Authors:Karel Novotný Pages: 1 - 21 Abstract: In his phenomenological works Jan Patočka increasingly referred to movement and lived/physical corporeality. He conceived the concept of the world in terms of the correlation of life with its milieu. In conjunction with Edmund Husserl’s late phenomenology of the lifeworld, he took lived corporeality as his starting point and guiding motif in a way that is parallel to Merleau-Ponty’s work. The article expresses an opinion, that it was also one of the reasons why he kept his distance from Eugen Fink’s philosophical cosmology. And still, it is Patočka’s reference to this cosmological project that has had, and keeps on having, an important impact on the recent reception of his work in France. PubDate: 2021-12-10 DOI: 10.5195/jffp.2021.989 Issue No:Vol. 29, No. 1-2 (2021)
Authors:Jakub Čapek Pages: 22 - 47 Abstract: In in the second half of the 1940s, Jan Patočka emphasized the essentially negative character of human existence. He thus found himself in the neighborhood of Sartre’s existentialism, Heidegger’s philosophy of being, and Hegel’s dialectic, and at the same time in opposition to schools of thought which either completely reject the substantive use of “the nothing,” such as Carnap’s positivism, or relativize it, like Bergson. It is the latter polemic, Patočka’s with Bergson, which is discussed in this article. The concept of negativity in Patočka basically refers to the idea that human existence is defined by a capacity to adopt a distance toward what is pre-given, be it the reality of the physical world or the established habits and rules of a particular society. Negativity qua distance has in Patočka an absolute character. It is this claim that he defends in his critique of Bergson. The article attempts to reconstruct Patočka’s position. I claim that the wager on absolute negativity does not make Patočka a nihilist, but a philosopher of a negative holism, and, in a sense, even a moralist. Above a reconstruction of Patočka’s stance, I spell out some reservations focused especially on the systematic meaning of Patočka’s recourse to negativity. I suggest that negation is an indispensable part of a more complex existential structure Patočka is aiming at. The terms he uses for this structure include “thirst for the absolute,” “thirst for reality,” “restlessness of the heart” and “desire.” To translate these allusions onto a general plan, it is useful to talk about the capacity to establish differences that matter. As general as it seems, this turn of phrase can grasp both Patočka’s emphasis on negativity, and his emphasis on the absolute, the latter – nevertheless – not residing in a distance from being, but in differences established, maintained and abandoned by ourselves within being. PubDate: 2021-12-10 DOI: 10.5195/jffp.2021.986 Issue No:Vol. 29, No. 1-2 (2021)
Authors:Jorge Nicolás Lucero Pages: 48 - 64 Abstract: Le travail cherche à rapprocher les réflexions philosophico-politiques de Jan Patočka et Jean-Luc Nancy à partir du sujet de la démocratie. En analysant la caractéristique «non-politique» de la pensée patočkienne, on soutient que le philosophe tchèque permet de penser un sens onto-phénoménologique pour la démocratie, appartenant à la nature humaine et notamment donné dans le troisième mouvement de l’existence. L’ontologie du singulier-pluriel de Nancy, pour sa part, reformule la différence entre l’être et l’étant par la voie de la distinction entre la politique et le politique, de façon à radicaliser l’idée de l’être-avec et définir la démocratie, non selon un forme de gouvernement, mais comme la vérité de la communauté. Dans le deux cas (l’un implicite, l’autre explicite), ce concept de démocratie, qui sape les fondements métaphysiques et politiques plus traditionnels, posera à l’être-en-commun au cœur de toute enquête philosophique et comprendra son essence comme protestation. PubDate: 2021-12-10 DOI: 10.5195/jffp.2021.981 Issue No:Vol. 29, No. 1-2 (2021)
Authors:Maria Cristina Clorinda Vendra Pages: 65 - 86 Abstract: Paul Ricœur and Jan Patočka are considered among the most important phenomenologists of the 20th century. As with Ricœur, Patočka’s philosophy is shaped by an enduring critical confrontation with Husserl’s phenomenology and Heidegger’s phenomenological analyses of Dasein. The present paper aims at analyzing Ricœur’s and Patočka’s convergences and mutual inspirations in their perspectives on the topic of history. More precisely, I will take up the question of the meaning of history in Ricœur and Patočka as profoundly influenced by their readings of Husserl’s Krisis. Then, the attention will be turned to Ricœur’s concept of historicity and Patočka’s notion of care of the soul as concerns involved in the search for meaning in history as an open-ended mediation. In this context, I will discuss Ricœur’s and Patočka’s critical examination of Heidegger’s conception of thrownness (Geworfenheit) and projection (Entwerfen), that is, Dasein’s already-being-in-the-world and its disclosedness, as necessary concepts for understanding their own philosophical approaches to history. PubDate: 2021-12-10 DOI: 10.5195/jffp.2021.988 Issue No:Vol. 29, No. 1-2 (2021)
