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This essay analyses Patočka’s philosophy of art in the period before and during the Second World War. Since the philosophy of art in Patočka’s thinking is part of a broader philosophical debate, the first section of this essay introduces the main philosophical problems that Patočka was dealing with at this time. The second part of the essay introduces the place that art has in this broader philosophical context, from the point of view both of the artist and of the viewer. In any case, art for Patočka represents a historical force of spirit, that is, a reflection of a certain form of the lived world. The last two parts of this essay describe specific differences between art and other kinds of spiritual activity like philosophy, science, and religion, as well as the pre-reflexive form of these spiritual forces as represented in mythology. The author concludes that Patočka’s early philosophical thinking creates quite a coherent system in which art plays an important role.

The presentation entitled “Jan Patočka’s Concept of Fraternity and its Challenges vis-à-vis the World of Today” discusses the concept of fraternity explored in texts by the Czech philosopher written later in his life. J. Patočka was one of the authors of Charter 77, a dissident document, which called for the protection of human rights (published on January 6.–7., 1977). First, Patočka’s theory of three movements of life (also: movements of the soul) – i.e. the movement of rooting or anchoring, the movement of labour or self-delivery and the movement of breakthrough or finding oneself – will be analysed. Based on the analysis, the role of turning (gr. metanoiésis) from a mere solidarity of interests to actual being through surrendering oneself will be shown. Jan Patočka interpreted life as surrender by referring to the notion of Godman and the way the world relates to him. The phenomenon of sacrifice that Jan Patočka dealt with in the last period of his life (Patočka died on March 13, 1977, following long and exhausting police interrogations) can inspire the field of social ethics, both from the philosophical and theological points of view. It also comes with challenges to education and training in today’s Europe, which faces migration, as it needs to learn new habits of hospitality and fraternity.

This article is concerned with the question of how two obvious but apparently antithetical features of aesthetic experience – distance and immersion – can be integrated into one theory. The author criticizes the contemporary neglect of the first feature (distance or disinterestedness), and argues for a more dialectical notion of aesthetic experience which would include both of them. To this end, the article starts, in section one, by re-examining the main points in the evolution of phenomenological aesthetics, which some authors consider a chief source of this neglect. The presence of two questions is emphasized: (1) the idea of a distinctive perception which we traditionally call aesthetic and can trace back to Kantian roots and (2) the process of breaking with the subject-object model of experience. In the end of this section, the question is raised whether the successful elimination of the latter means the necessary rejection of the former. In section two, the author argues for a negative answer to this question, and a candidate for a ‘new paradigm’ of aesthetics is considered – the idea of the environment. As the conclusion to this section, the compatibility of the idea of the aesthetic mode of perception in the traditional sense, together with the original sense of the idea of environment, is defended. Lastly, in section three, these findings are made more specific and confirmed by turning to Jan Patočka’s analyses of the experience of space.

In a couple of different works, Jan Patočka discusses the possibility of building a new paradise on earth, relating it to myths of a primeval paradise as well as some works by Dostoevsky. In some of Patočka’s writings, this possibility of a paradise on earth also appears, described as ‘new love’ or ‘universal love’. Unlike the myths of a time before the Fall, the possibility of an earthly paradise would be true to the human condition of finitude, understanding, and freedom. However, what is – or is there – the possibility of heaven on earth? What are the differences between the original paradise and the promise of this one? What is ‘love’, or are there different loves?

If the objective meaning of philosophy and science is different from the subjective meaning of life as it is expressed by art, the self-creation of the soul can express, through art, a universal objective; philosophy, art, and psychoanalysis create living meanings. Can we think of creation outside the subject? The psyche, which is neither substance nor subject, is self-created, and it is described in Patočka’s theory of the three movements of human existence. My intention in this article is to describe the self-creation of the psyche within the deeproot-movement, the reproduction-movement, and the truth-movement, and examine it from the phenomenological, psychoanalytical, and sociopolitical points of view. The essence of Psyche is creation; its purpose is autonomy. I seek to demonstrate here that creation can be a subject-free process, an asubjective movement.

The article deals with two Jan Patočka essays, each written to mark the 25th anniversary of the publication of Thomas Mann’s novel Doctor Faustus (1947). In these essays, the writer is defined as an ‘interpreter of myth’. In contrast to his essays ‘The Concern of the Writer’ (1969) and ‘Art and Time’ (1966), Patočka here examines the relationship between modern art and myth in two essays on Faustus. The article presents Patočka’s interpretation of the fundamental subject of Faustus literature in its metamorphosis from the sixteenth century to the twentieth, and points out that Patočka’s Faustus essays manifest an important aspect of his concept of modern art.

The article deals with Jan Patočka’s considerations on the mutual relation of science and art as two important ways towards the comprehension of reality. Patočka believes that science provides the tool to reveal objective and binding truth and that modern and contemporary art is able to reveal subjective and individual truth. Art thus functions as a corrective to the dominance of science and technology. However, art as such emerges only in a time of dominant scientific and technical approaches to reality. Along these lines, the article emphasises that the mutual relations of art and science should be conceived as dialectical.

