constantly being verified and constantly in need of further verification.23 Indirect mathematisation must start from our experience of something. Yet, it leads us to forget this life-world foundation to the extent that we posit the measurement as the explanation of the phenomenon: temperature becomes the explanation of warmth. The indirect mathematisation of nature leads to mathesis universalis,24 in which the world is conceived as a mathematical manifold. 25 Once the hypothesis of urement. Hence, taking these different measurements of temperature into account does not change the substantive point made here. 20 Husserl, The Crisis of European Sciences and Transcendental Phenomenology: An Introduction to Phenomenological Philosophy, 34. 21 Ibid., 37. Here, and unless otherwise noted, emphasis is in the work cited. 22 Ibid., 41–42. 23 Ibid., 41–43. 24 Ibid., 45. 25 Ibid., 23.

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indirect mathematisation is taken for granted, Husserl argues, the true meaning of mathematical natural science is further emptied out through the ‘technisation’ of the scientific method:26 the scientific method becomes the technique for achieving correct results.27 Husserl notes that the most extreme example of the technisation of method is algebraic arithmetic.28 The technisation of the method of natural science leads to a “universal ‘formalization’”,29 which separates mathematical science, with its mathematical conception of nature, from the meaningful world in which we live.30 To summarise: unlike idealisation, which retains its meaning fundament in the life-world, indirect mathematisation loses its meaningful foundation and becomes an empty technique that can be applied universally. While such a technique has been successful in humans’ mastery over nature, modern science can no longer speak to human concerns, because science has been severed from the meaningful human world from which it arose. In his last work, to confront the loss of meaning and the inability of science to speak to genuine human concerns, Husserl suggests a return to the Ancient Greek origin of philosophy in order to recover the original meaning of philosophy and science.31 In “The Origin of Geometry”, Husserl concludes that we must return to the Ancient Greek roots of our tradition in order to understand “the historical original meaning which necessarily was able to give and did give to the whole becoming of geometry its persisting truth-meaning”.32 In this phrase we see the nature of Husserl’s interest in history. He is not interested in a factual history that merely outlines the dates and times of the first geometer because this would amount to historicism: making mathematics relative to a particular historical time, place and cultural tradition. Husserl wants to hold on to the universal character of geometry, while understanding its historical roots, in order to recover the original meaning of geometry. His interest is in how our tradition first made available the idea of geometry. The purpose of this historical inquiry would be to discover “the foundations of the universal historical a priori”, and this is what would give history its proper meaning. History would address the 26

Ibid., §9g. Ibid., 46–49. 28 Ibid., 46. 29 Ibid., 45. 30 Ibid., §9g. 31 Ibid. 32 Ibid., 377. 27

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“highest question of a universal teleology of reason”.33 Despite pointing to the importance of this project, however, Husserl did no more than a precursory sketch.34 Heidegger on Modern Mathematical Science and Ta Mathēmata Heidegger starts from Husserl’s phenomenological critique of modern mathematical science. Heidegger is unsatisfied with the naïve account of modern science: that modern science rightly emphasises facts whereas medieval science was preoccupied with concepts.35 Following Husserl, Heidegger argues that the mathematical is defining of modern science. However, Heidegger understands the mathematical character of science differently from Husserl. For Heidegger, the mathematical character of science does not mean a universalisation of the procedure of indirect mathematisation, but rather it means that the “essence of things” is conceived as mathematical.36 For Heidegger, it is not that we start from sensuous qualities and then posit a measurement for them. For the modern scientist things cannot be conceived outside of the mathematical projection of nature; this is what makes possible the procedure of indirect mathematisation and, more generally, the experimental method of modern science. Heidegger’s understanding of the mathematical also means that we cannot simply return to the life-world to recover the meaning fundament of the mathematical modern 33

Ibid., 378. For example, see Husserl, “The Vienna Lecture: Philosophy and the Crisis of European Humanity”, trans. Carr, The Crisis of European Sciences and Transcendental Phenomenology: An Introduction to Phenomenological Philosophy (Evanston: Northwest University Press, 1970 (1935)), 269–299; Husserl, “The Origin of Geometry”. 35 Heidegger, “The Modern Mathematical Science of Nature and the Origin of a Critique of Pure Reason”, trans. Barton and Deutsch, What is a Thing? (Chicago, Illinois: Henry Regnery Company, 1967), 65–108, 66. Reprinted with minor changes and some deletions as Heidegger, “Modern Science, Metaphysics and Mathematics”, ed. Krell, Basic Writings (New York: HarperCollins, 2008), 271–305. German edition: Heidegger, “Die neuzeitliche mathematische Naturwissenschaft und die Entstehung einer Kritik der reinen Vernunft [The Modern Mathematical Science of Nature and the Origin of a Critique of Pure Reason]”, Die Frage nach dem Ding: Zu Kants Lehre von den transzendentalen Grundsätzen (Tübingen: Niemeyer, 1987), 50–51. Henceforth, the version from Die Frage nach dem Ding is cited (unless otherwise stated), with English version page numbers followed by German edition page numbers in square brackets. 36 Heidegger, “The Modern Mathematical Science of Nature and the Origin of a Critique of Pure Reason”, 92 [71]. 34

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sciences. Our contemporary understanding of the world is saturated by modern scientific concepts, such that we simply take for granted that things are defined by mathematics. Heidegger takes up and extends Husserl’s suggestion that we need to return to history in order to recover the original meaning of the mathematical; because he sees history as a way to question our taken-for-granted understanding of things. Before moving to Heidegger’s understanding of the mathematical, I am going to take a detour through Heidegger’s engagement with Husserl’s concepts of categorial and sensuous intuition.37 In a discussion of Husserl’s concept of categorial intuition,38 Heidegger argues that what is decisive for understanding Husserl’s phenomenology as a whole is that Husserl conceives the real as the sensuous. Heidegger explains that “sensuousness is a formal phenomenological concept”, which means “all material content as it is already given by the subject matters themselves”.39 Categorial intuition, in the form of blue sky or red coat, “ultimately rests upon sense intuition”40; in other words, “a thought without a founding sensuousness is absurd”.41 Idealisation is a “pure categorial act”42 which “constitutes a new objectivity”: the universal.43 Pure categorial acts are categorial acts that have excluded all that is sensory, which includes “mixed categorial ideations” such as “being-colored”, and “pure categorial acts” such as “unity, plurality, relation”.44 Heidegger outlines that this is Husserl’s rethinking of the classical form/matter distinction. What distinguishes Husserl’s sensuous and categorial intuition – which is always united in a singular act of perception – is that, while 37

Here, I am concerned with Heidegger’s engagement with Husserl’s discussion of sensuous and categorial intuition because it relates both to what Heidegger understands as Husserl’s most important contribution and to his extension of Husserl’s critique of modern mathematical science. For Husserl’s discussion of categorial and sensuous intuition refer to: Husserl, “Investigation VI, Volume II, Part 2 of the German Editions: Elements of a Phenomenological Elucidation of Knowledge”, ed. Moran, trans. Findlay, Logical Investigations (London and New York: Routledge, 2001), 181–348; German Edition: Husserl, Logische Untersuchungen [Logical Investigations Vol. II], Husserliana, XIX (Tübingen: Niemeyer, 1968). 38 Heidegger, “Categorial Intuition”, trans. Kisiel, History of the Concept of Time (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1985), 47–72, 70–71. 39 Ibid., 70. 40 Ibid., 69. 41 Ibid. 42 Ibid., 70. 43 Ibid., 69. 44 Ibid., 70.

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“the categorial acts constitute a new objectivity”, they do not produce a new object: constituting means “letting the entity be seen in its objectivity”.45 For Heidegger this is the significance of Husserl’s concepts of sensuous and categorial intuition: it means that the ideal is not a construct of acts of thinking and, hence, Husserl gives a “provisional answer…to an old dispute, the problem of the universals, of the being of universal concepts”.46 The importance of this digression, for my paper, is to outline Heidegger’s understanding of Husserl’s distinction between the real and the ideal: the real is sensuousness, while the ideal relates to pure categorial acts. The concepts of sensuous and categorial intuition help clarify Husserl’s insistence that the ideal is related to the life-world, as well as the perils of idealisation. Categorial intuition has no meaning without its sensuous foundation, but Husserl’s concept of pure categorial acts can become separated from their foundation in sensuousness. If we take for granted the universals arrived at through pure categorial intuition, we can forget their meaningful sensuous foundation because pure categorial acts abstract from all sensuous content. The concept of pure categorial acts illuminates why taking the ideal theorems of geometry as a starting point and positing them as an explanation of sense-qualities is mistaken: our thinking must be founded upon the sensuously given world in the first place. For Heidegger, Husserl’s concept of categorial and sensuous intuition is revolutionary because it is a new answer to the problem of universals, which also entails that our thinking can grasp the being of the thing perceived. Despite pointing out the revolutionary nature of Husserl’s concept, Heidegger takes issue with Husserl’s simple juxtaposition of the mathematically constructed world and the “intuitively given surrounding world”.47 Heidegger writes that the move to mathematical modern science cannot be understood as an either/or between the pre-scientific “immediate intuitive determination of things” and “formalism”.48 Modern mathematical science changes our understanding of a thing; it formulates the thing in advance as a mathematical entity. Husserl acknowledges that modern mathematical science changes our experience of things, with his concept of sedimentation, but sedimentation is not his central 45

Ibid., 71. Ibid. 47 For this phrase of Husserl’s refer to Husserl, The Crisis of European Sciences and Transcendental Phenomenology: An Introduction to Phenomenological Philosophy, 25. 48 Heidegger, “The Modern Mathematical Science of Nature and the Origin of a Critique of Pure Reason”, 95 [73]. 46

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concern. By contrast, Heidegger focuses explicitly on how mathematical science reformulates our understanding of things. In “The Modern Mathematical Science of Nature and the Origin of a Critique of Pure Reason”49 as well as “The Age of the World View”,50 Heidegger inquires into the mathematical and, in particular, the meaning of the mathematical for modern science. In explaining the mathematical character of modern science, Heidegger writes: the mathematical is…a project (Entwurf) of thingness (Dingheit) which, as it were skips over things. The project first opens a domain (Spielraum) where things – i.e., facts – show themselves.51

Heidegger’s concern is that modern mathematical science only allows things to show themselves insofar as they conform to the mathematical conception of nature. To clarify the mathematical character of modern science and how our modern understanding of the mathematical differs from its original meaning, Heidegger returns to the Ancient Greek ta mathēmata. Heidegger writes that for the Ancient Greeks: the mathēmata are the things insofar as we take cognizance of them as what we already know them to be in advance, the body as the bodily, the plant-like of the plant, the animal-like of the animal, the thingness of the thing, and so on.52

For the Ancient Greeks, ta mathēmata expresses the idea that we must already be familiar with a thing before we can know it. Heidegger uses the modern example of a rifle to clarify the Ancient Greek ta mathēmata. He clarifies that, to make a rifle, the maker must be familiar with the reason for the rifle, the type of thing a rifle is, what it is to be used for, and so on.53 As Heidegger points out, naturally 49

Ibid. English translation: Heidegger, “The Age of the World View”, Boundary 2 4.2 (1976). German text: Heidegger, “Die Zeit des Welt Bildes [The Age of the Worldview]”, Holzwege (Frankfurt am Main: Klostermann, 2003 [1938]), 75–113. Henceforth, with English version page numbers followed by German edition page numbers in square brackets. 51 Heidegger, “The Modern Mathematical Science of Nature and the Origin of a Critique of Pure Reason”, 92 [71]. 52 Ibid., 73 [56]. See also Heidegger, “The Age of the World View”, 343 [78]. 53 Heidegger, “The Modern Mathematical Science of Nature and the Origin of a Critique of Pure Reason”, 71–73 [55–56]. 50

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we would only have a vague and general conception of what rifles might be like, but without a basic familiarity with the sort of thing a rifle is, we would not be able to see, make or learn how to use something as a rifle. 54 Heidegger explicates ta mathēmata as what we are already familiar with in advance of knowing something; what we bring to a thing that is not created from the thing itself. 55 Heidegger argues that numbers are “the best known class of mathematicals”56 because “numbers are the closest to that which we recognize in things without creating it from them”.57 To use his example, ‘three’ is something we are familiar with prior to counting. What ‘three’ is is not explained by the things that we count: three plates or, for that matter, three tables, do not help us to understand the number ‘three’. We must be familiar with the number ‘three’ in advance of counting; we bring three to the things we count. 58 For Heidegger, numbers do not define the mathematical; rather numbers are mathematical because they are something that we bring to things, that does not come from the things themselves.59 According to Heidegger, modern mathematical science loses this original meaning of ta mathēmata. The mathematical is no longer understood in terms of ta mathēmata – as something we bring to things. Instead, modern mathematical science understands the thing in itself as mathematical; precisely what is left over when we remove all subjective elements from the thing. Furthermore, the mathematical is narrowed. As Heidegger explains, for the Ancient Greeks, ta mathēmata was what was learnable and, hence, also teachable.60 Modern mathematical science narrows ta mathēmata to the arithmetical, the geometrical, the calculable: what we would now find within a mathematics department. 61 The mathematical is no longer ta mathēmata: what we bring to things that enables us to learn about them. Instead, under the influence of modern science, we now take the mathematical as referring to numbers only, where these numbers are understood as capturing what is essential about things.

