To Live After Death: Where? Patočka’s “Phenomenology of Afterlife” and Its Contexts

Situating the study on the “Phenomenology of afterlife” within the whole of Patočka’s thought, one can find several threads or complexes of ideas that could provide a context for the study and a background for its interpretation: phenomenological analyses of intersubjectivity, corporeity, temporality; the problem of the soul; the role of the other in our becoming ourselves; ways of dealing with our finitude. Surveying these contexts, I will try to find the reasons for the fundamental decision Patočka takes in his study on the afterlife: i.e., his decision to observe the afterlife only in our consciousness of – and in our actions inspired by – the other.