This article examines the points of similarity and the differences between the Patočkian concept of interpellation and Merleau-Ponty’s concept of chiasmus. These two modes of relating-to-being through language and body, perception and space share the same character of reversibility and openness to the other. However, the “co-respondance” between the subject and the world is not approached by the two phenomenological philosophers from the same perspective. Being-questioned is the inter-psychical event specific to one’s experience of others and of the world; the (...) chiasmatic structure is the bedrock of the ontological relationship and the intercorporeity of beings. Close, but distinct one from the other, interpellation and chiasm partially reveal the common preoccupations of two philosophers whose dialogue History never allowed to occur. (shrink)

The Europe that was born from Plato's "care for the soul" can today no longer be recognized; it has been replaced by the self-management of the economic EU. How can we now come back to a Europe concerned about its soul, the others, and the world, reinventing itself as a new nation? Jan Patočka's thoughts on post-Europe can show us the way. Starting from some clarifications on the definitely European initial meaning that Patočka detects in Socrates' "care for the soul", (...) the purpose of this article is to examine what in this European spirit can be saved in the post-European age, and to what extent a "European nation" can still make sense. This analysis leads us, building on the visionary texts written in the seventies by Patočka, to rethink the possibilities of a reformation of European reason, and a métanoïa of Post-Europe. (shrink)