Thinking After Europe: Jan Patocka and Politics
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Thinking After Europe: Jan Patocka and Politics
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Overview
Europe as an idea and a political project is a central issue in contemporary political theory. Patočka’s political thought offers many original insights into questions surrounding the European project. Here, for the first time, a group of leading scholars from different disciplines gathers together to discuss the specific political impact of Patočka’s philosophy and its lasting significance.
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781783486861 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc. |
| Publication date: | 08/16/2016 |
| Sold by: | Barnes & Noble |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 410 |
| File size: | 1 MB |
| Age Range: | 18 Years |
About the Author
Darian Meacham is Senior Lecturer in Philosophy at the University of the West of England. He is the editor of Medicine and Society: New Perspectives in Continental Philosophy (2015).
Contributors:
Suzi Adams, Senior Lecturer, Flinders University of South Australia; Marion Bernard, Postdoctoral Scholar, Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne; Tamara Caraus, Postdoctoral Scholar, New Europe College‐Bucarest; Ivan Chvatík, Director of the Jan Patočka Archive, Prague; James Dodd, Associate Professor of Philosophy, New School of Social Research; Simona Forti, Professor of Political Philosophy, Università del Piemonte Orientale; Ludger Hagedorn, Professor, IWM Vienna and New York University; Daniel Leufer, Graduate Student, University of Leuven; Giuseppe Menditto, Postdoctoral Scholar, Università di Roma La Sapienza; James Mensch, Professor of Philosophy, Charles University, Prague; Riccardo Paparusso, Lecturer, Angelicum University, Rome; Jiri Priban, Professor, Cardiff University; Teresa Pullano, Postdoctoral Scholar, Université Libre de Bruxelles; Ovidiu Stanciu, Graduate Student, Bergische Universität Wuppertal; Michael Staudigl, Senior Lecturer, University of Vienna; Lubica Učník, Senior Lecturer, Murdoch University, Australia; Nicolas De Warren, Professor, University of Leuven
Read an Excerpt
Thinking After Europe
Jan Patocka and Politics
By Francesco Tava, Darian Meacham
Rowman & Littlefield International, Ltd.
Copyright © 2016 Darian Meacham and Francesco TavaAll rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-78348-686-1
CHAPTER 1
Translators' Preface
The essay presented here, in English translation, has its origins in a conference paper delivered by Jan Patocka on 3 June 1968, at the Evangelic Academy of Hofgeismar in West Germany. The historical context in which this event took place is of particular importance and thus deserves our attention. For Patocka and his entire nation, 1968 represented a moment of hope and rebirth: a season of political reforms had culminated in the election of Alexander Dubcek as the new secretary of the Czechoslovak Communist Party on 5 January, and what followed was a period of political change and liberation which became known as the Prague Spring. Patocka, who had experienced first-hand the harshness of the first years of real socialism in his country, welcomed this new political climate with great expectations. In particular, this gave him a chance to restart his activity as a professor at Charles University, from which he had been banned in 1949, one year after the communist takeover. Moreover, the improved political situation also gave him the chance to recommence travelling on a regular basis to Western Europe, where in 1968 he held a series of public lectures, of which the text we present here is an example.
Looking at the content of these lectures, two distinct lines of thought can be identified. On the one hand, Patocka took the opportunity to present his phenomenological research to an international audience, as he did on the occasion of the lecture 'Phänomenologie und Metaphysik der Bewegung'. On the other hand, he also gave another lecture, titled 'Czech Philosophy and Its Present Stage', in which he addresses an altogether different topic, namely the cultural and philosophical situation of his country, with clear references to the ongoing political upheaval. Some months later, at a turbulent moment in which the reform movement in Prague was encountering its first serious obstacles, Patocka had another chance to address these topics in the text that we present here. On this occasion, his attention is entirely focused on the figure of the intellectual and on the task that they are asked to fulfil in the present historical situation.
