The Necessity and Impossibility of a New Beginning for Philosophy through Phenomenology

Professor Thomas NENON University of Memphis, U. S. A.

Whether in its Husserlian or Heideggerian forms, phenomenology constitutes itself as a response to the need for a new beginning in philosophy. This aspiration is not unique to phenomenology, but rather a familiar theme from many forms of modern philosophy -- from Descartes to the founders of the movement of analytical philosophy that emerged at about the same time as phenomenology was developing as a distinct philosophical approach. Phenomenology differs from those other approaches, however, in its simultaneous demonstration of the impossibility of a truly new beginning in philosophy and in the fact that it provides a systematic account of the reasons why an absolute new beginning in philosophy is impossible. Since phenomenology nonetheless recognizes the urgency of a renewal in philosophy and modern culture in general, one that would be comparable to that of philosophy in its first beginnings with the Greeks, this paper will recall the limits of an new beginning for both Husserl and Heidegger and describe what the talk of a new beginning would mean in light of these limitations. It will turn out that for both of them, the process of simultaneous continuity and renewal will be greatly indebted to the notion of “life” as described by Wilhelm Dilthey. This paper also describes the fundamental differences in their approaches to the grounding of such a new beginning that mark very different senses of limits and finitude for phenomenology as well.