ABSTRACT
This chapter analyzes Jan Patocka’s concept of “asubjective phenomenology”. It begins with Patocka’s criticism of the Husserlian “life-world”, a criticism which leads to Patocka’s concept of the “phenomenal field” as the original source of manifestation, that which is irreducible both to a singular being and to a transcendental subject. By founding the “life-world” in the constitutive activity of transcendental intentionality, Edmund Husserl, according to Patocka, effectively reiterates the modern scientific claim to truly penetrate tangible reality by removing each sign of its irreducibility. The material background of the world accomplishes the movement of possibilities by establishing a relationship of attraction and repulsion with the kinesthetic system of the “living body”. Patocka’s thematization of the notion of the “natural world” reaches its most significant development in “The Natural World and Phenomenology”.
