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Presentation of new books by Karel Novotný and James Dodd on the work of Jan Patočka

The Faculty of Humanities kindly invites you to the presentation of two book titles on the work of the Czech philosopher Jan Patočka. The presentation will take place on Wednesday, October 4 at the Academic Conference Centre at 5 pm. The event is organized by the Department of Contemporary Continental Philosophy of the Institute of Philosophy of the CAS and the Central European Institute of Philosophy, directed by Karel Novotný.

Annotation: Život a svět: Fenomenologie Jana Patočky by Karel Novotný

The interpretation of selected parts of Jan Patočka's work concerning the fundamental question of the relationship between life and the world, as posed from the point of view of phenomenological philosophy, is confronted in this book with some post-classical conceptions, both from Patočka's contemporaries and his contemporary interpreters. In all parts of the book, it is mainly the texts preserved in the estate that come into play, whose commentary accompanies and puts into a new light the interpretation of the works that Patočka himself published. The author devotes a great deal of space to that part of the so-called wartime manuscripts which concerns the philosophy of the interior and its expression, and proceeds through reflections on space and the concepts of the 1960s lectures on corporeality to reflections on the need for an asubjective phenomenology and the idea of a pre-agency world. The book brings attention to these sources, hitherto less commented on in the literature, in a concentrated effort to provide a new perspective on the development of one part of Patočka's rich oeuvre, which he presents as an original version of the phenomenology of the natural world.

Annotation: The Heresies of Jan Patočka. Phenomenology, History, and Politics by James Dodd

Foregrounding the turbulent political and intellectual scene in Czechoslovakia following the Prague Spring in 1968, James Dodd explores the unity of philosophy, history, and politics in Jan Patočka’s life and legacy. Dodd presents Patočka as an essential philosopher of modern concepts—such as freedom, subjectivity, and history—and also as an interpreter of prominent thinkers such as Husserl and Heidegger. Dodd outlines the phenomenology that Patočka, as a late pupil of Husserl and Heidegger, crafted in response to the classical model before turning to his philosophy of history, which was oriented around the problem of Europe and the care for the soul. Finally, Dodd examines Patočka’s role as a dissident intellectual and one of the principal voices of the Charter 77 human rights movement until his death in March 1977. By situating Patočka’s thought in relation to classical phenomenology and to the political and historical conditions of Central Europe, Dodd illuminates the enduring impact of this key thinker of the twentieth century.

Photo: Northwest University Press