Search

Socrates’ final argument in the Protagoras is premised on the surprising identification of the pleasant with the good and argues that virtue is the “art of measurement” that can be easily taught to the Many. The view that virtue can be taught is also espoused by Socrates elsewhere, notably in the Phaedrus. However, while the Protagoras identifies virtue with the art of calculating the greatest pleasure, which is identified with the greatest good, in the Phaedrus virtue is shown to consist in the ceaseless search for the good. I argue that the picture of virtue presented in the Protagoras is in agreement with that of the Phaedrus in that the Protagoras depicts the first stage of the process of learning genuine virtue, which is outlined as a whole in the Phaedrus. The argument of the Protagoras then works as a protreptic: it teaches an elementary way of thinking about the ends of one’s actions and opens up the way toward genuine virtue.

The article investigates the intrinsic interconnectedness of European culture with philosophy acting as its self-reflexive pillar, the foundations of which many derive from Plato. It is in the philosophical interpretation of Plato’s work that the author uncovers the analogous structures that represented one of the greatest challenges of the philosophical tradition: the implicit polemical relationship to another, different starting point, that precedes the explicit polemos – a war. The author recalls the influential attempts of European thought in the 20th century that tried to break free from a state of total confrontation. In the 1990s, however, he catches up with the Platonic interpretation, as is demonstrated by the detailed description of the “war of methodologies.” If in the background there is a connection with self-reflection in the process of the self-constitution of philosophy and the selfcomprehension of Europe, then according to the author the “Platonic revolution” is an effort to come to terms with the unprocessed implicit epistemological preformative, war. A possible solution is provided by the author‘s distinction between agon and polemos.

In the concluding part of Heretical Essays in the Philosophy of History, Jan Patočka thematizes the 20th century and claims that this entire period is a century of war. This paper identifies the main arguments supporting this thesis and examines Patočka’s reflections on how this essential character of the 20th century can be overcome. The article primarily focuses on revealing the ontological-anthropological framework that underlies Patočka’s argumentation, including the idea that polemos is the law of the world. More concrete analyses then demonstrate the problematic elements of Patočka’s concept.

Amidst the human tragedy represented by the Russian invasion of Ukraine, the ideological and historical justifications for the conflict as they have been framed by Russian president Vladimir Putin themselves call for a philosophical response and ethical critique. Putin's political theological justification for the war, grounded in the commonalities of language, historical affinity, and ecclesial unity, which he posits constitute Ukraine and Russia as one people and justifies the imposition of Russian imperial authority over the Ukrainian state, is philosophically problematic and ultimately totalitarian. In contrast, the phenomenological philosophies of Edith Stein and Jan Patočka, whose political philosophies were shaped in spiritual resistance to similar ethnic and ideologically driven imperialisms of the twentieth century, offer resources for understanding and critiquing the world-historical interpretations of the meaning of civilization, peoplehood, and national destiny which drive Putin's foreign policy, and which have important ethical and political implications far beyond the Ukraine/Russia conflict. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explores the idea of 'play' as a metaphor to understand the world as an always presupposed frame of all experiences and appearances. A large part of it is devoted to the work of Eugen Fink, who developed a notion of the world as play, as a speculative idea beyond phenomenology. This article argues firstly in favor of such an effort to understand the world as play, as an alternative to onto-theological metaphysics. However, it argues secondly, that a stronger and more convincing concept of play can be found by elaborating on the views of Hans-Georg Gadamer and Jan Patočka. Gadamer discussed 'play' as a metaphor for art, while Patočka worked on the notion of 'world' as a phenomenological idea that serves as a frame for all experiences. A combination of these two ideas may result in a better alternative to both Fink's approach and to traditional onto-theological metaphysics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explores the value and lessons of the late baroque for Dalibor Vesely as an example of the role that it played for many architectural educators in the 1970s and 1980s. It shows the specific roots of Vesely's interpretation of the late baroque in the context of the influence of his mentors, the art historian Vaclav Richter, and the phenomenologist Jan Patočka whose thought positioned the late baroque in relationship to the crisis of modernity. It then shows how Vesely used the late baroque in his studio and seminar teaching in the 1980s at the University of Cambridge school of architecture, not only to develop his students' historical and theoretical critique of modern architecture, but as a model for contemporary design practice, finding in examples of late baroque churches, such as Johann Michael Fischer's renovations of the church at Zwiefalten Abbey (1739–65), an architecture of ambiguity, complexity, sensuality, imagination, and holism that could inspire contemporary architecture. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Martin Koci es quizás uno de los exponentes más recientes de lo que ha sido denominado el “giro teológico” de la fenomenología contemporánea. Koci presenta una lectura desde una teología que recurre a la fenomenología para intentar dar razón de un Cristianismo posterior a la cristiandad. Aunque la referencia a Kierkegaard sea ineludible, Koci alude, sobre todo, a las implicaciones que supone la vivencia del Cristianismo en una época posmoderna. O, dicho más específicamente: una época post-cristiana. Para llevar a cabo su tarea, el teólogo checo establece un diálogo con uno de sus compatriotas más relevantes del siglo pasado: Jan Patočka. En su texto más reciente, Christianity after Christendom: Heretical Perspectives in Philosophical Theology, Koci amplía su diálogo con Patočka haciendo partícipes en la conversación a una serie de filósofos, conocidos todos por sus posturas heterodoxas o “heréticas” en lo que se refiere al Cristianismo. Entre estos se encuentran Jean-Luc Nancy, Gianni Vattimo, John D. Caputo y Richard Kearney. Junto con cada uno de estos autores, Koci asume el reto de hacer “la pregunta obvia, pero que en gran medida ha sido descuidada: ¿qué viene después del fin del Cristianismo?”.

