Duchovní základy nadcivilizace

In this paper, I propose to return to Jan Patočka’s question from 1970 and ask again what the spiritual foundations of life are in our times, to reflect on the changes in modern societies after the turn to what we now call neoliberalism. My claim is that Patočka’s analyses concerning the turn to scientific rationality is now a defining feature of our times that ‘colours’ the whole of our understanding. According to Patočka, these changes started with the turn to modern science in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, slowly changing our thinking, framing it through the ideas of formalisation and subjectivity that we simply and unquestioningly accept. I will extend Patočka’s analysis of ‘rational Supercivilisation’ to argue that its ‘radical’ version now defines our present. The outcome is the privileging of formalised rationality that undermines other forms of reasoning, whereby human ‘subjective’ meaning becomes homeless.