Talk au département de philosophie de la New School for Social Research le 31 mars à 18h.

Jean-Paul Sartre’s Philosophical Realism in Being and Nothingness Tested by Jan Patočka’s Asubjective Phenomenology on the Crucial Question of the Body

Both Jean-Paul Sartre and Jan Patočka claim to regress below the phenomenal correlation between the subject and the world discovered by Husserl not to dismiss it but to account for it from a plane which precedes it. This regression below the “universal a priori of correlation” leads, as we will see, to resuming its description. Nevertheless, we wish to show that Sartre remains dependent on a certain philosophical realism which prevents him from carrying out this genesis of the correlation. On the contrary, Patočka would achieve this thanks to his conception of an originary appearing. To verify this interpretation, it will be important, if we have the time, to take an interest in the status of the body in both authors insofar as it is he who seems to be able to ensure the join between this native plan and the openness to the world of the subject. If we recognize this function in the body, then we will have to ask ourselves if the philosophies of Sartre and of Patočka allow them to grant the body the place it deserves or if, on the contrary, only Patočka achieves this while Sartre is prevented from doing so by virtue of his “realism”.