Within the Czech philosophical tradition, phenomenology gradually gained a place. It aimed simultaneously at the achievement of an absolutely certain and verifiable knowledge through its apriorism and at constituting an interpretation of the whole and an approach to the world. Beginning from a primitive grasp of phenomenology Czech philosophers proceeded to a better comprehension of its nature and methodology, to attempts to establish its theoretical-cognitive limits. The roots of its interpretative possibilities for understanding the world and life were examined and the premises were created whereby phenomenology, a discipline which concentrates on the phenomenal aspects of reality, could be grasped as such. In this way Czech philosophy maintained a critical distance from phenomenology, as well as a quite high level of comprehension.

In any attempt to determine the place of phenomenology in Czech philosophical life it is, of course, necessary to take into account the temporal coincidence of the main streams of Czech philosophy with developing phases in phenomenology. From the outset, phenomenology constituted a structured whole, with more or less shifting internal boundaries; by European standards it was a differentiated movement with markedly distinct approaches.

According to Husserl, its founder, phenomenology was to provide a way in which philosophy could be realized in the context of the actual state of science; phenomenology itself should have become a scientific philosophy with a certain approach to scientific character. However, the clash of phenomenology with the form of understanding reality (being) which characterized modern science, led Husserl to create a philosophical program, which basically revised the understanding of how the modern status of science served humanity and led to an understanding of nature and its conditions. This led to the gradual development of the phenomenological method. The origin of this discipline arose from within the streams of European philosophy, from Cartesianism as much as from Kantian philosophy. These render comprehensible the logic of Husserl's work, his phrasing and choice of paths, his transitions, ruptures and crucial changes of interest, and his introduction of an element of historicity into the final phase of his work.

THE ORIGINS OF PHENOMENOLOGY:

EDMUND HUSSERL AND HIS TIMES

In an attempt to find the roots of knowledge, Husserl formulated the imperative "to the things themselves!", i.e. to that which is given as direct evidence. This meant a sharp rejection of any positivist ideal of science, while retaining the descriptive-psychological methods. This was done in Husserl's celebrated "Logical Investigations", in which he identified the Czech mathematician and logician, Bernard Bolzano, as "the greatest logician of all times". At the same time he laid the basis for a critical resolution of questions regarding the relationships between psychology, phenomenology and linguistics. This was done through clashes with Prague University's professor Anton Marty, the founder of the philosophy of language in the Czech lands.

After elaborating the idea of "pure logic" (understandable to a significant degree through Husserl's links to Bolzano), it was as if, in a single block of time, an important correction to the original logical investigation was carried out. The first explanation of the idea of phenomenology as a basic a priori theory of knowledge was given, and, in preparing the first edition of Ideas Pertaining to a Pure Phenomenology and a Phenomenological Philosophy, a stage of so-called transcendental idealism, the notion of pure phenomenology, was formulated.

Edmund Husserl, a native of Prostjov in Moravia, began his scientific career as a mathematician. His dissertation was concerned with variable numbers, and his doctorate was on the notion of number. In 1891 his Philosophie der Arithmetik (whose psychology was criticized by Frege) appeared and further essays on logical calculus and psychological studies for elementary logic followed.

Towards the end of his life, Husserl embarked upon a grand lecture tour, linked with a deepening elaboration of phenomenological themes. In Paris he led phenomenology to a purely egological level through his meditations on the Cartesian model and laid the basis for a theory of intersubjectivity. He also led French philosophical thinking towards a creative grasp of the idea of intentionality. In 1935 he lectured in Prague on Crisis of the European Sciences and Transcendental Phenomenology. This had crucial significance for some aspects of the new approach due to its interest in regaining the forgotten natural foundations of knowledge. In a period of tense international relations, he reached out to the critical situation of European humanity.

