Europe and the Care of the Soul 9783869457000, 9783883098876
This book offers an original and challenging interpretation of Jan Pato?ka's conception of the spiritual foundation
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Martin Cajthaml
libri nigri 35
Copyright © 2014. Traugott Bautz Verlag. All rights reserved.
Europe and the Care of the Soul
Verlag Traugott Bautz GmbH
Europe and the Care of the Soul, Traugott Bautz Verlag, 2014. ProQuest Ebook Central,
Copyright © 2014. Traugott Bautz Verlag. All rights reserved.
For Aneţka, Dominik, and Michal
Europe and the Care of the Soul, Traugott Bautz Verlag, 2014. ProQuest Ebook Central,
Copyright © 2014. Traugott Bautz Verlag. All rights reserved. Europe and the Care of the Soul, Traugott Bautz Verlag, 2014. ProQuest Ebook Central,
Acknowledgements
Copyright © 2014. Traugott Bautz Verlag. All rights reserved.
There are many people who, each in her or his way, contributed to the existence of this book. I thank my wife Alţbeta and the children Aneţka, Dominik, and Michal for their patience with their husbands/father's overly busyness over the last year and a half. I thank my colleagues from the Department of philosophy and patrology of the Sts Cyril and Methodius Faculty of Theology at Palacký University in Olomouc Vít Hušek, Petr Dvořák, Jan Koblíţek, and Jiří Bartoník for their friendly support. My special thanks go to Peter McCormick without whose many-sided help this book would be literally impossible. I thank to Jan Frei from The Jan Patočka Archive for his help with archive materials and recent secondary literature on Jan Patočka‘s work. I thank Hans Rainer Sepp for accepting this book in the series libri nigri in Traugott Bautz Verlag. And last but not least, I thank to Lukáš Kotala, another colleague of mine, for formatting the text of the manuscript according to the requirements of the publisher.
Europe and the Care of the Soul, Traugott Bautz Verlag, 2014. ProQuest Ebook Central,
Copyright © 2014. Traugott Bautz Verlag. All rights reserved. Europe and the Care of the Soul, Traugott Bautz Verlag, 2014. ProQuest Ebook Central,
Table of Contents Acknowledgements
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vii
Preface
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Introduction
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Chapter I The Fundamental Theme of Patočka’s Thought: Truthful Human Existence . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
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7 11
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37 45 52
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67 72 78
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1. The Internal Unity of Patočka‘s Thought. . . . . . . . 2. Truthful Human Existence in Patočka‘s Works . . . . 3. Truthful Human Existence in Patočka‘s Philosophy of History . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Chapter II The Care of the Soul in Socrates and in Plato
Copyright © 2014. Traugott Bautz Verlag. All rights reserved.
1. 2. 3. 4.
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The Care of the Soul in Socrates . . . . . . . . . . . . . . The Self-Moving Soul . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . The Three Modalities of the Platonic Care of the Soul A Critique of Patočka‘s Interpretation of the Platonic Care of the Soul . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Chapter III The Care of the Soul in European Spiritual History . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
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1. The Socratic-Platonic Care of the Soul as a Spiritual Heritage . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2. Philosophy of the Renaissance . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3. The Philosophy of the Enlightenment . . . . . . . . . . . 4. The Three Forms of the Care of the Soul in European Spiritual History . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5. The Relationship Between the Socratic-Platonic and the Christian Care of the Soul . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Europe and the Care of the Soul, Traugott Bautz Verlag, 2014. ProQuest Ebook Central,
Chapter IV The Spiritual Crisis of Europe and Modern Techno-Scientific Rationality . . . . . . . . .
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1. The Causes of the Crisis in the work The Natural World as a Philosophical Problem . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2. The Causes of the European Crisis in the works From 50s . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3. Analysis of the European Spiritual Crisis and Suggested Solutions in the Texts from the 70s . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4. The Threat of Modern Techno-Scientific Rationality to Human Beings . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5. The Positive Possibilities of Technological Civilization .
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119 128
Conclusion .
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133
Endnotes .
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145
Bibliography.
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155
Copyright © 2014. Traugott Bautz Verlag. All rights reserved.
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x
Europe and the Care of the Soul, Traugott Bautz Verlag, 2014. ProQuest Ebook Central,
Preface
Copyright © 2014. Traugott Bautz Verlag. All rights reserved.
‗For I go around doing nothing but persuading both young and old among you not to care for your body or your wealth in preference to . . . the best possible state of your soul, as I say to you: Wealth does not bring about excellence, but excellence brings about wealth and all other public and private blessings for men.‘ (Plato)1
‗The human good, the knowledge of which a person at first naively claims to possess while not having even the slightest premonition of its sense, despite its mysteriousness and absence, is in some sense here . . . it is here as absent and yet also as an appeal to refuse all immediate (instinctive, traditional) and individual, fragmented, contingent ends, to refuse everything which pretends to be such an end and the human good. . . . the appeal to live this life is an appeal to live a unified, focused, internally consolidated life; it is the realization of a true and consolidated existence.‘ (Jan Patočka)2
ssssssssssssssssssssssssss 1 2
Apology 30 a6-b3; tr.G. M. A. Grube; cited below p. 37. 1991/7, p. 115; cited below p. 38.
Europe and the Care of the Soul, Traugott Bautz Verlag, 2014. ProQuest Ebook Central,
PREFACE
The Deep Trouble with Europe Today? The deep trouble with Europe today, and its continuing incapacities to harmonize if not unite the sovereign domains of the European Union‘s now 28 member states, is its having forgotten the individual and collective ideal of the Socratic care of the soul. That is just one of the conclusions one might critically draw from the remarkable reflections Martin Cajthaml has retrieved in his outstanding book on the central theme in the philosophy and in the vision of Europe of the eminent twentieth-century Czech philosopher, Jan Patočka.3 Among the many merits of Europe and the Care of the Soul is its providing the first thoroughly reliable and truly comprehensive account of this unifying theme in Jan Patočka‘s rich, varied and, in English, still insufficiently known philosophical works.4 That unifying theme, in an extraordinarily extensive life-long philosophical work of which only one book was published before his tragic death in the hands of the Czech secret police at the age of 70 in 1977, is the patient elucidation of one idea. And that seminal idea is the claim that the sense and significance of living truly one‘s life that most basically characterizes the Socratic care of the soul lies finally in the constant inquiry into the nature of the good.
Copyright © 2014. Traugott Bautz Verlag. All rights reserved.
Few philosophers in Europe or elsewhere have suspected the extent, the suggestiveness, and the inner coherence of Patočka‘s work. ssssssssssssssssssssssssss 3 4
The most recent biography is the brief one of Martin Cajthaml in Jan Patočka, Platone e l‘Europa, a cura di G. Reale (Milano: Vita e Pensiero 1997), pp. 255-263. ‗The most recent bibliography, although not entirely up to date, is on the web page of The Jan Patočka Archive at http://www.ajp.cuni.cz/index_e.html. See also two relatively recent bibliographies: I) L. Hagedorn and H.R. Sepp (eds.), Jan Patočka.Texte, Dokumente, Bibliographie, München/Prag: Karl Alber/Oikoymenh 1999, p. 523-777; and II) Jan Patočka, Platone e l‘Europa, a cura di G. Reale, Milano: Vita e Pensiero 1997, p. 267-338‘ (Personal communication from Martin Cajthaml of October 30, 2013 which also includes some further information from the current specialist assistent of the Archive, Jan Frei). The standard chronology of his work is also on the web page of The Jan Patočka Archive.
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PETER MCCORMICK
For example, when not without difficulty I travelled to Prague in the late Spring of 1978 in hopes of presenting to Patočka‘s still grieving family a copy of a book with a Patočka article in English that a colleague of mine and I had translated from the French and then of returning to France with a samizdat typescript of Patočka‘s bibliography, I was at a loss. For despite my extensive researches, I had no proper notion of either the extent of Patočka‘s disparate philosophical work, or of the unifying role the Socratic ideal of the care of the soul played in that work, or of the richness of that ideal for thinking freshly about Europe‗s most basic ethical values. 5 Now, thanks to Martin Cajthaml‘s work including some work in The Jan Patočka Archive in Prague, those interested in the values of the still struggling emergence of the European Union today finally have on hand an impeccably researched and very plausibly unified philosophical account of Patočka‘s courageous, thorough, and ceaseless inquiries into the several bases of those ethical values. But what if anything do Patočka‘s philosophical reflections on Socratic ethics and the history of Europe in the midst of his own troubled times might have to do with Europe‘s situation today?
Copyright © 2014. Traugott Bautz Verlag. All rights reserved.
Europe‘s Troubles Today and the Disagreements about Europe‘s Basic Ethical Values Nearly nine years ago, on October 29, 2004, the then 25 European Union (EU) heads of state signed a new formal draft treaty. The draft treaty incorporated for the first time a European Constitution.6 This proposed constitution was the fruit of an almost two year fractious constitutional
ssssssssssssssssssssssssss 5
6
See Jan Patočka, ‗The Husserlian Doctrine of Eidetic Intuition and its Present Critics,‘ tr. P. McCormick and F. Elliston in Husserl: Expositions and Appraisals, ed. P. McCormick and F. Elliston (Notre-Dame: University of Notre-Dame Press, 1977), pp. 150-160. Traité établissant une constitution pour l‘Europe (Paris: La Documentation française, 2004).
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PREFACE
convention of roughly 200 experts under the chairmanship of former French president, Valéry Giscard-d‘Estaing.7 Eight months later however, on May 29 and June 1, 2005 and after unusually acrimonious political campaigns, popular referenda in the EU member states of France and the Netherlands clearly rejected the proposed ratification of the already signed constitutional treaty. Central to these rejections were refusals on the part of many EU leading political figures and their respective countries to yield any part of what standardly is understood today as a state‘s political sovereignty. Debate continues today. Yesterday, the debate seemed to turn finally not on the acceptability or not of the draft constitution‘s alleged overly-liberal economic orientations and daunting complexities. Rather, the debate turned, perhaps not surprisingly in the very secular EU, on whether the constitution‘s preamble should or should not explicitly mention Europe‘s Christian backgrounds. A more basic issue, however, underlay the debate‘s traditional and perhaps overly familiar tensions in Europe between the sacred and the secular. That issue was the identity of just those common basic European values, 8 whether Christian or not, that were finally supposed to inform a properly articulated constitutional notion of limited sovereignty. 9
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Today, in late 2013 after the conclusion of Martin Cajthaml‘s timely work and as I write this Preface, the actual contexts of these issues are mainly not philosophical. Rather, these contexts would appear to be mainly geopolitical. Where Europe now has to steer in order to restore its rapidly declining global status is quite unclear.10
ssssssssssssssssssssssssss 7 8 9
10
L‘Europe de la construction à l‘enlisement, ed. T. Ferenczi (Paris: Le Monde, 2012), esp. pp. 81-86, and pp. 98-102. On ‗European values‘ today cf. and the specialissue of Futuribles (juillet-août, 2013). Cf. the conception of a future Europe in J. Delors, «Les peuples doivent voir clair dans leur système de gouvernement,» Alternatives économiques (Hors Série, N° 95, 1er Trimestre 2013), pp. 78-79, and the shifting conceptions in Germany‘s central views, for example, as reported in Le Monde, June 25, 2013. For a series of recent articles on the difficult future of Europe see Europe 2013, Alternatives économiques (Hors Série, N° 81, 3e Trimestre 2009) and Alternatives économiques (Hors Série, N° 98, 4e Trimestre 2013).
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Europe and the Care of the Soul, Traugott Bautz Verlag, 2014. ProQuest Ebook Central,
PETER MCCORMICK
For as detailed, recent reports from the European Union, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, and the International Monetary Fund have continued to demonstrate amply, the European Union is still struggling with the financial, economic, political, and social consequences of the crises that began some five years ago. 11 More fundamentally, insistent disagreement between the two present leaders of the EU, Germany and France, about whether a new treaty with a new constitution will be required to stabilize the now quite shaky EU with radical institutional reforms12 raise freshly the question as to just what basic ethical values might eventually figure in a ratifiable EU constitution. But just where do such values originate? For Patočka, European ethical values derive from Greek philosophy.
The Origins of Ethical Values in Europe in the Socratic Accounts of the Care of the Soul
Copyright © 2014. Traugott Bautz Verlag. All rights reserved.
Shortly after the end of the Second World War and before the Iron Curtain‘s division of Europe, from 1945 to 1948, Patočka worked into his ‗Lectures on Ancient Philosophy‘ a mature version of what he later argued in detail was the philosophical core of Europe‘s ethical values. This core he identified and then elaborated as what he took to be one of the most basic philosophical insights in Socrates‘ way of pursuing philosophical inquiry in the deeply unsettled times of late fifth-century BCE Athens. Those times were, he believed, in some important ways very much like his own in Czechoslovakia. Arguing from close inquiry into the Greek texts of the early dialogues of Plato and orienting his researches largely by at that time the pathbreaking philological and philosophical works of German scholarship, Patočka came to hold that Socrates‘ extraordinary practices of philosophical inquiry arose, mainly if not exclusively, from a singular understanding of ssssssssssssssssssssssssss 11
12
See the most recent numbers from the EU‘s official statistics office, Eurostat, at http://epp.eurostat.ec.europa/statistics, those from the OECD at http://stats. oecd.org, and those from the World Bank at http://databank.worldbank.org. For the continuing fallout on Europe and on the euro-skeptical backlash see, for example, Le Monde, April 24, 2013 and Le Monde, April 25, 2013. Cf. Le Monde, October 25, 2013.
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PREFACE
what Socrates called ‗elenchus‘ and of what we might informally call here ‗friendly philosophical cross-examination.‘13 This complex and demanding philosophical practice, some philosophers today might argue cogently, is probably at the origins of the initial rational articulation of those basic ethical values still governing Europe. The cross-examination process when taken to its conclusion, which many of Socrates‘ interlocutors like even the extraordinarily talented and privileged Alcibiades were often unable to accomplish, develops through three successive phases. The first phase of the cross-examination is one of astonishment and shock. This is the phase of what we might informally call here ‗embarrassed self-discovery.‘
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Socrates brings round an initially mundane public conversation with one of the promising young men in Athens‘ social and political life to the newly problematic question in their own troubled times of what makes for a good life. Socrates asks just what the politically ambitious young man thinks the good life comes to. And his interlocutor replies with characteristic selfconfidence. Then Socrates‘ further questions make explicit important contradictions in his interlocutor‘s apparently well-considered opinions about what the good life is. Gradually it becomes evident to all that Socrates‘ interlocutor has not examined sufficiently his own opinions on such an important matter. Hence, despite his believing so, in fact he does not actually know what that life consists in. And not knowing that raises serious questions about his eventual suitability to hold public office and be entrusted with trying to realize the common good for his fellow citizens. Following the exchanges carefully, Socrates, the young man himself, and his intelligent companions come to recognize that, for all his admitted intellectual and social qualities, the distinguished young man is ignorant of ssssssssssssssssssssssssss 13
‗Friendly‘ because unlike the cross-examination most familiar today in legal proceedings, Socratic cross-examination took place in the contexts of highly charged social conventions. Cf. P. McCormick, ‗Friendship‘s Unrequited Loves: On the Alcibiades Speech in Plato‘s Symposium,‘ Proceedings of the Fifth Symposium Platonicum Pragense, ed. M. Cajthaml and A. Havlíček (Prague: Oikoumene, 2007), pp. 293-311.
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PETER MCCORMICK
one of the most important matters, knowledge of what constitutes the good life for the individual, for society, and for proper self-knowledge as well. Moreover, until Socrates‘ ‗friendly philosophical cross-examination,‘ neither the young man nor his companions have known this to be so. The second phase of the philosophical cross-examination is one of strong emotions. This is the phase of what we might informally call here ‗shame and confusion.‘ For on discovering his own ignorance of what he previously had believed to be the case about life‘s most important matters, Socrates‘ interlocutor and, in a different way, some of his companions too, most often experience a profound personal and collective shame and confusion. For previously they have believed they knew what is essential to know if one is eventually to make one‘s way successfully in social and political life, to live the good life. But now their apparently unobjectionable replies to Socrates‘ persistent questions have actually demonstrated that their most basic beliefs about just what the good life is are contradictory; their views are simply false. More profoundly, their habitual justifications for leading the self-confident and ambitious lives they are presently leading are now, evidently, utterly unreliable.
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In short, these talented and privileged young aspirants to social and political prominence have most basically neglected themselves. They have neglected their spirits, their ‗souls.‘ Despite all appearances, fundamentally they have already failed; they have failed to ‗care for the soul.‘ Now at the end of this second phase of the cross-examination, as Martin Cajthaml carefully observes, ‗there are only two ways out of the extremely unsettling situation which the Socratic examination induces. One must either run away from Socrates with ears blocked, as Alcibiades does [in Plato‘s Symposium 216b5-6]. Or one must accept the hard-to-bear fact concerning one‘s own condition [as Alcibiades does in the Alcibiades 124b6-7: ‗Well, Socrates . . . can you show me the way?‘], be immersed in the Socratic questioning, and accept the life-program of the care of the soul.‘ 14 If Socrates‘ interlocutor accepts his condition both of being most basically ignorant about the essential thing for leading one‘s life truly and even ssssssssssssssssssssssssss 14
Cf. p. 39; translation slightly altered.
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PREFACE
of not knowing that one is so basically ignorant, then the third and final phase of Socratic cross-examination comes into force. This is the phase of what we might informally call here ‗perduring engagement.‘ For Socrates, coming to lead one‘s life not falsely but truly is engaging oneself unremittingly in the pursuit of a special kind of knowledge. This is the twofold knowledge of what is the true good for human beings and of what this knowledge entails for living one‘s life. Such a commitment, on Patočka‘s distinctive although not uncontroversial interpretation of the Socratic care of the soul, must be a ceaseless and life-long one. For, as Patočka argues in his 1947 lectures on Socrates and as Martin Cajthaml summarizes, ‗the Socratic search for the human good never finds a definitive answer . . . [yet] only such an endless search for the ever elusive good can give human existence its highest perfection.‘ 15
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Thus Socratic cross-examination aims through embarrassed selfdiscovery, shame and confusion, and a perduring engagement, to the adoption of a rationally justifiable view that the essential element in what leading a truly human life comes to is the care of the soul. And the care of the soul itself is to be understood as ‗an intellectual path marked by a constant refutation of the insufficiently reflective moral convictions concerning the human good. . . .‘ 16 But what does such an apparently merely theoretical philosophical view have to do with the practical historical development of ethical values in Europe? By way of reply, Patočka patiently undertook the task of providing an account of the fate of the Socratic account of the care of the soul through the major periods not just in classical thought but in European history generally.
The Historical Development of the Socratic Care of the Soul in Europe After the initial Socratic insights about the way towards the living of a truthful existence that motivated his habitual cross-examinations of some of ssssssssssssssssssssssssss 15 16
Cf. p. 40. Cf. p. 41.
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PETER MCCORMICK
the most talented and politically ambitious young men of Athens, the most important moment in the early history of the care of the soul was the fuller articulation of this ideal in the works of his greatest follower, Plato. For Patočka, this articulation assumed a metaphysical guise in Plato‘s sharpening of the Socratic search for ethical definitions of the virtues and of the good with the ingenious help of his own complex doctrine of Ideas or Forms and especially with the Idea of the Good as the highest of the Ideas. Despite the great advances Aristotle introduced into the previous understandings of the good in the ethical domains, Patočka saw the next major steps in the development of the care of the soul in Stoic ethical reflections during the Hellenistic period. Then, without investigating the metaphysical byways of Neo-platonic philosophies, Patočka took up the major transformation of the care of the soul in the emergence and protracted dominance in Europe of the spiritual and no longer exclusively metaphysical concerns of Christian philosophy.
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As the importance of Christian philosophy began to recede with the rediscovery of the various Greek and Roman philosophical traditions in the Renaissance, however, Patočka thought that what was the ideal of the care of the soul seemed gradually to change into what could be called ‗the care for the world.‘ Further, the several scientific revolutions in the early modern period appeared to give a new precision to the emerging care for the world while relegating most of the traditional care for the soul to the increasingly separate domain of religion. For Patočka, this strongly mathematical and naturalizing influence on the transformation of an original ethical ideal of the care of the soul to a new scientific ideal of the care for the world, even when Renaissance learning was able to delineate the traditional Socratic ideal with the help of the rediscovery of the classics of ancient Greek philosophy, reached its culmination in the Enlightenment. For then the very form of the care of the soul as a rational and not just ethical ideal changed definitively. This change, Patočka believed, came with the re-construal of the rational itself now exclusively in the new terms of the mathematical, the scientific, and the technological. This radical transformation of the original European ethical ideal of the care of the soul understood in expansive reasonable and spiritual terms to a scientific ideal of the care of the world understood in exclusive and reductive terms of strictly scientific notions of rationality for Patočka not only domi-
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PREFACE
nated the rise to power in the late nineteenth-century of the techno-sciences. Much more importantly for him, this new idea of rationality also made possible the unthinkable immensities of evil and suffering in the twentiethcentury‘s two world wars and the Cold War that followed which framed Patočka‘s own life. Born in 1907, Patočka lived through the horrors of the terrible twentieth-century world until his own untimely death in 1977 in the Soviet occupied Czechoslovakia. No wonder then that he came to believe that his historical ruminations apparently led to an inescapable twofold conclusion. His argued conviction was that the final reduction of the very idea of human rationality to techno-scientific rationality only had come about mainly because of the loss of the original European ethical ideal of the Socratic care for the soul. Moreover, whatever hope that might still be left for a newly emergent union of European states that he already sensed both in the multiplying signs of incipient revolt against the Soviet hegemony in Central Europe and in his endless discussions with Vaclav Havel and the other co-founders with him of Charter 77, required a critical return to the Socratic ethical ideal of a life lived truthfully through ceaseless inquiry into the nature of the good.
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This was Patočka‗s answer to the question his eminent student, Karel Kosík, raised with me that belated Spring in Prague in 1978 when he counselled me not to bring still more trouble on Patočka‘s grieving family by trying to give them a book. ‗But what could doing philosophy ever look like in times like these?‘ he asked. But was Patočka right? That is, did he come to a satisfactory interpretation of the Socratic ideal of the care of the soul, and did he succeed in working out a cogent enough account of the historical development of this ideal in European history?
Critically Appropriating the Socratic Ideal With respect to Patočka‘s understanding of the Socratic ideal of the care of the soul Martin Cajthaml has detailed a number of sympathetic yet carefully wrought criticisms. He puts these criticisms on exhibit, however, only after expending a great deal of thought about just what Patočka came to hold
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about such difficult matters after years of protracted philosophical investigation and political harassment. Cajthaml‘s critical but nonetheless genuine appreciation for Patočka‘s efforts in working out some of the implications of the care of the soul for the connected ideas of historicity, intentionality, and of the life world, to take but a few of several salient examples, cannot be doubted. Moreover, he has also scrutinized critically but sympathetically Patočka‘s intellectual debts to his teacher, Edmund Husserl, as well as to the work of Hegel and Heidegger. In particular, Cajthaml has scrupulously investigated Patočka‘s claims of how Plato apparently developed the original Socratic doctrine and, hence, of how Plato still merits the title of the father of European metaphysics. For Plato‘s metaphysics, some philosophers would argue today, still remains, even if not exclusively, at the core of the European philosophical understanding of ethics.
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On this central component of Patočka‘s philosophical legacy Martin Cajthaml reaches the conclusion that the initial Socratic ideal of the care of the soul can be ascribed to Plato only at the finally unreasonable price of ‗reSocratizing Plato.‘ That is, if I understand him correctly, Plato does not in fact take over and develop the metaphysics for the Socratic ethical ideal of understanding the examined life as the only life worth living in the most basic terms of the care of the soul. For, however sympathetic Plato remains to his teacher Socrates, Plato develops his own quite extraordinary philosophical inquiries out of a much more fundamental, and finally independent, set of epistemological and metaphysical concerns. 17 ssssssssssssssssssssssssss 17
These points may be made more specific. Thus, ‗the essential point of my criticism,‘ Martin Cajthaml writes in a personal note of October 31, 2013, ‗is this: Patočka interprets Socrates as teaching that the good cannot be known (it is present only indirectly in the sense that the life in pursuit of the good is evidently a good life). It is not a matter of course that Socrates is interpreted this way, but since we have the problem with the reconstruction of the historical Socrates, Patočka‘s interpretation is certainly within the borders of what can be ascribed to Socrates. Thus the problem arises not with this interpretation as such but at the moment when Patočka attempts to interpret Plato as having the same ‗Socratic‘ non-cognitivist approach to the good. For in Plato, particularly in the image of the Sun in Republic VI, it is said that the good is megiston mathéma (it is the highest object of teaching and learning). Moreover, if we take the approach of the
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The ethical remains of central concern for Plato, of course. But Socrates‘ perhaps overly narrow focus on the ethical and his overly superficial elucidation of the epistemological and the metaphysical dimensions of the essential definitions of the virtues keep Plato finally from endorsing any absolute primacy for the Socratic ideal of the care of the soul. But if Martin Cajthaml is right in his strictures on Patočka for reSocratizing Plato, as I believe he is, then the chronicle of just how the Socratic ideal of the care of the soul develops through European history also requires strictures. For the history of Western philosophy understood here as philosophy in Europe is not a series of footnotes to Socrates but, as the old handbooks used to repeat after Whitehead, 18 to Plato. And if Patočka cannot sufficiently warrant his basic historical claim that Plato most basically refines the Socratic ideal of the care of the soul, then the main stages in the historical development of this so-called Platonic and not just exclusively Socratic ideal must be critically recast. As Martin Cajthaml writes, although ‗Patočka is right in ascribing the care of the soul to Plato, the problem is that he conceives it in certain respects too much along the lines of the Socratic one (as he understands it). These respects are: the notion of the good and its knowability and the nature of the virtues.‘ 19
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Tübingen school, we have in Plato the theory of Principles, i.e., a metaphysical theory of the One-Good. And, since, Patočka in his texts from the 70s accepts explicitly the approach of the Tübingen school, we have the following contradiction: on one hand Plato is being interpreted as the one who teaches that the good is never to be reached by our cognition, on the other as a metaphysician whose metaphysics reaches its highpoint in the theory of the Good. These two approaches which are taken by Patočka cannot be reconciled. In the book I only argue from within Patočka‘s perspective in order to point out the tension, if not a contradiction, in his approach. Since, however, I also think that the approach of the Tübingen school to Plato is substantially correct, at one point I also argue that what Patočka says about the knowledge of the good in Plato is simply not to be justified by the Corpus Platonicum and the indirect tradition (agrafa dogmata). So the way you render my standpoint here is generally correct, but might be made more specific.‘ A. N. Whitehead, Process and Reality (New York: 1941), p. 63; thanks to M. Cajthaml for this reference. Personal communication from M. Cajthaml, October 31, 2013.
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In this context Patočka‘s jump from the Stoics to the Medievals without detailing the metaphysical and ethical analyses of the major Neoplatonists is particularly unfortunate. For by plunging into the reception of Platonic philosophy and not just into Plato‘s works by themselves, Patočka might well have been brought to reformulate more critically his views on the distance between Plato‘s related but different understanding of what makes for the truly good life and Socrates‘ own putative views on that very difficult matter. By way of critically appropriating Patočka‘s contributions then to our understanding today of what lies at the bases of European ethical values we would need to register some rather important criticisms. Some of these Martin Cajthaml brings out quite helpfully, as for example his discussions of Patočka‘s unsubstantiated claim that the efforts to understand the good can never fully succeed and hence must be endless. Others we ourselves would have to introduce such as, thanks to the extraordinary developments in the study of Greek philosophy in the last generation, what now seems to be Patočka‘s uncritical over-reliance on O. Gigon‘s account of both Socrates and Plato, or, thanks to a more nuanced and detailed understanding of European history today, what now seems also to be Patočka‘s over-reliance on G. Barraclough‘s important but quite narrow reading of that history.
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But some of the main lines of Patočka‘s re-Socratization of Plato, however they must be criticized, are suggestive enough by themselves for us now to return quite briefly by way of conclusion to the pertinence of Patočka‘s extraordinarily rich theme of the care of the soul for current ongoing discussions about Europe‘s quite uncertain future. How then might Patočka‘s understanding of the Socratic (if not Socratic-Platonic) care of the soul be helpful in the ongoing discussions of the EU‘s uncertain future?
Europe‘s Troubles Tomorrow? In 2013, for the first time since 2009, Europe as a whole had fallen into recession. By April 2013 average unemployment in the then 27 member
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PREFACE
states20 of the EU had reached more than 12.2% with more than 19 million people out of work.21 At the same time, widespread demonstrations of thousands of people broke out once again in Athens, Madrid, Rome, and Paris. Negotiations among the then 27 member states of the EU regarding the all-important budget for 2014-2020 were deadlocked for months until a basically unsatisfactory agreement was finally reached on June 27, 2013 only. Moreover, the protracted budget deadlock was not over the common economic good for Europe as a whole. Rather, the deadlock was essentially connected with inflated national egoisms, 22 increasing populisms, and politically unacceptable limitations on state sovereignties.23 Worrisomely, given Germany‘s leadership role in the EU today, the most recent German federal elections of September 2013 resulted in quite difficult coalition tractations. Further, the new EU elections scheduled for May 2014 were increasingly haunted by rising skepticism about the EU and the growing importance of EU populist anti-European political parties. Still, all deeply concerned stake-holders continue to agree today, that without closer economic, financial, and budgetary harmonization if not union among the EU states, Europe itself will almost certainly continue its global decline.24 Moreover, many political leaders of the EU member states themselves seem to realize that the key to such closer substantial bonds will require something more substantive than, as perhaps too often in the past as in Lisbon in 2007,25 just one more treaty revision.26 But just how could such closer harmonization and union be reached? ssssssssssssssssssssssssss Copyright © 2014. Traugott Bautz Verlag. All rights reserved.
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On July 1, 2013, Croatia became the 28th member of the EU, and on January 1, 2014, the EU member, Latvia, hopes to become the 18th member of the current 17 member Euro group within the EU. BBC World News, April 2, 2013; Le Monde, April 4, 2013; Eurostat May, 2013 (see http://epp.eurostat.ec.europa.eu/statistics). The source for the April 2013 percentage of EU unemployment is Haver Analytics cited in the ‗Economic and Financial Indicators‘ of The Economist from June 15, 2013. Le Monde, February 5, 2013. Le Monde, November 22 and November 23, 2012. See for example the articles in the special issue of Alternatives économiques (Hors–Série N° 95, 1er trimestre 2013), esp. pp. 12-29. The EU heads of state comprising the European Council of the EU signed the draft Lisbon Treaty on December 13, 2007, and the Treaty became effective on December 1, 2009. The quite difficult negotiations tried to incorporate as much as
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One essential key would seem to be agreement on and successful ratification of a new European Constitution that would entrench agreed-upon European ethical values. This agreement however seems at the moment quite difficult to reach for a number of different reasons. One of the central reason concerns the nature of the basic ethical values of Europe. Some basic ethical values in Europe today are already entrenched in the Preamble of the EU Lisbon Treaty that came into effect on December 1, 2009. This treaty tried to retrieve some of the central elements in the rejected EU Draft Constitution of 2005. And among the elements retrieved were the formulations of several of the basic ethical values that had already figured in the Preamble of that rejected draft. These basic ethical values, however, are currently under even greater critical pressure than they were in the acrimonious political discussions of Spring 2005 that led to the non-ratification of the proposed Draft Constitution. For with increasing EU-wide secularization and the hardening of the interpretation of the peculiar French culture of laicization, some quite influential European public intellectuals and political commentators are viewing some of these basic ethical values as essentially involving religious and especially Christian elements.
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Since, however, such elements are taken as anathema to the currently reigning understanding of democracy in Europe in terms of a thoroughly secular republic, such ethical values, even if basic, cannot be allowed to be entrenched in any eventual new EU constitution. But perhaps several new questions about Europe‘s future now arise. And some of these questions may arise in part thanks to the clear vision that Martin Cajthaml‘s now work allows us of the extraordinarily suggestive philosophical reflections of Jan Patočka on the nature of the Socratic care for the soul and the fate of Europe in the twentieth century. By way of conclusion, then, perhaps one of those questions might be put here even if in a necessarily preliminary way only. ssssssssssssssssssssssssss
26
possible of the previously rejected 2005 Treaty of the European Constitution without much success. Accordingly, agreement was reached on the understanding that the Lisbon Treaty was a ‗simplified treaty‘ that merely ‗amended without replacing‘ the major Maastricht Treaty signed in February 1992. Cf. The Economist, ‗Amsterdam, Nice, Lisbon . . . ,‘ April 27, 2013, p. 37.
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Thus, on the bases of Jan Patočka‘s work in particular, many reflective persons presently in powerful positions in the EU today might be brought to ask whether an evidently pluralistic understanding of at least those basic ethical values in Europe that might figure in the Preamble to any new EU constitution might be constitutionally articulated in the richly ambiguous terms of the Socratic care for the soul. If so, then just like the life of Socrates which remains exemplary for all Europeans whether secular or religious, so too the Socratic care for the soul as the historical and philosophical foundation for ethical values in Europe would remain open to both secular and religious interpretations. European politicians today cannot afford to overlook such an extraordinary instance of their European heritage. And Patočka‘s work, so ably and admirably presented by Martin Cajthaml, will be of immense assistance to them all.
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Paris, October 2013 Peter McCormick
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Introduction The question of the cultural and spiritual foundations of Europe is currently a very controversial topic, especially in the context of the ongoing European integration process. Although a clear awareness of the common cultural and spiritual values was at its origins, the process takes place primarily on the economic and political level visible to everyone and affecting all. It seems, however, that, even on this level, the project of a unified Europe cannot be successfully carried out without a deepened awareness of Europe‘s common cultural and spiritual heritage.
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At least for an average citizen who does not have expert knowledge of the matter (yet who does have it, given the complexity of the issue?), the lesson from the pervasive financial and economic crisis Europe just went through seems to be this: an economic rationality and a pragmatically conceived political will alone are not sufficient to guarantee a bright future for the European unification project. Therefore, against the background of the recent developments, we do well to search for trustworthy resources that, in the debates and decisions on a future Europe, will have a centripetal and not centrifugal effect. In human relationships, in times of tensions and difficulties, it is important to recall the true meaning of the mutual bond. Similarly, it is timely for us now in Europe, amidst the present difficulties, to rediscover the cultural and spiritual motives that constituted Europe. The notorious fact that ‗Europe‘ is primarily a cultural and not a geographical notion testifies to the existence of such motifs. The general consensus on the fact that Europe is a cultural and not geographical notion, however, goes hand in hand with a fundamental disagreement on what the fundamental values are that Europe stands for. As the draft of the Preamble of the European Constitution and the subsequent discussion about it some ten years ago showed, the deep chasm lies between those that see Europe standing for the values of the Enlightenment and those, more conservative, who think that, culturally and spiritually, European culture was born from the spirit of Christianity.
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INTRODUCTION
This rather profound disagreement concerning the cultural and spiritual quintessence of Europe raises many basic and fairly general questions: What is the role of Christianity in the spiritual and cultural shaping of Europe? What is the relationship between the Christian world-view and the form of life based on it and the world-view and the form of life of the preceding Greco-Roman civilization on the bases of which Christian Europe was formed? What is the true relationship between the Enlightenment and Christianity? Is it a simple antagonism between enlightened reason and obscurantist beliefs and superstitions, as many adherents of the Enlightenment seem to think? Or is it rather a relationship characterized by the dialectical conditioning of the Enlightenment ideals by Christian ones, as their opponents hold? What is the meaning of the scientific and technological revolution for the spiritual and cultural history of Europe? Is it the culmination of the cultural and spiritual development of European civilization as the proponents of the idea of scientific progress say? Or is it rather a manifestation and an acceleration of the dissolution of Europe‘s spiritual and cultural substance as some of the critics of modern science and technology hold?
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Given both the importance and the complexity of the issues at stake, it is, no doubt, a timely task for today‘s human sciences to prepare the ground for their substantive discussion. In fact, this task is perhaps one of the major challenges for human sciences today. Obviously, not every one of the humanities can contribute to this task in the same way and/or to the same extent. And none of them can solve all the problems without substantial help from the others. One of the human sciences that has repeatedly attempted to shed light on the issue is philosophy. In 20th century Continental philosophy we can find several such attempts. One of them is Jan Patočka‘s. Jan Patočka was born June 1, 1907 in the eastern Bohemian city of Turnov. In the 20s he studied Romance and Slavic languages and philosophy at the Philosophical Faculty of the Charles University, Prague. During a study visit to Paris in 1928, he became acquainted with the founder of phenomenology Edmund Husserl, and he studied subsequently with him. In 1936 he received his Habilitation with the book the Natural World as a Philosophical Problem in which he presents a transcendental-phenomenological analysis of the origin and structure of the ‗natural world‘ (Lebenswelt).
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INTRODUCTION
Subsequently, he taught as a professor at a gymnasium. From 1945 to 1949 he worked as a Dozent at the Philosophical Faculty of the Charles University in Prague and at the Pedagogical Faculty of the Masaryk University in Brno. In 1949 he was forced to leave the university because he refused to become a member of the Communist party. From 1950 to 1954 he worked as a researcher at the Masaryk Institute. From 1954 to 1958 he worked at the Comenius Institute of the Czech Academy of Sciences. Subsequently, he worked for ten years as the head of the editorial department at the Institute of Philosophy of the Czech Academy of Sciences. In those years he translated into Czech Hegel‘s Phenomenology of Spirit and Aesthetics. In this period he also wrote the book Aristotelés, jeho předchůdci a dědicové [Aristotle: His Forerunners and Heirs].
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In the 60s, for few years, he was allowed to resume lecturing at both Czech and foreign universities. In 1968 he was even offered a professorship at the Philosophical Faculty of the Charles University. However, three years later, he had to leave the university again. Soon afterwards, he was forbidden any public activity till the end of his life in March 1977. Despite these restrictions, Patočka continued his philosophical work. He held regular unofficial lectures that took place in private apartments. In 1977, together with Václav Havel, he became one of the initiators of Charter 77. As one of its first three spokespersons, he was subjected to exhausting interrogations by the Czech secret police immediately after the text of Charter 77 was published in foreign newspapers in January 1977. He died 17th March 1977 as a consequence of general exhaustion resulting from his work for Charter 77 and from night-long police interrogations. Jan Patočka is generally held to be the most important Czech philosopher of the second half of the 20th century. The aim of this book is to present and to interpret Jan Patočka‘s conception of the spiritual roots of Europe against the background of the whole of his philosophy and to reflect critically on both his overall philosophical thinking and his conception of the spiritual foundations of Europe based on it. As I will show, Patočka‘s main contribution consists in a remarkable conception of the spiritual history of Europe centered on the idea of the rise, transformation, and subsequent decline of the care for the soul. In the care of the soul, the Czech philosopher sees the ‗spiritual substance‘ of Europe.
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INTRODUCTION
Remarkable are also Patočka‘s analyses of the spiritual crisis of Europe and of the role modern techno-science plays in it. Noteworthy is also his philosophy of the Renaissance and the Enlightenment. In the first chapter I address the issue of the systematic unity of Patočka‘s both published and as yet unpublished work. This offers the necessary philosophical context in which Patočka‘s conception of the spiritual foundations of Europe must be placed. In this chapter, my central claim is that the inner unity of Patočka‘s published and as yet unpublished work is not constituted by one systematic philosophical conception. My claim is rather that the unity of Patočka‘s thought is constituted by one basic philosophical theme articulated in different ways throughout the Czech philosopher‘s life. This theme, as I shall argue, is the essence and the truthfulness of human existence. I will show that this theme is not only the backbone of Patočka‘s phenomenological works and his philosophy of history, but also of his interpretation of Socrates and Plato, both in the texts from the postwar period and in the 70s. And it is this interpretation of the Classical Greek philosophers that is the basis of Patočka‘s conception of the spiritual foundations of Europe.
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The topic of the second chapter is Patočka‘s interpretation of the care for the soul in Socrates and Plato. I close the chapter with a critical evaluation of Patočka‘s interpretation of the care for the soul in Plato. This chapter prepares the ground for an exposition of Patočka‘s philosophy of the spiritual roots of Europe based on the Socratic-Platonic care for the soul. This exposition is the subject matter of the third chapter. In the fourth chapter I focus on Patočka‘s account of the spiritual crisis of Europe. According to the Czech philosopher, the root of the crisis is the fact that the European humanity abandoned the life form of the care for the soul in favor of the radically opposed spiritual and cultural style, the ‗care for the world‘. The aim of the modern person who is the exponent of this new spiritual style is to dominate the world by means of modern science and technology. The chapter also contains Patočka‘s reflections on modern science and on the dangers that it presents to our age. The chapter concludes with the discussion of the positive possibilities that modern science and technology have opened up. This book is the only monograph on Jan Patočka published in English since the 1993 pioneer work of Erazim Kohák, Jan Patočka. Philosophy and
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INTRODUCTION
Selected Writings. It is the only general monograph on Jan Patočka attempting to offer a unified vision of the whole of his philosophical work. The book is based on a thorough study of the Czech philosopher‘s works in the original language, i.e., in Czech, including many archival sources. It comprises many passages from Patočka‘s published and as yet unpublished work translated into English for the first time directly from the Czech original. Extant English translations of Patočka‘s works, however, are used whenever possible.
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This book is a revised and updated English version of the book published in Czech (Evropa a péče o duši. Patočkovo pojetí duchovních základů Evropy. Prague: Oikoimenh, 2010). It is not a translation of this book, although most of the material is the same. In the English version I was able to formulate my thoughts more clearly and succinctly, omitting for example many footnotes and some paragraphs which, upon reflection, turned out to be not of essential importance. I also substantially revised the paragraphing of the text and several times a sequence of paragraphs. The most important changes, from the point of view of the content, are to be found at the end of the third chapter and in the Conclusion. In the English version, at the end of the third chapter there is a section ‗The Relationship Between the SocraticPlatonic and the Christian Care of the Soul‘ which is not present in the Czech version. The Conclusion to the English version presents a more mature version of my critique of Patočka‘s overly ‗Socratic‘ interpretation of Plato and of the Platonic care of the soul than the Czech version of the book. The English version also includes an updated Bibliography.
