Jan Patočka a Hannah Arendtová

• Authors: Pechar J.

Title variants

EN

Jan Patocka and Hannah Arendt

• Languages of publication: CS

Abstracts

EN

Jan Patocka repeatedly refers to Hannah Arendt when, in agreement with her, he puts the sphere of life-maintenance work, and thus the economic sphere in general, into opposition with political life. This does not, however, mean there are no differences between them on other questions. While Arendt is convinced that only a misunderstanding of the difference between thinking and knowing can lead to the expectation of truth from thinking, Patocka emphasises, in the context of a critique of Heidegger, that it must be possible to evaluate even a philosophical conception from the point of view of truth. The divergence here is however reduced by the fact that for Patocka truth in philosophy must be distinguished from truth in the sense of adequate knowledge. While the result of caring for the soul is, for Patocka, the enhancement of attempts to arrive at a solid unity of being, Arendt puts emphasis on the essential duality which is characteristic of the thinking self. Another difference is their evaluation of the political thinking of Plato and Aristotle, something which is related to their differing conceptions of authority. For Arendt, authority presupposes a conviction about the sacredness of the act of founding a community, which is something specifically Roman and which, in this specific sense, never existed among the Greeks who were able to continually repeat the founding of the polis when founding colonies. Against this, Patocka judges that Plato would have liked to renew the synthesis of authority and freedom which the Athenian community was once famous for. There is, in connection with this, a differing conception of further European development: Arendt emphasises the role played by the revival of the Roman conception of tradition based on founding, in the birth of the Christian church.

Keywords

EN

ARENDT HANNAH; PATOCKA JAN

Discipline

• PHILOSOPHY: PHILOSOPHY

• Publisher: Institute of Philosophy, Czech Academy of Sciences
• Journal: Filosofický časopis (Philosophical Journal)
• Year: 2007
• Volume: 55
• Issue: 4
• Pages: 485-495
• Document type: ARTICLE

Contributors

author

Pechar J.

• J. Pechar, Filosoficky ustav AV CR, Jilska 1, 110 00 Praha 1, Czech Republic

Identifiers

CEJSH db identifier

07CZAAAA03276768