Abstract
The paper investigates a strand of Patočka’s phenomenological appropriation of Plato in Plato and Europe — what is there termed the “ontocosmic” dimension proper to care of the soul — and argues that this appropriation is fundamentally influenced by the “so-called unwritten doctrine.” This doctrine, and not the influence or anticipation of Heidegger’s notion of Sorge, is shown as the basis for Patočka’s claim that “what shows the activity of the soul in the proper sense is our relation to the mathematical world.” The investigation of Patočka’s account of care for the soul also explores the influence of Jacob Klein’s reconstruction of the “Ideas-numbers” in the Platonic doctrine on Patočka’s presentation of the chōrismos thesis, which is inseparable from this doctrine. It is argued that this thesis is a major factor in Patočka’s notion of the fundamental distinction between (1) what manifests itself and (2) manifesting, and that this distinction informs his critique of Husserl’s and Heidegger’s phenomenological subjectivism, together with his own concept of the phenomenon proper to phenomenology. The paper concludes by pointing out certain problems in Patočka’s critique of the metaphysical character of the Platonic account of “the appearing of being” that follow from his endorsement of Konrad Gaiser’s reconstruction of the “dimensional generation” of solids as a fundamental aspect of Platonism. These problems are located in Gaiser’s reversal of the Republic’s (Book VI) account of the image-paradigm distinction as it relates to mathematical hypotheses and eidē, and the paper ends by suggesting that the restoration of the proper order to this relationship holds the key to substantiating Patočka’s original thought: that the structure of manifesting has to be “something more” than what appears, if it is to appear.
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- 1.
Characteristic of Husserl’s attitude toward Plato is his view that phenomenology’s “general essence is the eidos, the ἰδὲα in the Platonic sense, but apprehended in its purity and free from all metaphysical interpretations” (Edmund Husserl, Erfahrung und Urteil [Hamburg: Felix Meiner Verlag, 1985], p. 411; Experience and Judgment, transl. J. S. Churchill and K. Ameriks [Evanston, Illinois: Northwestern University Press, 1973], p. 341).
- 2.
Heidegger characterizes Plato’s approach to the meaning of Being as “formal-ontological” (Martin Heidegger, Platon: Sophistes [Frankfurt am Main: Vittorio Klostermann, 1992], p. 432; Plato’s Sophist, transl. R. Rojcewicz and A. Schuwer [Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1997], p. 299), in the precise sense that the explication of any pre-given theme, including that of the “mere something in general [Etwas überhaupt]” (ibid., p. 225/155), is guided by the logos.
- 3.
Jan Patočka, Plato and Europe, transl. P. Lom (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2002). Herein referred to as “PE.”
- 4.
Jacques Derrida, The Gift of Death, transl. D. Wills (Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 1995), p. 13. See also Edward F. Findlay, Caring for the Soul in a Postmodern Age (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2002), p. 62.
- 5.
The references can be found in Jan Patočka, Aristoteles, jeho předchůdci a dědicové [Aristotle, his Forerunners and Successors] (Praha: Academia, 1964), pp. 413, 411, 415.
- 6.
Konrad Gaiser’s Platons Ungeschriebene Lehre (Stuttgart: Ernst Klett Verlag, 1963) is mentioned in Jan Patočka, “Europa und Nach-Europa,” in Ketzerische Essais zur Philosophie der Geschichte und ergänzende Schriften, ed. K. Nellen and J. Němec (Stuttgart: Klett-Cotta, 1988), pp. 245, 256–257, 266–267.
- 7.
Edward F. Findlay, op cit., p. 16.
- 8.
“Brief J. Patočkas an Robert Campbell vom 30. 9. 1947,” in Eugen Fink and Jan Patočka, Briefe und Dokumente 1933–1977, ed. M. Heitz and B. Nessler (Freiburg/München: Alber; Praha: Oikoymenh, 1999), p. 57. Filip Karfík, in a personal electronic communication with the author, reports the following about Patočka’s relationship to Klein and Plato’s “unwritten doctrine”:
“Yes, Patočka was very much interested in this topic, probably since his early studies in Berlin. Jacob Klein was then his closest friend, and he remained in contact with him also after the war (they met again in 1947 in Freiburg). Patočka himself lectured on the Pre-Socratics and on Plato between 1945–1949 and knew almost everything written by that time, including research about early Greek mathematics (Becker et al.) and Plato’s unwritten doctrines according to Aristotle’s and other testimonies (following Robin, Wilpert, Gomperz). He addressed this topic late in his career, in his book on Aristotle, published in 1964, where he devoted a whole chapter to the interpretation of Platonic unwritten philosophy. All of these earlier studies by him preceded the publications by Krämer and Gaiser and relied on the older attempts of reconstructions (from Robin onwards). When he became acquainted with Gaiser’s book, Platons Ungeschriebene Lehre, he saw it as a sort of confirmation and a better elaboration of this reconstruction and kept referring to it up until his late writings. In the beginning of the 1970s he once again lectured on Plato (the course is still unpublished, but the typescript exists) and made use of Gaiser’s reconstruction.”
