Nostalgia and phenomenon

Husserl and Patočka on the end of the ancient cosmos

Burt C. Hopkins

pp. 57-78

in: L'ubica Učník, Ivan Chvatík, Anita Williams (eds), The phenomenological critique of mathematisation and the question of responsibility, Berlin, Springer, 2015

Abstract

This essay argues that Jan Patočka 's "Galileo Galilei and the End of the Ancient Cosmos' goes beyond Husserl 's fragmentary account of Galileo in The Crisis of European Sciences and Transcendental Phenomenology to present an account of the a priori eidetic structure of the foundation of a strand of the modern, scientific mathematisation of nature that is informed by actual history. In conjunction with this, Patočka adumbrates the eidetic structure of the concomitant limits on human meaning imposed by this historically dated conceptual foundation, insofar as the human being becomes a part of the mechanised world that Galileo's accomplishment makes possible.

Cited authors

Husserl Edmund

Patočka Jan