The Path of Phenomenology: James Mensch and Jan Patočka on Subjectivity

In this paper, using James Mensch’s and Jan Patočka’s accounts of the crisis of modern knowledge as a consequence of the changed idea of knowledge, starting with the rise of modern science and conceptualised by René Descartes’ attempt to stem the rise of scepticism to secure the ground of human knowledge without the support of divinity, I will chart the paths of Mensch and Patočka as they engage with ‘the motivated path’ of Husserl and his fight against the scepticism and relativism of modern knowledge. I will argue that the connection between the subject and the object, which defines the beginning of modern knowledge, preoccupied Mensch and Patočka throughout their careers. They both return, again and again, to Husserl, in order to question his ‘path’ leading to transcendental subjectivity, while offering different ways to think about it.