Towards an Ontology of the Movement of Existence : A Comparison of Plato's and Patočka's Visions of Human Being
Abstract
The study compares two approaches to human being: Plato's concept of three (parts of) souls and Patočka's concept of three movements of existence. The aim of this contrastive study is to evaluate Patočka's effort to make the concept of human being a-subjective and non-substantive.
Special attention is dedicated to two key problems: the concept of body and the relationship between a part (an individual) and the whole (the world). The comparison of the thinkers indicates Patočka's underestimation of the objective organization of body including its incorporation in the world.
The presentation of the relationship between an individual and the whole provides an opportunity to discuss realistic moments of Plato's approach and speculative moments of Patočka's phenomenology of existence. Finally, these findings make it possible to articulate the main difficulties of an ontological interpretation of the phenomenology of movement.