Nostalgia and Phenomenon: Husserl and Patočka on the End of the Ancient Cosmos

Abstract

This essay argues that Jan PatočkaPatočka, Jan ’s ‘GalileoGalileo Galilei and the End of the Ancient Cosmos’ goes beyond HusserlHusserl, Edmund ’s fragmentary account of Galileo in The Crisis of European Sciences The Crisis of European Sciences and Transcendental Phenomenology and Transcendental Phenomenology to present an account of the a priori eidetic structure of the foundation of a strand of the modern, scientific mathematisationMathematisation of nature that is informed by actual history. In conjunction with this, PatočkaPatočka, Jan adumbrates the eidetic structure of the concomitant limits on human meaning imposed by this historically dated conceptual foundation, insofar as the human being becomes a part of the mechanised world that Galileo’s accomplishment makes possible.