Proof

The New Yearbook for Phenomenology

and Phenomenological Philosophy
XIV – 2015
Religion, War and the Crisis of Modernity
A Special Issue Dedicated to the Philosophy
of Jan Pato≤ka

The New Yearbook for Phenomenology and Phenomenological Philosophy provides

an annual international forum for phenomenological research in the spirit of Husserl’s
groundbreaking work and the extension of this work by such figures as Scheler,
Heidegger, Sartre, Levinas, Merleau-Ponty and Gadamer.

Contributors: Ivan Chvatík, Nicolas de Warren, James Dodd, Eddo Evink, Ludger
Hagedorn, Jean-Luc Marion, Claire Perryman-Holt, Marcia Sá Cavalcante Schuback,

Taylor & Francis

Michael Staudigl, Christian Sternad , and L’ubica U≤ník.

Ludger Hagedorn is Research Leader at the Institute for Human Sciences (IWM) in

Not for distribution

Vienna, Austria. From 2005 to 2009 he was Purkyne-Fellow at the Czech Academy of
Sciences. His main interests include phenomenology, political philosophy, modernity
and secularization. He also lectures at New York University in Berlin.

James Dodd is Associate Professor of Philosophy at the New School for Social
Research, USA. He is the author of Violence and Phenomenology (Routledge, 2009,
2014), and Crisis and Reflection: An Essay on Husserl’s Crisis of the European Sciences
(2004). He is currently working on a book on phenomenology and architecture.

Proof
Book 1.indb ii
 Proof
The New Yearbook for Phenomenology and Phenomenological Philosophy

General Editors
Burt Hopkins, Seattle University, United States
John J. Drummond, Fordham University, United States

Founding Co-editor
Steven Crowell, Rice University, United States

Contributing Editors
Marcus Brainard, London, United Kingdom
Ronald Bruzina, University of Kentucky, United States
Algis Mickunas, Ohio University, United States
Thomas Seebohm, Bonn, Germany
Thomas Sheehan, Stanford University, United States

Consulting Editors

Taylor & Francis

Patrick Burke (Gonzaga University, Italy), Ivo de Gennaro (University of Bozen-
Bolzano, Italy), Nicholas de Warren (University of Leuven, Belgium), James Dodd
(The New School, United States), R. O. Elveton (Carleton College, United States),

Not for distribution

Parvis Emad (DePaul University (Emeritus), United States), James G. Hart (Indiana
University, United States), George Heffernan (Merrimack College, United States),
Nam-In Lee (Seoul National University, Republic of Korea), Christian Lotz
(Michigan State University, United States), Claudio Majolino (University of Lille,
France), Dermot Moran (University College Dublin, Ireland), James Risser (Seattle
University, United States), Michael Shim (California State University, Los Angeles,
United States), Andrea Staiti (Boston College, United States), Panos Theodorou
(University of Crete, Greece), Friedrich Wilhelm von Herrmann (University of
Freiburg, Germany), Olav K. Wiegand (University of Mainz, Germany), Dan Zahavi
(University of Copenhagen, Denmark), Andrea Zhok (University of Milan, Italy)

Book Review Editor

Molly Flynn, Assumption College, United States The New Yearbook for Phenomeno-
logy and Phenomenological Philosophy is currently covered by the following
indexing, abstracting and full-text services: Philosophy Research Index, International
Philosophical Bibliography, The Philosopher’s Index. The views and opinions
expressed in The New Yearbook for Phenomenology and Phenomenological Philosophy
are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the editorial board
except where otherwise stated.

The New Yearbook for Phenomenology and Phenomenological Philosophy is

published annually by Routledge.

