Lubica Ucnik

Our experience of the present is defined by numbers, graphs and, increasingly, an algorithmically calculated future, based on the mathematical and formal reasoning that began with the rise of modern science in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Today, this reasoning is further modified and extended in the form of computer-executed, algorithmic reasoning. Instead of fallible human reasoning, algorithms—based on mining databases for ‘information’—are seen to provide more efficient processes, offering fast solutions. In this paper, then, I will follow Jan Patočka, who suggests that we live in an age of supercivilisation, one in which human reasoning has become self-sufficient, ceasing to depend on the supernatural or cultural traditions that previously guided human lives. My argument is that Patočka’s analysis of supercivilisation can open up a different way to reflect on the ‘spiritual foundation of our times’. As Patočka says, to reflect on our situation does not mean that we can change it, but reflection can give us a new understanding that will open up different ways to think about our human future.

In this paper, I will argue that Patočka’s decision to become a signatory and one of the spokesperson of Charter 77 was both deeply informed, and in fact necessitated, by his whole philosophical understanding. I will suggest that the importance of Patočka’s contribution to Charter 77 goes beyond the original aim of the declaration, pointing to the broader significance of the moral and political crisis in a society reduced to the sphere of instrumental rationality. For Patočka, to think about humans and their existence in the world is irreducible to instrumental rationality...

Over the last 30 years, we have witnessed the impact of “neoliberalism” – a peculiar form of reason that configures all aspect of existence in economic terms – that has contributed to the redefinition of the role of university academics. Rather than being facilitators of knowledge, reflection and critical engagement with ideas, academics have instead become part of a system that has increasingly privileged economic considerations over curriculum. Academic work has been transformed into economically calculable “outputs”, which are forever changing. Academics and students are reconfigured on the model of “human capital” that they must perpetually improve in order to be ready for the next change of rules. Education becomes redefined as “training” for future economic entrepreneurs learning to pursue unattainable economic goals. To reflect on these changes, we will also consider the Enlightenment idea of education. We conclude that the logic of neoliberal governance cannot be confronted on its own ground, since, in this model, institutions are “hollowed-out” – maintaining the shell but emptying the substantive content in order to reconfigure the whole in economic terms. We must return to the task of critically and historically assessing the logic of neoliberalism by shifting the ground of the inquiry, combined with a resistance to the neoliberal reckoning by arguing that it is not the only way to reason – there is an alternative.

In this paper, I propose to return to Jan Patočka's question from 1970 and ask again what the spiritual foundations of life are in our times, to reflect on the changes in modern societies after the turn to what we now call neoliberalism. My claim is that Patočka's analyses concerning the turn to scientific rationality is now a defining feature of our times that 'colours' the whole of our understanding. According to Patočka, these changes started with the turn to modern science in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, slowly changing our thinking, framing it through the ideas of formalisation and subjectivity that we simply and unquestioningly accept. I will extend Patočka's analysis of 'rational Supercivilisation' to argue that its 'radical' version now defines our present. The outcome is the privileging of formalised rationality that undermines other forms of reasoning, whereby human 'subjective' meaning becomes homeless.

In this paper, I will use Jan Patočka’s last written essay, ‘Notes on Masaryk’s Theological Philosophy’, to reflect on Dostoevsky’s novel, The Brothers Karamazov. According to Patočka, in this novel, Dostoevsky offers an answer to Kant and his notion of immortality as a feature of practical reason only. Kant’s intervention in modern philosophy is well known. It is much less discussed that his influence was to reformulate not only metaphysics, but also theology. Dostoevsky takes up the challenge of the Kantian solution and plays it out in his novels. His critique of science and utilitarian morality and his treatment of children, immortality and love will be the focus of this paper. I will suggest that the problem of a duality between rationality and divinity limits Dostoevsky’s critique of Kant.

In this paper I engage with Jan Patočka's phenomenological reading of myth and tragedy as a way to consider human existence in our modern world. I suggest that Patočka's writing on myth and tragedy is relevant in arguing against the reductive tendencies of current scientific and technological thinking, which eliminate questions pertaining to the consideration of human experience and “humanity.” The scientific examination of human life cannot account for our own lived lives. In contrast, Greek tragedy can give us access to the drama of other lives and lead us to reflect upon our own.

In order to get out of present day discussions between (for example) determinism and free will, creationism and evolution, bios and zoe, human existence and biological life – those dead end binaries of our present day thinking into which we have manoeuvred ourselves – we need to revisit the Ancient discussions relating to the care of the soul and human existence. I will draw together these two themes from Jan Patocka’s writings by anchoring them in his account of Socrates who was the first to emphasise the idea of human responsibility not only for thinking but also for human acting in the world. I will argue that the significant common feature – the care for our own being, our existence – brings Patocka’s reflections on the care for the soul and care for our human existence together. While, according to Patocka, the notion of the care for the soul was displaced from the philosophical reflection by the modern scientific venture, the idea of human existence is, although problematic from the scientific point of view, still a part of our experience.

Para librarnos de discusiones contemporáneas entre (por ejemplo) determinismo y libre albedrío, creacionismo y evolución, bios y zoe, existencia humana y vida biológica, estos binomios, callejones de salida del pensamiento de hoy en los que nos hemos metido, tenemos que volver a escuchar las discusiones de la Antigüedad sobre el cuidado del alma y la existencia humana. Voy a recuperar estos dos temas de escritos de Jan Patocka, anclándolos en su interpretación de Sócrates, el primero en poner énfasis en la idea de responsabilidad humana no solo de su pensamiento sino también de su actuar en el mundo. Argumentaré que el significativo rasgo común, esto es, el cuidado por nuestro propio ser, nuestra existencia, es lo que une las reflexiones de Patocka sobre el cuidado del alma y el cuidado de la exitencia humana. Mientras que, según Patocka, la noción del cuidado del alma ha sido desplazada de la reflexión filosófica por la empresa científica moderna, la idea de la existencia humana, a pesar de lo problemático que puede resultar desde un punto de vista científico, todavía forma parte de nuestra experiencia.

In this paper, I propose to revisit Husserl's and Patoèka's notions of the lifeworld to reflect on the world we live in, as opposed to the 'scientific' descriptions which we so commonly take to be the 'correct' way of knowing the world. We need to consider the history of ideas to see how our present-day language in the life-world is saturated by the formalised language of sciences. By revisiting Husserl's and Patoèka's debate we can consider anew the path that both thinkers sketched.