Abstract

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.