Authors:Steven Nemes Pages: 87 - 108 Abstract: The purpose of the present essay is to exposit and interpret the principal contours of the phenomenology of Christianity proposed by Michel Henry in dialog with his theological critics. Against the claims commonly made about him, Henry is not a Gnostic of any sort: neither a monist, nor a dualist, nor a pantheist, nor a denier of faith, nor a world- or creation-denier or anything of the sort. He rather proposes a form of “life-idealism” according to which (i) life is the foundation of the possibility of the world, (ii) life assumes a visible, external representation (viz., the empirical body) in its activities in the world, and (iii) the meaning of the world is that it is the arena in which life pursues the goal of its own perfection and growth. Interpreted in this light, his thought is not Gnostic. PubDate: 2021-12-10 DOI: 10.5195/jffp.2021.969 Issue No:Vol. 29, No. 1-2 (2021)
Authors:Rik Peters Pages: 109 - 129 Abstract: Interpreters of Michel Foucault's 1966 Les mots et les choses have often conflated the terms 'episteme' and 'historical a priori'. This article suggests that the two terms are entirely separate: while 'episteme' refers to the configuration of thought in a given historical period, 'historical a priori' refers to the conditions of unity for a certain field of science within a given period. In his use of the term 'historical a priori', Foucault is thus much closer to Husserl than has hitherto been appreciated. Keeping the two terms separated also sheds new light on the archaeological method that Foucault uses, showing that there is a procedure to get from an archive of texts to the reconstruction of an episteme. PubDate: 2021-12-10 DOI: 10.5195/jffp.2021.963 Issue No:Vol. 29, No. 1-2 (2021)
Authors:James Kelly Pages: 130 - 147 Abstract: Cet article examine, à partir de la philosophie du temps de Gilles Deleuze, la problématique de la faille entre l’être humain et le monde naturel décrite par Pierre Montebello dans son livre L'autre métaphysique. L’article présente la métaphysique deleuzienne comme une continuation de la lignée philosophique qui est tracée par Montebello. Il explore comment la philosophie du temps de Deleuze nous sert à penser les paysages – y compris ses habitants humains – non pas en termes d’espace ou d’étendue mais dans une perspective temporelle et ce, à travers l’identification d’ensembles de processus temporels qui capturent certaines de leurs caractéristiques. Cette lecture « chronopédique » révèle les paysages comme compositions de rythmes à différentes échelles : des processus géologiques qui durent des millions d’années jusqu’à d’autres, beaucoup plus courts, comme celui de l’habitation humaine. Tout en proposant une nouvelle perspective sur le temps deleuzien, en le libérant des termes humains auxquels il est exposé, cette lecture nous fournit une base métaphysique puissante pour penser le dépassement de la bifurcation entre le monde humain et la nature. PubDate: 2021-12-10 DOI: 10.5195/jffp.2021.965 Issue No:Vol. 29, No. 1-2 (2021)
Authors:Danny Roussel Pages: 148 - 168 Abstract: Jean-Luc Nancy élabore, depuis quelques années, une philosophie première où le concept d’« être-avec » occupe une place centrale. Celui-ci a suscité son lot d'interprétations. Une des critiques faite à l’encontre du concept est articulée selon l’angle éthique, plus particulièrement en ce qui a trait à la pluralité. En effet, en amalgamant « être » et « avec », Nancy annihilerait, comme Heidegger, la nécessaire pluralité de la vie en commun. C’est ce débat que nous voulons ici commenter. Nous commencerons en explicitant le concept d’être-avec chez Nancy. Dans un deuxième temps, nous développerons les arguments de ceux qui reprochent à Nancy de ne pas avoir réussi à faire droit à la pluralité. Pour nous aider à y voir plus clair, nous utiliserons les travaux de Franco Volpi et de Jacques Taminiaux qui ont analysé les causes de ce déni heideggérien de la pluralité. Nous présenterons leur investigation dans la troisième section. Enfin, nous montrerons que l’être-avec nancéen, bien loin de dénier la pluralité, lui donne toute son ampleur PubDate: 2021-12-10 DOI: 10.5195/jffp.2021.966 Issue No:Vol. 29, No. 1-2 (2021)
