Erika Abrams - Jan Patočka and the Heritage of Phenomenology: Centenary Papers

Miroslav Petek 1

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Abstract

The concept of heresy in Patokas late texts is ambiguous and open to many interpretations. It could perhaps be explained in the context of phenomenology itself as a sort of drifting away from the original, Husserlian foundations towards a dynamic understanding of intentionality as including operative concepts, i.e., shadows, blind spots, irreducible non-evidences, in its complex dynamics. This then highlights the phenomenological mode of thinking as a development of the critical attitude ( qua care for the soul). Heresy means going beyond the limits of phenomenology as an act of fidelity and adherence to it.

In this short paper, I would like to take up the difficult task of recalling Jan Patokas work and intellectual activity as a whole, while at the same time not only commemorating, but proposing an interpretation that will link his work with present-day phenomenological philosophy. In other words, I shall attempt to resume his thoughts in order to renew his questions and problems in his own footsteps. The task is by no means easy, but Patoka himself has provided an important hint as concerns the practice of carrying on, inasmuch as one of his last works (developing impulses initially received from Husserls philosophy) bears the title Heretical Essays .

Hence my first and main question: what does heresy mean for Patoka, and what is heretical in his relation to phenomenology? What led him to this heresy, be it what it may?

Jan Patoka lived and worked in strange times and circumstances. Twice a university teacher, twice forced out of academe. To be sure, historical conditions cannot entirely explain his way of thinking, but they can perhaps help us to understand it. It is beyond me to provide a detailed description of the communist era in Czechoslovakia. Any account could be but partial and overly emotional. So Ill jump over this impassable obstacle with a short-cutting illustration.

When you watched television in those days and years, you ended up with tears in your eyes. Were those tears of laughter or deep despair? The answer is both. Such an odd experience is not something that can be passed on or shared. But that is the way things went, the way they were. It was a time that defies explaining not because it was too complicated but, rather, because it was totally stupid. On the other hand, it was the kind of situation where the saying philosophy as a way of life acquires its full meaning.

Jan Patoka called this particular coming together of life and philosophy care for the soul. But we shall perhaps better understand his way of thinking if we go back over the whole development that led him, in the end, to this concept of caring for the soul. It all began with his book dealing with the Lebenswelt , the life-world. But he was not long in expressing certain reservations with regard to Husserls conception of phenomenology and phenomenological method. According to Patoka, phenomenology cannot be identified with Husserls teachings. Moreover, what Husserl conceives of as phenomenology, i.e., the procedure of working back from ossified theses to the living wellsprings of experience, has always been part and parcel of philosophy that is why the course Patoka taught in his last year at Charles University was not called Introduction to Phenomenology, but rather the difference is revealing Introduction to Phenomenological Philosophy.

Of course, this was in no way an exceptional position, nothing that could justify describing Patokas version of phenomenological philosophy as a heresy. It is well know that many, perhaps nearly all of Husserls followers went on (later) to open up their own paths, which quite frequently led in very different directions. Such was, for example, the case of Martin Heidegger. I nonetheless believe Patokas path to be, to a certain extent, peculiar in its characteristic effort to remain as faithful as possible to Husserl. This is what makes Patoka open only to those Heideggerian suggestions which he can still construe as compatible with an enlarged version of Husserls phenomenology or phenomenological philosophy. In short, Patoka drifts away from Husserl in a process of broadening which has nothing to do with relinquishing or simply overcoming; rather, he attempts to enlarge both the scope and content of phenomenology. In this sense, his undertaking is much closer to Eugen Finks attempt at elaborating the inmost core of Husserls thought. I have here in mind first and foremost Finks lectures from the 1950s, Die intentionale Analyse und das Problem des spekulativen Denkens (1951) and Operative Begriffe in Husserls Phnomenologie (1957).

Phenomenology, says Fink, should be fundamentally anti-speculative, that is, free from prejudice; it should get at die Sachen selbst , reach all the way to the Lebenswelt , the life-world, and uncover the ultimate ground, where the thing itself appears as what it is in its Sich-Zeigen , its self-showing. This is both a requirement and an obligation, and to fulfill this requirement would mean the ultimate legitimation for phenomenology. Fink makes, however, a serious objection: there is no such thing as an an sich sprachfreie Sache , a thing entirely disengaged from language, and this realization brings with it a nachdenkliche Frage , making us doubt whether it is actually possible to get at the real origin without precedents, to start radically from the very beginning, radikal von vorn .

To anticipate a bit: we find a certain answer to these doubts in Patokas own philosophy in his concept of the first movement of existence, the movement of sinking roots, the instinctive-affective anchoring of our existence in the always already given world (this movement points to our embodiment), as well as in his reading of history as always already rooted in the pre-historical world.

Coming back briefly to Fink: if the pre-conceptual thing, the vor-begriffliche Sache , is a pre-judice, a pre-judgment in the sense of Vor-urteil , and if phenomenology always already includes an irreducible moment of speculation, how are we to understand the Sache selbst ?

Fink clarifies this speculative moment by distinguishing between thematic and operative concepts. The Sache selbst is what the thinker tries to grasp or, better, what is at issue for him in his thinking. To this purpose, in order to grasp the thing itself, he uses various thematic concepts which he creates in order to keep the thing in sight; at the same time, however, having in mind his theme, what really concerns him as his topic, he uses without being entirely aware of it all sorts of intellectual notions and schemata which never become explicit or thematic. These operative concepts are nonetheless what make it possible to bring the thing itself into sight in the first place. It is an act of a paradoxical sort: operative concepts are shadows, but precisely these shadows are the necessary medium of the phenomenological way of seeing. I quote: