Online research in philosophy

This paper presents a short biography of Jan Patočka, as well as biographical data of the author in connection to the life and work of Jan Patočka. The paper describes Patočka’s academic activity at Charles University between 1968 and 1972, how he continued by giving private underground seminars in the dark years of 1972 to 1976, and how his engagement culminated in the dissident movement Charter 77. The author explains how the unofficial underground Patočka Archive was established on the very (...) day of Patočka’s death, even before the terrible events around his funeral. Before the official Patočka Archive was founded on the 1st of January, 1990, many volumes of his works were edited secretly during the period of 1977 to 1989. This made it possible to continue successfully publishing the series of the Complete Works of Jan Patočka after 1990. (shrink)

The following article presents how the first Czech phenomenologist Jan Patoèka became a student of Edmund Husserl and how he motivated in the 70s a small group of Czech phenomenologists to begin the translation of Sein und Zeit, which started after his death in 1977. The article then describes how this translation was secretly “published” in the 80s, under the circumstances of the communist totalitarian regime, as successive installments. It then discusses examples of how the linguistic translation difficulties were solved (...) and how the entire book was finally and officially published in the middle of the 90s. (shrink)