Jan Patočka, Body, Community, Language, World Division II

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1 Monday Three Phenomenologies: 1. Scheler and the Münich school naïve ontological phenomenology a. Phenomenological Experience, cf. Formalism, 50f 2. Husserl transcendental phenomenology a. Philosophy of reflection, cf. BCLW, p. 95 (top) and then p. 83f 3. Heidegger (first phase Being and Time) existential phenomenology a. Primacy of practice Cf. Sein und Zeit, 12. b. non-objectifying access to the being that is always mine i. Cf. BCLW 96. c. See also Scheler, Formalism, p.387 & p. 483f (Verstehen) The problem of reflection: Problem of access to that which is, in principle, nonobjectival, cf. 84. o "going beyond Husserl with the help of a Husserlian motif" o Cf. 95 middle of page "the mode by which our original inmost being is accessible to us " o P. 104 "we do not observe our life" "A more original mode of approaching the world than objectification" (p. 106) o A new mode of doing phenomenology "not at one stroke, as in the phenomenological reduction, as in the epoché" o "a reflective kernel" Making radical the distinction between the original and the non-original Something analogous to the structure of reflection "The possibility of a will to be responsible is rooted in this trait of life, that life relates to itself. This being responsible means doing explicitly something that already life itself makes possible. Being that relates to its own being is at the same time unlocked for itself in some sense. The possibility of reflection is rooted in this openness." (101) o Heidegger has no answer to the problem of the non-phenomenal, the me on, origin of existence "isn't transcendental philosophy trying to step over its own shadow?" (101) Wednesday Notion of Horizon Background o Thus real or ideal being points as transcendent being points to "possibilities of verification <which refer> ultimately to making evident and having as evident. 1 Any particular being, in other words, points to a horizon of possible evidences evinced in an only predelineated fashion as the object is genuinely perceived, i.e., as the object is there, itself, before me in the flesh. As Husserl says, the system of evidences pertaining to particular object of a real objective world, i.e., external experience, remains always imperfect; for the object never presents itself entirely before consciousness. Perfect evidence A dialectic of the given and the not-given o phenomenological world - "the permanent horizon of all my cogitations and as a dimension in relation to which I am constantly situating myself" (Merleau-Ponty, PP, xiv) 1 Husserl. Cartesian Meditations III, P a g e

2 (PP) The world as typic. As style. As individual. The world shows itself in profiles but is not posited by a synthesis of understanding. The transition synthesis. 377b / 327b / 381b World as permanent being Unity of being as typic, a style Horizon of all horizons Patočka's critique of horizon o "Husserl sees the horizon, too, primarily contemplatively, there to be seen, as the explicability of the implied, the possibility of ever further explication" (BCLW, 115) Husserl regards reflection (naively) as pure contemplation (110) Hence the concept of the "transcendental onlooker" Heideggerian conception of pragmata o Practical significance in a context of meaning o Understanding as the practical grasping of meaningfulness, i.e., the how of their suitability o World as referential meaning structure "With that we introduce into the phenomenal sphere that distinctive mode of functional understanding which is a part of practical dealing with things, an overview which understands the interrelations of one pragmata with another and so, indirectly, also the whole of such relations, the original world." (116) Significance of a thing (Merleau-Ponty PP) o Unity of a thing suggests unity of a body and correlated form of behavior "A form of behavior outlines a certain manner of treating the world. In the same way, in the interaction of things, each one is characterized by a kind of a priori to which it remains fainthful in all its encounters with the outside world." (372) Given in the flesh Perception is a communion Union of subject and world o The thing is a 'unity of value' Present to me practically Situational Structuring of Understanding the spatium of life Triple structure of in-der-welt-sein, BCLW p. 128 o I am ahead of myself (as project) o I am set somewhere, always already somewhere (thrown being) o As thrown project, I encounter things, intraworldly existents "Being of Dasein as Care" "Now we ask, does not this understanding, structured as care, presuppose something else, prior to itself? Is care as such autonomous? Especially considering that the world is given to us through the senses. Are these not already meanings of a higher order, a derivative, meaning-bestowing layer?" (BCLW, 129) o Befindlichkeit disposition Fear Anxiety o "Self-understanding is linked to Dasein's being always on the way (underwegs) from somewhere to somewhere, that it is dwelling between. Dasein is movement." (BCLW, 132) Heidegger is leaving something out (BCLW, 133) 2 P a g e

