Jan Patočka : philosophy and selected writings /

Kohak (Idea and Experience, CH, Mar'79; The Embers and the Stars, CH, Oct'84) has provided the English-speaking world with a much-needed and long-overdue collection of works by Jan Patocka, an important Czech philosopher who survived both the Nazi and Russian occupations of his homeland, and whom Paul Ricoeur has called "the most Socratic of modern philosophers." Part 1 is an extensive and moving "philosophical biography" of Patocka's turbulent life, from his beginnings with early Husserl and the Czech statesman Masaryk, through his encounter with ancient philosophy (especially his own "negative Platonism"), and his careful scholarship on the 17th-century Czech philosopher Jan Comenius-Komensky, to his attempts to work through the cultural criticism of later Husserl and Heidegger. Scholars of Continental philosophy will be especially interested in Patocka's own "asubjective" approach to phenomenology grounded in an experience of the "subject-body." All of these themes are nicely exemplified in the selection of essays in Part 2. The last part is a comprehensive bibliography of Patocka's work, including all known translations into other languages. An important work for all advanced undergraduate and graduate collections, especially those desiring completeness in recent philosophy. R. M. Stewart Austin College