Platonismo negativo es quizás uno de los textos de Jan Patočka que más atención ha recibido en el ámbito académico. Su importancia es pocas veces puesta en duda. Con todo, hoy nos encontramos lejos de agotar las implicaciones que conlleva la interpretación que hace de Platón el filósofo checo. Particularmente, la concepción de la Idea platónica que se deriva de la lectura patočkiana, no parece haber sido suficientemente confrontada con lo dicho por el mismo Platón en sus diálogos. Según el autor, parece existir una afinidad particular entre lo dicho por Diotima en su discurso en el Banquete y la interpretación patočkiana de Platón que, hasta el momento, no parece haber recibido suficiente atención en la literatura académica sobre estos dos autores. De manera similar a lo que plantea Patočka con la experiencia de la libertad como puerta que abre a la consideración de la Idea, Diotima ancla el reconocimiento de lo bello en sí con la experiencia de lo bello en el mundo. Este “anclaje” se daría gracias al camino en ascenso planteado en la scala amoris, en el que eros, siendo amor de lo bello, asume una función integradora en el interior del amante. Justamente, esta función integradora llevada a cabo por eros parece dar razón del vínculo que establece Diotima entre aquello que es bello en sí mismo y la virtud verdadera que el amante engendra al experimentarlo.

Opening up to the world and individual reflective experience are fundamental pillars in the phenomenological approaches of Landgrebe, Fink, and Patočka. In the special case of Landgrebe and his constructive phenomenology, he seeks to address the problems of metaphysics through the clarification of meanings through the phenomenological interpretation of questions of idealism. For Landgrebe, strict knowledge coincides with the absolute, which arises from the possibilities of meaning or sense. The recovery of metaphysics, innate in the human being, requires evaluating the metaphysical origin of the birth of man. In this way, Landgrebe proposes to initiate the phenomenological path by seeking the path to the absolute in the depths of subjectivity. This path leads us to face the intersubjectivity of the world as objective and the primacy of the "you" over the "I". Landgrebe's original metaphysical phenomenology seeks to overcome the dualism between consciousness and being, and between knowledge and belief. The analysis of the intentional structure of the horizon reveals an absolutist concept that goes beyond man and his knowledge, representing both the basis and the link between them. Movement becomes the unique and original connection between subject and world.

Jan Patočka elabora una crítica a la subjetividad absolutizada y cerrada sobre sí misma que constituye para él el núcleo de la crisis, no sólo de la ciencia, sino también de la cultura europea y que la fenomenología de Husserl no logra superar. Para ello, Patočka despliega, de la mano de Platón, la idea del alma abierta, de una subjetividad que no necesita buscar una salida hacia la realidad porque consiste justamente en esta apertura al ser; en primer lugar, al ser propio, que está siempre frente a la posibilidad de salir de sí y elevarse hacia horizontes que la trasciendan o de perderse en la caída de la clausura narcisista sobre sí misma. Esta idea de una racionalidad sustentada no en la subjetividad absoluta de la modernidad, sino en una constitutiva apertura al ser, que Patočka rastrea hasta los orígenes del pensamiento griego y, por tanto, en la raíz de la tradición occidental, es para él la clave de una comprensión de la existencia como cuidado del alma, que tiene profundas implicaciones éticas y políticas para el contexto presente

Jan Patočka elabora una crítica a la subjetividad absolutizada y cerrada sobre sí misma que constituye para él el núcleo de la crisis, no sólo de la ciencia, sino también de la cultura europea y que la fenomenología de Husserl no logra superar. Para ello, Patočka despliega, de la mano de Platón, la idea del alma abierta, de una subjetividad que no necesita buscar una salida hacia la realidad porque consiste justamente en esta apertura al ser; en primer lugar, al ser propio, que está siempre frente a la posibilidad de salir de sí y elevarse hacia horizontes que la trasciendan o de perderse en la caída de la clausura narcisista sobre sí misma. Esta idea de una racionalidad sustentada no en la subjetividad absoluta de la modernidad, sino en una constitutiva apertura al ser, que Patočka rastrea hasta los orígenes del pensamiento griego y, por tanto, en la raíz de la tradición occidental, es para él la clave de una comprensión de la existencia como cuidado del alma, que tiene profundas implicaciones éticas y políticas para el contexto presente.