54

Ibid., 73 [56]. Ibid., 72–73 [56]. 56 Heidegger, “The Age of the World View”, 343 [78]. 57 Heidegger, “The Modern Mathematical Science of Nature and the Origin of a Critique of Pure Reason”, 75 [58]. 58 Ibid., 74 [57–58]. 59 Ibid., 74–75 [57–58]. 60 Ibid., §5b. 61 Ibid., 68–69 [52–53]. 55

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To further explain, Heidegger discusses Newton’s law of inertia and shows how a decisive change in our understanding of the nature of a thing is contained within this law.62 The principle of inertia states that: “Every body continues in its state of rest, or uniform motion in a straight line, unless it is compelled to change that state by a force impressed upon it.”63 Newton posits the law of inertia as a universal law of nature.64 He makes no distinction between things: all things – earthly and heavenly bodies – are alike and can be explained by the same law.65 A number, which presupposes an identical unit to be counted, becomes synonymous with the thing, as conceived by modern science: the thing is uniform in substance, location and shape. Like the numerical unit, a thing is understood as an identical, uniform component of nature, with no defining features that single this thing out as a particular something. Furthermore, comparable to the modern concept of number, on Newton’s account there is no essential relationship between thing, motion and place: every thing is interchangeable with any other thing.66 Heidegger concludes that Newton’s law of inertia leads to a new understanding of bodies as uniform interchangeable objects located in homogenous space–time.67 For Heidegger, the modern scientific understanding of natural bodies parallels the modern concept of number: things, like numbers, are uniform, interchangeable and homogenous. Decisively for Heidegger, the scientific conception of a thing as akin to a number means that the thing is a construction of thought. The law of inertia “speaks of a thing that does not exist. It demands a fundamental representation of things which contradicts the ordinary”.68 Modern science, supposedly based upon facts of experience, has at its apex the law of inertia, which defines a thing that it is not possible to experience.69 We cannot find a uniform body moving in a line through homogenous space–time.70 For Heidegger, the mathematical character of modern science means that “natural bodies are only what they show them62 63

Ibid., 88 [68]. Isaac Newton as cited by the translators W. B. Barton and Vera Deutsch in ibid.,

78. 64

See ibid., 78 [60]. Ibid., 86 [67]. 66 Ibid., 87 [68]. 67 Ibid., 88 [68]. See also Heidegger, “The Age of the World View”, 344 [78]. 68 Heidegger, “The Modern Mathematical Science of Nature and the Origin of a Critique of Pure Reason”, 89 [69]. 69 Ibid., 89 [68]. 70 Ibid. 65

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selves as” within the mathematical projection of nature. 71 For Heidegger, modern mathematical science starts from positing nature as mathematical, which means that things become objects constructed in thought; thereby losing their place as something we meaningfully encounter as part of our practical lives. Patočka on Plato and Numbers After reading Husserl’s and Heidegger’s critique of the modern mathematical sciences, Patočka seems to make the most extraordinary claim. He says: being and the world, understood as a kosmos, an organic whole, become the goal of Greek philosophy and science. Logic and mathematics are the organs, the tools, and at the same time the models of this philosophy.72

If we take this claim at face value, it would seem to suggest that nothing has changed from ancient to modern times; giving weight to the idea that nature really is mathematical. However, I will argue that this is not the case, and that to understand Patočka’s claim we precisely need to read Patočka against the background of Husserl’s and Heidegger’s phenomenology.73 Patočka draws upon both Husserl’s and Heidegger’s phenomenology. Like Husserl’s and Heidegger’s, Patočka’s return to Plato serves, ultimately, to clarify the change in our understanding of the world from the medieval to the modern era. Patočka sees the importance of Husserl’s push to understand Europe as a tradition of thinking and takes seriously Husserl’s suggestion to investigate the historical a priori.74 However, Patočka agrees with Heidegger’s critique that Husserl is too quick to juxtapose mathesis universalis with “the intuitively given surrounding world”. Patočka does not think that a return to the origins can simply be a return to the intuitively given life-world; he ultimately sees Husserl’s con-

71 72

Ibid., 93 [72], emphasis in translation. Patočka, An Introduction to Husserl’s Phenomenology (Illinois: Open Court, 1996),

10. 73 Patočka, Plato and Europe, Cultural Memory in the Present (Stanford, California: Stanford University Press, 2002), 94. 74 Hopkins, “Nostalgia and Phenomenon: Husserl and Patočka on the End of the Ancient Cosmos”, eds Učník, Chvatík and Williams, The Phenomenological Critique of Mathematisation and the Question of Responsibility: Formalisation and the Life-World (Dordrecht: Springer, 2014).

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cept of life-world as disappointing. 75 Patočka’s own project extends Heidegger’s return to the Ancient Greek concept of ta mathēmata, but combines this with Husserl’s interest in clarifying the beginnings of geometry and philosophy. By doing so, he differs from both Husserl and Heidegger and makes an original contribution to phenomenology: he contends that it is important to search for the origins of our way of thinking, but sees this search as primarily historical. In returning to the beginnings of philosophy and geometry, Patočka presents a different understanding of the beginnings of philosophy and ta mathēmata to that of both Husserl and Heidegger. In contrast to Husserl, Patočka shows that while geometrical theorems and numbers have persisted from ancient to modern times, the original meanings of geometrical theorems and numbers have changed dramatically. Hence, we cannot find a static origin; rather, to understand the origins of our current way of thinking we need to trace how ideas have changed throughout the history of our tradition. Patočka also diverges from Heidegger by showing that the change from ta mathēmata to the modern understanding of mathematics entails a change in the way we think as well as the way we understand things. From his engagement with Plato and the Ancient Greek mathēmata, Patočka argues that the return to the origins of philosophy is renewing because it opens a different way to understand thinking and the world. 76 For Patočka, mathēmata in Plato relates to what allows things to manifest. Like Heidegger, Patočka points out that mathēmata relates to what we bring to things. However, he extends this understanding of mathēmata to show its relation to the problem of manifestation: the difference between what manifests and its manifestation. Patočka claims that the problem of manifestation is the reason that Plato’s “guiding thread is mathematics, mathematical structure”, because the mathēmata relates to what allows things to be made manifest, that is not a part of what manifests.77 To explain Patočka’s claim, I will focus on his account of the change from Plato’s understanding of numbers to the modern concept of the number. Patočka’s engagement with Plato’s understanding of numbers draws heavily upon Jacob 75

Patočka, “Edmund Husserl’s Philosophy of the Crisis of the Sciences and his Conception of a Phenomenology of the ‘Life-World’”. edited and translated by Kohák. Jan Patočka: Philosophy and Selected Writings (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1989 [1971]), 223–238, 233. 76 Cf. Patočka, “Ideology and Life in the Idea”, Studia Phaenomenologica: Romanian Journal for Phenomenology VII (2007 [1946]). 77 Patočka, Plato and Europe, 99.

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Klein’s analysis of the origin of geometry and algebra,78 and, hence, I will also draw upon Klein. For the Ancient Greeks there is no concept of number. Numbers are sequenced: the triad follows the dyad. Having two oranges is different from having three oranges; the dyad is simply not the same as the triad. 79 For the Ancient Greeks, there is no concept of number because there is no commonality between different numbers. The unity of numbers was a problem for the Ancient Greeks, as Klein explains. For the Pythagoreans, “everything that we see and hear can be counted”.80 The Pythagoreans’ pronouncement raised two fundamental questions for Ancient Greek arithmos: “what is the character of things in so far as they are counted?” and “in what sense is the number of those things or ‘units’ in itself a unity?”81 For the Pythagoreans, the solution to the second question – what is the unity of numbers? – is eidos; “it makes a unity out of a multitude”.82 Klein outlines that Plato’s understanding of numbers is indebted to the Pythagoreans. Plato extends and transforms the Pythagorean eidos as the solution to the problem of the unity of arithmos in his dialogues. Plato also contemplates the second question – what is the nature of things in so far as they can be counted? According to Klein, Plato notes that we can count “six stars or six oxen or any six small or huge things”.83 Hence, the number six seems to have little to do with the stars, the oxen or any such things. Klein outlines that from this Plato posits 78

For a discussion on the relationship between Patočka and Klein on the topic of arithmetic and Greek thought, see Hopkins, “Patočka’s Phenomenological Appropriation of Plato”, eds Chvatík and Abrams, Jan Patočka and the Heritage of Phenomenology: Centenary Papers (Dordrecht: Springer, 2011), 39–53, 46–52. 79 Patočka, Plato and Europe, 210. For a discussion of Patočka’s claim, see Hopkins, “Patočka’s Phenomenological Appropriation of Plato”, 42. 80 Klein, “The Concept of Number in Greek Mathematics and Philosophy”, eds Williamson and Zuckerman, Lectures and Essays (Annapolis, Maryland: St John’s College Press, 1985 [1940]), 43–52, 44. 81 Ibid., 45. 82 Ibid., 48. For the Pythagoreans, the eidos is a form of the number, whether it is a triangle, square, pentagon, etc. Needless to say, Plato’s concept of eidos is different, which I shall explain in the following paragraphs. However, a discussion of this difference between the Pythagoreans’ eidos and Plato’s eidos is outside the scope of this paper; for a discussion of this point, refer to ibid., 44–48. 83 Ibid., 48.

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that the proper subject of arithmetic is ‘pure’ units.84 The ‘pure’ units are identical, unlimited and indivisible: “they are all equal to each other”, they are the same as each other, insofar as they are one. For Plato, to count six oxen we must presuppose the ‘pure’ unit which can be multiplied indefinitely because there is nothing ‘in’ the oxen that helps to constitute ‘sixness’: we could count six chickens instead. The unit that arithmetic must presuppose cannot itself be arithmos.85 For the Ancient Greeks, arithmos is a number of definite things, and one is not an amount or a number of things.86 Furthermore, definite things can be divided and are not identical, while ‘pure’ units are precisely opposite. The pure unit presupposed by arithmetic is indivisible and identical. Numbers must presuppose a unit to be multiplied, but the unit is not itself a number. One is neither a thing nor a number. One is an idea that is conceived by our intellect, not perceived by our senses. From contemplating the Pythagorean eidos as the solution to the unity of arithmos, Plato comes to the idea of ‘one over many’ as well as the difference between the visible and the invisible world. Klein writes, “Plato himself speaks of the ‘astonishing’ proposition that One is Many and Many is One as a gift of the gods to mankind”.87 To explain Plato’s understanding of arithmos and eidos further, Patočka draws upon the metaphor of the divided line presented in Plato’s Republic.88 The line is divided into the visible and the invisible world. The visible is composed of eikasia and pistis, while the invisible world is divided into dianoia and noēsis. Patočka points out that the divided line relates to “how the philosopher must be able to capture the one above the many”.89 Klein explains the metaphor of the divided line as well as the difference between eikasia, pistis, dianoia and noēsis in great detail.90 I will provide a sketch here that highlights the distinction between two types of thinking: the mathematical and the dialectical. 84

Ibid., emphasis added. Cf., ibid., 51. 86 Ibid., 45. 87 Ibid., 48. 88 See the sixth book in Plato, “Republic”, ed. Cooper, Plato: Complete Works (Cambridge: Hackett Publishing Company, 1997), 971–1223. 89 Patočka, Plato and Europe, 100. 90 Klein, A Commentary on Plato’s Meno (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1965), 112–150. 85

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Klein explains that the visible section of the line is composed of the soul’s ability to recognise images as well as their originals. Eikasia refers to the lowest section of the divided line and relates to the soul’s ability to decipher natural images from their originals. Pistis, the second part of the visible line, relates to the soul’s ability to perceive the originals.91 Hence, eikasia depends upon pistis just as images rely upon their originals. A similar relationship holds between the two parts of the invisible section of the divided line: dianoia depends upon noēsis. Klein describes the dianoia and noēsis as corresponding, in Socrates, “to two different possible ways of our being engaged in thought”: dianoia, which he translates as ‘thinking’, and noēsis, which he translates as ‘intellection’.92 Patočka relates dianoia to mathematical thinking and noēsis to dialectical thinking. The dianoia relates to clarifying our “perceptions of visible things”.93 Klein gives the example of a finger. He writes that, while a single finger may be clearly perceived and, hence, not raise a question, other perceptions can “seem at first perplexing”. For example, my middle finger can be bigger than my index finger, but smaller than Mike’s middle finger. This perception may, at first, seem perplexing, “because ‘opposite’ qualities…have been somehow ‘mixed up’” in the same finger, namely my middle finger seems both big and small. The fact that perceptions can elicit confusion “manifests the presence of dianoia”, because “‘opposition’ or ‘contradiction’ is within the province of dianoia, not of the senses”.94 The dianoia consists “in discriminating and relating”. Dianoia relates to “counting or numbering” because, like numbers, dianoia relates and separates things.95 Hence, like numbers, the dianoia relies upon something other than itself. Klein points out that, for Socrates in the Republic, “our dianoia makes us interpret” the things that we perceive, that we are perplexed about, “as images of invisible” noeta.96 The best example of what Socrates is talking about “is the paradigmatic way in which arithmeticians and geometricians use pebbles and other visible diagrams or models for their demonstrations”. When used in this way, the 91

Ibid., 113. Eikasia requires further clarification, but the focus of this paper is on the distinction mentioned between dianoia and noēsis: mathematical and dialectical thinking. For a full discussion of the meaning of eikasia, see ibid., 112–115. 92 Ibid., 115. 93 Ibid., 116. 94 Ibid. 95 Ibid., 117. 96 Ibid., 119.

