Revolution in Philosophy

Abstract

ary. Even if we exclude from our purview the existentialist upheaval of Western philosophy represented by such pre-phenomenological thinkers as Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, Feuerbach, Dostoevsky, Shestov, Jaspers, we can well ask if it is possible to name in any other current or historical philosophical movement such a plethora of geniuses: Husserl, Ingarden, Heidegger, Sartre, Merleau-Ponty, Ricoeur, even without concerning ourselves with their numerous disciples and followers, many of whom rank among the most eminent philosophers of our day? It is frequently remarked that there are more scientists alive today than there have been in the whole history of science. Is not a similar observation justified of philosophers also? The impact of phenomenology (and of phenomenological existentialism) in any case is just beginning to make itself felt in spit of the fact that this movement in philosophy is as old as this century. A movement which can keep its vitality for over seventy years and occasion the increasing intellectual excitement with which it is surrounded in this country at the present time is not one that the history of philosophy is soon going to forget. But if we now attempt to assess the essential characteristics of this revolution and, in an introductory way,1 try to state as clearly as possible in what this most recent innovation consists, we will have to conclude, I think, that the phenomenological revolution fits into a much broader series of historical revolutions in philosophy. Though it is certainly true to say with Pierre Thevenaz that truly profound revolutions in philosophy proceed more from innovations of method than from metaphysical illuminations,2 it seems that what the phe-