Should we approach the lived experience and/or understand the other with the sense of things? If this is the case, how are we to treat the human experience par excellence? Paradoxically, Edith Stein gives a fresh meaning to the Husserlian term “leibliche Selbstgegebenheit.” In contrast to Max Scheler’s account, she develops the “persönliche Note” criterion of authenticity. And against Maetin Heidegger’s existential philosophy, a concern for human existence itself resonates. Based on these three dimensions, this article discusses the idea of “the lived experience” according to Edith Stein, that is, the human experience contemplated by the humanities.

In this study, the author investigates, analyzes and evaluates the philosophically and politically important, interactive role played by criticism in forming and maintaining the concept of a democratic republic, and which played a fundamental role in the philosophical and political works of T. G. Masaryk, Emanuel Rádl, Jan Patočka, Ladislav Hejdánek and Erazim Kohák. The study first describes Masaryk’s concept of a democratic republic, which originated in his philosophical, social and political criticism of the time, and then continues with Rádl’s criticism of nationalism, also linked to Masaryk; Patočka’s criticism of Masaryk’s and Rádl’s philosophy and politics; and Hejdánek’s and Kohák’s criticism of Patočka’s criticism. Philosophical criticism played an irreplaceable role both in the initial sustaining of Masaryk’s and Rádl’s concept of a democratic republic and in its renewal and modernization. In the conclusion, the critical discourse of the authors discussed in the study is summarized.

Socrates' final argument in the Protagoras is premised on the surprising identification of the pleasant with the good and argues that virtue is the "art of measurement" that can be easily taught to the Many. The view that virtue can be taught is also espoused by Socrates elsewhere, notably in the Phaedrus. However, while the Protagoras identifies virtue with the art of calculating the greatest pleasure, which is identified with the greatest good, in the Phaedrus virtue is shown to consist in the ceaseless search for the good. I argue that the picture of virtue presented in the Protagoras is in agreement with that of the Phaedrus in that the Protagoras depicts the first stage of the process of learning genuine virtue, which is outlined as a whole in the Phaedrus. The argument of the Protagoras then works as a protreptic: it teaches an elementary way of thinking about the ends of one's actions and opens up the way toward genuine virtue. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The aim of this article is to demonstrate that even if Popper's and Patočka's interpretations of Plato originate in philosophical and intellectual traditions that have nothing or very little to do with each other, they share a common target, that is, modern biopower, which culminated in twentieth-century totalitarianism. If we examine Popper's and Patočka's interpretations of Plato from a biopolitical angle, it is possible to view them in a new light, that is, as two different, even opposing, intellectual and philosophical approaches to the very same tragic events that European culture and politics experienced in the twentieth century. Despite the radically divergent results of their readings, Popper and Patočka share a starting point, that is, the effort to outline a genealogy of European cultural and intellectual history in the light of Plato. The first section of this article explains why and to what extent Popper's and Patočka's interpretations can be considered genealogical readings. The second section elaborates on their different approaches to the relationship between justice and power in Plato. The third section concentrates on the relationship between Plato and twentieth-century biopower. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article addresses the theme of spectrality, the givenness of the other who remains here after departure as a ghost. It explores how this spectrality functions in Plato’s funeral oratory in the Menexenus dialogue. In the first part, the article discusses J. Patočka’s account of the specific givenness of the departed, which is experienced as a privation of a former intersubjectively intertwined life. The deceased other causes a twofold crisis. On the one hand, with the death of the other also comes the withering of part of myself, for I am unable to realise possibilities dependent on his or her presence. On the other hand, the meaning of the other’s project, which becomes institutionalised through participation in the events and re-formation of the world, is endangered if no one is willing to take on and realise this meaning as one’s own. The second part of the article discusses how Socrates’ oratory addresses this crisis through specific temporality of the speech, one in which the past provides the present with a paradigm for appropriate civic action which is to be imitated in the future. In this context, he creatively uses the concept of shame to induce an attitude of responsibility for the polis, whose greatness is grounded in the virtuous deeds of spectrally present ancestry.

The study presented here focuses on the transformation in the 1940s and 1950s of Jan Patočka’s interpretation of the relationship between Socrates and Plato. This shift is tracked in the context of Patočka’s dialogue with the philosophy of existence. While in the lectures from the 1940s and the climactic work from this period, Věčnost a dějinnost (Eternity and Historicity), Socrates – with his emphasis on subjectivity, human freedom and incompleteness – is seen in Patočka’s conception to be close to the main motifs of the philosophy of existence, in Negativní platonismus (Negative Platonism) Patočka’s position is already far from such an “existential Socraticism.” The text of the study shows that Patočka’s critical reception of the philosophy of existence is one of the historically important motives in the transformation of Patočka’s position between Eternity and Historicity and Negative Platonism.

