The Phenomenology of Afterlife

The essay “The Phenomenology of Afterlife” was left unfinished by Patočka and was never published during his lifetime. In fact, we still do not know exactly when it was written, though it was clearly written sometime during the latter part of his life. In the essay, Patočka attempts to analyze the question of afterlife phenomenologically. He rejects the traditional notion concerning the immortality of the soul and instead seeks to give a purely phenomenological and existential account of how the other lives on in us after his death, and of how we are affected by the death of a loved one. In order to do this, Patočka bases his understanding of the afterlife on a phenomenological analysis of our constitutive intersubjectivity with others.