Tamara Caraus

My project is centered on the political philosophy of Czech philosopher and dissident Jan Patocka. I argue that Patocka’s political thought essentially provides a philosophical account of the conditions of disagreement, dissent, and contestability, comparable to those elaborated by contemporary theorists of radical democracy. My aim is to show how the interplay between Patocka’s radical non-foundational politics and the classical ethics of the ‘care for the soul’ can bring to light new aspects of agonistic democracy, such as the emergence of democratic subjectivity in the experience of ‘breaking-through’, the logic of democratic identification through ‘permanent questioning’, and a non-teleological democratic perfectionism.