Husserl's reputation was established by his Logical Investigations, which was prompted by his effort to provide a "logical foundation for an objective theory of knowledge"; it was the construction of a "pure theory of diversity" which could serve as a basis for the whole system of sciences. This work was not without response in the Czech academic world. It was reviewed almost immediately after its appearance for its problems responded to a great interest on the part of Czech philosophers and paved the way for a better understanding of phenomenology.

Czech philosophy at the time of the first reception of phenomenology also represented a structured whole. The first and foremost was Emanuel Rádl, one of the most significant of the Czech philosophers and a proponent of intuitive realism, who chaired the Eighth International Philosophy Conference in Prague in 1934. He was sympathetic to Husserl and phenomenology. According to Rádl, Czechoslovakia had two basic trends in philosophy; on the one hand, Masaryk's realism and, on the other hand, positivism.

Masaryk and Husserl enjoyed a long personal friendship. In an earlier chapter it was noted that they met in Leipzig and how Masaryk influenced Husserl's return to philosophy and his journey to Vienna to meet Brentano. Their relationship on the level of philosophy can be understood only through the position of Brentano's philosophy and its basic status in the Austrian empirical tradition.⁽¹²⁷⁾ These facts, which have significant theoretical importance, are documented in a series of studies by Czech philosophers on the origins of Masaryk's philosophy and its links to Viennese sources, above all to the philosophy of Franz Brentano as teacher of both Husserl and Masaryk.

J. L. Fischer traced Brentano's anti-Kantian viewpoint,⁽¹²⁸⁾ thereby providing one of the most important motives for the anti-phenomenological arguments from the pens of Czech philosopher. He also traced the relationship of Brentano to Comte, concluding that Brentano had deviated from the principles of positivism. The force of his argument led to the frequently repeated opinion that Brentano led Masaryk towards positivism, resulting not only in the special features of Czech positivism, but also in several features such as its realism. But Fischer documents that on the theoretical level he did not find in Masaryk either Bretano's realism or his methodological principle of evidence. It would seem, therefore, that Masaryk never reached the philosophical level of Brentano.

As a representative of "clear optimistic theism" Brentano influenced Masaryk's religico-ethical principles, but for his philosophy Masaryk was forced to look elsewhere for his various empirical principles.⁽¹²⁹⁾ It has already been pointed out that the most productive group of positivist philosophers in Czechoslovakia were centered around the journal eská mysl (Czech Thought), whose moving spirit was Frantiek Krejí. Emanuel Rádl valued Krejí's philosophy as an integration of positivist elements in a special Czech system in which high value was placed on applying philosophy to everyday life. Krejí's philosophy as a whole responded to the tradition in Czech philosophy of progressing soberly, empirically and non-speculatively--in contrast to the systems of German idealistic philosophy from Kant to Hegel.

Frantiek Krejí's criticism of phenomenology can be divided into two chronological periods. At first he was quite limited by what was actually accessible to him of Husserl's work, but nonetheless he expressed himself on the problem of evidence. Krejí thought that the problem of the evidence of certain judgements can be explained "psychologically from empiricism"; therefore he criticized Husserl's construction of "pure logic" in his Logical Investigations as an irrelevant and merely illusory victory over psychologism. In his opinion, which otherwise does not differ from the common framework of evaluations of Husserl, phenomenology remains psychology, albeit of an empirical nature. However, based on his special receptivity towards the methodological postulates applied in Husserl's celebrated arguments against psychologism Krejí voiced the singular opinion that, in spite of the aforementioned limitations in the high theoretical pretensions of Husserl's phenomenology, in his struggle against psychologism Husserl entered into Hegelianism and, thanks to him, "Hegel again stepped to the forefront of philosophical interest".⁽¹³⁰⁾

In 1931 Krejí made a second attempt to come to terms with the so-called Gegenstandsphilosophie from the point of view of his own parallelist phenomenology. In his "Reflections on Modern Czech Philosophy",⁽¹³¹⁾ by using positivism, he attempted to construct a framework with which it would be possible to judge "the new-fangeled tendency to establish ontology and epistemology as specialized independent sciences". He came out against the epistemological subjectivism, ontological realism and scientific idealism which marked Husserl's phenomenology, which he saw as desperately complicating problems of being and knowledge with its concept of consciousness. Krejí correctly sees Husserl's apriorism as in philosophical tension with the destructive skepticism of positivism, but he rejects the attempt to overcome skepticism by a Kantian line of thinking. In his reflections on Husserl's concept of the given, he comes back to the opinion that phenomenology belongs "under the principle of the basic propositions of a biologically oriented psychology that mental actions are the realized reactions of the psychophysical individual".

