Thinking Faith After Christianity: A Theological Reading of Jan Patočka's Phenomenological Philosophy

Winner of the 2020 Emerging Scholar's Theological Book Prize presented by the European Society for Catholic Theology

This book examines the work of Czech philosopher Jan Patočka from the largely neglected perspective of religion. Patočka is known primarily for his work in phenomenology and ancient Greek philosophy, and also as a civil rights activist and critic of modernity. In this book, Martin Koci shows Patočka also maintained a persistent and increasing interest in Christianity. Thinking Faith after Christianity examines the theological motifs in Patočka's work and brings his thought into discussion with recent developments in phenomenology, making a case for Patočka as a forerunner to what has become known as the theological turn in continental philosophy. Koci systematically examines his thoughts on the relationship between theology and philosophy, and his perennial struggle with the idea of crisis. For Patočka, modernity, metaphysics, and Christianity were all in different kinds of crises, and Koci demonstrates how his work responded to those crises creatively, providing new insights on theology understood as the task of thinking and living transcendence in a problematic world. It perceives the un-thought element of Christianity--what Patočka identified as its greatest resource and potential--not as a weakness, but as a credible way to ponder Christian faith and the Christian mode of existence after the proclaimed death of God and the end of metaphysics.