Proof
Book 1.indb ii
 Proof

The New Yearbook for

Phenomenology and
Phenomenological Philosophy
XIV – 2015
Religion, War and the Crisis of
Modernity A Special Issue Dedicated
to the Philosophy of Jan Pato≤ka

Edited by
Ludger Hagedorn

Taylor & Francis

James Dodd

Not for distribution

Proof
Book 1.indb ii
 Proof
First published 2015
by Routledge
2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN
Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada
by Routledge
711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business
© 2015 Ludger Hagedorn and James Dodd, editorial and selection matter;
individual chapters, the contributors
The right of Ludger Hagedorn and James Dodd to be identified as the
author of the editorial material, and of the authors for their individual
chapters, has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the
Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or
utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now
known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in
any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing
from the publishers.
Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or
registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation
without intent to infringe.
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

Taylor & Francis

Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data

HBK ISBN13: 978-1-138-92396-6

EBK ISBN13: 978-1-315-68472-7

Typeset in Sabon
Not for distribution
by Keystroke, Station Road, Codsall, Wolverhampton

Proof
Book 1.indb ii
 Proof

In memoriam
Krzysztof Michalski (1948–2013)

Taylor & Francis

Not for distribution

Proof
Book 1.indb ii
 Proof

Taylor & Francis

Not for distribution

Proof
Book 1.indb ii 16/10/14 7:00 PM
 Proof

Contents

Acknowledgementsxi
List of contributors xiii
Editors’ Introduction Ludger Hagedorn and James Doddxv

PART I
Myth, Faith, Sacrifice and History 1

  1. Time, Myth, Faith (1952) 3

Taylor & Francis

JAN PATO≥KA (TRANSLATED BY LUDGER HAGEDORN)

  2. The Dangers of Technicization in Science according to

E. Husserl and the Essence of Technology as Danger according
Not for distribution
to M. Heidegger (Varna Lecture, 1973)
JAN PATO≥KA (TRANSLATED BY ERAZIM KOHÁK)
13

  3. Jan Pato≤ka and the Sacrificial Experience 23

CLAIRE PERRYMAN-HOLT

  4. “Christianity Unthought” – A Reconsideration of Myth,

Faith, and Historicity 31
LUDGER HAGEDORN

  5. The Gift of Life. Jan Pato≤ka and the Christian Heritage 47

EDDO EVINK

  6. Philosophy in Dark Times. An Essay on Jan Pato≤ka’s

Philosophy of History 64
JAMES DODD

Proof
Book 1.indb ii 16/10/14 7:00 PM
 Proof
viii  Contents
PART II
Nihilism and the Crisis of Modernity 93

  7. On Masaryk’s Philosophy of Religion (1977) 95

JAN PATO≥KA (TRANSLATED BY JI ŘÍ ROTHBAUER, REVISED BY JAMES DODD,
CHRISTINA GSCHWANDTNER AND LUDGER HAGEDORN)

  8. Jan Pato≤ka’s Studies on Masaryk 136

IVAN CHVATÍK

  9. The Gift of Eternity 161

NICOLAS DE WARREN

10. Fatigue of Reason. Pato≤ka’s Reading of The Brothers

Karamazov181
LUDGER HAGEDORN

11. Pato≤ka’s Discussion with Dostoyevsky on the Future of

Science and Christianity 199
L’UBICA U≥NÍK

PART III Taylor & Francis

Jan Pato≤ka and Krzysztof Michalski 217

Introduction Not for distribution

NICOLAS DE WARREN
219

12. Letters Between Krzysztof Michalski and Jan Pato≤ka

(1973–1976)223
(EDITED BY NICOLAS DE WARREN. TRANSLATED BY NICOLAS DE WARREN,
PATRICK ELDRIDGE, AND VERA TYLZANOWSKI)

PART IV
Jan Pato≤ka and Contemporary Phenomenology of Religion 271

13. Givenness – Dispensation of the World 273

JEAN-LUC MARION (TRANSLATED BY CHRISTINA GSCHWANDTNER)

14. Specters of the Sacred. Jan Pato≤ka, or: The Hidden Source
of Jacques Derrida’s “Phenomenology of Religion” 287
CHRISTIAN STERNAD