The best Czech philosophers of the 1930s took the understanding of phenomenology to a new level. For that group, Husserl's phenomenology was seen as an attempt to get beyond the "natural positivity of life and science" and build a completely new theory of experience and knowledge. Thus, it became on Czech soil a weapon against the application of the movement of positive philosophy in modern logic. This movement maintained a strong position above all in Prague's German University, where Rudolf Carnap and P. Frank were active, whence it influenced Vienna and the so-called Wiener Kreis.

It is important to note these circumstances, because aspects of logical positivism (which, though criticized in Czechoslovakia, to a lesser degree were also accepted) led to the creation, by those who had a deeper understanding of phenomenology and its methods, of a special variant of the anthropological approach of Heidegger and of existential philosophy in general. This was a period when the tendency toward the construction of epistemology as an independent discipline had been fulfilled by at least a few Czech philosophers, partly as a consequence of their leaning towards Kantianism and neo-Kantianism. In connection with this, the demand for a unity of the ethical and theoretical elements of the Kantian spirit--"the primacy of practical reason over theoretical"--was subsequently used as an argument against Husserl's "phenomenological idealism" with its theoretic-cognitive limits. Only a much higher level of the critical approach permitted the preeminence of activity and praxis, characteristic of the development of European philosophy since Kant, to contribute the most important historico-philosophical consequences for the almost completed system of phenomenology, including the relationship of Husserl's philosophy to Heidegger.

With clear critical distance, we can suppose that Josef Tvrdý did not by chance work his way to an understanding of the meaning of phenomenology in his Logics (1937). Similarly it was surely not a chance consideration that led to his choice of themes for his Paris contribution in the Congress on Descartes in 1937: "Descartes and Czechoslovak Thought" where he highlighted the relationship of Bolzano to Descartes among others.

His logical framework enabled Tvrdý to give system to his opinion on phenomenology, specifically its theories of judgements, concepts and categories, while simultaneously defining the logical principles or character of science and its basic propositions. His view originated from his interest in the relations between science and philosophy. This forms the background of his evaluation of Husserl's logic as "the purest form of metaphysical tendencies epistemologically and logically" and his tracing its roots to the Bolzano school. He argues that Husserl did not distinguish between epistemology and logic. Tvrdý considered the phenomenological method as metaphysical--actually as metaphysical psychology--which, from a logical point of view, is nothing more than pure hypothesis; rationalized intuition, according to him, should play no part in science. It should be emphasized that there was a progression in Tvrdý's understanding of Husserl's work, as is evident from his widely repeated opinion about the contradiction between the objectives of the phenomenological program and its real achievements. "Nobody has so misused the concept of evidence as has Husserl, securing for him all kinds of metaphysical presuppositions on which he proceeds to build his logic."⁽¹³²⁾ Likewise, in Husserl's concept of abstraction, he sees a clear danger, and reproaches him for his preference for the ideal sciences.

