Central and East European
Society for Phenomenology

Conference | Paper

Jan Patočka Critique of Husserl's Life World and Phenomenology of Corporeity

Marie Sassine

Wednesday 4 September 2024

14:00 - 14:40

TU-Main Venue

It can be said that of Patočka that he is Husserl’s direct heir, and much of his work is in close dialogue and reflection on Husserl’s legacy. One significant area of divergence, however, between Patočka and Husserl is their view of the natural world, or the Lebenswelt. For Patočka, transcendental subjectivity encountering a pristine natural world, a life-world of pure evidence unencumbered by history, is a philosophical dream. Phenomenology was to be rooted in the primary evidence of the life-world, one founded in a return to the things in themselves. But it is precisely this supposed accessibility of an originary world that troubled Patočka. He came to believe that it was impossible to arrive at a purely ‘unconstructed world’. Husserl’s epochē and how it brings forth phenomenon as phenomenon remains a crucial step for him, and his approach seeks to deepen Husserl’s insight to show the transformative power of the freedom revealed by the epochē.

 

For Patočka, the epochē reveals a basic material constancy, but also and mainly lights up the problematicity of manifestation, of a world appearing to a creature who sees it as a totality. The notion of ‘world’, however, seemed to him a fundamental concept in defining a truthful and historical life in a community. But even though he criticizes the possibility of a pristine natural world, he does not reject the notion of ‘world’ but, rather, enlarges it beyond the scope of reflection or perception. He insists on the primacy of our corporeal existence. Having a body compels us first and foremost to act in our world. And as we act, we change our world. We live in a world altered by human action and we, in turn, continue to add our own constructs and creations. As actors, the important question for us is how to orient our action.