In his essays on general history, Patočka locates the thaumatical shake-up together with the beginning of philosophy, politics, and history in classical Greece, when man first stepped back from being and became able to reflect freely upon everything that exists (his Lebenswelt). The author seeks to demonstrate that a similar thaumatical shake-up also occurred in art history with the coming of the aesthetic era. Here, art no longer serves to affirm a religious or ideological order, as it had in the preceding artistic era; instead, art turns towards the individual, who, by means of the work of art, reflects upon the world he or she lives in. The author concludes that the art of the artistic era has similarities with the pre-historical age in which thauma was not yet present, and the art of the aesthetic era shares features with the historical age in which, by contrast, thauma is the central factor. Liberating wonder brought the pre-historical age to an end in ancient Greece with the discovery of philosophy, politics, and history, giving birth to the historical age in Europe. By contrast, the artistic era did not cease to be dominant till modern times; it was then that thauma became the crucial aspect for the reception of art and gave birth to the aesthetic era. Here, the philosophy of art or aesthetics, the history of art, and the politics of art were revealed.

In this essay, I argue that there are striking parallels between the later work of the American pragmatist William James and the philosophy of Jan Patočka. Taking the naturalistic approach of existential moods in James as my point of departure, I show how both James and Patočka consider the dynamics of the feeling body to be the key to human selfunderstanding. They both see emotion as a paradigmatic form of embodied consciousness. What has remained an implicit and intuitive view in James gains a pronounced philosophical articulation in Patočka.

There are questions that are so important that it is a pity to spoil them with answers. No doubt, the question of God is one of them. Contrary to many presuppositions, theology is not capable of providing us with the final answers in this respect. On the contrary, theology professed as fides quaerens intellectum is an ongoing struggle with questions. Modernity interrupted this paradigm of theological questioning. Theology was withdrawn from the realm of understanding and shifted to the realm of explanation. Modernity brought the univocalization of God. Nonetheless, the attempts to tackle the question of God lead to hegemonic narratives about God. Such narratives are rightly criticized in a postmodern context for their totalizing pretensions. The problem of postmodern criticism is its one-sided emphasis on the apophatic dimension of theological discourse. I propose that theology can go a step further beyond postmodernity. In order to do so, I deal with the Czech philosopher Jan Patočka, who provides an opportunity to rethink God from the perspective of questioning in a new way. Patočka’s insistence on problematicity is the main reading key of his work. In this line of though, I interpret Patočka’s student Tomáš Halík and his thesis about the necessity to take the metaphor of an unknown God into account. I argue that theology must avoid the temptation to remove God from the question and make a well-known God of him. The time has come for theologians to turn their answers back into questions and dwell with them. Bůh jako otázka: Tázání jako předpoklad teologie Některé otázky jsou tak důležité, že je škoda kazit je odpověďmi. Není pochyb, že otázka po Bohu je jednou z nich. Navzdory mnoha předpokladům, ani teologie není schopna poskytnout v tomto ohledu konečné odpovědi. Teologie pojatá jako fides quaerens intellectum je nepřetržitý nekončící zápas s otázkami. Moderna narušila toto paradigma teologického myšlení. Modernita učinila z pojmu Boha pojem „univocitní“ a vyjmula jej z oblasti otázek. Teologie napříště náležela do oblasti vysvětlení. Avšak pokusy zodpovědět otázku po Bohu s konečnou platností vedou k hegemonii. Tento způsob myšlení je právem kritizován postmodernou. Problém postmoderní kritiky je však její jednostranný důraz na apofatickou dimenzi teologického diskursu. V tomto článku tvrdím, že teologie může nejen přijmout některé aspekty postmoderní kritiky, ale dokonce postmodernu překonat. S tímto úkolem se vyrovnávám za pomoci myšlení českého filosofa Jana Patočky, který otevírá příležitost k přehodnocení otázky po Bohu. Patočkův důraz na problematičnost je hlavním interpretačním klíčem. V tomto duchu dále interpretuji i Patočkova žáka Tomáše Halíka a jeho návrh metafory o neznámém Bohu jako způsobu, jak se s otázkou po Bohu v dnešním kontextu vyrovnat. V závěru argumentuji ve prospěch teze, že teologie se musí vyhnout pokušení vyjmout Boha z výhně otázek a učinit z něj dobře známého Boha/bůžka. Nadešel čas, aby teologové obrátili své odpovědi zpět v otázky.

Tři životní pohyby (dle J. Patočky), které utvářejí podobu lidské existence, jsou také základními východisky a podobami vztahu ke světu, a náleží jim vlastní ontologický statut. Patočkova tematizace tohoto (specificky lidského) vývoje poskytuje základ výchovnému působení, které pak může být vedeno s ohledem na život vcelku, směřovat k naplnění jeho celkového smyslu. Pozornost je věnována způsobu, jakým je založena a nadále prožívána tělesnost, a to v souvislostech její situovanosti (v přírodním prostředí). Je dále diskutován význam tohoto (zakládajícího) vztahu pro vnímání jevů v jejich fenomenalitě, v tom, čím (podstatně) jsou; tedy nikoliv jako objektivní reality následně vystavené manipulativnímu působení. Patočka rozděluje život podle pohybů do jednotlivých fází a rozvoj tělesnosti tak umísťuje do jeho prvního období. Praktické závěry pro výchovu jsou následující: první z pohybů, pohyb přijetí je také tělesným vrůstáním do prostředí; zakládá určitou formu situovanosti a zvláštní možnosti ontologické. Jeho důsledný výkon (především) v dětství nás později vrací k původním významům, kterými se vztahujeme ke způsobu své (autentické) existence.