Perception as an Explication of Being in Patočka and Merleau-Ponty[Smyslové vnímání jako vyjadřování bytí u Patočky a Merleau-Pontyho]

Firstly, the article gives a detailed interpretation of Jan Patočka's concept of sense-perception expressed in his manuscripts from the years 1939-1945. Secondly, it shows both the original and the more widely shared aspects of Patočka's concept through their comparison with analogous theses formulated in Maurice Merleau-Ponty's lectures from the year 1953. The starting point of Patočka's concept of perception is the idea of objective and horizontal intentionality. Its purpose is to establish a descriptive basis for this conception of intentionality and to develop it interpretatively in order to clarify the relationship and distance between subject and object. To this end, Patočka conceives the concept of the essential interest of an individual being in that being itself as the principle of the objective intentionality and as the beginning of individual self-objectification, i.e. the body. The relationship between this interest, body, and objective intention is described as the relation of expression and explication. On the basis of this description, Patočka presents a phenomenological interpretation of all objectivity as an expression of a life on the one hand and an intentional explication on the other. This conclusion, in comparison with the theses of Merleau-Ponty, proves to be an original idea of Patočka's philosophical fragment.