This paper attempts to compare the positions of Jan Patočka and Pavel Kouba concerning Friedrich Nietzsche and thus to show the role of his philosophy in the Czech phenomenology. The difference between Patočka and Kouba is that Patočka (in a similar way as Heidegger) understands Nietzsche still as a representative of traditional metaphysics (although brought to the utmost frontier), whereas Kouba succeeds to incorporate Nietzsche in the corpus of phenomenological thought and adopt his basic ideas for the specific understanding of (...) the world and of the position of Man in the world. In Kouba’s concept, Nietzsche is not just a figure from the history of philosophy, but an interesting focus around which phenomenological self-reflection can gravitate. (shrink)

This essay follows the strategy of Kant’s »Copernican Turn« bearing pragmatic features. It tries to show that this strategy is unjustified, that it forms theses about the character of reality and that it cannot provide the basis for »antirealism« developed – following Kant – by Richard Rorty. These problems indicate deficiencies of nominalist empiricism which Kant hasn’t managed to refute, and which today calls for further critical analyses of experience. Phenomenology in this context proves to be of particular importance.