Studia Phaenomenologica

Volume 7, 2007

Jan Patočka and the European Heritage

Nietzsche in der tschechischen Phänomenologie
Patočka und die Frage nach dem Sinn

This paper attempts to compare the positions of Jan Patočka and Pavel Kouba concerning Friedrich Nietzsche and thus to show the role of his philosophy in the Czech phenomenology. The difference between Patočka and Kouba is that Patočka (in a similar way as Heidegger) understands Nietzsche still as a representative of traditional metaphysics (although brought to the utmost frontier), whereas Kouba succeeds to incorporate Nietzsche in the corpus of phenomenological thought and adopt his basic ideas for the specific understanding of the world and of the position of Man in the world. In Kouba’s concept, Nietzsche is not just a figure from the history of philosophy, but an interesting focus around which phenomenological self-reflection can gravitate.