Patočka’s criticism of Husserl: transcendental subjectivity to the world as a transcendental

Abstract

Jan Patočka developed an original phenomenological research in spite of adverse circumstances. He underwent a profound evolution. If at first his theses were very close to Husserl’s Ideas, at the end of his life his position was notably different of his master’s. For the Czech philosopher, Husserl was right to speak about a transcendental sphere but was wrong to take it as an entity or pre-entity of subjective nature. On the contrary, a consequent use of epokhe enables us to get to the true transcendental sphere. This sphere is the “world” as the universal structure of appearing as such. Consequently, Patočka diverges from Husserl but he keeps the idea of a transcendental phenomenology (though “a-subjective”). Furthermore, Patočka thinks that Husserl mistook the realisation of appearing in each particular subject with the pure sphere of appearance. According to Patočka, then, Husserl’s Phenomenology would not have been transcendental enough.