15. Pato≤ka’s Critique of Existentialism 300

MARCIA SÁ CAVALCANTE SCHUBACK

Proof
Book 1.indb ii 16/10/14 7:00 PM
 Proof
Contents  ix

16. Human Existence and Vertical Life. A Study of Jan Pato≤ka’s

Phenomenological Anthropology 312
MICHAEL STAUDIG

PART V
Varia331

17. Direct Perception, Inter-subjectivity, and Social Cognition:

Why Phenomenology is a Necessary But Not Sufficient Condition 333
JACK REYNOLDS

18. Max Scheler and the Stratification of the Emotional Life 355
SAULIUS GENIUSAS

19. Thomas Sheebohm in Memorium 378

OLAV WIEGAND

Index000

Taylor & Francis

Not for distribution

Proof
Book 1.indb ii 16/10/14 7:00 PM
 Proof

Taylor & Francis

Not for distribution

Proof
Book 1.indb ii 16/10/14 7:00 PM
 Proof
Acknowledgements

This publication is the result of the research project Polemical Christianity: Jan
Pato≤ka’s Concept of Religion and the Crisis of Modernity, carried out at the Institute
for Human Sciences (IWM), Vienna, and financed by the Austrian Science Fund (FWF),
grant no. P 22828. The Editors would like to thank both institutions for their support.
The Editors would also like to thank Urszula Dawkins, Alexis Dianda, Paul-John
Gorre Joseph Lemelin and Dan Hutto for their assistance in copyediting.

Taylor & Francis

Jan Pato≤ka, “The Dangers of Technicization in Science according to E. Husserl and
the Essence of Technology as Danger according to M. Heidegger,” translated by

Not for distribution

Erazim Kohák, originally appeared in Jan Pato≤ka: Philosophy and Selected Writings,
trans. and ed. Erazim Kohák, (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1989), 327–339.
© 1989 by The University of Chicago. All rights reserved. Published 1989.
Michael Staudigl, “Human Existence and Vertical Life. A Study of Jan Pato≤ka’s
Phenomenological Anthropology” was conceived and written in the framework of the
research project “Religion beyond Myth and Enlightenment,” underwritten by the
Austrian Science Fund (FWF P 23255–G19).
Christian Sternad, “Specters of the Sacred. Jan Pato≤ka, or: The Hidden Source of
Jacques Derrida’s ‘Phenomenology of Religion’” was conceived and written in the
framework of the research project “Religion beyond Myth and Enlightenment,”
underwritten by the Austrian Science Fund (FWF P23255–G19).

Proof
Book 1.indb ii
 Proof

Taylor & Francis

Not for distribution

Proof
Book 1.indb ii 16/10/14 7:00 PM
 Proof

Notes on Contributors

Ivan Chvatík is Director of the Jan Pato≤ka Archive (Prague), which he founded in
1990, and since 1993 he has been a Co-Director of the Center for Theoretical Study
at Charles University and the Czech Academy of Sciences. He is a 1990 recipient of
the Czechoslovak Academy of Sciences Prize for the 27-volume Jan Pato≤ka Archive
Collection, published underground (1977–89). He is also the 1997 recipient of the
Jan Pato≤ka Memorial Medal from the Czech Academy of Sciences, as well as the
2008 recipient of the Honorary Doctorate from Charles University in Prague, both
in recognition of his scientific achievements. Since 1990 he has edited numerous
books by Jan Pato≤ka, including several volumes of his Collected Works in Czech
(Sebrané spisy Jana Pato≤ky).