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Chapter I
The Fundamental Theme of Patočka’s Thought: Truthful Human Existence 1. The Internal Unity of Patočka’s Thought
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Before I turn to the subject of this book which is Patočka‘s conception of the spiritual roots of Europe, I want to ask: ‗What is the internal unity of Patočka‘s thought?‘ Asking this question is necessary, because, as I will demonstrate throughout the book, Patočka‘s conception of the spiritual roots of Europe is the particular articulation of the fundamental theme of his lifelong philosophizing. And in order to be able to identify this theme, we have to ask, as we shall see, the question of the internal unity of Patočka‘s thought. If we ask and pursue this question, we arrive quickly at the observation that the internal unity of Patočka‘s thought, if indeed there is one, is not constituted by one or more philosophical conceptions which are continually developed over the whole span of his philosophical life, i.e., conceptions that are modified only by their ever more precise elaboration and revised only in their secondary aspects. We can make this observation by analyzing the discussions among Patočka scholars. For, in these discussions, they do not ask what is the fundamental conception (or conceptions) of Patočka‘s thought. Rather, they ask what are the reasons for its (their) absence.1 A comprehenssssssssssssssssssssssssss 1
According to Kohák and Sokol, this absence is due to the extraordinary circumstances under which Patočka lived and worked, i.e., to exterior causes. According to Hejdánek, the absence of a unified doctrine is immanent to Patočka‘s very style of thinking. Patočka was, according to him, an interpreter of other philosophers rather than an original thinker in his own right. See Moural, ‗The Question of the Core of Patočka‘s Work‘, p. 2 f.
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I. THE FUNDAMENTAL THEME OF PATOČKA‘S THOUGHT: TRUTHFUL HUMAN EXISTENCE
sive picture of Patočka‘s philosophical development confirms this initial observation.2 Thus, if there is a unity in Patočka‘s thought, it is very likely not a unity in the sense of one or more continually developed systematic projects. Is there perhaps any other, weaker, sense of unity that we can find in Patočka‘s thought? Is perhaps Patočka‘s thought unified by a fundamental theme that is a leitmotif of his whole thinking? Since experts on Patočka‘s work agree that in Patočka‘s thought there is indeed one basic theme, this suggestion seems reasonable. The same experts, however, disagree about what this theme is. Some think it is (a) the problem of the ‗natural world‘ (Lebenswelt),3 others think it is (b) the history of philosophy, (c) phenomenology, or (d) the philosophy of history.4
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Extensive and careful reading of Patočka‘s works confirms that each of these themes is a major theme of his thought. Yet none of them is so fundamental that it allows considering the others to be its mere variations. i Does this mutual irreducibility of the major themes of Patočka‘s thought imply that there is, after all, no internal unity in Patočka‘s thought, even at the level of the one basic theme? In this book, I will try to show that this is not the case. Substantive evidence will be brought in support of the claim that Patočka‘s thought is ultimately united by one fundamental theme, although it is none of the four previously mentioned. This theme is the essence and the truthfulness of human existence.5 The theme includes two basic questions that, taken by themselves, do not have the same formal object. Still, as I will attempt to show, in the context of Patočka‘s articulation of the theme, the answer to the first is by the same token the answer to the second. ssssssssssssssssssssssssss 2 3 4 5
For this only recently reconstructed comprehensive picture of Patočka‘s philosophical development, see UE, pp. 32-54. See Petříček, ‗Jan Patočka a myšlenka přirozeného světa.‘ [Jan Patočka and the Question of the Natural World], p. 22. See Moural, ‗The Question of the Core of Patočka‘s Work‘, p. 21-29. Most recently, a somewhat similar unifying approach to Patočka‘s work was taken by a young Italian scholar, Francesco Tava. He sees in Patočka‘s philosophy of (human) freedom a central aspect of his ethical thinking that may serve as ‗a new point of equilibrium in the center of Patočka‘s thought‘. Cf. Tava, Il rischio della libertà. Etica, fenomenologia, politica in Jan Patočka, p. 13.
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1. THE INTERNAL UNITY OF PATOČKA‘S THOUGHT
The first question concerns the very essence (nature) of human being. It is the question ‗What is man?‘ 6 The other question concerns truthful human existence. It is the question ‗What does truthful human existence consist in?‘7 As already mentioned, the two questions, taken by themselves, do not have the same formal object.8 And, for example, in respect to what Patočka calls the ‗negative accounts of human existence‘, they differ also materially.9 For, according to those accounts, the answer to the question ‗What is the essence of human being?‘ does not reveal the possibility of truthful human existence. Rather, it draws the image of an existence which is morally and/or ontologically deficient, ‗decadent‘, nihilistic. In these accounts, each form of truthful human existence appears as a nonrealistic ideal, if not an illusion detrimental to human life. Hence, while in the context of the negative accounts of human existence the question about the essence (nature) of human existence seems perfectly appropriate, the question concerning truthful human existence appears to be misleading, out of place, ill-formulated. Whatever, therefore, the differences between the negative accounts, it is obvious that in all of them the two questions do not have the same material object. Since Patočka, as we shall see, thinks that man is a being that, by his very nature, is ‗called‘ to realize his true existence (in both moral and ontological senses of the term), the material object of the two mentioned questions, in the context of his account of human existence, is virtually the same.10 However, it will be useful to keep in mind the distinctness of the two ssssssssssssssssssssssssss
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6 7
8 9 10
Throughout I use the expression ‗man‘ as Patočka used it, namely to refer to human being whether male or female and ‗his‘ as referring both to ‗his‘ and ‗her‘. For Patočka this question has both moral and ontological dimension. For it comprises not only the moral integrity of the human person, but also the issue of the actualization of the essential potentiality of human nature. I use here Pfänder‘s way of distinguishing between the formal and the material object. Cf. Pfänder, Logik, pp. 130-136. Patočka uses this term to label Heidegger‘s and Sartre‘s concept of human existence. Cf. 1987/12, pp. 216 f. Patočka‘s insight that the discovery of the essence of human being leads to the discovery of the possibility of truthful human existence—the discovery that appeals to one‘s own responsibility to be realized through a metanoia of the previous inauthentic existence—makes his thought akin to Socratic and Platonic philosophy; and to the extent that the necessity of a fundamental change of life (conversion) is implied in the Christian ethos, it is also akin to Christianity.
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I. THE FUNDAMENTAL THEME OF PATOČKA‘S THOUGHT: TRUTHFUL HUMAN EXISTENCE
questions even within the context of Patočka‘s account of a truthful human existence. For, while in some of Patočka‘s texts the question concerning the nature of human existence stands in the foreground, in others, the question of truthful (authentic) existence prevails. In his stimulating interpretation of Plato‘s dialogues, Patočka writes that ‗through human types and attitudes, Plato tries to penetrate to something deeper, something that may be called ―anthropology in the philosophical sense‖, a kind of ―phenomenology of human truth, of human freedom, and of the lack of freedom in it‖.‘11 This formulation expresses quite well the most fundamental theme of Patočka‘s own thinking.12 Now let me show how the theme is present in Patočka‘s phenomenological works and some others.
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Note, however, that, in the following, I do not aim at an interpretation of Patočka‘s whole work from the perspective of the theme of truthful human existence. Such an interpretation, if at all possible, would require much more thorough analysis of Patočka‘s work than the one carried through here. Rather I aim merely at showing, in some detail, how the theme is present in Patočka‘s phenomenological writings, while only roughly indicating in which sense this theme is present both in his philosophy of history and in his interpretation of Socrates and Plato. This approach is justified by the purpose of this chapter, i.e., to situate Patočka‘s reflections on the spiritual roots of Europe and on its crisis within the general context of his thought. Note also that the aim of the chapter is not to reduce Patočka‘s very diverse and thematically rich thought to the theme of truthful human existence. Rather, I shall try to identify the deepest and the most authentic source of Patočka‘s philosophizing that seems to lurk behind the undeniable and irreducible diversity and thematic richness of his thought. In this chapter, I also do not aim at considering all themes of Patočka‘s thought that might be related to the question of truthful human existence. Rather, I focus on those of them that are crucial for the understanding of the crisis and of the spiritual roots of Europe in Patočka‘s work. ssssssssssssssssssssssssss 11 12
1992/13, p. 84. Here lies the main reason for the deep spiritual affinity between Patočka‘s and Plato‘s thought. This affinity is not denied but only characteristically modified by Patočka‘s attempt to overcome the traditional ‗metaphysical Platonism‘ by the so called ‗negative Platonism‘. Cf. infra, pp. 24-26.
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2. Truthful Human Existence in Patočka’s Works In the following, I will adopt F. Karfík‘s division of Patočka‘s work into four periods.1 This division is based on the different philosophical conceptions developed by Patočka over his life. First, I will mention these four positions only in a preliminary way. Afterwards, I will discuss them more in detail, but always only to the extent that their presentation is relevant to the issue of truthful human existence. The first conception is the fruit of young Patočka‘s effort to reconcile the philosophical standpoint of the late Husserl with that of the early Heidegger. Karfík calls this conception ‗the absolute that has become finite‘ (endlich gewordenes Absolute). Surprisingly, the effort dates to the same period, i.e., the year 1936, in which Patočka presents himself as a full-fledged advocate of Husserl‘s transcendental phenomenology.
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The second period, lasting from 1936 till the end of the Second World War, is marked by Patočka‘s endeavor to work out an original account of human subjectivity, trying again to bring together and to reinterpret elements from Husserl‘s late phenomenology and Heidegger‘s Daseinsanalytik.ii The result is the theory according to which human subjectivity is interpreted as the non-objectifiable interior which is the source of all objectivity. In the third period that lasted roughly from the end of the World War II till the end of the 50s, the concept of the interior is gradually replaced by a new theory of consciousness. Patočka sees now the essential feature of all conscious life in the capacity to transcend everything objective, i.e., all that is ‗merely given‘. Karfík calls this theory of consciousness the ‗spirit‘s struggle with objectivity‘. The most mature philosophical conception is the doctrine of the three movements of human existence. Patočka develops it in the course of the 60s. In the beginning of the 70s, he tries to elaborate still another fundamental
ssssssssssssssssssssssssss 1
For the detailed description of these four periods and for the justification of this periodization of Patočka‘s work, see UE, pp. 32-54.
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I. THE FUNDAMENTAL THEME OF PATOČKA‘S THOUGHT: TRUTHFUL HUMAN EXISTENCE
theoretical concept, the so called ‗a-subjectivist phenomenology‘. However, this concept, interesting as it is, remained a mere sketch.2 Now, let me go through the four periods in more detail. In each case, I shall try to show that the theme of truthful human existence was the central philosophical concern. In the Habilitation, Přirozený svět jako filosofický problém [The Natural World as a Philosophical Problem], from 1936, in which the young Patočka presents himself as a whole-hearted advocate of Husserl‘s transcendental phenomenology, the question concerning the essence and the truthfulness of human existence is present as the motivational background of the analysis of the ‗natural world‘ (Husserl‘s Lebenswelt), which is the main topic of the work.3 For, in this analysis, the young Patočka sees a decisive step for the theoretical overcoming of the crisis of modern man. 4 For Patočka, the most salient symptom of the crisis is the self-alienation of modern man. He writes: ‗Man directs neither himself nor anyone else from a personal standpoint; he surrenders to impulses that carry him on.‘ 5 The self-alienation leads to man‘s self-abdication. Thus, according to Patočka, at the root of the crisis of modern man, is the loss (or, at least, the weakening) of modern man‘s inner freedom. 6 The theme of truthful human existence is therefore present also in the Natural World, although only negatively, i.e., as the risk of the loss of human freedom. The need to overcome this danger motivates the transcendental ssssssssssssssssssssssssss 2
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3
4
5 6
For a detailed exposition and analyses of this late concept, see UE, pp. 55-68. In the second part of the work, Patočka gives a justification of the transcendental phenomenological method. From there he moves on to the phenomenological description of the natural world‘s structures (pp. 80-92) and the constitutive sketch of its genesis (pp. 101-116). In the book, he openly expresses his conviction that the transcendental phenomenological method is superior to any other philosophical method available at the time (p. 76). In the Introduction, Patočka stresses that the beginning of philosophy for contemporary man is ‗the internal difficulties of his spiritual life‘, not thaumazein (p. 14). For Patočka‘s interpretation of the nature of the crisis of modern man, see infra, pp. 95-119. 1992/10, p. 19. For the importance of the question of freedom in Patočka‘s Habilitation, cf. Petříček, ‗Patočkův filosofický projekt‘ [Patočka‘s Philosophical Project], p. 274. For the more detailed analyses of the notion of freedom in this work, see UE, p. 18.
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phenomenological analysis of the ‗natural world‘. Patočka considers the restitution of the Lebenswelt to be the decisive step in the process of pushing aside the theoretical obstacles standing in the way of the rediscovery of human freedom in the age dominated by the reductive image of the world produced by modern science. Therefore, in this early work, the description of the ‗natural world‘ is not a purpose in itself. Rather, it is the ‗key to understand human existence in its freedom and in its relationship to the whole of reality‘.7 Nevertheless, as a series of studies showed,8 despite his selfpresentation in the Habilitationsschrift, even in the period 1934-1936 Patočka was not a whole-hearted advocate of Husserl‘s transcendental phenomenology. In the articles from this period9 he tried to formulate his own standpoint in which he draws upon both Husserl and Heidegger. As already mentioned, Karfík calls the standpoint ‗the absolute that has become finite‘ (endlich gewordenes Absolute). In this rather controversial conception, which Patočka soon abandoned in favor of the full recognition of man‘s essential finitude (without, however, giving up some form of infinity implied in this finitude),10 the main features of Patočka‘s later conceptions of human existence are already anticipated. One of them is the idea that man must fight the threat of decline always menacing his existence. Therefore, he has to gain his interior truthfulness by struggling with decadent tendencies in his nature.11 Another feature is the idea that philosophy, as ‗the domain of the ultimate clarity‘ (and not religious faith) plays in this struggle a decisively positive role.12
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ssssssssssssssssssssssssss 7 8 9 10
11 12
Cf. Petříček, ‗Patočkův filosofický projekt‘ [Patočka‘s Philosophical Project], p. 274. For the list of these studies, see UE, p. 33, note 5. See 1934/4, p. 66, 1936/5, p. 83. For this seemingly paradoxical feature of Patočka‘s account of truthful human existence, cf. UE, pp. 79-81. According to Patočka, human existence becomes infinite through its finitude. My renouncement of myself takes on the form of surrendering myself to the other. Through this it gains a certain form of infinity. Patočka aims here at the eminently ethical notion of the infinity of human existence that is distinct from Husserl‘s stress on the infinity of tasks, ends, verifications etc. in which he sees the forma mentis of European man. 1936/5, p. 83. 1934/4, pp. 66 f.
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I. THE FUNDAMENTAL THEME OF PATOČKA‘S THOUGHT: TRUTHFUL HUMAN EXISTENCE
Both the essence and the truthfulness of human existence play an important role in the 1936 article ‗Der Geist und zwei Grundschichten der Intentionalität‘ [The Spirit and the Two Basic Levels of Intentionality]. In this text, Patočka argues that ‗abstract intentionality‘, i.e., intentional acts directed to ideal objects, is always connected to the wholeness of the person‘s experience. The connection is allegedly possible in virtue of a peculiar kind of intentionality which is distinct from act-intentionality, i.e., from intentionality in the classical sense of ‗the consciousness of something‘. It is distinct since it is not directed to (real or ideal) objects and since it is the condition of the possibility of act-intentionality.
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As this intentionality is an awareness of a particular horizon, e.g., the horizon of nature, the horizon of aesthetic enjoyment, the horizon of a particular science, Patočka calls it the ‗horizon-intentionality‘. The particular partial horizons and their correlative horizon-intentionalities point ultimately to one global universal horizon and its correlative horizon-intentionality. Patočka calls it ‗the original phenomenon of the world‘. He underscores the impossibility of human existence without the ‗world‘ in this sense.13 This fundamental anthropological fact suggests that man is able to make thematic the primordial wholeness of the world (universal horizon) and to relate himself to it explicitly. This need not happen by means of a theoretical observation. In order that ‗the person be liberated from the enslavement by the immediate‘, it is sufficient that ‗the universal connection is at least felt, that the sight of the person is not completely absorbed by particularities‘. 14 If that happens, the person undergoes an interior transformation. She does not live from single impulses anymore. ‗Everything is given in the service of one emotion [Ergriffenheit] in which the unconditional requirement is included, a requirement promising to give the person an absolute anchor‘.15 Through this interior transformation, man becomes a spiritual being. Both the question regarding the essence of human being and the question of truthful human existence are present in this text. Missing, however, if compared to the articles mentioned above, is both the idea that man has to struggle for his own true self and that philosophy is ‗the domain of the ultissssssssssssssssssssssssss 13 14 15
1936/2, p. 40. A similar idea is formulated by M. Scheler in Formalism in Ethics and Non-Formal Ethics of Values, pp. 393-396. 1936/2, p. 40. Ibid.
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2. TRUTHFUL HUMAN EXISTENCE IN PATOČKA‘S WORKS
mate clarity‘ that alone can bring about the interior transformation leading to truthful existence.16 The new motif in this text is the idea that truthful human existence is realized by means of making explicit the relationship to the whole of reality (to the world as universal horizon). The questions of the essence and of truthful existence of man are at the center of Patočka‘s phenomenological research also in the second period of his thought, i.e., between 1936-1945. The goal of the phenomenological analyses in AJP 3000/30718 is the elucidation of the essence of human being. In this manuscript, Patočka develops the distinction made already in the article ‗Der Geist und zwei Grundschichten der Intentionalität‘, namely that between act-intentionality, i.e., the intentionality oriented toward objects, and the intentionality now called ‗longitudinal‘, ‗subjective‘ or ‗internal‘.
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The analysis of this intentionality is critical for the theoretical goals Patočka sets for himself in this text. For he is convinced that this intentionality makes accessible human subjectivity in the sense of the unity of the concretely lived existence, not in the sense of the bare ‗I‘ that accompanies all our acts. Although, in this text, Patočka‘s analyses of the structure of human existence are clearly inspired by Heidegger‘s analysis of Dasein in Being and Time, he often formulates his ideas in a critical opposition to Heidegger.19 According to the Czech philosopher, the dynamism of human existence is primarily characterized by the relationship between ‗ordinariness‘ (Heidegger‘s Alltäglichkeit) and the force that ‗breaks‘ or ‗shakes‘ it. In this context, he offers an extensive analysis of ‗ordinariness‘.20 In this text, however, the theme of truthful human existence is only implicit.21
ssssssssssssssssssssssssss 16
18
19 20 21
In this text, Patočka does not give clear preference to philosophy as the means of making thematic the relationship of the human being to the whole of reality. Instead, he puts philosophy, in this respect, at the same level as art and religion. Cf. 1936/2, p. 41. Throughout, I cite Patočka‘s unpublished manuscripts with the signatures of the Jan Patočka Archive. The abbreviation ‗AJP‘, with which all signatures begin, stands for ‗Archiv Jana Patočky‘ [The Jan Patočka Archive] AJP 3000/307, p. 7. AJP 3000/307, p. 81. The same holds for the remarkable fragment ‗Svět a předmětnost‘ [The World and Objectivity] that develops some of the themes of AJP 3000/307.
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I. THE FUNDAMENTAL THEME OF PATOČKA‘S THOUGHT: TRUTHFUL HUMAN EXISTENCE
In AJP 3000/17622, Patočka develops the new account of the subject mentioned in the short overview of his philosophical conceptions I made above. In this text, human subjectivity is interpreted as an interior which is neither objective nor objectifiable.23 The interior is presented as the source of all intentional life and thus also of all reflection. No reflection can ever capture the interior completely. For the interior, being the very source of all intentional life and thus of any possible objectification, cannot itself be objectified.24 The interior, as a non-objective source of all intentional life, is a force that always turns outside of itself and exists solely in and through objectifying acts.25 Hence, between objectivity and the interior, there is an essential correlation. Neither one can exist without its pendant. This conception is meant to overcome the traditional split between subject and object. Patočka suggests that all objects are related to the intentional life with the interior as its non-objectified foundation.26 He tries to capture the essence of the interior in the analysis of its indirect objectifications such as interest or unrest (internal movement).iii The question of the essence of human being is crucial also in this manuscript. For the purpose of the analyses of the non-objectified interior is to answer the question of the ultimate ‗source‘ of the human spirit understood as the ‗highest and most substantial‘ purpose of European mankind. 27 The manuscript closes with the description of true human existence conceived both as the discovery of oneself and as the disclosure of the infinity immanent to human spirit.28 Note that, in this text, the notion of spirit ssssssssssssssssssssssssss Copyright © 2014. Traugott Bautz Verlag. All rights reserved.
22
23
24 25 26 27 28
This text was put together with other manuscripts of a similar content and was published in German translation under the title Das Innere und die Welt [The Interior and the World]. Penetrating reflections concerning the possibility of a psychological and philosophical prise de conscience of the non-objective interior appear in AJP 3000/106. UE, p. 39. UE, p. 39. UE, p. 40. AJP 3000/176, p. 1. AJP 3000/176, p. 12: ‗This higher self-consciousness must aim at the consciousness of the self which makes the whole of being alive, not dead. It is a consciousness, therefore, which does not fixate everything in mere concepts, analyzing and stating it, as if it stood in front of a mere object. Rather, it must aim at the consciousness
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connects purely phenomenological reflections concerning the nature and the mode of givenness of the interior to the question of the spiritual history of Europe.29 This approach prefigures Patočka‘s later attempts to develop a phenomenology-based philosophy of history. Also, AJP 3000/203 speaks in favor of the claim mentioned above. Although the main topic of the manuscript is the analysis of the ‗natural world‘ and not the question of the nature of human existence, it contains sections in which different aspects of human existence are dealt with extensively. Moreover, it culminates in remarkable reflections on the sense and the fulfillment of human life.30 In general, the theme of the ‗natural world‘ developed in this manuscript includes many aspects of human existence. In fact, these are necessarily implied in the analysis of the Lebenswelt. The main topic of Patočka‘s major systematic piece from the period 1945-48, an extensive essay Věčnost a dějinnost [Eternity and Historicity], is the historicity of human being. In this work, Patočka is convinced that the hypothesis of the ‗historical essence‘ is unavoidable. By ‗historical essence‘ he means an essence the positive content of which is not given entirely in advance but includes determinations which have their origin in man‘s moral search and struggle and thus in his freedom. For this reason, Patočka acknowledges, in opposition to some radical existentialists, some predetermined features of human nature. Yet he underscores that some determinations of human nature ‗exist at first only
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29 30
of the self that awakens the internal horizons and abets the internal movements; the self-consciousness which is at the same time an unconditional action. However, this can happen only if self-consciousness is the consciousness of the interior which undertakes a task which never lies behind or below it. To discover infinity without losing sight of oneself. The path of the spirit, of consciousness which is not dead but rather the source of the eternal life, leads both to infinity and to oneself.‘ AJP 3000/176, section II, pp. 5-11. AJP 3000/203, pp. 2-12 (21. About death and the relationship to death, see 22. Emptiness and fulfillment, 23. The sense and the fulfillment of life, 24. What does ‗fulfillment‘ mean?) The manuscript culminates at the end of section 24. From section 25 on it starts losing the character of a continuous text. Sections 15-17 (3000/202, pp. 22-28) contain the philosophy of the interior and interiority that is considered by Karfik (UE, p. 40) to be Patočka‘s basic metaphysical concept in the texts from the war period.
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I. THE FUNDAMENTAL THEME OF PATOČKA‘S THOUGHT: TRUTHFUL HUMAN EXISTENCE
negatively (as intentions, requirements, concealed lacks of something etc.)‘.31 To be more precise, Patočka accepts some ‗predetermined‘ non-temporal structure of man‘s ‗historical essence‘. But, according to him, this structure consists only of a negative moment of ‗not-being satisfied, not being present in the given‘ and in an appeal to be realized in time.32 Hence, in concrete realizations of the ‗historical essence‘, many of its essential features are the results of free choices. In that sense, man is the co-determiner of his positive essential features. According to Patočka, Socrates discovered the historicity of human existence in this sense.33 This notion of historicity of human existence brings us back to the question of the essence of human existence. For this reason, it is closely linked to what I have called the basic theme of Patočka‘s thought.
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Something similar can be said about the following section of the essay Věčnost a dějinnost. In it, Patočka offers a remarkable synthetic sketch of European spiritual history that I shall mentioned later in greater detail.34 The sketch is written from the perspective of the basic conceptions of man and of his moral struggle. It leads to the delineation of three ideas of man in modern philosophy. According to Patočka, these three basic conceptions of man in modern philosophy are summarized under the headings of naturalism, classical metaphysics, and subjectivism. Against this background, Patočka confronts his philosophical view with that of Masaryk and Rádl. He emphasizes that the key philosophical problem for both was the moral problem of man. 35 Therefore, while seemingly restricted ‗only‘ to the analyses of Masaryk‘s and Rádl‘s philosophical ideas, this passage too does not drop the issue of true human existence. As a matter of fact, this topic winds like Ariadne‘s thread through the whole text and connects topics that at first seem to be quite heterogeneous. The question of man‘s essence is also in the background of Patočka‘s brilliant synthetic summary of Scheler‘s ethical and anthropological concepssssssssssssssssssssssssss 31 32 33 34 35
1987/11, p. 150. 1987/11, p. 150. 1987/11, pp. 142-147, 151 f. 1987/11, p. 152-159. See infra, pp. 81 f. 1987/11, p. 163.
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tion with which the essay Věčnost a dějinnost continues.36 For Scheler‘s philosophical interest is also focused mainly on the question of man. And it is precisely Patočka‘s critique of the (allegedly) unsolved problems in Scheler‘s ethics and anthropology that, by means of a contrast with the approach that, in many respects, is close to his own, makes visible the core of the Czech philosopher‘s conception of truthful human existence developed in the post-war period. This core is the notion mentioned above of man‘s ‗historical essence‘. It is based on the presupposition that truthful human existence (including true moral existence) cannot be grasped purely objectively, even if objectivity is conceived, as by Scheler, in a non-reductionist sense, i.e., as including the axiological dimension and correlated to the human person as a spiritual being and the center of all intentional acts.
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The ultimate reason for Patočka‘s opposition to Scheler‘s views is not easy to grasp. But it seems to be something like this: Persons can acquire their truthful existence only by undergoing a fundamental life conversion or by a moral struggle for one‘s truthful existence. Now, neither the conversion nor the struggle is something that can be given as an object of our intentional acts.37 And since, for Patočka, moral struggle is the source of both moral life and all moral value-judgments, it seems to follow that, independently of the conversion and moral struggle, there is no objective order of values. This seems to be the reason why Patočka finds Scheler‘s material value ethics too ‗objectivistic‘ and ‗classically metaphysical‘. 38 For this ethics, as is well known, acknowledges the existence of such an order. Without offering here a full critique of Patočka‘s argument, let me just note that it is not evident why moral struggle or a conversion should be the source of the existence of values. What is evident is only that certain values ssssssssssssssssssssssssss 36
37 38
Patočka wrote on Scheler repeatedly. The most thorough exposition of his thought is to be found in 1968/7. Cf. The German translation by L. Hagedorn (‗Max Scheler – Versuch einer Gesamtcharakteristik‘, in: Jan Patočka. Texte — Dokumente — Bibliographie, pp. 338–382). The Czech original of the study was published as an introduction to the Czech translation of Scheler‘s late work The Human Place in the Cosmos. The translation was published 1968 in Prague. Cf. infra, pp. 21-24. This account of the relationship between moral life and moral evaluation brings Patočka close to the standpoint of Heidegger and Sartre, although Patočka refuses their overall negative account of human existence. Cf. infra, pp. 20 f.
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I. THE FUNDAMENTAL THEME OF PATOČKA‘S THOUGHT: TRUTHFUL HUMAN EXISTENCE
might not be perceived by an amoral or a ‗not-yet-converted person‘. The structural link between this epistemological ‗defect‘ and the moral conversion and moral life is obvious. A similar structural link between the non being of certain (morally relevant) values and the moral conversion and life, is, however, not evident, unless we accept, at least implicitly, some form of nonrealist epistemology and/or ontology of values. Although Patočka, as we have already seen, abandoned Husserl‘s transcendental idealism, he turned rather to a Heideggerian hermeneutical approach than to a version of a realist epistemology. I think it is this development that is ultimately responsible for Patočka‘s refusal of Scheler‘s idea of material value ethics. However, it is not possible to discuss this critical issue more in detail at this place. While Patočka finds Scheler‘s conception of value too objectivist, the understanding of fundamental moral concepts implied in Husserl‘s transcendental phenomenology seems to him too subjectivist. 39 The analysis of Husserl‘s transcendental phenomenology in this passage is probably the first of Patočka‘s texts in which Husserl‘s transcendental phenomenology is rejected because of its too subjectivist consequences.
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In chapter 11 of the essay, the question of truthful human existence is a central one in Patočka‘s interpretation of Heidegger‘s fundamental ontology.40 The question of the essence of human being is, in its turn, the background for Patočka‘s interpretation of Heidegger‘s and Sartre‘s negative accounts of existence in the next section of the essay Věčnost a dějinnost.41 While Patočka found Scheler‘s conception of values, moral norms, and moral evaluations too objectivist and Husserl‘s too subjectivist, he finds Heidegger‘s and Sartre‘s negative accounts of human existence unsatisfactory for still another reason. In their context, ‗each private morality is equally satisfactory and thus it seems, at any time, possible to exchange one‘s private ssssssssssssssssssssssssss 39 40
41
1987/11, p. 187. The question is, in fact, implied in Heidegger‘s way of posing the question about being. Although Heidegger revives ontological questioning, he interprets it as structurally linked to human existence. The transcendence from being (das Seiende) to existence (Sein) takes place in the being (Dasein) that has an explicit relationship to its own existence. Moreover, Dasein is, for Heidegger, not just the being to which the question about Sein must be addressed first. Rather, ‗the ontological analytics of Dasein constitutes fundamental ontology as such‘ (Being and Time, § 4.) 1987/11, pp. 207-213.
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morality for another‘.42 In other words, Patočka finds the two negative accounts of existence dissatisfactory because they imply moral relativism, i.e., the claim that there is no standpoint from which one private morality can be judged as objectively (absolutely) higher (better) then another. Now, Patočka opposes to all these conceptions his own interpretation of consciousness based on the idea mentioned above of the ‗spirit‘s struggle with objectivity‘.43 Although the conception of the non-objectified interior is still at play,44 the stress is now put on the ‗affection of the object by negativity‘, i.e., on the capacity of consciousness to transcend everything ‗objective‘, all that is ‗merely given‘. The idea that there is an essential correlation between objectivity and intentional life with the not-objectifiable interior as its source is not anymore crucial.45
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Patočka sees now the fundamental feature of all conscious life in the capacity to transcend everything ‗objective‘. He finds this capacity in the ability of consciousness to overcome the ‗contingency of the givenness of an object through a transition from the actually to the potentially given‘. He finds it also in the fact that, in pre-reflective consciousness, the actual givenness of an object is already transcended (despite the object-directedness of all consciousness) such that, in each conscious act, there is a pre-reflective consciousness of the conscious subject.46 According to Patočka, the capacity to transcend the ‗given object‘ becomes morally relevant if the transcending is explicitly understood to be the crucial task of human life. Similarly, as in all other of the Czech philosopher‘s accounts of human existence, man is confronted with the necessity to choose between the two opposite possibilities of his existence: either he decides to remain satisfied with the ends and interests of ‗mere life‘, or he opts for the difficult task of self-renewal, for the ‗narrow path‘ of transcendence, freedom, and responsibility that would eventually make his existence a truthful one. In the text, the alternative is formulated in the following way: ssssssssssssssssssssssssss 42 43 44 45
46
1987/11, p. 216. 1987/11, p. 223. 1987/11, p. 227. Cf. UE, pp. 44 f. Note that Patočka earlier in the essay, in his critique of Husserl‘s transcendental phenomenology, explicitly rejects the idea that objectivity is possible only in correlation to subjectivity. Patočka refers here especially to Brentano‘s ‗secondary consciousness‘. See 1987/11, p. 225.
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Either to turn to something that, if not actually given, is, nevertheless, already in some sense present, [and in that sense] is something of the past, something potentially given as a force of instinct, tradition, habit and routine. Thus it [a consciousness] can employ its transcendence only for another form of givenness, a givenness that is looser, more comprehensive, one that turns its future into the past […]; or a consciousness turns to what does not exist at all. It makes sure that there is no given purpose until it itself determines it, that even the allegedly imposed and inflicted purposes and functions of life exist only through and for consciousness; that, exactly, in this respect, consciousness must transcend and that there is no predetermined path for consciousness.47
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According to Patočka, the true essence of man consists in such a transcending.48 In this passage, it becomes apparent that, for Patočka, the question ‗What is the essence of human being?‘ almost coincides with the question of truthful human existence. To understand the essence of human being means to understand the possibility of truthful human existence, i.e., the possibility that becomes visible in the light of the discovered deficiency of one‘s previous life. In this discovery there is a ‗call‘ to realize one‘s truthful existence. Notice, this ‗call‘ is not just an appeal to realize one‘s own moral perfection. Rather, it is also a ‗call‘ to fulfill one‘s ‗human nature‘ although Patočka would be hesitant to use this traditional term. To put it in classical Aristotelian terminology of act and potency, it is a ‗call‘ to bring to actuality the essential human potency, i.e., the potency the actualization of which makes man become what he truly ought to be, both morally and ontologically. In fact, it seems that, for Patočka, the full actualization of ‗human nature‘ entails also the realization of moral perfection. This basic intuition seems to explain, on the one hand, Patočka‘s criticisms of Heidegger‘s notion of ‗authenticity of Dasein‘, and, on the other, the special affinity to Plato‘s ‗phenomenology of human truth, human freedom, and the lack of freedom in it‘.49 Patočka, therefore, argues against Heidegger‘s and Sartre‘s negative accounts of human existence, saying, basissssssssssssssssssssssssss 47 48 49
1987/11, pp. 232 f. 1987/11, pp. 232 f. 1992/13, p. 84. See supra, p. 10.
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cally, that transcending, far from revealing the inner emptiness of human existence, is rather the key to true positivity, to truthful existence. 50 At the same time, the positive meaning of transcending is not compromised by the fact that—through transcending—no transcendent ‗ultimate reality‘ is reached.
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Against the objection that an ethical theory based on such a notion of transcending lacks direction and thus ends up in arbitrariness Patočka argues: transcending is directed by the ‗knowledge of what true reality is not, by what is not positive, because it is something merely given, only instinctive, sheer routine, or habit‘.51 Patočka seems to be convinced that this ‗Socratic‘ account of transcendence is sufficient to guarantee a secure path towards moral goodness. This interpretation of transcendence, based on the concept of the ‗spirit‘s struggle with objectivity‘, is ultimately inspired by Hegelian dialectics, i.e., by the interpretation of the positive as the negation of negation.52 The same influence can be found in Patočka‘s interpretation of the Socratic form of the care for the soul which was developed in the same period.53 Also in this interpretation, Patočka claims that the positivity of the care for the soul is secured, because, in taking care of one‘s soul, it is necessary to abandon all traditional and ordinary opinions about the anthropinon agathon (human good) revealed by the Socratic elenchos as insufficient. However, the true nature of the human good remains unknowable. Therefore, also the Socratic care of the soul does not derive its positivity from the cognition of the human good as some transcendent entity. Rather, it derives its positivity from the incessant process of the exclusion of the unworthy candidates for the human good, whereby this process as such is sufficient to give human existence an eminently positive content. 54 This supports the ssssssssssssssssssssssssss 50 51 52
53 54
1987/11, p. 233. 1987/11, p. 234. In developing the notion of the ‗spirit‘s struggle with objectivity‘, Patočka writes, for example: ‗the reaction of this being against the objectivity that is characterized by negativity is essentially positive‘. In favor of Hegelian inspiration speaks the circumstance that in the period in which Patočka developed his conception of the ‗spirit‘s fight against objectivity‘ he studied Hegel intensely. Cf. UE, p. 45. Patočka himself makes an explicit link between his conception of the ‗spirit‘s struggle with objectivity‘ and his interpretation of Socrates. See 1987/11, p. 234. 1991/7, pp. 115 f.
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I. THE FUNDAMENTAL THEME OF PATOČKA‘S THOUGHT: TRUTHFUL HUMAN EXISTENCE
claim that the interpretation of the Socratic care for the soul is also based on the understanding of the positive as the negation of negation. iv Thus the main inspiration for the interpretation of the Socratic care of the soul, in the 1947‘s lectures on Socrates, is the concept of the ‗spirit‘s struggle with objectivity‘, not a philological critique of the sources of Socratic literature. It seems that Patočka‘s decision to base his interpretation of Socrates on his philosophical concept rather than on a purely philological critique of the sources was influenced by his awareness of the radical skeptical conclusions regarding the ‗Socratic question‘ reached by the Swiss philologist Olof Gigon.55
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Patočka remains faithful to this interpretation of the Socratic care for the soul also in his late works in which he develops the idea of the SocraticPlatonic care for the soul as the spiritual foundation of Europe. Hence, the philosophical concept of a positive transcendence not guaranteed by a transcendent being (Platonic Form or personal Absolute), but by the negation of negation, enters the fundaments of Patočka‘s conception of the spiritual foundations of Europe. This has a series of crucial consequences to be discussed below. However, the idea of the ‗spirit‘s struggle with objectivity‘ is not just the theoretical basis for the exposition of the meaning of the moral existence of man and for the Socratic care for the soul. Rather, in the texts from the 50s, it serves also as a starting point of an attempt to take from metaphysics ‗its essential philosophical thrust and carry it on‘.56 From the perspective of the concept of the ‗spirit‘s struggle with objectivity‘, traditional metaphysics appears as a ‗new, distinctly ambiguous form of knowledge. On the one hand, traditional metaphysics involves an awareness of absolute transcendence, of the relation of humans to the whole and so of the inevitable relation to nonbeing, to the non-real as well. On the other hand, it treats this transcendence again as an entrance to ―another world,‖ giving it a ―munssssssssssssssssssssssssss 55
56
See Gigon, Sokrates. Sein Bild in Dichtung und Geschichte. In his lectures on Socrates, Patočka mentions Gigon explicitly (cf. 1991/7, p. 15 f.), and he argues against the philologically motivated skepticism regarding the possibility of the reconstruction of the ‗historical Socrates‘ in the article ‗Remarques sur le problème de Socrate.‘ ‗Negative Platonism‘, p. 188.
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dane‖ interpretation and seeking to explain, to clarify, this world with its help.‘57 For this reason, according to Patočka, metaphysics manifests ‗the fundamental substitution of a transcendent, nonexistent Being for the perennial existents, a substitution bound up with the crucial conception of what-is as perennial. Thus the living force of transcendence is replaced by an image of reality which may be harmonious, ―spiritual,‖ but is rigid and lifeless; so in place of the living reality of Socrates‘s struggle against the degeneration of life we now have the imitation of the eternal world of Forms. The absolute claim of truth now appears guaranteed by an invincible universal conceptual system and actualized in the form of the perfect state‘.58
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According to Patočka, metaphysics with its pretention to embrace intellectually the whole ‗ended up in the contradiction of integral humanism‘, 59 i.e., Hegelianism, on one side, and positivism, on the other. Both of these strains of thought, notwithstanding their deep ideological antagonism, share the idea of radical or absolute humanism, as well as the resolute rejection of (traditional) metaphysics.60 According to Patočka, metaphysics can be purified and rehabilitated, if it can be shown that it is based upon the experience of freedom and of transcendence, i.e., upon the ‗spirit‘s struggle with objectivity‘. What he means by such a purification and rehabilitation is shown by his interpretation of the Platonic Form as the symbol of freedom and of transcendence. He does not interpret the Platonic Form as an absolute Being, as a ‗Model‘ of which the sensibles are mere imitations, but as a force that liberates man from passive experience, from mere objective givenness. The list of phenomena in which this liberating force finds its expression is similar to the list offered in the essay Věčnost a dějinnost. Thus, the Form which, for Plato, was ‗the most existent being‘ (to ontós on), for Patočka, is a radical non-being.61 Patočka interprets the Form in a (quasi-)transcendental manner as a condition of possibility of specifically ssssssssssssssssssssssssss 57 58 59 60 61
Ibid., p. 181. Ibid., p. 182. Ibid., p. 188. Ibid., p. 176. ‗Negative Platonism‘, pp. 199-204.
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human existence.62 And since, according to our philosopher, the experience of freedom and of transcendence constitutes the ‗historicity‘ of man, he interprets the Form as a condition of possibility of the historicity of human existence. Therefore, the Platonic Form, traditionally understood as the symbol of eternity and of a-historicity, in Patočka‘s interpretation turns out to be something like a condition of possibility of history and historicity. In the texts from the 60s, Patočka‘s conception of the natural world assumes the form of the doctrine of three movements of human existence, i.e., the third basic philosophical standpoint in Patočka‘s philosophical development. This transformation is conditioned by many factors. One of them is Patočka‘s extensive historical study of the concept of movement in Aristotle, his predecessors and followers.63 The results of this study, together with a deepened understanding of the meaning of corporality for the constitution of natural world,64 allowed Patočka to work out the interpretation of human existence as a triad of fundamental ‗movements‘. 65 I cannot offer a full exposition of this doctrine at this place. Rather, I shall limit myself to showing that the question of the nature and of the truthful existence of man is at the very center of this doctrine. To put it conversely, I will show that the doctrine of three movements of human ssssssssssssssssssssssssss 62
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63
64
65
Ibid., pp. 195 f. Cf. Ritter, ‗Historicko-systematický rámec Patočkova negativního platonismu‘ [Historical and Systematic Framework of Patočka‘s Negative Platonism], p. 263. Aristotelés, jeho předchůdci a dědicové [Aristotle: His Forerunners and His Heirs] is the title of Patočka‘s most important publication on the topic. With the exception of The Natural World, this book is the only monograph Patočka published during his life. On the connection between Patočka‘s studies of the concept of movement and the doctrine of three movements of human existence, see UE, pp. 52-54. The starting point of Patočka´s phenomenological descriptions of corporality is neither Husserl‘s transcendental phenomenology nor Heidegger‘s fundamental ontology. See UE, pp. 73 f. The positive meaning of corporeality for the constitution of the natural world is explained in 1995/8. In this context, ‗movement‘ is understood in the Aristotelian sense as the actualization of potency. The main difference consists in Patočka‘s refusal of Aristotle‘s claim that substantial change is made possible by the unchangeable character of the substratum. Patočka‘s life-movement does not presuppose any such substratum. Cf. 1992/10, p. 226. In Patočka‘s concept of potency, the Aristotelian ontological meaning of potency merges somewhat strangely with Heidegger‘s existential meaning of ‗possibility to be‘ (Sein-Können) from Being and Time. Cf. 1995/8, pp. 102 f., p. 124.
