Abstract
In his polemic against contemporary philosophies of time, Jan Patočka tries, within the framework of his project of ‘Negative Platonism’, to sketch out a conception of temporality as a stance at the edge of an already completed past and a transcendent, ‘wholly other’ future. The offered contribution seeks, firstly, to show the problematic character of this conception on the grounds that this stance, and thus also time itself, is exclusive to humankind; all other Being, animate as well as inanimate, being in time only in a mediated manner. Secondly, it seeks to point out an alternative view, assumed partly by Patočka himself in his explication of space. Finally, it indicates the more general problem arising out of philosophy’s separation of the future from the past, of time from space and of the thing from the world.
Translated from Czech by Marina Barabas.
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Notes
- 1.
At more or less the same time, Patočka develops along these lines also the contrast between myth and faith. See ‘Time, Myth and Faith’, published in 1953 in Křesťanská revue (Christian Review), reprinted in (Patočka 1996: 131–136). See also the text published posthumously under the title ‘Study about Time II’, in (Patočka 2002b).
- 2.
Perhaps not surprisingly, Heidegger dedicated these lectures to the memory of Eugen Fink , who died in 1975 while Heidegger was preparing them for publication.
References
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Kouba, P. (2015). Time in ‘Negative Platonism’. In: Učník, Ľ., Chvatík, I., Williams, A. (eds) The Phenomenological Critique of Mathematisation and the Question of Responsibility. Contributions To Phenomenology, vol 76. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-09828-9_6
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