The fidelity of heretics: Ricoeur and Patocka on Husserl's Cartesians meditations

In spite of making explicit their phenomenological influence, Ricoeur and Patocka have been very critical with husserlian idealism. In that sense, although we can consider those remarks as "heresies" to Husserl's thought, they evidence their belonging to the phenomenological tradition. Following this trail, in this article, we ask the question: How to characterize the phenomenological conceptions of Ricoeur and Patocka despite of their common critique of husserlian idealism? To answer this question, we analyze their respective commentaries to Husserl's Cartesians Meditations. In this "sacred" book of the phenomenology of intersubjectivity, both of them find a reconstruction of phenomenological idealism in the concept of methodical solipsism, and they find the introduction of the concept of alter ego in the last Meditation as an insufficient escape. We will show that the meaning of their critiques has to be understood in relation with their own trajectories where they converge in defending a particular conception of phenomenology. This conception implies a critical reflection of its own task and the renewal of its autonomous care for the phenomena.