Jan Patocka and the European Heritage - Studia Phaenomenologica 2007
JAN PATOČKA
AND THE EUROPEAN HERITAGE
Ivan Chvatik, Introduction: Jan Patočka
and the European Heritage
JAN PATOČKA - NEW
TRANSLATIONS
Jan Patočka, Das Innere
und die Welt (aus
dem Tschechischen uebersetzt von Sandra Lehmann, Einfuehrung von Ana
Cecilia Santos)
Abstract: Presented here
is the German translation of Jan Patočka's fragment Nitro a svět (The Inner and
the World) which was written in the 1940s and belongs to the so called „Strahov
Papers". The fragment reflects Patočka's early attempts towards a thinking
of subjectivity and the world. Thereby Patočka's approach is
phenomenological, but also integrates motives of German Idealism. The critical
impact of the fragment lies in its orientation against the scientific biologism
of its times.
Jan Patočka, Des deux
manieres de concevoir le sens de la philosophie (traduit du
tcheque par Erika Abrams)
Abstract: The essay "On the Two Conceptions of the Meaning of Philosophy", published in 1936, links up
with other early writings such as "Remarks on the Wordly and Other-Wordly
Stance of Philosophy" (1934) reflecting Patoμka's initial approach to the
question of philosophers' moral commitment. He distinguishes here an
"autocentric" (Aristotle, Descartes, Hegel) and a "hetero-" or "sociocentric"
(Plato, Enlightenment philosophers, Comte, Nietzsche) conception of the meaning
of philosophy, characterizes its possible influence on human life as either
"apperceptive" or "magical" and concludes on a vision of "autonomous life" as
"the divinity struggling with its intrinsic peril" which heralds later writings
on freedom and sacrifice.
Jan Patočka, Ideology and Life
in the Idea (translated
from the Czech by Eric Manton)
Abstract: Patočka's
text from 1946, right after World War II and before the Communist takeover of
Czechoslovakia, analyzes the important historical events he was living through
from a philosophical perspective. Patočka describes the crisis in
Enlightenment-based social humanism, which even though having won the war, was
left battered and distrusted for not preventing the disaster. With this branch
of social humanism being discredited, people turned towards its Eastern
manifestation, i.e., Socialism or Communism. Patočka distinguishes the
various aspects of Socialism that exist undifferentiated within the term: the
concept of Man, ideology, and the Idea. The liberation of the Idea is twisted
when combined with a material concept of Man as just one force among other
forces, which the ideology then uses and abuses for an external aim.
DOCUMENTS
Jan Patočka, Briefe an
Krzysztof Michalski
Abstract: We reproduce
here forty previously unpublished letters sent by Jan Patočka to the
Polish philosopher Krzysztof Michalski between 1973 and 1976. The letters to
Michalski reveal his key role in motivating Patočka to formulate his ideas
concerning the philosophy of history and present them first in a series of
underground lectures in Prague and finally on paper in his last samizdat book,
the Heretical Essays on the Philosophy of History.
Ivan Chvatik, Geschichte und
Vorgeschichte des Prager Jan Patočka-Archivs
Abstract: This paper
presents a short biography of Jan Patočka, as well as biographical data of
the author in connection to the life and work of Jan Patočka. The paper
describes Patočka's academic activity at Charles University between 1968
and 1972, how he continued by giving private underground seminars in the dark
years of 1972 to 1976, and how his engagement culminated in the dissident
movement Charter 77. The author explains how the unofficial underground Patočka
Archive was established on the very day of Patočka's death, even before
the terrible events around his funeral. Before the official Patočka
Archive was founded on the 1st of January, 1990, many volumes of his works were
edited secretly during the period of 1977 to 1989. This made it possible to
continue successfully publishing the series of the Complete Works of Jan Patočka
after 1990.
ARTICLES
Paul Ricoeur, Jan Patočka:
De la philosophie du monde naturel a la philosophie de l'histoire
Abstract: We reproduce here
the text of a lecture held by Paul Ricoeur at Naples in 1997. Ricoeur sees in Patočka's
work an elliptical movement with two foci: the phenomenology of the natural
world and the question of the meaning of history. Ricoeur evidences the new
features of Patočka's a-subjective phenomenology compared to Husserl's
transcendental idealism and Heidegger's existential analytics. The transition from
the phenomenology of the natural world to the problematic of history suggests
in any case a substantial dialectical thread that starts from the phenomenology
of the movement of life, weaves through the problematic and tragic character of
history and ends in the idea of the solidarity of the shaken.