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existence is an articulation of the question of the nature and of truthfulness of human existence.66 Let me start by showing how this question is present in one of the most comprehensive expositions of the doctrine of three life-movements in Patočka‘s work, i.e., in the essay ‗―Přirozený svět‖ v meditaci svého autora po třiatřiceti letech‘ [‗Natural World‘ in the Meditation of its Author after Thirty-three Years]. The question of truthful human existence appears already in the beginning of the essay, in a long passage in which Patočka offers an extensive critique of Husserl‘s interpretation of transcendental reflection. Patočka‘s argument goes something like this: Husserl understands reflection as an act motivated by a pure theoretical interest.67 But philosophical reflection is never an act motivated just by a theoretical interest. Rather, it is a countermove against ‗the automatic tendency of human life not to see itself as it truly is, to overlook itself, to disregard its essential uncertainty about itself and about its possibilities‘.68 Therefore, reflection is an instrument of internal self-reform; through its help, truthful human existence becomes possible.69 Husserl‘s reflection is, for that reason, ‗a fundamental misunderstanding of our existence‘.70 Patočka‘s critique of Husserl‘s understanding of reflection is surely inspired by Heidegger. His influence is evident, for example, in Patočka‘s assertion that human life is not characterized primarily by the relationship to ‗objects‘, but rather ‗by understanding the practical dimension of things and oneself as the dimension where praxis, making, handling, dealing with things takes place‘.71
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ssssssssssssssssssssssssss 66
67 68 69
70 71
For a synthetic exposition of the doctrine of three movements of human existence, see Hagedorn, ‗―Bewegung” als Leitmotiv von Patočkas Ideengeschichte‘, pp. 1418. For an original systematic development of the idea of movement of human existence inspired by Patočka, see Barbaras, L‘ouverture du monde. Lecture de Jan Patočka. 1980/2, pp. 172-185. 1980/2, p. 173. ‗The countermove of reflection is part of the countermove of freedom […] in the broadest sense of the term starting with freedom of any initiative step up to freedom in the sense of moral autonomy.‘ (1980/2, p. 173) Ibid. This and following passages are clearly written under the influence of Heidegger‘s analyses of the ‗world‘ in Being and Time.
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Nevertheless, the stress laid on the assertion that the aim of reflection is to gain ‗freedom to truth‘72 does not echo the challenge to authenticity in Heidegger‘s sense, but the ‗truth movement‘ of human existence described in the third part of the text,73 a ‗movement‘ differing in many points from Heidegger‘s notion of authenticity. 74 In ‗―Přirozený svět‖ v meditaci svého autora po třiatřiceti letech‘, we can see very well how, in Patočka‘s mature thought, the issue of the natural world is transformed into the doctrine of three movements of human existence. Patočka transforms his conception of the natural world particularly under the influence of two aspects of Heidegger‘s thought. The first is a specific understanding of subjectivity: subjectivity understood not as a subject, but as an existence not indifferent to itself, an existence open both to the whole of being and to each particular region of being. 75 The second is the concept of the world in Being and Time, which offers deeper ontological understanding of the ‗entity within-the-world‘ (innerweltliches Seiende). Notoriously, Heidegger shows in the analysis of the world that the original mode of being of the ‗entity within-the-world‘ is not ‗presence at hand‖ (Vorhandenheit), but ‗readiness to hand‘ (Zuhandenheit).76 However much Patočka owes to Heidegger in this text, he also goes well beyond him. For example, he rightly points out the deficiency of Heidegger‘s notion of body and corporality. Building upon his own ssssssssssssssssssssssssss
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72
73 74
75 76
1980/2, pp. 182 f. Cf. for example the following passage: ‗This means that it is necessary to give the phenomenological method a different meaning than its author gave it—it cannot consist simply in the intuitive grasp of phenomena, deprived of any interest in the thesis of the world that through them becomes apparent. For phenomena, i.e., life to which the world discloses itself, must not only be stated. Rather, they must be retrieved from everything that obscures their sense and that covers them. There is another problem of the reality in the phenomenon than the one that poses itself in respect to one objective nature. It is the problem of the reality in the phenomenon in relationship to me, to my own physical instinctive constitution with which I have to cope, and to the reality of others, coping with which is both an interior and exterior task for me.‘ 1980/2, pp. 226-251. For the differences between Heidegger‘s ‗authenticity‘ and Patočka‘s ‗third movement of existence‘, see P. Rezek, Životní pohyb pravdy a život v pravdě u Jana Patočky [Life-Movement of Truth and Living in Truth According to Jan Patočka], pp. 71 f. 1980/2, p. 214. 1980/2, pp. 218 f.
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phenomenology of existence as corporeal movement, he points out that ‗the original praxis must be essentially an activity of the corporeal subject‘77 and that ‗body belongs not only in the context of the problem of spatiality, but also in the domain of our possibilities. Body is, existentially, the sum of possibilities that we do not chose, but that we find ourselves to be immersed in, possibilities toward which we are not free, which we must realize.‘78 The doctrine of three movements of human existence answers the question of the essence of human being in that it describes three mutually connected basic human ‗possibilities‘ (in Heidegger‘s sense of Sein-können). The question of truthful existence of man is answered by the description of the third of these movements. In this text, this movement is called ‗breakthrough‘ or ‗proper self-understanding‘.79 In this movement, man sees ‗his own most proper essence and possibility‘.80 Hence, also in this text, the question concerning the essence of man naturally leads to the question of man‘s truthful existence.v
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In the same text, a structural link between the notion of truthful human existence and the theme of the ‗natural world‘ is established. Since the world is described as ‗the condition of possibility of all clarity and of all consciousness‘,81 the investigation of the (natural) world becomes an investigation of one of the conditions of possibility of human existence. This investigation shows the following: our relationship to the world, i.e., whether we relate to it only in the modality of lingering on the entities within-the-world, or by explicitly relating to the world as a whole, depends on whether we realize our most proper possibility (the third life-movement) or whether we lose ourselves in the ‗bad infinity‘ of the movement of self-extension. For this reason, the fundamental connection between the issue of the natural world and the question of truthful human existence is the following. The investigation of the natural world both presupposes and entails the investigation of the world (obviously, of the ‗world‘ in the phenomenological sense of the term, not of the world as the sum of individual existing things). Since human existence is existence ‗in the world‘, the investigation of the ssssssssssssssssssssssssss 77 78 79 80 81
1980/2, p. 217. 1980/2, p. 217. 1980/2, p. 245. 1980/2, p. 245. 1980/2, p. 175.
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world is an integral part of the investigation of human existence. This investigation leads to a discovery of three fundamental possibilities of relationship to the world that determine whether humane existence is truthful or not. The first of them is lingering on the individual that has two modalities. The first is the primary inter-subjectivity of the movement of acceptation: both the accepting and the accepted are two human beings. The second modality is lingering on the individual qua means of procurement and lingering on individual persons because of whom the procurement takes place. In the first case, the world is present primarily as the ‗chilly outside‘ that overshadows the movement of acceptation. In the second case, the world is primarily the sum of all ‗references‘ (Bewandtnis) in the context of which the movement of self-extension takes place. Only the third way of relating oneself to the world avoids relating exclusively to the individual entities within-the-world and allows for relating to the world as such. The realization of this possibility changes both the relationship of human existence to the world and existence itself. For it gives it its interior veracity, the veracity articulated in three fundamental modalities: philosophy, art, and religion (or in the combination of these modalities).
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This schematic sketch shows that, from the perspective of Patočka‘s phenomenology, the study of the natural world leads most organically to the study of human existence and its basic modalities: untruthful and truthful human existence. The claim that Patočka‘s lifelong investigations of the natural world led organically to the question of the nature of human existence and of truthful human existence is corroborated by Patočka‘s ‗Postface‘ [de l'auteur au ‗Monde naturel comme problème philosophique‘] from 1976.82 The text opens with the question as to why Husserl‘s theoretical approach to the theme of the natural world was insufficient and continues with a critique of a certain one-sidedness of Heidegger‘s concept of Lebenswelt. The text closes with Patočka‘s own doctrine of the three movements of human existence, while in the account of the third movement the theme of truthful human existence comes into play. The exposition ends with the following lines: ssssssssssssssssssssssssss 82
I quote here the Czech translation of the ‗Postface‘ published in Přirozený svět jako filosofický problém, pp. 256-268 (1980/3).
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Perhaps the lesson from the natural world is not what Husserl wanted to gain from it, i.e., to give us the insight that this world is a sort of unconscious reason waiting for being understood and that the task of a philosopher is to mediate this understanding primarily to the scientists. Rather, the lesson is that human life is in all forms the life of truth—truth that, despite its finitude, appeals to our responsibility with the same inexorability as the rationalism of apodicticity.vi The third movement of human existence is, however, not just a movement of giving oneself over to the service of the phenomenal character of the world, i.e., a movement allowing things to appear, through my consciousness, as they are, but also giving oneself to other human beings in ‗true and ultimate love‘, in comparison with which biological love is just an ‗incomplete and inconsistent metaphor‘.83
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For this reason, intersubjectivity does not characterize only the first and the second movement of human existence: it does not exist only in the modality of the affectively-instinctive union of two persons in the movement of acceptance or in the modality of cooperation, concurrence, and struggle with the others, reduced to their social roles, in the movement of self-extension. Rather, intersubjectivity exists also at the level of the third movement that produces the most adequate and true form of intersubjectivity consisting in voluntary self-giving to other human beings in true selfsacrificing love. By this self-giving, human existence acquires a special infinity that does not contradict one‘s own essential finitude, but rather presupposes it.84 Both the question concerning the essence of human being and the question of truthful human existence are the main themes of the important article ‗Co je existence?‘ [What is Existence?], in which Patočka on the basis of a critical reception of existence in K. Jaspers, M. Heidegger, and J.P. Sartre, presents his doctrine of three movements of human existence.
ssssssssssssssssssssssssss 83 84
See Die Bewegung der menschlichen Existenz, p. 225. Cf. UE, p. 225.
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3. Truthful Human Existence in Patočka’s Philosophy of History The questions of the essence of human being and of truthful human existence, besides being the fundamental themes of Patočka‘s phenomenological works, are also key to the understanding of his philosophy of history, and his account of historicity of human existence. The basic connection between Patočka‘s notion of truthful human existence and of historicity is this: because human beings are capable of a fundamental change of life and of truthful existence originating in this change, they are historical beings. Therefore, Patočka‘s understanding of historicity is based on his account of truthful human existence. Also the concept of history, as we find it in Patočka‘s ideas about philosophy of history, has the same foundation. History, in the proper sense of the term, begins when truthful human existence appears i.e., when humans discover the possibility to realize their truthful existence. For this reason, history is, for Patočka, always and primarily the history of the rising and declining of the human soul.1
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This claim will be further corroborated throughout this book, particularly where I analyze Patočka‘s views on the philosophy of history. At this stage, as a partial confirmation of the claim, let me just quote one particularly eloquent passage from the essay ‗Nadcivilizace a její vnitřní konflikt‘ [‗Supercivilization and its Internal Conflict‘]: Human history is about humanity, i.e., ultimately about truth. Truth is not a ‗mere theoretical problem‘ solved by ‗objective methods‘ and by means that—in the form of gifted persons and institutions—are always at the disposal of mankind. On the more fundamental level, truth is an interior struggle of humans for their own inner, substantial freedom, the freedom that they have essenssssssssssssssssssssssssss 1
This claim can be corroborated by an analysis of Patočka‘s various accounts of the philosophy of history . Cf. Karfík, ‗Nad prvním svazkem Patočkových spisů’ [Remarks on the First Volume of Patočka‘s Collected Works]; and his ‗Duše evropská a poevropská‘ [European and Post-European Soul]; and his UE, pp. 171193.
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tially and in principle, but not as a matter of fact. The question of truth coincides with the question of truthful human existence. Humans are creatures that may live in the truth, that ought to care for the truth […] Human history is the history of man‘s relationship to the truth—the history of our ability to see, but also of our blindness.2 Given that, for Patočka, the beginning of history coincides with the beginning of the West,3 he interprets also European history as the drama of the rising and declining of the soul of European man. Therefore, his conception of the spiritual roots of Europe cannot be properly understood without taking into account the problem of truthful human existence—the most fundamental theme of his phenomenology, as we have seen. The inner connection between phenomenology, philosophy of history, and the interpretation of the spiritual roots of Europe, is particularly evident in Patočka‘s 1973 lectures Plato and Europe.
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In these lectures, Patočka develops a phenomenological interpretation of man as the ‗exponent of phenomenon‘, who by his very nature has a moral obligation to live in the truth. This exposition of the theme of truthful human existence passes then to an interpretation of the Socratic-Platonic care of the soul which is interpreted as the first historical prise de conscience of this theme. Eventually, the care of the soul is declared to be the axis of the European spiritual history. The author thus arrives at a conception of the philosophy of (European) spiritual history in which periods dominated by the spiritual style of the care of the soul are followed by periods of its neglect. Finally, the spiritual style characterized by the neglect of the soul is identified with the very cause of the spiritual crisis of modern Europe. The individual aspects of this interpretation will be discussed in detail in the rest of the book. At this point, I merely wish to indicate the mode in which, in Patočka‘s works, the phenomenological analyses are intertwined both with his interpretations of ancient philosophers and with issues of the philosophy of history. This otherwise rather unusual connection of phenomenology, history of philosophy, and philosophy of history is surprisingly organic. It is so because in each of these philosophical contexts ssssssssssssssssssssssssss 2 3
1987/12, p. 289. 1975/3, p. 54.
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the theme of truthful human existence is developed, albeit always from a different perspective. *** The claim that truthful human existence is the fundamental theme of Patočka‘s thought is further corroborated by Patočka‘s own testimony about his philosophical views. In one of his letters to Václav Richter he writes: Sometimes I try to formulate my own ‗philosophical opinions‘ […]. I think that my basic conviction is the faith in man revolving around the idea of transcendence, i.e., the distance to everything merely given (given by biology or by mere tradition). I see this transcendence at work in all my writings—in science, art, myth and religious faith, particularly in history, in which it is summarized. On this motif, a modern account of knowledge-understanding can be built (an account that would avoid the error of the old rationalism, while at the same time not falling into the trap of positivism or subjectivist constructions). A philosophy of artefact and of history can also be built on this account.4
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In order to see that Patočka‘s assessment of the fundamental theme of his own thinking corresponds to the thesis proposed in this chapter, it is enough to substitute the terms ‗transcendence‘ and ‗freedom‘, used by Patočka in this passage, with ‗truthful human existence‘. Although Patočka‘s ‗testimony‘ dates back as far as 1950, the later texts mentioned in this chapter do not suggest any substantial revision of this ‗philosophical program‘. The idea that the central moral drama of human life consists in the necessity to choose between good and evil, the upsurge and decline of one‘s own existence, true and apparent freedom, etc., is, obviously, not at all new. We find a powerful expression of it already in Socrates and Plato. 5 The idea is recurrent in Stoicism and it is further developed and deepened in the Christian tradition. In modern philosophy it is reinterpreted, perhaps most prominently, by the Existentialists.
ssssssssssssssssssssssssss 4 5
2001/3, p. 30-31. This is, in fact, particularly evident from Patočka‘s interpretations of these philosophers. See 1991/7 and 1992/13.
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3. TRUTHFUL HUMAN EXISTENCE IN PATOČKA‘S PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY
Patočka, however, finds an original approach to this classical theme of philosophical ethics and anthropology. It is an approach based not just on rethinking the ancient and the Christian roots of the theme, but also on a critical dialogue with the existentialist version of it. The specificity of his approach lies in the following: He develops his idea of true human existence not just on the basis of a phenomenological analysis of man‘s ‗being in the world‘, but also on the basis of his interpretation of Socrates and Plato—and he integrates the result in a philosophy of history based on the idea of the rising and declining of man‘s ‗soul‘ (spiritual life). The claim that Patočka‘s thinking revolves ultimately around the question of truthful human existence is also not entirely new. In fact, many experts on Patočka‘s thought have already pointed out that the question of truthful human existence is one of the basic themes of our author‘s thought.6 Yet, these indications were prevalently implicit, and no attempt was made to show that the connection between all other major themes of Patočka‘s thought becomes understandable in the light of this theme that ties together Patočka‘s published and as yet unpublished work. ***
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Kierkegaard once said: ‗philosophers have many thoughts, all valid to a certain extent; Socrates had only one, which was absolute‘.7 In this chapter, I have aimed at showing that something similar holds true also about Jan Patočka, the ‗Socrates from Prague‘. I have tried to identify his ‗one absolute thought‘ that lurks from behind almost every page of his work and that gives to his thought both momentum and direction. If we accept Patočka‘s interpretation of Socrates as the thinker pursuing the question of truthful human existence, 8 we may say that Patočka‘s affinity ssssssssssssssssssssssssss 6
7 8
Karfík, for example, stresses that the elaboration of truthful human existence was the central concern for Patočka from the very beginning of his philosophical career. Cf. UE, p. 31. Similarly, the editors of the volume Jan Patočka. Texte – Dokumente – Bibliographie gave one of the sections the title ‗Menschliche Existenz – Das Grundthema im Werk Patočkas.‘ Kierkegaard, Philosophical Fragments, p. 14. Cf. Patočka, Věčnost a dějinnost [Eternity and Historicity], p. 143: ‗since also Socrates is looking for—and finds—true being, the movement that he and his student [Plato] undertake in their thinking seems to be one and the same. These stirrings are, however, not identical: while the one aims at truthful human
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I. THE FUNDAMENTAL THEME OF PATOČKA‘S THOUGHT: TRUTHFUL HUMAN EXISTENCE
to Socrates does not consist only in the fact that both have ‗one absolute thought‘, but rather in something much deeper and more important, namely that the ‗one absolute thought‘ that both have is, in the last analysis, one and the same. If the search for ‗true being‘ (ontós on) is the long-standing task of metaphysics, then Patočka‘s lifelong philosophical project may be called ‗metaphysical‘. However, it is not metaphysics in the sense of the doctrine of the true object-like being that Plato first formulated in the theory of Forms and of the first Principles and Aristotle rearticulated in the doctrine of the First Mover and of the fifty heavenly Intelligencies. Rather, it is a metaphysics of the personal, subjective being; the only ‗metaphysics‘ that Patočka, convinced about the definitive collapse of classical metaphysics, considered philosophically justifiable.
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And since this kind of being is, unlike the object-like being of traditional metaphysics, not immutable and eternal, but, as our thinker time and again stresses, by its very nature historical, Patočka‘s philosophy is, essentially, a philosophy of history and of historicity. Moreover, if the fundamental theme of Patočka‘s thought is truthful human existence, Patočka‘s philosophy must be the philosophy of history and of historicity. For historicity is the mode of existence of the very being that Patočka put in the center of his life-long philosophical effort.
ssssssssssssssssssssssssss
existence, the other aims at the true and ultimate foundation of the universe as such‘.
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Chapter II
The Care of the Soul in Socrates and in Plato 1. The Care of the Soul in Socrates Although Patočka develops the idea that the Socratic-Platonic care of the soul is the spiritual foundation of Europe only in his late works, he gives the care of the soul a detailed treatment as early as in his post-war lectures in ancient philosophy from 1945-48. The theme appears, for the first time, in his synthetic exposition of the evolution of the concept of philosophy from Socrates to Aristotle, which serves as an introduction to the first part of the lectures devoted to the Presocratics.1
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According to this exposition, the starting point of the evolution was the Socratic concept of philosophy as the care of the soul, i.e., as the internal renewal of man.2 Although Plato starts from this conception, philosophy is for him the interpretation of this internal renewal: ‗The ethical moment is for him […] the prerequisite of a pure theory.‘3 Aristotle, eventually, understands philosophy as pure theory which is an end in itself. He has only a very limited understanding for philosophy in the sense of the care of the soul.4
ssssssssssssssssssssssssss 1 2
3 4
1996/1, pp. 13-22. Patočka quotes here the famous passage from the Apology of Socrates (Apol. 30 a 6-b3): ‗For I go around doing nothing but persuading both young and old among you not to care for your body or your wealth in preference to or as strongly as for the best possible state of your soul, as I say to you: Wealth does not bring about excellence, but excellence brings about wealth and all other public and private blessings for men.‘ (transl. G.M.A. Grube) This passage contains in nuce both the life-program of Socrates and his conception of the care of the soul. 1996/1, p. 15. 1996/1, p. 20.
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II. THE CARE OF THE SOUL IN SOCRATES AND IN PLATO
Already this first remark on the care of the soul in Patočka‘s works shows a close connection of this topic with the theme of truthful human existence. For the statement that the care of the soul is ‗the interior renewal of man‘, like Patočka‘s later assertion that the care of the soul is ‗the conscious creation of oneself‘,5 points in that direction. The structural connection between the question of the historicity of human being, truthful human being, and the Socratic care of the soul is expressed in the following text from Věčnost a dějinnost [Eternity and Historicity]: Let us summarize what has been said so far: the humanism of Socrates means that humans are beings who are by nature unfinished, in need of completion. Mere life is only apparently full existence. However, humans can be awakened to their true, real existence. When they are in a natural state, they neglect this possibility; they ‗do not know themselves‘. Behind the apparent existence there is the truthful one; behind the purposeless life there is the life in the proximity of a purpose, the life lived from the perspective of the unity of a purpose.6
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Subsequently, the care of the soul becomes the central theoretical issue in the interpretation of the philosophy of Socrates, which is the theme of Patočka‘s lectures from 1947. The interpretation is contained in the fifth lecture called Care of the Soul. According to this interpretation, the dynamic principle of Socrates‘s care of the soul is the elenchos. Driven by elenchos, the Socratic care of the soul has three phases. Each of them has a basic function.7 The first function is the diagnostic one. By asking questions, Socrates is able to detect the state of the soul of his interlocutor. It is not a psychological or a psychiatric diagnosis in the modern sense but the detection of the soul‘s condition in respect to its being. In other words, Socrates investigates whether the soul he examines is fully, truly existing or whether the soul‘s being is in some sense weakened, deficient. Patočka seeks to explain this kind of ‗diagnosis‘, which is hardly understandable for modern readers, by pointing to the archaic conceptions of logos ssssssssssssssssssssssssss 5 6 7
1987/11, p. 146. 1987/11, p. 146. Patočka does not distinguish these three functions as neatly as it will be done in the subsequent exposition.
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1. THE CARE OF THE SOUL IN SOCRATES
in Parmenides and Heraclitus. According to these thinkers, logos is a pure expression of ‗the truth of things‘ not blurred by the deficiencies of human cognitive capacities.8 According to Patočka‘s interpretation, Socrates applies this notion of logos to ethics. Logos does not reveal the truth of cosmos but of psyche, i.e., it reveals the real state or condition of the soul in examination.9 It does so in the following way: by his questions, Socrates examines the coherence of his interlocutor‘s opinions concerning the nature of the good life and of right action. ‗And since every action is determined by an end and every end is conceived to be a good, the examination focuses on the opinions about the good.‘10 If during the examination Socrates‘s interlocutor starts to contradict himself, the contradictions reveal the lack of true knowledge of the most important things in life. They reveal that the interlocutor‘s soul is neglected and that it is necessary to take care of it properly.
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Since the Socratic elenchos is directed mostly to morally hardened people,11 the examination seems to have, secondly, a destructive function. By showing the contradictions between his interlocutors‘ opinions about the good, Socrates undermines the justification of their life-projects. If the interlocutors understand this hard-to-bear implication of Socrates‘ questioning, it affects them profoundly: they feel a deep shame for the previous conduct of their lives. This shame, in most cases hidden deep in the soul of the examined, is vocalized by the drunken Alcibiades in Plato‘s Symposium.12 There are only two ways out of the situation which the Socratic examination induces: either to run away from Socrates with ears plugged as Alcibiades does13 or to accept the hard-to-bear fact concerning one‘s own condition, be immersed in the Socratic questioning, and accept the life-program of the care of the soul. Only in the latter case does the elenchos receive also a third function which can be called maieutic. However, it is not the Socratic maieutic in its usual sense, i.e., the skill to ‗give birth‘ to a particular piece of knowledge in ssssssssssssssssssssssssss 8 9 10 11 12
13
1991/7, pp. 111 f. 1991/7, p. 112. 1991/7, p. 114. 1991/7, p. 109. Plato, Symp. 215e1-216c4. It is not by chance that Patočka mentions Alcibiades as the most characteristic example of the young people to whom Socrates addresses his elenchos. Cf. Plato, Symp. 216b5-6.
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II. THE CARE OF THE SOUL IN SOCRATES AND IN PLATO
the soul of the interlocutor, but a kind of ‗existential maieutic‘, i.e., helping the interlocutor to discover a ‗new way of life‘. This ‗new way of life‘ is an incessant investigation of the true nature of the ‗human good‘ (anthrópinon agathon), i.e., the care of the soul.
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The peculiar feature of Patočka‘s interpretation of the Socratic care of the soul is the emphasis on two claims which do not seem reconcilable, at least at first sight. The first is that the Socratic search for the human good never finds a definitive answer. The second is that only such an endless search for the ever elusive good can give human existence its highest perfection.14 Here is the crucial passage. Given its importance, I quote in full: Under examination, therefore, something positive starts to emerge. Elenxis consists in the confutation of the natural certainty, of the seemingly unproblematic character of the good. It shows that the knowledge of the good was only apparent, and it causes an acute uncertainty; it shows the emptiness that this discovery brought about. Socrates‘ elenchus places one in this emptiness. This emptiness is the Socratic question. Socrates teaches one to ask the question about the good meaning the human good as such. Examined by Socrates, everyone loses his certainty. He must either violently refuse this question, plug his ears as Alcibiades in the Symposium confesses to have done, or he must immerse himself in the stream of Socratic questioning, i.e., in the not-knowing, as Alcibiades does in the dialogue Alcibiades Major. If the questioning is incessant and permanent, something paradoxical happens. The human good, the knowledge of which man at first naively claims to possess, having not even the slightest premonition of its sense, despite its mysteriousness and absence, is in some sense here […] It is here as absent, and yet also as an appeal to refuse all immediate (instinctive, traditional) and individual, fragmented, contingent ends, to refuse everything which pretends to be such an end and the human good. All superficial moral judgments must be examined, and this examining is itself a life-project: to live a conscious and examined life. Since such a life presupposes one highest telos, the appeal to live this life is an appeal to live a unified, ssssssssssssssssssssssssss 14
1991/7, p. 115.
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focused, internally consolidated life; it is the realization of true and consolidated existence.15 As this perfection consists in the knowledge that ‗maintains the clarity of the question‘,16 i.e., the knowledge about a ‗new way of life‘, virtue (excellence) is for Socrates knowledge, arête is phronesis.17 Later in his lectures, Patočka tries to show that this interpretation of the Socratic arête makes understandable the doctrine of the unity of virtues traditionally ascribed to Socrates.18 As already mentioned, Patočka elaborates his interpretation of the Socratic philosophy on the basis of a detailed knowledge of the so called ‗Socratic question‘, i.e., the difficulties accompanying any attempt to reconstruct the image of Socrates as an historical figure.19 This knowledge makes him conclude that ‗we do not have an objective overall image of Socrates and, probably, we shall never have one‘.20 Since a purely philological reconstruction of the image of historical Socrates is hardly feasible, Patočka opts for a philosophical solution of the problem. For this purpose, he uses the concept of the ‗spirit‘s struggle with objectivity‘21 inspired by his study of Heidegger and Hegel. That is why Patočka‘s conception of the Socratic care of the soul is ultimately based on a speculative scheme derived from Hegel‘s dialectics.
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According to this scheme, the good life is understood as an intellectual path marked by a constant refutation of the insufficiently reflective moral convictions concerning the human good, i.e., as the result of the negation of negation.22 The concrete interpretation of this Hegelian scheme is inspired by Heidegger´s conception of truth as Unverborgenheit. This interpretation of the Socratic care of the soul influences decisively Patočka‘s notion of the historicity of human existence developed in Věčnost ssssssssssssssssssssssssss 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22
1991/7, p. 115. 1991/7, p. 115. 1991/7, p. 115. 1991/7, pp.117-141. For a learned exposition of this problem, see the first chapter of Patočka‘s postwar lecture on Socrates (1991/7, pp. 7-27. 1991/7, p. 15. Cf. supra, pp. 11, 21-23. Cf. supra, pp. 23 f.
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a dějinnost [Eternity and Historicity]. In this work, he calls Socrates the ‗discoverer of human historicity‘,23 because Socrates discovered ‗man as originally incomplete but given to himself so that he may understand his essential will, so that he may give his life a meaning‘.24 Given the above mentioned structural connection between the notion of the historicity of human existence and Patočka‘s philosophy of history, the notion of historicity gains a crucial importance also for the latter.vii
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The structural link between the Socratic care of the soul and the historicity of human existence established by Patočka in Věčnost a dějinnost [Eternity and Historicity] reemerges some thirty years later in the Heretical Essays, Patočka‘s final word on the subject. For the characterization of historicity as ‗the constant shaking of the naïve sense of meaningfulness‘25 is just a reformulation of the idea, expressed in Věčnost a dějinnost, that Socrates, the discoverer of the care of the soul, is also the discoverer of the historicity of human existence. That this is the same pattern of thought as the one appearing later in the Heretical Essays, is obvious from the following: First, already in Věčnost a dějinnost we read that it is the Socratic elenchos, which, by uncovering the contradictoriness of the uncritically assumed convictions about the good, shakes the naïve sense of the meaningfulness of non-reflected life.26 Second, the new meaning of life arising from the constant shaking of the naïve sense of meaningfulness of which the Heretical Essays speak, recalls strongly the description of the inner dynamics of the care of the soul with its positivenegative relationship to the human good which we find in the lectures on Socrates from 1947. In Heretical Essays, for example, Patočka writes that this new meaning of life ‗can arise only in an activity that stems from a searching lack of meaning, as the vanishing point of being problematic, as an indirect epiphany‘.27 ssssssssssssssssssssssssss 23 24 25 26
27
1987/11, p. 147. Cf. supra, p. 18. 1987/11, p. 146. HE, p. 61. Cf. for example the following passage from 1987/11: ‚By this operation of mind, i.e., by ‗freezing‘ naive life into opinions and assertions, of which he, then, shows mutual contradictoriness, Socrates managed to confute this originally mute life. By the power of the word he managed to reveal its hidden negativity.‘ (p. 145) HE, pp. 60 f.
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1. THE CARE OF THE SOUL IN SOCRATES
As the good, in the lectures on Socrates from 1947, is present only indirectly, i.e., not as a content of knowledge but only as the cause of the ‗ontological reinforcement‘ of the soul, so too, in the Heretical Essays, the historical human being finds the new meaning of his or her existence only indirectly, i.e., as ‗the vanishing point of being problematic, as an indirect epiphany‘. The pattern of thought is evidently the same. The identity of the pattern of thought is confirmed by Patočka himself. For, in the crucial passage of Heretical Essays, he makes an explicit link between the conception of historicity in the sense of the shaking of the naïve sense of meaningfulness and his interpretation of Socrates: If we are not mistaken, then this discovering of meaning in the seeking that flows from its absence as a new project of life, is the meaning of Socrates‘s existence. The constant shaking of the naïve sense of meaningfulness is itself a new mode of meaning, a discovery of its continuity with the mysteriousness of being and what-is as a whole.28
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Therefore, it is evident that through the interpretation of the Socratic care of the soul, both the systematic concept of the ‗spirit‘s struggle with objectivity‘ and the scheme of thought derived from the Hegelian dialectics on which this concept is based (positivity equals negation of negation) exert a strong, if not decisive, influence on Patočka‘s late philosophy of history. The theme of the care of the soul remains present also in the lectures on Plato delivered in 1947-49. In an extensive interpretation of the Apology with which the lectures begin, Patočka claims that it is the aim of this dialogue to show ‗a fundamental conflict between philosophy and the world‘,29 i.e., a conflict between a life based on the care of the soul and a non-reflective life. The Apology, Patočka says, ‗describes a conflict between the diablerie of the world that lulls and enslaves humans and the liberating, divinely conditioned, daimonic inspiration of philosophy‘.30 This conflict is solved by two lawsuits. The first is the visible judgment of the city on Socrates, in which Socrates is condemned. The second, hidden, is the judgment of Socrates on the city. For it is by condemning Socrates in the visible trial that the city was condemned in the true lawsuit. Philosophy ssssssssssssssssssssssssss 28 29 30
HE, p. 61. 1992/13, p. 63. 1992/13, p. 65.
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can be defeated by the world only in an exterior lawsuit. In the true trial, however, which is based on truth alone and not on the demonic powers and the appearances created by them, philosophy wins. For this reason, the true winner of the conflict between Socrates and the city is Socrates.31 In the interpretation of other early dialogues, Patočka aims at showing various expressions of this basic conflict between philosophy and the world, between philosophy and non-philosophy.32
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Since Plato‘s philosophy, in the first part of these lectures, is interpreted as the ‗phenomenology of human truth, of human freedom and of the lack of freedom in it‘,33 the conflict between philosophy and non-philosophy, which is its hermeneutic axis, is fundamentally a conflict between truthful and untruthful human existence. It is a struggle between life in its arising and life in its declining, a confrontation of the reflective life and life in spiritual slumber. That means, however, that the theme of truthful human existence is crucial also in this text. It functions there as the key to the interpretation of the early Platonic dialogues.
ssssssssssssssssssssssssss 31 32 33
Some traces of this interpretation can be found in some of Patočka‘s late texts. Cf., for example, 1988/4, p. 133. Cf. 1992/13, pp. 70-187. 1992/13, p. 84.
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2. THE SELF-MOVING SOUL
2. The Self-Moving Soul Before we turn to Patočka‘s interpretation of the Platonic care of the soul, we must say few words about his approach to Plato. In the post-war lectures, Patočka aims, above all, at making Plato‘s thought relevant to the philosophical discussions at the time.1 Patočka thought it possible because he discerned a convergence of Plato‘s thinking with post-war philosophy. He thinks Plato moves from boundedness to freedom and autonomy, which is, however, not absolute, divine, but human and is thus realized only as a tendency to the absolute freedom. Modern philosophy—Patočka thinks here of the philosophy of life and existentialism—is liberating itself from an excessive freedom, from the divinization of man (Patočka alludes here probably to transcendental idealism) and is heading toward facticity, boundedness, particularity, relativity, etc. It seems, therefore, that Plato and the philosophy of the post-war period converge in the idea of finite freedom. Patočka also thought that post-war philosophy must be impressed by Plato‘s emphasis on the autonomy of philosophy. For Plato, philosophy has, compared to its situation in modern times, an enviable freedom. It is neither a special science nor a mere ‗maidservant of science‘.
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Thus, according to Patočka, Plato‘s philosophy is up-to-date in two respects: (1) In thinking finite freedom, it reveals its inner affinity to the postwar philosophical currents and, (2) In the emphasis laid on the autonomy of philosophy, it can inspire the modern philosophy that often surrenders to the temptations of scientism and positivism. Also in the texts from the 70s, Patočka retains the aim not to treat Plato from a purely historical point of view. However, for the systematic concept of the ‗spirit‘s struggle with objectivity‘ is substituted a new one. It is the interpretation mentioned above of human life as a triad of life-movements. It results from a synthesis of the historical research on the concept of movement and a phenomenologically-based ontology of human life. Movement is understood as an actualization of potency, i.e., basically in classical Aristote-
ssssssssssssssssssssssssss 1
1992/13, p. 23.
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lian terms, but potency is interpreted along the Heideggerean lines as the Sein-Können of the Dasein.2 Inspired by this new systematic approach, Patočka makes an audacious claim regarding the interpretation of the whole of Plato‘s philosophy. He says that Plato‘s doctrine of the soul, particularly the late Platonic doctrine of the soul as self-movement, is the key to Plato‘s philosophy in general.3 For this reason, Patočka‘s interpretation of the Platonic care of the soul must be understood in the context of his interpretation of the Platonic doctrine of the soul as self-movement. Therefore, before focusing on the interpretation of the care of the soul, I will briefly describe this general context.
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Patočka begins with the observation that, for Plato, the soul is always related to the Good in the sense of the highest measure of human lifeprojects. The relationship to the Good is immanent to the soul in the sense of a ‗subjective impulse which is the raison d'être of our lives and in the light in which things appear to us‘.4 Socrates was the first to show the insufficiency of this instinctive, not-reflected, relationship of the soul to the Good as the highest measure. He also teaches how to ask questions about this measure, which in our life should play an analogical role to the role geometry and its exact measure play in the sensible world.5 In that sense, Socrates teaches how to acquire an explicit and a reflective relationship to the Good as highest measure. According to this interpretation of Plato, the very essence of the soul consists in relating oneself and all other things to the Good as the highest measure, be this relating explicit and reflected or instinctive and notreflected.6 The relating is a process. It is the movement of the soul. According to Patočka, it is this movement that Plato had in mind, when he called the soul ‗self-movement‘ (to auto heauto kinún).7 ssssssssssssssssssssssssss 2
3 4 5 6 7
Cf. supra, p. 26, n. 65. For a detailed analyses of the combination of the two strains of thought and of their importance as the starting point of the interpretation of Plato‘s doctrine of the soul as self-movement, see JPD, p. 139-153. Ibid., 129. 1988/2, p. 49. Cf. JPD, p. 132. 1988/2, p. 49. 1988/2, p. 52. Cf. JPD, p. 132. 1988/2, p. 52.
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2. THE SELF-MOVING SOUL
The self-movement of the soul takes place in two directions. The first is a reflexive circular movement of the soul in each of the two realms of being defined by Plato‘s metaphysical interpretation of reality, i.e., a movement in the realm of the sensibles and a movement in the realm of the Forms. 8 Karfík describes it in the following way: In each of these realms, the moving soul, as it were, steps outside of itself in order to come closer, according to its dynamics rooted in its relationship to the good, to something in which it can find its Woraufhin. This movement is reflexive, because the stepping outside of the soul affects retroactively its own being. The kind of affection depends on the direction of the soul‘s striving. If the soul‘s movement takes place mostly in the realm of what is sensible and corporeal, undetermined and flowing, impure, the soul‘s being will be of the same kind: impure, self-losing, self-slipping. If, on the other hand, the soul turns toward the realm of the Pure, the Forms, and it performs its circular movement there, under the direction of the anypotheton itself, then it collects itself in itself [sammelt sie sich in sich selbst] and its being becomes similar to the being of the Pure und the Identical: it gains a selfhood [Selbstsein]. Through the reflexive movement, the soul shapes and determines its own mode of being.9
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The second movement of the soul is the result of this circular and reflexive movement. It is the movement of the soul‘s rising and declining. Karfík explains: This movement is, as it were, the result of the circular movement: it is equal to the mutations of the soul‘s mode of being, be it the mutation of the loss of being, be it the mutation of the gain of being. However, both the upward and the downward movement must be conceived of as equally fundamental with the circular movement. They belong to the original structure of the soul, to its original motility.10
ssssssssssssssssssssssssss 8 9 10
Cf. JPD, p. 133. Cf. Hladký, Změnit sám sebe [Changing Oneself], p. 143. JPD, p. 133. My translation. Ibid. My translation.
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In the essay Evropa a doba poevropská [Europe and the Post-European Period] and the lectures Plato and Europe, Patočka says a bit surprisingly that the aim of the soul‘s movement is not the Good as the highest measure of things but an ‗absolutely clear and unified, non-contradictory, and coherent reasoning about each individual and the whole of reality‘.
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Despite this difference in the interpretation of the final aim of the soul‘s movement, the soul striving towards this aim is described, similarly as in the other texts on the self-movement of the soul, as moving from ‗an undetermined immediacy to a determining reflection‘.11 Although the soul can never reach its aim completely, the result of its movement is a stable thought-path to which it is always possible to go back and which can always be a subject of further examination.12 In virtue of the ‗reflexivity‘ of the soul mentioned above, the stability, the precise contours, and the clarity of the thought-path affect retrospectively the soul itself. For it is by applying the measure of clarity and evidence, which it discovers by cognizing the precise and permanent intelligible entities, to its opinions, its real or alleged knowledge, that it discovers ‗what it can account for and what it cannot […] what are its intentions and what is the structure of its thoughts‘.13 In this way, the soul gains a higher degree of an interior clarity. In that sense, the struggle for a unified and a lasting theory makes the soul itself more unified, permanent, and precisely determined. Simultaneously with the discovery of this new measure of being, the soul discovers also the indeterminacy, the mutability, and the lack of unity of the world in which it has lived so far.14 However, the soul does not discover only these two ‗landscapes‘ in which it ‗moves‘, but also two fundamental possibilities of its existence. It can either ontologically ‗dissolve‘ into the world of an indeterminate and intruding immediacy, or it can assume the features of the intelligible world. In the latter case, it can, by means of a philosophical care of itself, ‗intensify‘ its being, i.e., it can become itself stable, precise, and unified. The soul that makes this latter option sets itself on an upward movement, transforming and intensifying its being.15 ssssssssssssssssssssssssss 11 12 13 14 15
1988/4, p. 128. 1988/4, p. 127, PE, pp. 91 f. 1988/4, pp. 127 f. 1988/4, p. 128. 1988/4, p. 128. PE, p. 94.
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Both in Plato and Europe and in Evropa a doba poevropská [Europe and the Post-European Period], the inner unity of the soul moving upward is defined in terms of the unity of the four cardinal virtues. Surprisingly, these virtues are interpreted exactly in the same way as in the exposition of the Socratic care of the soul in the lectures from 1947.16 Patočka‘s late interpretation of the Platonic care of the soul thus acquires a strong Socratic accent. The accent is expressed in the claims that (a) the courage of the self-caring soul consists in self-problematizing, and (b) the wisdom of the self-caring soul consists in knowing its not knowing (in the sense of being aware of the need of investigation). If these claims are meant, as they presumably are, as an interpretation of Plato‘s account of the two cardinal virtues, they offer a very ‗Socratic‘ interpretation of them.