In discussing the problem of the intellectual in society, Patocka does not aim to propose any straightforwardly elitist conception of politics in which a small, closed group of intellectually superior citizens would alone hold the reins of society. Indeed, the conception of the 'intellectual' which he advocates is not that of the modern specialist who, thanks to their intellectual skills, aims at becoming 'the new leading character of human spirituality', just as the figure of the religious clericus was in the Middle Ages. What Patocka has in mind are rather the young intellectuals – primarily students – who in the late 1960s, in Czechoslovakia as well as in Western Europe and North America, strove to reform the social and political system by entering into an active relationship with all its inner forces. Although it could be objected that even such a conception is nevertheless elitist because it still privileges a small group of society, it should also be noted that Patocka does not focus on the young intellectuals of Western capitalist societies (whom he actually criticizes), but rather those of Eastern socialist societies. Looking beyond the corrupt reality of those societies at the time, at least in principle, the universities in countries such as Czechoslovakia were accessible to all citizens. There were no 'poor' people who could not afford to send their children to universities (only 'enemies of the state' whose children were blacklisted, but the eradication of such corruption was precisely part of the hope placed in the reform movement). As such, this category of intellectual is something much more open than what we usually associate with the term. Indeed, the Czech term inteligence can mean both the 'intelligentsia' and the 'intellect/intelligence' as a fundamental human faculty. In this broad sense, then, we could see the 'intellectual' to whom Patocka appeals as essentially a member of that group of human beings who utilize their faculty of intelligence, and, in 1968, the clearest manifestation of that phenomenon was to be found in the student movements.
Patocka's emphasis on the figure of the intellectual acquires a specific meaning if we take into account the role that intellectuals had played in Czechoslovakia during the years leading up to the Prague Spring. In that particular context, because of the total lack of a legitimized political elite, or of any other social group that could have been able to usefully represent the majority of the population, the voice of the intellectuals acquired a peculiar power and their action started to be seen as a reference point and as an example. It is not by chance that one of the fundamental events which set the tone for the Prague Spring was the Fourth Congress of Czech Writers that took place between 27 and 29 June 1967 in Prague, and to which Patocka referred one year later in his lecture.
The issue of the role of the intellectuals before, during, and after the Prague Spring cannot be further developed here. What we would like to do is simply to look more closely at this particular text of Patocka, whose editorial history can reveal better than any other description the author's complex relationship with his country and his times. Two different versions of 'Intellectuals and Opposition' exist: the first one – partly readable here in the Appendix – which corresponds to the conference paper, and which was written in German, was in fact extensively reshaped by the author when he decided to translate it into Czech. In particular, the new version presents a different and more extended conclusion, in which Patocka directly tackles Marxist thought in a critical but also constructive way, revealing his growing interest in the inner reform of Marxism, which was developing in Czechoslovakia in those years. Patocka's interest becomes particularly visible in the last paragraph of the final version of the essay, in which he directly refers to the Prague Spring, arguing that 'the significance of Czechoslovak events in 1968 consists in the fact that for the first time the possibility takes shape of a new free society, based on the transformation of the working class – within socialism itself – into a class which has intellectuals at its core, as a core which is capable of introducing society to a new productive and historical era'. The tragic end of the Prague Spring, and the beginning of normalization, severely dampened Patocka's enthusiasm, indelibly marking the further development of his political and philosophical reflection. This change is visible in his decision to cut the aforementioned excerpt from the second edition of the text, published in 1969, in a collection of essays entitled On the Meaning of Today, in which Patocka lucidly analyzed the failure of the Czech national programme from Masaryk to its definite collapse after the end of the Prague Spring. The passage between this essay, in which the hopes for a social and political renewal are still perceivable, and the following works from the 1970s is decisive. Nevertheless, even in the sixth of his Heretical Essays from the mid-1970s, where he is arguably at his darkest and most despairing, we still find Patocka holding out hope for the 'technical intelligentsia' as an agent of social renewal. At the close of the essay, when he discusses how the 'solidarity of the shaken' could become a historical factor, he states that it is necessary that this 'component of the spirit, the "technical intelligentsia," primarily researchers and those who apply research, inventors and engineers, would feel a waft of this solidarity and would act accordingly'. As such, the centrality of the intellectuals in Patocka's political vision seems to have persevered even throughout the disappointments and despair of the 1970s. And it is precisely in the following essay that we find the role of the intellectual for Patocka most clearly spelled out.
f.t. and d.l.