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pebbles are not interesting because they are pebbles, but rather because they are “artful ‘images’” of “‘pure’ objects of thought”.97 The dianoia clarifies our perceptions, but to do so, it relies upon images, which are “images of their intelligible originals”.98 As a result, like the relationship between eikasia and pistis, dianoia relies upon noēsis. Noēsis relates to ideas, such as the one that is presupposed by arithmetic. As Patočka notes, the invisible domain “has within it” numbers as well as the ideas upon which the numbers rest.99Dianoia, mathematical thinking, takes something as its starting point – for example, the one – and proceeds from it. By contrast, noēsis, dialectical thinking, attempts to clarify the presuppositions from which mathematical thinking proceeds, by attempting to give reasons for these presuppositions. For Patočka, it is Plato’s difference between mathematical and dialectical thought that opens the possibility of philosophy. Philosophical thought is not mathematical thought, which proceeds from taken-for-granted presuppositions. Philosophical thought is dialectical thought, which seeks to question presuppositions and attempts to give reasons for them.100 Patočka outlines that, for Plato, numbers not only open up a way into philosophy – a difference between mathematical thinking and dialectical thinking – but numbers also suggest a way to relate ideas to the world of flux. Patočka states that one of the fundamental problems of “geometry of Plato’s age” is “the problem of the relations within the mathematical domain”.101 Ancient Greek mathematics is composed of discrete domains: arithmetic is concerned with numbers, logistics is concerned with ratios and calculation, while geometry is concerned with the area of shapes.102 For the Ancient Greeks, the relationship between mathematical domains was a problem because the different domains led to “quantities that are mutually incommensurable”.103 Yet, it is possible to understand the relationship between the incommensurate and the commensurate. The relationship between geometry and arithmetic, as well as the incommensurate

97

Ibid. Ibid., 134. 99 Patočka, Plato and Europe, 101. 100 Ibid., 95. 101 Ibid., 101. 102 Cf. Klein, “The Concept of Number in Greek Mathematics and Philosophy”, 48– 98

49. 103

Patočka, Plato and Europe, 101.

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quantities that an interaction between these distinct domains leads to, is at play in the famous slave interlude in Plato’s “Meno”.104 The example of the slave being able to ascertain the Pythagorean theorem of the triangle, by answering Socrates questions, shows that it is possible to understand the relation between incommensurate and commensurate quantities.105 As Socrates illuminates through his questions, a square that is double the size of a twofeet-by-two-feet square has sides that are neither three nor four feet in length. In other words, the sides of a square that is double the size of two-by-two-feet square are incommensurate because they are not expressible through numbers. Numbers count only wholes, units that are indivisible; and, hence, a quantity that is neither three nor four is incommensurate with numbers. 106 Yet, we can show the length of the side of a square double the size of a two-by-two-feet square using geometry rather than arithmetic. Focusing on the area of a two-bytwo-feet square, we ascertain that: (1) the area of a two-by-two-feet square is four square feet; (2) the area of a square four-by-four feet is 16 square feet; and, hence, (c) by drawing four lines that cut in half the sides of the square 16 square feet in area, we have made a square 8 square feet in area. Here is a diagrammatical representation:

104

See Plato, “Meno”, 880-886. I am taking this interlude out of context. The topic of “Meno” is virtue and the interlude is designed to show the character Meno why Socrates understands teaching as recollection. I use this example only to illustrate what it might mean for there to be a comprehensible relationship between incommensurate and commensurate quantities. For a thorough and insightful discussion of the complexities of Plato’s “Meno” refer to Klein, A Commentary on Plato’s Meno. 105 Here, I draw my understanding from reading “Meno” through Klein, A Commentary on Plato’s Meno, 99–107. 106 On the relation between arithmetic and geometry in Ancient Greece refer to Klein, “On a Sixteenth-Century Algebraist”, eds Williamson and Zuckerman, Lectures and Essays (Annapolis, Maryland: St John’s College Press, 1985 [1940]), 35–42.

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In other words, a square double the size of the original two-by-two-feet square is based upon the original square’s diagonal. From the commensurate magnitudes of the two-by-two-feet square and the four-by-four-feet square, we have made comprehensible a relation between an incommensurate quantity and commensurate quantities. We cannot state the length of the side of a square double the size of a two-by-two-feet square because its sides are neither three nor four feet, but we can show that it would be based upon the diagonal of the two-bytwo-feet square. For Patočka, this ability to make understandable the relation between incommensurate and commensurate quantities gives Plato a way to understand the world more generally. Patočka writes that, for Plato, the comprehensible relationship between commensurate and incommensurate quantities means not only the relation between different mathematical domains, but also: that it simultaneously has the meaning of the mixing of the comprehensible with the incomprehensible, that it simultaneously means the mixing of two various principles that Plato sees in the foundation of all things.107

Klein hints at a similar thing when he says that “numbers may solve…the great Platonic problem of participation”.108 Numbers give Plato a way of relating the world of flux, the indeterminate world of growth and decay, to ideas. Patočka explains, “the ideas are nothing but the first relations, original relations between this couple: between indeterminacy and unity”.109 The world, for Plato, “is not comprehensible in itself”; 110 the world is only comprehensible on the basis of something other than itself: ideas. This relates to Patočka’s claim that Plato makes thematic the problem of manifestation: what manifests is different from what makes possible the manifestation. Patočka suggests that, in recognising the one over many, Plato, in his own “peculiar way”, recognises “that things can manifest themselves to us only on the basis of something else than what they themselves are” and this is why mathematics is a “guiding thread” in Plato.111 Patočka writes that “mathematics is the key to the structure of existence, and even its manifesting”.112 He explains, “so that something should be at all and should be manifest – it must be one.” At the same 107

Patočka, Plato and Europe, 102. Klein, “The Concept of Number in Greek Mathematics and Philosophy”, 49. 109 Patočka, Plato and Europe, 102. 110 Ibid., 97. 111 Ibid., 99. 112 Ibid. 108

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time, considered at the broadest level, it is also necessary, in order for something to manifest, that “it distinguishes itself from others and yet is similar to them and so on”.113 Numbers count diverse things; numbers separate things, yet they also unify what is counted. Hence, Patočka writes that they provide Plato with “paradigms of composition”: 114 numbers give Plato the ‘one over many’ as well as a way to relate the unity of ideas to the world of indeterminacy and change. To return to Patočka’s quote that I started with: being and the world, understood as a kosmos, an organic whole, become the goal of Greek philosophy and science. Logic and mathematics are the organs, the tools, and at the same time the models of this philosophy.115

For Plato, numbers open up the invisible world; while numbers remain invisible, they make comprehensible the visible world. Numbers also open up the difference between mathematical thinking – that proceeds from presuppositions – and dialectical thinking, which questions presuppositions and attempts to give reasons for them. The difference between dianoia and noēsis opens the possibility of philosophy because dialectical thinking is the highest form of thinking for Plato. Dialectical thinking is never finalised, because it cannot be. Noēsis moves between unclarified presuppositions to clarity and back again, because ideas remain invisible. Ideas are necessary for comprehending the visible world, but they cannot be brought out of hiding. For Plato, things are not essentially mathematical; rather, mathēmata is what allows things to be seen, but also differs from the appearing of something. Conclusion In his return to Plato, Patočka takes up Husserl’s project of returning to the beginning of our tradition in order to clarify the original meaning of geometry and philosophy. However, in doing so, he discovers that numbers and geometry were not based on an idealising act, but were rather based upon the soul’s ability to relate and separate things in order to clarify perceptions. However, numbers are related to ideas because numbers must be based upon the idea of the one, which is not itself a number. Plato’s recognition that the one over many must be 113

Ibid. Ibid., 100. 115 Patočka, “Phenomenology as Philosophy”, ed. Dodd, trans. Kohák, An Introduction to Husserl’s Phenomenology (Chicago and La Salle: Open Court, 1996), 1–17, 10. 114

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the ground of numbers opens up the possibility to contemplate ideas as well as providing the first idea which relates the indeterminacy of the visible world to the unity of ideas. Furthermore, for Plato, mathematical thinking does not stem from the visible world. Instead, mathematical thinking relates to the soul’s ability to comprehend the visible world. In this sense, Patočka agrees with Heidegger: for the Ancient Greeks, mathēmata is what makes possible our ability to grasp a thing, which is not created from the thing. However, Patočka extends Heidegger’s analysis to show that mathēmata plays a central role in Plato’s philosophy because it is at the heart of the problem of manifestation: what manifests does so on the basis of something other than itself. The recognition of the relation between mathēmata and manifestation allows Patočka to conceive not only things differently, but also our thinking. Our thinking is not exhausted by the exact and the mathematical; rather, thinking can also be a movement between acknowledging our uncertainty and seeking further clarification. Dialectical thinking is related to the possibility of philosophy because it is related to our ability to question presuppositions and attempt to give reasons for them. In his return to Plato and his thoughtful reflection on mathēmata as related to manifestation, Patočka offers a new way into phenomenology. He turns phenomenology into a historical project, not as a factual collating of events, but as a disclosing act. His phenomenological engagement with the origins of our tradition opens the possibility to understand ourselves and our world differently. Works Cited Galilei, Galileo. “From The Assayer (1623).” Edited and translated by Maurice A. Finocchiaro. The Essential Galileo. Indianapolis, Indiana: Hackett Publishing Company, 2008 [1623], 179–189 Heidegger, Martin. “The Age of the World View.” Translated by Marjorie Grene. Boundary 2. 4.2 (1976), 340–355 Heidegger, Martin. “Categorial Intuition.” Trans. Theodore Kisiel. History of the Concept of Time. Studies in Phenomenology and Existential Philosophy. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1985, 47–72 Heidegger, Martin. “Die neuzeitliche mathematische Naturwissenschaft und die Entstehung einer Kritik der reinen Vernunft [The Modern Mathematical Science of Nature and the Origin of a Critique of Pure Reason].” Die Frage nach

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The Meaning of the Mathematical dem Ding: Zu Kants Lehre von den transzendentalen Grundsätzen. 49–83. Tübingen: Niemeyer, 1987 Heidegger, Martin. “Die Zeit des Welt Bildes [The Age of the Worldview].” Holzwege. Frankfurt am Main: Klostermann, 2003 [1938], 75–113 Heidegger, Martin. “The Modern Mathematical Science of Nature and the Origin of a Critique of Pure Reason.” Trans. J. W. B. Barton and V. Deutsch. What is a Thing? Chicago, Illinois: Henry Regnery Company, 1967, 65–108 Heidegger, Martin. “Modern Science, Metaphysics and Mathematics.” Basic Writings. Ed. David Farrell Krell. New York: HarperCollins, 2008, 271–305 Hopkins, Burt. “Nostalgia and Phenomenon: Husserl and Patočka on the End of the Ancient Cosmos.” The Phenomenological Critique of Mathematisation and the Question of Responsibility: Formalisation and the Life-World. Eds Ľubica Učník, Ivan Chvatík and Anita Williams. Springer Contributions to Phenomenology. Dordrecht: Springer, 2014 Hopkins, Burt. “Patočka’s Phenomenological Appropriation of Plato.” Jan Patočka and the Heritage of Phenomenology: Centenary Papers. Eds Ivan Chvatík and Erika Abrams. Contributions to Phenomenology. Dordrecht: Springer, 2011, 39–53 Husserl, Edmund. The Crisis of European Sciences and Transcendental Phenomenology: An Introduction to Phenomenological Philosophy. Trans. David Carr. Northwestern University Studies in Phenomenology & Existential Philosophy. Evanston: Northwest University Press, 1970 Husserl, Edmund. “Investigation VI, Volume II, Part 2 of the German Editions: Elements of a Phenomenological Elucidation of Knowledge.” Trans. J. N. Findlay. Logical Investigations. Ed. Dermot Moran. Vol. 2. London and New York: Routledge, 2001, 181–348 Husserl, Edmund. Logische Untersuchungen II [Logical Investigations Vol. II]. Tübingen: Niemeyer, 1968 Husserl, Edmund. “The Origin of Geometry.” Trans. David Carr. The Crisis of European Sciences and Transcendental Phenomenology: An Introduction to Phenomenological Philosophy. Evanston: Northwest University Press, 1970 (1936), 353–378 Husserl, Edmund. “The Vienna Lecture: Philosophy and the Crisis of European Humanity.” Trans. David Carr. The Crisis of European Sciences and Transcendental Phenomenology: An Introduction to Phenomenological Philosophy. Evanston: Northwest University Press, 1970 (1935), 269–299 Klein, Jacob. A Commentary on Plato’s Meno. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1965 Klein, Jacob. “The Concept of Number in Greek Mathematics and Philosophy.” Lectures and Essays. Eds Robert B. Williamson and Elliott Zuckerman. Annapolis, Maryland: St John’s College Press, 1985 [1940], 43–52 Klein, Jacob. “On a Sixteenth-Century Algebraist.” Lectures and Essays. Eds Robert B. Williamson and Elliott Zuckerman. Annapolis, Maryland: St John’s College Press, 1985 [1940], 35–42

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Anita Williams Patočka, Jan. “Edmund Husserl’s Philosophy of the Crisis of the Sciences and his Conception of a Phenomenology of the ‘Life-World’.” Edited and translated by Erazim Kohák. Jan Patočka: Philosophy and Selected Writings. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1989 [1971], 223–238 Patočka, Jan. “Ideology and Life in the Idea.” Trans. Eric Manton. Studia Phaenomenologica: Romanian Journal for Phenomenology. VII (2007 [1946]), 89–96 Patočka, Jan. An Introduction to Husserl’s Phenomenology. Trans. Erazim Kohák. Illinois: Open Court, 1996 Patočka, Jan. “Phenomenology as Philosophy.” Trans. Erazim Kohák. An Introduction to Husserl’s Phenomenology. Ed. James Dodd. Chicago and La Salle: Open Court, 1996, 1–17 Patočka, Jan. Plato and Europe. Trans. Petr Lom. Cultural Memory in the Present. Stanford, California: Stanford University Press, 2002 Plato. “Meno.” Plato: Complete Works. Ed. John M. Cooper. Cambridge: Hackett Publishing Company, 1997, 870–897 Plato. “Republic.” Plato: Complete Works. Ed. John M. Cooper. Cambridge: Hackett Publishing Company, 1997, 971–1223

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Movement and Human Existence: The Mysterium of Mundanity Ľubica Učník This work develops a few simple ideas demanding a rather complex manner of exposition and demonstration.1 ‘This – is now my way: where is yours?’ Thus I answered those who asked me ‘the way.’ For the way – does not exist!2

