Abstract
This chapter constitutes a preliminary and humble attempt to answer the following question: How to make sense of the vast number of Patočka’s writings, themselves dispersed in most cases in the apparently modest form of exegetic exercises on works of classical thinkers, ancient (e.g., Plato, Aristotle) or contemporary (Husserl, Heidegger)? The reply we risk to propose is: Patočka’s reflections represent perhaps one of the most fruitful philosophical endeavors within the wider phenomenological movement to confront the crisis of modern civilization which Patočka calls “Over-civilization and its internal conflict”. Recapturing and renewing in a new direction Husserl’s diagnosis of the crisis of European civilization, Patočka was one of the first European philosophers—a philosopher of the Other Europe—to have emphasized with lucidity the necessity of abandoning the hitherto Eurocentric propositions of solution to the crisis—for example Comte’s positivism and its variants, Marxism and bourgeois liberalism—when he explicitly raised the problems of a “Post-European humanity”. In advocating an understanding of the history of European humanity which is different from Husserl as well as Heidegger, Patočka is able to direct his philosophical reflections on history back to the formulation of a more profound phenomenology of the natural world insufficiently thematized in Husserl and absent in Heidegger (at least the Heidegger of Sein und Zeit).
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Notes
- 1.
The first version of this chapter was presented to the conference: Issues Confronting the Post-European World, A Conference dedicated to Jan Patočka (1907–1977) on the occasion of the founding of the Organization of Phenomenological Organizations, organized by the Center for Phenomenological Research Prague at Charles University and the Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic, Prague, November 6–10, 2002 and published in Essays in Celebration of the Founding of the Organization of Phenomenological Organizations, ed. CHEUNG Chan-Fai, Ivan Chvatik, Ion Copoeru, Lester Embree, Julia Iribarne & Hans Rainer Sepp, Web-Published at www.o-p-o.net, 2003, 19 pp. Since then a number of book length studies on Patočka’s works have appeared. The most significant ones include: Edward E. Findlay, Caring For the Soul in a Postmodern Age: Politics and Phenomenology in the Thought of Jan Patočka (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2002); Renaud Barbaras, Le mouvement de l’existence. Études sur la phénoménologie de Jan Patočka (Paris : Les Éditions de la Transparence, 2007); Renaud Barbaras, L’ouverture du monde: lecture de Jan Patočka (Paris : Les Éditions de la Transparence, 2011); Émilie Tardivel, La liberté au principe. Essai sur la philosophie de Patočka (Paris: Vrin, 2011).
- 2.
Jan Patočka, “La surcivilization et son conflit”, in Liberté et sacrifice. Ecrits politiques, French trans. Erika Abrams (Grenoble: Jérôme Millon, 1990), pp. 99–177.
- 3.
J. Patočka, “Réflexion sur l’Europe”, Liberté et sacrifice, p. 181.
- 4.
Edmund Husserl, Die Krisis der europäischen Wissenschaften und die transzendentale Phänomenologie, Husserliana VI, ed. W. Biemel (The Hague: M. Nijhoff, 1954), pp. 327–330; The Crisis of European Sciences and Transcendental Phenomenology, Eng. trans. D. Carr (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1970), pp. 281–283.
- 5.
Below is Heidegger’s well-known declaration: “And yet a question, the question: “Is ‘Being’ a mere word and its meaning a vapor, or is it the spiritual fate of the West?’ This Europe, in its unholy blindness always on the point of cutting its own throat, lies today in the great pincers between Russia on the one side and America on the other. Russia and America, seen metaphysically, are both the same: the same hopeless frenzy of unchained technology and of the rootless organization of the average man.” Martin Heidegger, Einführung in die Metaphysik (Tübingen: Max Niemeyer Verlag, 1953), pp. 28–29; Introduction to Metaphysics, New Eng. trans. Gregory Fried and Richard Polt (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2000), p. 40.
- 6.
Cf. Henri Declève, “Philosophie et liberté selon Patočka”, in Profils de Jan Patočka, ed. Henri Declève (Bruxelles: Publications des Facultés universitaires Saint-Louis, 1992), p. 114.
- 7.
J. Patočka, Platon et l’Europe, French trans. Erika Abrams (Paris: Editions Verdier, 1983), pp. 23 sq; Plato and Europe, Eng. trans. Petr Lom (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2002), pp. 15 sq.
- 8.