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This interpretation is ‗Socratic‘ to the point of ignoring the strong metaphysical and epistemological implications that these virtues have in Plato.viii It is hardly imaginable that this ‗Socratic‘ accent would be a result of a thoughtless projection of the Socratic care of the soul onto the Platonic one. Rather, we should take it as Patočka‘s fully deliberate attempt to integrate what is essentially the Socratic form of the care of the soul within the metaphysical framework of the Platonic thought. But is it possible to integrate the Socratic conception of the care of the soul, i.e., the never ceasing inquiry unifying and solidifying the soul, into the Platonic perspective where philosophy is not only a thought-path but also a thought-system that, despite its openness for further revisions and differentiations,ix determines the place and nature of everything that exists, including the ontological status and the nature of the soul? Is it then not necessary to derive the sense of the specifically Platonic care of the soul not just from its original Socratic inspiration but also from the place and the function it has ssssssssssssssssssssssssss 16
‗I brought your attention to the most important idea, to the formation of the soul itself by itself. This means that this soul turned the experience that it does not know, the experience of knowing its not knowing, into an experience about its own being. At the same time, it also experienced that it is brave because it exposes itself to problematization, that it is wise in knowing of not knowing qua investigating, that it is temperate and disciplined, because it subordinates all other human affairs to this thinking struggle. It is just by doing its own business, by doing that to which it sees itself to be bound, i.e., as we would today say, as doing that for what it finds itself to be responsible; it does not claim anything apart from what is in this way its own.‘ (PE, p. 93, cf. 1988/4, p. 128).
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within this metaphysical system? If we answer these questions in the affirmative, Platonic care of the soul would not consist merely in the program of the ceaseless inquiry into the human good as its Socratic heritage. Rather, it would also be the program of both individual and social life based on the knowledge of the eternal, hierarchically ordered intelligible realm of being with the Form of the Good (or the One-Good of the ‗unwritten doctrines‘) at the top. It seems that Patočka is to some extent aware of the tension between his ‗Socratic‘ interpretation of the Platonic care of the soul and the conception of the care of the soul implied in Plato‘s metaphysics. It seems also that he tries to relax the tension by a particular interpretation of the relationship between the metaphysical system and the self-caring soul. He interprets this system as the mere ‗image‘ or ‗sediment‘ resulting from the movement of the self-caring soul.17
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Now, if the metaphysical system were the mere ‗sediment‘ of the movement of the self-caring soul (or the mere ‗image‘ arising in the soul due to its inner movement) the soul would become ontologically the principium and the metaphysical system the principiatum. In other words, the idea of the metaphysical system being ‗sediment‘ or ‗image‘ implies that it is in its being and essence ontologically dependent on the movement of the selfcaring soul. Whatever the purely systematical philosophical merits of this claim, there is nothing in Plato to suggest that he would consider his metaphysical system derived from the self-movement of the soul. As a matter of fact, he formulates his doctrine of the self-movement of the soul in the context of his reflection on the first cause of the movement in the universe, i.e., in the context of his cosmology.18 Therefore, he does not consider the doctrine of the self-movement of the soul the foundation of his metaphysics and cosssssssssssssssssssssssssss 17 18
Cf. JPD, pp. 157 f. Cf. Phaedr. 245c-246a; Leg. 896a. Note that the discussion of the soul as selfmovement does not concern only the human soul but also the divine one (an explicit mention of the divine soul is in the passage from the Phaedrus, in the Laws, the subject of the speculations is the soul in general; yet the primarily cosmological context in which the discussion takes places suggests that Plato does not mean primarily human soul. Cf. JPD, p. 140.
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mology. Rather, he sees in it a doctrine that acquires its full meaning within this metaphysical framework and in that respect it presupposes it.
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It is obvious that Patočka‘s interpretation of Plato‘s doctrine of the soul as self-movement is not meant to be a historical reconstruction of Plato‘s teaching. Rather, Patočka aims at interpreting certain themes of Platonic provenience from the perspective of a phenomenology-based ontology of human life. He also, at least in part, retains the critical view of the traditional metaphysics outlined in ‗Negative Platonism‘. Nevertheless, he undoubtedly also aims at interpreting Plato. And to that extent the validity of his interpretation must be measured by the textual evidence of the Corpus Platonicum and, to the extent that the methodology of the Tubingen school is appropriate, also by the content of the ‗unwritten doctrines‘.
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3. The Three Modalities of the Platonic Care of the Soul So far I have discussed Patočka‘s account of the Platonic doctrine of the soul as self-movement. For it was the general hermeneutical context for the Czech philosopher‘s interpretation of the Platonic care of the soul. And it is to this interpretation that I must now turn. Its main content is the description of three modalities, three manners in which, according to Patočka, the Platonic care of the soul is articulated. Since, however, in Patočka‘s texts, this description is preceded by a comparison between the Democritean and the Platonic care of the soul, I will first say a few words about this topic.
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Now, someone might ask: ‗Why compare Plato and Democritus?‘ From Patočka‘s perspective on the history of ancient philosophy, this comparison makes sense. The reason is that, for Patočka, the thought of Democritus is much more closely connected to the metaphysical way of thinking inaugurated by Plato and Aristotle then to the cosmological speculations of the Presocratics.1 Both thinkers share the idea of a systematic and methodical reduction of the phenomena to true reality.x Common motifs on the practical level correspond to the similarities in theoretical matters. In both thinkers, according to Patočka, we find a form of the care of the soul. In Democritus, occasional assertions in which the primacy of the psychic over the bodily is stressed or the psychic goods and not the bodily ones are called divine and lasting are the testimony of the presence of the idea of the care of the soul.2 Its aim is the contemplation of eternal and divine being, i.e., of the invisible but highly intelligible principles. According to Democritus, the whole of life must be subordinated to this supreme aim of the philosophical life.3
ssssssssssssssssssssssssss 1 2
3
Cf. 1979/15, p. 140. Patočka refers particularly to the fragment DK 68 B 45, in which it is said that the man committing injustice is unhappier than the one suffering it (1988/4, p. 120). Patočka rightly points out that this idea makes sense only in connection with the care of the soul. Moreover, this idea is reminiscent of one of the basic claims of the Socratic ethics defended in Plato‘s Gorgias, namely that it is better to suffer injustice then to commit it. 1988/4, p. 120.
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The unilaterally contemplative character of the Democritean care of the soul makes the philosopher turn away from both his family and the city. He turns his back to both in order to devote himself fully to the contemplation of the truth, undisturbed by worries and affections of practical life. The Democritean philosopher thus does not focus primarily on the care of the soul as such but on its ‗objective aspect‘, i.e., justified knowledge, explanations, etc. This aspect is so dominant in Democritus that the soul ‗has no other objective but to serve the mirroring of the universe […] The soul is here exclusively, or at least predominantly, a means to know the world; the knowledge of the world is here not because of the soul and its inner growth.‘4
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According to Patočka, the Democritean care of the soul differs in this respect from the Platonic one. To be sure, in Plato‘s care of the soul, the knowledge is important, but it is not an end in itself. The Platonic philosopher does not care for his soul in order to know. Rather, he strives for knowledge because he knows that its acquisition is an integral moment of the care of his soul. If we use here the already mentioned concept of the ‗reflexivity‘ of the soul‘s movement, we may say that whereas Democritean care of the soul is unaware of this reflexivity, the Platonic one is based on it. It is based on the discovery of the critical importance of this reflexivity for the soul‘s formation. At least in part, the one-sided contemplative focus of the Democritean inquiry is due to the context in which it matured. Democritus lived far away from the center of world-historical events, i.e., from the Athens of the 4th century B.C. Plato‘s philosophy, on the contrary, is inseparably linked with the historical situation of Athens, with its rise and fall. Plato lived in times which are marked not only by an economic and political decline of his native city but also by the moral decadence of its citizens. For him, the symbol of decadence was the way the city-rulers treated Socrates. According to Patočka‘s interpretation, the conflict between Socrates and the city was caused by the former‘s conviction that the ‗old objective‘, i.e., the moral upsurge of the citizens and of the whole city, could be achieved only by ‗new means‘, i.e., by the philosophical care of the soul. His accusers, to the contrary, were convinced that it was sufficient to follow the orders of the traditional morality. They did not understand that the philossssssssssssssssssssssssss 4
1988/4, p. 120.
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sophical care of the soul is, at the time, the only available means for the moral renewal of the city and that Socrates is, for this reason, really an ‗envoy of the gods‘. They took, therefore, Socrates‘s appeal to take care of one‘s soul as an incitement designed to subvert traditional morality and piety. The conflict between Socrates and the city, represented by his accusers, ends with the condemnation and the death of Socrates. Yet, by condemning the ‗divine envoy‘, the accusers become themselves the accused and the city calls down upon itself the divine wrath.5 Patočka sees Plato‘s philosophy nurtured by a constant reflection on the ‗Socratic principle‘ (the care of the soul) and on the destiny of Socrates in the sense just mentioned, i.e., Socrates becoming for Plato a symbol of the conflict between the philosophical way of life and the life based on a naive acceptance of tradition. This political context frees Plato‘s care of the soul from the one-sidedness of the Democritean one.
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After these remarks on a comparison between Plato and Democritus, let me turn to the three forms or modalities of the Platonic care of the soul. The first of them we find in Plato‘s metaphysical system. Patočka‘s interpretation of this system is strongly influenced by the historical reconstruction of Platonic metaphysics by the ‗Tübingen school‘ of Plato‘s interpretation. According to this reconstruction, Plato‘s metaphysical system is a four-level hierarchical ontological structure. On the very top, there is the level of the first two Principles of the One and the Indefinite Dyad. Second, dependent on the first, is the level of the Forms. Between the two levels of the intelligible reality and the sensible world there is an ‗intermediary‘ level of mathematical entities and souls. ‗Lowest‘ is the level of the sensible realities. Between the four levels there is a relation of unilateral ontological dependency. That means that the lower level cannot be (and cannot be thought of) without the higher, whereas the higher level can be (and be thought of) without the lower. Plato‘s technical expression for this unilateral dependency between the ontological levels was: that which is dependent can be destroyed without destroying that on which it depends (synanairein kai mé synanaireisthai).6 ssssssssssssssssssssssssss 5 6
For the idea of the two lawsuits, cf. supra, pp. 43 f. G. Reale, Toward a New Intepretation of Plato, p. 74.
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As mentioned, the soul is situated on the level of the mathematical entities in which the mutually excluding characteristics of the intelligible and the sensible level are united.7 For, in virtue of its connection to the body, the soul belongs to the sensible world, and through its capacity to know the Forms and even the first Principles, it is able to ascend to the level of intelligible being. This ascent is possible owing to the philosophical care of the soul. Thus, in Plato‘s metaphysical system, the care of the soul finds its expression in the doctrine of the soul as self-movement.xi The second mode of the care of the soul‘s articulation is linked to Plato‘s political thought. Basically, it is a reflection on the state in which ‗philosophers will not have to die‘, i.e., the state of justice and spiritual authority. Patočka describes this political modality of the care of the soul in considerable detail.8
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He starts from the reflection mentioned above on the fate of Socrates that, according to him, is for Plato a symbol of the fate of the philosopher as such. The fate of Socrates shows that the care of the soul is life-threatening, even if a philosopher, like Socrates, avoids public life. Already his purely philosophical activity appears to many a threat to the city. For the philosopher by examining his fellow citizens uncovers the hidden tyrannical thinking of the apparent democrats and their teachers. 9 The uncovered consider Socrates‘s examination an attack on the very foundation of the regime, and they defend themselves by accusing and condemning Socrates. Socrates dies. Yet, his heritage remains in the attempts of his pupil to design a state in which ‗philosophers will not have to die‘, i.e., a city which will not enter into conflict with those who care for their souls. Thus Socrates, who did not help himself, is, by his spiritual heritage, helping others. To his most faithful disciples, he passes on the heritage of philosophical help which permits the designing of a new polis, a city based on the idea of the ssssssssssssssssssssssssss 7 8
9
The mathematical entities differ from the sensibles by being eternal and immovable and from the Forms by being many of the same kind. 1988/4, pp. 132 -143; PE, pp. 109-123. In both passages, Patočka presents basically the same ideas. Their modes of expression are, however, significantly different. In PE, to give just one example, we find a synthetic exposition of the first two books of the Republic, for which there is no pendant in 1988/4. 1988/4, p. 132. In this passage, Patočka follows up implicitly with the detailed analyses of the main points of the accusation of Socrates he presented in the postwar lectures on Plato (1992/13, pp. 32-70).
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care of the soul. Plato‘s political philosophy, which we find in the Republic, the Politicus, and the Laws, is, according to Patočka, such an attempt to design foundations for a new state of justice and of spiritual authority. In his exposition, Patočka stresses two motives of Plato‘s political theory that are particularly important for the care of the soul. The first is the idea that the exterior is the projection of the interior, i.e., that the city and its organization is a projection of the conditions of the soul. In this context, Patočka investigates in detail some of the crucial aspects of the famous analogy which, in the Republic, Plato draws between the soul and the city. He underscores that Plato‘s detailed exposition of the structure of the city serves, in the last analysis, to elucidate the structure of the soul. That means: political considerations are instrumental to the treatment of the problem of the soul.10
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The result is a psychologically more concrete delineation of the nature of the soul than the one we find in Patočka‘s interpretation of Plato‘s doctrine of the soul as self-movement. The soul is not depicted only as an entity which, by means of a spontaneous and reflexive movement between the sensible and the intelligible realm of reality (and within each of the two), coconstitutes its own being. Rather, it is presented also as a hierarchically ordered unity of three fundamental psychic moments: rational, irascible, and appetitive. The second basic motif in Plato‘s political doctrine that Patočka highlights is the education of the ‗guardians‘, i.e., the education of a special type of spiritual people whose task is the care of the city and who therefore have to renounce all private life, particularly family and property. 11 Plato is aware that the problem of the just city is primarily the problem of the class of the guardians.12 The guardians, he says, are ‗men of extreme insight and extreme risk; they are people seeking wisdom, i.e., insight; yet, they are also brave.‘13 Since humans are not born to be such men, the question of the guardians implies necessarily the question of education, of paideia. The particular difficulty of this education consists in keeping the right balance between ssssssssssssssssssssssssss 10 11 12 13
PE, p. 111. 1988/4, p. 136. PE, p. 118. PE, p. 118.
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courage and wisdom, i.e., to make sure that the guardian is neither foolishly bold nor cowardly wise; hence the crucial importance of the formation of the irascible part of the soul (thymoeides).14 The third manner in which the care of the soul is articulated concerns the relationship of the soul to itself as well as its inner experience of the intensification of its being. For this reason, it is related to its self-knowledge. It is the relationship to both levels of existence between which the soul moves that is constitutive for this self-knowledge. In contrast to the metaphysical system, in which this relationship is presented in an objectified manner as a movement of a particular entity named soul, this relationship is now interpreted as an intimate experience that the soul has of itself.
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It was already mentioned that the self-caring soul, i.e., the soul that sets itself in motion in the direction of the intelligible realm, does not discover only the Forms and the Principles but also stability, unity, and precision as the measure of its own being. This measure shows the decrease of its own being, if it starts to become imprecise, fragmented, and changeable by giving in to the desires that are themselves infinite, mutually contradictory, and changeable in their demands. With the same measure it measures also the increase of its being, if—by moving to the realm of what is precise, unified, and self-identical—it becomes such. The soul thus makes an experiment with its own being, i.e., whether it is solid or decadent, and it discovers that it is responsible for both the rising and declining.15 The movement of the self-caring soul has two mutually interconnected aspects. The first is linked to the essential temporality of the sensible being. While the sensibles both originate and terminate their being in time, the soul—when it moves away from the sensible realm of being—moves away also from the world of generation and corruption. It discovers thus its affinity
ssssssssssssssssssssssssss 14 15
For an interesting interpretation of the irascible part of the soul, see 1988/4, pp. 139 f. ‗During our experience, with which we get to know the proper character of the soul with the movement, through which the soul itself shapes itself, and through which it has the capacity to shape itself, we also comprehend that when we do not shape ourselves through this way of conscious reflection, in reality we shape ourselves in the opposite way. We are the authority of our own decline. We are responsible for our decline.‘ (PE, p. 125)
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to the realm of eternal being.16 Therefore, due to its ‗upward‘ movement, the soul enters into an essential relationship to what is eternal. By moving away from the temporal, the ‗upward‘ moving soul recedes also from the embodied life.17 For by caring for itself, the soul limits its desires and cravings, which are either directly corporeal or have their origin in the bodily sphere. During its earthly existence, the soul can be separated from the body only partly. For this reason, this movement ends only after death. Both aspects of the movement of the self-caring soul give rise to the notion of immortality which is radically different from the traditional Greek notion of immortality in Homer, other poets, and in the mystery religions.18 The soul which has spent its life caring for itself reaches in death the end of its life-long striving. It enjoys the fullness of its being, undisturbed by the body and its temptations. At the same time, it is clear that only the one who cared for his soul, i.e., who realized the essential possibility of his existence, is the one who lived well. For this reason, Patočka stresses that in Plato, owing to the above mentioned care of the soul, immortality gains the proper content. It is not anymore ‗an illusory continuation of normal life in some other fantastic environment and in a desirably outward manner. It entered into a firmly established relationship to the essential movement of the soul, to good and evil, to reward and punishment, to the acquisition of being, and to the despair over its loss; the interior life acquired a clear shape and history, a clarity about the direction, the phases, and the itinerary of the soul‘s movement.‘19
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So, here are the three articulations of the care for the soul in Plato. In the context of Plato‘s metaphysical system, the care of the soul appears as ssssssssssssssssssssssssss 16
17 18 19
‗The impetus of the soul to discover what is precise, pure, and does not succumb to all these changes and oscillating is, at the same time, a battle against time. While this is not explicitly articulated and made thematic by Plato, it is factually constantly present. In relation to itself, the soul is the discoverer of eternity. It tends toward eternity, and its most proper problem—the problem of the status of its own being—is the problem of its relation to eternity: whether in its being it is something fleeting, or whether in its depths it is something eternal.‘ (ibid.) 1988/4, p. 145. For the interpretation of the sensible realm as a bodily realm, see also 1988/3, pp. 62-63. PE, p. 126; 1988/4, p. 146. For the traditional understanding of immortality as a shadow or a dream, cf. Homer, The Odyssey, XI, 204-222. 1988/4, p. 146.
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the doctrine of the self-movement of the soul between the sensible and the intelligible realm. In the context of Plato‘s political theory, it appears as a theory of the state of justice and of political authority, in which alone the philosophical care of the soul is possible. In Plato‘s eschatological myths, the care of the soul leads to a notion of the soul‘s inner life and immortality, which is essentially different from the older religious and literary tradition. Patočka concludes with the following words:
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In all three of these directions, Plato‘s teaching is the grand metaphysics of the Western world. One contemporary thinker says: all metaphysics is Platonism. The future of European life will show the profound effectiveness of all three motifs rooted in the idea of the care of the soul: the systematic cosmological motif, the practical-state motif (life in the community, spiritual power, and spiritual authority), and finally, the problem of how to convert myth into something like religious faith, religious faith in the sense of a purely moral religion.20
ssssssssssssssssssssssssss 20
PE, p. 127.
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4. A Critique of Patočka’s Interpretation of the Platonic Care of the Soul I have already mentioned the tension between Patočka‘s ‗Socratic‘ interpretation of the Platonic care of the soul and the account of the care of the soul implied in Plato‘s metaphysical system. There is a similar tension between Patočka‘s general interpretation of the care of the soul in Plato, which has its starting point in Plato‘s doctrine of the self-movement of the soul, and the presentation of the three articulations of the care of the soul just described. Also the cause of the tension is in both cases similar: it is an attempt to bring together two very different approaches to the interpretation of Plato.
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The first of them is Patočka‘s own approach to Plato, developed in the 70s. This approach is characterized by the effort to interpret the basic themes of Plato‘s philosophizing starting from the doctrine of the selfmovement of the soul. This approach is influenced by (a) the results of the studies of the history of the concept of movement mentioned above combined with the attempt to develop a phenomenologically-based ontology of human life, and (b) Patočka‘s older interpretation of the Socratic care of the soul doctrine characterized by the attempt to interpret the relationship of the self-caring soul to the absent ‗human good‘ positively as the negation of negation. The result of the combination of these two strains of thought is that Plato‘s doctrine of the soul as self-movement is not primarily conceived ontologically-cosmologically. Rather, it is interpreted existentiallyanthropologically, i.e., as a movement of the originally decadent existence, struggling for truthfulness. The essential relationship of this existence to the unknowable Good is thought of in terms of endless investigation. Patočka tries to combine this existential-anthropological ‗Socratic‘ approach to Plato with a strongly metaphysical interpretation elaborated by the ‗Tubingen school‘.1 In fact, in the texts from the 70s, he uses very often ssssssssssssssssssssssssss 1
A school of Platonic interpretation founded by the German philologists and philosophers Hans Krämer and Konrad Gaiser. The school underscores the importance of the so called ‗indirect tradition‘, i.e., the doctrines Plato did not
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the main results of this interpretation as the starting point for his own expositions of Plato‘s thought. The heterogeneity of the two interpretative approaches is shown by their declared aims. The aim of Gaiser‘s and Krämer‘s attempts at a reconstruction of Plato‘s onto-cosmological ‗system‘ on the basis of the so-called ‗unwritten doctrines‘ is to offer, as far as possible, a historically faithful reconstruction of Plato‘s thought. The aim of Patočka‘s approach is to use Plato as a source of ideas which, if conveniently interpreted, are philosophically relevant today.
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The reader who is convinced of the hermeneutical validity of the Tubingen school‘s approach and who is, at the same time, sympathetic to the attempt to interpret Plato as a sort of a ‗proto-phenomenologist‘ of human existence will find Patočka‘s brilliant and philosophically stimulating interpretation very attractive. Nevertheless, even he might have the impression that Patočka sometimes fails to relax the basic tension between the two interpretational approaches he wants to bring together. This tension is particularly strong in his interpretation of Plato‘s account of the Good. On the one hand, Patočka interprets the Good as the highest measure. On the other, he interprets it, in the spirit of his ‗Socratic‘ approach, as unknowable. Now, the interpretation of the Good as the highest measure is one of the characteristic feature of the Tubingen school approach. Its proponents interpret Plato‘s texts (Prot. 354e-4-357b7; Polit. 284a4-e8) in which the ‗axiological science of measurement‘ is mentioned while its full explanation is ‗left for another time‘ as an allusion to the ‗unwritten doctrines‘. They also interpret the ‗measure‘, the existence of which is presupposed by the ‗axiological science of measurement‘, as the OneGood of these doctrines.2
ssssssssssssssssssssssssss
2
entrusted to his written work but discussed with his students at the Academy. The doctrines are usually referred to as the ‗unwritten doctrines‘ (agrafa dogmata). The main content of the unwritten doctrines is the doctrine of the first two Principles, the One-Good and the Undetermined Dyad. The chief witness on the contents of the agrafa dogmata is Aristotle and his student Aristoxenus. Patočka was familiar with this school of Platonic interpretation through his careful study of Konrad Gaisers 1963 book Platons ungeschriebene Lehre. See, for example, G. Reale, Toward a New Interpretation of Plato, pp. 249-253.
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Since Plato accepts the existence of the ‗axiological science of measurement‘ (particularly in Polit. 284a1-e8), he also acknowledges, according to this interpretation, its necessary presupposition. This presupposition is the existence and knowability of the absolute Measure, i.e., the One-Good of the ‗unwritten doctrines‘. The claim that the highest Good qua absolute Measure can be known is, according to the proponents of the Tubingen school, corroborated by Socrates‘s ‗cognitivist‘ assertions about the Form of the Good in the Republic. These thinkers underscore the agreement of these assertions with what is said about the One-Good in the ‗unwritten doctrines‘.3
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The startling feature of Patočka‘s interpretation of the Good in Plato is that he accepts, together with the Tubingen school, that the Good is the highest Measure, but he, at the same time, refuses the cognitivist consequences of this interpretation of the Good. In fact, in the same text, in which he interprets the Good as the highest Measure, he claims that, according to Plato, the Good, unlike the ideal geometrical figures, cannot be known.4 In his interpretation of the Platonic care of the soul, he evidently tries to merge into one the metaphysical notion of the Good as the highest Measure and his older interpretation of the ‗human good‘ in Socrates, i.e., the Good as an object of an endless investigation. The tension created by this endeavor is somewhat relaxed in the texts, in which he, instead of the unkowability of the Good, speaks about the unreachability of the ultimate end, i.e., ‗an absolutely clear, unified, and notcontradictory reasoning about each particular and the whole of reality‘.5 However, even this modification is in a certain tension with the Tübingeninterpretation of Plato. For, according to Krämer and Gaiser, Plato‘s ‗system‘ pretends to be a unified and coherent interpretation of the whole of reality, at least in the sense of ‗the totalizing tendency towards a coherent and consistent overall project‘.6 ssssssssssssssssssssssssss 3
4 5 6
In particular, they point to following assertions: the Form of the Good can be known (508e4, 517b8-c1 together with 516b4-7, 518c9-10, 532a5-b2), its essence can be specified (534b3-d1), it is the highest object of teaching and learning (505a2). Cf. T. Szlezák, ‗Die Idee des Guten als arche in Platons Politeia‘, pp. 49 f. 1972/3, p. 739. 1988/4, p. 127; PE, p. 229. Cf. Endote ix, p. 148.
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Patočka‘s attempt to merge the metaphysical and historically oriented interpretation of the Tubingen school with his own systematically motivated existentially-anthropological approach fails, however, at least in one critical point. It is the interpretation of the relationship between the soul and the Good in Plato. According to Patočka‘s texts on the self-movement of the soul, the soul always relates itself to the Good as the highest measure of the human life-projects.7 According to these texts, however, the relation between soul and the Good is never one-sided, but always reciprocal. That means: (a) by its relationship to the Good, the soul realizes itself; (b) the Good becomes meaningful only in the relation to the soul which strives for it.8 This interpretation of the relationship between the good and the (human) soul9 is incompatible with the metaphysical interpretation of the Platonic Good proposed by the Tubingen school. For, according to that interpretation, the Good is synonymous with the order of being, the ultimate source of which is the highest One.xii According to this interpretation, the One is the cause of the intelligible structure of the Forms, of their unity, and thus also of their ‗goodness‘. For this reason, on the intelligible level, the ‗goodness‘ of the Forms is due to their structural connection to the One, not to the soul, however broadly we may conceive it. Neither is the One, the cause of the structured unity of the Forms, ‗efficient‘ by its relationship to soul. Rather, it is structurally connected only to the Indefinite Dyad, upon ssssssssssssssssssssssssss 7
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8
9
Cf. supra, p. 46. ‗The existence of the soul is contingent upon the existence of the Good; for its basic movement is toward the Good. Yet, also the Good as an end and as a vanishing point of everything is meaningful only, if there is such a movement. The Good is efficient, i.e., is, only, if there is something that can intensify its being by moving in its direction. The soul thus makes possible not only the overall hierarchy of being in the sense of the Good, i.e., the teleological concept. It also justifies the Good, it answers the question (posed for the first time explicitly by Nietzsche), why choose good and not evil, why truth and not appearance (that is sometimes more effective)‘. (1988/4, p. 131) From the passage in the previous note, it is evident that Patočka relates the Good to the human soul. For only such a soul can intensify its being by moving toward the Good. The soul of the universe or the rational souls of the stars and planets mentioned in Tim. 40a2-b8 are divine and imperishable. Consequently, they do not need such a movement. They move, according to Plato, only in a circular path and revolve around their axis.
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which it ‗acts‘.10 Souls (both human and divine) are placed on the so called ‗intermediate‘ level, i.e., the level which is in between the sensible and the intelligible realm and which mediates between them. All souls, i.e., the soul of the universe, rational souls of stars and planets, and human souls are made by the divine Intelligence (demiúrgos).11 The same divine Intelligence is the maker of all sensible beings.12
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Therefore, in the context of this interpretation, the notion of a reciprocal relationship between the Good and the soul is meaningful only if it is interpreted as a relationship between the divine Intelligence and the OneGood (or, possibly, the Forms). In this case, it can mean that (a) the divine Intelligence is related to the One-Good (or to the Forms) as to an eternal model for its making. Alternatively, it can mean that (b) the Good is related to the creative activity of the divine Intelligence in the sense that through its activity a being, and thus also a good, is generated. Finally, it can mean (c) that the One-Good (and the Forms ‗generated‘ by its ‗activity‘) can fully realize their function of the model of the sensible reality, and thus also the particular ‗goodness‘ pertaining to them, only through the demiurge‘s creative activity. Patočka‘s account of the relationship between the Good and the soul is, in comparison to how this relationship must be conceived according to the interpretation of the Tubingen school, highly reductive. For, he interprets this relationship, which is crucial also for the Tubingen school,13 as a relationship between the Good and the ‗existentially‘ understood (human) soul.xiii This interpretation conceives this relationship as a primary constitutive element of Plato‘s onto-cosmological project. From the perspective of the Tubingen school it thus ignores that (a) in the intelligible realm this relationship is irrelevant and (b) in the sensible realm it is already ontologically founded in the relationship between the Good and the divine creative Intelssssssssssssssssssssssssss 10 11 12 13
To the way the One ‗acts‘ upon the Indefinite Dyad, see G. Reale, Toward a New Interpretation of Plato, pp. 150-151. Ibid., pp. 424 f. For a detailed exposition of the generation of the soul as a ‗mixture‘, see ibid., pp. 405-413. Ibid, pp. 421-424. For the critical importance of the demiurge‘s Intelligence for Plato‘s theory of both the making of the sensible (cosmic) realm and the making of human and divine souls, see ibid., pp. 305-431. Krämer and Gaiser later accepted this innovation within the hermeneutic paradigm of the Tubingen school.
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ligence (this relationship conditions the existence of both divine and human souls and thus also their relationship to the Good). Therefore, we come back to the tendency of Patočka mentioned above, i.e., to interpret Plato‘s onto-cosmological project as a dependent moment of the dynamic relationship between the soul and the Good.14 The preceding paragraphs make clear that this tendency is incompatible with the approach of the Tubingen school, which interprets Plato‘s doctrine of the soul and its movement as being founded upon his metaphysics and cosmology, not vice versa.
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Recall that the hermeneutical approach of Patočka‘s post-war lectures on ancient philosophy was to show the conflict between philosophy and non-philosophy, and thus, fundamentally, the conflict between truthful and untruthful existence.15 Notice that the same approach, now in the form of the ‗existential‘ interpretation of Plato‘s doctrine of the self-movement of the soul, characterizes also Patočka‘s texts on Plato from the 70s. This fact is another confirmation of the claim that true human existence is the fundamental theme of Patočka‘s thought.
ssssssssssssssssssssssssss 14 15
Cf. supra, p. 50. Cf. supra, p. 44.
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Chapter III
The Care of the Soul in European Spiritual History 1. The Socratic-Platonic Care of the Soul as a Spiritual Heritage In this chapter, I will present Patočka‘s account of the spiritual foundations of Europe with which his life-long meditations on this topic culminate. This account, developed in the series of texts written during the 70s, is based on three basic ideas. First, Europe, in the spiritual sense, was born from the SocraticPlatonic care of the soul.
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Second, the care of the soul underwent two basic changes in the course of two great historical catastrophes. After the decline of the Greek polis, the Socratic-Platonic form of the care of the soul was transformed into the Stoic care of the soul. After the collapse of the Roman Empire, the Stoic form of the care of the soul was gradually transformed into the Christian one—the spiritual fundament of Europe in the proper sense. Third, Europe came into profound spiritual crisis at the beginning of Modernity as European man started to abandon the spiritual style marked by the care of the soul. To say that Europe, in the spiritual sense, was born from the care of the soul is not a matter of course. For even if someone accepted the idea that the Socratic-Platonic care of the soul is the spiritual cornerstone of the Western world, he would wonder why it should be the foundation of Europe. After all, between the formation of the ethical ideal of the care of the soul and the
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III. THE CARE OF THE SOUL IN EUROPEAN SPIRITUAL HISTORY
rise of Europe in the proper sense, there is a gap of more than a thousand years.1 Patočka is well aware of this fact. He stresses that the Socratic-Platonic care of the soul is the spiritual foundation of Europe only in the sense of a spiritual heritage—the heritage that outlived two major historical catastrophes: the downfall of the Greek city-state and the decline of the Roman Empire.2 The spiritual unity of a (Western) Europe was based on the idea of the Holy Roman Empire (sacrum imperium) inherited from the dissolving Roman Empire.3 Although the Roman Empire was obsessed with the idea of an empire, i.e., with the constitution of a state and thus with gaining and retaining power, it was also shaped by the Stoic-Platonic idea of the cultivation of the common good, of universality, of a state of justice and equity. 4 And it is this latter idea that is taken up in the concept of the Holy Roman Empire which later was to become the political program of Christian Europe. And since the idea of the state of justice and of equity that Cicero and Seneca discussed and defended goes back to the heritage of classical Greek philosophy, the thinkers of the Hellenistic and Imperial period picked up the threads of the spiritual heritage of the care of the soul. Patočka summarizes the idea of the care of the soul as the critical spiritual heritage of Europe in the following words: ssssssssssssssssssssssssss
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1
2
3 4
If we consider Europe as a whole, i.e., both Western and Eastern Europe, we can see the origin of Europe in the creation of the Carolingian Empire in the West, and the continuation of the Roman Empire through the Byzantine Empire and its mission to the Slavic nations in the East. See, for example, J. Ratzinger, Europe Today and Tomorrow, pp. 11-17. Most extensively, Patočka describes the mode of the transmission of this spiritual heritage in the fourth of the Heretical Essays called ‗The European Heritage until the End of the Nineteenth Century‘. For the description of the care of the soul as the fundamental spiritual heritage that is both preserved and universalized in the course of the historical catastrophes of the Greek polis and the Roman Empire, see also PE, pp. 10-12. HE, p. 79 f. HE, p. 81. Patočka observes in the Roman Empire a vacillation between the obsession with the idea of an empire, i.e., the idea to possess and to rule, and the Greek idea of the state of justice and of equality. As this vacillation had led to the break-up of the solidarity between the state and the public, it caused the decline of the Roman Empire. Cf. 1986/3, p. 259.
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Altogether we can thus say that the European heritage remains the same in the various forms in which the care for the soul is transformed in the two great historical catastrophes, that of the polis and that of the Roman Empire. We could then also say that this heritage helped transform these two catastrophes from purely negative phenomena into attempts at overcoming that which had grown sclerotic and incapable of life under the historical conditions of the time and, through adaptation, into a generalization of the European heritage as well. For in the Roman Empire the care of the soul assumes the form of striving for a rule of law throughout the global community affected by the empire, for the most part directly, for the rest at least by its demands and its influence. The Western Christian Holy Roman Empire then gives rise to a much broader human community than the Roman-Mediterranean had been, while at the same time disciplining inner humanity and giving it greater depth. The care for the soul is thus what gave rise to Europe—this thesis we can hold without exaggeration. 5
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Thus, in this account of European spiritual history, the idea of the care of the soul ensures basic continuity between the deep historical changes, the continuity given by a gradual deepening and universalizing of this fundamental spiritual heritage. Understandably, then, the gradual abandonment of this heritage beginning with the sixteenth century causes the deepest discontinuity in European spiritual history. This discontinuity is caused by the fundamental change of the spiritual style of European humanity at the threshold of Modernity. The spiritual style preoccupied with the external world and its conquest (the care to have) gradually replaces the spiritual style of the care of the soul (the care to be). Patočka writes: From that time on another motif comes to the fore, opposing the motif of the care of the soul and coming to dominate one area after another, politics, economics, faith, and science, transforming them in a new style. Not a care for the soul, the care to be, but rather the
ssssssssssssssssssssssssss 5
HE, p. 83. A similiar formulation see also in1986/3, p. 259.
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care to have, care for the external world and its conquest, becomes the dominant concern.6 This turn in the European spiritual history was caused and stimulated by the coincidence of a whole series of motives. First, there were the discoveries beyond the seas, particularly the discovery of the New World, and the wild scramble for the riches of the world brought about by these discoveries. 7 The second motif was the Reformation. Owing to the discoveries beyond the seas, it acquired ‗that political significance that will manifest itself in the organization of the North American continent by Protestant radicalism‘.8 The third factor was the profound change in the ideal of human knowledge. Patočka finds it particularly in Francis Bacon‘s new idea of knowledge. This new idea of knowledge differs profoundly from the one that motivated the spiritual style of the care of the soul. For Bacon, ‗knowledge is power; only effectual knowledge is real knowledge; what used to apply only to practice and production now holds for knowledge as such; knowledge is to lead us back to paradise, the paradise of inventions and possibilities of transforming and mastering the world to suit our needs while those needs remain undefined and unlimited‘. 9 ssssssssssssssssssssssssss
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6
7
8 9
HE, p. 83. Cf. 1986/3, p. 247. Patočka notes that the care to have and to dominate existed already in ancient Rome. But, he says, Roman society was ashamed of it and it pretended to more noble interests. The idea of the sacrum imperium ‗covered but not overcome‘ this principle that came to the surface again with the beginning of the sixteenth century. Cf. 1986/3, p. 260. In another text, however, Patočka situates the fundamental change in the European spiritual style much earlier, i.e., in the thirteen century. He finds it in the thought of Raimundus Lullus. Cf. 1989/3, pp. 195 f. I thank Radim Palouš for this specification. HE, p. 84; cf. also the fragment 1988/33, p. 247; Patočka adds: ‗The unlocked powers lead to the jump over the seas, the jump for riches, and to the encounter with the pre-Columbian man. Europe becomes the owner, or rather, the thief of the riches of the world; and this is the transition from the late Middle Ages to the Renaissance and the Reformation period which is so far dialectically not thought through (Theological and ethical motivations in connection with the change of life)‘ (1986/3, p. 260). HE, p. 84; cf. 1988/33, pp. 247 f. HE, p. 84.
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Owing to these changes—and in opposition to the medieval understanding—states become ‗defensive and armed institutions for the securing of common property‘.10 The economy is organized in a modern capitalist way. ‗From that time on expanding Western Europe lacks any universal bond, any universal idea which could be embodied in a concrete and effective bonding institution and authority.‘11
ssssssssssssssssssssssssss 10 11
HE, p. 84. HE, p. 84.
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2. Philosophy of the Renaissance Since in this conception of the spiritual roots of Europe, the deepest dividing line is drawn between the end of the Middle Ages and the beginning of Modernity, the philosophy of the Renaissance acquires special significance.1 Patočka was convinced about the decisive importance of this period as early as the beginning of the 40s. In the Introduction to his unfinished philosophy of history from1940/1942, he calls the philosophy of the Renaissance the crucial theme of the whole development of Modernity.2 For, in this period, ‗a Christian man turned to a man without Christianity, a postChristian man‘.3
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For Patočka, the very essence of the Renaissance period is the ‗struggle of Christianity that had lost its innermost impulse for a new clarity and solidity‘.4 What endangers the Christian form of life in the Renaissance are, therefore, not external factors such as advanced laicization, new ideas and forms of economy. Rather, it is an inner development of Christianity resulting in a loss of inner deep experience of Christian faith. For this reason, in the Renaissance, the spiritual substance of the medieval world dissolves. For Patočka, this substance consisted in the unity of the external and internal world, i.e., the unity of moral struggle, on one hand, and of the objective order of reality, on the other. This unity, guaranteed by the limitless authoritativeness of the Christian God,5 is the condition of the harmony that, unlike the harmony of the Ancient world, does not ignore or suppress negative and painful aspects of human existence. Rather, it descends into the negative and painful aspects of life and lingers there. That is why, according to Patočka, the essence of the medieval life form consists in the harmony between the two opposing tendencies: ‗the faith in ssssssssssssssssssssssssss 1 2 3 4 5
For Patočka‘s interpretation of the Renaissance, see esp. UE, pp. 133-156. Cf. Karfík, ‗Jan Patočkas Strahov-Nachlass und sein unvollendetes opus grande‘, p. 42. 1996/3, p. 350. 1996/3, p. 351. 2001/2, p. 161.
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the objective harmony of the universe, its divine content as the true content of life, on the one hand, and the despair over everything merely human, over human capacities and possibilities, on the other.‘ 6 Given the opposite character of the two tendencies kept together only by the absolute authority of the Christian God who is both the warrantor of the rationality of the universe and the Lord of the history of salvation, 7 the resulting harmony is fragile. Patočka calls it ‗the harmony over the abyss‘ or ‗the tense and in tension reconciled harmony‘.8 This harmony is kept together only by the inner strength of the Christian faith, which, in the beginning of the Renaissance, starts to fade. The result is the gradual emancipation of the first mentioned tendency, i.e., the conviction about the objective harmony of the universe. Patočka sees the very essence of the Renaissance period in the philosophical and cultural exploitation of this conviction. For this reason, this period is not just ‗an unrestricted individualism of the few powerful individuals, but also the positive state of mind that attempts to see the world clearly, not blurred by a veil of one‘s anxiety and guiltiness‘.9 In order to illustrate his general typology of a humanist and a Renaissance philosopher, Patočka sketches portraits of major representatives of renaissance philosophy (Cusanus, Ficino, Pico, Pomponazzi).10 According to this typology, these scholars tend to mundaneness. They aim at developing purely human capacities and abilities. ‗The Christian distance to the immediate‘ is missing.11
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ssssssssssssssssssssssssss 6 7 8 9
10
11
2001/2, p. 162. UE, p. 134. 2001/2, pp. 161 f. 2001/2, pp. 166 f. Since, for Patočka, the Renaissance life form is the result of the dissolution of the Medieval life form, he underscores, together with many other authors, that, between the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, continuity prevails over discontinuity. In this, he opposes Burckhardt‘s famous conception of the Renaissance as the radical break with the Medieval world. Each of these figures contributes in its own way to the dissolution of the Medieval ‗tense harmony‘ mentioned above. Cf. UE, pp. 136-146. The only personage falling out of this scheme is Cusanus. Yet even he does not fall out of it completely. Cf. UE, pp. 136 f. 2001/2, p. 169.
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This new direction of life leads to the reappraisal of natural gifts and of their development. The humanists are, for Patočka, virtuosi, i.e., humans focusing primarily on gaining and exercising intellectual and artistic virtuosity. For them, the moral dimension of life is only secondary. These intellectuals—the characteristic example is Petrarch—remain romantically at an aesthetic stage. They do not engage fully in a religious stage.12 Yet, this free development of intellectual and artistic capacities can take place only on the basis of the confidence in an indubitable life-fundament. Although the experience of personal faith is fading in Renaissance man, his life-fundament is still the Church—as an objective institution.13 For Patočka, it is this certainty that explains the difference between the Renaissance romantic aestheticism of Petrarch and the Romanticism of the 19th century. Renaissance Romanticism is not an escape from painful reality, a reaction to serious conflict. Rather, it is a free devotion to one‘s own interior with its powers of experience, imagery and creativity—enabled and secured by the certainty that the universe is harmonious and peaceful. 14 This account interprets the Renaissance as a sort of decadence of the medieval life form characterized by ‗tense harmony‘. The Renaissance is thus interpreted on the basis of its relation to the preceding period.
