Abstract
In this chapter, I reconsider Patočka’s concept of the movement of existence in its contribution to understanding (the movement of) history. Having explained Patočka’s principal ideas regarding the history of the world and the role of Europe in its current crisis, I argue against Patočka’s drawing a firm line between a free, truly historic way of life, and unfree, earthbound living. Connecting Patočka’s historic and political reflections with his ontological thought, and paying special attention to the concept of polemos, I accept neither an onto-polemical nor a moral interpretation of his (political) philosophy. I do not question Patočka’s emphasis on freedom, but I call for thinking existence as being free, and historic, through each of its movements. On the basis of such a reinterpretation, Patočka’s concept provides a framework for understanding human being in the world, or its living through the world (as) crisis.
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Notes
- 1.
This chapter is a revised version of an article “Towards a Non-Eurocentric Analysis of the World Crisis: Reconsidering Patočka’s Approach,” Research in Phenomenology, 47(3), 2017, 388–405.
- 2.
The problem of Patočka’s Eurocentrism has been addressed, e.g., by Novotný (2007).
- 3.
A concise but fitting summary of the “principles” conditioning the history of Europe is offered by Dodd (2016: 89–90).
- 4.
- 5.
Speaking of conflict, Patočka evokes several meanings and contexts. Apart from the, if you will, sociological meaning of conflict (conflict in the sense of “the Twentieth Century as War” indicated by the title of the sixth Heretical Essay or by the title of The Super-civilisation and its Inner Conflict), there is also an existential meaning: each human being is in a conflict between authentic and declining life. However, at the deepest level, there is an ontological or phenomenological meaning of conflict – the conflict in Being.
- 6.
For a more detailed and contextualized articulation of Patočka’s idea of sacrifice see esp. Schuback (2011).
- 7.
Cf. Heidegger’s vision (Heidegger 2014: 238) of “the ultimate fulfilment of enframing,” i.e. “the destruction of Earth and the vanishing of contemporary human being” as “the first cleansing of Being from the deepest deformation caused by the dominance of being.”
- 8.
In Heretical Essays, one can find the motif of the sacrifice of the sacrificed (Patočka 1996: 130), but in speaking of “understanding for the positive task of suffering and for the positivity of this negativity” (Patočka 1990: 298) Patočka does not mean the sacrifice of others but rather self-sacrifice.
- 9.
Symptomatic, in this context, is how Patočka differentiates western Christianity from eastern Buddhism: whereas Buddhism proposes the overcoming of life by its denial, in Christianity one overcomes the self-enclosure of one’s life, but “life remains unbroken, the world as world retains its validity” (Patočka 1998: 160).
- 10.
Cf. already the concept of “negative Platonism” explicated above in Chap. 6.
- 11.
Accordingly, Arendt’s theoretical “restoration” of action can be interpreted as her contribution to overcoming the present world crisis (cf. Arendt 1958: 5).
- 12.
Arendt continues: “This appearance … rests on [an] initiative … from which no human can refrain and still be human” (Arendt 1958: 176).
- 13.
I do not claim, of course, that the first and second movements can be identified with labour and work as Arendt conceives them.
- 14.
Regarding this incorporation, see e.g. Villa (1996: passim).
- 15.
According to Tamara Caraus, “in Patočka’s political thinking, the insights of … radical political theory, which accounts mainly for the radicality and singularity of the event, merges with the insights of agonistic political theory, which account mainly for disagreement and conflict as a practice” (Caraus 2016: 248).
- 16.
Her overall interpretation of Patočka can be found in Bernard (2016b).
- 17.
“[T]he world is what men have, in [the] proper sense, in common” (Bernard 2016a: 260).
- 18.
Importantly, the “front-line experience … is an absolute one” (Patočka 1996: 129).
- 19.
Pavel Kouba (1998), interpreting and evaluating Patočka and Fink’s phenomenologies, outlined an important concept of appearing as a “conflict in being.”
- 20.
To put it in the terminology of Caraus, how to think of the grounding affectivity of this radix remains unclear.
- 21.
When Arendt quotes the watchword of Greek colonization (“Wherever you go, you will be a polis”; Arendt 1958: 198), one can add that the colonizers, by bringing the polis with them, also brought along its habits and economic interests.
- 22.
Possibilities of such a comparison are indicated by Tava (2016).
- 23.
Regarding the first movement, I agree with Bernard (2016a: 262): “Dependence is not only biological, but also phenomenological, since the phenomenon itself is first opened via others. The phenomenon is not only historicized through epochs, but also socialized, through the different social opportunities of those who introduce us to the world.”
- 24.
The most elaborated analysis of these issues, and a defence of Patočka regarding his Eurocentrism, is offered by Novotný (2016).
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Ritter, M. (2019). Passing Through the World (as) Crisis. In: Into the World: The Movement of Patočka's Phenomenology. Contributions to Phenomenology, vol 104. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-23657-1_13
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