J. Patočka, “Le platonisme négatif”, in Liberté et sacrifice, op. cit., p. 86 sq. Patočka’s reinterpretation of Platonic Ideas is comparable to that of the contemporary Chinese philosopher Lao Sze-Kwang (1927–2012), author of a 4-volume History of Chinese Philosophy. For the latter, Platonic Ideas as universals, in opposition to particulars, can be interpreted, from the point of view of philosophy of culture, as ideals and values in opposition to reality. Cf. Lao Sze-Kwang, 《文化哲學講演錄》(“Lectures on Philosophy of Culture”), edited and annotated by Kwok-ying LAU (Hong Kong: The Chinese University Press, 2002), p. 6.
- 9.
J. Patočka, “Notes sur la préhistoire de la science du mouvement: le monde, la terre, le ciel et le mouvement de la vie humaine”, “Le monde naturel et la phénoménologie”, “Méditation sur Le Monde naturel comme problème philosophique”, “La conception aristotélicienne du mouvement: signification philosophique et recherches historiques”, in Le monde naturel et le mouvement de l’existence humaine, French trans. Erika Abrams (Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1988), pp. 3–12, 13–49, 50–124, 127–138.
- 10.
J. Patočka, “L’idéologie et la vie dans l’idée”, in Liberté et sacrifice, p. 46.
- 11.
J. Patočka, Essais hérétiques sur la philosophie de l’histoire, French trans. Erika Abrams with a Preface by Paul Ricoeur (Paris: Editions Verdier, 1981), pp. 85–86; Heretical Essays in the Philosophy of History, Eng. trans. by Erazim Kohák (Chicago and La Salle, Illinois: Open Court, 1996), pp. 74–75.
- 12.
J. Patočka, Essais hérétiques …, p. 54; Heretical Essays …, p. 40–41.
- 13.
J. Patočka, “La surcivilization et son conflit”, in Liberté et sacrifice, p. 160.
- 14.
Ibid., p. 161.
- 15.
J. Patočka, Platon et l’Europe, p. 10. The Eng. trans. of Petr Lom reads simply: “we will not get to the heart of the matter without reflecting.” Plato and Europe, p. 2.
- 16.
J. Patočka, Platon et l’Europe, p. 10; Plato and Europe, p. 2.
- 17.
Herbert Marcuse, “The Struggle against Liberalism in the Totalitarian View of the State”, first published 1937, republished in Negations: Essays in Critical Theory (Boston: Beacon Press, 1968), pp. 3–42; “The Affirmative Character of Culture”, first published 1937, republished in Negations, ibid., pp. 88–133; H. Marcuse, Soviet Marxism: A Critical Analysis (Boston: Beacon Press, 1964).
- 18.
Max Horkheimer, “Authority and the Family”, first published 1936, Eng. trans. in Critical Theory: Selected Essays (New York: The Seabury Press, 1972), pp. 47–128. Cf. David Held, Introduction to Critical Theory: Horkheimer to Habermas (Cambridge: Polity, 1990), Chapter 2, pp. 40–76.
- 19.
Cf. M. Horkheimer & T. W. Adorno, Dialektik der Aufklärung (New York: Social Studies Association, Inc., 1944; reissued in Germany by S. Fischer Verlag GmbH, Frankfurt-am-Main, 1969); Dialectic of Enlightenment, Eng. trans. J. Cumming (New York: Herder and Herder, Inc., 1972); M. Horkheimer, Eclipse of Reason (New York: Oxford University Press, 1947); M. Horkheimer, Zur Kritik der instrumentellen Vernunft (Frankfurt-am-Main: S. Fischer Verlag GmbH, 1967); Critique of Instrumental Reason, Eng. trans. M. J. O’Connell and Others (New York: The Seabury Press, 1974).
- 20.
J. Patočka, “La surcivilization et son conflit”, in Liberté et sacrifice, pp. 125–129.
- 21.
Ibid., pp. 165–168.
- 22.
Michel Foucault, Surveiller et punir. Naissance de la prison (Paris: Gallimard, 1975), p. 35; Discipline and Punish. The Birth of Prison, Eng. trans. A. Sheridan (New York: Random House, 1979), p. 31.
- 23.
M. Foucault, “Qu’est-ce que les Lumières?”, in Dits et écrits, IV (Paris: Gallimard, 1994), p. 687; Eng. trans. as “What is Revolution?”, in Michel Foucault, The Politics of Truth, ed. Sylvère Lotringer and Lysa Hochroth (New York: Semiotext(e), 1997), p. 100. This article bears the same French title as the article mentioned in the next footnote, yet the contents of two versions are quite different.
