Jan Frei

The Jan Patočka Research Program and Archive at the IWM have an ongoing collaboration with the Jan Patočka Archive in Prague. As part of this collaboration, Jan Frei spent some time at the IWM during 2019 to participate in network meetings and work on shared projects.

This translation aims at providing Czech readers a deeper insight into Voegelin’s philosophy in general – into his differentiating between symbols and their engendering experiences; between linguistic expressions of truth and truth experienced; and, subsequently, between fideistic adherence to symbols and meditative reconstruction of the experiences that engendered them; between construction of “second realities” and the search for reality; between existential deformations and existence of truth, i.e. between ideology and philosophy. These “diagnostic tools” can be as helpful today as they were when Voegelin used them to analyze the intellectual climate of his time. This volume will hopefully „bring Voegelin back to Mitteleuropa” that Central-European Voegelin-scholars call for.

Das Projekt befasst sich mit Patočkas Konzeption der Lebensbewegungen. Der Schwerpunkt liegt an der dritten der drei Bewegungen (der des Durbruchs, der Wahrheit oder der Existenz), die der existenzphilosophischen Auffassung der authentischen Existenz nahesteht. Ich will also versuchen, die Konzeption Patočkas mit entsprechenden Sparten der Philosophie von Karl Jaspers zu vergleichen und so sie als eine spezifische Gestalt des existentiellen Denkens zu zeigen.

The Jan Patocka Research Program and Archive at the IWM have an ongoing collaboration with the Jan Patocka Archive in Prague. As part of this collaboration, Jan Frei spent two months at the IWM during 2009 to participate in network meetings and work on shared projects.