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In his reflections on the Renaissance developed some twenty years later (1965) in the article ‗O Burckhardtově pojetí renesance‘ [On Burckhardt‘s Interpretation of the Renaissance], Patočka seeks to understand the Renaissance primarily on the basis of its relationship to the later period, i.e., Modernity. This new perspective modifies Patočka‘s approach to Burckhardt‘s book Die Cultur der Renaissance in Italien, i.e., the book that played an important role already in his earlier reflections on the Renaissance. While in the texts from the war period Patočka criticizes Burckhardt‘s claim that, compared to the Middle Ages, the Renaissance is something radically new, in the text ssssssssssssssssssssssssss 12
13 14
2001/2, p. 171. Given that virtuosity and the development of intellectual and ‗cultural‘ capacities is the very sense of life and the very source of pride for the humanist scholars, their life is characterized by the phenomenon of competition, mutual mistrust, and envy (2001/2, p. 170). 2001/2, p. 167. 2001/2, pp. 171, 174.
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from 1965 he focuses on how Burckhardt sees the relationship of the Renaissance to subsequent periods, particularly to Burckhardt‘s own times. According to Patočka, Burckhardt wants to show to his time of ‗unleashed individualism and violent disciplining‘, the time of ‗revolutions alternating with restorations‘, not just its origins, but also the depth of its decadence.15 For this reason, in his account of Renaissance individualism, he deliberately connects two different forms of individualism which, in the Renaissance man, were still in equilibrium. And he traces back the decadent features of his own time to the unleashing of these two, now separated tendencies. The first of them is individualism in the sense of the anti-social, ‗disintegrating‘ doctrine of the revolutionary rationalists of the 18th century. The other is individualism in the sense of the cult of individuality, personal originality, and brilliance.
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Burckhardt tries to show that, in the Renaissance man, these two tendencies are not yet clearly separated and have, therefore, a positive meaning: ‗they enrich, radicalize, and emphasize the whole personality which is not yet deformed by the unilateral will to material profit or by the entirely emancipated will to power‘.16 According to Patočka, these two tendencies express, in substance, two fundamental forms of rationality: ‗cool‘ analytic reason, on the one hand, and reason in the sense of the ‗spiritual power‘, i.e., ‗the world penetrating spirituality‘, on the other.17 Thus, according to Patočka, Burckhardt tries to show that while the Renaissance man was able to keep these two fundamental forms of rationality in equilibrium and in mutually fecundating cooperation, his own time had already lost this capability and gave in to the purely instrumental form of reason and to the temptation of the unhampered will to power. In this context, Patočka makes an interesting observation. He says that the equilibrium of the two just mentioned forms of rationality is responsible for the fact that the Renaissance man, who, through Galileo, set the cornerstone of the mathematical natural science, is still reluctant to accept the ssssssssssssssssssssssssss 15 16 17
1965/2, p. 198. 1965/2, p. 197. 1965/2, p. 200.
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modern method of the mathematical treatment of nature as the means to world-dominance. According to Patočka, the Renaissance man is still under the spell of the idea of the ‗integral, harmonic cosmos in which each part is organically connected with the rest and in which, therefore, the isolation of the material body, required by the abstract formula of the fundamental law of mechanics, is unthinkable‘.18 The Renaissance man has therefore ‗both the capacity and the possibility to discover the world in the form of pure object, in the form of purely material, insensitive, and senseless nature, to which he can imprint the sense and meaning he wishes. He has also both the capability and the possibility to discover his subjectivity as the foundation of certainty securing both him and all things‘.19 Yet, he does not turn these possibilities into reality. He is kept from it by what Burckhardt called individualism, i.e., ‗the rootedness in himself, the endeavor to shape his own life in the perfect, equilibrated form which is not unconditionally subjected or exposed to any exterior power‘. 20 Patočka concludes: the Renaissance man, in approaching nature, is not yet able to make the ultimate step toward absolute analytic rational sobriety. The result of this sobriety will be the victorious campaign of the modern mathematical natural science in the 17th century and the genesis of the modern man in the strict sense.
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Thus, in the article from 1965, Patočka rounds out the picture of the interim status of the Renaissance man who, spiritually, is not the Medieval man anymore, but not yet the Modern man either. To summarize his overall contribution to the philosophy of the Renaissance, we can say the following: First, in the texts from the 40s, Patočka defines the interim status of the Renaissance man by determining the spiritual substance of the Renaissance as the dissolution of the life form of the Medieval man. According to this approach, the essence of the Renaissance is the emancipation of faith in the ssssssssssssssssssssssssss 18 19 20
1965/2, p. 203. 1965/2, p. 203. 1965/2, p. 203.
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objective harmony of the universe from the consciousness of the fragility and insufficiency of all human things experienced in the Christian faith.
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Second, in the article from 1965, Patočka tries to define the interim status of the Renaissance by seeing it against the background of Modernity, particularly against the situation of the second half of the 19 th century. He interprets it, inspired by his reading of Burckhardt, as the equilibrium of two basic forms of rationality which will be lost in Modernity, i.e., as the equilibrium between rationality in the sense of purely analytic power and rationality in the sense of ‗spiritual power‘ capable of disciplining and cultivating ‗the inner man‘.
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3. The Philosophy of the Enlightenment The new spiritual style of the ‗care of the world‘, which starts to emerge in the Renaissance or with the Reformation,1 is fully realized in the Enlightenment. Patočka studied this period quite closely in the 40s as he worked on the translation of Herder‘s philosophy of history. 2 So far unpublished, the manuscript Osvícenství [The Enlightenment], written in this period, testifies to this interest.3 In this manuscript, Patočka identifies two main characteristic features of the Enlightenment: individualism and a specific form of rationality. The individualism of the Enlightenment has Christian roots.4 Antiquity considers man to be part of nature (kosmos) and of the city-state (polis). For this reason, it sees individualism as nihilistic. Christianity removes man from the structural bond to nature and state and makes him directly related and dependent on God.xiv The immediate relation to the Absolute generates absolute responsibility. This responsibility which does not primarily concern knowing but human praxis, is realized in the context of faith.xv Patočka, therefore, postulates the following genesis of the phenomenon of individuality: Christian immediacy toward the Absolute—absolute responsibility (faith)—individuality. The enlightened account of reason has its roots in classical Antiquity. However, in the classical ancient concept of reason, logos and noésis, i.e., the ssssssssssssssssssssssssss Copyright © 2014. Traugott Bautz Verlag. All rights reserved.
1
2 3
4
In an earlier version of the idea of the fundamental turn in the European history developed in 1987/11, Patočka stresses that the turn did not take place in the Renaissance, which he sees as ‗the closure period of the medieval motif development rather than a new beginning‘. Rather it took place ‗in the schism brought about by the Reformation, which truly split Europe and brought the (unrealized) program to break away completely from the classical thinking‘. (1987/11, p. 167) This claim corresponds to Patočka‘s philosophy of the Renaissance developed in the manuscripts from 1940-1942. Later, he returns to this theme, particularly in 1971/4. The manuscript is a part of the materials deposed by Patočka in The Museum of Czech Literature (the so called ‗Strahov-Nachlass‘). So far, there is no Czech edition of the manuscript, but only a German translation of it in Andere Wege in die Moderne, pp. 365-385. Ibid., pp. 365-368.
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discursive and the intuitive dimension, are inseparably intertwined. Rationality is seen as autonomous and as the very source of human freedom. 5 In the enlightened account of reason, the intuitive (noetic) dimension is lost. The discursive dimension is connected with sense perception and becomes more and more dependent on it. Reason ceases to be the divine element in man and becomes a purely human, final capacity (for Patočka, the most characteristic representative of enlightenment sensualism is Condillac).6 The idea that the most characteristic feature of the Enlightenment is a paradigmatic shift in the understanding of reason is developed in Patočka‘s Herder study from 1942 ‗Dvojí rozum a příroda v německém osvícenství‘ [Two Senses of Reason and Nature in the German Enlightenment]. 7 In particular, he retains in this study the idea that traditional speculative reason, which is derived basically from Plato and Aristotle, has both intuitive and discursive dimensions. The discursive dimension, in this account, is instrumental to the noetic dimension. Classical Greek philosophers are convinced that noesis allows one to grasp the ultimate essence of reality. 8
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The ultimate essence of reality appears as unity which has an eternal axiological foundation in the intelligible ‗forms‘ (in either the Platonic or the Aristotelian sense). Reality, so conceived, is an organic and harmonious whole, a hierarchical unity. Reason, which is capable of penetrating to the very center of this reality, searches for unity, analogy, and harmony. Beginning with Descartes, speculative reason gradually gives way to a radically different account of rationality which is not based on unity and harmony, but simplicity and clarity. In its context, concepts of truth, world, and being acquire a radically new meaning. Truth is what is ‗observed and construed from case to case‘.9 World consists of facts and necessary rational constructs. It has no analogy and hierarchic scales. Being is not open to a direct and immediate rational insight. Rather, it is the vanishing point receding ssssssssssssssssssssssssss 5 6 7 8 9
Andere Wege in die Moderne, p. 369. Ibid., p. 370. ‘Two Senses of Reason and Nature in the German Enlightenment‘, pp. 157-174. Ibid., p. 161. Ibid., p. 162.
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in front of rational constructions. With immense energy, this new reason is realized in modern natural sciences.10 This insightful idea of the paradigmatic change of rationality, according to which, in the course of the Enlightenment period, speculative reason is transformed into sober analytic rationality, is, however, not the only noteworthy aspect of Patočka‘s philosophy of the Enlightenment. Remarkable— although potentially controversial—is also the idea of the special status of ‗German‘ spiritual life in this period.11 According to Patočka, the new sober, non-metaphysical understanding of reason is first developed in the West European countries (England, Netherlands, and France). Thus, it is in the Western Europe that the new spiritual style of the ‗care for the world‘, i.e., the new ideal of science focused on the domination of external world by means of praxis-oriented knowledge, supersedes the traditional understanding of rationality. 12
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Germany (in the sense of a cultural sphere) retains, from the Renaissance up to the period of German idealism, a spiritual and intellectual independence from this development. It retains the traditional principle of authority and hierarchy in both the political and social life expressed and petrified by Holy Roman Empire of the German nation 13 and, later, the Prussian state.14 It copes on a long-term basis with the new Western spiritual style, not just opposing it, but also, in part, trying to deepen it by reconnecting it with the traditional Christian-metaphysical motifs.15 It is quite possible that Patočka sees his own philosophical efforts in the line of the so conceived ‗German‘ philosophy. For, in his interpretation of the care of the soul as the spiritual foundation of Europe, he claims that, in the overcoming of the Enlightenment, we should not refuse reason, but rather try to gain a deeper understanding of it. He finds this deeper ssssssssssssssssssssssssss 10 11
12 13 14 15
Ibid., 162 f. ‗German‘ is, in this context, not meant in the national sense, but in the cultural one. ‗German‘ is here, therefore, used as equivalent to ‗Central European‘ or ‗Middle European‘. ‗Two Senses of Reason and Nature in the German Enlightenment‘, pp. 158-160; 1971/4, pp. 468 f. 1973/1, pp. 514 f. ‗Two Senses of Reason and Nature in the German Enlightenment‘, p. 173. Cf. UE, p. 155.
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understanding in the idea of the care of the soul and he exhorts his contemporaries to overcome the Enlightenment account of reason by returning to this most proper fundament of the European culture and spirit. In doing this, he seems to set for himself similar goals which, according to him, German philosophy of the 18th and the beginning of the 19th century pursued. Obviously, Patočka does not use the same ‗philosophical means‘ as the older German philosophy, but the ‗philosophical means‘ of his time, namely Husserlian phenomenology and Heidegger‘s fundamental ontology. Still, with these new means he tries to reinterpret the traditional metaphysical and Christian heritage (Platonic and Christian care of the soul), as he understands it, in order to offer to the post-Enlightenment man the spiritual foundation for his life. In this sense, the philosopher from Prague seems to stand in the older tradition of the ‗German‘ or Central European philosophy, as he interprets it in his philosophy of the Enlightenment.
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It is interesting to compare Patočka‘s late account of the spiritual history of Europe centered on the idea of the care of the soul with the earlier account of this history developed in the 50s.16 For, in this earlier account, Patočka starts from a presupposition which is, in a certain sense, opposite to the presupposition on which the later account is based. It is the presupposition that ‗the central issue of Socratic philosophy‘, namely the discovery of the historicity of human existence, remained ‗in suspenso for two thousand years, because it was bridged by classical metaphysics which impeded man from understanding himself primarily through himself‘. 17 In this earlier version of European spiritual history, Socrates (and his account of the care of the soul) is not interpreted as the foundation of the spiritual continuity of European spiritual life. Rather, Socrates was removed, or at least covered over, by Plato and his metaphysics, and had to be, therefore, rediscovered and recuperated in the present post-metaphysical era. In his later account of European spiritual history, Patočka revises this interpretation based on the overly negative view of the metaphysical tradition and its importance for European culture and spiritual life. The revision ssssssssssssssssssssssssss 16 17
See, especially, 1987/11, pp. 154-159. 1987/11, p. 157.
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concerns particularly the relationship between Socrates and Plato. In the earlier version, Plato is opposed to Socrates. He is seen as the ‗founder of metaphysics‘, who by giving the definitive response to the question about the anthrópinon agathon removed the sting of the ‗Socratic question‘. In the later version, the continuity between the two thinkers is underscored. The basis of this continuity is precisely the idea of the care of the soul. The care of the soul is what connects Socrates to Plato. In the later account, therefore, Plato is not presented primarily as the founder of metaphysics, but rather as the thinker who, in his own way, developed the most fundamental and original Socratic thought, namely the idea of the care for the soul, although in the way that reflects Plato‘s metaphysical way of thinking.
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The prize paid for the reestablished continuity in the relationship Socrates-Plato is the controversial re-Socratizing of Plato mentioned above: Plato is interpreted as the theoretician of the care of the soul, and care is, in its essence, understood along the lines of its Socratic form. 18 In Patočka‘s late texts on the spiritual roots of Europe, the reSocratizing of Plato is the consequence of the effort to unite two hardly reconcilable presuppositions. The first is to base European spiritual history not just on Socrates, but also—or even primarily—on Plato and thus necessarily on the metaphysical philosophical heritage of which Plato is the founder.19 The second is to give this philosophy of European history a decisively non-metaphysical slant by founding it on the ‗Socratic‘ idea of problematicity interpreted as the ‗the constant shaking of the naïve sense of meaningfulness‘. This problematicity is not understood as the passage to a definitive metaphysical sense, but as being itself the absolute and definitive universal meaning of the human history.
ssssssssssssssssssssssssss 18 19
See supra, pp. 60-65. The title of the above mentioned lecture series in which this interpretation is developed is ‗Plato and Europe‘, not ‗Socrates and Europe‘. This fact is significant, although the title of the lecture series was given to it only ex post by the editors of Patočka‘s work.
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4. The Three Forms of the Care of the Soul in European Spiritual History In his late texts, Patočka mentions three forms of the care of the soul corresponding to three historical periods. The first is the Socratic-Platonic care of the soul—it sums up the spiritual heritage of the Greek polis. The second is the care of the soul of the late Stoics and the eclectics—it encapsulates the spiritual heritage of Hellenism and the Imperial period. xvi The third is the Christian care of the soul—the spiritual foundation of Europe in the strict sense. The Socratic-Platonic care of the soul was already described in the second chapter. Regarding Patočka‘s description of the Stoic care of the soul, there is not much to be said besides what was mentioned in the preceding note. Thus, in the following, I will focus on the Christian care of the soul. Patočka—quite understandably—takes it as absolutely central for the spiritual formation of Europe. He describes it by listing elements of its continuity and discontinuity with the original, Socratic-Platonic care of the soul.
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The basic element of continuity is constituted by retaining, on behalf of the Christian care of the soul, a distinction between the purely intelligible and the sensible realm of reality. According to Patočka, this distinction is the most fundamental metaphysical presupposition of both forms of the care of the soul, and Christian theology took it over from Platonism, not from the Jewish religion.xvii Another element of continuity is the structural affinity between the Platonic ‗myth of Socrates‘ and the story of Christ in the Gospel. In both cases the only ‗truly just man‘ (Socrates, Christ) is labeled as unjust, condemned, and sentenced—an action by which the judges call down upon themselves the divine wrath.xviii According to Patočka, one of the main differences between the Platonic and the Christian form of the care of the soul consists in the fact that ‗in the Christian version, the soul is released from the intellectualism of the Greek dialogue, the dialectics‘.1 It is true that Platonic care of the soul does not aim ssssssssssssssssssssssssss 1
PE, p. 129.
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only at a philosophical insight, but also at education to an unreserved responsibility and courage.2 But, in the Christian care of the soul, even that is not sufficient.3
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For, as Patočka stresses, the truth for which the Christian soul struggles is not, as in Plato, the truth of rational insight, but the truth of its own destiny defined by the relationship to Christ. The inner life of the soul springs not from rational insight, i.e., from seeing eternal entities and relationships between them, but from opening itself to the theandric mystery of Christ, which makes the soul the protagonist of the ‗unique drama‘ of mercy and salvation. In the Heretical Essays, Patočka writes: In the Christian conception of the soul, though, there is a fundamental, profound difference. It is not just that, as St. Paul would have it, the Christian rejects the Greek sofia tú kosmú (metaphysics) and its method of inner dialogue—eidetic intuition—as the way to that being which belongs inseparably to the discovery of the soul. The chief difference appears to be that it is only now that the inmost content of the soul is revealed, that the truth for which the soul struggles is not the truth of intuition but rather of its own destiny, bound up with eternal responsibility from which there is no escape ad saecula saculorum. The intrinsic life of the soul, its essential content, comes not from seeing ideas and so from its bond to the being which agelessly, eternally is, but rather in an openness to the abyss in the divine and the human, to the wholly unique and so definitively self-determining bond of divinity and humanity, the unique drama to which the fundamental content of the soul relates throughout. The transcendent God of antiquity combined with the Old Testament Lord of History becomes the chief personage in the inner drama which God makes into the drama of salvation and grace. The overcoming of everydayness assumes form of the care for the salvation of the soul which won itself in a moral transformation, in the face of death and death eternal, which lives in anxiety and hope inextricably intertwined, which trembles in the
ssssssssssssssssssssssssss 2 3
See supra, pp. 56 f. PE, p. 129.
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knowledge of its sin and with its whole being offers itself in the sacrifice of penance.4 The liberation from the intellectualism of Greek dialectics, which is characteristic of the Christian care of the soul, leads also to a different foundation for responsibility. While Platonic philosophy sees the foundation of responsibility in the transformation of the orgiastic sacrality in Eros, i.e., in philosophical love culminating in eidetic intuition, Christianity interprets responsible life as a gift of the mysterium that ‗despite the character of the Good, has also the traits of what is inaccessible and forever superior to humans.‘5 In Christianity, therefore, human responsibility is ‗now vested not in humanly comprehensible essence of goodness and unity but, rather, in an inscrutable relation to the absolute highest being in whose hands we are not externally, but internally.‘6
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Christianity, therefore, does not interpret the Good in the objectifiable sense. Rather, it interprets it ‗as a self-forgetting goodness and a self-denying (not orgiastic) love‗, i.e., personally.7 What a person is, is explicated ‗in the form of the problem of divine love and of the God-Human who takes our transgressions unto godself. Transgression, too, acquires a new meaning: it is an offense against the divine love, a dishonoring of the Highest, which is a personal matter and demands a personal solution.‘ 8 The relationship between the Socratic-Platonic and the Christian care of the soul is, no doubt, crucial for any deeper understanding of the spiritual formation of Europe. It deserves, therefore, to be pursued in greater detail and more systematically than it is the case in the deep and inspiring but somewhat scattered remarks of the late Patočka. The following analysis of the relationship between the Socratic-Platonic and the Christian care of the ssssssssssssssssssssssssss 4 5 6 7
8
HE, pp. 107 f. HE., p. 106. HE., p. 106. ‗The freedom of the wise man who has overcome the orgiastic can still be understood as demonic, as a will to separation and autonomy, a resistance to total devotion and self-forgetting love in which the true image of God consists. The soul now [in Christianity] does not simply seek itself in the ascent of an inner dialogue but also senses its danger. In the final analysis, the soul is not a relation to an object, however, noble (like the Platonic Good), but rather to a Person who sees into the soul without being itself accessible to view.‘ (Ibid.) HE, p. 107.
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soul is inspired by Patočka‘s approach to the topic. Yet, there are significant differences between the main results of this analysis and the standpoint that Patočka would probably take on the topic, given his understanding of both Christianity and the Platonic care of the soul. The main reason for the differences is that I do not accept Patočka‘s too ‗Socratic‘ interpretation of the Platonic care of the soul and his, in my opinion, overly ‗demythologizing‘ approach to the Christian mysterium.9
ssssssssssssssssssssssssss 9
Cf. Endnote xviii, p. 152.
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5. The Relationship Between the Socratic-Platonic and the Christian Care of the Soul Analyzing the relationship between the Socratic-Platonic and the Christian Care of the Soul, one possible approach is to identify similarities and differences in fundamental attitudes from which the two forms of the care of the soul arise. If we take this approach adopted also by Patočka in the texts mentioned above, we find that both types of attitudes are characterized by a certain form of radical ‗flexibility‘ or a ‗readiness to change‘ which is worthwhile looking at more closely.
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In the fundamental attitude characteristic of the Socratic-Platonic care of the soul we encounter the readiness to change one‘s conviction, even if the change would have to lead to a radical change of one‘s way of thinking about the world and/or of one‘s way of life. This readiness to give up one‘s own convictions regarding the fundamental issues of life correlates with the readiness to accept foreign convictions if they have been shown by a dialectical examination as more solid. This openness to someone else‘s conviction is not dependent on who originally held it. The only relevant criterion is what I would call here the ‗rationality-principle‘. The ‗rationality-principle‘ goes: adopt only such convictions that withstand dialectic examination.1 For Socrates, therefore, it does not matter whether it is a minority or majority conviction; irrelevant also are its consequences for one‘s life.2 Thus the ‗flexibility‘ of the attitude we find in the Socratic-Platonic care of the soul consists in a constant, explicitly willed, and fully reflected readiness 1) to examine dialectically one‘s own convictions about the fundamental issues of human life, particularly the question ‗What is the good?‘, and 2) to modify these convictions only on the basis of the ‗rationalssssssssssssssssssssssssss 1
2
At this point, it may remain open, whether it is the specifically Socratic or Platonic form of dialectical examination, although the two are different. Also, it may remain open what exactly it means to sustain the dialectical examination. For it is believed that to have rationally defensible convictions, particularly concerning the good and the beautiful, is always in the objective interest of a person that holds them. Thus, for Socrates and Plato, true convictions about the fundamental matters of human life can not harm anyone, accept, perhaps, for some very exceptional cases and situations.
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ity-principle‘, i.e., regardless of who happens to hold them and regardless of what consequences for one‘s life they have. ‗Flexibility‘ as the foundational attitude characterizing those who practice the Socratic-Platonic care of the soul has both an internal and an external effect. The internal effect is the constantly renewing effort to realize in oneself the governance of the ‗rationality-principle‘ over the extra-rational factors. This effort is the origin of Socratic enkrateia and autarkeia. The external effect of the ‗flexibility‘ is the effort to help other people liberate themselves from the dominance of extra-rational factors when it comes to make up their minds about the essential things in life. This effort finds expression in Socratic exetasis. And whenever it is necessary to remove obstacles that stand in the way of the realization of the ‗flexibility‘ in the soul of the other, this effort takes the form of the Socratic elenchus. In Plato‘s dialogues, we can find three basic types of reactions to this effort of Socrates to wake up in his fellow citizens the awareness of the need to adopt the attitude of ‗flexibility‘.
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1) The first reaction is a simple incapacity to understand the meaning and merit of this attitude. Figures such as Euthyphro, Ion, or Crito (from the homonymous dialogues) are characteristic examples of this incapacity. 2) The second basic reaction is to refuse the attitude of ‗flexibility‘. Sometimes it is refused because the nature and the justification of this attitude is not sufficiently understood. This time, however, it is not because of a simple intellectual incapacity as in the previous case, but rather because of an inappropriate training and orientation of rational capacities. Characteristic representatives of this type of reaction are the Sophists, e.g., Protagoras and Gorgias in the homonymous dialogues, and some of their students, i.e., Polos in Gorgias. Sometimes, however, the resistance to adopt the attitude of ‗flexibility‘ is not a result of intellectual incapacity but of a defect of the will. Probably the most characteristic example of this source of resistance is Alcibiades in the Symposium. For, as we learn from his speech, he is fully capable of understanding the meaning and merit of Socrates‘ ‗flexibility‘. In fact, he sees that to live like Socrates is the only way how to lead a truly good life. And
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yet, his desire for fame and political power is too strong to allow him to make his own the attitude of ‗flexibility‘ that Socrates incorporates.3 3) The third basic reaction to Socratic ‗flexibility‘ is its wholehearted acceptance. We find it depicted, for example, in the description of Appollodorus in the proemium to the Symposium.
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The ‗flexibility‘ of Socrates must not be confused with the ‗fluidity‘ of a man who has no firm convictions of his own and changes his opinions opportunistically. The philosopher of the Socratic-Platonic sort is not ‗fluid‘ in this sense. He does not change his convictions according to circumstances, under political or economic pressure, etc. For him, the only legitimate criterion for accepting and abandoning convictions about the essential things in life is the rationality-principle. The lack of ‗fluidity‘ in this sense is evident from notorious passages in Plato‘s Apology and Crito where Socrates is depicted as arguing that one should do only what he considers just, good, and proper—regardless of the consequences of such a behavior. ‗Flexibility‘ in this sense should also be sharply distinguished from the changeability of opinions we encounter in most of Socrates‘ interlocutors when examined by him in his usual manner. As is well known, Socrates‘ cross-examination led often to the result that his interlocutor found himself denying what he previously accepted and vice versa. Resulting from the lack of dialectical skills and/or of critically acquired knowledge, the ‗fluidity‘ of opinions and convictions in this sense is the result of the dominance of extra-rational factors in one‘s mind when it comes to the question of the nature of good life. Often intricate connections between these factors, in combination with a lack of rational reflection, lead to the situation where the same person holds two contradictory opinions to be true at the same time and in the same respect. This kind of changeability of opinions is quite contrary to the attitude of ‗flexibility‘. For ‗flexibility‘ is the result of the victory of the rationalityssssssssssssssssssssssssss 3
I do not contest here the historical fact, namely that the concept of free will (liberum arbitrium) is not yet present in Plato, and, also not in Aristotle, although, for example, A. Kenny (cf. A. Kenny, Aristotle‘s Theory of the Will), sees in Aristotle a theory of the will. I only want to suggest that in analyzing fundamental attitudes as they are displayed in literary figures present in Plato‘s dialogues we can use, as a conceptual tool, a fairly general distinction between acts of reason and acts of will.
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principle over the extra-rational factors and forces in the mind, whereas the changeability of opinions is the result of the dominance of the extrarational factors and forces over the rationality-principle in the human mind. For this reason, the very aim of the Socratic elenchus is not to foster but to eradicate this kind of ‗fluidity‘. Now let us turn to the Christian pendant of this form of ‗flexibility‘. We find a good analysis of it in the spiritual writings of Dietrich von Hildebrand, one of the foremost Christian moral philosophers of the 20th century. Analyzing the conditions of what he calls ‗transformation in Christ‘, a task to a realization of which every Christian is called, von Hildebrand talks about the ‗unqualified readiness to change‘.4 In his analysis of this readiness, he makes several points that are relevant in the present context.
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First, he stresses that the kind of ‗readiness to change‘ to which a Christian is called must be radical, unqualified, unlimited. 5 In this respect, it is similar to the attitude of ‗flexibility‘ in the Socratic-Platonic care of the soul. For also in this ancient form of the care of the soul one must be ready to give up any of his conviction, however dear to him, if, on examination, it turns out to be unjustified. Second, this ‗readiness to change‘ is radically opposed to ‗spineless malleability‘. Von Hildebrand writes: ‗The fluidity which goes with aliveness to the supernatural, on the contrary, has nothing to do with spineless malleability as such. Rather it involves a firm standing in the face of all mundane influences, a character of impermeability in regard to them, and an unshakable solidity on the new base with which Christ supplies us.‘6 In this respect, this readiness to change is quite similar to Socratic ‗flexibility‘, which is, as shown above, sharply opposed both to opportunistic ‗fluidity‘ and to the changeability of opinions characteristic of a dialectically inexperienced person. Third, this Christian readiness to change, far from being a cause of spiritual discontinuity, is rather the very condition of spiritual continuity.7 The same holds true also for Socratic ‗flexibility‘. It gives to the life of the soul a ssssssssssssssssssssssssss 4 5 6 7
Von Hildebrand, Transformation in Christ, pp. 3-29. Ibid., pp. 7-11. Ibid., p. 12. Ibid., pp. 17-20.
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new and more profound coherence and continuity. We can see it, again, in the example of Socrates as portrayed in Plato‘s dialogues. There are no passages where we would see Socrates behaving incoherently, losing his personal integrity, etc. Between the two attitudes there are, however, also significant differences. First, it seems that, for Socrates and Plato, it is possible, through right education and just laws of the city, to ensure the governance of the rational part of the soul over the irrational, at least in the case of some citizens (Plato‘s ‗philosopher-kings‘ and ‗guardians‘, Aristotle‘s virtuous man). That seems to imply that the radical moral transformation of a human being is, in principle, within the reach of human capacities. In contrast to this, Christians believe that the power to actually bring about a radical moral transformation of human being is of supernatural origin.8
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Second, the Socratic flexibility is, primarily, a response to the value of truth (knowledge) for man. It grows from the discovery of the disvalue of ignorance and of error regarding the fundamental ethical questions (ti to agathon; tis hé arété;). The ‗unconditional readiness to change‘ in the Christian sense is liberated from this cognitive overtone. Not that the cognitive dimension is missing. But it is imbedded in the context of an absolutely unique interpersonal relationship: the relationship between man and God. 9 For understandable reasons, this interpersonal dimension is missing in the SocraticPlatonic care of the soul. In order to understand better the difference between the interpersonal dimension present in the Christian care of the soul and in the SocraticPlatonic one, it is useful to have a closer look at the different notions of dialogue involved in both forms of the care. According to Socrates and Plato, the soul is taken care of by a dialectical conversation, usually in the form of a dialogue. In these conversations, which we know especially from their idealized imitations in Plato‘s dialogues, there is, most of the time, a certain asymmetry between the two interlocutors. It is owing to the fact that one of the interlocutors is superior ssssssssssssssssssssssssss 8 9
Cf., for example, the early condemnation of Pelagianism at the Council of Carthage and of Ephesus in the first half of the fifth century. Cf. Patočka‘s interesting remarks on this point, supra, p. 84.
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to the other in virtue of his being a more advanced dialectician.10 As Patočka‘s interpretation of Plato‘s dialogues showed so well, another reason for the asymmetry between the two interlocutors is that Socrates as the protagonist of most dialogues represents the life principle of the care of the soul, i.e., the only authentic form of pursuing the ultimate goal of human life, whereas his partners in conversation have not yet discovered this life principle or, this principle is not yet established well enough in their souls.
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However, this asymmetrical relation between the two partners in conversation is, in Plato‘s dialogues, presented against the background of a fundamental metaphysical equality between them. Both partners in dialogue, despite different degree of dialectical skills/the ability to care for one‘s soul, find themselves in the same metaphysical situation as those who long and search for wisdom. For Plato, the philosopher, by his essence, is the ‗lover of wisdom‘ (philo-sophos), not the ‗wise one‘ (sophos).11 Both the skilled dialectician and his less advanced fellow are striving for what each is missing (wisdom), albeit the one is closer to it than the other. In the Christian care of the soul, the dialogical situation is similar to the Socratic-Platonic care only in so far as the relationship between the partners is also asymmetrical. However, in contrast to the Socratic-Platonic care of the soul, the asymmetry is absolute. The metaphysical gap between the infinite, necessary, omniscient, etc., on one hand, and the finite, contingent, and limited in knowledge, on the other, cannot be bridged, unless the infinite one deliberately descends to the finite for whom he otherwise would be unreachable. For this reason, the Christian God does not philosophize with man in the Socratic-Platonic sense. Although, like the Platonic lover, He addresses his interlocutor with love, he does so from the standpoint of an absolute epistemic and ontological supremacy. In the Christian care of the soul, the ‗conversation‘, in contrast to the ‗horizontal‘ interpersonal dialogue in the Socratic-Platonic care of the soul, is directed primarily ‗vertically‘, i.e., between God and man. First, it is dissssssssssssssssssssssssss 10
11
In most of Plato‘s dialogues, Socrates is presented as this superior dialectician. For a detailed study of this role of Socrates, see T. Szlezák, Platon und die Schriftlichkeit der Philosophie. Interpretationen zu den frühen und mittleren Dialogen, and his Das Bild des Dialektikers in Platons späten Dialogen. Platon und die Schriftlichkeit der Philosophie. Plato, Symp. 204 a-b.
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rected from top to bottom, and only secondarily, bottom-up. God takes the initiative and ‗seeks‘ and ‗calls‘ man. Man‘s task is to ‗respond‘ to the ‗call‘.12 The metaphor of ‗seeking‘ is a figurative expression of the effort the Christian God makes in order to draw man onto himself. This difference between the Socratic-Platonic and the Christian care of the soul is indicated in the following remark of the young Patočka: ‗The pathos of philosophy is not the pathos of mutuality. Rather, it is a one-sided pathos directed from man to the superhuman, and never vice versa. I think it follows from the idea of philosophy not to interpret philosophizing as a divine reward.‘13
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A further difference between the Socratic-Platonic and the Christian form of the care of the soul concerns the ultimate goals at which both of them aim. The highest goal of the Platonic care of the soul—at least according to the metaphysical interpretations of Plato—is the intellectual seeing of the Forms and, eventually, of the first Principles. On earth, this goal can be realized only in part. Its full realization is reserved for the posthumous life.14 In the context of earthly existence, the means for realizing this goal is the dialectical conversation stirred up by the philosophical eros. Also the Christian care of the soul aims ultimately at a life in contact with the eternal Reality. Max Scheler argued that this contact is, in the Christian context, not a cognitive participation in the primal Reality (Urwesen). Plato and Aristotle, he writes, ‗started rightly from the idea that the goal of philosophy was human participation in absolute Reality. Since in the outcome their philosophy defined the primal essence as an objectifiable entity and therefore a possible correlate of knowledge, they had also to regard knowledge (or a particular kind of knowledge) as the definitive, ultimate participation in Reality that man might attain.‘15 In contrast to this, says Scheler, in the Christian era, the primal Reality was ‗thought and felt to consist in an endless activity of creative and merciful love.‘16 And, since ‗human ssssssssssssssssssssssssss 12 13 14 15 16
We find this interpersonal dynamics, for example, in the New Testament parables of the lost sheep, the lost coin, or the prodigal son. 1934/4, p. 65. Cf., for example, Plato, Phd. 79d-81a. M. Scheler, ‗The Nature of Philosophy and the Moral Preconditions of Philosophical Knowledge‘, p. 77. Ibid.
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participation in an entity which is not objective but active in essence cannot be other than a collaboration in this activity‘, he concludes that the ultimate aim of the Christian life cannot be a cognitive participation in the primal Reality. Now, Scheler is certainly right in holding 1) that the ultimate goal of the Christian life must be more than just a cognitive participation in ‗the primal Reality‘ and 2) that, for Christians, this ‗primal Reality‘ is, in its innermost essence, not an objectifiable entity comparable to Plato‘s Forms. At the same time, however, one must not ignore the fact that Christian descriptions of the life of the blessed in Heaven include the idea of ‗seeing God face to face‘, i.e., as not mediated by His creatures. Although this kind of ‗seeing‘ seems to be something quite different from a cognitive participation of the knower in the object known in the sense in which it is conceived of in philosophical epistemologies, it still seems that a cognitive element, in a quite elementary sense, must be in some way present in it. For this reason, I formulate the matter more carefully than Scheler by saying that the ultimate goal of the Christian care of the soul is a participation in the perfect life of the Trinitarian God which contains, but by far exceeds, a mere cognitive participation in Him.
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Similarly as in the Platonic care of the soul, this ultimate goal is reached in earthly existence only partially and imperfectly. Full and perfect realization is reserved for the eschatological dimension which, according to Christian belief, includes not only a special and a final judgment17 but also the resurrection of the body. With this final remark I should like to conclude my attempt to carry further Patočka‘s reflection on similarities and differences between the Socratic-Platonic and the Christian care of the soul. I do so with full awareness of the fact that the topic can be investigated much more deeply and thoroughly.
ssssssssssssssssssssssssss 17
Platonic eschatology knows posthumous moral judgment of human souls which often served as an inspiration for Christian conceptions of posthumous judgment. Cf. Plato, Gorg. 523a-527e.
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Chapter IV
The Spiritual Crisis of Europe and Modern Techno-Scientific Rationality 1. The Causes of the Crisis in the work The Natural World as a Philosophical Problem
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The first significant mention of the spiritual and cultural crisis of Europe can be found already in Patočka‘s Habilitation. For, as already noted, the very aim of this work is to overcome the crisis of modern man. 1 In the introduction to this work, Patočka first offers a brief diagnosis of the crisis and then suggests the remedy. As far as the diagnosis goes, he claims that the ultimate cause of the crisis of modern man is his ambiguous relationship to the whole of reality. 2 The ambiguity is due to the fact that modern man wages his life in two utterly different worlds. The first is the natural world given to him without any explicit effort on his side, particularly without a necessity to think theoretically about the whole of reality. The second is the world of modern natural science. This world is a radical reconstruction of the natural one. In it, man is naturalized and reduced to a mere object—a mere link in the causal chain, ‗an agent of objective forces‘. And since modern man, unthinkingly, takes for granted that the image of the world created by modern science is the objective description of reality as such, he interprets the natural world as a mere ‗subjective phenomenon‘, i.e., as something derivative, secondary, epiphenomenal. ssssssssssssssssssssssssss 1 2
See supra, pp. 12 f. 1992/10, p. 14.
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The most serious consequence of this noetic devaluation of the natural world is, according to Patočka, the loss of the subjective feeling of freedom. For if the scientific image of the world is accepted as the only truly objective description of reality, than the feeling of freedom has no noetic value. Patočka states: ‗According to the scientific description of the world, one must not feel free.‘3 The consequence is the self-alienation and selfabdication of modern man. He ceases to command himself and others from his personal standpoint. Instead, he indulges impulses that arise in him on the sub-personal level.4 If the cause of self-alienation and self-abdication is the ambiguous relation of modern man to the whole of reality, the overcoming of the crisis must consist in the elimination of this ambiguity. In his Habilitation, Patočka is firmly convinced that Husserl‘s transcendental phenomenology has at its disposal a method capable of this elimination and thus of the solution of the crisis. According to Patočka, the transcendental reduction is capable of uncovering the originally hidden link between two seemingly completely heterogeneous worlds. This link is ‗transcendental life‘. The study of it can uncover the laws of the constitution of objectivity in consciousness.5 Constitutive analysis is capable of demonstrating that, first, both worlds are, in reality, two mutually dependent strata of constituted objectivity and, second, that the natural world is more fundamental than the scientific image of the world. This shows that the natural world is both more original and more foundational then the scientific one. In fact, the latter is shown to be the result of specific theoretical activities which are both possible and meaningful only on the basis of the pre-existent natural world. The ssssssssssssssssssssssssss Copyright © 2014. Traugott Bautz Verlag. All rights reserved.
3 4
5
1992/10, p. 18. 1992/10, p. 19. In a similar way, Patočka characterizes the crisis of modern man in 1935/1. Also here, he speaks about self-alienation which he describes as the ‗enslavement of spontaneous humanity under an external norm‘. Similar is also the description of the cause of this phenomenon. The cause is the naturalistic anthropology which misinterprets human experience as a thoroughly objective, ultimately natural process (1935/1, pp. 47 f.). 1992/10, p. 70. Constitution is known by the descriptive and constitutive analysis of what is found in the reflexive view of the ‗transcendental spectator‗. The spectator finds a stream of transcendental life which is made visible by ‚transcendental reduction‗, i.e., by putting out of action the general thesis of the natural attitude. For a more detailed characterization of the descriptive and constitutional analysis, see ibid., pp. 69-75. Patočka moves here strictly within the borders of Husserlian transcendental methodology.
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1. THE CAUSES OF THE CRISIS IN THE WORK THE NATURAL WORLD AS A PHILOSOPHICAL PROBLEM
scientific image of the world is thus shown to be understandable only on the basis of the natural one, never vice versa.
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This theoretical rehabilitation of the natural world eliminates the ambiguity of man‘s relationship to reality and thus removes the ultimate cause of the self-alienation and self-abdication of modern man. It must be noted, however, that Patočka never comes back to this analysis of the origin of the crisis of modern European man and its solution. The reason is obvious: it presupposes an unreserved acceptance of Husserl‘s transcendental phenomenology. And it is this fundamental theoretical option that Patočka abandons very early.xix
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2. The Causes of the European Crisis in the works From 50s Patočka comes back to the topic of the European spiritual crisis in the essay ‗Nadcivilizace a její vnitřní konflikt‘ [Supercivilisation and its Internal Conflict] written in the 50s. This text, published posthumously, is closely linked to the project of ‗negative Platonism‘.1 In the essay, Patočka offers penetrating analyses of modern civilization. He calls it ‗supercivilization‘ as it is characterized by a high level of universality and an entirely new degree of rationality—two features that set it apart from all other civilizations. 2 This new degree of rationality is manifested in the intellectual (spiritual) sphere by the universality of modern science, in the economic sphere by the existence of the world market, and in the social sphere by the idea of social equalization. These are the three chief directions of the supercivilization which ‗aims at universality with obstinacy and permanence unknown to other civilizations‘.3 The characteristic feature of supercivilization is, therefore, neither emotional fanaticism, nor the will to power, nor revolutionary enthusiasm. Rather, it is ‗the stubborn and almost anonymous impact of the almost impersonal forces mentioned above‘.4
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This impact knows no exterior limit. It will, as Patočka rightly predicts in the 50s, extend to all cultures and civilizations of the contemporary world. And he adds: ‗The limits of this universal civilization are internal. They concern general questions, questions of global sense and meaning. Rational civilization does not attempt to solve these questions. It is, by its very essence, factual, not personal.‘ 5 The impact of rational civilization is continual and concerns the means of human life, not its ends.
ssssssssssssssssssssssssss 1
2 3 4 5
In fact, the essay develops the eighth point of ‗Negative Platonism‘. See, Editor‘s Commentary in: 1996/2, p. 503. Therefore, the essay must be read together with ‗Negative Platonism‘ and ‗Eternity and Historicity‘. For an interesting interpretation of this text, see Tava, Il rischio della libertà. Etica, fenomenologia, politica in Jan Patočka, pp. 36-47. 1987/12, p. 247. 1987/12, p. 248. 1987/12, p. 248. 1987/12, p. 253 f.