Jan Patočka’s reflections on movement begin with his analysis of changes in our understanding of the world and nature. Difficult as it is to grasp today, our present understanding is a consequence of the Galilean reconceptualisation of movement, whereby the explanation of the ancient Kosmos and the place of humans in it was radically changed. We still live under the shadow of a new scientific understanding that was first given its theoretical exactitude by René Descartes.3 Descartes based his system on the split of the world into res cogitans and res extensa, thereby instituting a new conceptual understanding of nature and our ability to know it, which was supposed to eliminate mystery from the world by explaining it scientifically. Patočka’s synchronic and diachronic conversation with the Western philosophical tradition, and, in particular, Aristotle, leads him to wrest the idea of movement from the encrustation of its subsequent scientific reconfiguration. He explores movement within a different conceptual framework: namely, his conception of the three movements of human existence.4 In 1

Patočka, “Přirozený svět jako filosofický problém [The Natural World as a Philosophical Problem]”, Fenomenologické spisy I: Přirozený svět. Texty z let 1931–1949 (Prague: Oikoymenh, Filosofia, 2008 [1936]), 127–260, 129, trans. Erika Abrams. 2 Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra (Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1969), Part 3, 11, Of the Spirit of Gravity. In quotations, emphasis is in the original unless otherwise noted. 3 See, for example, Burtt, The Metaphysical Foundations of Modern Physical Science: A Historical and Critical Essay (London: Kegan Paul, Trench, Trubner & Co., Ltd [Bibliolife], 1925). 4 See, for example, Patočka, “Prirodzený svet a fenomenológia [The Natural World and Phenomenology]”, ed. Bodnár, Existencializmus a fenomenológia (Bratislava: Obzor, 1967), 27–71; Patočka, “Co je existence? [What is Existence?]”, Filosofický Časopis 17.5–6 (1969); Patočka, “Celek světa a svět člověka: Poznámky k jednomu současnému náběhu ke kosmologii [The World as Whole and the Human World: Notes on a Contemporary Cosmological Approach]”, Filosofický Časopis 38.6 (1990); Patočka, Tělo, společenství,

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this paper, I consider his reflections on movement and human existence, utilising his earlier article on Josef Čapek, ‘Limping Pilgrim’.5 I also take into account Patočka’s invocation of the mystery of mundanity (mysterium samozřejmosti), which we habitually overlook.6 Patočka’s question concerning human existence is set against the background of modern scientific objectivism. How can we rethink the modern problematic split of the world into subject and object? For him, this is a question concerning meaning. Only by reflecting on the way we constitute meaning, do we realise that our everyday understanding ‘hides’ mysteries that are not naive or simple, but require much work to unravel. The Mysterium of Mundanity Patočka’s reflections on what he calls a “mystery of the commonplace”7 move in (at least) three directions. First, he considers the way we constitute meaning, reminding us that we simply take for granted non-sensual experience as if it were experience of things in the world. Things are not out there, simply lying in front of us, open to our gaze. Neither do they cause, or rather create, a mirror image, so to speak, in our minds. We do not realise our unquestioned acceptance of the Cartesian conception of the world, whereby our thinking is in our ‘head’ and the world is ‘out there’, standing opposite us. We are accustomed to this underjazyk, svět [Body, Community, Language, World] (Prague: ISE, Oikoymenh, Edice Oikúmené, ve spolupráci s Archivem Jana Patočky, 1995); Patočka, “‘Přirozený svět’ v meditaci svého autora po třiatřiceti letech [The Natural World Reconsidered Thirty-Three Years Later]”, Fenomenologické spisy II: Co je existence. Publikované texty z let 1965–1977 (Prague: Oikoymenh, Filosofia, 2009 [1969]), 265–334. See also Kouba, Problém třetího pohybu: Na okraj Patočkova pojetí existence [The Problem of the Third Movement: On the Margins of Patočka’s Conception of Existence], Center for Theoretical Study: The Institute for Advanced Studies at Charles University and the Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic (Prague: Center for Theoretical Study, 2003). 5 Patočka, “Kulhavý poutník Josef Čapek [Limping Pilgrim Josef Čapek]”, eds Vojtěch and Chvatík, Umění a čas: Soubor statí, přednášek a poznámek k problémům umění. První díl: Publikované studie (Prague: Oikoymenh, 2004), 137–158. 6 See Patočka, “K prehistorii vědy o pohybu: Svět, země, nebe a pohyb lidského života [Notes on the Prehistory of the Science of Movement: The World, Earth, Heaven and the Movement for Human Life]”, Fenomenologické spisy II: Co je existence. Publikované texty z let 1965–1977 (Prague: Oikoymenh, Filosofia, 2009 [1965]), 192–201. 7 Ibid., 194.

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standing because we have grown up in a world that is already structured according to the Cartesian split between res extensa and res cogitans, which was further transformed by its Lockean extension, according to which our mind is a tabula rasa on which experiences of things imprint themselves in the form of simple ideas. Originally, we accept the world as mundane and obvious, populated by things that ‘exist’ separately from us that, eventually, we encounter. Yet, what is obvious at first glance hides mysteries of meaning that Edmund Husserl calls empty and fulfilled intuitions. Things are neither simply there, waiting for us to experience them, nor are they ideas imprinted on our minds. Reflection on the structure of our experience reveals that we do not see things as if they were – as is supposed – beings outside of us. Husserl shows that we are ignorant of our participation in the constitution of meaning; unaware that we always see more than what we are actually presented with, given the movement of our bodies among things. One of the ways Patočka thinks about meaning constitution is through movement. Things reveal and conceal themselves depending on our bodily position in relation to them. We move near a thing or far away from it, thereby seeing it differently. Things are given to us in a perspective that depends on the position of our bodies.8 The empty intuition of a thing far away can be fulfilled by confirming our initial impression if we move closer, or it could be frustrated if what we thought we saw from afar turns out to be something else on closer inspection. We continually need to rethink what we think we see: all the time, we modify our meaningful understanding of things. Yet, we do not think about our involvement in meaning constitution: we simply accept this mystery of the commonplace because we are unquestioningly accustomed to it – precisely because it is commonplace. Patočka’s second approach is to think about the whole that is the background to all our understanding. Eugen Fink points out that “we take the world as the totality of entities in an utterly questionless way and as altogether obvious”.9 Accordingly, Patočka notes that the world is not a super-container holding within itself earthly things. But neither is it a super-object. We simply cannot experience the world as a whole, because it is not a thing among other things. Instead, the world as a whole is an overall horizon that informs our understanding of 8

Ibid. Unless otherwise indicated, translations from the Czech are my translation. Fink, “What Does the Phenomenology of Edmund Husserl Want to Accomplish? (The Phenomenological Idea of Laying-a-Ground)”, Research in Phenomenology 2 (1972 [1934]), 8. 9

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things. It is the historically saturated horizon within which we experience things, and which we presuppose, oblivious to the mystery of our historically informed sense. We take for granted that lightning during a thunderstorm is an electrical discharge and not a display of Zeus’ anger. Our understanding is shaped by the ideas we have grown up with. So, another mystery is our forgetfulness of the historical sedimentation of ideas. We accept them unquestioningly, forgetting another mystery that we need to unravel. Patočka notes, for example, Johann Gottfried von Herder’s intellectual exchange with Immanuel Kant on the notion of reason. He points out that Herder’s critique is more complicated than a simple misunderstanding of Kant, of which Herder is accused. Herder and Kant speak of reason, but their ideas of what reason is differ. In fact, as Patočka points out, they are not compatible. Herder speaks of the old idea of divine reason that the modern conception of nature made untenable; while Kant answers the challenge revealed by Hume’s critique. Kant realises that modern scientific reason – without the divine ground – can throw humans into the quagmire of scepticism and relativism. Kant’s project is to recast modern reason in line with modern scientific understanding, while securing human reasoning.10 Similarly, Patočka shows how Tomáš Garrigue Masaryk’s idea of ‘bad subjectivism’ is incompatible with his praise for scientific objectivism. Accepting Brentano’s critique of Kant, Masaryk misunderstands Kant’s anti-Humean intervention. Instead of criticising Kant’s concept of subjectivity, as Masaryk assumes he is doing, Masaryk’s rejection of subjectivity harks back to the Lockean conceptual understanding of subjectivity that Hume pushed to the limit, thereby revealing its presuppositions. Bad subjectivism, as Masaryk calls it, is the outcome of Locke’s project, laid bare by Hume. Masaryk fails to appreciate the Kantian critique and its different conception of subjectivity. For Kant, subjectivity is not a Lockean passive mirror, closed upon itself. Kant presents an account that takes into consideration our human participation in meaning constitution.11

10

See Patočka, “Two Senses of Reason and Nature in the German Enlightenment: A Herderian Study”. edited and translated by Kohák. Jan Patočka. Philosophy and Selected Writings (Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press, 1989 [1942]), 157–174. 11 Patočka, Tři studie o Masarykovi [Three Studies on Masaryk], Edice Váhy (Prague: Mladá Fronta, 1991). See also Patočka, Věčnost a dějinnost: Rádlův poměr k pojetím člověka v minulosti a současnosti [Eternity and Historicity: Rádl’s Relation to Past and Present Conceptions of Man], Edice Oikúmené (Prague: Oikoymenh, 2007), 37–42.

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Patočka’s third approach to the mystery of the commonplace is his appropriation and reconfiguration of the Aristotelian idea of motion in order to rethink human existence and its double movement, as a body and as existence. His point of departure is Aristotle’s insistence that motion is inherent in all natural things, while also taking into account its modern transformation. Patočka speaks of the human body’s movement, without which we cannot grasp the perspectival understanding of things.12 These two accounts are important because they show that we are not objects among other objects, ruled by the law of inertia, as we supposedly should be if the modern account of movement related to our objective bodies. We can move and we are aware of our ability to move, which is problematic in terms of the modern scientific conception of movement. Rethinking the Aristotelian conception of motion, Patočka points out that for Aristotle, motion and change are coterminous. Yet change is motion only if there is a beginning and an end to the process according to the nature of a thing. “Organisms mature and die, a sick person becomes healthy again, iron rusts, a beast leaps at its prey.”13 All earthly things will come to be and then pass away. Every acorn is potentially a tree in itself, because the innate impulse to change belongs to its nature. Each natural thing “has within itself a principle of motion and of stationariness”.14 Hence, an object falls from high until it hits the earth, resuming its natural state of rest, while water, if it turns into vapour, moves up into clouds.15 For Aristotle, “nature is a principle or cause of being moved and of being at rest in that to which it belongs primarily, in virtue of itself and not accidentally”.16 This explanation of motion as belonging to the nature of things is abandoned under the influence of Galileo, who mathematises motion. His novel approach is 12

Patočka, “K prehistorii vědy o pohybu: Svět, země, nebe a pohyb lidského života [Notes on the Prehistory of the Science of Movement: The World, Earth, Heaven and the Movement for Human Life]”, 194–195. 13 Patočka, “Rozklad Aristotelovy dynamiky a předehra moderního mechanismu [The Disintegration of Aristotle’s Dynamics and the Prelude to Modern Mechanism]”, Vesmír 32.8 (1953), 285. 14 Aristotle, “Physics”, ed. Barnes, trans. Hardie and Gaye, The Complete Works of Aristotle: The Revised Oxford Translation (Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1995), 192b9–23. 15 Patočka, “Rozklad Aristotelovy dynamiky a předehra moderního mechanismu [The Disintegration of Aristotle’s Dynamics and the Prelude to Modern Mechanism]”, 285. 16 Aristotle, “Physics”, 192b9–23.

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to rethink the Aristotelian qualitative motion, according to which a motion is a “change inherent in things”.17 Movement ceases to be defined by the beginning and the end of the natural process central to the nature of a thing. Galileo takes motion out of things and transforms it into a movement of things. He then dissects movement into separate parts: “time, distance, speed and increase of speed.” This transformation is an outcome of his insight that he can decompose movement into different constituents on the model of geometry and see them as one sees geometrical figures; as “relations between the sides and the angles of a triangle”.18 Once we break down motion into its parts, we can measure the movement of any and every body, based on an understanding of geometrical figures. Bodies become equivalent to each other, moving uniformly if uninterrupted. Yet, if all bodies are equivalent and movement ceases to be the internal motion of a thing according to its nature, and rather, the modern Galilean movement becomes a movement of things, then human movement is difficult to understand. How can we account for the ‘internal’ movement of our body, of which we are, without a doubt, aware? The answer given by the post-Cartesian tradition is that the human body is a machine, because it can move itself by itself. For Hobbes in 1651, a living body is “a motion of limbs, the beginning whereof is in some principal part within”. Bodies are “engines that move themselves by springs and wheels”. The heart and nerves are strings, while joints are “Wheeles, giving motion to the whole body”.19 In 1747, La Mettrie simply takes for granted that the “human body is a machine which winds itself up, a living picture of perpetual motion.” Yet, without food, which we “pour into its pipes”, and fever,20 which “mechanically stimulates the muscles and the heart”,21 the body is “like a candle whose light flares up just as it is going out”.22 However, if humans are machines moving mechanically, how can we think about human responsibility, which raises human beings out of the domain of things? How can we understand meaning constitution? In this mechanical universe, how 17 Patočka, Aristoteles, jeho předchůdci a dědicové: Studie z dějin filosofie od Aristotela k Hegelovi [Aristotle, His Predecessors and Inheritors] (Prague: Nakladatelství Československé Akademie Věd, 1964), 307. 18 Ibid., 308. 19 Hobbes, Leviathan (Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1968 [1651]), I, 1 [81]. 20 Mettrie, “Machine Man”, trans. Thomson, Machine Man and Other Writings (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996 [1747]), 3–39, 7. 21 Ibid., 31. 22 Ibid., 7.

