Jan Patočka’s Project of an Asubjective Phenomenology, and the Movement of Human Existence

Phenomenology is a mode of philosophising that does not take ready-made theses for its premises but rather keeps all premises at an arm’s length. It turns from sclerotic theses to the living well-spring of experience. Its opposite is metaphysics – which constructs philosophy as a special scientific system. Phenomenology examines the experiential content of such theses; in every abstract thought it seeks to uncover what is hidden in it, how we arrive at it, what seen and lived reality underlies it. We are uncovering something that has been here all along, something we had sensed, glimpsed from the corner of our eye but did not fully know, something that ‘had not been brought to conception.’ Phenomenon – that which presents itself; logos – meaningful discourse. Only by speaking it out do we know something fully, only what we speak out do we fully see. That is what makes phenomenology so persuasive..