Taylor & Francis

James Dodd is Associate Professor of Philosophy at the New School for Social
Research. He is the author of Violence and Phenomenology (Routledge, 2009,

Not for distribution

paperback 2014), and Crisis and Reflection: An Essay on Husserl’s Crisis of the
European Sciences (2004). He is currently working on a book on phenomenology
and architecture.
Eddo Evink teaches history of modern philosophy in the Faculty of Philosophy at
the University of Groningen (Netherlands). His main areas of research contain
metaphysics, phenomenology, hermeneutics, contemporary French philosophy and
philosophy of art. He is the author of Transcendentie en inscriptie. Jacques Derrida
en de hubris van de metafysica (2002).
Ludger Hagedorn is Research Leader at the Institute for Human Sciences (IWM) in
Vienna. After studying Philosophy and Slavic Languages, he obtained his doctoral
degree from Technical University Berlin in 2002. From 2005 to 2009 he was Purkyne-
Fellow at the Czech Academy of Sciences. His main interests include phenomenology,
political philosophy, modernity and secularization. He has lectured at the Gutenberg-
University Mainz, Södertörns Högskola (Stockholm), for several years at Charles
University in Prague, and currently at New York University in Berlin.
Jean-Luc Marion is Professor of philosophy at the University of Paris-Sorbonne (Paris
IV) and the Greeley Professor of Catholic Studies and Professor of the Philosophy
of Religions and Theology at the Department of Philosophy and the Divinity School
of the University of Chicago. He is the author of numerous books and articles on
Descartes, theology, and phenomenology, including Being Given: An Essay on the
Phenomenology of Givenness (2002), In Excess: Studies on Saturated Phenomena
(2004), and The Erotic Phenomenon (2007).

Proof
Book 1.indb ii
 Proof
xiv  Notes on Contributors
Claire Perryman-Holt is a PhD candidate at Université Paris I Panthéon Sorbonne. She
is working on a dissertation under the title “The Question of History: Pato≤ka as a
Reader of Heidegger.”
Marcia Sá Cavalcante Schuback is Professor of Philosophy at Södertörn University in
Sweden. Before moving to Sweden she worked as associate professor at Universidade
Federal do Rio de Janeiro (Brazil). Her main field of research is German idealism,
Phenomenology, Existential Philosophy and French Contemporary Philosophy.
Recent publications include Being with the Without, edited with Jean-Luc
Nancy  (2013), and Dis-orientations: Philosophy, Literature and the Lost Grounds
of Modernity, edited with Tora Lane (2015).
Michael Staudigl (Univ.Doz. Dr. habil.) teaches philosophy at the Department of
Philosophy, University of Vienna, Austria. In 2007-2010 he directed an Austrian
Research Fund (FWF) supported project “The Many Faces of Violence” at the
Institute for Human Sciences (Vienna), and currently leads another FWF funded
project (“Religion Beyond Myth and Enlightenment”) at the Department of
Philosophy at the University of Vienna. Recent publications include Phänomeno-
logie der Gewalt (2014), and as editor, Gesichter der Gewalt (2014). Research areas
include continental philosophy, contemporary French philosophy, phenomenology,
violence research, and the philosophy of religion.
Christian Sternad is a Post-Doctoral Research Fellow at the Husserl Archives at the

Taylor & Francis

KU Leuven, Belgium. He is currently working in the project, “The Great War and
Modern Philosophy” (GRAPH, funded by the European Research Council), which
investigates the impact of the First World War on twentieth/twenty-first century

Not for distribution

philosophy. His research interests include: phenomenology, French Theory, theory
of history and literature.
Nicolas de Warren is Research Professor of Philosophy and Director of the Center for
Phenomenology and Continental Philosophy, Husserl Archives, at the Katholieke
Universiteit Leuven in Belgium. He is currently writing a book on the unforgivable.
L’ubica U≤ník is Academic Chair in Philosophy at Murdoch University, Perth, Australia.
Her publications include articles on Husserl’s mathematisation of the Lebenswelt
and Pato≤ka’s thinking on modern civilization and Post-Europe. In 2014 she
completed the book, The Life-World and the Crisis of Meaning: Husserl, Heidegger,
Arendt and Pato≤ka. She is co-editor (with Ivan Chvatík and Anita Williams) of
Asubjective Phenomenology: Jan Pato≤ka’s Project in the Broader Context of his
Work (2014) and The Phenomenological Critique of Mathematisation and the
Question of Responsibility: Formalisation and the Life-World (2015).

