Abstract

What gives meaning to life after the end of religious and metaphysical conceptions? This is the crucial quest of Jan Patočka’s final study. His “phenomenology of meaning” advocates a relative, human meaning, yet one that transcends the egotistical enclosure in oneself. The most important source for Patočka in these regards is the literary writing of Dostoevsky, esp. his novel Brothers Karamazov. This article relates the quest for a “new” meaning to a critical reflection on reason and the nightmarish monsters it creates.