CHAPTER 2Intellectuals and Opposition
Jan Patoc[??] ka
Translated from Czech by Francesco Tava and Daniel Leufer
In an age that prides itself on how man's rational will has subjected history itself to organization and anticipatory management, we are again, surprisingly, witnesses to unexpected and unheard-of things. Analyses do indeed still emerge which teach us how to comprehend what is happening, and prove that for those capable of deeper insight things are not incomprehensible. Yet, in matters of history, our deeper insight still lags behind reality. There were some events in the post-war age that I think surprised the world, at least for the scale of their impact, if not for the fact that they happened at all. Foremost was the disintegration of the Stalinist system in the Soviet Union, which occurred without any external pressure, but rather, through an imperceptible internal process, opaque in respect of its innumerable causes. This was despite the fact that the structure of this system seemed to be guaranteed by an enormous centralization probably unparalleled in history. An imponderable element also played a role, the shaking of the Stalin legend; an element whose intellectual nature gives it a particular relevance for our topic. When, some years later, what is known as the Cultural Revolution broke out – initiated by Mao and then led by his followers – most people saw something completely incomprehensible in it, some kind of Oriental barbarism, with no possible equivalent in the rational Western world. Nowadays, similar and yet more spontaneous movements have brought the most stable societies and states in Western Europe to the edge of destruction. Rightly or wrongly, these movements tend to have Mao's name on their lips. There is no doubt that the recent resolutions by President Johnson, and particularly his decision to stop the air strikes over North Vietnam, were also influenced by intellectual elements, especially by the students protests in the United States, which exacerbated the mood of opposition towards American policy in Vietnam. Anyone with some knowledge of West Germany noticed how the entire political and spiritual atmosphere changed over the last two years, due for the most part to student action and student organizations. In our country, too, we have seen how one of the less glorious repercussions of the Stalinist era – Novotný's regime – ended up the same way. This regime, which survived by resorting to all kinds of sly manipulations and still had plenty of power in its hands despite its longtime term lack of popularity, entered its final phase through clashes with writers and students.
We could ask ourselves whether we have not put two disparate issues under one heading; indeed, what do the end of Stalinism or Mao's Cultural Revolution have in common with intellectual opposition? Here, I would like to point out what Isaac Deutscher highlighted in his studies about the post-Stalinist era: the replacement of Stalinism in the Soviet Union is connected with a new educational system and a change in the standard of living. Moreover, Mao's Cultural Revolution was recently defended in the German left-wing press as being oriented against a bureaucratic establishment that is a traditional threat in the Chinese context, and against which an intellectual opposition is indispensable. It seems that Mao very quickly became aware of something that was overlooked elsewhere, namely the mass nature of the contemporary student body and hence the possibility to appeal to the students as a mass. Since then, however, the rest of the world has also been paying attention to the wild intellectual opposition spreading from one country to another, altering its activities, learning and adapting its tactics to the circumstances, and developing a long-term strategy. At the same time, it emerges that this opposition is related to phenomena which did now show up before and were hence not necessary to take into account. Until recently, intellectuals were an isolated or dispersed element that constituted a relatively negligible factor in public life due to their lack of numbers and dependence on decisive forces – for example, the power of the capitalist classes or the size of the relevant masses. In Western consumer society, conceived as a 'lonely crowd', the only possibility left open to intellectuals was to observe, orient themselves, and keep themselves informed, with absolutely no chance for action. We cannot, of course, assert today that intellectuals have achieved the social influence that would ensure that the whole of society realizes how, on the basis of consultation, something positive can be undertaken to confront the spread of harmful phenomena. Yet, intellectuals are no longer powerless, at least not if they form groups and factions. That the intellectual workers, mostly students, take to the streets, organizing street riots or occupation strikes as only labourers did before; that writers' congresses have become events of major importance in which political changes are invisibly attained – of these phenomena, in the past, there were rumours, but no real instances. A new element is emerging in society, a force that will have to be reckoned with from now on, a force that will be regretted by any politician who fails to use it. The students – those for example attending Western universities, which are expanding and have tens of thousands of members – have formed a group which is continuously together, which can easily organize itself, and which is highly mobile; tens of thousands in the streets (or potentially in the streets) constitute something for which the ordinary apparatus of power is not easily prepared, especially if that apparatus resorts to the unpopular use of force, directing it against that element considered everywhere the finest and most hopeful.
Despite the different traits this phenomenon may acquire in particular states and nations, it clearly has an international nature, since similar events are taking place in all, or nearly all, Western countries. In Eastern countries with a different social structure, there are major differences. Nonetheless, a mass movement, mainly composed of students, exists here too.