The ancient concept of the underground is mainly associated with the outdated triadic cosmology. In modernity, some authors such as Dostoevsky and Nietzsche have dialectically referred to the underground as an alternative to the principle of reason or ground. Others—such as Hegel or Heidegger—have more radically linked this dialectic to the abyssal unground, recalling Boehme and Hölderlin. However, all these modern dialectical constellations of ground, underground, or unground have failed to provide a philosophical vision that would overcome the aporetic relationship between metaphysical grounding and phenomenal appearance. They have left aside the reality of the Marian underground, overshadowed by the Spirit and Cross and marked by Christ's descent into the underground, by which the powers of the ancient underground were apocalyptically drawn into the liturgical celebration of a persecuted Church. In this article, I will link Jan Patočka's phenomenology of the underground experience and Zdeněk Neubauer's Marian metaphysics to prove that, in the apocalyptic horizon of suffering and persecution, the Sophianic and Marian revelations spell out the created form of Trinitarian being, that becomes a miraculous rescue of all relations and phenomena as the ground shining from within the underground, and the underground within the ground. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Should we approach the lived experience and/or understand the other with the sense of things? If this is the case, how are we to treat the human experience par excellence? Paradoxically, Edith Stein gives a fresh meaning to the Husserlian term “leibliche Selbstgegebenheit.” In contrast to Max Scheler’s account, she develops the “persönliche Note” criterion of authenticity. And against Maetin Heidegger’s existential philosophy, a concern for human existence itself resonates. Based on these three dimensions, this article discusses the idea of “the lived experience” according to Edith Stein, that is, the human experience contemplated by the humanities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article discusses the relationship between Jan Patočka's and Václav Havel's political writings. By specifically focusing on Patočka's concepts a "life in the idea" and a "life in problematicity" and Havel's notion of a "life in truth", it seeks to draw out the differences and similarities between their respective understandings of the relationship between truth and politics. The paper argues that Havel reinterpreted Patočka's ideas in a way, which in the final analysis diverged from Patočka's original intentions. Finally, the article argues that Havel's, in many ways productive, reinterpretation gives rise to a highly problematic conception of ideology and politics since the "prepolitical" form of politics that Havel envisions ultimately tends to naturalize both truth and politics.

According to Václav Havel’s famous essay The Power of powerless life within a lie is at the core of the communist regime in Czechoslovakia. Life within a lie is characteristic for the great majority of people and is contrasted with life within the truth which is characteristic of dissent movement. In this paper, I will try to shed some light on the concept of “living within a lie.” I will show that Havel develops not one but two concepts of a lie: on the one hand, lie is deliberate pretence; on the other hand, lie is seduction by consumerist values. The first meaning of a lie is derived from Havel’s analysis of the specifics of the Soviet sphere of influence, namely central role of ideology with omnipresent demands on public support of the regime. The second meaning of a lie is heavily influenced by a critical assessment of modern society from the leading figure of the Czech underground movement Ivan Jirous and leading Czech philosopher Jan Patočka. This double meaning of a lie enables Havel to capture both specific problems of living under the communist regime and general problems of living in modern society anywhere in the world. In the final chapters of this paper, I will show that Havel is not clear about how these two meanings of a lie are connected and that there are problems resulting from these unclarities both for Havel’s analysis of the communism and his proposed solution of the crisis.

In in the second half of the 1940s, Jan Patočka emphasized the essentially negative character of human existence. He thus found himself in the neighborhood of Sartre’s existentialism, Heidegger’s philosophy of being, and Hegel’s dialectic, and at the same time in opposition to schools of thought which either completely reject the substantive use of “the nothing,” such as Carnap’s positivism, or relativize it, like Bergson. It is the latter polemic, Patočka’s with Bergson, which is discussed in this article. The concept of negativity in Patočka basically refers to the idea that human existence is defined by a capacity to adopt a distance toward what is pre-given, be it the reality of the physical world or the established habits and rules of a particular society. Negativity qua distance has in Patočka an absolute character. It is this claim that he defends in his critique of Bergson. The article attempts to reconstruct Patočka’s position. I claim that the wager on absolute negativity does not make Patočka a nihilist, but a philosopher of a negative holism, and, in a sense, even a moralist. Above a reconstruction of Patočka’s stance, I spell out some reservations focused especially on the systematic meaning of Patočka’s recourse to negativity. I suggest that negation is an indispensable part of a more complex existential structure Patočka is aiming at. The terms he uses for this structure include “thirst for the absolute,” “thirst for reality,” “restlessness of the heart” and “desire.” To translate these allusions onto a general plan, it is useful to talk about the capacity to establish differences that matter. As general as it seems, this turn of phrase can grasp both Patočka’s emphasis on negativity, and his emphasis on the absolute, the latter – nevertheless – not residing in a distance from being, but in differences established, maintained and abandoned by ourselves within being.

