ABSTRACT The article reconstructs the cosmological notion of world and the theory of the three movements of human existence in Patočka’s thought. The reconstruction explains the essential unity between world and existence. It grounds this unity, firstly, on the structural features which are common both to the movement of the world and the third movement that consummates existence, and, secondly, on the fact that this consummated existence signifies, in an analogous manner, the cosmic significance of heaven and earth. Finally, as (...) a problem in Patočka’s phenomenology, it shows the absence of a cosmological ethics that should consider not only the movement of realization of life, but also the movement of derealization that the cosmos is. (shrink)