Domenico Jervolino, Ricoeur
lecteur de Patočka
Abstract: In this essay,
Domenico Jervolino summarizes twenty years of Ricoeur's reading of Patočka's
work, up to the Neapolitan conference of 1997. Nowhere is Ricoeur closer to Patočka's
a-subjective phenomenology. Both thinkers belong, together with authors like
Merleau-Ponty and Levinas, to a third phase of the phenomenological movement,
marked by the search for a new approach to the relation between human beings
and world, beyond Husserl and Heidegger. In the search for this approach, Patočka
strongly underlines the relation between body, temporality and sociality.
Central to this new encounter of Patočka and Ricoeur is the discovery of
an idea of inter-human community based on a a-subjective conception of
existence.
Francoise Dastur, Reflexions
sur la "phenomenologie de l'histoire" de Patočka
Abstract: This paper is
dedicated to the analysis of some important points of Patočka's Heretical
Essays on the Philosophy of History in order to question his major thesis
of the common origin of philosophy, politics and history shared by Hannah
Arendt and based on Husserl's and Heidegger's phenomenological conception of
the Greek beginning. It tries to show the complexity of Patočka's conception
of Europe, which on one side can be understood as falling into Eurocentrism,
but on the other side brings to light the dark face of modern European nihilism
and planetary domination and tries to find a remedy for it by appealing to a
philosophical conversion leading to the recognition of the diversity of human
culture.
Renaud Barbaras, L'unite
originaire de la perception et du langage chez Jan Patočka
Abstract: This article
explores some indications in the texts of Patočka that point towards a concept
of language which no longer takes it to be a derived layer of an original
perceptive basis: he disassociates intuition from origin, and establishes a
co-origin of language and perception. It is this co-origin whose meaning and
limits this article seeks to determine.
James Mensch, The a priori of
the Visible: Patočka and Merleau-Ponty
Abstract: Jan Patočka
and Maurice Merleau-Ponty attempted to get beyond Husserl by focusing on
manifestation or visibility as such. Yet, the results these philosophers come
to are very different - particularly with regard to the a priori of the
visible. Are there, as Patočka believed, aspects of being that can be
grasped in their entirety, the aspects, namely, that involve its
"self-showing"? Or must we say, with Merleau-Ponty, that being can only show
itself in finite perspectives that can never be summed to a whole? At stake in
their attempts to speak of appearing as appearing is, I propose to show,
nothing less than the question of the finitude of being.
Lorenzo Altieri, A meme les
"choses memes": La jonction de sentir et mouvement dans la phenomenologie de
Jan Patočka
Abstract: In this paper I
would like to reconstruct Patočka's effort to give a faithful account of
the phenomena, without betraying these phenomena with an objectivistic theory
of perception. Only by remaining close to the things themselves will we be able
to understand them as an appeal, as a call, while understanding ourselves as a
response to this call. On the basis of this "ontological rehabilitation of the
sensible", which reveals Patočka's affinity with Merleau-Ponty as much as
his departure from Husserl, I will criticize the idealism of Husserlian
phenomenology and reconsider the a priori of correlation in a different
fashion. World and subject will then find a different articulation, grounded in
the ontological couple of movement and feeling. The analysis will consist of
three parts: in the first part I will introduce the problematic of the
opposition between phenomenological and physical space; the second part will
deal with the notion of movement; the third part will concentrate on Patočka's
new account of subjectivity, the a-subjective cogito, arising precisely from
the fundamental coupling of kinesis and pathos. Embodiment, qua
original phenomenon, will be constantly present in the background of this
analysis.
Ana Cecilia Santos, Die Lehre
des Erscheinens bei Jan Patočka: Drei Probleme
Abstract: In this article
the author attempts to establish whether we can find a "theory of appearance"
in the philosophy of Jan Patočka. The "appearance" for Patočka is
basically composed of two elements. First there is a "primeval movement" which
accounts for an infinite possibility of phenomena. The second element is the
relation of this movement with an "addressee", the subjectivity. If we begin to
analyse the unity of these two elements we fundamentally come across three
problems: what is it that appears, when appearance presupposes a certain
totality of appearance; how does this total appearance come forth; and,
finally, is this whole "structure of appearance" taken as a free movement, kept
once and for all within the boundaries of phenomenology, which is founded on a
precise and positive term of "appearance" - or do we have to stipulate a
special "experience" as the starting point of a phenomenology, which
accepts the abyssal impossibility to control its frame?
Alessandra Pantano, Vers les
moments de l'apparaitre
Abstract: The main theme
of this article is the phenomenality. Jan Patočka's asubjective
phenomenology distinguishes itself by the description of the plan of
phenomenality, where beings can appear and that is independent from everything
which appears in it. Only by an universalization of the phenomenological
epoche, it is possible to turn our eyes towards the phenomenality itself and to
understand its independence. To put the theme of the world and the
consciousness between brackets means to discover the structure of the
phenomenality, which is constituted by what appears, to which something
appears and the way of appearance. The world is the transcendental field
of appearance. Everything appears in the world. It is the whole, always given
and opened to the human being. The subjectivity is a moment of phenomenality
that presupposes the relation with the world. It has a role that makes it an
"existence". It is that to which something appears. Finally the way of
appearance: the characters of the phenomenality are "objective mediators".