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The impact of the supercivilization is, according to Patočka, limited by two factors. The first are the forces of the particular traditions. The irrational core in each of them resists the rational impact of the supercivilization. The second is the tendency that arose in the supercivilization by radicalization of its fundamental intention. This tendency attempts to make the process of rational impact both autotelic and ‗explosive‘, i.e., one that proceeds by revolutionary leaps. 6
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Patočka is not much concerned with the first threat. He probably thinks that sooner or later supercivilization will overcome all ‗traditionalisms‘—all attempts to refuse it en bloc. But he is very concerned with the second threat—to the extent that its analysis becomes the central theme of the essay. This analysis elaborates a distinction between two forms of supercivilization: ‗moderate‘ and ‗radical‘. The latter having its roots in the just mentioned inner threat to supercivilization. Patočka shows that the moderate version is closer to the basic intention of supercivilization, i.e., to the focus on the rational optimization of means, not ends of human existence— in science, production, trade, and social organization. Patočka observes that the moderate version of supercivilization is, in its core, tolerant. ‗Its antagonism toward other life-principles is limited only to those aspects that hinder the universality of civilization. For the rest, it accepts that civilization, in its universalistic version, is just a framework. Although all our life in it acquires a particularly high degree of sobriety, it is concerned with the questions of the means of human life, not of its ends.‘ 7 This version of the supercivilization is therefore largely compatible with the spiritual roots of existing civilizations. The concrete example of this compatibility is the coexistence of liberalism (for Patočka, the most important, though not the perfect expression of the moderate version of supercivilization) and Christianity, i.e., the religious fundament of the civilization in which the supercivilization arose.8 In contrast, the radical version of the supercivilization wants the process of rationalization to include also the questions regarding the goals of human life. Further, it is not satisfied with the continuous and impersonal ssssssssssssssssssssssssss 6 7 8
1987/12, p. 252. 1987/12, p. 251. 1987/12, pp. 274 f.
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expansion of the supercivilization: it strives to constraint it by a political revolution. For this reason, the radical version of the supercivilization ‗aims at pushing the antagonism between civilizations and the supercivilization to its ultimate consequences. It wishes to make rational organization the key to all questions of human life. It strives to push through the supercivilization not by integration but by elimination of all other aspects of human life.‘ 9 According to Patočka, in the course of history, the radicalism of the supercivilization took various forms. It must not be identified with any particular social, political, or philosophical movement.10 In 19th century Europe, it was just a part of the ‗vertical structure of the supercivilization‘, 11 i.e., it appeared merely in the attempts to change radically the structure of western societies. With the success of the October 1917 Russian Revolution, however, it became the dominant ‗horizontal‘ societal principle, i.e., a principle that has its own existence next to the moderate principle,12 and—as one might add—in political and ideological competition with it.
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Although Patočka, at that time, observes with concern the growing dominance of the radical version of the supercivilization, he does not think that the future belongs inevitably to civilizational radicalism. He reaches this conclusion by reflecting on the ideological bases of both forms of the supercivilization. This reflection leads him, first, to recognize a close connection between the moderate version and the principle of liberty. 13 Second, it leads him to a conclusion that there is no single significant idea to which the radicalism of the supercivilization strives that, in the moderate version of the supercivilization, would not be contained already. 14 That means that the radical version of the supercivilization stands for no substantial value that would not be already striven for, and more successfully so, by the moderate
ssssssssssssssssssssssssss 9 10 11 12 13 14
1987/12, p. 251. 1987/12, p. 251. 1987/12, p. 269. 1987/12, p. 270. 1987/12, pp. 258 f. 1987/12, p. 261.
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version.15 Third, it leads him to a discovery of inner contradictions in the radical form of the supercivilization.16
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Despite this critique of the radical form of the supercivilization, Patočka does not ignore the decadent tendencies and the inner contradictions of the moderate version of the supercivilization either (he is particularly concerned with the liberal democratic tradition). 17 To the protagonists of the moderate version of the supercivilization he addresses the following appeal: ‗the restructuring of the world and the universalization of the supercivilization in its moderate version, with certain educational and social continuity, is possible only on the condition that the moderate version disciplines itself strongly. It must acquire consciousness of the common destiny and it must be animated by the will to sacrifice, i.e., to give up all unnecessary advantages and privileges. It must have a clear vision of the goal, i.e., to lead the world from the non-universal stage to the universal one; it must learn to act universally, not in terms of privileged persons, classes, nations, or continents.‘18 In this appeal, the direction of his proposal for the solution of the crisis is already indicated. The solution must consist in the overcoming of the decadent tendencies of both forms of the supercivilization. And it should, at the same time, lead to the overcoming of the aforementioned split between the two versions of the supercivilization.19 According to Patočka, this overcoming is possible only by attempting to realize more fully and more perfectly truthful human existence. Only from this perspective defined by man‘s relation to truth, is it possible to see the solution of the crisis of the supercivilization. In the crucial passage of this essay, we thus come across the theme that, in the first chapter, was shown to be the most fundamental theme of Patočka‘s philosophizing. ssssssssssssssssssssssssss 15 16
17 18 19
Patočka thinks here, particularly, about the value of scientific truth and the value of the human person (1987/12, p. 259). 1987/12, pp. 262-265. Patočka was given the opportunity to witness these contradictions directly and personally, as he wrote the essay in the Czechoslovakia of the early 1950s. 1987/12, pp. 262, 272, 292 f. 1987/12, p. 281. Patočka states that ‗the split of the supercivilization into two forms where one does not understand but fights the other is an expression, so to say, of the dialectics of its own decline.‘ (1987/12, p. 291)
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In this essay Patočka develops this theme extensively and interestingly. He starts by pointing out that truth is not merely a ‗theoretical question‘ to be solved by ‗objective methods‘. Rather, it is the existential struggle of man for his inner, substantial freedom. Therefore, the question of truth is, above all, the question of man‘s veracity, the question of truthfulness of his existence. Human history is, therefore, first of all, the history of man‘s relationship to truth, not the result of the effect of some objectively describable forces.20 The truth that measures human existence is not subjected to human will: ‗man does not have the choice whether he wants or does not want the truth‘.21 For each real human action is concentrated on a focal point of truth for which there is neither purely objective nor purely subjective explanation (if subject is understood merely as a certain form of objectivity). Human relationship to truth can be either positive and univocal (if he strives for truth explicitly and consciously) or negative and contradictory (if he decides against truth; even this decision, however, presupposes some awareness of truth, and it is not an absolute forgetfulness of truth—whence its contradictory character).22 According to Patočka, the meaning of history, and thus also one of the basic problems of the philosophy of history, consists in the relationship of each historical epoch to truth. In other words, it is defined by an answer to the question how truthful is man‘s relationship to factors that constitute his epoch (his relationship to nature and the way he handles it by technology, his relationship to what transcends nature and humans, etc.).23 ssssssssssssssssssssssssss
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20
21 22 23
Here is the crucial passage: ‗The object of human history […] is humanity, i.e., ultimately, truth. Truth is not a mere ―theoretical question‖ solved by ―objective methods‖ and by means that are, in the form of some gifted individuals or institutions, always at our disposal. Truth, more fundamentally and profoundly, is the inner struggle of man for his inner, essential freedom which is part of the core of his being and which he possesses essentially, not factually. Truth is the question of human truthfulness; man, in his essence, is someone who can possess truth, someone to whom it is essential to care for truth. […] Human history is the history of man‘s relationship to truth—the history of our clairvoyance or blindness. Not just what we know but, primarily, how we are is a piece of truth or falsity, a piece of human self-judgment, human self-measurement, or rather, the measurement of oneself by the absolute measure (the measure of truth).‘ (1987/12, p. 289) 1987/12, p. 290. 1987/12, p. 290. 1987/12, p. 290.
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If humans find to all basic factors defining the character of their epoch a truthful relationship, they find their own center and both the epoch and their life ‗acquire a sense‘. If they fail to do so, ‗the period becomes restless. Humans do not feel at home in themselves. This is manifested in an epoch‘s anxiety, pain, lack of calmness, uneasiness‘.24 According to Patočka, the division of the supercivilization to moderate and radical forms shows that humans of our epoch did not find their center, that the epoch is restless.
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According to Patočka, the lack of inner spiritual clarity characterizing contemporary humanity is, above all, owing to the fact that humans do not properly understand the most fundamental trait of the civilization in which they live. This trait is the ‗distinction between what is in the power of finite human being, what belongs to his contentful, positive knowledge and his rational action, i.e., an action based on such positive knowledge, and that which exceeds both of them.‘25 With what exceeds interpreted as what unexpectedly breaks through the powers and forces that can be objectively stated, Patočka undoubtedly alludes to the notion of transcendence in the sense of ‗the spirit‘s struggle with objectivity‘. It is the same notion on which he bases his interpretation of human existence in 1987/11, his interpretation of the Socratic care of the soul in 1991/7,26 and his concept of ‗negative Platonism‘ in 1987/4.27 The claim that the most fundamental trait of the supercivilization is the distinction between what is in human power and what—as an act of pure transcendence—exceeds it, Patočka justifies by pointing to the fact that the supercivilization is, originally, connected with the problem of individuality and individualism.28 However, in the rational supercivilization, individuality as its principle appears in a decadent form, i.e., as liberal individualism. In this decadent form, individuality cannot function as the fundamental principle of the supercivilization, i.e., ‗as the immediacy to the supermundane, as the liberation from the level of objective forces‘. 29 Rather, it is understood as an autonomous worldly being, i.e., as a social atom. ssssssssssssssssssssssssss 24 25 26 27 28 29
1987/12, p. 291. 1987/12, p. 292. See supra, pp. 21-24 See supra, pp. 24-25. 1987/12, p. 292. 1987/12, p. 292.
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Patočka tries to identify the dialectics that leads from liberal individualism—as the manifestation of the defective kind of understanding of the very principle of the supercivilization—to the radical version of the supercivilization.30 This dialectics is the transition from the bourgeois social order to the socialist one, i.e., the dialectics within the sphere of social decadence, not the dialectics of social renewal.31 For this reason, the solution of the crisis of the supercivilization cannot consist in the mere exchange of social techniques, i.e., in the change of the principles governing the disposition and the organization of political power. Rather, it must consist in breaking through this decadent dialectics all together. In other words, political power must be organized in such a way as to allow ‗the deep level of human existence‘, 32 i.e., basically, the transcendence of the ‗spirit‘s struggle with objectivity‘, to assert itself. The idea of transcendence breaking through the level of objective forces is, undoubtedly, the speculative fundament on which, in the 1960s, Patočka develops the doctrine of three movements of human existence, particularly the idea of the third movement, which he sometimes calls the ‗breakthrough‘ or ‗shaking‘ of the (second) movement of the self-prolonging.33 It is no less evident that Patočka‘s appeal to realize a social order in which ‗the deep level of human existence‘ will be able to assert itself tackles the same fundamental problem that is dealt with in the already mentioned political modality of the Platonic care for the soul, i.e., of the idea of the ideal state in which people like Socrates would not have to die.34
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*** The major difference between Patočka‘s Habilitation and the essay on supercivilization from the point of view of the question of the European spiritual crisis is the following. In the latter work Patočka abandons the idea that philosophy (in the form of transcendental phenomenology) is able to remove the fundamental cause of the crisis and thus offer the solution to the crisis. According to the latter work, the solution of the crisis must lie on the level that precedes the theoretical one. The ‗turn from untruthfulness to ssssssssssssssssssssssssss 30 31 32 33 34
1987/12, pp. 292 f. 1987/12, p. 294. 1987/12, p. 294. See supra, pp. 21-25. See supra, pp. 57-59.
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truth‘ (or the breakthrough of the objective powers and forces realized by the incalculable force of transcendence, by ‗immediacy to the supermundane‘),35 leads to the overcoming of decadent tendencies and allows finding a truthful relationship to the crucial factors determining the character of an epoch in which man lives.36 In this way, while influenced by Heidegger but at the same time diverging from him in many ways, Patočka tries to elaborate a notion of truth that would be more thorough and more basic than the purely theoretical one, i.e., the notion with which Husserl operated in his analysis of the crisis of Europe. For this reason, Patočka, in this essay, moves the solution of European rational civilization from the presupposition that the crisis can be overcome by solving some crucial theoretical questions, to a more fundamental level, both existential and ethical. This level is, however, more difficult to handle by means of a conceptual philosophical analysis.
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This may be the reason why this essay, while offering the deep analysis of the two forms of rational civilization, does not describe more concretely and positively the social order which, as Patočka demands, would allow ‗the deep level of human existence‘ to assert itself and thus create the condition for overcoming the crisis. Also, the descriptions of the various forms of ‗the movement from untruthfulness to truth‘ lack a more systematic character. Is it because the text remained unfinished? Or did the text remain unfinished because the level of truthfulness to which Patočka moved the discourse about the crisis turned out to be hardly treatable in clear rational concepts? In this essay, Husserl‘s philosophical heritage remains clearly present, particularly in the idea that European (modern) civilization is, in its essence, rational. However, Patočka attempts to broaden and deepen the Husserlian notion of rationality which almost coincides with the rationality of philosophy and science. For him, therefore, the rationality of supercivilization is not just the rationality of science, but also economic and socio-political rationality, the former manifesting itself in the division of labor and the existence of
ssssssssssssssssssssssssss 35 36
1987/12, p. 292. This expression is a clear allusion to Ranke‘s idea of the ‗immediacy of all epochs to God‘. Cf. 1996/3, p. 348. 1987/12, p. 297.
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world market, the latter in the tendency of the supercivilization to social equalization.37
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Let me summarize the main point. In the essay on supercivilization, Patočka gives up Husserl‘s idea that it is the task of true philosophy (in the form of transcendental phenomenology) to solve the European spiritual and cultural crisis. Although he retains Husserl‘s deep conviction that Europe is ratio, rational insight, he seeks to conceive the rationality of European civilization more broadly and deeply. This approach in many ways prefigures the direction of his analyses of European crisis in the texts from the 70s.
ssssssssssssssssssssssssss 37
See supra, p. 100.
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3. Analysis of the European Spiritual Crisis and Suggested Solutions in the Texts from the 70s
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In the texts from 70s dealing with the spiritual crisis of Europe, Patočka‘s starting point is the analysis of the world after the World War II. The analysis is based on the description of the post-war world given by the English historian Geoffrey Barraclough.1 Here is one of Patočka‘s paraphrases of the Barraclough‘s description of the post-war period: After World War II, we encounter a world that is fundamentally different from the world of the preceding period. It has its roots in this older period, but it differs from it to at least the same extent as the so called ‗modern times‘, starting with humanism, the Reformation, and the foundation of modern science, particularly the mathematical natural sciences, differ from the preceding period. Since the second third of the 19th century, the prelude to this process was the industrial revolution. This revolution gave Europe the exclusive possession of modern technology, and thus also the power that, for a long period, enabled its unique expansion. This was accompanied by demographic growth, the emergence of modern industrial cities, and of mass society. This new constellation brings about changes in existing political structures. Mass democracy emerges, political life is organized by parties, and the state becomes the space of general electoral right, the state of political parties. Imperialism means the transfer of the question of European equilibrium outward, toward the rest of the world, and it leads to the division of the world among European powers. But imperialism turns out to be unfeasible: the powers are unable to dominate the world—both their mutual rivalry and fear of each other lead to World War I. This war provides the foundation for the future dualism of the great powers by allowing its older embryonic formations to step into the foreground. Moreover, owing to the weakening ssssssssssssssssssssssssss 1
G. Barraclough, An Introduction to Contemporary History (first published 1964). Patočka makes this text the starting point of his analysis of the post-war period in 1988/4, p. 80-148, 1970/11, p. 9-28, and 1988/16, p. 29-44. Cf. Hladký, Změnit sám sebe [Changing Oneself], p. 137.
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pressure of the imperial empires, the first contours of the third world emerge. This unsolved problematic comes closer to solution by World War II. During the war and after it, under the pressure of the great powers, the post imperial world emerges […]. This world is, formally, europeanized, but, from the point of view of its content, it is new, i.e., not-European. In this world, Europe as a politipolitical and spiritual power, ceased to play the crucial role. Still more and more important, next to the two great powers, are nonEuropean demographic and political colossi. It is their constellation, their demands and problems (and not the ‗Concert of Europe‘) that determine the world of today and tomorrow. At the same time, the speed of the industrial revolution that turns on the scientific-technological one changes the structure of industrial society. The technology of control, cybernetics, and automation comes to the foreground. The inside of the atom opens up. The powers allowing the conquering of space are released. Fine instruments allowing precise functioning required for all these discoveries are being constructed. The equilibrium of atomic weapons petrifies the position of the great powers and the ideologies. The new world of the regenerated or newly appearing nations has an opportunity to substitute something new for the spiritual hopelessness, the decadent culture of subjectivism that had pestered Europe and the europeanized world since the beginning of the century. May this new world succeed in expressing the vigorous life energy of which it is full and give positive sense to the colossal results of science and technology for which Europe of this century did not find a positive expression.2 From Barraclough‘s description, Patočka derives two basic features of the world after the World War II. The first is historically unparalleled. New technology, for the first time in the history, makes possible the realization of age-old human dreams and gradually liberates humans from physical labor. However, the same technology makes possible, also for the first time in history, the extinction of humankind. The second basic feature is the radical redeployment of powers and influence in the post-war world in which Eussssssssssssssssssssssssss 2
1988/4, p. 85 f. This paraphrase appears in a somewhat altered form also in 1970/11, p. 10 f., and 1988/16, p. 29 f.
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rope loses its economic and political supremacy. Its position is taken by two inimical superpowers that block each other. New demographic and political colossi emerge on the horizon. They, unlike the two superpowers, are not the heirs of European spiritual history. It is their requirements and problems that will determine the future world.
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Patočka‘s assessment of the situation of the world after World War II differs from Barraclough‘s mainly in the evaluation of the relation between the two factors, i.e., the new level of technology, on one hand, and the radical shift of powers in the field of the world history, on the other. While Barraclough—somewhat naively—hopes that the new political and demographic colossi will be able to use the immense resources of modern science and technology meaningfully and not self-destructively, Patočka—perhaps more realistically—predicts that the world resulting from the coexistence of political and demographic colossi and equipped with European technology and organization will be ‗the very opposite of an idyll‘. 3 Patočka thinks that Barraclough‘s picture of the world after World War II does not present a new ‗spirit of the age‘ but rather the continuation of the preceding ‗spiritual‘ situation.4 According to Patočka, the foundation of this situation is the modern conception of closed and absolute spirit. In this understanding of the subject, he sees the very cause of the European spiritual crisis, the crisis that resulted in the destruction of Europe in the two world wars and into the loss of political and economic supremacy of Europe over the rest of the world. For, according to Patočka, this understanding of the subject, particularly in Hegel‘s philosophy, becomes the philosophical basis of the concept of the absolute sovereignty of the national state that leads to imperialism which is the ultimate cause of the self-destruction of Europe in the two world wars.5 Patočka expressly relates himself to the idea of T.G. Masaryk who, in World War I, saw the destructive results of the modern subjectivism. 6 According to Patočka, the modern techno-scientific rationality also has its roots in this understanding of the subject: from its perspective, the world is ssssssssssssssssssssssssss 3 4 5 6
1970/11, p. 27; cf. 1988/16, p. 40. 1970/11, p. 16. 1970/11, p. 16 f.; 1988/16, p. 42; 1970/3, p. 349. 1970/11, p. 17.
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a mere collection of means, a reservoir of forces that can be unloosed with the help of modern science and technology.7 For this reason, the ultimate cause of both basic features of the postwar world mentioned above (the new level of technology, the radical shift of power and influence) is, according to Patočka, the modern conception of absolute and self-enclosed spirit (subject). The same conception is thus also the ultimate cause of the new global situation, i.e., of the coexistence of political, demographic, and economic colossi equipped by European technology and organization having, however, different spiritual and cultural backgrounds, which raises the likelihood of mutual misunderstanding, tension, and conflict.xx
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The danger brought by the new global constellation of European mankind must, therefore, be confronted by an effort to overcome the modern concept of spirit (subject). The modern notion of the absolute and selfenclosed subject must be replaced by a radically different understanding of the subject. Patočka wants to express this difference also terminologically. For his conception of this new account of the subject, he chooses the traditional term ‗soul‘ speaking thus of the ‗open soul‘. In 1970/11 and 1988/16, Patočka offers some hints only at this new form of the subject (or spirit). In the article on Comenius from 1970 called ‗Comenius and the Open Soul‘, he says more on the topic.8 In order to describe what Patočka means by the ‗open soul‘ let us start from the characterization of its opposite, namely the modern understanding of subjectivity that Patočka, in this article, calls the ‗closed soul‘. The ‗closed soul‘ is ‗as it were externally bounded in itself as a closed continent that does not accept anything external. Its autonomy either brings it close to the absolute or it even defines it. Therefore, there is nothing that could be external to it, nothing that, from outside, could limit its infinity and freedom.‘ 9 This soul, owing to its closedness and alleged infinity, can meet only itself. It does not recognize anything outside of itself. Therefore, it sees its essential tasks only ‗in the perspective of domination, getting something under control, appropriating it‘.10 This is the reason for the claim that the ‗closed soul‘ is at the ssssssssssssssssssssssssss 7 8 9 10
1970/11, p. 17. 1970/3. 1970/3, p. 337. 1970/3, p. 337.
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foundations of modern technology. Surprisingly, the ‗closed soul‘ can exist in both idealist and materialist versions. 11
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The ‗open soul‘ as the opposite of the ‗closed‘ one is related to something outside of itself on which it is essentially dependent—something it cannot grasp and control. Thus the Christian soul—for Patočka one of the most historically influential forms of the ‗open soul‘—is essentially related to its Creator and Savior on whose revelation and grace it is entirely dependent. Although this form of the ‗open soul‘ presupposes ‗the jump into a revealed absolute‘,12 the ‗fundamental operation‘ even of this form of the ‗open soul‘ is the ‗uncovering of nothingness‘, 13 which alone is able to open the possibility to ‗engage with the world in the right manner‘. 14 This enables the ‗fundamental task of the open soul‘, i.e., ‗not to lose oneself in the world and its content, but rather to devote oneself deliberately to things, to expose and exhaust oneself for the benefit of things, men, and God and, in this submission, to find oneself.‘ 15 The uncovering of nothingness and the conversion of the soul caused by this uncovering lead the Christian soul toward truly existing Being, the Being on which it essentially depends and which it cannot fully comprehend, i.e., toward God in its traditional Christian sense. In 1970/11 and 1988/16, Patočka—in the spirit of his long-term effort to overcome traditional metaphysics as the doctrine about true and eternal being—intimates the conception of the ‗open soul‘ the ‗exterior‘ of which is not absolute Being, God in the traditional sense, but the ‗event of manifestation‘. He interprets the ‗open soul‘ as ‗the foundation on which the universe of existents manifests itself‘16 and man with the open soul as the one ‗who is sent into the world […] in order to offer himself to things and other human beings as the foundation for development‘.17 Despite the undeniable influence of the late Heidegger on this conception, in this account of ‗open soul‘ the specifically Patočkian tone can be heard when, from the ontological cha-
ssssssssssssssssssssssssss 11 12 13 14 15 16 17
1970/3, p. 337. 1970/3, p. 338. 1970/3, p. 343. 1970/11, p. 23. 1970/3, p. 339. 1988/16, p. 44. 1970/11, p. 24.
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racterization of man as the ‗fundament of manifestation‘, 18 the moral appeal is derived: Man is sent into the world in order to give witness to truth, to help everything that has a mode of existence similar to his own to find itself, to let human beings be what they are, in clarity and truth, to offer himself to things and human beings as the fundament for development, rather than profiting from them and using them for his own selfish interests.19
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It seems that the concept of the ‗open soul‘ on which Patočka‘s attempts to solve the problems of ‗post-European mankind‘ is based on a reformulation of the concept of the third movement of human existence mentioned above, i.e., of the idea of submitting oneself to the service of the manifestation of the world and of other human beings. 20 The aim of this reformulation is to extract from this concept a form of spirituality that would make possible the solution of the problems of post-war global humanity. In the concept of the ‗open soul‘ is included the appeal to search for a new concept of phenomenon different from Husserl‘s transcendental one.21 This appeal foreshadows Patočka‘s late ‗a-subjective‘ phenomenology that was developed, albeit only fractionally, in the early 70s. We saw that, according to Patočka, the ultimate cause of the danger threatening post-European humanity is the absence of a common spiritual denominator for the new political and economic colossi newly equipped by European technology and organization. The concept of the ‗open soul‘ is designed to suggest the general contours of such a possible common denominator. The ‗open soul‘ can be such a denominator because it allows ‗conceiving all traditions as components of inevitably unilateral and always final manifestations of the being of the whole‘.22 Since the ‗open soul‘ is essentially characterized by the consciousness of dependence on something outside of itself, it is capable of conceiving the universe as inexhaustible in its content (Patočka says metaphorically ‗infinitely rich‘). And it allows conssssssssssssssssssssssssss 18 19 20 21 22
Later texts devoted to an ‗a-subjective phenomenology‘ take man to be the ‗custodian‘, not the ‗creator‘ of the phenomenon. 1970/11, p. 24. Cf. supra, pp. 29-31. 1988/16, p. 43. 1988/16, p. 44.
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ceiving this inexhaustible richness as something that discloses itself to various cultural spheres and historical epochs always only in part, while each manifestation is at the same time the concealment of other ‗parts‘ of this absolute inexhaustible richness of content.23 From the point of view of the ‗closed soul‘, such infinite richness of content could be accepted only if the subject is made infinite, i.e., absolute. In this perspective, the infinite richness would have to be interpreted as the content of this subjectivity. The irreducible plurality of historical substances which, in the post-European era, for the first time becomes fully visible,24 would thus lead to a ‗plurality‘ of collective subjectivities, each conceived as absolute. And that, finally, would lead to the situation that, according to Patočka, caused the decline of Europe and could repeat itself, in an even more catastrophic form, in the post-European globalized world. A particularly striking feature of this attempt to solve the crisis of postEuropean humanity is Patočka‘s ability to use for this purpose the results of his seemingly purely theoretical phenomenological analysis of human existence. He thus shows the practical relevance of his purely theoretical philosophical ideas.
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Nevertheless, the concept of the ‗open soul‘ raises certain critical questions. One of them is whether this concept expresses cultural and/or historical relativism. That means whether it expresses the idea that there is no absolute, i.e., trans-temporal and transcultural, truth. Does each culture or historical epoch have merely its own particular truth, relative to itself, and not valid in other cultures and epochs? As is well known, this form of relativism allows recognizing the validity of cultures based on diverging or even opposing premises. It escapes the temptation to order these cultures according to some absolute criteria of evaluation. In doing so, it avoids the temptation to absolutize one‘s own cultural prejudices that are often hidden in the formulation of such ‗absolute‘ criteria. Nonetheless, this relativistic standpoint involves a notorious difficulty. Either it (implicitly) claims for itself truth in the sense in which its very conssssssssssssssssssssssssss 23 24
1970/11, p. 26. 1970/11, p. 16.
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tent denies it, i.e., in the sense of objectively valid prise de conscience of ‗how things are‘, and is, for this reason, unacceptable. Or this implicit absolute truth claim is absent. In this case, the relativistic thesis makes no truth claim whatsoever and thus it does not contradict the assertion that some transtemporal and transcultural truth exists. In this latter case, the relativistic claim does not imply contradiction, but it leaves the defender of absolute truth objectively (logically) unchallenged. The first possibility gave rise to the variety of the so called reductio ad absurdum arguments that, since Plato and Aristotle who refuted Protagoreanism with it, is used against various versions of general relativism till the present day.25 It seems that serious defenders of relativism today recognize the principal force of this argument—they try to formulate a ‗weaker‘ version of relativism that would escape the reductio.26
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Both Patočka‘s radicalization of the concept of historicity and the obvious dependence of the concept of the ‗open soul‘ on the philosophy of the late Heidegger seem to indicate that Patočka‘s standpoint in this respect is not entirely free from historical or cultural relativism. It seems, nevertheless, that in formulating the concept of the ‗open soul‘, Patočka‘s intention was not to vindicate historical or cultural relativism. This is indicated by his sharp critique of Heidegger‘s concept of truth. Patočka formulates it in one of his private lectures from 1973.27 In this lecture, Patočka criticizes Heidegger for not elaborating the problem of truth in the proper sense. After commending him for enlarging the problem of truth also on the prepredicative level, i.e., the level of the manifestation of things, he reproaches him for identifying the problem of truth with the problem of the manifestation of things. The problem of truth, Patočka contends, does not consist in things manifesting themselves, i.e., in things becoming phenomena. This is only a presupposition for the problem of truth. The problem of truth arises because things can manifest themselves as they are, but also as they are not, i.e., we can judge about them correspondingly to how they are, but also how they are not.
ssssssssssssssssssssssssss 25 26 27
Cf. M. Cajthaml, Analyse und Kritik des Relativismus, pp. 31-34 See J. Margolis, The Truth About Relativism, pp. 1-12, and passim. PE, pp. 165-179.
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According to Patočka, from this fatal identification of the problem of truth with the problem of the manifestation of things results Heidegger‘s ‗horrible‘ claim expressed in the text The End of Philosophy and the Task of Thinking. Heidegger says in this text that there is no measure that would allow comparing which of two epochs of metaphysical thinking is more perfect. ‗For Heidegger, then, there does not exist any possibility of evaluating metaphysical philosophies […] from the point of view of truth.‘28 And few lines lower Patočka continues: … for Heidedegger, each of these philosophies has, in its conception of being, something unveiled and something concealed from being, and they are all equivalently placed in this, so the fact that Aristotle discusses with Plato is in reality wasted effort. It cannot be done. Hegel‘s debates with Kant are entirely useless. But that is horrible! And this is connected to the fact that the process of unveiling-concealing is seen by him again just as unveiling in general, without the difference of correspondence and noncorrespondence, without what makes up truthfulness in the proper sense of the word.29
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Taking into consideration this critique of Heidegger‘s conception of truth and its relativistic consequences expressed only three years after the publication of the articles developing the concept of the ‗open soul‘, it seems inappropriate to read the occasional ambiguous passages with which Patočka formulates this concept as expressions of historical or cultural relativism. Some doubts concerning this issue, however, remain. I would like to conclude my treatment of this topic with the following critical remarks: Patočka‘s claim that the very cause of the internal and external decline of Europe was the ‗closed soul‘ seems to be too unilateral. It stresses one-sidedly philosophical principles and ideals at the expense of historical facts. In particular, it seems to ignore the crucial role of the example of post-revolutionary France in the formation of national states. In Germany, for example, nationalism was largely a reaction to the events connected with Napoleon‘s invasion of Germany. 30 France represented the first model ssssssssssssssssssssssssss 28 29 30
PE, p. 175. Ibid., p. 175 f. Italics mine. Cf. S. Vietta, Europäische Kulturgeschichte, p. 15 f.
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of the national state,31 and the Napoleonic military campaign which ‗exported‘ nationalism had a decisive influence on this form of the state asserting itself. If this is the case, than it would be necessary, instead of searching for one ultimate cause for the rising of national states, to clarify to which extent this phenomenon is the result of the cultural and political impact of philosophical ideas (the modern conception of the subject) and to which extent it is the result of unique historical events (the French revolution and its aftermaths).
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In 1988/4, the text in which Patočka also starts from Barraclough‘s description and the analysis of the post-war period, he does not identify the cause of the European spiritual crisis with the modern conception of the closed spirit/subject and, consequently, does not propose the notion of the ‗open soul‘ as the solution of the problem. Rather, he returns to Husserl‘s idea of rational reflection as the fundamental principle of the European spirit. Nevertheless, he seeks to reinterpret it in such a way as to liberate it from the transcendental subjectivist connotations it has in Husserl‘s late philosophy. He starts from Husserl‘s criticism of modern science, particularly from the idea that ‗contemporary science abandoned insight for (theoretical and practical) success.32 In this idea, Patočka sees a hint at the practical form of rationality, i.e., ‗about the idea of knowing as binding and responsible selfformation‘.33 For this reason, Husserl‘s account of the European spiritual principle already anticipates the idea that, in European history, rational reflection acquired two major tasks: ‗to make understandable the given and to form our very self‘. These two tasks that co-constitute the unity of the principle of rational reflection are in constant mutual tension. The tension threatens to break the unity of the European principle by the uncontrolled reinforcement of one side of the principle at the expense of the other. That means either ‗the knowledge of the given without self-dominion‘ or ‗striving for unity, universality, and eternity, at the expense of the knowledge of the given‘.34 ssssssssssssssssssssssssss 31 32 33 34
E. Morin, Europa Denken, p. 53. 1988/4, p. 82. 1988/4, p. 82. 1988/4, p. 82.
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According to this text, both the spiritual greatness and the crisis of Europe lie in the historical dynamism determined by this dichotomy. Europe dominated the rest of the world because it was able to develop both sides of the European principle in a manner unmatched by other civilizations. It retained supremacy as long as it was able to keep both sides of rational reflection in balance, i.e., as long as it was able to keep an equilibrium between the rationality-based dominion of humans over the world and over themselves. When this fragile balance was lost, Europe started to move towards the crisis which, in its ultimate consequences, deprived it of its privileged status in the world history. The equilibrium was lost at the beginning of Modernity, i.e., in the period in which modern science that focused almost exclusively on the rational penetration and domination of the world that asserted itself as the sole and unique model of rationality. This shift gave European humanity the (ratiobased) dominion over the world but it deprived it of dominion over itself. The very cause of the European spiritual crisis is to be sought in this loss of balance. Political and economic crisis followed, resulting in the ultimate selfdestruction of Europe in the two world wars of the 20th century.
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The remedy of the crisis corresponding to this diagnosis is the restitution of the ‗practical‘ side of European rationality. Patočka expresses this point in the following passage using highly metaphorical language: Europe has shown two paths leading to the opening of the earth: the exterior path of the conquest and subjugation of the world which brought about the extinction of Europe as a historical and unified formation; and the interior path of the opening of the earth in the sense of unlocking the world, the path of the transformation of the natural world as such. And it seems that this path, after all exterior catastrophes and inner confusions and mistakes, must be found again and walked to its end.35 If we connect this analysis of the origins of the European crisis with Patočka‘s remarks about the European spiritual heritage in 1975/5 and other late texts, the core of his most mature version of the origins and remedies of European spiritual crisis seems to be the following: ssssssssssssssssssssssssss 35
1988/4, p. 84.
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1) Till the beginning of modernity, Europe was in a state of spiritual equilibrium. This equilibrium consisted in the productive coexistence of the two sides of rationality (1988/4). This equilibrium was part of the Christian care of the soul (1975/5).xxi 2) This fragile balance of the European spiritual principle was broken at the beginning of Modernity (16th century). The rationality that focused on the world and its domination through science and technology asserted itself more and more—at the expense of the rationality that focused on the formation of the inner self. Increasingly, the spiritual style of the care of the soul gave way to the thoroughly different spiritual style: the care for (this) world and its domination. This new spiritual style was the work of the Enlightenment.36 3) The solution of the crisis must therefore consist in the restitution of such a form of spiritual life in which both sides of the European principle are put in balance again. Since this form of spiritual life was for centuries safeguarded by the care of the soul, Patočka asks whether it can still speak to us today,37 whether it is not necessary, in some sense, to ‗repeat‘ it. 38
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Patočka‘s appeal to ‗repeat‘ the care of the soul, i.e., to strive through new methods and new words to restore spiritual equilibrium, raises the question as to what form of the care of the soul is to be restored and how such a restoration should take place. Nowhere in Patočka‘s writings can we find an explicit answer to this question. However, an implicit answer seems to be his repeated appeal to make ourselves available to the phenomenal character of the world, to surrender to the foundation of understanding which is inalienably proper to us, and, in doing this, to break through the understanding of being as Heideggerean enframing (Gestell). This appeal is the result of Patočka‘s reflections about technology and its danger. These reflections give flesh and bones to the claim mentioned above that modern European man is governed by the spiritual style of the care of the world. These reflections as well as the implicit response to the question how to care for the soul today contained in them will be the topic of the concluding section of this chapter. ssssssssssssssssssssssssss 36 37 38
Cf. 1986/3, p. 260. PE, p. 14. ‗Repeating‘ means in this context not doing again what has been done in the past, but ‗through new ways, new words, new methods, say the same thing‘. Ibid., p. 90.
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4. The Threat of Modern Techno-Scientific Rationality to Human Beings It was mentioned that modern science and science-based technology are constitutive elements of the new direction of European civilization that Patočka calls ‗the care for the world‘. What this direction is and in which sense it leads to a ‗neglect of one‘s soul‘ Patočka spells out in his reflections about the essence of modern science, technology, and the threat the two present to modern humanity. In texts from the 70s, Patočka articulates the threat of technology and science to modern man in two different ways. In 1970/11, using a metaphor from biology, he speaks of modern technology as an ‗inorganic body‘ of planetary man. 1 The danger of technology, as indicated already by the chosen metaphor, lies in the sheer instrumentality of technological rationality, i.e., in its being a sheer rationality of means, not of ends.2 In this article, Patočka indicates that the danger of technological rationality, interpreted in this sense, is twofold: internal and external (physical). The external threat is a consequence of the internal one, just as a physical threat to a body is a consequence of the preceding threat to a body‘s soul. In this article, therefore, Patočka tries to sketch a new form of spirituality—the above discussed ‗open soul‘. He designs it as the spiritual element—‗the rationality of ends‘—that should supplement the purely instrumental technological rationality averting thus both dangers mentioned above.3
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The idea of an interior—spiritual—threat of technology to modern man is more developed in Patočka‘s paper ‗The Danger of Technicization in ssssssssssssssssssssssssss 1
2
3
He writes: ‗The body of this epoch lies in front of us: a huge polyp whose cells we all are. Although it has no existence for itself, it determines each of us more than it is itself determined by any of its suborganisms. This body is ready for action— what will be its goal, what meaningful content will determine its movement?‘ (1970/11, p. 13) ‗Technical rationality offers unprecedented means both for life and for destruction. And since it itself is essentially instrumental, we cannot expect from it any solution to the problem. (1970/11, p. 27) Karfík rightly pointed out that this characterization of modern technology as a merely instrumental form of rationality is already contained in Patočka‘s notion of ‗supercivilization‘. See supra, pp. 110-112.
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Science according to E. Husserl and the Essence of Technology as Danger according to M. Heidegger‘. Patočka wanted to present this German-written paper at the XV. World Congress of Philosophy in Varna. However, this intention was, for political reasons, ultimately doomed to fail.4 In this paper, the claim that it is the sheer instrumentality of modern scientific and technological rationality that presents both exterior and interior threats to man is substituted by a different one. Patočka now claims that the threat does not come from technology as such. Rather, it has to do with the fact that ‗the essential core of technology touches upon the essential core of man‘, ‗the essential core of man‘ being ‗the relationship of human being to truth‘.5 According to Patočka, this claim is the common denominator of the otherwise rather diverging accounts of Husserl and Heidegger of what feature of technology constitutes the actual threat to modern humanity. According to Patočka‘s interpretation, both thinkers aim at a deeper understanding of truth than the one offered by the traditional adequatio-theory. However, the difference between them lies in the way each of them conceives truth and its relationship to ‗the essential core of man‘.
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Husserl aims at founding this truth upon the theory of transcendental consciousness. He thinks that the threat can be faced by theoretical means, i.e., by offering a deeper foundation of rationality that would allow reversing the process of the draining of meaning which is the result of wrongly understood technicization in science. Heidegger conceives truth as the historical process of uncovering of being (and its meaning). He interprets technology as a specific mode of this historical process of uncovering of being for which he has the term ‗enframing‘ (Gestell). This mode of historical uncovering, Patočka writes, sets ‗in motion a universal uncovering which has not even an indirect and objectified awareness and knowledge of the ground of the uncovering itself. For this uncovering, by its very conception of what is, closes itself up against all that claims to transcend its sphere. For nothing but just the calculable resources ssssssssssssssssssssssssss 4 5
For the circumstances under which the paper was written and published, see ‗Ediční komentář’ (Editor‘s Note) to 2002/1, pp. 829 f. ‗The Danger of Technicization in Science according to E. Husserl and the Essence of Technology as Danger according to M. Heidegger‘, p. 333.
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that are ―on order‖ can penetrate the unitary network of technically uncovered reality, including all that can be objectively grounded, showing no lacunae.‘6 Thus, according to Heidegger, the danger of technology consists in that ‗the uncovering that prevails at the essential core of technology necessarily loses sight of uncovering itself, concealing the essential core of truth in an unfamiliar way and so closing man‘s access to what he himself is—a being capable of standing in an original relation to the truth.‘7 The draining of meaning described by Husserl is therefore for Heidegger a moment of a new meaning of being. Unlike Husserl, Heidegger does not think that the threat of technology to the essential core of man, i.e., to his relationship to truth, can be faced with theoretical means. Philosophy can only discover that an understanding of being different from ‗enframing‘ may possibly arise. Art (poetry in particular) and philosophy may prepare such a transformation of the meaning of being. Neither of them is, however, able to bring it about.
