auto-immunity or transcendenceonly a very brief sketch of such a venture, which he characterizes as a
“phenomenology of responsivity.” Its guideline would be the attempt
to grasp religious phenomena in terms analogous to Levinas’s concept
of the other and the epiphany of the human face. Accordingly, the
character of religious experiences would then be best described as a
fundamental disruption, as an excess that radically questions the
existing (finite) order but that still cannot be separated or detached
from the order that it exceeds. It is something that withdraws itself but
is present even in its withdrawal. The role of the “subject” or “Ego”
(to use these inadequate traditional terms) would then be one that is
not doomed to the bad dichotomy of either omnipotence or impotence.
Against this background, the work of Jan Patočka opens up a poten-
tially helpful line of debate. In the first instance for a rather “techni-
cal” reason: the underlying concept of his philosophy is a non-subjec-
tive one that thwarts the unconditional constitutional power of the
“Ego” and its “self-centeredness.” It “opens up” the ground for alter-
ity and an encounter with something external, strange, not disposable.
Yet at the same time, this move in Patočka does not go to the other
extreme of a mere receptiveness and passivity. Methodologically, he
wants to maintain what he calls a “phenomenological provability.”
Second, it seems that it is precisely the field of religion, the “openness
to transcendence,” that deserves special attention. Patočka’s repeated
references to Christianity are, as Karfík observed, by no means the
“accidental excursion”^11 of a philosopher into the realm of religion.
His sometimes almost intimate relationship to Christianity is even
more of a surprise, if one takes into account the biographical back-
ground: Unlike other philosophers of religion who — at least at certain
points of their lives — often had strong personal inclinations to reli-
gion as “believers,” Patočka was always more or less distant from the
church and practicing religion. In his philosophy of history, he speaks
of the “Post-Christian epoch” as the lived European reality at least
since the 19th century, and it seems that this epoch is a matter of fact
xien, deren Auflösung schlimmer ist als diese selbst.” Waldenfels, op. cit., 84), but
to be aware of its tension and the shortcomings of any “immunizing” vaccination.
- Karfík, Filip, Unendlichwerden durch die Endlichkeit. Eine Lektüre der Philosophie
Jan Patočkas, Würzburg: Königshausen, 2008, 31.