Mediators because they show the strings that build up the field of appearance,
objective because wordly. What they show, even if in the darkness of the
absence, is the relation with the world.
Darian Meacham, The Body at the
Front: Corporeity and Community in Jan Patočka's Heretical Essays in the
Philosophy of History
Abstract: This paper
investigates the relation in Patočka's thought between the concepts of the
"front" and the "solidarity of the shaken", which we find in the Heretical
Essays in the Philosophy of History, particularly the sixth essay, "Wars of
the Twentieth Century and The Twentieth Century as War", and the phenomenological
analysis of corporeity that we find in Patočka's work from the late
sixties, namely, "The Natural World and Phenomenology" (1967). We argue for a
reading of the "front" and the "solidarity of the shaken" that emphasizes the
importance of the body and intercorporeity. Based on this we argue for an
interpretation of Patočka's "absolute" as life's transcendence of itself.
Peter Trawny, Die Moderne als
Weltkrieg: Der Krieg bei Heidegger und Patočka
Abstract: In the article
"The Modern Age as World War" Heidegger's and Patočka's considerations of
the First and the Second World War are interpreted as a reflection on the
modern age. The historical background of this reflection goes back through an
important influence of Ernst Juenger to Heraclitus' thought of an all-ruling polemos,
which brings forth the close affinity between Heidegger and Patočka. Here
it is unavoidable to pay heed to the question, whether war that is understood
on the basis of the Heraclitean polemos is a historical (geschichtliches)
event or not. Besides this, Heidegger's and Patočka's philosophical
approaches to the world war are set back in the context of their thoughts,
which we can find by Hobbes, Kant, Hegel, or Clausewitz. In the end, we argue
that Heidegger's and Patočka's thinking of war is a contribution to the
almost refused self-knowledge of the modern age itself.
Marc Crepon, La guerre
continue: Note sur le sens du monde et la pensee de la mort
Abstract: "The Continuous
War: note on the sense of the world and the thought of death" is a free
commentary on the last chapter of Heretical Essays, "Wars of the
Twentieth Century". It takes as a guiding thread a reflection on the reasons
for which, as Patočka suggests, "even in peace, war continues". It finds
these reasons both in the way in which we are bound to the fear of death, and
in the sense of the world determined by that bind. It poses the question as to
the extent to which this calls for another meaning of the world.
Lubica Učnik, Patočka on
Techno-Science and Responsibility
Abstract: Starting from Patočka's
understanding of history as a reflective confrontation with the "shaken
present", I will examine his understanding of human responsibility. For Patočka,
human responsibility is impossible to think if the basis of our
investigation is couched in the formalised scientific explanation. To think
about human responsibility is to recognise that our lives are not something in
the world, unchanging and open to investigation by formalised knowledge as a
tree or rocks are. We must be responsible for the way we live. In that sense,
science is incapable to account for the meaning of life. However, this
does not mean that to speak of the meaning of life is meaningless. The life one
leads is an achievement. What kind of an achievement it is depends on the way
we understand the world and our place in it, who we want to be.
Emilie Tardivel, La
Subjectivite dissidente: etude sur Patočka
Abstract: Patočka
has never developed the political and historical concept of dissidence. But
trying to sketch its phenomenological foundation in the writings of the Czech
philosopher, who experienced human liberty as an act of dissidence, could be an
original way in qualifying his alternative idea of the modern subjectivity in
phenomenology: between finitude and autonomy. The first part of the article
presents the radical criticism aimed by Patočka to the transcendental
subjectivism of Husserl, and thinks the requirement of a split between
autofoundation and autonomy. Then, it is analysed the articulation between the
movement of life and the movement of existence, in which lies the very idea of
dissidence. In a third and final part, one shows to what extent the dissident
subjectivity fully reveals itself in the political life.
Eric Manton, Patočka on Ideology
and the Politics of Human Freedom
Abstract: This essay
examines Patočka's reflections on the ideological battles in the middle of
the 20th century and the nature of ideology as such. Drawing on Patočka's
texts from around the time of the Second World War and the Communist takeover
in Czechoslovakia, the essay describes Patočka's analysis of the main
philosophical schools of the age, how they conceive of Man, and how they seek
to use Man for their own purposes. The essay shows how this external
materialization of Man dehumanizes and thus abuses. Only an idea respecting
human freedom will do justice to the human experience. Lastly the author
reflects on whether Patočka's analysis of the human situation 60 years ago
under various types of totalitarianism is still relevant today.