Proof
Book 1.indb ii
 Proof

Introduction
Ludger Hagedorn
Institute for Human Sciences (Vienna)
hagedorn@iwm.at

James Dodd
New School for Social Research (New York)
doddj@newschool.edu

This issue of the New Yearbook for Phenomenology and Phenomenological

Philosophy is dedicated to the thought of the Czech philosopher Jan Pato≤ka
(1907–1977), a figure who has become increasingly influential in phenomeno-
logical circles in recent years, as well as widely known and read outside of academic
philosophy. The growing interest in his work should perhaps come as no surprise, for
in a way, Pato≤ka’s probing reflections on politics, civilization, religion, war, and the

Taylor & Francis

crisis of modernity from the middle of the last century only really obtain their full
meaning in the globalized world of today. And indeed it has become clear to many
that Pato≤ka’s engagement with the question of the meaning of Europe, basic to his
thought, and the reprocessing of its intellectual heritage it requires (a project he

Not for distribution

even calls “post-European”), represents an important pre-history to current debates
about globalization and post-colonialism. It has also become the belief of many that
these reflections have the potential to enrich such debates, perhaps even correct some
of the ideological impasses that plague them, thus revealing Pato≤ka to be a thinker
whose ideas are “untimely” in the very best sense of the word.
As a student of Husserl and Heidegger, Pato≤ka’s philosophical background is
phenomenology; but perhaps of equal importance to his thought is a profound, even
heretical challenge to the modern secular marginalization of religious life, and more
specifically to the Nietzschean critique of religion that sanctions it. Thus reflections on
the philosophical and political meaning of religion represent a crucial aspect of
Pato≤ka’s writings on the intellectual and cultural legacy of Europe: he is one of the
few thinkers who not only analyses the cultural and scientific dimensions of the crisis
of modernity, but explicitly calls for a reassessment of religion which, in the European
context, means above all Christianity. Yet Pato≤ka is no Christian apologist, speaking
from the vantage point of faith; he remains always a philosopher, and in fact from his
earliest writings to his last, there is a consistent strain of ideas that are as provocative
and heretical to the Christian tradition as they are to the triumphant secularism of
modernity. It is because of this double heresy of his philosophical project that Pato≤ka
stands out as an important forerunner as well as a critical counterweight to the
contemporary resurgence of the theme of religion in scholarly and intellectual
discourse.
In this way Pato≤ka’s sometimes intimate engagement with Christianity does not
make him a Christian philosopher. In his philosophy of history, he speaks of the

Proof
Book 1.indb ii
 Proof
xvi  Ludger Hagedorn and James Dodd
“post-Christian epoch” as the European reality from at least the twentieth century,
and it seems that this is something he takes as given, without any undertone of triumph
or regret. He considers religion, especially Christianity, mainly with respect to its intel-
lectual potential, that is, as a potentially profound challenge to philosophy and its
continuing allegiance to Greek (“metaphysical”) patterns of thinking. Moreover,
even though reflections on the philosophical potential of Christian ideas permeate his
work, they are neither elaborated systematically, nor formulated as an explicit
doctrine. Thus any philosophical project inspired by Pato≤ka’s thought would still
have to address questions such as the following: Why reconsider religion at all, in a
decidedly post-Christian epoch? What philosophical challenge does religion actually
pose? What could be the meaning of a “return of the religious” when—at least in the
European context—religion seems to have ceased giving life and offering “meaning”?
Philosophically questioning religion today, we often seem to be gesturing at a mere
phantom, some gruesome shadow in that empty cave Nietzsche speaks of in his Gay
Science.
Yet perhaps it is precisely the shadowy nature of religion in the secular world that
might be the real question for philosophy. On the one hand, from inside the religious
view of the world, public pressure on religion is felt to be repression, a denial of its
right to exist. This paves the way for all kinds of radicalizations and simplifications.
A religion deprived of its cultural rootedness is more likely to fall prey to the stubborn
insistence on its own dogmatic supremacy, which it enforces by almost any means. In
a recent book, the French political scientist Olivier Roy described this attitude as sainte

