Dominant Science and Influential Art: Jan Patočka on Relations between Art and Science

The article deals with Jan Patočka’s considerations on the mutual relation of science and art as two important ways towards the comprehension of reality. Patočka believes that science provides the tool to reveal objective and binding truth and that modern and contemporary art is able to reveal subjective and individual truth. Art thus functions as a corrective to the dominance of science and technology. However, art as such emerges only in a time of dominant scientific and technical approaches to reality. Along these lines, the article emphasises that the mutual relations of art and science should be conceived as dialectical.