Lubica Ucnik

In the Middle Ages, the struggle between Platonists and Aristotelians ends with the defeat of both these doctrines in favor of modern science. Kant is the first to realize the problem for human meaning and responsibility in a universe perceived as a fine-tuned machine without purpose, aim or values. His attempt is to rethink a rational theology, thereby saving theology as well as natural science. Kant's endeavour to account for human meaning in a physical world strippeed of all sense is countered by Dostoevsky: Ivan Karamazov rebels against utilitarian reasoning, leading ultimately to his madness; whilst Nicolai Stavrogin's struggle between the incompatible call of about scientific reasoning and human existence? Jan Patocka's heretical history of European reason and science is an answer to Kant and Dostoevsky and their attempts to rethink human responsibility in a world where objective reasoning relegates human experience to the margins of knowledge.

In this paper, I will very schematically claim that Jan Patocka's questioning of our Western philosophical tradition can be understood as a venture to rethink the notion of 'subjectivity' by taking subjectivity seriously. 1 In our modem age, to rethink subjectivity is imperative if, indeed, we want to genuinely address the finite nature of our human existence. Our subjectivity is the foundation for our acting in the world, which has moral and political implications. We are not pure thinking: the Kantian 'I' or the Husserlian 'transcendental ego.' We are the centre of our acting. We live in the world. Only in relation to our bodily presence do things reveal themselves as near and far, up and down.2

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...

In this paper, I call attention to certain themes that are present in Patočka ’s PhD dissertation of 1931, The Concept of Evidence and its Significance for Knowledge [Pojem Evidence a Jeho Význam pro Noetiku]; in which he outlines a historical account of the concept of evidence by considering the methodology of modern science based on modern epistemology as inaugurated by René Descartes . For Patočka , Husserl does not offer a finished philosophy but rather provides the best possible philosophical attempt so far at answering the question of evidence inherited from modern epistemology . I argue that certain concerns that are present in his PhD dissertation never leave Patočka ’s thinking. In Patočka ’s view, we need to rethink phenomenology, not abandon it.

Self-responsibility and self-critique have been themes in philosophy since Plato ’s Socrates endorsed the demand to ‘know thyself’ [γvωθι σαυτοv]. In the modern philosophical tradition, self-critical reason, a reason that gives the law to itself, has been at the very centre of the practice of both epistemology and ethics . In the twentieth century, the European phenomenological philosophers Edmund Husserl and Jan Patočka brought new clarity and a sense of urgency to the critical thinking surrounding the need for responsibility . Using Husserl ’s and Patočka ’s thinking as the starting point for a critical reflection, this volume proposes different approaches to reflect upon the increasing formalisation of all aspects of our lives, which is particularly relevant for the present age.

In this paper we present Patočka ’s discussion and critique of the transformation of ‘the world’ into ‘nature’. Patočka takes up the history of ideas from the Ancient Greeks to the present, to show how our understanding of nature changed from the mythical world of the Ancient Greeks to modern mathematised nature; whereby we simply accept a description of nature as nature itself. In Patočka ’s account, the importance of Galileo ’s mathematisation of movement is central.

The Czech philosopher Jan Patočka, one of Edmund Husserl’s last students, is not widely known among Anglo-American philosophers. If known at all, he is mostly regarded as an expositor of Husserl. In 1995, the publication of the English translation of Jacques Derrida’s book Gift of Death brought Patočka a broader philosophical audience. Nonetheless, the idiosyncrasy of Derrida’s commentary has masked the true nature and importance of Patočka’s philosophy. In this paper, I present a reading of Patočka’s work dealing with the existential crisis of today’s society. For Patočka, this crisis and the recurrence of wars disguised as peace are two sides of the same problem. They are the outcome of nature’s transformation into a standing reserve of energy for humans to use as they see fit. Stripped of unpredictable and contingent elements, nature becomes a formal system written in mathematical symbols that can be potentially understood by anyone, anywhere, at any time. However, if the book of nature is written, as Galileo believed, in the characters of geometry, the idea of responsibility for nature as that in which we live becomes unclear. How are we to reflect on responsibility for triangles and circles? To think nature in such a way seems to absolve humans from any responsibility for it. Yet not everything in the world is open to such calculative transformation. For Patočka, the phenomenon of the sacrificial victim and our own death are examples of the impossibility of calculus and, hence, of prediction which is the sine qua non of modern scientific knowledge. Patočka’s exposition offers a way to confront understanding based on calculus alone. The phenomenon of sacrifice can initiate a challenge to our techno-scientific understanding of the world by showing the futility of attempts to simply use objective — i.e., formal — knowledge to account for the world we live in: the natural world.

In order to show a different understanding of what it means to be human, in this paper, I will present Jan Patočka's discussion of human existence. For Patočka, human existence is essentially historical and situational. His reflections proceed from Martin Heidegger's explanation of the structure of human existence in Sein und Zeit, which Heidegger calls Da-Sein. According to Patočka, Heidegger's exposition is predicated on a negative human relation to the world; we are originally inauthentic. Yet he forgets to take into account that Da-Sein is a doublet: animal rationale. Patočka appropriates Arendt's phenomenological account of the human condition in order to critique Heidegger's account of Da-sein in Being and Time to develop his own understanding of human existence.