What is Consciousness a Negation of? Jan Patočka’s Contribution to the Existentialism Controversy
Journal of the British Society for Phenomenology June 18, 2025 Jakub Čapek 1 citation
Jan Patočka's philosophical anthropology in the 1940s defined human existence by the capacity to distance oneself from pre-given reality, echoing Sartre's existentialism. However, Patočka rejected Sartre's ethical implications and the notion that self-consciousness entails an inner duplication and negation of consciousness itself. While Patočka still conceived consciousness as negation, he offered a different account of what it negates by interpreting Socratic knowledge of not-knowing existentially. This opened an original perspective in the debate over existentialism, distinct from other participants.