In Western countries, this movement adds new elements to its programme of action as it passes from one country to another. In Germany, a plan of action originated among left-wing students and extended beyond the student body to the trade unions and broader strata of labourers; while in France this task will almost be fulfilled before the traditional structures snap out of their stupefaction. In Poland, the opposition emerging among the writers is severely repressed; in our country, by contrast, it is pushing ahead, even showing the politicians how to speak to those who hold power. I have already suggested that these phenomena seem to be related to the fact that the mass nature of modern society has encompassed the intellectual sphere. In the post-war period, the mass groupings of students increased enormously everywhere, especially in the West where society invested heavily in the establishment of universities, channelling its surpluses into them. The possibility of spiritual control over this intellectual element did however not correspond to the rate of its growth. Nowhere do the universities have the teaching and administrative staff who could measure up to the present situation, not just with regard to their discipline but to the social situation; people able, in their regular activities, to show that universities work in contact with the historical moment, and not in a way completely burdened with dead traditions, topics, and petty meanings; that active life and urgent problems do not escape their consideration. Internally, the universities thus become explosive and externally a combat division and battlefield. Young intellectuals, in their effort to discover the truth about their own situation and the society in which they live, reach the point of a radical refusal of the reality of which they are a part. To identify what is worth refusing is for them quite easy, requiring only a few years to accomplish. Young people do still have that time, unlike the rest of the population already settled into intricate and motionless Western society, which is composed of an extremely controlling conglomeration. This is not, however, enough to find some positive solution. It is thus not surprising that the young intellectuals of Western countries thrive on the negation that is the only space of their freedom. Today's society, meanwhile, is such a stable mechanism, not even allowing partial modification, that this negation, insofar as it does not bring any fundamental revolutionary change, inevitably leads to a withdrawal into unreality, or untamed revolt, senseless with regard to its aims, and thriving on destruction. Today, Western intellectuals no longer think they are powerless cogs inside a mighty machine which keeps running with no regard for the wishes of the cogs; they are no longer powerless, but their power is purely destructive. This may also entail some advantages, among which would be the abolition of those intellectual taboos that previously covered the spiritual atmosphere; such as, for example, in the Germany of the Weimar Republic, where no one could have attempted to stir up in an unpopular way the question of the war guilt or reconsider the meaning of Bismarck's concept of the state for the future of Germany. Today, we witness how all this neglect is catching up with us. But even the abolition of the taboo is evidence only of a crisis if we do not see where we are heading without the taboo.
(Continues...)
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Table of Contents
Editors’ Introduction / Acknowledgements / Part I: Intellectuals and Opposition1. Translators’ Preface / 2. Intellectuals and Opposition, Jan Patočka / 3. Appendix / Part II: Dissidence and Political Commitment / 4. Jan Patočka and the Possibility of a Spiritual Politics, Ivan Chvatík / 5. Resisting Fear: On Dissent and the Solidarity of the Shaken in Contemporary European and Global Society, Jiri Příbáň / 6. The Soul as Site of Dissidence, Simona Forti / Part III: Political Phenomenology / 7. Polemos in Jan Patočka’s Political Thought, James Dodd / 8. Supercivilisation and Biologism, Darian Meacham / 9. Caring for the Asubjective Soul, James Mensch / Part IV: Philosophy of History / 10. He Who Saw the Deep: The Epic of Gilgamesh in Patočka’s Philosophy of History, Nicolas De Warren / 11. The Dark Night of the Care for the Soul – Politics and Despair in Jan Patočka’s Sixth Heretical Essay, Daniel Leufer / 12. The Heresy of History: Patočka’s Reflections on Marx and Marxism, Francesco Tava / 13. The End of History and After: Rethinking Kojève and Patočka on the Idea of Post-History, Riccardo Paparusso / Part V: Rethinking the Community / 14. On the Significance of the Ancient Greek Polis for Patočka and Castoriadis: Philosophy, Politics, History, Suzi Adams / 15. Patočka’s Radical and Agonistic Politics, Tamara Caraus / 16. Patočka's Figures of Political Community, Marion Bernard / 17. This is a Mathematical Certainty: Patočka and the Neoliberal Ideology, Ľubica Učník / Part VI: Europe and Post-Europe / 18. Europe, Post-Europe and Eurocentrism, Karel Novotný / 19. Europe and the Oblivion of the World: From Husserl to Patočka, Ovidiu Stanciu / 20. Europe’s Twentieth Century: History of Wars and War as History, Ludger Hagedorn / Bibliography / Index