Taylor & Francis

ignorance, “holy ignorance.”1 On the other hand, in the terms of the secular-scientific
view of the world, this development once more confirms reservations about religion,
leading to the outright denial of the meaning of religion today. This pushes religion

Not for distribution

even further into seclusion, which in turn reinforces its dogmatic self-immunization,
thereby corroborating its apparent incompatibility with the modern world, thus
reaffirming the vicious circle of ignorance. Yet this also alienates the secular world
itself from a great many of its historical and cultural sources; as a result, the dominant
intellectual landscape of our globalized world is ever more becoming a “wasteland of
sense and truth,” as Jean-Luc Nancy put it—and this from his point of view as a
philosopher, not as a believer or non-believer. It seems therefore that it should be the
task of philosophy today to work towards the “mutual dis-enclosure” of religious and
secular-scientific worldviews.
Such an approach evolves out of a phenomenological perspective that suggests
“bracketing” ideological debates in order to focus on underlying structures of meaning
(Sinnstrukturen). Especially in the context of debates about religion, this approach
allows for the clarification of religious attitudes and implications free from the
constraints of short sighted dogmas, above all those of theism and atheism. It is not
simply a matter of the logical proximity of the two terms “theism” and “atheism” (one
is simply the negation of the other), but rather the dogmatic character of each point of
view that retains the essence of what it negates. If, as Jean-Luc Nancy holds, “all
contemporary thinking” will come to be seen as “a slow and heavy gravitational
movement around the black sun of atheism,”2 then this diagnosis mainly aims at the
often privative, reductive and defective character of atheism, which remains blind and
deaf to religious “input” even against its own will. The claim does not therefore entail
an affirmation of theism, it rather points to an inability and a will to think beyond, or
in-between, the old dichotomies.

Proof
Book 1.indb ii
 Proof
Introduction  xvii
One of the concerns of contemporary phenomenology has been to overcome this
biased understanding of religion, and here we can cite the work of Jean-Luc Marion,
Richard Kearney, Anthony Steinbock, John Caputo and others. It is important to
stress that these debates are firmly grounded in the phenomenological tradition, and
in this respect Pato≤ka is without a doubt an important figure. In recent years, the
reception of Pato≤ka’s writings has been particularly intense in French phenomeno-
logical circles, where today he is one of the most debated thinkers in the continental
tradition. The situation is different in the English-speaking world, partly given the
simple fact of a lack of access: so far there are only a few translations of Pato≤ka’s
writings available in English, in contrast to the more extensive editions of his work in
German, and above all in French, in which almost the complete œuvre is available,
thanks in large part to the extensive efforts of Erika Abrams. The intention of this
issue of the Yearbook is to improve this situation by offering the reader a profile of
Pato≤ka’s philosophy through the publication of a selection of some recent scholarly
articles on his work, accompanied by several significant primary sources appearing for
the first time in English.
The authors contributing to this volume count among the best known scholars and
experts in the field, representing the Pato≤ka-Archives in Prague and Vienna, as well as
the Husserl-Archives in Leuven and New York, along with a number of other
institutions that have become closely associated with contemporary phenomenological
research in recent years. Together they represent a small but significant sample of an
international field of Pato≤ka studies that has emerged in the past two decades, and

Taylor & Francis

which continues to expand.
Parts One and Two of this volume are explicitly dedicated to the topics of religion,
war, and the crisis of modernity. Part One includes an original English translation of