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can we, as machines, understand the world? If we are machines, who thinks thoughts about these machines? What is the ‘role’ of subjectivity? If we are machines, what is res cogitans, this thinking thing, in itself? Subjectivity/Objectivity Speculation that modern subjectivism is basically guilty of bringing about the skeptical crisis which deprived European society of faith in eternity [timelessness] is itself questionable to the highest degree.23

Unsurprisingly, Patočka’s reflection on movement and human existence is tied to his thinking about the problem of subjectivity and objectivity. From the beginning, Patočka tries to rethink the problematic nature of meaning and subjectivity, which is, for him, an existential question. As he notes at the beginning of his Natural World, we do not have a “unified world-view”. We live in “a double world”, the world of our everyday living, as well as “a world created…by modern natural science, based on the principle of mathematical laws governing nature”. This disunity is “the true source of our present spiritual crisis”.24 For Patočka, this spiritual crisis is a crisis of meaning, which is a result of the problem of subjectivity and the way we think about it. He suggests that the spectre of subjectivism haunts modern philosophy. Yet, we need to make clear what we mean when we speak of subjectivity; what this idea actually stands for. Patočka’s many investigations are driven by his attempt to clarify this problem. According to Patočka, in the present, the motif of bad subjectivism unquestioningly arises out of a fear that human responsibility – an ontological aspect of what it means to be human – is weakened, or even eliminated, as Masaryk claims, by the eclipse of divinity; leading to the spiritual sickness of human societies. 25 For Masaryk, states Patočka, the idea of subjectivity is titanism: the attempt of humans to replace God, thereby losing the divine ground that anchors human compassion and responsibility for the world. On a personal level, ‘the titanism of

23

Patočka, “Kolem Masarykovy filosofie náboženství [On Masaryk’s Philosophy of Religion]”, Tři studie o Masarykovi (Prague: Mladá Fronta, 1991 [1976]), 53–119, 98. 24 Patočka, “Přirozený svět jako filosofický problém [The Natural World as a Philosophical Problem]”, 129, trans. Erika Abrams. 25 Patočka, “Pokus o českou národní filosofii a jeho nezdar [Attempt at the Czech National Philosophy and Its Failure]”, Tři studie o Masarykovi (Prague: Mladá Fronta, 1991 [1977]), 21–52, 52.

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modern subjectivism’ leads to increased suicides, and, on the level of society, to a permanent state of war.26 Paradoxically, Masaryk rejects subjectivism, but accepts the positivistic account of objectivism. Modern positivism – with its spectre of non-scientific, fantastic or arbitrarily created world-views that only positivistic science, supposedly, can keep at bay – enchanted Masaryk.27 Instead of seeing that the claims of positivism are scarecrows, based precisely on the presupposition of bad subjectivism, Masaryk fails to question their sedimented historical nature. He accepts scientific objectivism while rejecting subjectivism, which for him leads to the loss of faith culminating in modern egotism. 28 Subjectivism is the sick root that needs to be cut off from the body of modern understanding, leading us back to the paradise of responsibility that God guarantees, while accepting science’s claim to objectivity, which guarantees its impartiality. 29 The spell that positivism casts over Masaryk’s thinking prevents him from questioning the seeming obviousness of positivistic claims, hiding their mysterium of mundanity.30 In other words, accepting positivism, Masaryk fails to appreciate the double-sided modern understanding grounded on the subject/object split; which is impossible to separate, but which needs to be confronted. Modern subjectivism and objectivism are interdependent. Since subjectivity and objectivity are two sides of the same problem, Patočka rejects Masaryk’s solution.31 Already in 1936, Patočka writes that we must rethink subjectivity. Yet, “not by refusing modern subjectivism but by passing through it to the very end, to the point at which it becomes the source of moral strength”.32 26 Patočka, “Titanism”. edited and translated by Kohák. Jan Patočka. Philosophy and Selected Writings (Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press, 1989 [1936]), 139–144. 27 Patočka, “Pokus o českou národní filosofii a jeho nezdar [Attempt at the Czech National Philosophy and Its Failure]”, 52. 28 Patočka, “Titanism”, 139. 29 Ibid. 30 Patočka, “K prehistorii vědy o pohybu: Svět, země, nebe a pohyb lidského života [Notes on the Prehistory of the Science of Movement: The World, Earth, Heaven and the Movement for Human Life]”, 194. 31 Patočka returns repeatedly to Husserl, leading him to formulate his notion of asubjective phenomenology. I do not address Patočka’s notion of asubjective phenomenology in this paper. 32 Patočka, “Titanism”, 143.

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In Masaryk’s time – the late nineteenth and early twentieth century – the split of the world into res cogitans and res extensa was accepted. It had become an unquestioned commonplace. The problem of subjectivism leads back to Descartes and his positing of cogito as the starting point of modern knowledge. Yet, this starting point is ambiguous, since the Cartesian cogito can lead to two rather incompatible outcomes: to either “a radical subjectivism” or the objectivism of modern science.33 It is this fulcrum within the Cartesian labyrinth that Patočka returns to repeatedly. From there, different arguments can follow. One route is to reconsider subjectivity by questioning Hume’s ‘bad subjectivism’, which is based on “a naturalistic foundation which is the starting point of positivism”,34 leading to scepticism and to the puzzle of ‘how we can know the world’. The mystery of the relation between subject and object is, once again, two-sided. If the ego-subject is the ground for the scientific certainty of knowing objects, it is not clear how an empirical subject can know objects. As Patočka notes, citing Schelling, “from the standpoint of objectivism…we can understand how an object can affect a subject, but we cannot understand how the subject can be aware of it”.35 After all, not only are subject and object discrete substances, but the empirical subject cannot be the ground of objectivity. As Patočka notes, the Cartesian cogito is quaternio terminorum. It is the personal ‘I think’ as well as the impersonal ground of certainty, the thinking thing.36 Descartes equivocates between two different senses of ego cogito. For Descartes, ego cogito stands for thinking, the only certainty left after doubting our unreliable senses, through which we encounter the world. Descartes – holding a sheet of paper – doubts his thinking experience and reaffirms that if he can doubt, his thinking is secure. Thinking is the certainty that remains after dubitable sensual experience is discarded. Thinking is thus taken in two senses: it is the ground of knowledge as well as Descartes’s personal thinking. However, ego cogito as the ground of knowledge cannot be an empirical person. So, what is the relation between the empirical and the transcendental subject? The empirical/transcendental puzzle leads to another mystery: how can two res – res cogitans and res extensa – interact? The problem is exacerbated by the Lockean 33 Patočka, “Masaryk’s and Husserl’s Conception of the Spiritual Crisis of European Humanity”, 152. 34 Ibid., 151. 35 Ibid., 153. 36 Patočka, “Fenomenologie vlastního těla [Phenomenology of the Personal Body]”, Přirozený svět a pohyb lidské existence (Prague: Samizdat, 1980), 1–20, 2.3.14.

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project. If the Lockean subject is a passive mirror of the world, not only is the problem of relations between the two substances acute, but the relation between ideas in the mind becomes mysterious. How could simple ideas in the mind relate to each other to form complex ideas? Presumably, unless we use objectivism, with its mathematical law of causality, we cannot explain subjectivity. This was also Husserl’s realisation when he showed the presupposition of logical psychologism in his Prolegomena to Logical Investigations.37 On this model, subjectivity becomes an ‘object’ that objectivity supposedly can account for, leading to the same puzzle as in the first case: a mystery of the relation between the empirical and transcendental experience, later confronted by Kant and Husserl. The ground of objectivity becomes an enigma. Subjectivity is interpreted as a selfenclosed spatium with no access to the world, and, yet, mysteriously mirroring it. It is from this understanding of subjectivity – subjectivity as self-enclosed world – that the claim of egotism is derived. By contrast to Masaryk, who sees subjectivism as the root of spiritual sickness, Husserl accepts the Cartesian solution but deepens it, positing transcendental subjectivity as the solution that overcomes the problem of empirical meaning constitution.38 Husserl proposes to question the mystery of knowledge with his affirmation of subjectivity, by “distinguishing the transcendental and the empirical subject”;39 while pointing out “the enigma of subjectivity”; “the enigma of psychological subject matter and method”.40 As Husserl notes, the substitution of a method for the world leads to problems: “we take for true being what is actually a method”.41 For positivists, a method of thinking becomes “the true reality it-

37

Husserl, Logical Investigations, International Library of Philosophy (London and New York: Routledge, 2001). 38 See Patočka, “Masarykovo a Husserlovo pojetí duševní krize evropského lidstva [Masaryk’s and Husserl’s Conception of the Spiritual Crisis of European Humanity]”, Tři studie o Masarykovi (Prague: Mladá Fronta, 1991 [1936]), 5–20; Patočka, “Masaryk’s and Husserl’s Conception of the Spiritual Crisis of European Humanity”. 39 Patočka, “Masaryk’s and Husserl’s Conception of the Spiritual Crisis of European Humanity”, 152. 40 Husserl, The Crisis of European Sciences and Transcendental Phenomenology: An Introduction to Phenomenological Philosophy, Northwestern University Studies in Phenomenology & Existential Philosophy (Evanston: Northwest University Press, 1970), §2, 5. 41 Ibid., §9h, 51.

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self”.42 Objectivity is the only certainty that we can scientifically account for on the model of mathematics. For Patočka, the challenge for phenomenology, in the face of the scientific elimination of subjective experience in favour of an objective scientific account, is: “how to procure meaning from this mute, scientifically conjured-up universe, which is indifferent to our lived experience of the world; which is indifferent to what makes us human”.43 In the end, the question is: “what is more decisive and important? Is a silent and utterly indifferent and meaningless universe the last word for man, or, conversely, is man the key, which can, at least slightly, open the universe?”44 Čapek’s Limping Pilgrim: Whence to Where So, how can we think about human existence in our modern, scientifically defined, mathematised universe? How can we unravel the mysterium of common acceptance of objective knowledge that cannot account for human subjective experience? For Patočka, one of the answers to the puzzle of human existence is movement in its double aspect: as both the objectivised movement of our bodies and as the movement of human existence. Despite the objectification and mathematisation of movement by modern science, there is a commonality between the two. We move among things; the movement of our bodies enables us to disclose things according to their place in relation to us. Additionally, the idea of movement retains, as he notes, other meanings that live in the subterranean regions of our tradition. We still speak of being moved by a sad story; Homer’s Odyssey is impossible to understand without invoking the notion of a journey,

42

Patočka, “Masaryk’s and Husserl’s Conception of the Spiritual Crisis of European Humanity”, 147. 43 Patočka, “Poznámky posluchačů z přednášky: Vznik a konec Evropy [Listeners’ Notes from the Lecture The Beginning and End of Europe]”, eds Chvatík and Kouba, Péče o duši: Soubor statí a přednášek o postavění člověka ve světě a v dějinách. Třetí díl: Kacířské eseje o filosofii dějin. Varianty a přípravné práce z let 1973-1977. Dodatky k Péči o duši I a II (Prague: Oikoymenh, 2002 [1974]), 424–429, 429. 44 “Neboť zůstane tu ovšem otázka: co je rozhodnější a významnější? Je němé a na pohled zcela lhostejné a nesmyslné univerzum posledním slovem o člověku, nebo je naopak člověk klíčem, kterým možno alespoň pootevřít univerzum?” Patočka, Aristotelés: Přednášky z antické filosofie [Aristotle: Lectures from Ancient Philosophy] (Prague: Vyšehrad, 1994), 85.

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of being on a way.45 After all, even Alice is on the way through Wonderland to find out what really matters.46 Nietzsche warns against forgetting one’s own way: “You have forgotten the way, now you will also forget how to walk”.47 We also speak about “ways of thinking”;48 and Heidegger published a collection of essays called Pathmarks (Wegmarken) to indicate the importance of travelling through different ideas.49 Nevertheless, when we speak of movement, we invoke the modern, scientific, objectified movement that cannot account for human existence, as noted above. Here, Patočka revisits and substantially changes Aristotle’s notion of movement. He rejects the enduring Aristotelian substrate that persists through change. 50 A human being is not an acorn, which will become the tree that it always potentially was. We change, depending on the situations we are in, according to the possibilities we take up or the projects we reject. Human existence is not the motion of an enduring substrate’s beginning and end of change: there is no unchanging substrate, persisting through qualitative changes. Human existence is essentially nothing but the movement through which we become who we want to be. According to Patočka, our life is a movement, which relates to two referents: the earth and the sky, or where and when. Our human existence is rooted in the place from where we come, and where we travel. The stable, unmovable earth is a potent power over all elements in its domain, horizontal as well as vertical; it rules over life and death. The earth is also an ever-present sustainer of all and a provider for all; the earth provides everything that can be defined by ‘where’. By contrast, the sky gives human life the sense of ‘when’, by providing light and darkness, seasons, day and night.51 Human movement is defined always by 45 Patočka, “K prehistorii vědy o pohybu: Svět, země, nebe a pohyb lidského života [Notes on the Prehistory of the Science of Movement: The World, Earth, Heaven and the Movement for Human Life]”, 194–195. 46 Carroll, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland & Through the Looking-Glass, Wordsworth Classics (Ware, Hertfordshire: Wordsworth Editions Ltd, 2001). 47 Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra, Part 2, 22, The Stillest Hour. 48 Gadamer, Heidegger’s Ways, SUNY Series in Contemporary Continental Philosophy (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1994), vii. 49 Heidegger, Pathmarks (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998). 50 See also Barbaras, “Pohyb existence u Patočky: K fenomenologii dění [The Movement of Existence: Towards a Phenomenology of Happening]”, Filosofický Časopis 51.3 (2003). 51 “Jako je země především dárcem všeho ‘kde’, tak nebe je především dárcem ‘kdy’ svým střídáním noci a dne, světla-tmy se všemi jejich cykly, příchody a přechody. A s tím

