This edited collection discusses phenomenological critiques of formalism and their relevance to the problem of responsibility and the life-world. The book deals with themes of formalization of knowledge in connection to the life-world, the natural world, the history of science and our responsibility for both our epistemic claims and the world in which we live. Readers will discover critiques of formalization, the life-world and responsibility, and a collation and comparison of Patocka's and Husserl's work on these themes. Considerable literature on Husserl is presented here and the two themes of epistemic responsibility and the life-world are discussed together. This work specifically emphasizes the interrelatedness of these existential aspects of his work - self-responsibility and the crisis - as not only epistemological, but also related to human life. This volume also introduces Jan Patocka to English-speaking readers as a phenomenologist in his own right. Patocka shows us, in particular, the significance of the modern abyss between our thinking and the world. Readers will discover that this abyss is of concern for our everyday experience because it leads to a rupture in our understanding of the world: between the world of our living and its scientific construct. We see that Patocka continually emphasized the relevance of Husserl's work to existential questions relating to human responsibility and the life-world, which he admits is left largely implicit in Husserl's work. This edited collection will spark discussion on the question of responsibility against the backdrop of formalized knowledge which is increasingly inaccessible to human understanding. Despite the complexity of some of the analyzed ideas, this book discusses these themes in a clear and readable way. This work is scholarly, exact in its discussion and authoritative in its reading, but at the same time accessible to anyone motivated to understand these debates.

This edited collection discusses phenomenological critiques of formalism and their relevance to the problem of responsibility and the life-world. The book deals with themes of formalization of knowledge in connection to the life-world, the natural world, the history of science and our responsibility for both our epistemic claims and the world in which we live. Readers will discover critiques of formalization, the life-world and responsibility, and a collation and comparison of Patocka's and Husserl's work on these themes. Considerable literature on Husserl is presented here and the two themes of epistemic responsibility and the life-world are discussed together. This work specifically emphasizes the interrelatedness of these existential aspects of his work - self-responsibility and the crisis - as not only epistemological, but also related to human life. This volume also introduces Jan Patocka to English-speaking readers as a phenomenologist in his own right. Patocka shows us, in particular, the significance of the modern abyss between our thinking and the world. Readers will discover that this abyss is of concern for our everyday experience because it leads to a rupture in our understanding of the world: between the world of our living and its scientific construct. We see that Patocka continually emphasized the relevance of Husserl's work to existential questions relating to human responsibility and the life-world, which he admits is left largely implicit in Husserl's work. This edited collection will spark discussion on the question of responsibility against the backdrop of formalized knowledge which is increasingly inaccessible to human understanding. Despite the complexity of some of the analyzed ideas, this book discusses these themes in a clear and readable way. This work is scholarly, exact in its discussion and authoritative in its reading, but at the same time accessible to anyone motivated to understand these debates.

In The Crisis of Meaning and the Life-World, Lubica Ucnik examines the existential conflict that formed the focus of Edmund Husserl's final work, which she argues is very much with us today: how to reconcile scientific rationality with the meaning of human existence. To investigate this conundrum, she places Husserl in dialogue with three of his most important successors: Martin Heidegger, Hannah Arendt, and Jan Patocka. For Husserl, 1930s Europe was characterized by a growing irrationalism that threatened to undermine its legacy of rational inquiry. Technological advancement in the sciences, Husserl argued, had led science to forget its own foundations in the primary "life-world": the world of lived experience. Renewing Husserl's concerns in today's context, Ucnik first provides an original and compelling reading of his oeuvre through the lens of the formalization of the sciences, then traces the unfolding of this problem through the work of Heidegger, Arendt, and Patocka. Although many scholars have written on Arendt, none until now has connected her philosophical thought with that of Czech phenomenologist Jan Patocka. Ucnik provides invaluable access to the work of the latter, who remains understudied in the English language. She shows that together, these four thinkers offer new challenges to the way we approach key issues confronting us today, providing us with ways to reconsider truth, freedom, and human responsibility in the face of the postmodern critique of metanarratives and a growing philosophical interest in new forms of materialism.

Bruxelles, Bern, Berlin, Frankfurt/M., New York, Oxford, Wien. By tracing the theoretical genealogy of such ideas as reason, natural and historical rights, the individual, nation, and the state, Lubica Ucnik argues that we need to come to terms with the conceptual framework of the Enlightenment in order to understand the relationship between nationalism and liberalism. The author claims that the foundation of our knowledge is embedded in the modern concept of the individual. She argues that there are two different models of individualism. One is predicated on the mechanistic universe of causation and defined by the idea of negative liberty; the other theorises the individual as relational and hence social. These two conceptions of the individual are tied to different concepts of rights. The idea of nation is likewise contained in the notion of the individual. Once again, there are two possible approaches. Using the example of the splitting of Czecho-Slovakia, the concept of historical right theorised by the German Historical School of Recht is elaborated. After the First World War, the idea of natural right, as advanced by the Treaty of Versailles promised a sense of legality to all nations living in Central Eastern Europe. Now two concepts - natural right and historical right - provide a basis for the claim of each nation to its own state. The complexity of the political situation in Europe after 1989 thus has to be interpreted differently. Contents: The book aims to explain the theoretical heritage of the Enlightenment in the context of liberalism and nationalism. It presents clear conceptual accounts of the individual, rights, the nation, the state, as well as the relationshipbetween the individual and the state, sensus communis, rational and irrational nations. This discussion enables a change of focus in current debates about nationalism versus liberalism and draws upon the split of Czecho-Slovakia as an example.