Not for distribution

the essay “Time, Myth, Faith,” written in the 1950’s, one of Pato≤ka’s earliest and
most explicit reflections on religion and historicity. It is a remarkable document of
Pato≤ka’s “philosophized” understanding of faith as a genuinely liberating existential
moment that opens the space of historicity. This piece is followed by a republication
of Erazim Kohák’s translation of Pato≤ka’s 1973 Varna Lecture, “The Dangers of
Technicization in Science according to E. Husserl and the Essence of Technology as
Danger according to M. Heidegger,” a later text on the essence of technological
civilization that includes an important reflection on historicity and sacrifice. Four
interpretive essays accompany these texts of Pato≤ka’s in Part One, exploring the
themes of sacrifice, myth, faith, and history, situating them within the broader spectrum
of Pato≤ka’s work: Claire Perryman-Holt on Pato≤ka’s later philosophy of technology;
Ludger Hagedorn and Eddo Evink on Pato≤ka’s engagement with Christianity; and
James Dodd on the relation of sacrifice, war, and historical existence in Pato≤ka’s later
writings, above all in the Heretical Essays.
Part Two contains the first appearance in English of one of Pato≤ka’s truly remarkable
studies, “On Masaryk’s Philosophy of Religion”—an unfortunately misleading title
that does not cover in the least the width and scope of this extraordinary text.
This study is dedicated to the crucial question of meaning in a nihilistic age: what gives
life meaning after the demise of religious and metaphysical ideas? Written in late 1976,
the text was completed just before the philosopher’s commitment to the civil rights
movement Charter 77 that was to significantly change, and ultimately cost him, his
life. As his last completed major work, and the first to be circulated in samizdat after
his death, it turned into something like Pato≤ka’s personal legacy. Here too a selection

Proof
Book 1.indb ii
 Proof
xviii  Ludger Hagedorn and James Dodd
of essays interpret and situate this text within Pato≤ka’s work as a whole: Ivan
Chvatík describes the place of “On Masaryk’s Philosophy of Religion” in Pato≤ka’s
intellectual biography, while Nicolas de Warren, Ludger Hagedorn, and L’ubica U≤ník
explore the remarkable reading of Kant and Dostoyevsky that plays such a central role
in Pato≤ka’s essay.
Part Three contains an English translation of the correspondence in German
between Pato≤ka and the then young Polish philosopher Krzysztof Michalski between
1973 and late 1976, just before Pato≤ka’s death in March of the following year. These
letters contain, on the one hand, a philosophically inspiring discussion of Heidegger,
while on the other hand they represent a revealing document of the political and
cultural situation in 1970’s Poland and Czechoslovakia, essential for an understanding
of the conditions under which Pato≤ka pursued philosophy. We would like to dedicate
the publication of these letters to the memory of Krzysztof Michalski, founder and
rector of the Institute for Human Sciences (IWM) in Vienna and professor of philosophy
at Boston University, who died in February 2013.
Part Four contains a selection of essays by Michael Staudigl, Marcia Sá Cavalcante
Schuback, Christian Sternad, and Jean-Luc Marion that together illuminate the
relevance of Pato≤ka’s thought in contemporary French phenomenological philosophy,
in particular with regard to what has been called its “theological turn.” Given the
ongoing debates regarding the place of religion in (post-) modern society, these articles,
together with the others, all strive to address a contemporary intellectual desideratum
through the exploration of the resources, inspiration, and insights of Pato≤ka’s
philosophy.
Taylor & Francis
Not for distribution
Notes
 1 Olivier Roy, La sainte ignorance. Le temps de la religion sans culture (Paris: Seuil, 2008).
 2 Jean-Luc Nancy, Dis-Enclosure. The Deconstruction of Christianity, trans. Bettina Bergo,
Gabriel Malenfant, and Michael B. Smith (New York: Fordham University Press, 2008), 18.

Proof
Book 1.indb ii