What we have termed the breach by phenomenology of the structure of Czech philosophical life is in our opinion supported by two important factors. The first one concerns Husserl's origins; he was born to a Jewish family in Prostjov in Moravia, and received his secondary education in that region, which then belonged to the Austro-Hungarian Empire. This made possible many personal relationships and contacts, among them his relationship to Masaryk, facilitated by Brentano's role in the Austrian philosophical tradition. The second factor is that it is useful to trace the theoretical progress of Husserl's phenomenology in philosophy, which at that time in this region was basically German. Thus, a whole series of problems comes to the fore, whose roots would otherwise have remained hidden or would scarcely have been traceable. To these problems belong: Husserl's concept of sensuality, including the phenomenological resolution of the relation of reason to direct experience; corporeality; the role of so-called kinesthetic feelings in the constitution of space and the concept of movement; and, finally, the phenomenological approach to the problems of matter, to which Husserl devoted special attention in a broader context. Further questions become apparent, for example: the problem of time and temporality, the problem of the given and of the absolute self-given, in other words, problems of evidence which, as we have seen, were always in the foreground of interest. Ernst Mácha (twice elected rector) was the uncontested founder of the Prague school of the psychology of the senses; Carl Stumpf, Brentano's student and the teacher of Husserl, wrote the first volume of his Tonpsychologie in Prague; the discoverer of the so-called "shape quality", Christian von Ehrenfels, professor at Prague University until 1932, had links to the Brentanian school in Graz. Among others we have already named Anton Marty, who, by means of his linguistic philosophy, had reopened the question of Husserl's relation to Bolzano. All this can aid in understanding Husserl's phenomenology from the subjective point of view, although obviously the question of the two traditions as a special problem of Czech-German relations remains open (and not only on the philosophical level).

An historic point in the process of understanding Husserl's phenomenology in Czechoslovakia was reached in 1934 with the convening of the 8th Philosophical Congress in Prague, and with the founding of the Czech-German Cercle philosophique de Prague pour les researches sur l'entendement humain, which named Husserl an honorary member. This group arose with the aim of the "intensifying scientific work" as a result of various stimuli from the Congress itself and on the initiative of Prague philosophy professors, Emil Utitz and J.B. Kozák. The activities of the circle were characterized by an impressive seriousness of approach to phenomenological philosophy. Its members organized discussion seminars at the university for a narrow circle of erudite philosophers. As far as the domestic philosophical tradition is concerned, they referred back to Jan Amos Komenský, Bernard Bolzano and T.G. Masaryk; their methodology originated from a thorough study of the concrete by means of strict analysis after the manner of Husserl.

Due to the initiative of the Cercle and other philosophical societies, Husserl gave his lecture cycle "die er dann zu einer eigenslichen Krisis-Arbeit erweiterte".⁽¹³³⁾ Documents showing the real number of Husserl's lectures as compared with what he had planned allow one to see his choice of themes and the singular circumstances of his stay in Prague. Husserl's lectures were aimed at several philosophical groups and met with deep philosophical interest. Husserl gave seminars on aesthetics, even in the "Cercle Linguistique de Prague", which shows the decisive relationship of the tradition of the Prague structural school to phenomenology.⁽¹³⁴⁾

The Cercle's first publication appeared in Liebert's journal, Philosophia, Vol 1 (Beograd, 1936), and consists of a series of essays among which the first and the second part of Husserl's The Crisis of the European Sciences can be found. All the essays are connected by the unifying idea of investigating the essence of mind. It began with an explanation of the essence of mind as a transcendental project and by a parallel paper addressing this problem. In Emil Utitz's article, "Geist als Gerechtigkeit", the starting point is characteristically complemented and widened, because "we have in mind not only pure thought but also, for example, behavior". Jan Patoka, by then the secretary of the Cercle, in an essay about dual intentionality, pronounced against narrowing concepts and declared his opinion that the essence of mind was objectifying active intentionality and that a mental act was at the same time to be understood as a personal act. In this concept of intentionality, the approach leaned towards the conviction that "the concept of mind and its task in the whole of life is not only of theoretical concern", a thought to which the author later devoted much attention.⁽¹³⁵⁾

To the wider spectrum of the Cercle's activities in the 1930s belong the attempts to preserve Husserl's manuscripts and their preparation for publication, which "had to be completed".⁽¹³⁶⁾ The Prague edition of Husserl's Erfahrung und Urteil stands as a lasting monument to the cooperation on Husserl's works. It was published in 1939 by Academia thanks to the efforts of the German secretary of the Cercle, Ludwig Landgrebe.⁽¹³⁷⁾

In 1936, the same year that Husserl's Crisis of the European Sciences appeared, Patoka's work The Natural World as a Philosophical Problem was published. Its author attempted to exploit philosophically Husserl's concept of the "Lebenswelt" (the life world) and to demonstrate its necessity as an explanation of the practical, natural incorporation of man into the world in "co-existence" with others.