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“whence to where”. Yet, for Patočka, ‘whence to where’ characterises not only the movement of our bodies, but also the movement of our existence. Expressed temporally, the ‘whence’ indicates the past which orients our existence and anchors our possibilities; the present is constituted by taken-up or rejected possibilities that are always structured according to the future ‘where’, which will give orientation to our existence.52 ‘Whence to where’ is also a theme of Patočka’s essay on Čapek’s limping pilgrim and his life journey. A pilgrim is always on the road. He travels from unknown to unknown: “I was not – I am – I will not be”. It is a journey of finite human life in an age when the role of Christianity is waning.53 Čapek’s writing is a reflection on the modern “atheistic age”54 and the role of humans in a material universe that cannot account for the human soul; and, yet, the soul is here. 55 Čapek’s confrontation with the age, where the place of God remains empty, presents a problem regarding the human place in the world. It is the problem of the empirical and transcendental subject: humans are part of nature as well as the ground of knowing nature. His thinking might resemble the titanism that Masaryk condemns, but Čapek manages to avoid the perils of subjectivism.56 The pilgrim walks unevenly on the road of life, limping, with one leg firmly attached to the earth. Yet, he sees his ‘bad leg’, his limping, as the positivum. Human existence is not only harmony and power; it is also, constitutively, weakness and flaws.57 The limping keeps the pilgrim forever in touch with the earth, not allowing him to forget that he is a finite creature, always in debt to the earth-provider. A human cannot be a ruler and possessor of the earth and sky. He is finite and yet he is a meaning-constituting creature.58

je zároveň dárcem vší jasnosti, tím vší vědomosti o blízkém, která je v podstatném vztahu k vzdálenému – ve světle hraje i země v barvách, které odhalují věci podstatně, nikoli jen v blízkosti, nýbrž na distance” (Patočka, “K prehistorii vědy o pohybu: Svět, země, nebe a pohyb lidského života [Notes on the Prehistory of the Science of Movement: The World, Earth, Heaven and the Movement for Human Life]”, 196). 52 Ibid., 197. 53 Patočka, “Kulhavý poutník Josef Čapek [Limping Pilgrim Josef Čapek]”, 141. 54 Ibid., 139. 55 Ibid., 145. 56 Ibid., 139. 57 Ibid., 142–143. 58 Ibid., 143.

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The journey of the limping pilgrim is also the journey of human time. 59 To reflect on human existence and our ability to procure meaning, which is never final but depends on our human situation, is to become aware of our finitude, to become aware of the question ‘where do we come from – where are we going?’. This question is both all-embracing and negating. We must accept that we can never know all. We must acknowledge docta ignorantia, learned ignorance: a knowing of not-knowing, as Socrates professes at the beginning of philosophy. Humans simply cannot know where they came from and what happens when they die. This realisation is an acknowledgment of the impossibility of knowing everything. Yet, gaining insight into our limitations – acknowledging that human knowledge is finite – simultaneously humbles us and allows us to realise that this gaining of insight is an immense step. We become aware that science with its objectivism, although very successful in its own domain, cannot answer questions that are decisive for the humanity of humans. 60 The magnitude of this realisation of never being able to know all-there-is leads us to the further realisation that we must start from ourselves; forging a new relation between the world and finite, human life, from the perspective of incalculability and infinity. 61 As Patočka writes, “humans are a relation that relates to itself, a relation between eternity and time, individuality and universality, contingency and necessity”.62 A human is not a stone or a tree belonging to a species that will always be as it is, perpetually renewing itself through ever-vanishing members. Neither are we gods who can understand all. We are different because “we are not initially given to ourselves but rather must seek ourselves”.63 Our existence is movement. Our life is a quest that might end up badly. For Patočka, human life has three dimensions, related to its beginning, its end, and to its necessities in the form of the never-ending cycle of consumption.64 Birth is related to the past, to the community into which we are born and which takes care of us in the remembrance of the past and in the future of the family. 59

Ibid., 144. Husserl, The Crisis of European Sciences and Transcendental Phenomenology: An Introduction to Phenomenological Philosophy, §2. 61 Patočka, “Kulhavý poutník Josef Čapek [Limping Pilgrim Josef Čapek]”, 145. 62 Patočka, Body, Community, Language, World (Chicago and La Salle, Illinois: Open Court, 1998), 111. 63 Ibid. 64 “Život člověka má vždycky tyto tři velké dimenze: vztah k začátku, vztah ke konci a vztah k životu jakožto propadlému této nutnosti” (Patočka, “Problém počátku a místa dějin: Diskuse [The Problem of Beginning and Place of History: Discussion]”, 300). 60

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Self-sustenance and work is our present; while the future reveals to us that we are finite human beings who will die. Yet, this realisation also brings to the forefront that we are free. We can shake up our everydayness, our reliance on the public anonym, if we confront our finitude. We can realise that the mundanity we accept hides mysteries that are hard to discover. Only by shaking up our initial acceptance of tradition, of others, of the world, might we realise that it is we who must define the meaning of all we encounter. The human task is to question the meaning we have inherited, not accepting it unquestioningly. In order to question, we must provide reasons for our beliefs. Yet, our reasons can only be finite, without the assurance of a transcendent ground. According to Patočka, we must question and confront the shaken confidence in our beliefs that is brought on by tradition, in order to challenge the certitude of inherited, overall, historical meaning. Without questioning, we might not realise that what we have inherited – an inherited meaning become empty – has turned into a dogmatism of old beliefs which permeates our relation to the world. We might become ‘homeless’ without even being aware of it. The homelessness of meaning, “human unclarity, that refuge of our life’s routines”, is not insignificant. It informs our whole being. 65 It is the source of our relation to ourselves, others and to the world. By questioning inherited meaning, we assume personal responsibility for the world into which we are thrown by birth, although the world is not of our doing. The world is here before we were born and it will be here when we die. As Patočka writes, “we did not personally bring about the adversity of our age and the present situation, we inherited it. Nonetheless, we are responsible for it”.66 We must confront the present-day crisis of meaning in order to shape the future. We must attempt to unravel the mystery that the commonplace hides and to which we are always blind. As Patočka sees it, there is a precedent to the crisis of meaning that we are confronting today. To be sure, the problems are different, but it is important for us to revisit the space of questioning that was opened up in Ancient Greece. Socrates is the only figure, according to Patočka, who tries to leap into the unknown without the support of tradition, by trying to rethink the

65 Patočka, Heretical Essays in the Philosophy of History (Chicago and La Salle, Illinois: Open Court, 1996), 102. 66 Patočka, “Zpěv výsostnosti [Song of Nobility]”, eds Vojtěch and Chvatík, Umění a čas: Soubor statí, přednášek a poznámek k problémům umění. První díl: Publikované studie (Prague: Oikoymenh, 2004 [1969]), 416–432, 418.

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mystery hidden in mundanity; to rethink the inherited meaning that has become obsolete, turned into the dogmatism of a dead tradition. Conclusion As elsewhere in history…the real way forward is going back to the beginning. 67

Patočka rejects Husserl’s solution of the transcendental subject, although he never abandons the problem of meaning constitution. Under the influence of Heidegger, in “What is Phenomenology?” Patočka critically reflects on Husserl’s conception of human subjectivity as well as Heidegger’s notion of human existence. Husserl’s never-ending struggle against psychologism defines his phenomenology, with his continuous attempt to clarify – against the reduction of human psychic life to empirical psychology – the problems of subjective life, aiming towards a universality of sense and meaning. 68 Patočka questions the reduction of all meaning to the space of transcendental subjectivity. Instead, he accepts Heidegger’s notion of human existence. Yet, he objects to the withdrawal of human questions in preference to Being in late Heidegger, because this means a disappearance of historical humans from Heidegger’s ontological inquiries. 69 Patočka’s work navigates between the Scylla of transcendental subjectivity and the Charybdis of no subjectivity at all. He realises that only a human being can be responsible for her deeds and words. Patočka continuously rethinks the idea of subjectivity. The Cartesian res cogitans does not have to lead to a subject devoid of the external world nor to an elimination of the subject altogether. His last attempts were to think human existence as movement, as well as to propose an asubjective phenomenology.

67

“Ako inde v histórii, aj tu sa možno ukazuje, že skutočná cesta vpred je cesta naspäť k začiatkom” (Patočka, “Motto”, Kapitoly z Dejín Slovenského Myslenia (Bratislava: Polygrafia SAV, 1995), 7). 68 Patočka, Věčnost a dějinnost: Rádlův poměr k pojetím člověka v minulosti a současnosti [Eternity and Historicity: Rádl’s Relation to Past and Present Conceptions of Man], 64. For a similar claim, see also Crowell, “Husserl, Heidegger, and Transcendental Philosophy: Another Look at the Encyclopaedia Britannica Article”, Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 50.3 (1990). 69 See Šrubař, “Asubjektivní fenomenologie, přirozený svět a humanismus: Patočkovo myšlení mezi Husserlem a Heideggerem [Asubjective Phenomenology, Natural World and Humanism: Patočka’s Thinking On Husserl and Heidegger]”, Filosofický Časopis 39.3 (1991).

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Works Cited Aristotle. “Physics.” Trans. R. P. Hardie and R. K. Gaye. The Complete Works of Aristotle: The Revised Oxford Translation. Ed. Jonathan Barnes. Sixth Printing, with Corrections ed. Bollingen Series LXXI, 2. Vol. Two. Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1995 Barbaras, Renaud. “Pohyb existence u Patočky: K fenomenologii dění [The Movement of Existence: Towards a Phenomenology of Happening].” Trans. Josef Fulka. Filosofický Časopis. 51.3 (2003), 365–382 Burtt, Edwin Arthur. The Metaphysical Foundations of Modern Physical Science: A Historical and Critical Essay. London: Kegan Paul, Trench, Trubner & Co., Ltd [Bibliolife], 1925 Carroll, Lewis. Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland & Through the Looking-Glass. Wordsworth Classics. Ware, Hertfordshire: Wordsworth Editions Ltd, 2001 Crowell, Steven Galt. “Husserl, Heidegger, and Transcendental Philosophy: Another Look at the Encyclopaedia Britannica Article.” Philosophy and Phenomenological Research. 50.3 (1990), 501–518 Fink, Eugen. “What Does the Phenomenology of Edmund Husserl Want to Accomplish? (The Phenomenological Idea of Laying-a-Ground).” Trans. Arthur Grugan. Research in Phenomenology. 2 (1972 [1934]), 5–27 Gadamer, Hans-Georg. Heidegger’s Ways. Trans. John W. Stanley. SUNY Series in Contemporary Continental Philosophy. Albany: State University of New York Press, 1994 Heidegger, Martin. Pathmarks. Ed. William McNeill. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998 Hobbes, Thomas. Leviathan. Ed. C. B. Macpherson. Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1968 [1651] Husserl, Edmund. The Crisis of European Sciences and Transcendental Phenomenology: An Introduction to Phenomenological Philosophy. Trans. David Carr. Northwestern University Studies in Phenomenology & Existential Philosophy. Evanston: Northwest University Press, 1970 Husserl, Edmund. Logical Investigations. Trans. J. N. Findlay. Ed. Dermot Moran. International Library of Philosophy. Vol. 1. London and New York: Routledge, 2001 Kouba, Pavel. Problém třetího pohybu: Na okraj Patočkova pojetí existence [The Problem of the Third Movement: On the Margins of Patočka’s Conception of Existence]. Center for Theoretical Study: The Institute for Advanced Studies at Charles University and the Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic. CFB-03-06 / CTS-03-07. Prague: Center for Theoretical Study, 2003 Mettrie, Julien Offray de La. “Machine Man.” Trans. Ann Thomson. Machine Man and Other Writings. Cambridge Texts in the History of Philosophy. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996 [1747], 3–39

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Movement and Human Existence Nietzsche, Friedrich Wilhelm. Thus Spoke Zarathustra. Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1969 Patočka, Jan. Aristoteles, jeho předchůdci a dědicové: Studie z dějin filosofie od Aristotela k Hegelovi [Aristotle, His Predecessors and Inheritors]. Prague: Nakladatelství Československé Akademie Věd, 1964 Patočka, Jan. Aristotelés: Přednášky z antické filosofie [Aristotle: Lectures from Ancient Philosophy]. Eds Ivan Chvatík and Pavel Kouba. Prague: Vyšehrad, 1994 Patočka, Jan. Body, Community, Language, World. Ed. James Dodd. Chicago and La Salle, Illinois: Open Court, 1998 Patočka, Jan. “Celek světa a svět člověka: Poznámky k jednomu současnému náběhu ke kosmologii [The World as Whole and the Human World: Notes on a Contemporary Cosmological Approach].” Trans. Pavel Kouba. Filosofický Časopis. 38.6 (1990), 729–735 Patočka, Jan. “Co je existence? [What is Existence?].” Filosofický Časopis. 17.5–6 (1969), 682–702 Patočka, Jan. “Fenomenologie vlastního těla [Phenomenology of the Personal Body].” Přirozený svět a pohyb lidské existence. Tématický Sborník. Vol. II. Prague: Samizdat, 1980, 1–20 Patočka, Jan. Heretical Essays in the Philosophy of History. Trans. Erazim Kohák. Ed. James Dodd. Chicago and La Salle, Illinois: Open Court, 1996 Patočka, Jan. “K prehistorii vědy o pohybu: Svět, země, nebe a pohyb lidského života [Notes on the Prehistory of the Science of Movement: The World, Earth, Heaven and the Movement for Human Life].” Fenomenologické spisy II: Co je existence. Publikované texty z let 1965–1977. Sebrané spisy Jana Patočky. Svazek 7. Prague: Oikoymenh, Filosofia, 2009 [1965], 192–201 Patočka, Jan. “Kolem Masarykovy filosofie náboženství [On Masaryk’s Philosophy of Religion].” Tři studie o Masarykovi. Edice Váhy. Prague: Mladá Fronta, 1991 [1976], 53–119 Patočka, Jan. “Kulhavý poutník Josef Čapek [Limping Pilgrim Josef Čapek].” Umění a čas: Soubor statí, přednášek a poznámek k problémům umění. První díl: Publikované studie. Eds Daniel Vojtěch and Ivan Chvatík. Sebrané spisy Jana Patočky. Svazek 4. Vol. I. Prague: Oikoymenh, 2004, 137–158 Patočka, Jan. “Masaryk’s and Husserl’s Conception of the Spiritual Crisis of European Humanity.” Edited and translated by Erazim Kohák. Jan Patočka. Philosophy and Selected Writings. Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press, 1989 [1936], 145–156 Patočka, Jan. “Masarykovo a Husserlovo pojetí duševní krize evropského lidstva [Masaryk’s and Husserl’s Conception of the Spiritual Crisis of European Humanity].” Tři studie o Masarykovi. Edice Váhy. Prague: Mladá Fronta, 1991 [1936], 5–20 Patočka, Jan. “Motto.” Kapitoly z Dejín Slovenského Myslenia. Vladimír Bakoš. Bratislava: Polygrafia SAV, 1995, 7