- 24.
M. Foucault, “Qu’est-ce que les Lumières?”, Dits et écrits, IV, p. 577; Eng. version as “What is Enlightenment?”, in The Foucault Reader, ed. Paul Rabinow (London: The Penguin Books, 1984), p. 50.
- 25.
“Beantwortung der Frage: Was ist Aufklärung?”, in Kant‘s gesammelte Schriften (Berlin: Königliche Preussische Akademie der Wissenschaften, 1902–1938), Vol. VIII, pp. 33–42; “An Answer to the Question: ‘What is Enlightenment?’, in Kant, Political Writings, Eng. trans. H. B. Nisbet (Cambridge : Cambridge University Press, 2nd ed. 1991), pp. 54–60.
- 26.
M. Foucault, “Qu’est-ce que les Lumières?”, in Dits et écrits, IV, p. 679; “What is Revolution?”, in Michel Foucault, The Politics of Truth, p. 84.
- 27.
M. Foucault, “Qu’est-ce que la critique? [Critique et Aufklärung]”, Bulletin de la Société française de Philosophie, Vol. LXXXIV, 1990, p. 39; Eng. trans. as “What is Critique?”, in Michel Foucault, The Politics of Truth, op. cit., 31–32.
- 28.
M. Foucault, “Qu’est-ce que les Lumières?”, Dits et écrits, IV, p. 577; “What is Enlightenment?”, in The Foucault Reader, p. 50.
- 29.
Ibid.
- 30.
J. Patočka, “Les fondements spirituels de la vie contemporaine”, in Liberté et sacrifice, pp. 215–241.
- 31.
Ibid., pp. 234–235.
- 32.
Ibid., p. 235.
- 33.
Ibid., p. 235.
- 34.
Ibid., p. 223–224.
- 35.
J. Patočka, Essais hérétiques …, p. 87; Heretical Essays …, p. 76.
- 36.
J. Patočka, Essais hérétiques …, p. 86; Heretical Essays…, pp. 75–76.
- 37.
J. Patočka, Essais hérétiques…, p. 125; Heretical Essays…, p. 117.
- 38.
J. Patočka, Essais hérétiques…, pp. 125–126; Heretical Essays…, p. 117.
- 39.
J. Patočka, Essais hérétiques…, p. 126; Heretical Essays…, p. 118.
- 40.
Ibid.
- 41.
In the last chapter of the Heretical Essays in the Philosophy of History, in an ultimate effort to renew the discussion of the problem of the meaning of history, Patočka invents the expression “solidarity of the shaken” from the experience of those who returned from the front during the great wars. Yet the chapter ends again by an open question concerning the possibility of the meaning of history of western humanity: “Or does something open up to us therein of the meaning of the history of western humanity which will not be denied and which today is becoming the meaning of human history as such?” Essais hérétiques…, p. 146; Heretical Essays…, p.137.
- 42.
J. Patočka, “La surcivilization et son conflit”, in Liberté et sacrifice, pp. 160–162.
- 43.
J. Patočka, Le monde naturel comme problème philosophique, French trans. by H. Declève and M. Danèk (The Hague: M. Nijhoff, 1976).
- 44.
The following lines are largely indebted to the very informative article of Etienne Tassin, “La question du sol: monde naturel et communauté politique”, in Jan Patočka: philosophie, phénoménologie et politique, ed. Etienne Tassin and Marc Richir (Grenoble: Jérôme Millon, 1992), pp. 167–187. For a more detailed study of Patočka’s phenomenology of movement, cf. Renaud Barbaras, Le mouvement de l’existence. Études sur la phénoménologie de Jan Patočka (Paris : Les Éditions de la Transparence, 2007); Renaud Barbaras, L’ouverture du monde : lecture de Jan Patočka (Paris : Les Éditions de la Transparence, 2011).
- 45.
J. Patočka, “La conception aristotélicienne du mouvement: signification philosophique et recherches historiques”, in Le monde naturel et le mouvement de l’existence humaine, pp. 132–133. Patočka’s book-length study of Aristotle is now available in French translation by Erika Abrams: Aristote, ses devanciers, ses successeurs (Paris: J. Vrin, 2011).
- 46.
J. Patočka, “Le monde naturel et la phénoménologie”, Le monde naturel et le mouvement de l’existence humaine, p. 30; “The ‘Natural’ World and Phenomenology”, in Jan Patočka, Philosophy and Selected Writings, Erazim Kohák (Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 1989), p. 255.