In this way an approach to phenomenology was born which fulfilled and even exceeded its intentions by broadening the parameters for phenomenological writings. As far as philosophy itself is concerned, this approach follows the Czech tradition, which can be described in one word as humanistic. We are convinced that phenomenology itself was able to become a philosophy through the means and from those sources through which its decisive methodological principles were reached. We are also convinced that in each situation, and hence in the reception of phenomenology (which carries within itself metaphysical presuppositions for the building of systems which one may or may not accept), the general intellectual climate, which the new philosophical tendency entered, played a great role.

AFTER WORLD WAR II: JAN PATOKA

It is as though two intellectual climates pervade the philosophical personality of Jan Patoka, reflecting two social levels of approach. It is necessary, therefore, to say something about the new postwar interest in phenomenological philosophy, an interest which Patoka called the "renewal of phenomenology". The bearers of this interest were the generation which, during the so-called Protectorate, had been deprived of study at the universities and had to wait until the situation changed and enabled them to familiarize themselves with phenomenology.

Despite the general importance we have recognized for the role of social consciousness in each nation's expression of phenomenological philosophy according to its own particular situation, we are forced to think of phenomenology within certain boundaries, that is, on a theoretical, academic level. This is in keeping with the fact that we have demonstrated its content through its constants and its shifts in the context of the above-mentioned concentration of philosophical activity around the Philosophical Congress in Prague and the Cercle's attempts to explain phenomenology. We shall now aim at a profile of Prague University and its activities in the humanities, especially philosophy, after 1945.

After the war, those who had been the bearers of the prewar phenomenological inheritance returned to the philosophy faculty of Prague University. J.B. Kozák, after his return from exile in the U.S.A., lectured on epistemology and on the history of political theory. Emil Utitz came back from the Theresienstadt ghetto and turned to an elucidation of the relationship between the theories of Husserl and Brentano and their tradition in Czechoslovakia in his book, Erinnerungen an Franz Brentano (1954). Above all, however, it was Jan Patoka, who began to lecture and hold seminars, becoming the most authentic mediator of phenomenological philosophy to a younger generation. One may speak of the wider theoretical setting of Patoka's efforts, which includes all kinds of phenomenological writings with a clear preference, at least at that time, for the structuralist school. This was composed mainly of the former members of the Linguistic Circle, representatives of the Prague school with its central concept of function; they managed at least in a few cases to achieve a new application of phenomenology on the level of scientific methodology.⁽¹³⁸⁾

The renewed interest in phenomenological philosophy could not in any case mean a return to some of the prewar attempts at its interpretation. Many of these attempts, which at that time had guided the new intellectual streams of European philosophy which gave birth to phenomenology, had simply collapsed. During the sharply left-oriented period from `45-`48, phenomenology once again (and in new ways) strove for its restitution in the newly reconstructed Czechoslovak state. After the consolidation of the Communist regime, it had to contend with an open confrontation with Marxism linked with new interpretive attitudes, and had different aims than before the war. This process was aided by the fact that new interpretative levels of Husserl's philosophy had been reached on the international scale, mainly due to the philosophers whose work Patoka had been following. Merleau-Ponty considered Husserl's method of viewing essences to be a rational advance comparable to the experimental approaches; the Vietnamese philosopher, Trãn-Dúc-Thao, in his book, Phénoménologie et Materialisme Dialectique (Paris, 1951), stated that due to the technique of variation Husserl's concept of eidetic intuition had nothing in common with a metaphysical hypothesis (we are reminded here of Josef Tvrdý who had thought that this concept was pure hypothesis, unusable in science). Husserl's phenomenological explanation was corrected in many respects by a whole series of European philosophers, including Ludwig Landgrebe.⁽¹³⁹⁾

