Abstrakt
Based on the analysis of texts by Jan Patočka, Zuzana Svobodová wants to explore two concepts of human existence. The concept of three movements of life and the concept of two basic forms of life are examined in this paper, with the aim of referring to similarities and differences between them and to try to point out the essentials from these concepts.
The motivating question that gives rise to the author's efforts in this conference paper is: "What kind of agreement can be found between different concepts?" Jan Patočka wrote in his third chapter of Heretical Essays in the Philosophy of History that philosophy did not shake the modest or small meaning of life in order to impoverish humans, but on the contrary, it shook them with the will to enrich them. Being shaken involves a transformation or metamorphosis of life, which could be seen by others and from the outside as an impoverishment, because the shaken is no longer interested in such things or in such manners of being what they were before, they do not want to live only day by day; however, to those who have really been shaken towards transforming their lives, being shaken is enrichment, because they are now able to live their lives for real; they are led to discover a freedom to orientate their own lives, and to move from "LETHE" (covertness) to "ALETHEIA" (disclosedness, truth).
Those who have been shaken in this way live an unsecure life and are no longer able to abide the confidences of their former lives. They are also unbridled by the fear of death because death is now consciously accepted as part of what is natural.
Who or what is the origin of that shakenness? Patočka claims it is philosophy understood as the love of wisdom, or perhaps as the wisdom of love. How can we speak about a kind of shakenness in which all certainties are lost? What sort of shakenness is this? What is being shaken? And for what purpose? These will be the main issues of the current text.
In connection with these inquiries, a further question must be asked about Patočka's theory of life movements. What kind of movements accompanies being shaken? How can each of these movements be described? A disciple of Husserl, Jan Patočka asks the question "What is phenomenology?".
All of his lifelong work corresponds to this question. Therefore, he could not inquire about the natural world without also knowing that this question relates to the very essence of his being, which the philosopher encounters as a mystery; but at the same time, the answers to questions about the mystery of our being sometimes could and sometimes even should be rendered in words so that it could be possible to establish and to lead a dialogue with others.