Nichtigkeit des Seins. Zu Jan Patočkas Stellungnahme zum Existenzialismus
Nothingness of Being. On Jan Patočka‘s View on Existentialism

Summary/Abstract: In the years 1946 to 1948 Jan Patočka dealt, among other things, with the then current wave of existentialism and its criticism. In addition to an essay „Doubts on Existencialism”, published in 1947, this is evidenced by numerous reflections from this period found in Patočka’s estate, such as the recently published Philosophical Diaries. Unpublished notes from the years 1946–1950, as well as by the previously published book manuscript Eternity and Historicity, which comes from another part of his estate. These are the main sources the paper explores in order to show an impact of Eugen Fink’s critical stance on phenomenology, which in the 1930s was linked, among other things, to the idea of the “Me‑on.”The article does not go into this idea itself, as Fink conceived it, but it only follow its traces in Patočka’s debates on existentialism, where the negativity of being, insofar as it is reduced to “pure objectivity” in transcendental phenomenology, leads to the concept of a “dialectic of negative affection.”

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