The aim of the present essay is to contribute to a phenomenological concept of Europe, taking as its starting point the idea of Europe developed by Jan Patŏcka as “Post-Europe.” Following the phenomenological account of self-transformation as the infinite task and eternal care for the soul, the essay discusses critically the phenomenological account of the self-differentiation of identity, which in turn introduces Hölderlin’s and Heidegger’s respective conceptions of “becoming in dissolution” to this discussion. It shows that the dialectic of identity (...) and difference is inadequate to conceive the philosophical question of contemporary Europe. Instead it insists that Europe is an “intervocal” rather than an equi-vocal concept. The essay proposes the concept of “intervocity [Zwischendeutigkeit]” and an open “in-betweeness” as key to an understanding of Europe as a philosophical task. (shrink)

My paper aims at laying out the main tenets of Patočka’s unusual and highly provocative position with regard to the question of history, drawing essentially on his Heretical Essays on the Philosophy of History, while also gathering insights from other works such as Eternity and Historicity and Europe and post-Europe. In the first part, I set in place the overall framework of this analysis, and show that three distinct, yet entwined concepts of history are operative in Patočka’s work: the understanding (...) of history as a specific regime of meaning, as an existential possibility of the human Dasein, and as a “epochal” dynamic. In the second part, I reconstruct the criticism Patočka mounts against the classical philosophies of history and indicate that his rejection of a teleological account of history is compatible with the attempt of establishing an intrinsic correlation between meaning and history. In the final part, I stress the importance acquired by the experience of the “shattering of meaning” for Patočka’s threefold understanding of history and argue for the possibility of crafting a unitary framework which would encompass his analysis. (shrink)

This essay explores the practical significance of Michel Henry’s “material phenomenology.” Commencing with an exposition of his most basic philosophical intuition, i.e., his insight that transcendental affectivity is the primordial mode of revelation of our selfhood, the essay then brings to light how this intuition also establishes our relation to both the world and others. Animated by a radical form of the phenomenological reduction, Henry’s material phenomenology brackets the exterior world in a bid to reach the concrete interior transcendental experience (...) at the base of all exteriority. The essay argues that this “counter reduction,” designed as a practical orientation to the world, suspends all traditional parameters of onto(theo)logical individuation in order to rethink subjectivity in terms of its transcendental corporeality, i.e., in terms of the invisible display of “affective flesh.” The development of this “metaphysics of the individual” anchors his “practical philosophy” as he developed it—under shifting accents—throughout his oeuvre. In particular, the essay brings into focus Henry’s reflections on modernity, the industry of mass culture and their “barbaric” movements. The essay briefly puts these cultural and political areas of Henry’s of thinking into contact with his late “theological turn,” i.e., his Christological account of Life and the (inter)subjective self-realization to which it gives rise. (shrink)

El artículo analiza desde una perspectiva fenomenológica y hermenéutica el modo originario de donación del mundo y el origen del mundo en el pensamiento de Jan Patočka posterior a 1965. Primero muestra en qué sentido tanto la donación del mundo como horizonte, cuanto los movimientos de la existencia humana, implican un vínculo esencial entre el modo originario de darse del mundo y la noción de infinito, concebido como lo indefinido e inagotable. Finalmente explicita por qué el vínculo del mundo con (...) lo infinito reposa sobre un impulso creativo divino que constituye el fundamento cosmológico de la religiosidad humana. (shrink)

This article investigates the political potentialities of Jan Patočka’s philosophy. It begins by situating Patočka’s philosophy in the context of the history of Czechoslovakia, and poses the question of whether Patočka’s late Kantianism and involvement with the Charter 77 initiative constitutes the sole political potentiality of his philosophy. It then argues that Patočka’s status as a political thinker is best understood by demarcating his pre-political philosophical core from its possible political applications. By sketching the essence of his philosophy as a (...) conception of ‘ontological wounding’, the article then investigates how this core of his philosophy can be politicized in certain circumstances. Ultimately, it argues that Patočka should not be considered a political thinker per se, but that his philosophy nevertheless has political potentialities. (shrink)

Demokrasi ve kriz deneyiminin üzerine araştırmalar çağdaş siyaset felsefesinin en önemli tartışmalarından birini oluşturur. Eldeki yazı, Husserl’in Avrupa insanlığı krizi meselesini etik ve politik bir boyuta taşıyan Patočka’ın fenomenolojik tarih felsefesi çalışmalarını incelemeye koyulur. Çek filozof ve politik muhalif Jan Patočka’nın, kalkınma ve çöküş, özgürlüğün imkânı ve engellenmesi arasındaki temel etik ilişkiler üzerine en anlaşılır çözümlemelerden birini sunduğuna inanıyoruz. Onun “heretik” polemos kavramı bu bağlamda yeni bir topluluk fikri ortaya koyan “sarsılmışların dayanışması” argümanıyla buluşur.