This essay takes up the claim made recently by Simon Critchley in The Companion to Continental Philosophy that a feature common to many philosophers in the Continental tradition is the utopian demand that things be otherwise. The general question I pursue has to do with whether or not such a claim includes movements within Continental philosophy that do not self-identify with the utopian (like critical theory). The particular question has to do with whether or not the movement of phenomenology is (...) utopian or does it, because of its other commitments, view the utopian as the antithesis to its orientation, which makes that claim that phenomenology is utopian seem strange. My thesis is that phenomenology can be seen as a utopian tradition but that some account must be given that demonstrates this connection to the utopian. In particular, I argue that Maurice Merleau-Ponty''s phenomenology provides an understanding of the utopian, which I call a non-conventional view, that is vastly different from the one assumed by most when they see or hear the word utopian, which I label conventional. I show that such a non-conventional understanding can be developed in a way that neither requires us to view the utopian solely as opposed to finitude and contingency, nor a form of thought and action from which we necessarily need to dissociate ourselves. It is this non-conventional view of the utopian that in the end enables us to understand how Continental philosophy in general and phenomenology in particular are important bearers of the utopian demand that things be otherwise. (shrink)

By elaborating upon pivotal twentieth-century studies in language, representation, and subjectivity, Being Made Strange reorients the study of rhetoric according to the discursive formation of subjectivity. The author develops a theory of how rhetorical practices establish social, political, and ethical relations between self and other, individual and collectivity, good and evil, and past and present. He produces a novel methodology that analyzes not only what an individual says, but also the social, political, and ethical conditions that enable him or her (...) to do so. This book also offers valuable ethical and political insights for the study of subjectivity in philosophy, cultural studies, and critical theory. (shrink)

In his two works from the 1970s, Patočka proposes a very personal way that the spiritual crisis, which manifests itself as a techno-scientific reality of Gestell, can be overcome. Patočka argues that the only way to escape spiritual decline is through sacrifice. This study examines how the ethical is represented in Patočka’s philosophy. It focuses on his two main concepts of sacrifice and care for the soul and explores the relationship between them. Through a close reading of Plato and Europe, (...) ‘Four Seminars’, and his essay ‘The dangers of technicization’, this study reveals how Patočka proposes that the ethical can be implemented within the realm of the political. Drawing a parallel between Socrates’ and Patočka’s lives and fates, this study points to the significance of ethics in political life – both in the ancient Greek polis of Socrates’ time and in communist Czechoslovakia in Patočka’s time. This approach highlights the influence that the philosophy of Socrates had on Patočka’s thinking. (shrink)