The Movement of Transcending of ‘Bare’ Life Towards the Political. From Husserl to Patočka

This paper addresses the topic of life in the philosophy of Jan Patočka, specifically in its intertwining with, on the one hand, the one of finitude and, on the other, the dimension of the political. This topic is taken into consideration focusing on two perspectives: first, the relation between ‘bare’ life as prolongation of itself and life as existentially meaningful; second, the relation between individual life and the broader dimension into which individual life may be integrated. Patočka’s reflections are approached starting out from partly similar thoughts found in Husserl’s meditation. This paper attempts to point out the parallels between Husserl’s and Patočka’s position, as well as the aspects which differentiate them. The main textual points of reference for tracing this comparison are the following: for Husserl, besides the first Kaizo article and some related passages on the political, especially the Vienna lecture The Crisis of European Humanity and Philosophy; for Patočka, especially the Heretical Essays in the Philosophy of History, in addition to the text Supercivilization and its inner conflict. In the case of Husserl, the transcendence of finite everyday interests leads towards an integration of life into ‘life’ as a transcendental, intersubjective dimension and movement. In such context, the political is to be conceived starting from the rational teleology of this movement. For Patočka, it is rather the confrontation with problematicity and finitude that opens up the possibility of a movement which, leading beyond the prolongation of life, can integrate the assumption of mortality with the opening of an authentic political dimension – and this in a thinking of finitude and of the political which focuses in a more radical way on the original event of shaking, crisis, and transformation.