- 9.
Jacob Klein, “Die griechische Logistik und die Entstehung der Algebra,” Quellen und Studien zur Geschichte der Mathematik, Astronomie und Physik, Abteilung B: Studien, Vol. 3, no. 1 (Berlin: Julius Springer, 1934), pp. 18–105 (Part I). English translation (of both parts): Greek Mathematical Thought and the Origin of Algebra, transl. E. Brann (Cambridge, Massachusetts: M.I.T. Press, 1968; 2nd ed. New York: Dover Publications, 1992).
- 10.
Jan Patočka, “Jacob Klein, Die griechische Logistik und die Entstehung der Algebra I. In Quellen und Studien zur Geschichte der Mathematik, Astronomie u. Physik, (hsgg. v. Neugebauer, Stenzel u. Töplitz. Berlin, Springer 1934. S. 97),” in Česká mysl, Vol. 30, no. 4, 1934, pp. 232–233. See English transl. by Eric Manton in The New Yearbook for Phenomenology, Vol. 6, 2006, p. 307.
- 11.
Ibid.
- 12.
Jacob Klein, op. cit., chapter 6.
- 13.
Ibid., chapter 7.
- 14.
See above, where Patočka’s account of why Ideas-numbers are not ideas of numbers is discussed.
- 15.
Jacob Klein, op. cit., p. 86/89 (German/English).
- 16.
Aristotle, Metaphysics M 6, 1080a15–b4; see W. D. Ross’ note on the term ἀσύμβλητος, Aristotle’s Metaphysics (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1924), p. 427.
- 17.
Jacob Klein, op. cit., pp. 88–94/91–98 (German/English).
- 18.
Discussion in detail of possible reasons for this cannot be pursued here, although the two most obvious ones can be briefly indicated. The first is that Klein’s attempt to approach Ancient Greek mathematics from its own conceptual level is ultimately inseparable from his critical-historical account of the difference in the “conceptuality” (Begrifflichkeit) of pre-modern Greek and modern European numbers concepts. (Most discussions of the “unwritten doctrine,” whether they mention Klein or not, lack critical acuity on this point, symptomatic of which is their talk in vague metaphorical terms about the Greek number concept being more “concrete,” “intuitive,” etc., than the modern concept.) In addition to the non-conceptual mode of Being of the Greek ἀριθμός noted above that emerges in Klein’s account, its aporetic mode of Being, as at once many and one, is especially significant, because it is Klein’s thesis that this mode of Being means that the Greek ἀριθμός is both καθ᾿ αὑτό (by itself) and πρός τι (in relation to something). Because of this, Klein maintains (1) that Greek arithmetic as well as logistic treat of both non-relational and relational mathematical beings and (2) that from the standpoint of Being, arithmetic and therefore ἀριθμός is more fundamental than logistic and therefore ἀναλογία. For Gaiser and Patočka following him, it is the reverse: Plato’s so-called “theory of logos” (in the sense of mathematical relation, ἀναλογία) assumes priority as the “παράδειγμα and bridge to beings” (Jan Patočka, “Europa und Nach-Europa,” op. cit., p. 245). From the standpoint of Klein’s analysis, this reversal of priority has the insuperable disadvantage of eliding the status of the mathematical as the image of the beings (εἴδη) that are paradigmatic for that which is mathematical and all else, which is clearly manifest in Plato’s dialogues. See also below for a discussion of this last point.
- 19.
Konrad Gaiser, op. cit., p. 365.
- 20.
Ibid., p. 367.
- 21.
Jan Patočka, “Europa und Nach-Europa,” op. cit, p. 266.
- 22.
See ibid., pp. 266 f., where Patočka provides a concise synopsis of Gaiser’s account of dimensional generation, the context of which is Patočka’s endorsement of it.
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Hopkins, B.C. (2011). Patočka’s Phenomenological Appropriation of Plato. In: Abrams, E., Chvatík, I. (eds) Jan Patočka and the Heritage of Phenomenology. Contributions To Phenomenology, vol 61. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-90-481-9124-6_4
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