The relevance of Patočka's "negative platonism"

Eddo Evink

Rijksuniversiteit Groningen

pp. 57-70

in: Erika Abrams, Ivan Chvatík (eds), Jan Patočka and the heritage of phenomenology, Berlin, Springer, 2011

Abstrakt

In twentieth-century continental philosophy, several evaluative standpoints with regard to the metaphysical tradition can be discerned, each working with a different concept of metaphysics: (1) Successive attempts to overcome metaphysics, taken as a philosophical position with a fixed foundation (Nietzsche, Heidegger, Levinas, Derrida); (2) the idea that metaphysics, i.e., the effort to reach absolute knowledge, has been left behind quite a while ago (Gadamer, Habermas); (3) metaphysics as a set of recurrent unanswerable basic questions (Merleau-Ponty, Patočka). This is the background against which the relevance of Patočka's "Negative Platonism" is sketched, highlighting its main distinguishing aspects, especially in a comparison with the work of Derrida, which is very close to the thought of Patočka, though also showing some important differences.

Cited authors

Merleau-Ponty Maurice

Heidegger Martin

Derrida Jacques

Levinas Emmanuel

Patočka Jan

Plato