Abstract
This final chapter elucidates Patočka’s absolute emphasis on intersubjectivity, his “localizing” infinity into the relation between “subjects.” After paying attention to Patočka’s early ideas on the relation of a finite being to infinite life, I turn to his late thought focusing on the third movement of existence as identified with the movement of transcendence. I accentuate Patočka’s idea of self-transcendence toward the other, by which “the kingdom of God” is among us: the movement of self-transcendence is the movement of love. This idea allows for thinking the finite-infinite relation as the relation between finite being who by de-limiting themselves live in infinity. I indicate why we should not expel love from the first two movements of existence. Finally, I localize Patočka’s concept of the finite-infinity relation in the context of related reflections of Feuerbach, Kierkegaard, and Nietzsche.
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Notes
- 1.
This chapter is based on a paper “Approaching the Absolute in Jan Patočka’s Phenomenology,” Tijdschrift voor Filosofie, 79(3), 2017, 499–515.
- 2.
Karfík himself, if I understand him correctly, answers this question negatively. Cf. his “Post scriptum” to the Czech translation of the just mentioned chapter (Karfík 2016: 171).
- 3.
- 4.
- 5.
- 6.
Karfík also cites a telling letter from 1933 in which Patočka speaks of a sharp difference between Husserl, who “makes philosophy in the absolute,” and Heidegger, who “disclaims any approach to the absolute” (Karfík 2008: 27, n. 8).
- 7.
In one of his very last studies, Patočka formulates following observation which is implicit, I would argue, already in his early phenomenology: “Landgrebe grasped perceptively that the free act in which the epoché is rooted cannot … be integrated into the overall conception of subjectivity as it appears in the view of the transcendental spectator, and showed a profound reason for it, in that freedom is essentially linked to the future-oriented extasis of temporality while insight, contemplation, and theoretical interest are by their very nature rooted in the past oriented ‘already’ which pertains to what is finished, to that into which a free being is set” (Patočka 1989d: 311).
- 8.
According to Karfík, Patočka’s philosophy of history is an attempt to relive a philosophical project that has its origins in the German Enlightenment and that was realized most fully by Hegel. Yet, whereas Hegel’s realization is based on the ontology of the in-finite, absolute subject, Patočka actualizes it on the basis of Heidegger’s ontology. Cf. Karfík (2016): 168.
- 9.
See, e.g., these formulations: “That the third basic relation … is also a temporal one follows from its relation to the future, to nonbeing, to death” (Patočka 1989a: 266). “The accent on the future requires, on the contrary, that the already existent cease to be regarded as the decisive instance of possibilities, that the possibility of not-being come to the fore and sharpen our eyes to that to which alone we can, and must, give ourselves up” (Patočka 2016b: 164).
- 10.
The two studies on time have been interpreted by Kouba (2015).
- 11.
Cf. Hagedorn (2015: esp. 34–36).
- 12.
In the Czech original, Patočka uses the collocation život věčný which should be translated into English, due to its obvious Christian connotations, as “eternal life.”
- 13.
Ivan Chvatík believes that, to overcome the present crisis of the world, Patočka seeks a third conversion after the first conversion from myth to philosophy and the second made by Christianity; cf. Chvatík (2011: esp. 272–277).
- 14.
As is probably clear, I disagree with Hagedorn as well as Patočka’s idea that “human life is ‘unfree’ as long as it clings to something in the world, as long as it is preoccupied with beings” (Hagedorn 2015: 36).
- 15.
Interestingly, devaluating the mythical way of life, Patočka uses the same analogy speaking of prehistorical living as living in “ontological metaphor.” Cf. above, Chap. 11.
- 16.
Of course, in loving others, one can also be polemical toward them, but it does not make polemos the principle of action, and much less that of love.
- 17.
Obviously, Patočka comes close to Levinas’ idea that “the individual and the personal are necessary for Infinity to be able to be produced as infinite” (Levinas 1979: 218). This similarity, however, cannot be analysed here in more detail.
- 18.
In fact, Patočka’s image of “the ocean of being” sounds like an echo of Feuerbach’s “vivifying and refreshing waves of the ocean of the world.”
- 19.
In the 1950s, when interpreting faith, Patočka connects it with the “conception in which the future takes priority” and identifies it with “the belief that no decision is ultimate and irrevocable” (Patočka 2015e: 9). Regarding the concept of faith, cf. Hagedorn (2015: esp. 34–36), and Kočí (2016: esp. 113–114).
- 20.
Especially because some of the fundamental thoughts of Heidegger’s Being and Time, utilized by Patočka, are based on the reconsideration of Kierkegaard’s thought, and Patočka’s own concept of the movements of existence can be connected with that of Kierkegaard, as already pointed out by Kohák (1989: 284).
- 21.
Regarding sacrifice, see e.g. this formulation: “I love those who do not first seek behind the stars for a reason to go under and be a sacrifice, who instead sacrifice themselves for the earth, so that the earth may one day become the overman’s” (Nietzsche 2006: 8).
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Ritter, M. (2019). Omnia Vincit Amor. 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_15
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