3 "In Heidegger, the entire human life with its relations is primordially given in selfunderstanding and in understanding which is inevitable partnership with life as its necessary context. Heidegger underlays the world of knowledge with a world of understanding. Life is a life of understanding. What, though, if there is a a more elementary ground still the world as the empathy of a kind, as a sympathy. Cf. Merleau-Ponty This is, as Merleau-Ponty says on page 400, the deeper function without which perceived objects would lack the distinctive sign of reality. It is the momentum which carries us beyond subjectivity, which gives us our place in the world prior to any science and any verification, through a kind of 'faith' or 'primary opinion.' (400) To put it another way, as he does a few lines down, this is the originary opening of the "antepredicative world." Fundamentally, this is a Husserlian insight. However, we see two modifications by Merleau-Ponty here neither of which is fundamental alien to Husserl's deeper investigations into this 'phenomenon.' First, this primal opinion, the deeper function, is a momentum that carries into the world, i.e., into reality. As a momentum, it is fundamentally temporal in character. Second, Urdoxa is the very basis of his account of intersubjectivity. We can see this on page 414: My <adult> awareness of constructing an objective truth would never provide me with anything more than an objective truth for me, and my greatest attempt at impartiality would never enable me to prevail over my subjectivity (as Descartes so well expresses it by the hypothesis of the malignant demon), if I had not, underlying my judgments, the primordial certainty of being in contact with being itself, if, before any voluntary adoption of a position I were not already situated in an intersubjective world, and if science too were not upheld by this basic δοχα. (414) It is precisely to this fundamental origination of the worldliness of world that Merleau-Ponty points at the end of chapter four. (Top of page 425) Friday "what is reflection, and how is it possible?" (101) Our theme, but one central theme in Patočka's work Husserl's transcendental phenomenology A philosophy of reflection o "Husserl does understand consciousness as a series of acts, but acts always pertaining to or relating to an object. Objectification constitutes the firm structure of consciousness; the fixation onto an object is the primordial basis of knowing. The objective guide for analysis is the primordial model of phenomenological work. Consciousness has fundamental an objectival structure. If we can show a clarity that is in principle nonobjectival, and if all objectival, objectifying clarity, all modalities of this objectification are rooted in it, then we have gone beyond Husserl with the help of a Husserlian motif. (italics mine, 85) "the crux of phenomenology lies precisely here, in the quest for a way to that originality" (174) 3 P a g e

4 o "For Husserl, philosopher's responsibility consists in saying only what is and what is accessible in the original, what presents itself to his gaze.... Husserl's criterion of a philosophical truth, the requirement of responsibility based on reflection, on reflection Is not enough." (102) "the question of the absolute reflection which once more transforms our personal, that is, finite lived experience into an absolute object which is there only for observation, an absolute one, to be sure, grasping in absolute completeness, adequacy, originality but objectifying nonetheless. Reflection transforms a living and live life into a contemplating and contemplated one." (174) This critique harkens back to Scheler o The phenomenological reduction asserts an abstraction to the acts of consciousness o Acts are not objects Only in inner perception do they become objective o Husserl's philosophy conceals concrete personality Patočka on Husserl's Cartesianism o "In Husserl conception (of phenomenology) we sought to show modern Cartesianism in its most extreme and most sophisticated form." (174) o "A philosophy (such as Descartes') founded on ego cogito cogitatum, on self-knowing consciousness, comes to grief on my situatedness in the world.... We need to delve beneath this layer of the impersonal and bring out the originary personal experience." (172) Heidegger and Aristotle and situated existence "Heidegger was perhaps the first to pose the question of the origin of consciousness, not in the sense of natural causes (that belongs to psychology, biology), but in principle, in the sense of the ontological conditions of the possibility of clarity concerning the world." (85) o "At the very protofoundation of consciousness, of thought, of the subject, there is acting, not mere seeing." (96) Our life is a realization of possibilities Need for a radicalization of Aristotle's conception of movement "For Aristotle, life is movement from start to finish." (154) o Movement is "transformation, as possibilities being realized." (145) o Rejection of Aristotle's starting point: "movement presupposes an unmoved object (substrate, a changeless something) as the ontological foundation of unity for its unfolding" "our life, our existential movement, takes place in a polyphony of three voices" (148) o Falleness "Heidegger does not deny coporeity, he does not deny that we are also objectively among objects, but he does not analyze it further, does not recognize it as the foundation of our life which it is. Following Merleau-Ponty's analysis, we showed that the ongoing self-integration into the world, which makes us spatial and in space, takes place by means of our subjective corporeity which is horizontal, manifesting itself as corporeity in the strongest sense of the word." 176) Patočka's unique articulation of the distinctive triple structure descriptive of being in the world (148f) 4 P a g e

5 1. The movement of sinking roots, of anchoring an instinctive-affective movement of our existence A movement shared, "manifest in our dependence on an other who provides us with safety, with warmth, it is manifest in attachment, protection, sympathy." (149) Related to our primordial past Shaped also by a distinctive self-concealment "life in this sphere is determined by all manner of contingencies (150) 2. The movement of self-sustenance, of self-projection the movement of our coming to terms with the reality we handle, a movement carried out in the region of human work The suppression of instinctual life for purposeful maintenance of life The sphere of meaning Vita Activa (Arendt) Related to our primodial present Shaped also by a distinctive mode of inautheticity A sphere bond to a situation of conflict, of suffering, of guilt A realm of the average, of anonymity, of social roles 3. The movement of existence in the narrower sense of the world which typically seeks to bestow a global closure and meaning on the regions and rhythms of the first and second movement "an attempt to breakthrough our earthliness," "shaking the dominance of the Earth," Buddhism (160) Christianity Related to our primordial future A relation to world as such "On the basis of their coporeity humans are not only the beings of distance but also the beings of proximity, rooted beings, not only innerworldly beings but also beings in the world." (178) 5 P a g e