The article looks at the foundations of Jan Patočka’s philosophy of negative Platonism. On the one hand, it pursues the negative-Platonic question of the essence of metaphysics and, on the other, Patočka’s analysis of the ontic-ontological difference as the fundament of the whole negative-Platonic project. The author points out that the expression of Patočka’s borderline position between metaphysics and philosophy is the ambiguousness of negative Platonism, with which, however, the negative-Platonic requirement of a clear ontic-ontological difference does not correspond. He seeks a possible solution to this problem in Patočka’s study “Nadcivilizace a její vnitřní konflikt” (“Supercivilisation and its Inner Conflict“), especially in the notion of “large distinctions”. He understands this as a historical archetype of the difference from later texts devoted to negative Platonism, interpreted as chorismos.

This essay opens the question of the political genesis of fractal topologies from monolithic fronts of power and privation. The political front can no longer be encapsulated as a continuous norm‐provisioning ground. Emerging frontier zones of violence jettison anachronistic centralized fronts of law and procedure in their wake. The political frontier is exemplified by the current fusion of warfare and lawfare — the extrajudicial violence of racialized and militarized policing, the right to look and inspect and the murder and carceralization of minorities, migrants, and cognate others. Police power, as the surviving repository and legatee of the historical wreckage of sovereignties past, is the anarchy that has captured the state in the present. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines the relation between two key, but seemingly opposed concepts in Jan Patočka's thought: epoché and the concrete institutional polis. In doing so it attempts to elucidate the inextricable relation between phenomenology and politics in the work of the Czech philosopher, and illustrate more broadly the possibilities for approaching the political from a phenomenological perspective. The article provides a phenomenological interpretation of "care for the soul" as closely linked to Patočka's reformulation of the core phenomenological notion of epoché. It argues that in Patočka's work, the epoché, traditionally conceived as a radical stepping back from the world must be rendered differently, not only as a negative freedom, but as the foundation of positive politics. Thus, the authors argue that there is a thematic and conceptual continuity between Patočka's phenomenological studies and his political work. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article aims to elucidate Patočka's impact on contemporary Czech philosophy. As a preliminary, it presents Patočka's general conception of the possible impact of philosophy as such. It seems that for Patočka, the clarifying function of philosophy was the most relevant, much more than its possible capacity to stimulate objective or social processes. It then explains what impact Patočka himself expected from his own activity as a philosopher. Here we can see that his main concern was to pass on the great philosophical tradition neglected by Czech intellectuals, primarily ancient philosophy and German Idealism. Finally, it sketches the impact of Patočka's writings and lectures that can actually be seen today in Czech philosophy—in the study of ancient and Classical German Philosophy, in new philosophical conceptions inspired by him, in phenomenology, and in debates about modern Czech history. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores the theme of sacrifice as it appears in the writings of the Czech philosopher Jan Patočka from the 1970s on the subjects of history, metaphysics, and techno-civilization. The paper argues that the theme of sacrifice is best understood as part of an engagement with the problem of post-metaphysical philosophy, largely inspired by but also directed against the position of Martin Heidegger. These reflections are also best understood in relation to totalitarian resistance, exemplified by the self-immolation of Jan Palach in the wake of the Soviet invasion in 1968, which remains a constant, if unacknowledged presence in the background of these writings. The conception of sacrifice that emerges, in contrast to mythico-religious forms, breaks with a reliance on patterns of exchange and reward in favor of an expression of metaphysical freedom, and in turn provides the fulcrum for Patočka's commentary on the possibility of a "demythologized" Christianity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The studies of the Czech phenomenologist Jan Patočka (1907–1977) has been flourishing recently. Martin Ritter's book Into the World: The Movement of Patočka's Phenomenology (Springer 2019) offers an important contribution to the debate and a long-awaited critical presentation of Patočka's asubjective phenomenology as well as creative re-reading of Patočka's central doctrine of the movements of existence. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Přestože Patočka nevyvinul systematickou teorii estetiky, napsal četné texty, které společně tvoří jeho "filozofii literatury". Vytváří vysoce osobní korpus spisovatelů, který odráží jeho vlastní filozofické pozice. Bytostně osobní a politicky angažovanou interpretaci věnuje dílům Ivana Vyskočila, kde se zaměřuje na popis mechanismů moci a jejího potencionálního zneužití. Politická a občanská dimenze Patočkovy literární kritiky, ve které se nevyhýbá dobovým polemikám, vyvrací obecně sdílené tvrzení, podle kterého Patočka vstupuje do politické debaty až v pozdějším věku. Konsistentní přítomnost figury Sokrata jako symbolu role filozofa ve společnosti v Patočkových textech dále popírá ideu apolitičnosti Patočkovy tvorby, která předcházela jeho zapojení do aktivit související s Chartou 77. Motiv "prodeje duše", který Patočka reflektuje ve svých studiích ze sedmdesátých let věnovaných Faustovskému tématu, můžeme chápat jako odvrácenou stranu důležitého Patočkovského motivu "péče o duši". Meditace na faustovské téma zajímavě doplňuje Patočkovy soudobé filozofické texty věnované z velké části tématice duše u Platóna. Studie o literatuře a umění, ve kterých můžeme sledovat Patočkovy filozofické koncepty v akci, kde ožívají v konkrétních literárních interpretacích, mohou být osvěžující vstupní branou do komplexního, nicméně koherentního a velice bohatého Patočkova intelektuálního světa, který stále nabízí mnohá tajemství a zachovává si svou aktuálnost i v dnešním kontextu.