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Now, Patočka acknowledges the relative validity of Husserl‘s interpretation of the threat of technology as the draining of meaning taking place in modern science and resulting in the spiritual crisis of European mankind. Since he, however, does not accept Husserl‘s basic idea to base phenomenology on transcendental subjectivity, he does not accept Husserl‘s suggestion as to how to face the threat. In other words: Patočka does not accept Husserl‘s idea that the threat may be overcome by working out a deeper foundation of rationality on the basis of transcendental phenomenology. To that extent he fully shares Heidegger‘s conviction that ‗a recourse to our life-world makes sense as a stage in the recourse to absolute subjectivity, but it is not radical enough to include in its field of vision that „within‖ man which is responsible for meaning, for clarity and truth.‘ 8 Patočka also agrees with Heidegger‘s interpretation of the ‗essence of technology‘ as ‗enframing‘. In particular, he agrees with the idea that ‗enframing‘ makes humans blind to the essential relation between their essential core and the historical process of uncovering of being. ssssssssssssssssssssssssss 6 7 8
Ibid., p. 331. Ibid. Ibid., p. 329.
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Patočka, however, disagrees with a certain defeatism of Heidegger‘s suggestion how to face the threat of technology construed as ‗enframing‘. This defeatism is contained in Heidegger‘s account of the ‗history of being‘ of which the philosophy of technology is a part. The leading speculative idea of this account is that concealment of being ‗reigns‘ in the uncovering of beings. In this perspective, the uncovering of being as ‗enframing‘ presents the highpoint of the concealment of being. According to Heidegger, the epochal conversion in being necessary to break through the technological understanding of being is not in anyone‘s individual power. It cannot be brought about by human initiative. The most humans can do about this conversion is to prepare it in thought and art and waiting patiently for its eventual occurrence.
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While Patočka agrees with Heidegger that the uncovering of being is a universal, supra-individual process that cannot be altered by an individual initiative, however heroic, he identifies in recent history a phenomenon that indicates that ‗enframing‘ may be gradually overcome by a different understanding of being. In this new understanding of being, the essential relationship between uncovering of being and the essential core of man is becoming thematic again. This phenomenon is the experience of a victim. Patočka starts this remarkable reflection with the observation that a war is the most powerful means of maximizing performance, i.e., the most powerful means of realizing the most fundamental imperative of the era of calculable resources. Therefore, he takes the two world wars of the 20 th century as a particularly clear illustration of the claim that, in the technological understanding of the world, man is not the governing factor in history, but merely a calculable resource.9 Yet, we speak about victims of these conflicts, not just about resources, their use and consummation. This way of speaking indicates that we, somehow, dispose of an understanding of being different from ‗enframing‘. The characteristic feature of this understanding is that there are mutually irreducible orders of reality. This understanding of being thus implies an acknowledgement of the existence of an ontological hierarchy, albeit only in its minimal two-level form: human and subhuman (non-living) reality. The acknowledgement of this minimal ontological hierarchy is sufficient to overcome the onessssssssssssssssssssssssss 9
Ibid., p. 336.
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dimensional understanding of being, i.e., being as calculable resource, ‗enframing‘. And given that the experience of being a victim is one of the most powerful experiences of the technological era, it cannot be justifiably claimed that ‗enframing‘ governs so totally and unavoidably as Heidegger wants us to believe. Patočka is further convinced that the power of ‗enframing‘ can be resisted by the ‗repetition of sacrifice‘. The ‗repetition of sacrifice‘ is different from both being a passive war-victim and from sacrificing oneself for a concrete ideal (be it objectively worthwhile or not).10 The ‗repetition of sacrifice‘ is a sacrifice in the sense of ‗making explicit the authentic relation between the essential core of man and the ground of understanding which makes him human‘.11 Sacrifice in this sense is not a sacrifice for something or for someone, although in a certain sense it is sacrifice for everything and all. In a certain sense, it is a sacrifice for nothing, if by ‗nothing‘ we mean that which is no existing particular person or thing. For the ground of understanding that makes us human and which is radically finite is ‗something like a light or a clearing which makes manifestation possible‘.12
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As such it is not only no ‗entity‘ whatsoever, but it is also no reason for being, no cause, no force. ‗Out of just this situation stems the need for man to take the part of this ground and to commit himself for it, thereby however, first winning his humanity in the true sense of the word.‘ 13 According to Patočka, sacrifice in this sense opens the possibility to reverse the history of manifestation of being from the decadent ‗enframing‘ in the direction of the ‗salvific‘. It seems that the idea of the ‗repetition of sacrifice‘ is closely connected to the earlier doctrine of the three movements of human existence. In fact, ssssssssssssssssssssssssss 10
11 12 13
In Czech, the term ‗oběť‘ has two meanings. It means both ‗victim‘ and ‗sacrifice‘. This makes it for Patočka easy to move smoothly from war-victims to the idea of repeated sacrifice. In fact, in this text, without explicit differentiation, he uses the term ‗oběť‘ in three meanings: 1) the ‗passive victim‘, i.e., the so called ‗civilian casualties‘ in war-conflicts; 2) those who voluntarily sacrificed their lives for a particular cause; 3) sacrifice in the sense of ‗repetition of sacrifice‘. Ibid., p. 338 f. Ibid., p. 339. Ibid.
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the idea of the repetition of sacrifice is in a certain sense a reformulation of the third movement of human existence (the movement of truth). In this context, however, it is not conceived in an abstract supra-temporal context of ontology of human existence, but in the specific historical context, namely the present phase of the (post)-European spiritual history interpreted in the light of Heidegger‘s philosophy of technology. Similarly as the movement of truth is a breakthrough in the movement of self-extension, the repetition of sacrifice is a breakthrough and a turn in the technological understanding of being, i.e., ‗enframing‘. Moreover, this understanding of being can be interpreted as a petrification and a hypertrophy of the movement of self-extension.
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Most importantly however, placing the idea of the repetition of sacrifice in the context of the doctrine of the three movements of human existence helps us understand the reason why Patočka‘s opposes Heidegger‘s pessimistic attitude toward the ‗enframing‘. Patočka, the thinker of the third movement of human existence, could hardly accept that, even in the era of the technological understanding of being as calculable resource, a breakthrough to truthful human existence is impossible. It seems therefore that the idea of the repetition of sacrifice is the way how, according to Patočka, truthful human existence is possible in the present era interpreted in terms of late Heidegger. It seems that the idea of the repetition of sacrifice may also be linked to Patočka‘s late account of the spiritual foundations of Europe centered on the care of the soul. In this context it may be construed as an indirect answer to the question Patočka asks in his 1973 private lectures Plato and Europe: How can the care of the soul be repeated today? Perhaps, in the light of the Varna-lecture, we may respond by saying: The care of the soul can be repeated today in the form of the repetition of sacrifice. Patočka returns to the issue of the technological civilization in the fifth of his Heretical Essays called ‗Is Technological Civilization Decadent, and Why?‘. Before answering the question he asks in the title, he explains the criterion of decadence he has in mind. It is the truthful human existence, i.e., the topic that in this book was shown to be the fundamental theme of Patočka‘s thought.
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According to this criterion, ‗a life can be said to be decadent when it loses its grasp on the innermost nerve of its functioning, when it is disrupted at its innermost core so that while thinking itself full it is actually draining and laming itself with every step and act‘.14 The new motif in this late essay comes from connecting his ‗standard‘ opposition of truthful/untruthful human existence with the distinction sacred/profane. In connecting these two pairs of opposites Patočka makes the point that although the dimension of the sacred, similarly as the escape in the untruthful existence, is an alleviation in respect to the everydayness, it is, unlike untruthful existence, not simply an escape from responsibility. For this reason, the dimension of the sacred, unlike the tendency to flee in the untruthfulness of everydayness, cannot be simply overpowered. It must be grafted onto responsible life.15
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The consequence of this approach is that, in this essay, Patočka‘s does not describe the struggle for truthful existence in the usual terms of the clash between truthfulness (in the language of this text: historicity) and everydayness, but rather as various attempts of historical human existence to incorporate freedom and responsibility into the dimension of the sacred. Such incorporation implies the transformation of the demonic, orgiastic dimension, which is the original form of the sacred, so that when in the experience of the sacred everydayness is overcome, the personal spirituality of human being is not lost, but rather—on a higher level—regained. The very problem of the historical struggle of human being for its truthful existence, which in this essay is used as the criterion for judging the decadence of technological civilization, thus ensues from the fact that not every form of overcoming everydayness by entering into the sacred ensures existential upsurge. Patočka states: We believe that ‗I‘ in this sense emerges at the dawn of history and that it consists in not losing ourselves in the sacred, not simply surrounding ourselves in it, but rather living through the whole opposition of the sacred and the profane with the dimension of the problematic which we uncover in the responsible questioning in a quest for clarity with the sobriety of the everyday, but also with an ssssssssssssssssssssssssss 14 15
HE, p. 97. HE, p. 99.
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active daring for the vertigo it brings; overcoming everydayness without collapsing in self-forgetting into the region of darkness, however tempting.16 In the next section of this essay, Patočka‘s effort is to show that European spiritual history, in the sense of the history of the care of the soul, is the history of the overcoming of everydayness without losing oneself in the darkness of the orgiastic dimension, which is the original form of the sacred.17 I have already mentioned that Patočka interprets modern technoscience as an essentially instrumental form of rationality and as governed by the understanding of being as calculable resource. In this essay, as a consequence of the insertion of the theme sacred/profane, a third feature is added to these two.
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It is the inability of technical rationality ‗to be a bulwark against orgiastic irresponsibility‘.18 In elucidating this feature, Patočka highlights the capacity of the traditional (Ancient and Christian) forms of rationality to limit the orgiastic tendencies. In contrast, modern technical rationality is unable to perform this function, which was so fundamental for the European spiritual style of the care of the soul. And as in modern and contemporary European history, the traditional forms of rationality are being gradually replaced by the modern techno-scientistic mentality, the orgiastic tendencies reappear and grow stronger. Patočka writes: The more modern technoscience asserts itself as the true relation to what-is, the more it draws everything natural and then even everything human into its orbit, the more the ageless traditions of balancing the authentic and the captivating are set aside and condemned as unrealistic, untrustworthy, and fantastic, the more cruel will the revenge of orgiastic fervor be.19 In this inauspicious connection of a completely worldly, unspiritual form of rationality with the newly unleashed orgiastic tendencies as its necessary pendant, Patočka sees the very essence of Modernity. And he sees in ssssssssssssssssssssssssss 16 17 18 19
HE, p. 103. HE, pp. 103-112. HE, p. 112. HE, p. 113.
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this ominous connection also the ultimate cause of the revolutions and wars of the 20th century.20 To summarize, then, the development of Patočka‘s reflection on the danger of modern techno-scientistic rationality, we may say the following. First, Patočka interprets this rationality as essentially pragmatic, as the ‗rationality of means, not ends‘. The danger of this rationality thus lies in the consequences of its pure instrumentality. For this reason, he thinks, in order to be able to face this danger, we must reintroduce the ‗rationality of ends‘. We must transform it into the form of the ‗open soul‘.
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Starting in 1973, Patočka explicitly accepts Heidegger‘s interpretation of technology as ‗enframing‘, together with his late philosophy of being. Nevertheless, he objects to Heidegger‘s pessimism by developing the idea of the ‗repetition of sacrifice‘—the form of life in which the modern man may break through the hegemony of ‗enframing‘ in a radical spiritual sacrifice of his own self. The consequence of the transition from the interpretation of technological rationality as pure instrumentality to its interpretation in the spirit of Heideggerean ‗enframing‘ is the radicalization of the threat that is perceived in this form of rationality. The radicalization of the threat corresponds to the radicalization of the suggested facing of the threat: The problem of how to reinsert the ‗rationality of ends‘ into the ‗rationality of means‘ can be solved theoretically by working out the ideal of the ‗open soul‘. The ‗conflict in being‘ however, can be faced only by a radical submission of oneself in the ‗repetition of sacrifice‘. Correspondingly, the earlier idea of an intellectual and political mobilization of the technical intelligentsia is radicalized in the late concept of the ‗solidarity of the shaken‘.21
ssssssssssssssssssssssssss 20 21
HE, p. 113: ‗In this century, war is the full fruition of the revolt of the everyday.‘ For the ‗solidarity of the shaken‘ cf. HE, pp. 134-136.
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5. The Positive Possibilities of Technological Civilization Keeping in mind everything that has been said about the essence of modern techno-scientistic rationality and its effects on man, it would seem that Patočka must answer the question posed in the title of the fifth essay, i.e., whether technological civilization is decadent or not, in positive terms. Yet, Patočka hesitates to make such a categorical condemnation of technological civilization. The reason for this moderation is his remarkable, though in some respect unrealistic, reflection about the positive possibilities that the technological era opens up, however uncertain their realization may be. In 1970/11, Patočka notes that, for the first time in history, science and technology made possible a society realizing production by intellect and realizing the interests of reason, i.e., a society in which work, technology, and reason enter into a new kind of mutual relationship. 1 The decisive and the most populous class of future societies will be the technical intelligentsia. The whole burden of the work load will be on its shoulders.
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If it were possible to make the technical intelligentsia more ‗spiritual‘, i.e., if the technical intelligentsia were able to complement the ‗rationality of means‘ with the ‗rationality of ends‘, then it might become possible, for the first time in history, to realize the ‗governance of the spirit‘, i.e., basically the old Platonic ideal of the unity of political power and spiritual authority. xxii As mentioned above, in the concluding parts of 1970/11 and 1988/16, Patočka proposes to make the technical intelligentsia more ‗spiritual‘ by convincing it to embrace the idea of the ‗open soul‘. In the fifth essay, Patočka stresses what the technological civilization ‗makes possible more than any previous human constellation: a life without violence and with far-reaching equality of opportunities. Not in the sense that this goal would anywhere be actual, but humans have never before found the means to struggle with external misery, with lack and want, which this civilization offers.‘2 In the same text, Patočka reminds the reader of another positive result of the victory of technological civilization. For the first time in history, he ssssssssssssssssssssssssss 1 2
1970/11, pp. 13 f. HE, p. 118.
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says, emerges ‗the possibility of a turn from accidental rule to the rule of those who understand what history is about‘.3 And he adds on a dramatic note: ‗It would be a tragic guilt (not a misfortune) of the intelligentsia if it failed to comprehend and grasp this opportunity.‘ 4 These positive possibilities that emerge in the context of the technological civilization all turn round the central idea of a new societal position of the (technical) intelligentsia and its pervasive positive task in the present historical situation. Patočka treats this theme most extensively in the article ‗Intelligentsia and Opposition‘ from 1968. In this article, student revolts in Western Europe and the events of the Prague Spring resonate. The philosophical substance of the article is the clarification of the concept of intelligentsia and an attempt at deriving from it the sense in which, in the contemporary epoch, the intelligentsia should appear as an opposition. In his analysis of the concept of intelligence, Patočka starts from the original Latin word meaning intellectus, intelligentia which designates the ‗originary presence of the first principles of being in the grasp of mind‘. 5 The original meaning of the term ‗intelligentsia‘ is therefore the presence of the ultimate meaning and purpose of the whole of reality in the human mind. This original meaning of the term, which clearly implies the ‗rationality of ends‘, has gradually changed denoting now mere formal efficiency, i.e., something purely instrumental.
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The lack of justification for this decadent meaning of the term, the genesis of which mirrors a large part of modern spiritual history, Patočka demonstrates by analyzing the phenomenon of independent thinking to which the concept of intelligentsia ultimately refers. With Gadamer,6 on whom he draws in this respect, he claims that independent thinking is not a mere gift for whose development we may decide. Rather, independent thinking can be realized only by struggling with ‗inhibiting life forces, private and social‘,7 and has therefore moral presuppositions. The restrictions of immediate, i.e., traditional or instinctive, ssssssssssssssssssssssssss 3 4 5 6 7
Ibid. Ibid. 1969/3, p. 238. H.G. Gadamer, ‗Philosophische Bemerkungen zum Problem der Intelligenz‘. 1969/3, p. 239.
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life goals required by independent thinking enable us to set individual and explicit goals, goals we set freely and that are therefore spiritual, not natural. 8 This concept of intelligence corresponds to the concept of the intelligent person as a human being that, by a moral upsurge, gains intellectual independence from himself and from his milieu: a human being that expressly chooses and sets his life goals. According to Patočka, the concept of intelligence so defined implies both the possibility and the justification of an emancipation of the spiritual/intellectual professions from the social vassalage to which they were originally subjected and a solidarity of all those who do intellectual work.
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This concept of intelligence also implies the task of a twofold opposition to the actual state of society. The opposition is twofold because there are two forms of transcendence: vertical and horizontal. Vertical transcendence stands for ‗an impulse that transcends the given and creates goals‘. Horizontal transcendence stands for ‗an impulse toward the world, toward things‘.9 The task of intelligence is to retain both the distinction and the mutual relationship of the two impulses. Thus the task of the intelligentsia is not only to discover, contemplate, and venerate the ‗spiritual realm‘ in a quietist manner (vertical transcendence), but also to strive for ‗a real governance of the spirit based on the discovery of factual reality‘ (horizontal transcendence).10 Patočka‘s expectations from the intelligentsia of his time are therefore very similar to Plato‘s expectations from the prisoners (philosophers) in his famous allegory of the cave. For Plato does not only expect the prisoner to step out of the cave and to see the world of truth and of spirit. Rather, he also expects the prisoner, after having seen the truth, to be willing to return to the cave and to help his former fellow prisoners to ascend to the spiritual world by changing the laws and orderings of the polis according to the imperatives of the spiritual realm. It was rightfully noted that Patočka‘s idea that the rule of the spirit may, for the first time in history, be realized by political mobilization of the ssssssssssssssssssssssssss 8 9 10
Ibid. 1963/3, p. 245. Ibid.
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technical intelligentsia, is somewhat utopian. 11 The remarkable trait of this idea is the fundamental political ideal of Platonism, i.e., the unity between political power and spiritual authority,12 combined with the Marxist-like formulation of the realization of this ideal: a political mobilization of the technical intelligentsia as the decisive ‗class‘ of a modern mass society.
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I say utopian, for however complex and hard-to-grasp the global situation of mankind is at the beginning of the 21st century, there are no clear signs of the process Patočka hoped for, i.e., the technical intelligentsia becoming politically mobilized and striving to realize the governance of reason in the form of the ‗rationality of ends‘. Similarly utopian seem today Patočka‘s reflections about the ‗solidarity of the shaken‘, in which, under the influence of Heidegger‘s late concept of the history of being, the idea of political emancipation of the technical intelligentsia evolved in his latest texts.
ssssssssssssssssssssssssss 11 12
I. Chvatík, ‗Kacířství Jana Patočky v úvahách o krizi Evropy‘ [The Heresy in Jan Patočka‘s Reflections on the Crisis of Europe], p. 4,5. This political idea is present in Patočka‘s thought since his first articles from the 1930s till the late texts from the 1970s.
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Conclusion We have seen that Patočka‘s most important contribution to the issue of the cultural and spiritual foundations of Europe is his account of European spiritual history in terms of formation, transformation, and decadence of the spiritual style of the care of the soul. For Patočka, this spiritual style was not just a historically concrete form of realization of truthful human existence but also—since, for him, historicity was truly realized only in European spiritual history—the only historically realized form of truthful human existence.
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According to this peculiar view of history, truthful human existence arose from the shaking of the modest but reliable sense of life of mythical man. This shaking of the sense of human existence took place in Ancient Greece between the 6th and 5th century B.C. It was not just philosophy that was responsible for this shaking but also Greek political life and political freedom. A life resulting from this shaking of a naïve original meaning of life rose up and was marked by a philosophical care of the soul first elaborated by Socrates and Plato and then over and transformed by the Hellenistic schools, particularly by the Stoics. At the beginning of the Christian era, this form of truthful human existence was gradually transformed into a religiously based ideal of a care of the soul, retaining, however, its philosophical (metaphysical) component as one of its specific traits. Toward the end of the medieval period, the Christian form of the care of the soul lost its dominance, a trend that became even stronger in the Renaissance. At the threshold of Modernity, the care of the soul made way for a new, decadent spiritual style dominated by the ‗care for the world‘. In the Enlightenment, this change of a spiritual style was accompanied by a gradual transformation of an idea of rationality. The result of this process was the modern scientific-technological rationality. The ultimate and most disastrous consequence of the ‗care for the world‘ was the material self-destruction of Europe accomplished with shocking speed in the two world wars of the 20th century. Nevertheless, the disintegrating nihilistic force of the decadent
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spiritual style of the ‗care for the world‘ can be faced today by returning to the spiritual style of the care of the soul in the form of the ‗repetition of sacrifice‘. This account of European spiritual history recapitulated here in a nutshell and with many oversimplifications is certainly in many ways remarkable and can serve as a starting point for many fruitful ulterior reflections on the subject. However, in the conclusion to this book, instead of thinking further along the lines of Patočka‘s approach, I would like to focus on what seems one crucial problematic aspect of this approach. I mean the one-sided character of the ‗Socratic‘ interpretation of the care of the soul as ‗living in problematicity‘, as a life lived in constant questioning. Let me explain.
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In post-war lectures on Socrates, in which the idea of the care of the soul as life in constant questioning is developed most extensively, 1 Patočka says that Socratic examination and questioning are absolutely meaningful even if they do not lead to a knowledge of the Good. This is because the human soul, immersed in the process of ceaseless questioning and examining, reaches its specific perfection regardless of the result obtained. This holds true despite the fact that the Good is not given directly, i.e., as an object of knowledge, but only as a result of examination and questioning. The ceaseless examination and questioning of the Good have a perfective effect on the soul regardless of whether they lead to their natural result, i.e., to some definite knowledge of the Good. According to this interpretation of the Socratic care of the soul, the specific perfection of human soul is not derived from its capacity to know the Good as the finis ultimus of human life and to base on this knowledge a vision of a good life, but from the capacity to search for this Good, ceaselessly and endlessly. The meaningfulness and perfection of human life based on the constant examining of the Good is stressed to an extent that the question ‗Does this questioning ever reach its goal?‘ seems almost irrelevant. For, if the soul has reached its perfection already by searching ceaselessly for the Good, what surplus in perfection could it obtain by gaining some definite knowledge of the Good?
ssssssssssssssssssssssssss 1
1991/7, p. 109-117.
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Now, as I have already demonstrated, 2 this interpretation of the care of the soul becomes the key to Patočka‘s understanding of the historicity of human being. And this notion of historicity, in turn, becomes the foundation of Patočka‘s philosophy of history—not just in the texts from the 50s but also from the 70s.3 Now, since for Patočka history is above all the history of Europe, European (spiritual) history must be understood in terms of this notion of historicity. Entirely in this spirit, in the 50s, Patočka describes Socrates‘ discovery of the historicity of human existence as the spiritual foundation of Europe. However, this foundation was, starting with Plato, obscured by the tradition of classical metaphysics.4 This account of European spiritual history had, at the time, its theoretical background in the concept of the ‗spirit‘s struggle with objectivity‘. A part of this philosophical program was the attempt to reinterpret classical metaphysics in the spirit of a ‗negative Platonism‘.5
ssssssssssssssssssssssssss 2
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3
4 5
Cf. supra, pp. 41-43. Cf. the following passages from HE: ‗As a result, meaning will never be simply given or won once and for all. It means that there emerges a new relation, a new mode of relating to what is meaningful; that meaning can arise only in an activity which stems from a searching lack of meaning, as the vanishing point of being problematic, as an indirect epiphany. If we are not mistaken, then this discovering of meaning in the seeking which flows from its absence, as a new project of life, is the meaning of Socrates‘ existence.‘ (HE, p. 60 f.) ‗Humans cannot live without meaning, and without a global and absolute meaning at that. That means: humans cannot live in the certitude of meaninglessness. But does not that mean that they cannot live with a sought for and problematic meaning? That precisely this life in a problematic context is a part of meaningfulness in an authentic sense, not in a privative or a dogmatic one? Perhaps Socrates knew this, perhaps that is why the characterization of Socrates by a contemporary philosopher as perhaps not the greatest but the most authentic philosopher is so aptly profound. And Lessing, when in the choice between ―having the truth‖ and ―seeking the truth‖ prefers the latter, might he not have the same in mind?‘ (HE, p. 75) ‗Thus the shaking of naïve meaning is the genesis of a perspective on an absolute meaning to which, however, humans are not marginal, on condition that humans are prepared to give up the hope of a directly given meaning and to accept meaning as a way.‘ (HE, p. 77) The most succinct expression of Patočka‘s ‘Socratic‘ interpretation of the meaning of history is this: ‗History is nothing other than the shaken certitude of pre-given meaning. It has no other meaning or goal.‘ (HE, p. 118) 1987/11, p. 153. Cf. supra, p. 24-26.
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Patočka gave up this theoretical approach soon after he worked it out. It could well be that one of the reasons for abandoning it was that, in its light, the whole western metaphysical tradition appeared entirely negative: as a tradition in which historicity, problematicity, and thus also truthful human existence was forgotten, stuffed under the stiff shell of eternal, immutable principles and essences of things. It seems that, in his later account of the spiritual foundations of Europe, Patočka wanted to moderate this ominous shadow thrown over classical metaphysics—and over Plato, its official hero. At the same time, however, he wanted to keep the idea of ‗life in problematicity‘—and of Socrates as its patron. These two preoccupations may have led to the question that lurks in the background of Patočka‘s late construction of European spiritual history: ‗How to reconcile the idea of the continuity of ancient and mediaeval form of European spirit with the premise that the very foundation of European spiritual life consists in the ‗life in problematicity‘?
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In respect to his previous position, the question can be put in the following way: ‗How to escape the earlier conclusion that western metaphysical tradition obscures the very fundament of European spiritual life?‘ For this tradition, however much indebted to the Socratic tradition and inspiration, adheres to an ideal of life based on truth, a truth not only searched for but— in some of its fundamental aspects including the dimension of the Good— also found, either on the basis of reason alone, or—later in Christian theology and philosophy—on the basis of a cooperation of faith and reason. It seems that, in texts from the 70s, Patočka tried to come to grips with this fundamental problem. His strategy was, as I have shown in the second chapter of the book, the ‗re-Socratizing‘ of the Platonic care of the soul.6 This approach allowed him to keep the ‗Socratic‘ account of historicity (‗living in problematicity‘) while at the same time turning Plato into the most fundamental figure of western philosophical tradition. Making Plato, the discoverer of metaphysics, the patron of European spiritual life allowed him to present the spiritual history of Antiquity and the Middle Ages as a process in which the (Platonic) care of the soul as the most substantial spiritual heritage of Europe became gradually deepened and generalized. That means, it allowed him to present this process as, substantially, continuous dessssssssssssssssssssssssss 6
Cf. supra, pp. 47-51, 60-65.
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spite the two ‗historical catastrophes‘ (the decline of the Greek polis and, later, of the Roman civitas). However, the intention to make the care of the soul the most fundamental spiritual principle of European history, under the premise that this care is interpreted in terms of ‗life in problematicity‘, leads to serious difficulties. One of them is the ‗re-Socratizing‘ of Plato mentioned above.7 In a similar way, one can show that also Aristotle‘s conception of perfect life is not primarily based on the philosophical search for truth, but rather on the contemplation of it.8 Mutatis mutandis, one could show the same regarding other key thinkers of the western metaphysical tradition, e.g., Plotinus, Augustine, Thomas, etc. It seems, therefore, that a successful interpretation of European spiritual history cannot be built exclusively upon the interpretation of the care of the soul as ‗life in problematicity‘. In other words: the foundation of European spiritual life cannot be construed as a conception of life that derives all of its inner unity and perfection from the search for truth only. Rather, at least a part of its perfection and unity must have its origin in an idea of life based on a truth found, i.e., a truth cognized and contemplated. For this reason, Patočka‘s account of the spiritual roots of Europe must be liberated from the one-sided ‗Socratic‘ interpretation of the care of the soul. That means, however, to free it from the core of his life-long philosophical project, i.e., from his interpretation of truthful human existence. Let me explain why this is so. ssssssssssssssssssssssssss 7
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8
Ibid. Cf. Aristotle‘s account of wisdom, the higher one of the two ‗dianoetic‘ virtues, and of the blessed life based on it in the sixth book of the Nicomachean Ethics. Curiously enough, young Patočka interprets Aristotle exactly in this spirit: ‗Also in man there are higher and lower activities. Higher are freer, more commanding. They presuppose that they will be served more and more perfectly. The freer and more lordly such activity, the more perfect and more divine. […] Higher than all other activities is the freest, most god-like of them, for it, in its nature, coincides with the divine all creative theoria. It is the philosophical contemplation.‘ (1936/5, p. 73) In the same text, Patočka explains that the same account according to which the specific perfection of human existence consists in the contemplation of truth is kept also in Aquinas. Patočka quotes here a passage from the Summa contra gentiles, in which Thomas—completely in the spirit of Aristotle—says that intellectual intuition and the contemplation of truth are the ultimate goals of all human action. (1936/5, p. 74 n.)
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The account of European spiritual history in terms of the care of the soul is the central element of Patočka‘s late philosophy of history. 9 This history is nothing but a philosophy of the historicity of human being while historicity is interpreted as ‗life in problematicity‘. And since ‗life in problematicity‘ is for Patočka clearly a paradigm of truthful human existence, the inner link between Patočka‘s account of European spiritual history in terms of the care of the soul and his account of truthful human existence is discernible. The following short presentation of the essential points of Patočka‘s account of truthful human existence will make this inner link even more evident.
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Patočka‘s articulation of the fundamental theme of his thought is based on a critical rethinking of a whole series of authors and philosophical motifs. In particular, it was Plato‘s ethos of life in truth and in the light of Forms, Husserl‘s philosophy of Lebenswelt, and Heidegger‘s Daseinsanalytik. In some late texts from 1973 on, there is a decisive influence of Heidegger‘s late philosophy (history of being, philosophy of technology). Given these major influences, Patočka offers several formulations of truthful human existence. In the texts from the midst of the 30s, he tries to capture the ‗core‘ of human existence and of truthful human existence with the concept of ‗horizon intentionality‘. In the manuscripts from 1936-45, he aims at the same with the conception of the ‗interior which is neither objective nor can it be objectified‘. In the 50s, he formulates his fundamental theme in the context of his theory of the ‗spirit‘s struggle with objectivity‘. In the 60s, the problem of truthful human existence is treated in the framework of the third movement of human existence. In the texts from 1973-76, the possibility of truthful human existence is seen—under the influence of late Heidegger—in the form of the ‗repetition of sacrifice‘. Reviewing these lifelong attempts at a philosophical response to the fundamental question of the essence of man and of his truthful existence, one may ask whether what is common to all of them is just the abstract claim that man is the being that is by its nature called to the realization of its most proper moral and ontological possibility,10 or whether it is possible to identify some less abstract, although still fairly general moments that are ssssssssssssssssssssssssss 9 10
Cf. supra, pp. 133-136. Cf. supra, pp. 21-22.
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present in most of these attempts. It seems that there are some such moments. In the following, I will try to identify the most important of them. Undoubtedly, the first such moment is historicity. According to the key passage dealing with this topic, the historicity of human being consists in the fact that its essence is largely not pre-determined.11 For this reason, the historicity of human being is essentially linked to its freedom. In the first sense, it is freedom as the possibility of a choice between the two fundamental options of human life: either to remain in the original ‗decadent‘ state or to liberate oneself from this state by realizing life in its rising. In the second sense, it is freedom that can be predicated only about a person living in the upsurge of life. Freedom in this second sense is the second crucial moment of Patočka‘s truthful human existence.
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Correlative to these two senses of freedom is the twofold sense of responsibility. No doubt, the person that—like Heidegger‘s das Man or Alcibiades in Plato‘s Symposium—runs away from her more truthful self is responsible for her decadence. Yet, in the proper sense of the term, the responsible person is only the person that chooses to realize her truthful self. This responsibility is the third essential moment of Patočka‘s account of truthful human existence. The historical, free, and responsible self is kept in the upsurge of life through the movement of transcendence. Patočka describes this movement in different ways: as a transition from the individual to the totality of the world,12 as a dissatisfaction with what is ‗merely given‘, as an overcoming of one‘s self-centeredness and egoism in a gift of a selfless love, etc. Decisive is that Patočka never interprets transcendence as reaching over to an absolute, eternal, supersensible realm of reality, i.e., to the transcendent as conceived by the classical metaphysical tradition and the Christian theology inspired by it. This is one of the consequences of Patočka‘s critical distance to the classical metaphysical tradition (and to the more traditional Christian theology)—a permanent trait of his thought, though in different phases of his ssssssssssssssssssssssssss 11 12
Cf. supra, p. 17. World is always conceived in the phenomenological sense: either more in Husserlian terms as a ‗universal horizon‘ or in more Heideggerean sense of a sort of structure of indications that enable practical handling of things.
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intellectual development it was defended with varying degrees of radicalism. In many texts, Patočka intimates that this ‗transcendence without the transcendent‘ can—in various modalities—be realized not only by philosophers, but also by artists or religious persons. Transcendence in this sense is the fourth salient feature of Patočka‘s account of truthful human existence.
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In fact, it seems that this ‗transcendence without the transcendent‘ is the most specific trait of Patočka‘s account of truthful human existence: it is an existence realized by freely and responsibly transcending all that is ‗merely given‘, i.e., in particular, by surpassing all naïve, non-reflected global meanings of life toward a deeper, reflected, and intrinsically more truthful meaning without ever reaching an eternally valid, metaphysical, definite meaning of human existence. Although, in the third of the Heretical Essays,13 Patočka recognizes the existence of an ‗absolute meaning‘ of life, he does not understand it as a ‗metaphysical‘ meaning, but as a global meaning, i.e., as a meaning to which any particular meaning points to. Thus, for Patočka, metaphysically warranted meaning is just one form of absolute meaning, although—as he explicitly says—it is the form on the basis of which human existence reached its highest historical upsurge, i.e., the Ancient and, above all, the Christian form of the care of the soul.14 Therefore, by acknowledging the existence of an ‗absolute meaning‘ in this sense, Patočka does not compromise his ‗Socratic‘ account of human existence. In fact, it seems that he sees precisely in this form of existence a key to an ‗absolute meaning‘ that would be deprived of the deficiencies of any absolute meaning that traditionally was metaphysically grounded and therefore not ‗thought-through‘. Nevertheless, I. Chvatík, one of Patočka‘s closest students and collaborators, later the chief editor of his works, while agreeing with Patočka‘s critique of traditional metaphysical meaning, argued repeatedly against the feasibility of such non-metaphysical and yet, in a way, ‗absolute‘ meaning. 15 ssssssssssssssssssssssssss 13 14
15
HE, p. 58. HE, p. 108: ‗By virtue of this foundation in the abysmal deepening of the soul, Christianity remains thus far the greatest, unsurpassed but also un-thoughtthrough human outreach that enabled humans to struggle against decadence.‘ Chvatík, I., ‗Kacířství Jana Patočky v úvahách o krizi Evropy‘ [The Heresy in Jan Patočka‘s Reflections on the Crisis of Europe], p. 10 f; and his ‗Patočkovy studie o Masarykovi a problém sokratovského humanismu‘ [Patočka‘s Studies on Masaryk and the Problem of Socratic Humanism], p. 317 f.
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But let us not delve into this very difficult issue which does not have to be settled for the purposes of the present argumentation. Instead, I would like to turn back to Patočka‘s notion of historicity. For, in the light of what has just been said, it can be made even more specific. Historicity, we can say now, is not just the fact that an essential part of human nature consists of determinations which are not pre-given, i.e., independent of fundamental decisions of a person. It is also, and even more importantly, the fact that the realization of these determinations takes place by a movement of transcendence directed at a global meaning that is always superior to the preceding naïve, non-reflected meaning of life, yet, at the same time, never anchored in the metaphysical, eternal meaning of existence. With a concept of historicity so defined, Patočka tries to keep together two tendencies immanent in his account of truthful human existence as ‗transcendence without the transcendent‘: the emphasis laid on freedom, responsibility, and transcendence, on the one hand, and a radical critique of metaphysics and of its eternal truths, values, and goals, on the other.
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I think now it can be understood why the one-sided ‗Socratic‘ interpretation of the care of the soul as the most fundamental principle of European spiritual history is so inextricably interwoven into the texture of Patočka‘s philosophy, particularly into his account of truthful human existence. If this is so, however, and if the account of European history in terms of the care of the soul is to be made feasible, than the account of truthful human existence in terms of the ‗transcendence without the transcendent‘ must be abandoned. The same conclusion can be reached also in another way: one may identify the fundamental premises of Patočka‘s late construction of European spiritual history in terms of the care of the soul and then ask how to remove a tension between them. On reflection, these fundamental premises are the following three: (1) Historicity excludes a metaphysically based form of life. (2) Plato, the founder of metaphysics, is the ‗spiritual father‘ of Europe. (3) European history is the only true history, i.e., the only ‗place‘ where historicity was realized, although, even there, only partially and imperfectly.
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There is a tension between these three premises. Can it be removed? Let us consider the alternatives. First alternative: an essential modification of (1). That means: to reformulate the notion of the historicity of human being in such a way as to make room for some ‗metaphysical foundation‘. In such a case, Plato, under certain circumstances, would remain the ‗spiritual father‘ of Europe and European history would remain history, even history in the strict sense of the term. However, this solution presupposes that the account of truthful human existence in terms of ‗transcendence without the transcendent‘ is given up and thus the very fundament of Patočka‘s thought is put into question.
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Second alternative: a denial of (2). That means: to deny that Plato is the ‗spiritual father‘ of Europe and that European spiritual life was based on a metaphysical fundament. The result would be an account of European spiritual history deprived of any traditional metaphysical fundament and seen, for this reason, to be the source of the historicity of this history. The weakness of this alternative is that it ignores the basic fact regarding European spiritual life, namely that, since its beginning in the Carolingian Empire till at least the end of the period, according to Patočka, it is characterized by the spiritual style of the care of the soul and as metaphysically based. In my opinion, it is one of the virtues not vices of Patočka‘s account of spiritual foundations of Europe that it tries to do justice to this basic fact and that it makes Plato, the founder of metaphysics, the founding figure of European spiritual life. Third alternative: a denial of (3). That means: to deny that European history is a history in the proper sense of the term or, even, that it is history at all. The result of this modification would be the somewhat bizarre standpoint according to which the form of life of European mankind would be metaphysically based, but it would not be, for that very reason, a historical form of life. The bizarre character of such a standpoint follows from its ultimate consequence: the denial of history as such. Indeed, if we say that European history lacks historicity, we must conclude that there was no historical epoch in history so far (as long as we use Patočka‘s criterion of historicity). The fourth alternative (adopted implicitly by Patočka): to interpret Plato, the founder of metaphysics, in such a way as to make him a
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representative of historicity, of life in problematicity, while, at the same time, to fault European spiritual history for some lack of historicity. Patočka adopted this strategy already in 50s, in his ‗Negative Platonism‘, interpreting the Platonic Form as a ‗pure appeal of transcendence‘ to find later this approach an ‗incomprehensible naiveté‘.16 In 70s, he attempts the same by a subtle, largely implicit ‗re-Socratizing‘ of Plato. I have shown what that means: to present the Platonic care of the soul as a version of the Socratic one, in particular, reinterpreting in this spirit the late Platonic teaching of the soul as self-movement. Since this reinterpretation was shown to be highly controversial,17 the least problematic alternative seems to be the first one. Yet, it requires, as I have said, to abandon Patočka‘s notion of historicity as ‗life in problematicity‘ as well as his account of truthful human existence as ‗transcendence without the transcendent‘ with which it is so closely tied. Toward the end of the third chapter, I offer a glimpse of how the care of the soul, liberated from its one-sided ‗Socratic‘ interpretation, may look.18
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Despite this critique, however, Patočka‘s account of the spiritual roots of Europe is without any doubt in many ways profoundly inspiring. It can be therefore used as an extremely valuable resource for further critical reflection on the spiritual foundations of Europe. One of its main virtues is the stunning ability to capture and to articulate, in the notion of the care of the soul, some of the deepest spiritual and intellectual aspirations that without any doubt define what it means to be European. Another virtue of Patočka‘s account lies in showing both the merit and the limit of Husserl‘s interpretation of the spiritual foundations of Europe in terms of the idea of rationality. In Patočka‘s account, we can see the foundational role of rationality for European culture worked out so admirably in the late Husserl. But unlike in Husserl, where rationality is almost exclusively limited to its theoretical dimension in philosophy and science, in Patočka, the decisive meaning of the practical dimension of rationality for Europe‘s spiritual life is fully recognized and amply articulated.
ssssssssssssssssssssssssss 16 17 18
2001/3, p. 73. Cf. supra, pp. 60-65. Cf. supra, pp. 87-94.
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Another inspiring feature of Patočka‘s account of the spiritual foundations of Europe, particularly if compared to Heidegger‘s thought that is with Husserl‘s its key inspiration, is the stress laid on the ability of human beings to oppose the decadent tendencies of the age. The idea that these tendencies can be faced by the ‗repetition of sacrifice‘ both encourages and invites those living today to reflect freshly on the kind of fundamental ethical attitudes called for by the world some thirty five years after Patočka‘s death.
