Wahrheit als Freiheit. James Mensch über das Verhältnis von Bewegung und Recht bei Patočka

In his book Patočka’s Asubjective Phenomenology: Toward a New Concept of Human Rights, published in 2016, James Mensch analyses Jan Patočka’s phenomenology of the movement of human existence, showing the extent to which Patočka follows European philosophical traditions, above all Aristotle, and interprets central concepts like movement, existence, essence, body and soul in a new way. Mensch explains that for Patočka, the care for the manifestations of existence in the context of its movements as the ontological framework for human rights will only be fulfilled under the condition that in the public space of mutual understanding, the rights of free speech and free exchange are guaranteed and the single existence can realise his or her explicit freedom that is at the same time always related to and dependent on the Other. This result lays the ground for further questions around the relationship of care and right within an intercultural context, in particular in regard to basic characteristics of law practices in the life-world of Australian Aborigines.