Český filozof Jan Patočka (1907–1977) se velmi dobře znal s představiteli Pražského lingvistického kroužku (např. Vilémem Mathesiem, Romanem Jakobsonem a Janem Mukařovským), avšak k užší badatelské spolupráci mezi nimi nikdy nedošlo. Záměrem studie je 1) představit Patočkovy názory na strukturalismus, 2) nastínit jeho vztah k českému strukturalismu, zvláště pak k Janu Mukařovskému. Jestliže Mukařovského můžeme považovat za jednoho z hlavních představitelů českého strukturalismu a analyticko-strukturálního uvažování o umění, Patočka byl myslitelem, který usiloval o syntetizující filozofický přístup.

Studie ukazuje přínos filozofa Jana Patočky pro literární vědu a estetiku. V první části jsou popsány souvislosti Patočkových estetických úvah s jeho koncepcí třech pohybů lidské existence, konkrétně se třetím pohybem průlomu či pravdy. V Patočkově pojetí je umění odhalovatelem životního smyslu a má schopnost připomenout fenomenální podobu našeho životního světa. Chápáním umění jako místa, kde se děje pravda (ve smyslu Heideggerova pojetí pravdy jako ἀλήθεια), Patočka zároveň předjímá hermeneutickou koncepci produktivní reference či mimetického působení P. Ricoeura. V druhé části je sledován přínos Patočkova myšlení pro české literární vědce Milana Jankoviče a Zdeňka Kožmína. Jankovič se inspiroval Patočkými estetickými úvahami a koncepcí svobody v Negativním platonismu při promýšlení otázek smyslu literárního díla, podobně jako Patočka zdůrazňuje časovost smyslu, respective jeho ontologickou otevřenost a vztah ke svobodě. Kožmín zohledňuje širší kontext Patočkova filozofického myšlení a nahlíží na estetickou zkušenost jako na existenciální událost, během níž se dostává do popředí smysl jako takový a s ním i spojené modality lidského zakoušení prostoru a času.

Winckelmannova snaha vysvětlit změny stylu v umění proměnila odbornou znalost v samostatnou vědeckou disciplínu. Jeho následovníci se na tomto nově otevřeném poli dějin umění pokoušeli překročit pouhý popis změn k vysvětlení pomocí hlubších, často filozofických příčin. Ve svých textech z šedesátých let se o svůj vlastní fenomenologicky založený výklad dějin umění pokusil i Jan Patočka. I on se odvolává, přestože kriticky, na Winckelmanna a některé další významné teoretiky dějiny umění, jmenovitě na Riegla, Wölfflina, a Sempera. Filozoficky se pak Patočkův pokus rýsuje na pozadí Hegelovy Estetiky a Heideggerovy fenomenologické koncepce uměleckého díla. Patočkův vlastní pokus z šedesátých let nicméně trpí řadou nedostatků. Patočkovo rozdělení dějin umění na období umělecké a estetické nevykazuje na první pohled žádnou souvislost s druhým dělením, které Patočka zavádí, s dělením na období stylu a imitace. Patočka rovněž nechává nedostatečně zodpovězenou otázku, zda přechody mezi jednotlivými érami pramení pouze z rozdílného kulturně společenského kontextu, či jsou podle způsobeny hlubšími příčinami ontologického rázu. Ontologický charakter uměleckého díla pak nechává pouze naznačen. Cílem tohoto článku je ukázat, jak Patočkova kritická recepce některých momentů Ingardenovy estetiky pomohla vyjasnit a zodpovědět některé problémy jeho vlastní koncepce.

Článek se zabývá fenomenologickou koncepcí literatury v Patočkově studii "Spisovatel a jeho věc" a rozvíjí myšlenku, že literatura nabízí výrazný filozofický přínos. Patočka přisuzuje spisovateli spoluúčast na aktivitě zjevování světa a ukazuje, že literatura může poskytnout vhled za technicko-vědecký rámec, který dominuje současnému životu. Zabývám se vědou i literaturou jako způsoby vztahování se ke světu, reflektuji osobitost každé z nich a způsob, jakým používají psané slovo. V závěru nacházím filozofický přínos literárního psaní v Patočkově dvojím tvrzení o literatuře: že nabízí "individuální zachycení smyslu života" a že představuje "svět" jako "nedělitelný" celek.

