Abstract

The reception of the British empirical-sensualist tradition as a unique form of philosophising has its special place in the history of philosophy. Jan Patočka takes this fact into consideration, but his reception and interpretation of British empiricism is not purely historical. Patočka was trained by Husserl’s phenomenology and formed by Heidegger’s intellectual heritage, and this is reflected in his original philosophical thinking. Furthermore, his philosophical thought is highly influenced by a motif initially formed on the grounds of Husserl’s phenomenology as the problem of Lebenswelt, in Patočka’s work present as the problem of natural world. Patočka perceives the entire philosophical tradition in the context of this leitmotif. His critical reception of British empiricism was an inseparable component in the rethinking of the problem of natural world. Patočka did not attempt to summarise his attitude towards British sensualism in the form of a stand-alone paper or study. Nevertheless, his reception of the British philosophical heritage of the 17th century is definitely of primary importance — firstly, in the context of the phenomenological tradition, which Patočka joins, and secondly, for the articulation of his own philosophical position. Comments on the British sensualist tradition can be found in various writings from his early as well as late period. His notion of empiricism is always fundamentally interrelated with his other philosophical works — with his interpretation of Husserl and Heidegger and later still more intensely with his own notion of the natural world and his project of asubjective phenomenology.