Erika Abrams

Jan Patočka’s Philosophical Notebooks – an as yet unpublished “metaphysical diary” or Gedankentagebuch written by the Czech phenomenologist in the years immediately following the end of the Second World War  – shed new light on the lived philosophical genesis of many ideas that still acutely concern us today. The project proposes to edit, translate and annotate the better part of this corpus for the French-speaking public.

The project aims at providing the international community of Patočka scholars with the first, long-awaited translation of a major work on Aristotle’s concept of movement, published in Prague in 1964, which is of particular importance not only for the history of ideas, but also for the comprehension of Patočka’s own contribution to phenomenology through his original theory of the “three movements of human existence.”

Erika Abrams (Paris) was at the IWM for one month during 1988 to consult the Institute's Patočka Archives on some remaining editorial questions related to two new Patočka volumes ("L'écrivain, son objet" and "Qu'est-ce que la phénomenologie?"), which she has translated and will be bringing out shortly.