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Endnotes i
Undoubtedly, in Patočka‘s thought there is an intimate mutual interconnectedness of all those themes. For example, general considerations about phenomenology and its method become the starting point for analyses of the ‗natural world‘ that, in their turn, have bearings on the concept of historicity of human being and therefore on some basic problems of the philosophy of history. Similarly, results of a systematic philosophizing serve sometimes as the background for the interpretations of historical positions, while these interpretations, in their turn, serve as a stimulus for further developments of a systematic standpoint. For example, the interpretation of the Socratic form of the care for the soul developed in the 1947 lectures on Socrates is based on the systematic concept of ‗the spirit‘s struggle with objectivity‘ that is developed in the essay Věčnost a dějinnost [Eternity and Historicity] from the same period. The interpretation of the Socratic care for the soul developed in the lectures has, in its turn, a decisive influence on Patočka‘s concept of the historicity of human existence developed in the previously mentioned essay.
ii
This period of Patočka‘s work is still almost unexplored. Most of the texts from this period remained unfinished and unpublished. They appear neither in the German edition of Patočka‘s works (Jan Patočka, Ausgewählte Schriften, Stuttgart: Klett-Cotta, 1987-1992) nor were they included in the plan of the Czech edition of Patočka‘s collected works that was created on the basis of the Samizdat edition of Patočka‘s works by the collaborators of the Jan Patočka Archive. Patočka deposited the texts in The Museum of Czech Literature (Památník národního písemnictví) at Strahov, where they remained undiscovered till 1990. For the attempt to assess the content of these materials, see F. Karfík, ‗Jan Patočkas Strahov Nachlass und sein unvollendetes opus grande.‘ Some of the materials were recently published in German translation in the volumes Andere Wege in die Moderne and Studia Phenomenologica VII. The material consists of three groups of manuscripts: (a) texts published by Patočka, (b) unpublished manuscripts, (c) diaries. Karfík divided unpublished manuscripts into three thematic groups. Probably, they served as preparatory work for three voluminous monographs. The first seems to be focused on the theory of subjectivity as a non-objectified source of all objectivity (cf. n.31), the second on the philosophy of history, and the third on the philosophy of myth.
iii
Patočka connects unrest (internal movement or inner stirrings), the essential feature of the non-objectified interior, with the idea of a peculiar kind of movement. He connects this kind of movement with Plato‘s idea of the soul as self-motion. Therefore, in this text, we find a hint of (a) his later teaching of the three movements of human existence and (b) his later interpretations of Plato‘s definition of
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ENDNOTES
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the soul as self-movement. Cf. especially the following passage: ‗The unrest of the inner interest, considered in its root, is a negation of any objective tranquility. It is not the tension in which the difference between two energetic levels is ―balanced‖. It is not a force of the potential that is defined and quantified. It is not unrest in the sense of a transition, unrest in respect to something external. Rather it is the inner unrest, which exists in itself and from itself. (Perhaps Plato had exactly this in mind, if not explicitly, when he defined the soul as to auto heauto kinún.) Since this ―movement‖ is entirely interior, any moment of life is a ―stirring‖ (which must not be identified with ―act‖, action or performance of the I; for here we deal with that which is the most fundamental, the very essence of the I.‘ (AJP 3000/176, p. 4.) iv
In his postwar lectures on Plato, Patočka writes: ‗Philosophy was for him [Plato], as for Socrates, originally the question concerning the highest purpose of human life, the purpose that man cannot formulate positively and that he can see clearly only through conflict with non-philosophy, i.e., with all life-principles pretending to resolve the fundamental questions of human life while not being able to do so. In taking distance from and by unmasking this semblance and pretension, philosophy emerges as the discovery of truthful existence through the negation of negation, i.e., as the negation of the distracted and only apparent existence, not by construing another life-project next to those already existing, but by bridging and surpassing those already existing. I tried to show how, in some early works of Plato, the idea of philosophy as a conflict with non-philosophy, with nontruthfulness, non-existence, non-fullness of human life is developed into a sort of phenomenology of man‘s relationship to truth, if ‗phenomenology‘ is taken partly in modern, partly in the Hegelian sense.‘ 1992/13, p. 289. See also UE, p. 46.
v
Note that, just as in 1936/2, Patočka describes this most proper human possibility as liberation from what is individual (to which humans are bound through the previous two movements). Cf. 1980/2, p. 245: ‗What matters is not to encounter, in life, something that can be discovered through our comportment open to the existent [jsoucno], but rather not to allow all these possibilities and their urge to cover what is essential, namely the possibility to cope with the basic option of our existence: either to dissolve our being in the individual and lose ourselves in it or to realize our own proper disposition. In the first two movements, the character of life, its universality, its relationship to being binds me to an individual activity, to the performance of life-functions, to the existent [jsoucno], hence to the individual. In the third movement, it becomes apparent that I can open myself to being in a different manner, that I can modify this bond to the individual, that I can alter my relation to the whole.‘ Although both texts are separated by the symbolic thirty three years in the course of which Patočka‘s thought developed substantially, the basic intuition concerning the truthfulness of human existence seems to be quite similar.
vi
1980/3, p. 268. This text, besides corroborating the claim that the question of truthful human existence is the fundamental theme of Patočka´s thought, explains why Patočka‘s phenomenological thought is so much oriented not just to Husserl
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but also to Heidegger. For according to Patočka, it was Heidegger who, by analyzing ‗the primordial, nonhuman within-the-world mode of being, discovered not ―objectivity‖, as it is still in Husserl, but ―availability‖ and ―accessibility‖. He was thus able to conceive the phenomenological problem of the world, and therefore also of the natural world, in a new way, philosophically more satisfactory, than Husserl‘s handling of the problem.‘ (1980/3, p. 221). Although the one-sidedness of Heidegger‘s conception must be overcome, any attempt at such an overcoming must, according to Patočka, take Heidegger‘s analysis of the world, worked out in Being and Time, as its starting point. For this reason, Patočka‘s conception of three movements of human existence is based not only on Heidegger‘s late philosophy of being (1980/3, pp. 222 f.), but also on his analysis of the world in Being and Time. In Přirozený svět a fenomenologie [The Natural World and Phenomenology] Patočka acknowledges that it was Heidegger who discovered the second and third movement of human existence (1980/3, p. 229). Patočka nevertheless modifies this discovery of Heidegger significantly, both by stressing the meaning of corporality for the realization of the movements and by changing the conception of the third movement. Without Heidegger‘s contribution, however, Patočka‘s doctrine is hardly imaginable. vii
In fact, if we think through the structural connections between the Socratic form of the care of the soul, the historicity of human existence, and Patočka‘s conception of the philosophy of history, we get very close to Patočka‘s much later claim that Europe was spiritually born from the care of the soul. For this claim follows quite naturally if we insert into the set of claims its last element, namely the conviction that it is in the European spiritual history in the broad sense, i.e., including also its ancient roots, that the history in its true sense, i.e., in the sense of the realization of man as a historical being, was realized. This conviction is explicitly stated only in Patočka‘s late texts. Now, if European spiritual history is conceived in that way and if at the same time Socrates is interpreted as ‗the discoverer of the historicity of human existence‘, the (Socratic) care of the soul becomes quite naturally the spiritual foundation of Europe. Thus the main presuppositions of Patočka‘s interpretation of the spiritual foundations of Europe, which are, however, never stated by him so explicitly as are stated here, are the following: (a) an interpretation of the historicity of human existence as the possibility of truthful human existence gained through a fundamental conversion of one‘s previous life; (b) an interpretation of the Socratic care of the soul as the life-program, by which for the first time in the world history the historicity in this sense is realized.
viii
See, for example, G. Reale‘s interpretation of wisdom and courage in Plato. According to Reale, wisdom is for Plato the knowledge of the Good on the basis of which just choices are made and on the bases of which what ought to be done is done conveniently. Similarly, courage is the ability to keep a firm fidelity, on the basis of the knowledge of the Good, to what ought to be done and what ought to be avoided in every situation. Thus according to Reale, both virtues are structurally connected to the Good in the sense that man can be wise or courageous, if and only if he possesses the knowledge of the Good. Patočka‘s interpretation of both
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virtues is, in a sense, contrary. For its foundation is not the knowledge of the Form of the Good (or of the One-Good) on the side of the virtuous agent, but rather the idea that the fundament of moral virtue is an incessant inquiry into the Good and thus a permanent cognitive absence of the Good on the side of the virtuous agent (the Good is never given as a positive content on which firm attitudes of the kind Reale speaks about are built). In other words: while, according to Patočka‘s interpretation, cardinal virtues in (Socrates and) Plato are based on the presupposition of a (definitive) impossibility to know the Good, according to Reale, they are based exactly on the opposite presupposition, namely on the ability to know the Good. ix
Cf. for example H. Krämer‘s remark on the subject: ‗The claim to correctness of the unitarian understanding of Plato‘s philosophy must be settled by making a series of distinctions. It is hardly likely that the dogmatic claim to a definitive correctness of the system was united with the claim that it was not in need of any revision; this much can be inferred from the dynamic concept of philosophy (love of wisdom taken in its strong sense), as well as from the divergence which was permitted in the Academy both with respect to Plato and with respect to each other. Nor was the claim made that the system exhausted all the matters of philosophical interest; the project was held to be rather elastic and flexible and was basically open to growth both as a whole and in its parts. The system can therefore be said to involve not a dogmatic but, rather, an heuristic stance which, on some matters, remained merely sketchy, and so an open system but certainly not an antisystem made up from fragments of theory not held together by precise connections. Rather, we must take full account of the totalizing tendency towards a coherent and consistent overall project. This is corroborated by the theory of the Principles, by the elaboration of the general concepts of the relations and functions, and also by the agreement of all the followers about the exact purpose of constructing a system. Therefore, in the evaluation of these questions we must be careful to distinguish two matters: the degree of coherence of a given doctrine and the degree of its cogency.‘ (Platone e i fondamenti della metafisica, pp. 177 ff., transl. R. Davies) K. Gaiser says something similar: ‗In describing this theory as systematic I mean that it was a wholesome amalgation, a universal synthesis, a synoptic and speculative gathering of all the specific knowledge acquired in all possible realms of reality. This description, however, does not mean it is a rigidly closed complex of propositions, scholastic and established once and for all. We find this sort of living and dynamic system today in the various sciences, which are open-minded as they try to represent reality in a way which is always and only hypothetical and dialectical; the same goes for ontology as a whole. The Platonic system … therefore does not exclude … ceaseless further development: even if its fundamental conception, like the nucleus of crystallization, remained unchanged for a long time, it was always possible to integrate new knowledge into the overall system.‘ (La metafisica della storia in Platone, pp. 192 f., transl. R. Davies)
x
The most thorough analyses of the relationship between the Democritean reduction of the doxis to aletheia and the Platonic reduction of the sensible being to the
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Forms and the first Principles is to be found in 1979/15. Patočka‘s interpretation can be summarized in the following four points: (a) Both in Plato and in Democritus, the ‗true reality‘, to which the phenomenal world is reduced, is interpreted as invisible, i.e., in principle not accessible to the senses. There are, however, two basic differences in the understanding of this ultimate ‗true reality‘. First, for Democritus, the invisible ‗true reality‘ is only of a mathematical (geometrical) nature. For Plato, it comprises also the hierarchically ordered intelligible Forms and the first Principles of the One-Good and the ‗Indefinite Dyad‘. Second, according to Democritus, the geometrical figures exist in time and space. For Plato, numbers and geometrical figures exist out of time and space (this holds true not just for the ‗Forms-Numbers‘ but also for the operational ‗mathematical numbers‘). (b) Democritus and Plato conceive the idea of the reduction in a similar way. For Democritus, aletheia is the necessary condition for the existence of doxis. For Plato, each higher level of reality is a necessary condition for the existence of the lower one. There is, however, a basic difference between both thinkers in respect to the idea of reduction. For Democritus, the reduction does not lead from this to ‗another‘ world, i.e., the true realities (geometric figures) also do exist in time and space. For Plato, the idea of the reduction leads to the discovery of purely intelligible realm of reality, outside of time and space. (c) In both authors, the geometrical figures are interpreted as real entities, not as mere abstractions. In Democritus, they are substances of the real world. For Plato, they are ideal realities outside of time and space. (d) Both conceptions, despite the differences, present a consequent and a unified reflection on life and on the whole of reality inspired by mathematical experience. In both cases, the reflection leads from the temporal to the eternal, from the ontologically conditioned to the unconditional.
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xi
‗Thus in the onto-cosmological image of reality, the care of the soul appears as the theory of movement, as the auto heauto kinún from Phaedrus. On the other hand, from this perspective, the care of the soul can be formulated even more precisely: the soul is what determines its own being—either in respect to its increase or in respect to its decrease and loss of being: the soul is the indicator of the arterial road of being‘ (1988/4, p. 131). Karfík (JPD, pp. 155-163) is right in pointing out that in the above mentioned passage Patočka tries to integrate the cosmological dimension of the doctrine of the self-movement of the soul in its anthropological context that, for Patočka, is essential. Thus in this passage, Patočka tries to bring his ‗existential‘ interpretation of the doctrine of the self-movement closer to the literal meaning of Plato‘s texts. In the earlier texts on the self-movement of the soul (1988/2, 1972/3), Patočka calls Plato‘s cosmology, based on the doctrine of the soul as self-movement, ‗fairy-tale physics‘ (fantastická fyzika) and discards it as an erroneous although partially understandable deviation of the originally anthropological doctrine. In the later text (1988/4)—as is evident from the passage mentioned above—he uses the onto-cosmological doctrine of the soul as selfmovement as a means to make better sense of the human taking care of oneself. In this later text, the onto-cosmological conception of the soul as the mediator between the two fundamental levels of reality is not discarded as ‗fairy-tale physics‘
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(fantastická fyzika). Rather, it is treated as a context that, although transcending the anthropological level, helps to specify the sense of the ‗anthropological phenomenon‘ of the care of the soul. Nonetheless, Karfík is correct in pointing out that this modification implies a certain ambiguity and, for this reason, cannot be seen as a successful integration of the cosmological dimension of the soul as selfmovement in the anthropological one. For Patočka says, on the one hand, that it is only within the onto-cosmological context that the nature of the soul as selfmovement can be understood. On the other hand, however, he interprets the being of the soul on the basis of the nature of the human soul, i.e., the soul as being originally in the fallen state that is to be overcome by forming itself into something internally solid. Thus in Patočka‘s interpretation, there is still missing a clear distinction between the mode of being and of movement proper to the human soul and the mode of being and movement proper to the soul of the universe which is discussed in Plato‘s Timaeus. According to Karfík, Patočka succeeds in liberating himself from this ambiguity only in the following passage from 1977/31: ‗The movement of the pure soul is based neither on this final life nor on the movement of the unifying care of the soul. Rather, it is vice versa: the movement of the pure presence of the eternal, the passing through the structure of the existing universe is possible without the inferior life in corporality. This is testified to by the divine life. Embodiment, to the contrary, is impossible without this movement. For although in the embodiment it is possible to disclose what is, it happens in the deficient manner; the essence of embodied life is therefore not autonomous.‘ Despite this break-through passage Patočka‘s overall interpretation of the soul (even in this article as a whole) is of existence struggling for its truthful being. xii
For the relationship between the Good and the highest Principles, see G. Reale, Toward a New Interpretation of Plato, pp. 167-169. Particularly important is the following passage from the Eudemian Ethics: ‗They ought in fact to demonstrate [the existence of] the good-itself in the opposite way to that in which they do now. As things are, beginning with objects not agreed to possess the good, they demonstrate what are agreed to be goods; starting with numbers, [they prove] that justice is good, and health, on the grounds that they are forms of order and numbers, good belonging to numbers and monads because the one is the gooditself. They ought to start with agreed [goods], such as health, strength, and temperance, [in order to show] that the fine is present even more in unchanging things. For all those things are [examples of] order and state of equilibrium; so if [they are good], those things must be even more so, as these properties belong even more to those things. Hazardous, too, is the demonstration that the one is the good-itself, on the grounds that the numbers seek it; for one thing, they do not say clearly how they desire it—they say it too baldly; and further, how could inclination be thought to be present in things that lack life?‘ (Eudemian Ethics, I,8,1218a15-28, transl. M. Woods)
xiii
Patočka interprets soul ‗existentially‗, i.e., as an originally ‗fallen‘ entity which ought to turn away from this fallen state and, by relating itself consciously to the
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Good, ‗intensifies‘ its being. He offers this interpretation in the above mentioned articles focused on Plato‘s doctrine of the soul‘s self-movement (1988/2, pp. 4557; 1972/3, pp. 735-748; 1988/3, pp. 58-79) and in 1988/4, from which stems the passage mentioned above on the relationship between the Good and soul. In one passage from 1977/31, Patočka overcomes this existential interpretation. He acknowledges there that the proper mode of being of the self-moving soul is the circular self-movement in the onto-cosmological sense. However, even in this article, with the exception of the passage just mentioned, the soul is interpreted ‗existentially‘. xiv
It seems that a certain specification of Patočka‘s claim is needed here. It is correct that (1) in Christianity, the relationship to God is not mediated by the relationship to cosmos or to polis and that (2) the relationship of a Christian to God has in respect to the relationship of the Ancient Greeks of the classical or Hellenistic period a new quality comprising the ‗immediacy to the Absolute‘. Nevertheless, also in (traditional) Christianity the relationship to God is mediated—by the community of the Church (sacraments, liturgy, etc.) For this reason, the Christian ‗immediacy to the Absolute‘, new and more interior as it is in respect to Antiquity, is, after all, a mediated immediacy.
xv
In this text, Patočka offers an interesting philosophical analysis of the fundamental metaphysical presuppositions of Christian faith. Christian faith, according to this analysis, presupposes the awareness of the contrast between the absolute Being and a contingent human being. The contrast takes the form of the eminent interest of the contingent human being to gain permanent being. The interest is awakened by (1) the awareness of the fact that human being can also be lost and (2) by the awareness of its original fallen nature. Faith, according to this analysis, is the feeling of the uncertainty about one‘s own being caused by being aware of the possibility to gain or to lose this being; it is the feeling that both enriches and gradates human existence.
xvi
Patočka mentions, explicitly, Seneca and Cicero (1975/5, p. 86). The Stoic care of the soul consisted, according to Patočka, in the idea of the education for the common good, for universality. It strives at the realization of the state of justice, of the state based on truth, on insight. Patočka does not offer a detailed description of this form of care of the soul. Nevertheless, he indicates its distinctness in respect to the Socratic-Platonic one. The classical Greek political doctrine investigates the features of the state in which the life in truth is possible. However, neither this investigation nor the striving for such an ideal state finds fulfillment in concrete political reality. In contrast to this, for Cicero, Platonic and Aristotelian thought is just ‗a means for strengthening the good conscience of the Roman civitas.‘ In other words: while the Greeks search in their philosophical reflection for the best form of state without a definitive result, Cicero‘s reflection is based on the practical certainty that the Roman civitas is such a state, since it is successful. Philosophy is thus degraded to a means of legitimization of one concrete, already existing state-establishment—the Roman Empire (1988/14, pp. 797-799).
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xvii
PE, p. 128; 1975/4, pp. 73 f. This claim of Patočka should be specified. It is true that the conceptual, i.e., purely rational, prise de conscience of this distinction, on which all metaphysics hinges, comes from Plato. Nonetheless, the theological conception of the transcendent God is also based on the biblical teaching on creation and on the idea of the radical otherness of the Creator in respect to all His creation. For this reason it seems that the distinction between the ‗two worlds‘ has its foundation not just in Plato, but also—in its own, less rationalistic way—in the Jewish religion. This is, however, a complex matter and I do not wish to go deeper into it here.
xviii
PE, p. 128. Patočka is, in some passages, inclined to reduce Christology to the ‗theandric myth‘, to which he then finds a parallel in the Platonic ‗myth of Socrates‘. The origin of this tendency is his ‗demythologizing‘ approach to Christian dogma. In this respect, Patočka was probably influenced by R. Bultmann‘s theology. For the exact form of this influence, see Patočka‘s review of R. Bultmann‘s book Das Urchristentum im Rahmen der antiken Religionen (1952/2). For the hypothesis of the influence of Bultmann‘s New Testament theology on Patočka‘s tendency to ‗demythologize‘ Christianity, see UE, pp. 30 f. To the ‗theandric myth‘ cf. Frogneux, ‗Le mythe de Socrate comme germe de l‘Europe‘, pp. 16-19.
xix
Already in 1992/10, Patočka, besides interpretation of the world as ‗transcendental horizon‘, employs Heidegger‘s account of the world as the ‚being-in-theworld‗. M. Petříček observes rightly that this fact ‗creates in his work a tension which cannot be removed without a fundamental revision of transcendental phenomenology‘ (M. Petříček, ‗Patočkův filosofický project‘ [Patočka‘s Philosophical Project], p. 277). One might add to this that Patočka tries to answer the question regarding human freedom with help of basic concepts of Heidegger‘s Daseinsanalyse as early as in 1934/2. In the same article, he also tries to connect Husserl‘s and Heidegger‘s concept of the world (1934/2, pp. 41-45). On the basis of his study of the Strahov-Nachlass, Karfík also arrives at the conclusion that, already in this early stage of his thought Patočka uses Husserl‘s phenomenology only as a means for a solution of the problem of modern times and for the elaboration of the theory of subjectivity and objectivity of whose limits he is, at the time, fully aware (Karfík, ‗Jan Patočkas Strahov-Nachlass und sein unvollendetes opus grande‘, p. 52).
xx
For Patočka, Husserl‘s transcendental phenomenology is also a philosophy based on the modern understanding of the subject. For this reason, Husserl‘s Crisis of the European Sciences, while going in the right direction by trying to find a deeper understanding of rationality than positivism, nevertheless, ultimately, fails. For it is not able to liberate itself from the modern understanding of the subject as absolute and self-enclosed. Cf. 1988/16, pp. 40-42. Therefore, Patočka requires a more radical reorientation than the one offered by Husserl‘s transcendental phenomenology.
xxi
In 1988/4 Patočka claims that, until the beginning of modernity, both sides of the European principle were in balance. In 1975/5, he says that this period was marked
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by the spiritual style of the care of the soul. From this we can draw the conclusion that, for the late Patočka, the spiritual style of the care of the soul is a historically concrete form of the spiritual life in which both sides of the European principle are in balance. This interpretation is in agreement with Patočka‘s analysis of the care of the soul in Plato, presented above, in which he stresses that the knowledge of the universe is just one moment of this care of the soul, while the other two moments, the political and the eschatological one, are not less important. All three moments are mutually interconnected and build together the proper fundament of all European spiritual life. Patočka writes: ‗The present period is chaotic. It is characterized by a collapse of educational, political, and social structures. Yet, it opens up the possibility of a communion of workers, whose most proper interest is the freedom from exploitation by the incompetent, the freedom of the spirit that is aware of the solidarity of all areas of spiritual work. This communion would enforce the common interest as if it were its own. The intelligentsia as a decisive mass in the mass-era: isn‘t this a spark of hope in the otherwise dark epoch?‘ (1970/11, p. 14) In 1988/16, Patočka is more cautious: ‗While, in capitalist countries, the classical proletariat with its modest demands on life turned away from its original requirements, in the socialist block we see opening the possibility of the communion of workers whose most proper interest is to appreciate its freedom from the incompetent guardianship as well as to come to know the solidarity of all spiritual spheres. In one word: a communion for which reason, work, interest, and reality is not divided by a hiatus. This is, nota bene, a mere opportunity that we see filter through the tangle of today‘s actions, movements, quarrels. It is a mere possibility with big questionmarks and perhaps even with contradictions. For, would the intelligentsia as a decisive mass in the mass-era still retain its character of intelligentsia? And if not, which other mass could enkindle the hope that the mass-character of the present era can be overcome? I mean overcome by reason which, as active grasping, questioning, and answering, is the only remedy for anonymity and passivity.‘ (1988/16, p. 35)
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xxii
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Bibliography Patočka’s works1 1934/2 Několik poznámek k pojmům dějin a dějepisu [Some Comments Concerning the Concepts of History and Historiography], in: Péče o duši I [Care of the Soul I], p. 35-45. 1934/4 Několik poznámek o mimosvětské a světské pozici filosofie [Some Comments about the Extramundane and the Mundane Position of Philosophy], in: Péče o duši I [Care of the Soul I], p. 58-67. 1935/1 Několik poznámek o pojmu ‗světových dějin‘ [Some Comments Concerning the Concept of World History], in: Péče o duši I [Care of the Soul I], p. 47-57. 1936/2 Der Geist und die zwei Grundschichten der Intentionalität, in: Die Bewegung der menschlichen Existenz, str. 33-42. 1936/5 O dvojím pojetí smyslu filosofie [Two Conceptions of the Meaning of Philosophy], in: Péče o duši I [Care of the Soul I], p. 68-84.
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1942/1 Dvojí rozum a příroda v německém osvícenství. Herderovská studie [Two Senses of Reason and Nature in the German Enlightenment], in: Umění a čas I [Art and Time I], str. 81-99. 1949/3 Remarques sur le problème de Socrate, in: Revue philosophique de la France et de l' étranger, 74, 1949, str. 186–213. ssssssssssssssssssssssssss 1
In agreement with the Bibliography of The Jan Patočka Archive (http://www.ajp. cuni.cz/biblio.html), Patočka‘s works are ordered according to the year and the serial number of their publication. Only works cited in this book are included in the list. Whenever possible, the English translations of the original Czech titles of Patočka‘s works are taken from: Jan Patočkas Bibliography, in: Kohák, E. Jan Patočka. Philosophy and Selected Writings. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1993. Only Czech titles are translated into English.
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BIBLIOGRAPHY
1952/2 Bultmann, R., Das Urchristentum im Rahmen der antiken Religionen (book review), in: Křesťanská revue, 19, 1952, p. 311–315. 1964/1 Aristoteles, jeho předchůdci a dědicové. Studie z dějin filosofie od Aristotela k Hegelovi [Aristotle: His Forerunners and His Heirs], Prague: Nakl. ČSAV, 1964. 1965/2 O Burckhardtově pojetí renesance [Burckhardt‘s Conception of the Renaissance], in: Umění a čas I [Art and Time I], p. 190-203. 1968/7 Max Scheler. Pokus celkové charakteristiky [The Philosophy of Max Scheler], in: M. Scheler, Místo člověka v kosmu, Prague: Academia, 1968, p. 5-41. 1969/3 Inteligence a opozice [The Intelligentsia and Opposition], in: Češi I [On Czechs I], p. 233-249. 1969/8 Co je existence? [What is Existence?], in: Filosofický časopis, 17, 1969, p. 682-702. 1970/3 Komenský a otevřená duše [Comenius and the Open Soul], in: Komeniologické studie II [Studies on Comenius II], p. 337-351. 1970/11 Duchovní základy života v naší době [The Spiritual Foundations of Life in our Time], in: Péče o duši II [Care of the Soul II], p. 9-28.
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1971/4 Německá duchovnost Beethovenovy doby [German Spirituality in Beethoven‘s Time], in: Umění a čas I [Art and Time I], p. 468-488. 1972/3 Nejstarší systematika nauky o duši [The Most Ancient Taxonomy of the Doctrine of the Soul], in: Péče o duši III [Care of the Soul III], p. 735748. 1977/31 Původ a smysl myšlenky nesmrtelnosti u Platóna [The Origin and the Sense of the Idea of Immortaility in Plato], in: Péče o duši II [Care of the Soul II], p. 370-382. 1979/15 Démokritos a Platón jako zakladatelé metafyziky [Democritus and Plato: the Two Founders of Metaphysics], in: Péče o duši II [Care of the Soul II], p. 356-369. 1980/2 ‗Přirozený svět‘ v meditaci svého autora po třiatřiceti letech [‗Natural World‘ in the Meditations of its Author after Thirty-three Years], in:
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BIBLIOGRAPHY
Přirozený svět jako filosofický problém [The Natural World as a Philosophical Problem], Prague: Československý spisovatel, 1992, p. 169-251. 1980/3 Autorův doslov k francouzskému vydání díla ‗Přirozený svět jako filosofický problem‘ [Author‘s Epilogue to the French Edition of ‗The Natural World as a Philosophical Problem‘], Czech trasl. I. Santar – I. Chvatík, in: Přirozený svět jako filosofický problém [The Natural World as a Philosophical Problem], Prague: Československý spisovatel, 1992, p. 252-268. 1986/3 Zamyšlení nad Evropou [A Meditation on Europe], in: Péče o duši III [Care of the Soul III], p. 257-262. 1987/4 Negativní platonismus. O vzniku, problematice, zániku metafyziky a otázce, zda filosofie může žít i po ní [Negative Platonism], in: Péče o duši I [Care of the Soul I], p. 303–336. 1987/11 Věčnost a dějinnost [Eternity and Historicity], in: Péče o duši I [Care of the Soul I], p. 139-242. 1987/12 Nadcivilizace a její vnitřní konflikt [Supercivilization and its Internal Conflict], in: Péče o duši I [Care of the Soul I], p. 234-302. 1988/2 Počátky systematické psychologie [The Beginnings of Systematic Psychology], in: Péče o duši II [Care of the Soul II], p. 45-57. 1988/3 O duši u Platóna [Plato‘s Psychology], in: Péče o duši II [Care of the Soul II], p. 58-79.
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1988/4 Evropa a doba poevropská [Europe and the Post-European Period], in: Péče o duši II [Care of the Soul II], p. 80-148. 1988/14 Impérium [Empire], in: Péče o duši III [Care of the Soul III], p. 797-799. 1988/16 Doba poevropská a její duchovní problémy [The Post-European Period and its Spiritual Problems], in: Péče o duši II [Care of the Soul II], p. 29-44. 1988/33 Evropa a její dědictví [Europe and its Heritage], in: Péče o duši III [Care of the Soul III], p. 241-256. 1989/3 Komenský a mathesis universalis [Commenius and mathesis universalis], in: Češi II [On Czechs II], p. 193-211.
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1991/2 Die Bewegung der menschlichen Existenz, ed. K. Nellen – J. Němec – J. Šrubař, Stuttgart: Klett-Cotta, 1991. 1991/7 Sókratés. Přednášky z antické filosofie [Socrates. Lectures on Ancient Philosophy], Prague: Státní pedagogické nakladatelství, 1991. 1992/10 Přirozený svět jako filosofický problém [The Natural World as a Philosophical Problem], Prague: Československý spisovatel, 1992. 1992/13 Platón. Přednášky z antické filosofie [Plato. Lectures on Ancient Philosophy], Prague: Státní pedagogické nakladatelství, 1992. 1995/8 Tělo, společenství, jazyk, svět [Body, Community, Language, World], ed. J. Polívka, Prague: Oikoymenh, 1995. 1996/1 Nejstarší řecká filosofie [Pre-Socratic Philosophy], ed. I. Chvatík – P. Kouba, Prague: Vyšehrad, 1996. 1996/2 Péče o duši I. Soubor statí a přednášek o postavení člověka ve světě a v dějinách [Care of the Soul I. Collected Writings Concerning the Human Condition and History], 1st ed. Chvatík – P. Kouba, Prague: Oikoymenh, 1996 (Sebrané spisy Jana Patočky, 1). 1996/3 Filosofie dějin [Philosophy of History], in: Péče o duši I [Care of the Soul I], p. 339-352.
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1998/6 Komeniologické studie II. Soubor textů o J. A. Komenském [Studies on Comenius II], ed. V. Schifferová, Prague: Oikoymenh, 1998 (Sebrané spisy Jana Patočky, 10). 1999/1 Jan Patočka. Texte – Dokumente – Bibliographie, ed. L. Hagedorn – H. R. Sepp, Prague – Freiburg i. Br. 1999. 1999/6 Péče o duši II. Soubor statí a přednášek o postavení člověka ve světě a v dějinách [Care of the Soul II. Collected Writings Concerning the Human Condition and History], 1st ed. Chvatík – P. Kouba, Prague: Oikoymenh, 1999 (Sebrané spisy Jana Patočky, 2). 2001/2 Renesance: Ficinus, Pico, Pomponatius [The Renaissance: Ficino, Pico, Pomponatius], ed. F. Karfík – C. Říha, in: Kritický sborník, 20, 2000– 2001, p. 160-203. 2001/3 Dopisy Václavu Richterovi [Letters to Václav Richter], ed. I. Chvatík – J. Michálek, Prague: Oikoymenh, 2001 (Sebrané spisy Jana Patočky, 20).
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2002/1 Péče o duši III. Soubor statí a přednášek o postavení člověka ve světě a v dějinách [Care of the Soul III. Collected Writings Concerning the Human Condition and History], 1st ed. Chvatík – P. Kouba, Prague: Oikoymenh, 2002 (Sebrané spisy Jana Patočky, 3). 2004/1 Umění a čas I. Soubor statí, přednášek a poznámek k problémům umění [Art and Time I. Collected Writings Concerning Philosophical Problems of the Arts], ed. D. Vojtěch – I. Chvatík, Prague: Oikoymenh, 2004 (Sebrané spisy Jana Patočky, 4). 2004/2 Umění a čas II. Soubor statí, přednášek a poznámek k problémům umění [Art and Time II. Collected Writings Concerning Philosophical Problems of the Arts], ed. D. Vojtěch – I. Chvatík, Prague: Oikoymenh, 2004 (Sebrané spisy Jana Patočky, 5). 2006/Wege Andere Wege in die Moderne. Studien zur Europäischen Ideengeschichte von der Renaissance bis zur Romantik, ed. L. Hagedorn, Würzburg: Königshausen&Neumann, 2006. 2006/Češi I, Češi I. Soubor textů k českému myšlení a českým dějinám: práce nepublikované [On Czechs I. A Collection of Texts on Czech History and Czech Philosophy: Unpublished Writings], ed. K. Palek – I. Chvatík, Prague: Oikoymenh, 2006 (Sebrané spisy Jana Patočky, 12).
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2006/Češi II, Češi II. Soubor textů k českému myšlení a českým dějinám [On Czechs II. A Collection of Texts on Czech History and Czech Philosophy], ed. K. Palek – I. Chvatík, Prague: Oikoymenh, 2006 (Sebrané spisy Jana Patočky, 13). 2007/SPh Studia phaenomenologica. Romanian Journal for Phenomenology, VII: Jan Patočka and the European Heritage, Bucharest 2007.
Unpublished manuscripts (Selection only) AJP VIII. Úkoly, které si může klásti fenomenologická teorie subjektivity... [VIII. Tasks for a Phenomenological Theory of Subjectivity ], in: The Jan Patočka Archive (= AJP), sg. 3000/307 (Strahovská pozůstalost). AJP Nepředmětné a zpředmětnitelné nitro [Not Objectified and To-BeObjectified Interiors], in: AJP, sg. 3000/106 (Strahovská pozůstalost).
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Nitro a duch/Nitro, čas, svět [The Interior and the Spirit/The Interior, Time, World], in: AJP, sg. 3000/176 (Strahovská pozůstalost) Platón. Přednáškový cyklus na FF UK v Praze ve škol. r. 1971–1972 [Plato. Lectures at the Philosophical Faculty of the Charles University, Prague, 1971-1972], in: AJP, sg. 3000/080. AJP Studie k pojmu světa I, in: AJP, sg. 3000/202 (Strahovská pozůstalost). AJP Studie k pojmu světa II [Studies on the Concept of the World II], in: AJP, sg. 3000/203 (Strahovská pozůstalost). Svět a předmětnost [World and Objects], in: AJP, sg. 3000/179 (Strahovská pozůstalost).
English Translations of Patočka’s Works cited in this book Heretical Essays in the Philosophy of History. Translated by E. Kohák. Chicago and La Salle: Open Court, 1996. Plato and Europe. Translated by P. Lom. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2002.
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‗Two Senses of Reason and Nature in the German Enlightenment‘ In Kohák, E. Jan Patočka. Philosophy and Selected Writings. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1993, p. 157-174. ‗Negative Platonism: Reflections Concerning the Rise, the Scope, and the Demise of Metaphysics—and Whether Philosophy Can Survive It‘ In Kohák, E. Jan Patočka. Philosophy and Selected Writings. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1993, p. 175-206. ‗The Danger of Technicization in Science according to E. Husserl and the Essence of Technology as Danger according to M. Heidegger‘ In Kohák, E. Jan Patočka. Philosophy and Selected Writings. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1993, p. 327-339.
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Abbreviations Patočka, J. Heretical Essays in the Philosophy of History. Translated by E. Kohák. Chicago and La Salle: Open Court, 1996.
PE
Patočka, J. Plato and Europe. Translated by P. Lom. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2002.
UE
Karfík, F. Unendlichwerden durch die Endlichkeit. Würzburg: Königshausen& Neumann, 2008.
JPD
Karfík, F. ‗Jan Patočkas Deutung der Platonischen Bestimmung der Seele als Selbstbewegung‘ In: Listy filologické 66 (1993), p. 128-168.
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HE
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Other works Aristotle. Eudemian Ethics. Translated with a commentary by Michael Woods. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2005. Barraclough. G. An Introduction to Contemporary History. London: Penguin, 1990. Barbaras, R. L‘ouverture du monde. Lecture de Jan Patočka. Les Éditions de La Transparence, 2011. Burckhardt, J. The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy. London: Penguin, 1990. Cajthaml, M. Analyse und Kritik des Relativismus. Heidelberg: C. Winter, 2003. Frogneux, N. ‗Le mythe de Socrate comme germe de l‘Europe‘, Revue Philosophique de Louvain 109 (2011), pp. 7-25. Gadamer, H.-G. ‗Philosophische Bemerkungen zum Problem der Intelligenz.‘ In Der Nervenarzt 35 (1964), pp. 281-286. Gaiser, K. La metafisica della storia in Platone. Milano: Vita e Pensiero, 1988. Gigon, O. Sokrates. Sein Bild in Dichtung und Geschichte. Bern 1947.
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Hagedorn L. and H.R. Sepp (ed.), Andere Wege in die Moderne. Forschungsbeiträge zu Patočkas Genealogie der Neuzeit. Würzburg: Königshausen& Neumann, 2006. Hagedorn L. ‗―Bewegung‖ als Leitmotiv von Patočkas Ideengeschichte‘. In L. Hagedorn and H. R. Sepp (ed.) Andere Wege in die Moderne (Würzburg: Königshausen& Neumann, 2006), pp. 14-18. Heidegger, M. Being and Time. Translated by John Macquarrie and Edward Robinson. Oxford: Blackwell Publishing, 1962. Hildebrand, D. von. Transformtion in Christ. New Hampshire: Sophia Institute Press, 1989. Hladký, V. Změnit sám sebe [Changing Oneself]. Červený Kostelec: Pavel Mervart, 2010.
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Homer The Odyssey. Translated by Walter Shewring. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1980. Chvatík, I. ‗Kacířství Jana Patočky v úvahách o krizi Evropy.‘ [The Heresy in Jan Patočka‘s Reflections on the Crisis of Europe]. In Reflexe 16 (1996), pp. 4,1- 4,12. Chvatík, I. ‗Patočkovy studie o Masarykovi a problém sokratovského humanismu.‘ [Patočka‘s Studies on Masaryk and the Problem of Socratic Humanism] In Ješič and M., Leško V. (ed.) Patočka a grécka filozofia (Košice: Univerzita Pavla Jozefa Šafárika v Košiciach), 2013, p. 289-318. Karfík, F. ‗Nad prvním svazkem Patočkových spisů.‘ [Remarks on the First Volume of Patočka‘s Collected Works]. In Kritický sborník 3 (1996–1997), pp. 21-29. Karfík, F. ‗Duše evropská a poevropská.‘ [European and Post-European Soul]. In Kritický sborník 19 (1999–2000), pp. 164-179. Karfík, F. ‗Jan Patočkas Deutung der Platonischen Bestimmung der Seele als Selbstbewegung.‘ In Listy filologické 66 (1993), pp. 128-168. Karfík, F. ‗Jan Patočkas Strahov-Nachlass und sein unvollendetes opus grande.‘ In L. Hagedorn, H. R. Sepp (ed.) Andere Wege in die Moderne (Würzburg: Königshausen& Neumann), 2006, pp. 31-63. Karfík, F. Unendlichwerden durch die Endlichkeit. Würzburg: Königshausen& Neumann, 2008.
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Kenny, A. Aristotle‘s Theory of the Will. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1979. Kierkegaard, S. Philosophical Fragments. Translated by D. Swenson, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1974. Kohák, E. Jan Patočka. Philosophy and Selected Writings. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1993. Krämer, H. Platone e i fondamenti della metafisica. Saggio sulla teoria degli principi e sulle dottrine non scritte di Platone con una raccolta degli documenti fondamentali in edizione bilingue e bibliografia. Milan: Vita e Pensiero, 1982. Margolis, J. The Truth About Relativism. Oxford: Blackwell, 1991.
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Moural, J. ‗The Question of the Core of Patočka‘s Work.‘ In: Reports of the Center for Theoretical Study, CTS-99-05 (Prague 1999). Morin, E. Europa Denken. New York-Frankfurt/M.: Campus, 1991. Pfänder, A. Logik. Tübingen: Max Niemayer, 1963. Plato Complete Works. Ed. by J. M. Cooper, Indianapolis/Cambridge: Hackett, 1997. Petříček, M. ‗Jan Patočka a myšlenka přirozeného světa.‘ [Jan Patočka and the Question of the Natural World] In Filosofický Časopis 38 (1990), pp. 2243. Petříček, M. ‗Patočkův filosofický projekt.‘ [Patočka‘s Philosophical Project] In: J. Patočka, Přirozený svět jako filosofický problém [The Natural World as a Philosophical Problem], (Prague: Československý spisovatel, 1992), pp. 269-280. Ratzinger, J. Europe Today and Tomorrow. San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2007. Reale, G. Toward a New Interpretation of Plato. Translated by R. Davies and J.R. Catan. Washington: Catholic University of America Press, 1997. Reale, G. and S. Scolnicov, S. (ed.) New Images of Plato. Dialogues on the Ida of the Good. Sankt Augustin: Academia Verlag, 2002.
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Rezek, P. ‗Ţivotní pohyb pravdy a ţivot v pravdě u Jana Patočky.‘ [LifeMovement of Truth and Living in Truth According to Jan Patočka], In: Rezek, P. Filosofie a politika kýče (Prague: Oikoymenh, 1991), pp. 63-78. Ritter, M. ‗Historicko-systematický rámec Patočkova negativního platonismu‘ [Historical and Systematic Framework of Patočka‘s Negative Platonism] In Ješič, M. and V. Leško (ed.) Patočka a grécka filozofia (Košice: Univerzita Pavla Jozefa Šafárika v Košiciach), 2013, pp. 243-265. Scheler, M. ‗The Nature of Philosophy and the Moral Preconditions of Philosophical Knowledge.‘ In: Scheler, M. On the Eternal in Man. Translated by B. Noble. (New Brunswick, New Jersey: Transaction Publishers, 2010), pp. 69-104.
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Scheler, M. Formalism in Ethics and Non-Formal Ethics of Values: a New Attempt Toward the Foundation of an Ethical Personalism. Translated by M. S. Frings and R. L. Funk. Evanston, Ill.: Northwestern University Press, 1973. Szlezák, Th. ‗Die Idee des Guten als arche in Platons Politeia.‘ In: Reale, G. and S. Scolnicov, (ed.) New Images of Plato. Dialogues on the Idea of the Good (St. Augustin: Academia Verlag, 2002), pp. 49-68. Szlezák, Th. Platon und die Schriftlichkeit der Philosophie. Interpretationen zu den frühen und mittleren Dialogen. Berlin/New York: de Gruyter, 1985. Szlezák, Th. Das Bild des Dialektikers in Platons späten Dialogen. Platon und die Schriftlichkeit der Philosophie. II. Berlin/New York: de Gruyter, 2004. Tava, F. Il rischio della libertà. Etica, fenomenologia, politica in Jan Patočka. Milano: Mimesis, 2013.
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Vietta, S. Europäische Kulturgeschichte: eine Einführung. erweiterte Studienausgabe. Paderborn: Wilhelm Fink, 2007.
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