ludger hagedornto him, something that he takes as given, without any undertone of
either triumph or regret. Therefore, the “intrusion of belief” into the
pure field of science that generally seems to be a problem area for
many critiques is not an issue as far as Patočka is concerned. The fol-
lowing observations are meant to open up the field for a closer discus-
sion of his understanding of Christianity, an intellectual potential that
Patočka sees as constituting a profound challenge to philosophy and
its continuing allegiance to Greek (“metaphysical”) patterns of think-
ing. Far from wanting to give a full account of this problem in his
thought, these reflections will draw attention to an understanding of
religion that takes up its move to transcendence and its quality of
transcending without necessarily linking it to the transcendent deities
or “netherworlds.” The title of Karfík’s book mentioned above de-
scribes this as “Unendlichwerden durch die Endlichkeit,” obtaining
in-finity by and through finitude. As a short sketch of this feature of
Patočka’s philosophy will show, this concept in the end also gives a
concrete goal, a telos, to the transcending move.
Surveying Patočka’s philosophical development from his early
transcendental idealism up to the late concept of a movement of
human existence, Karfìk discerns one characteristic and distinguishing
mark of his philosophy: “ein Zug der Transzendenz, einer Selbst-
überschreitung des empirischen Menschseins auf ein anhypotheton
hin... ” (31). This is already true of the young, 28-year-old philosopher
who emphatically states:
Part of the finitude of our actual life is to experience a need for some
external support, for salvation. Salvation is the sustenance of our life
by an external, absolute power. Philosophy, however, suggests a reversal
of that situation: finitude cannot naïvely find “support” in absolute
power simply because the absolute itself is wholly contained within the
finite.... It is not possible to rely on the gods, because the absolute is
not outside but within us. Man stands in a closer and more intimate
relation to God than is either safe or pleasant.^12- Quoted from an article that bears the significant title “Some comments con-
cerning the extramundane and mundane position of philosophy,” cf. Patočka, Jan,
Living in Problematicity, ed. Eric Manton, Praha: Oikoymenh, 2008, 26.