Kwok-Ying Lau, Jan Patočka:
Critical Consciousness and Non-Eurocentric Philosopher of the Phenomenological
Movement
Abstract: By his critical
reflections on the crisis of modern civilization, Jan Patočka,
phenomenologist of the Other Europe, incarnates the critical consciousness of
the phenomenological movement. He was in fact one of the first European
philosophers to have emphasized the necessity of abandoning the hitherto
Eurocentric propositions of solution to the crisis when he explicitly raised
the problems of a "Post-European humanity". In advocating an understanding of
the history of European humanity different from those of Husserl and Heidegger,
Patočka directs his philosophical reflections back to sketch a more
profound phenomenology of the natural world insufficiently thematized in
Husserl and absent in Heidegger's Sein und Zeit. By virtue of its
emphasis on the structural characteristics of movement, of praxis, and of the
disclosure of the abyssal nature of human existence and of the original
nothingness as the (non-)foundation of the phenomenal world, Patočka's
phenomenology of the natural world constitutes an opening towards the reception
of Others and other cultures, in particular that of Chinese Taoist philosophy.
Ivan Blecha, Nietzsche in der
tschechischen Phaenomenologie. Patočka und die Frage nach dem Sinn
Abstract: This paper
attempts to compare the positions of Jan Patočka and Pavel Kouba
concerning Friedrich Nietzsche and thus to show the role of his philosophy in
the Czech phenomenology. The difference between Patočka and Kouba is that Patočka
(in a similar way as Heidegger) understands Nietzsche still as a representative
of traditional metaphysics (although brought to the utmost frontier), whereas
Kouba succeeds to incorporate Nietzsche in the corpus of phenomenological thought
and adopt his basic ideas for the specific understanding of the world and of
the position of Man in the world. In Kouba's concept, Nietzsche is not just a
figure from the history of philosophy, but an interesting focus around which
phenomenological self-reflection can gravitate.
TRANSLATING BEITRAEGE INTO
ENGLISH: A DEBATE
Frank Schalow, Locating the Place of
Translation
Abstract: This paper
argues that Theodore Kisiel, in his article published in Studia
Phænomenologica, vol. 5 (2005), pp. 277-285, completely overlooks the
"hermeneutic principles" involved in translating philosophical texts when he
arbitrarily denounces Parvis Emad's and Kenneth Maly's translation of Beitraege
zur Philosophie (Vom Ereignis). By locating the distinctive place that
translation occupies, this paper argues that the kind of "neologisms" which
Emad and Maly employ are not only acceptable, but necessary, insofar as the
translation of such an extraordinary work as the Beitraege tests the
limits of language where the word emerges from silence.
Thomas Kalary, Some Unaddressed
Hermeneutic Issues in Kisiel's "Review and Overview of Recent Heidegger
Translations"
Abstract: In his appraisal
of the English translation of the Beitraege by Emad and Maly, Kisiel
has not addressed some key issues concerning the translation of this seminal
work of being-historical thinking. Emad and Maly have in their "Translators'
Foreword" highlighted a number of hermeneutic issues and challenges which had
to be addressed while translating this work. If Kisiel were to be really
reviewing the quality of this translation, he would have had to address first
the question whether those issues highlighted by the translators are real
issues that are to be considered by any translator. If they are real issues and
if Kisiel is unhappy with the way the translators have dealt with them, he
should have proposed better alternatives, instead of summarily and
contemptuously dismissing the "Translator's Foreword" itself. Literary
criticism is surely an invitation to present another point of view, but never a
means for expressing contempt.
Theodore Kisiel, In Response to my
Overwrought Critics
Abstract: This response
defends the relevance and indeed the necessity of the "grassroots archival perspective"
in exposing the errors of transcription, omission, dating, etc. in the "German
originals", recording the erratic history of the Heidegger-Gesamtausgabe and
its largely posthumous editorial principles, and tracing the genealogy and
development of Heidegger's shifting conceptual constellations. Further
suggestions are made toward improving the readability of the forthcoming new
English translation of the Beitraege. A thoroughgoing grammatology of
be-ing is offered as a more adequate "alternative" to the verbally superficial
framework propounded by the Translators' Foreword of the Contributions.
BOOK REVIEWS
Rolf Kuehn, Innere Gewissheit und
lebendiges Selbst. Grundzuege der Lebens-phaenomenologie (Gabrielle
Dufour-Kowalska); John Wrae Stanley, Die gebrochene Tradition. Zur
Genese der philosophischen Hermeneutik Hans-Georg Gadamers (Radegundis
Stolze); Gisbert Hoffmann, Heideggers Phaenomenologie. Bewusstsein -
Reflexion - Selbst (Ich) und Zeit im Fruehwerk (Antonio Cimino); Dean
Komel (Hg.), Kunst und Sein. Beitraege zur Phaenomenologischen aesthetik und
Aletheiologie (Mădălina Diaconu)
Jan Patocka and the European Heritage