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Jan Patočka’s Life and Work Jan Patočka (1907–77) was one of Edmund Husserl’s last direct pupils. He met Husserl for the first time in Paris in the school year 1928/29, as a graduate student attending Husserl’s Paris Lectures (better known under the title of Cartesian Meditations) at the Sorbonne. Subsequently he won a Humboldt Foundation stipend for 1932–33, and went first to Berlin and then to Freiburg. In Berlin, he not only witnessed Hitler’s coup d’état (a shock he was later to speak of as the beginning of his political awakening), but engaged in a friendship with Jacob Klein; who recommended insistently that Patočka should not only concentrate on the study of Husserl’s phenomenology, but should apply equal attention to the thinking of Martin Heidegger. Patočka was given the same advice by Husserl’s then assistant, Eugen Fink, who initiated him into the deepest of philosophical issues that lay hidden in the gaping abyss between Husserl’s phenomenology and what Heidegger had made out of it. To delve into these obscure depths and, eventually, to bridge the gap – such was the task Patočka appears to have taken up, even then. In order to come closer ‘to things themselves’ than Husserl himself ever managed, and to let phenomena shine forth in their apparentness and in their historicity at once, he consistently grasped and interpreted not only the ‘history of Being’ but, to no less an extent, that of mankind. At the time of writing the habilitation thesis he was to publish in 1936, on the Husserlian theme of the life-world (The Natural World as a Philosophical Problem), Patočka was instrumental in organising Husserl’s November 1935 visit to Prague; during which Husserl presented one of the first drafts of his posthumously published work, The Crisis of the European Sciences and Transcendental Phenomenology. Shortly thereafter, when it became clear that Husserl’s manuscripts were in danger of destruction by Nazi authorities, Patočka endeavoured to secure their transfer to Czechoslovakia. His friend Ludwig Landgrebe was thus able to prepare, in Prague, the first volume of the proposed Collected Works of Edmund Husserl (Erfahrung und Urteil), but when the book came off the press in March 1939, Hitler’s troops were already marching into town. Nearly the whole edition was destroyed by the Nazi occupiers. During the Occupation years, Patočka worked as a secondary school teacher, while never ceasing to work on philosophical projects concerning both phenomenology and the philosophy of history. After World War II he invested all his energy into his teaching at Charles University in Prague. Following February

Notes on Contributors

1948, when the ‘Prague coup’ ushered in a Communist totalitarian regime, Patočka was sidelined into editing the work of the late Renaissance philosopher, Comenius. In 1964, thanks to the political liberalisation preceding the so-called Prague Spring, Patočka published his second and last book to appear in the normal way: a collection of essays on Aristotle, his forerunners and successors, for which he was awarded the highest postdoctoral degree of the Czechoslovak Academy of Sciences. In 1968 he was called back to Charles University, and at age 61 he was finally awarded tenure as a professor there. His appointment was, however, officialised only in the autumn of 1968 – more than two months after Czechoslovakia had once again been occupied, by the armed forces of its Warsaw Pact allies. After a mere four years of teaching, Patočka was forcedly pensioned upon reaching age 65; left with only ‘private engagement’, so to speak, with the participants of unauthorised, clandestine seminars that he held in his own apartment. In the darkest days of the 1970s ‘normalization’ period in Czechoslovakia, Patočka nonetheless continued to work on his main subjects. His last and mosttranslated major work, the Heretical Essays in the Philosophy of History, was published in an illegal samizdat edition less than two years before his life reached its climactic end; when he became, alongside future Czech president Václav Havel, one of the three initial spokespersons for the dissident civic initiative, Charter 77.1 Patočka died after a series of exhaustive interrogations by the secret political police, in March 1977. Ivan Chvatík

1

For an illumination of some links between Patočka’s life, philosophy and the historical situation of his time, and in particular his defence of Charter 77, see Michael Gubser’s essay in this volume.

276

Contributors Anthony Backhouse Anthony Backhouse is a PhD candidate at Murdoch University, Perth, Western Australia. His research interests centre on the phenomenological critique of technology. [email protected] Ivan Chvatík Ivan Chvatík is Founder and Director of the Jan Patočka Archive in Prague. He received the Czechoslovak Academy of Sciences Prize in 1990 for the 27-volume Jan Patočka Archive Collection, published underground (1977–89). Since 1993 he is Co-Director of the Center for Theoretical Study at Charles University and the Czech Academy of Sciences. His publications include the first Czech translation of Heidegger’s Being and Time and the Patočka entry in Blackwell’s Companion to the Philosophy of History and Historiography. He co-edited the Springer Centenary Papers volume, Jan Patočka and the Heritage of Phenomenology. [email protected] Michael Gubser Michael Gubser is an Associate Professor of History at James Madison University in Harrisonburg, Virginia, USA. His most recent book is The Far Reaches: Phenomenology, Ethics, and Social Renewal in Central Europe (Stanford University Press, 2014). [email protected] Jakub Homolka Jakub Homolka is a PhD candidate in the Faculty of Humanities, Department of Historical Sociology, at Charles University in Prague. In 2008–09 he was an Erasmus Scholarship recipient, based at Maastricht University; and in 2013 he received Prague’s Josef Hlávka Award for students and graduates. He has been working in cooperation with the Jan Patočka Archive in Prague since 2012. [email protected]

Notes on Contributors

Josef Moural Josef Moural is a philosophy lecturer at the J. E. Purkyně University in Ústí nad Labem, Czech Republic. He has previously taught at Charles University (Prague), King’s College (London) and the University of California, Berkeley. He publishes widely on ancient and modern philosophy (Plato, skepticism, Descartes, Hume), phenomenology (Husserl, Patočka) and the philosophy of John Searle (theory of institutions, Chinese Room). He has translated works by Hume, Kant, Popper and Tugendhat into Czech. [email protected] Riccardo Paparusso Riccardo Paparusso is a lecturer in philosophy at the Pontifical University of Saint Thomas Aquinas, Rome. His interests are contemporary continental philosophy and phenomenology, with current research focusing on the thought of Jan Patočka. His publications include “Salvation without Redemption: Phenomenology of (Pre-)History in the Late Patočka” (2013); and his translation from Czech to Italian of Jan Patočka, Due studi su Masaryk (2014). [email protected] Inês Pereira Rodrigues Inês Pereira Rodrigues defended her PhD thesis at the University of Beira Interior, Portugal, in 2013. Her thesis was titled A World of Possibilities: The Concept of ‘Ontological Movement’ in Jan Patočka. She completed her Masters degree, also about Patocka, at the University of Lisbon. [email protected] Ciaran Summerton Ciaran Summerton is a PhD candidate at Murdoch University, Perth, Australia. His research interests include the phenomenology of Husserl, Heidegger and Patočka, the history of political philosophy, the philosophy of economics, and contemporary critical French philosophy. His PhD focuses on Grotius, Hobbes, Pufendorf and Locke, and the relation between their changing political ideas and larger changes in theology, philosophy and the emergence of modern science. [email protected]

278

Notes on Contributors

Émilie Tardivel-Schick Émilie Tardivel-Schick was awarded her PhD from the University of Paris 1. She is Assistant Professor in the Faculty of Philosophy at the Catholic University of Paris, where she is also director of the Masters program, and responsible for the research group in moral and political philosophy. She is the author of an essay on Patočka’s philosophy, La Liberté au principe (Paris, Vrin, 2011), which won the Prix La Bruyère de l’Académie française 2012. [email protected] Ľubica Učník Ľubica Učník is Academic Chair in Philosophy at Murdoch University, Perth, Australia. Her publications include articles on Husserl’s mathematisation of the Lebenswelt and Patočka’s thinking on modern civilisation and Post-Europe; and in 2013 she completed the book, The Life-World and the Crisis of Meaning: Husserl, Heidegger, Arendt and Patočka. She is also Co-Editor of Formalisation and the Life-World: The Phenomenological Critique of Mathematisation and the Question of Responsibility (Springer, 2015). [email protected] Anita Williams Anita Williams is an Adjunct Lecturer in Philosophy at Murdoch University. Her research draws upon the phenomenology of Jacob Klein, Patočka, Husserl and Heidegger. Specific interests include the increasingly taken-for-granted adoption of the natural scientific method for investigating human thinking; Patočka’s and Klein’s historical extension of Husserl’s phenomenology; and the philosophical thinking around arithmos, from Ancient Greece to modern natural science. [email protected]

279

Index Appearing Appearing as such, 23, 34, 37, 40, 51– 53, 67, 140–141 Modes of appearing, 3, 18, 20, 27, 32, 40, 68–69 Aristotle, 21–22, 27, 40, 112, 127, 277, 281, 289 Asubjective phenomenology, 2, 8– 10, 12, 60, 67, 87, 294 Avenarius, Richard, 1 Beauty, 12, 194, 217– 226 Bolzano, Bernard, 26–27, 40 Brentano, Franz, 5, 27–29, 36, 40, 83, 280 Čapek, Josef, 278, 290 Care for the soul, 93, 97–98, 228 Certainty, 3–5, 9, 27, 32–33, 37–38, 59–60, 64–65, 96, 159–160, 286– 287 Charter 77, 10, 77 Human rights, 10, 77–78, 99 Cogitationes, 46, 51–52, 64–65 Comte, Auguste, 157–160, 168, 174, 179, 196 Descartes, René, 3–5, 17, 23–24, 27, 37–38, 40, 45, 47, 59–60, 64, 68, 106, 139, 277, 285–286 Cartesianism, 2, 5, 9, 28–29, 59, 65, 80 Dostoevsky, Fyodor, 131, 235–240 Empiricism, 62, 83 Epoché, 5, 9–10, 45–48, 51–54, 65– 67, 80, 84–85 Evidence, 1, 17–18, 24, 27, 49–50, 65, 108–109, 118–119, 240, 255

Faulkner, William, 131–132 Fink, Eugen, 1, 61, 80, 125, 279 Funke, Gerhard, 43 Galileo, 249, 252–254, 282 Givenness Modes of givenness, 18, 23, 26, 28, 36 Self-givenness, 18–19, 37, 45–46, 49, 65 Harmonia, 217, 219–220, 222–226, 228 Havel, Václav, 77–78, 98 Hayek, Friedrich August von, 157– 158, 161–179 Heidegger, Martin, 2, 5–10, 19, 39, 40, 61–62, 68, 74, 79–81, 84, 87, 98, 105, 107, 113–115, 117, 123– 125, 129, 138–139, 143–144, 146, 151, 157, 205–206, 219, 236–238, 240, 242, 249–250, 256–265, 273, 289, 293 Heretical Essays, 95, 97, 110, 115– 117, 183–186, 189, 191, 199, 205, 233, 246 Historicity, 114, 244 History, 10–11, 40, 63, 79, 81, 85, 88–89, 93–98, 105, 108, 113–118, 139, 157–161, 164–170, 172, 176– 179, 183–184, 187–189, 191–193, 198–199, 207, 222, 225,228, 233– 235, 242, 244, 256–257, 265, 293 Horizon, 51, 53, 61, 67, 85–86, 137, 148, 150–151, 175, 207, 280 Human freedom, 10–11, 78, 90, 98, 170

Index

Hume, David, 46, 280–281, 285 Husserl, Edmund, 1–3, 5–10, 17–19, 23, 28–32, 35–37, 39–40, 43–45, 47–48, 50, 51–53, 59–64, 66–67, 69–70, 79–85, 87, 92, 98, 105– 110, 115, 117, 123–124, 138–140, 143, 151, 157, 185, 190, 192–193, 249–260, 264–265, 273, 279, 286– 287, 293 Idea of Phenomenology, 45, 47, 49, 65 Immanence, 5, 18, 33, 45, 48–49, 64–65, 67, 85 Intuition Categorial intuition, 37, 62–63, 257–259 Eidetic intuition, 37 Empty intuition, 279 Fulfilled intuition, 279 Sensuous intuition, 257, 259 Kant, Immanuel, 17, 60, 64, 71, 137–138, 233–240, 244–245, 280– 281, 287 Klein, Jacob, 249–250, 266–269, 271 Leibniz, Gottfried Wilhelm, 24–27, 40 Levinas, Emmanuel, 61, 137–138, 146, 148–149, 151 Locke, John, 106, 281 Logical Investigations, 18, 20, 28– 29, 34, 49, 83, 286 Manifestation, 2, 4–6, 8–12, 63, 83, 87, 126–128, 211–212, 251, 265, 272–273 Mann, Thomas, 131–132 Masaryk, Tomáš Garrigue, 185, 190, 192–193, 246, 280–281, 284–285, 287, 290

