Problematicity, Recognition and Spirituality: A Constructive Reading of Political Resistance in Jan Patočka
Published 2025-08-25
Keywords
- problematicity,
- sacrifice,
- political resistence,
- political pluralism,
- freedom
- social dynamics,
- ethics,
- intersubjectivity,
- political commitment,
- Jan Patočka ...More
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Abstract
This article discusses whether it is possible to speak in a positive sense of political resistance in Patočka, considering that in his reflections there is a clear tension regarding the power dynamics that are usually imposed to avoid it. To do this, I analyze the three movements of existence proposed by Patočka to emphasize in what sense political action can only occur in the third movement because it promotes a non-instrumental intersubjective relationship. This allows us to recognize our finitude and vulnerability and make ourselves ethically responsible for a type of non-traditional political resistance, whose interest is not to intervene in new forms of domain of life. There is, rather, a commitment to a political pluralism that does not reduce the different horizons of meaning of individuals through an effective struggle for power, but rather assumes, through the image of the spiritual man, an attitude of conversion that includes the freedom to constitute one’s own existence as a political project and, through it, a transformation of our social dynamics.
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