In order to show a different understanding of what it means to be human, in this paper, I will present Jan Patočka’s discussion of human existence. For Patočka, human existence is essentially historical and situational. His reflections proceed from Martin Heidegger’s explanation of the structure of human existence in Sein und Zeit, which Heidegger calls Da-Sein. According to Patočka, Heidegger’s exposition is predicated on a negative human relation to the world; we are originally inauthentic. Yet he forgets to take into account that Da-Sein is a doublet: animal rationale. Patočka appropriates Arendt’s phenomenological account of the human condition in order to critique Heidegger’s account of Da-sein in Being and Time to develop his own understanding of human existence.

The purpose of this paper is to review the structure of the subjective time which has not been explicitly discussed by Schutz, with the action theory by him as a guide, and to show the overlapping time structure interwoven by intentional experience and objective time to be life-worldly time. Eventually, by disclosing the three phases of life-worldly time constituted by the intersection of multiple qualitatively differing times, two conclusions can be drawn: intentional experiences are not self-identical, but in an inter-reflective relationship with objective time; and the ego constituting time in the natural attitude can be positioned on intentional experience only through self-referential circulation by action as a medium.

Max Scheler (1874-1928) is one of the most original and influential figures in phenomenology. He is also known as the father of modern philosophical anthropology. Scheler’s project is not to develop a strict science or to explore the meaning of being, but to question the fundamental question: what is man, and what is man’s place in nature? In this paper, I shall discuss Scheler’s turn from phenomenology of man to philosophical anthropology, and evaluate the significance of this turn.

The active subject in the historical situation: An interobservation between the philosophy of Marx and phenomenology. Since the beginning of the twentieth century, Phenomenology and Marxism have been two major paradigms in human science based on their contribution to ontology about human being instead of methodology. The phenomenological analysis of the ability of sense-giving of human-being made man as a being-active in the world, while the historical materialism of Marx defined man as a passive-being within the particular historical situation. However, these two discourses may easily open to misconception. Phenomenology was once seen as under the banner of solipsism and the philosophy of Marx as an economical or material determinism. In fact, in Husserl’s Ideas II, Husserl had noticed the role and the function of the body in constitutive act and then the human being had been thought as a passive-being, a corporeal-being-in-the-world, in phenomenology. On the other hand, for Marx, his historical materialism had never negated man as a being-active in the historical process. But both of these two philosophical systems cannot successfully describe human being as being-active meanwhile as being-passive. Therefore, I suggest that it is propitious moment to clarify the unclear dimensions of these two philosophical discourses through the dialogue between them. In addition, I will attempt to propose some new statements on the relationship between the body, will and history.