- 47.
Ibid.
- 48.
Edmund Husserl, “Grundlegende Untersuchungen zum Phänomenologischen Ursprung der Räumlichkeit der Natur”, in Philosophical Essays in Memory of Edmund Husserl, ed. Marvin Farber (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1940), p. 307; “Foundational Investigations of the Phenomenological Origin of the Spatiality of Nature”, Eng. trans. Fred Kersten, in Husserl: Shorter Works, ed. Peter McCormick and Frederick A. Elliston (Notre Dame, Indiana: University of Notre Dame Press and Brighton, Sussex: The Harvester Press, 1981), p. 231. In a succinct passage Husserl explains that “the ‘earth’ as the unitary earth-basis cannot be at rest and therefore cannot be experienced as a body which not only has its extension and its qualification but also its ‘place” in space, and which can possibly exchange its place and be at rest or in motion. As long as I do not have a presentation of a new basis, as a basis from which the earth can have sense in interconnected and returning locomotion as a self-contained body in motion and at rest, and as long as an exchange of bases is not presented such that both bases become bodies, to that extent just the earth itself is the basis and not a body. The earth does not move… The earth as a whole whose parts … are bodies; but as a ‘whole’ the earth is not a body.” “Grundlegende Untersuchungen zum Phänomenologischen Ursprung der Räumlichkeit der Natur”, p. 313; Eng. trans. p. 225, translation modified.
- 49.
J. Patočka, “Le monde naturel et la phénoménologie”, in Le monde naturel et le mouvement de l’existence humaine, p. 30; “The ‘Natural’ World and Phenomenology”, in Jan Patočka, Philosophy and Selected Writings, p. 255.
- 50.
J. Patočka, “Le monde naturel et la phénoménologie”, in Le monde naturel et le mouvement de l’existence humaine, p. 31; “The ‘Natural’ World and Phenomenology”, in Jan Patočka, Philosophy and Selected Writings, p. 256.
- 51.
J. Patočka, “Méditation sur Le Monde naturel comme problème philosophique”, in Le monde naturel et le mouvement de l’existence humaine, p. 103.
- 52.
Ibid, p. 101.
- 53.
J. Patočka, “Notes sure la préhistoire de la science du mouvement: le monde, la terre, le ciel et le mouvement de la vie humaine”, in Le monde naturel et le mouvement de l’existence humaine, p. 10.
- 54.
Tao Te Ching, bilingual edition, Eng. trans. D. C. Lau (Hong Kong: The Chinese University Press, 1989 (1st ed. 1982)), Ch. 1, p. 3; the original Chinese text reads: 「道可道,非常道」.
- 55.
Tao Te Ching, op. cit., Ch. 21, pp. 32–32; the original Chinese text reads: 「道之為物,惟恍惟惚。惚兮恍兮,其中有象;惚兮恍兮,其中有物。窈兮冥兮,其中有精;其精甚真,其中有信。」
- 56.
Tao Te Ching, op. cit., Ch. 25, p. 37; the original Chinese text reads: 「有物混成,先天地生;寂兮寥兮,獨立而不改,周行而不殆,可以為天地母。吾不知其名,故強字之曰道。」
- 57.
Tao Te Ching, op. cit., Ch. 1, p. 3; the original Chinese text reads: 「無,名天地之始;有, 名萬物之母。」
- 58.
Tao Te Ching, op. cit., Ch. 40, p. 61; the original Chinese text reads: 「天下萬物生於有, 有生於無。」
- 59.
“Man models himself after earth, earth models itself after heaven, heaven models itself after the Dao, and the Dao models itself after Nature.” (「人法地,地法天,天法道,道法自然。」Tao Te Ching, op. cit., Ch. 25, p. 39.
- 60.
For a more detailed account of the concept of Dao and Laozi’s philosophy, cf. our interpretative essay: “To What Extent Can Phenomenology Do Justice To Chinese Philosophy?—Attempt at a Phenomenological Reading of Laozi”, supra, Chap. 3.
- 61.
This chapter is dedicated to all those who had participated in the gigantic work of the safeguard of the Patočka Archives, foremost of them Professor Ivan Chvatik.
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Lau, KY. (2016). Jan Patočka: Critical Consciousness and Non-Eurocentric Philosopher of the Phenomenological Movement. In: Phenomenology and Intercultural Understanding. Contributions To Phenomenology, vol 87. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-44764-3_5
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