Authors:Ian Alexander Moore, Barbara Wahl Pages: 169 - 172 Abstract: Cette lettre, publiée ici pour la première fois en français, dans sa version originale, a été envoyée par Jean Wahl à Martin Heidegger le 12 décembre 1937. Elle répond à une lettre que Heidegger avait écrite à Wahl une semaine plus tôt au sujet des thèses de Wahl dans la célèbre conférence « Subjectivité et transcendance ».[1] Dans cette conférence, qui a été décrite comme « un tournant dans l’histoire intellectuelle du XXe siècle »,[2] Wahl s’interrogeait, entre autres, sur la mesure dans laquelle la philosophie pouvait fournir une théorie générale des intuitions d’existences particulières telles que Kierkegaard ou Nietzsche. En d’autres termes, une philosophie de l’existence était-elle possible, ou ces existences elles-mêmes n’étaient-elles pas « à la fois plus ‘existentielles’ et plus vraiment philosophiques que les philosophies de l’existence »'[3] Dans sa réponse, Heidegger déclarait que sa propre pensée ne pouvait être qualifiée de philosophie de l’existence, car elle ne s’occupait de l’être humain que dans la mesure où celui-ci pouvait éclairer l’être lui-même (das Sein). Wahl, cependant, n’était pas convaincu, et dans la lettre publiée ici, il défend à la fois sa décision d’appeler Heidegger un philosophe de l’existence et propose plusieurs objections à la manière dont Heidegger essaie de répondre à la question de l’être. PubDate: 2021-12-10 DOI: 10.5195/jffp.2021.993 Issue No:Vol. 29, No. 1-2 (2021)
Authors:Ian Alexander Moore, Barbara Wahl Pages: 173 - 181 Abstract: A translation of selected correspondence between Jean Wahl and Karl Jaspers on Descartes and Kierkegaard. PubDate: 2021-12-10 DOI: 10.5195/jffp.2021.956 Issue No:Vol. 29, No. 1-2 (2021)
Authors:Arnaud François Pages: 182 - 185 Abstract: This is an English translation of the French editor's preface to The Evolution of the Problem of Freedom, which is the first course Bergson taught as the chair in the “History of Modern Philosophy” at the Collège de France. PubDate: 2021-12-10 DOI: 10.5195/jffp.2021.953 Issue No:Vol. 29, No. 1-2 (2021)
Authors:Jakub Votroubek Pages: 193 - 197 Abstract: A review of Martin Ritter, Into the World: The Movement of Patočka’s Phenomenology (Cham, Switzerland: Springer, 2019). PubDate: 2021-12-10 DOI: 10.5195/jffp.2021.991 Issue No:Vol. 29, No. 1-2 (2021)
Authors:Jason K. Day Pages: 198 - 202 Abstract: Merleau-Ponty and Contemporary Philosophy is an ambitious collected volume of fourteen chapters, accompanied by an epilogue by Jean-Luc Nancy, in which current Merleau-Ponty scholars together aim to demonstrate the urgent relevance of Merleau-Ponty to contemporary philosophy across a range of fields including ontology, epistemology, anthropology, embodiment, animality, politics, language, aesthetics, and art. Divided into four thematic sections, namely, “Legacies”, “Mind and Nature”, “Politics, Power, and Institution” and “Art and Aesthetics”, this collected volume provides a rich resource for Merleau-Ponty scholars who are interested in novel applications and understudied aspects of his thought. It also opens up Merleau-Ponty’s oeuvre to the general reader, presenting many possible entry-ways into the diversity of his work. In my review of Merleau-Ponty and Contemporary Philosophy, I suggest that each of its thematic sections could have been the subject of a separate volume themselves, and that the volume would then perhaps have not suffered from a number of poorly developed lines of argumentation. But I consider that the inclusion of all these thematically diverse sections in a single volume nonetheless presents a forceful display of the wide-ranging relevance of Merleau-Ponty’s work to contemporary philosophy. PubDate: 2021-12-10 DOI: 10.5195/jffp.2021.984 Issue No:Vol. 29, No. 1-2 (2021)
Authors:Duncan R. Cordry Pages: 203 - 209 Abstract: The following paper serves as a review of a recent compilation of essays by Leonard Harris (edited by Lee A. McBride III), addressing the reimagining of philosophy contained therein and engaging a handful of views borne by this unique philosophical conception from a Deleuzo-Guattarian perspective, focusing on a few of the strategic merits and challenges faced by a potential alliance between these thinkers. PubDate: 2021-12-10 DOI: 10.5195/jffp.2021.992 Issue No:Vol. 29, No. 1-2 (2021)
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