Patočkův esej, doprovázející jeho německý překlad Durychova románu Boží duha (česky, 1969) z roku 1975, rozděluje české kritiky. Zatímco někteří zcela odmítají jeho spojení románu s poválečným vyhnáním německého obyvatelstva z Československa, jiní kritizují to, že v eseji je román redukován do jednoho historického kontextu a ztrácí se v něm Durychovo obecnější volání po smíření. Jiní zase protestují proti začlenění konzervativního katolíka Durycha do sekulární liberální agendy. V tomto příspěvku přistupuji k Patočkovu překladatelskému projektu a jeho recepci metodou překladatelské historie a posuzuji kritické postoje ve světle přesnějšího a podrobnějšího pojetí Patočkových motivací při vydávání tohoto překladu. Sleduji jak Patočku, tak i jeho spolupracovníka v projektu, německého historika Franka Boldta, a srovnávám Patočkovu předmluvu s jeho eseji o Komenském a českých dějinách psanými ve stejném období. Argumentuji, že skutečným problémem není tolik Patočkova interpretace Durychova románu, jako jejich dlouhodobá neoddělitelnost v překladech a českých edicích románu, která ruší křehkou rovnováhu v románu mezi historičností, univerzalitou, didaktismem a estetismem.

Jan Patočka je často považován za filozofa, který se nezajímal o politiku a který vstoupil na veřejnou scénu až na konci života, když se rozhodl podpořit undergroundové hudebníky během jejich stíhání a soudu v roce 1976. Tento přístup k Patočkovi je vidět například v nekrologu, který o něm zveřejnila Charta 77 krátce po jeho smrti v roce 1977. Takové pojetí jeho života a díla však ignoruje celou jednu stránku jeho aktivit na poli kulturní kritiky, například jeho četné eseje a recenze, které vycházejí z české literatury a kultury, aby traktovaly sociální a politické otázky. Jedním z těchto textů je i Patočkova recenze hry Milana Uhde "Děvka z města Théby" z roku 1967. Uhde chtěl modernizovat klasický příběh Antigony; Patočka ho podrobuje zdrcující kritice a ukazuje, že Uhde nerozumí záhadám této klasické hry. Když čteme pozorně Patočkův rozbor Uhdeho hry i původní hry Antigona, rozpoznáme jak jinou "genealogii" jeho podpory pro hudební underground v roce 1977, tak jiný výklad vztahu mezi myšlením a jednáním obecněji v jeho díle. Patočkovy eseje o umění a kultuře představují soustavný komentář k okolnímu sociálnímu a kulturnímu světu a ukazují, že se jeho život se značně liší od od ustáleného obrazu abstraktního filozofa, který vstoupil do světa politiky až na konci života.

At the time of his sudden death in 1977, the Czech philosopher Jan Patočka left a large philosophical legacy with no will and testament. For the last 43 years, the editors of his Collected Works have been reconstructing a unified and thematically articulated oeuvre from the more than 10,000 pages found in his drawers and boxes. It should in the end include not only the texts published during Patočka’s lifetime but also his many unpublished manuscripts, fragments, variations, drafts of unfinished philosophical projects, notebooks and letters. After demonstrating in which sense the death of the author coincides in Patočka’s case with the birth of his oeuvre, the article aims to show that the unity of Patočka’s work is not something given, but rather something to be artificially reconstructed, in an always disputable fashion, since the internal coherence of its various thematic divisions is necessarily itself a matter of ongoing interpretation.

This study aims to portray the self of the sacrificial subject, specifically the feminine sacrificial self. The Christian discourse on sacrifice is dominated by the scholarship of René Girard and his followers. This study briefly presents Girard's approach and pinpoints its weaknesses in order to complement it with the work of Julia Kristeva and Jan Patočka. All these approaches, taken together, provide a complex picture of what the autonomous feminine sacrificial self looks like. Starting from thorough theoretical and analytical analyses of Girard, Kristeva and Patočka, this study then applies their insights through the particular example of the feminine sacrificial self of Milada Horáková. The example of this political prisoner and victim of a Stalinist showtrial in 1950s Czechoslovakia aptly illustrates the uniqueness of the feminine sacrificial self. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Neste artigo apresentamos as análises fenomenológicas sobre a dor que Jan Patočka desenvolveu nos anos 40. Nelas, o filósofo aponta para uma posição interessante sobre a dor como uma experiência do mal. Em particular, a dor é uma intenção negativa, onde existe um objeto peculiar que aniquila todos os objetos possíveis aos quais os desejos humanos aspiram. Esta tese do filósofo checo, além de esclarecer todo o seu trabalho, enquadra-‑se plenamente nos atuais debates filosóficos e interdisciplinares sobre a dor.