Mathematical science, 8, 12, 249– 250, 252, 255–256, 260, 262–263 Meaning Absolute meaning, 191, 193, 234, 240, 244 Human meaning, 8, 12, 84 Meaning constitution, 2–4, 279, 281, 283, 287, 293 Modern society, 8, 11–12, 91, 184– 185, 190, 193, 195 Myth, 52, 211, 214–215 Natural attitude, 44, 48, 53, 66 Natural world, 1, 61, 82, 123, 249 Newton, Isaac, 262–263 Nietzsche, Friedrich, 238–239, 244, 289 Objectivism, 60, 80, 84, 278, 280, 284–286, 291 Objectivity, 287 Ontology, 49–50, 52–53, 65, 124, 128, 143, 146 Plato, 4, 12, 19–20, 22, 27, 37, 40, 59–60, 63, 68, 70, 74, 106, 112, 214, 217, 226–228, 238, 249–250, 264–267, 269, 271–273 Letter Seven, 4, 19, 41, 68 Polemos, 95–97 Politics, 11, 89, 95–96, 116, 157– 158, 162, 169–170, 172, 177, 179– 180, 189, 228 Positivism, 157, 160–161, 179 Post-European age, 88, 187, 190, 196 Post-European world, 93 Psychologism, 6, 83, 286, 293 Rationalism, 87, 90–92, 191, 234 Religion, 185, 192–193, 196–197, 211, 237 Renaissance, 92, 217

281

Index

Responsibility, 89 Self-responsibility, 82 Sacrifice, 12, 98, 207–215 Saint-Simon, Henri de, 157, 159– 160, 171, 174, 177, 179 Science, modern, 12, 85, 192, 249– 250, 252, 255–257, 260–263, 285, 288 Solidarity of the shaken, 98 Spiritual crisis, 185, 187, 190, 193, 196, 283–284 Subjectivism, 6, 8–10, 59–60, 80, 87, 92–93, 139–141, 143, 238, 280– 281, 283–285, 287, 290 Subjectivity, 287 Transcendental subject, 5, 48, 67, 80, 286–287, 290, 293 Supercivilisation, 11, 183, 185–188, 190–199 Three movements of existence, 2, 8, 10–12, 105, 110–112, 116–117, 130, 158, 172, 199, 277

282

First movement, 111, 130, 147, 172–176 Second movement, 111, 131, 172–176, 178 Third movement, 10–11, 112– 113, 116, 118, 131–132, 149, 173, 175–177, 179 Titanism, 93, 284, 290 Transcendence, 34, 38, 40, 46, 48– 50, 64, 67, 78, 82, 84–85, 96, 171, 179 Transcendence in immanence, 45–46 Transcendental phenomenology, 3 Truth, 6–7, 23–24, 60, 77, 81, 85– 86, 88–89, 92, 97–98, 109, 139– 140, 143, 145, 192, 227, 238, 241– 245, 256 Aletheia, 92 Tugendhat, Ernst, 19, 36–37 Weber, Max, 183, 187–188, 191–197 Worldliness, 81–82, 92

LIBRI NIGRI DENKEN ÜBER GRENZEN

Herausgegeben von Hans Rainer Sepp Die libri nigri treffen sich bevorzugt an Orten, an denen die Grenzen von Wirklichkeitsbereichen, Standpunkten, Fachrichtungen sowie Kultur- und Wissenstraditionen in den Blick geraten und ihre Voraussetzungen verhandelbar werden. Begründungsabsichten nachzuspüren, gilt hier mehr, als Begründungen zu suchen, das wagende Experiment mehr als die gültige Schablone, die störende Bewegung mehr als der Drang nach Absicherung. Da die Orte für entscheidende Bewegungen meist Ränder und nicht Zentren sind und da Grenzen nicht einfach nur begrenzen, sondern vor allem Potentiale des Anderen und Fremden bergen, wird sich die Reihe auch dem Terrain des Utopischen nicht verweigern.

1

Hans Rainer Sepp Über die Grenze Prolegomena zu einer Philosophie des Transkulturellen broschiert ISBN 978-3-88309-792-3 gebunden ISBN 978-3-88309-793-0

2

Yoshiko Oshima Zen – anders denken? Zugleich ein Versuch über Zen und Heidegger 2. Aufl. broschiert ISBN 978-3-88309-846-3 gebunden ISBN 978-3-88309-847-0

3

Max Lorenzen Philosophie der Nachmoderne Die Transformation der Kultur – Virtualität und Globalisierung Herausgegeben von Cathrin Nielsen broschiert ISBN 978-3-88309-668-8 gebunden ISBN 978-3-88309-668-1

4

Hisaki Hashi und Friedrich G. Wallner (Hg.) Globalisierung des Denkens in Ost und West Resultate des Österreichisch-Japanischen Dialogs broschiert ISBN 978-3-88309-555-4 gebunden ISBN 978-3-88309-560-8

5

Aleš Novák Heideggers Bestimmung des Bösen broschiert ISBN 978-3-88309-650-6 gebunden ISBN 978-3-88309-651-3

6

André Julien S. E. Faict Philosophische Voraussetzungen des interkulturellen Dialogs Die vergleichende Philosophie von Hajime Nakamura im Dialog mit Anthropologie und Hermeneutik broschiert ISBN 978-3-88309-683-4 gebunden ISBN 978-3-88309-684-1

7

Peter Schwankl Diplomatisches Verhalten Ein phänomenologischer Versuch über das Wesen des Diplomatischen Herausgegeben von Georg Lechner broschiert ISBN 978-3-88309-517-2 gebunden ISBN 978-3-88309-516-5

8

Paul Janssen Vom zersprungenen Weltwerden broschiert ISBN 978-3-88309-685-8 gebunden ISBN 978-3-88309-686-5

9

Constantin Noica De dignitate Europae Übersetzt von Georg Scherg Herausgegeben von Mădălina Diaconu broschiert ISBN 978-3-88309-708-4 gebunden ISBN 978-3-88309-709-1

10

Constantin Noica Briefe zur Logik des Hermes Übersetzt von Christian Ferencz-Flatz und Stefan Moosdorf broschiert ISBN 978-3-88309-434-2 gebunden ISBN 978-3-88309-435-9

11

Ananta Charan Sukla (ed.) Art and Expression Contemporary Perspectives in the Occidental and Oriental Traditions broschiert ISBN 978-3-88309-710-7 gebunden ISBN 978-3-88309-711-4

12

Dean Komel Den Nihilismus verwinden Ein slowenisches Postscript zum 20. Jahrhundert broschiert ISBN 978-3-88309-712-1 gebunden ISBN 978-3-88309-713-8

13

Tatiana Shchyttsova (Hg.) In statu nascendi Geborensein und intergenerative Dimension des menschlichen Miteinanderseins broschiert ISBN 978-3-88309-716-9 gebunden ISBN 978-3-88309-688-9

14

Chung-Chi Yu and Kwok-ying Lau (eds.) Phenomenology and Human Experience broschiert ISBN 978-3-88309-722-0 gebunden ISBN 978-3-88309-723-7

15

Daniel Aebli Wie modern ist die Antike? Studien und Skizzen zur Altertumswissenschaft broschiert ISBN 978-3-88309-729-9 gebunden ISBN 978-3-88309-730-5

16

Hiroo Nakamura Für den Frieden broschiert ISBN 978-3-88309-731-2 gebunden ISBN 978-3-88309-732-9

17

Günter Fröhlich Anthropologische Wege Ulmer Stadthausvorträge broschiert ISBN 978-3-88309-733-6 gebunden ISBN 978-3-88309-734-3

18

Hans-Dieter Bahr Die Anwesenheit des Gastes Entwurf einer Xenosophie broschiert ISBN 978-3-88309-761-9

19

Massimo Mezzanzanica Von Dilthey zu Levinas Wege im Zwischenbereich von Lebensphilosophie, Neukantianismus und Phänomenologie broschiert ISBN 978-3-88309-750-3

20

Klaus Kanzog Mit Auge und Ohr Studien zur komplementären Wahrnehmung broschiert ISBN 978-3-88309-784-8 gebunden ISBN 978-3-88309-785-5

21

Silvia Stoller und Gerhard Unterthurner (Hg.) Entgrenzungen der Phänomenologie und Hermeneutik Festschrift für Helmuth Vetter zum 70. Geburtstag broschiert ISBN 978-3-88309-771-8 gebunden ISBN 978-3-88309-772-5

22

Claus C. Schnorrenberger Chinesische Medizin – Placebo, Wissenschaft oder Wirklichkeit? broschiert ISBN 978-3-88309-776-3 gebunden ISBN 978-3-88309-777-0

23

Detlef Thiel Maßnahmen des Erscheinens Friedlaender/Mynona im Gespräch mit Schelling, Husserl, Benjamin und Derrida broschiert ISBN 978-3-88309-782-4 gebunden ISBN 978-3-88309-783-1

24

Leonidas Donskis Fifty Letters from the Troubled Modern World A Philosophical-Political Diary 2009–2012 broschiert ISBN 978-3-88309-799-2 gebunden ISBN 978-3-88309-800-5

25

Hartmut Buchner Heidegger und Japan – Japan und Heidegger Vorläufiges zum west-östlichen Gespräch broschiert ISBN 978-3-88309-836-4 gebunden ISBN 978-3-88309-837-1

26

Kateřina Šolcová Comenius im Blick Der Briefwechsel zwischen Milada Blekastad und Dmitrij Tschižewskij Deutsch-Tschechische Ausgabe broschiert ISBN 978-3-88309-843-2 gebunden ISBN 978-3-88309-844-9

27

Karin Knobel Poetik des Staubes bei Goethe und Hafis broschiert ISBN 978-3-88309-838-8 gebunden ISBN 978-3-88309-839-5

28

Ryôsuke Ohashi Schnittpunkte Essays zum ost-westlichen-Gespräch Erster Band: Dimensionen des Ästhetischen broschiert ISBN 978-3-88309-859-3 gebunden ISBN 978-3-88309-860-9

29

Ryôsuke Ohashi Schnittpunkte Essays zum ost-westlichen-Gespräch Zweiter Band: Deutsch-Japanische Denkwege broschiert ISBN 978-3-88309-885-2 gebunden ISBN 978-3-88309-886-9

30

Aleš Novák (Hg.) Grenzen der Transzendenz Aus dem Tschechischen übersetzt von Jana Krötzsch broschiert ISBN 978-3-88309-854-8 gebunden ISBN 978-3-88309-855-5

31

Boško Tomašević Hervorgang des Seins Das ontologische Geschehen des Dichtens broschiert ISBN 978-3-88309-952-1 gebunden ISBN 978-3-88309-953-8

32

Gerard Visser Nichts ist geschenkt Ein philosophischer Essay über die Seele Aus dem Niederländischen übersetzt von Anna Sikora broschiert ISBN 978-3-88309-871-5 gebunden ISBN 978-3-88309-872-2

33

Marcin Rebes Der Streit um die transzendentale Wahrheit Heidegger und Levinas broschiert ISBN 978-3-88309-942-2 gebunden ISBN 978-3-88309-943-9

34

Jürgen Trinks Überleben des Phänomens im Symbolischen Studien zur sprachphänomenologischen Kulturwissenschaft broschiert ISBN 978-3-88309-875-3 gebunden ISBN 978-3-88309-876-0

35

Martin Cajthaml Europe and the Care of the Soul Jan Patočka’s Conception of the Spiritual Foundations of Europe With a Preface by Peter McCormick broschiert ISBN 978-3-88309-887-6 gebunden ISBN 978-3-88309-888-3

36

Leonidas Donskis Das Ende von Ideologie und Utopie? Moralität und Kulturkritik im zwanzigsten Jahrhundert Aus dem Englischen übersetzt von Cathrin Nielsen broschiert ISBN 978-3-88309-883-8 gebunden ISBN 978-3-88309-884-5

37

Dean Komel Kontemplationen Entwürfe zur phänomenologischen Hermeneutik broschiert ISBN 978-3-88309-903-3 gebunden ISBN 978-3-88309-904-0

38

Armin Wildermuth Findlinge Gefundenes und Erfundenes broschiert ISBN 978-3-88309-944-6 gebunden ISBN 978-3-88309-945-3

39

Hisaki Hashi (Hg.) Denkdisziplinen von Ost und West Interdisziplinäre Philosophie in einer globalen Welt

40

Markus Ophälders Konstruktion von Erfahrung Versuch über Walter Benjamin

41

Ivan Chvatík and Lubica Ucník (eds.) Asubjective Phenomenology Jan Patočka’s Project in the Broader Context of his Work broschiert ISBN 978-3-88309-993-4 gebunden ISBN 978-3-88309-994-1

42

Terri Jane Hennings Writing Against Aesthetic Ideology Tom Sharpe’s The Great Pursuit and Paul Auster’s City of Glass

43

Irina Hron (Hg.) Einheitsdenken Figuren von Ganzheit, Präsenz und Transzendenz nach der Postmoderne broschiert ISBN 978-3-88309-995-8 gebunden ISBN 978-3-88309-996-5

44

Nicole Thiemer Zwischen Hermes und Hestia Hermeneutische Lektüren zu Heidegger und Derrida broschiert ISBN 978-3-88309-946-0 gebunden ISBN 978-3-88309-947-7

45

Sumalee Mahanarongchai Health and Disease in Buddhist Minds broschiert ISBN 978-3-88309-950-4 gebunden ISBN 978-3-88309-951-4

46

Fengli Lan and Friedrich G. Wallner (eds.) The Concepts of Health and Disease From the Viewpoint of four Cultures broschiert ISBN 978-3-88309-948-4 gebunden ISBN 978-3-88309-949-1