Within the context of the political development of the state in the postwar years, phenomenological philosophy was suppressed, yet it survived in its own special form. In 1965-66 Patoka again presented publicly his lecture serious, "An Introduction to Husserlian Phenomenology," with its pure phenomenological themes.⁽¹⁴⁰⁾ The activities of Husserl's students, namely of Heidegger with his anthropological phenomenology and ontology, had resulted in further interpretative waves in Europe. As a result of Patoka's problems with the authorities, interest in phenomenology again shifted to an unofficial level. New forms of action were necessary, such as studying and research, linked with the copying, publishing and distribution of philosophical texts. (This deserves separate evaluation as the political significance of these activities is clear.)

In the postwar decades phenomenology was imprinted upon the whole structure of the social development of the country. During the early years a pure interest in pure phenomenology dominated, albeit with different intensities, from different motifs and in different depths (this can be illustrated by dissertations, publications and studies). During the 1950s, despite the then official Marxist-Leninist orientation with its struggle for `ideological purity' and its struggle against `reactionary philosophical opinions', phenomenology gained a certain space within the framework of the critical analysis of `modern bourgeois philosophy' where its inquiry was situated in historico-philosophical contexts. Even here we can recognize high and low points. For example, studies of phenomenological problems were possible because of the intensive return to work on monographs and funded studies based on philosophical analysis; fortunately these works matured approximately in the mid-60s. At the same time, an opportunity to work on anthropological problems arose due to historical problems susceptible to the application of the phenomenological method. The analysis of the `philosophy of man' with its ambiguous definition in Karel Kosík's book The Dialectic of the Concrete. The Study of the Problematics of Man and the World (1965), provided a breakthrough into a period of open interest in world philosophical writings. In addition to Husserl, attention was directed towards Heidegger, Jaspers and French existential philosophy.⁽¹⁴¹⁾

In the confrontation between Marxism and phenomenology, particular aspects of the phenomenological concept of the subject as meaningful responded to Marx's radical theory of man. This enabled an understanding of man in terms of pure philosophy. But, at the same time, it constituted a revolutionary social theory capable of `realizing' man in his human essence, historically, revolutionarily and practically, and thereby negating the official philosophy. The antithetical character of both these theoretico-cognitive approaches furthered research into the methodological possibilities of phenomenology, the understanding of phenomenology as a method, and interest in what can be called Husserl's concept of objectivity, objectification.

This opportunity to explain Husserl's method of final clarification, excluding any kind of argumentative approach, constituted a challenge to make this method scientifically defensible in the spirit of descriptive psychology. This was turned to advantage in Czechoslovakia. Although there was a certain primitivism in the argumentation which reached only relatively shallow depths, it was nevertheless part of the probes into Husserl's philosophy. There were some positive results; for example, despite the problematic character of particular results, it became apparent how important were explanations of transcendental reduction and the methodological elements of "epoché" (with which phenomenological philosophy still struggles). Hence, at least in its intentions, this orientation was correct and hopeful.⁽¹⁴²⁾ This is shown by the recent appearance of Patoka's works from archival material, e.g. his hypothesis concerning the relations between `two great phenomenological thinkers, Husserl and Heidegger, namely that the ontological phenomenology of Heidegger grows directly from Husserl's well thought-out motives undergirded by his explanation of the relations between `epoché' and reduction.⁽¹⁴³⁾

