Lubica Ucnik

In this paper, I will discuss the neoliberal construction of the subject as an entrepreneurial self, based on the economic notion of ‘human capital’. I will argue that this framing of the self is a fiction that has become accepted as everyday reality: this reduces the political space to that of the marketplace, the state to a corporation, and education to a vocational training ground, producing compliant subjects for a risk-driven present defined by corporate logic. I will revisit Jan Patočka’s paper on ‘Super-civilisation’ to offer a possible understanding of this new configuration of society. Patočka’s consideration of the changes to modern society is an extension of his concern with the ‘responsibility of the subject.’ I will sketch his argument in opposition to the notion of ‘responsibilisation’ of the neoliberal subject, which is the outcome of the changes I have outlined above. The neoliberal subject is configured on the entrepreneurial model, whereby the social and political become reduced to the personal risk of the ‘responsibilised’ neoliberal subject.

In this paper, I will briefty sketch Arendt's phenomenological analysis of the human condition defined by her early stress on the vita activa, as well as her later, vita contemplativa, in order to suggest that her project is problematic. At the heart of Arendt's project is the problem of time: the time in her analysis of thinking as nunc stans of the vita contemplativa as well as the historical time in her analysis of the vita activa. I will argue that the problematic nature of her analyses follows from her appropriation of Heidegger's phenomenological project without also accepting Husserl's analyses of inner time consciousness that Heidegger presupposes. To conclude, I will briefty point towards Patocka's project to show a different way to address human existence.

In this paper I reflect on the meaning constitution in phenomenology and Jan Patočka’s attempt to reconcile two different phenomenologies by proposing that neither Husserl nor Heidegger succeeded in harvesting the biggest discovery that phenomenology offers: the investigation of appearance as such. As Patočka notes, Husserl begins his investigations of meaning by showing the problematic nature of modern theories of knowledge and ends with a reflection on the life - world. For Husserl, the problem of epistemology is how to explain the connection between our thinking and the world. In the end, the space of meaning - constitution is in the immanence of the transcendental ego . Heidegger rejects the consciousness as the ground of meaning, but he also rejects the privileging of objects based on the model of mathematical modern science. In a reaction against Cartesian presuppositions of Husserl’s investigations, he posits the world as the ground from where the ontological inquiry must begin. The world is the space where we let beings be as they are and what they are. This relatedness between Dasein and beings is the meaning - constituting horizon. In opposition to both, Patočka claims that they forget the most important discovery of Husserl’s phenomenology, the appearance – manifestation – as such and concentrate on something already manifested