Jan Patočka, who drew inspiration for his own philosophy not only in the important phenomenologist Hannah Arendt but also in Greek philosophy, at one point in his philosophical development, surprisingly turned away from Socrates and Plato and inclined to Aristotle and his concept of action. As with Arendt, this concept forms the pillar of his thinking, and the aim of this text is to indicate the possible connection of this leaning towards Aristotle with the study of Patočka’s friend and colleague Eugen Finek called PHRONESIS und THEORIA. It is these Aristotelian concepts that prove to be crucial for the further development of Patočka’s thought and his concept of action. In addition, there are similarities, but also differences in Patočka and Fink’s concept of human finitude, which is very closely related to the act.

At the time of his sudden death in 1977, the Czech philosopher Jan Patočka left a large philosophical legacy with no will and testament. For the last 43 years, the editors of his Collected Works have been reconstructing a unified and thematically articulated oeuvre from the more than 10,000 pages found in his drawers and boxes. It should in the end include not only the texts published during Patočka's lifetime but also his many unpublished manuscripts, fragments, variations, drafts of unfinished philosophical projects, notebooks and letters. After demonstrating in which sense the death of the author coincides in Patočka's case with the birth of his oeuvre, the article aims to show that the unity of Patočka's work is not something given, but rather something to be artificially reconstructed, in an always disputable fashion, since the internal coherence of its various thematic divisions is necessarily itself a matter of ongoing interpretation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Czech translation of selected parts of The Second Sex was published in 1966. The Slovak translation, published in 1967, was nearly the complete text. Attitudes toward Beauvoir's feminism can be observed in two Czech academic journals (Sociologický časopis [Czech sociological review] and Filosofický časopis [Philosophical review]) and in a debate in Literární noviny (Literary review). The author focuses on the context of both translations and describes the reactions to the Czech translation both in the academy and by the general public. Résumé: La traduction tchèque de certaines parties du Deuxième Sexe date de 1966. La traduction slovaque (1967) était quant à elle presque complète. Les réactions au féminisme de Beauvoir peuvent être observées dans deux revues scientifiques tchèques (Sociologický časopis [Revue sociologique tchèque] et Filosofický časopis [Revue philosophique]) et dans la polémique qui a éclaté au sein de la revue Literární noviny (Revue littéraire). L' auteure se concentre sur le contexte des deux traductions et décrit la réception de la traduction tchèque par le milieu universitaire et par le grand public. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Based on an analysis of the theory of the movement of existence, this paper answers the following question: Where can one see the most important connections of philosophical and religious language in the most re-thought part of Jan Patočka's thinking? The third movement of life is seen as a form of the true philosophical life, but also as a form with metaphysical responsibility. The movement of breakthrough, or actual self-comprehension, is the most important, because it leads to care for the soul--and, according to Patočka's analyses of interpretations of the Faust legend, it leads to care for the true immortality of soul. In the third movement of life, one lives an unsheltered life in openness to all which is not given and cannot be given, which is beyond all objective identification, and yet determines this world. In response to the mission in time (kairos), on the way to "asubjective" openness of the soul, in a dialogue which searches for truth and resists temptation, one can still find metaphysical responsibility and freedom. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We have no other experience of God but the human experience , claims Emmanuel Falque. We – human beings – are in the world. Whatever we do, whatever we think and whatever we experience happens in the world and is mediated by the manner of the world. This also includes religious experience. Reflection on the possibility of religious experience – the experience of God – suggests that the world is interrupted by someone or something that is not of the world. The Christian worldview makes the tension explicit, which is perhaps why theology neglects the concept and fails in any proper sense to address the world. Through following the phenomenologist Jan Patočka, critiquing the theologian Johann B. Metz and exploring the theological turn in phenomenology, I will face the challenge and argue for a genuine engagement with the world as a theological problem. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The intensive and systematic scholarly interest in the relation of Patočka’s phenomenology to religion and Christianity is recent and has only intensified over the last ten years. Thus far, the topic has mainly been studied from philosophical and theological perspectives, and the extensive body of Patočka’s cultural writings has largely failed to attract the attention of scholars. Moreover, a culturological approach is virtually absent. Therefore, this article suggests focusing on the analysis of cultural archetypes in Patočka’s cultural writings related to the topic of religion and Christianity from this perspective. The cultural archetypes of the Faustian figures of Patočka’s cultural writings, whether Goethe’s Faust, Goethe’s Marguerite, or Mann’s Adrian Leverkühn, are all Socratic-Christic avatars that personify Patočka’s philosophical concept of “care for the soul” in the modern age. The legacy of Plato’s Greek philosophy and that of Western Christianity as presented by Patočka insist on the universally shared existential experience of finitude that should be grasped as a positive challenge in the strife for meaning. Patočka’s “titanism” and the archetypal titanic figures of his cultural writings are Patočkian manifestations of this universal effort. A culturological approach to Patočka’s thinking on religion and Christianity might thus prove most relevant.

The Editorial offers an overview of the Patočka Special Issue.