In a time of hopeful activity--at least as far as phenomenological studies are concerned--attention was given also to the problem of intersubjectivity, that is, to the question in the phenomenological movement which was strongly criticized shortly after the war (generally from a sociological standpoint) and which today is still an issue of topical interest in the works of Husserl's student, A. Schuetz.⁽¹⁴⁴⁾ This is the notion of the subject in constituting the world in itself, expressly laid out in Husserl's book, The Crisis of European Sciences. The presentation of this problem in Czechoslovakia manifested the possibility of a phenomenological conception and, at the same time, clarified the approaches of the phenomenological method with the special aim of discovering the sources and possibilities of a critique of phenomenology in its relation to the approaches of Heidegger and Sartre (see Antonín Mokrej, Phenomenology and the Problem of Intersubjectivity, 1969). The studies of Ivan Dubský, who elaborated the Heideggerian motif of path as a path of thinking, probed in the direction of the point at which Husserlian and Heideggerian problematics meet and are themetised both as a question of home and homelessness and as a problem of temporality. He was interested also in the philosophy of Jan Patoka.⁽¹⁴⁵⁾

The exceptional fate and work of Husserl's student, Jan Patoka (1907-1977),⁽¹⁴⁶⁾ is reflected in his philosophical writings, his pedagogical activities in both Czech and foreign universities, his rich and extensive publications on the problems of philosophy, art, Czech history and culture, and also in his superb translations. It is reflected also in his activities springing from a spirit of moral responsibility, particularly when he became the spokesman of Charter 77. As a consequence of this action, Patoka, who was twice forced to leave the philosophical faculty of Charles University after the war (always in situations which became turning points in the consolidation of Communist power), was frequently interrogated by the state security police after one of which long interrogations he died.

The essence of Jan Patoka's work lies within the framework of Husserl's phenomenology, which can be followed from his 1931 dissertation on the concept of evidence and its significance for epistemology, through the themes he worked out in the context of the Philosophical Circle, up to his 1936 habilitation on the natural world.

Here, before any monograph on his life and works has been written, we can give only a short bibliographical overview, point towards a synthesis of the studies from abroad⁽¹⁴⁷⁾ and interpretations in Czechoslovakia, and attempt to trace the thematic continuity in Patoka's life achievements and his fate. Against the background of his writings, Patoka appears as a man intrinsically bound up with philosophy, wholly devoted to his interest in revealing the theoretico-cognitive sources of truth, and at the same time seeking practical existential ways to grasp the world and life in the spirit of phenomenology. He treated phenomenology critically, seeing it as having been saved by Heidegger's ontological explanation. He employed the complex of means he derived from it in order to pass a final judgement on the relationship between Husserl and Heidegger, thereby presenting his own philosophical conception.

Jan Patoka had a good philosophical education. His orientation towards this field was demonstrated very early in his work: Descartes and Bergson.⁽¹⁴⁸⁾ During the occupation, which painfully affected the whole Czech nation, he concentrated on translations and interpretations of the thoughts of important German philosophers, such as Herder with his idea of humanity, and Kant with his concept of moral philosophy in A Critique of Practical Reason.⁽¹⁴⁹⁾ When he became an associate professor in the philosophical faculty of Charles University in 1945, he began his preparations by studying texts in ancient philosophy, contributing outstanding explanations of Socrates and Aristotle. His further studies of Aristotle resulted in the work, Aristotle: His Predecessors and Heirs, 1964. It was the only work he was allowed to publish after the war. As far as a role of an explanation of Aristotle's categories is concerned in Patoka's philosophic output of his work, the concept of three movements of human existence, we refer to corresponding literature which includes the essay "On the Prehistory of the Science of Movement: World, Earth, and Sky and the Movements of Human Existence" (1965).⁽¹⁵⁰⁾

Patoka's interest in Hegelian philosophy was of great significance because of certain possibilities offered regarding the meeting of the two levels of phenomenology and of the search for their point of contact. This is, of course, a philosophical task which can be undertaken only by a philosophy deeply rooted in Hegelian philosophy. Patoka had lectured on Hegel's Phenomenology of Mind as early as 1950 and set the seal on his Hegelian research in 1966 with his unrivalled translation of Hegel's Aesthetics and Phenomenology of Mind, which greatly contributed both to Czech philosophical translations and to Czech philosophical life in general.

Patoka's interest in European philosophy was matched by his interest in Czech philosophy as a deep source from which he took his concepts of the primacy of activity by following motifs of the natural world, of the life world and of the our world in its significance for an explanation of the behaviour of man in this world. After 1953, Patoka worked in the Research Institute of Pedagogy where he was engaged in explaining and publishing the works of Jan Amos Komenský: he contributed substantially to a deeper understanding of this figure of world renown.⁽¹⁵¹⁾ After his move to the Philosophical Institute of the Czechoslovak Academy of Sciences, his interest in his native philosophical tradition (here his own relationship to Masaryk is a more or less open question)⁽¹⁵²⁾ was reflected particularly in his work on "the greatest philosopher on Czech soil", Bernard Bolzano,⁽¹⁵³⁾ and in a series of essays on the problems of the Czech nation and on the philosophy of Czech history, done mainly during the tense years of 1968-69.⁽¹⁵⁴⁾

In 1969, when Jan Patoka brought the contemporary orientation of Czechoslovak philosophy to worldwide attention, he wrote that, despite all contrary efforts, this philosophy had retreated from Husserl and attacked Husserlian thought from the standpoint of Marxist criticism.⁽¹⁵⁵⁾ In 1968, during his "Die tschechische Philosophie und ihre gegenwartige Phase" lecture in Freiburg, he stated that, at least tentatively, it was possible to outline certain positive results reached by the efforts of the postwar generation. Jan Patoka's "Meditations after 33 Years" in his book about the life world attempted "a constitutive sketch of the genesis of the naive world". This constituted notably a creative transposition of the Husserlian motif, in which figure the polarity of theory and what the author terms the natural world and human life. This revised his original opinion and that of Husserl himself, rejecting absolute reflection and, as such, an explanation of phenomenological reduction "which makes it the gate way to the absolute". This method of reflection is based on an understanding of the `three basic ecstasies of temporality and the movement of existence which springs from it'. This has ontological significance because of Patoka's development of the idea of life as movement which must be understood as a tendency towards a practical grasp of man in the world and his anchoring therein. He sees praxis as an element of human life and history for which modern philosophy, whether covertly or openly, has been striving during the entire epoch since the time of Kant.⁽¹⁵⁶⁾-⁽¹⁵⁷⁾

The abandoning of Husserl's contemplative reflection and its replacement with the concept of reflection as part of praxis, `as a component of internal behaviour and conduct', is, of course, an idea which asserts itself in the structure of all the author's works and would demand a special study. Only the preliminary foundations are now being laid for an evaluation of the essence of Jan Patoka's work.⁽¹⁵⁸⁾ *

*Summary of a Curriculum Vitae by J. Patoka in 1947

Studied philosophy and Slavonic and Roman philology at the Philosophy Faculty of Charles University; doctorate in the Philosophy Faculty of Charles University, June 20, 1931; active in philosophical literature from 1929; a member of the editorial board of eská mysl (Czech Thought) and its editor; from 1934 a member of a committee of Philosophical Unity in Prague; from 1935 secretary of the Cercle Philosophique de Prague. From 1937 a docent in the Philosophy Faculty of Charles University until its closing in 1939. Returned in May 1945. In 1946 an extraordinary member of the Learned Society. From summer 1947 Foreign Consulting editor and member of the editorial board of Philosophy and Phenomenological Research. In addition to his own independent translations he has written numerous philosophical articles in both Czech and foreign journals, collaborated on the Pedagogical Encyclopaedia, commented on foreign and domestic philosophical works in the journal eská mysl, and took part in international philosophical meetings, congresses, and other working events. From 1945-46 has taught philosophy in the Pedagogical faculty of Masaryk University.