Introduction

Abstract

Phenomenology in the United States is in a state of ferment and change. Not all the changes are happy ones, however, for some of the most prominent philosophers of the first generation of phenomenologists have died: in 1959 Alfred Schutz, and within the past two years John Wild, Dorion Cairns, and Aron Gurwitsch. These thinkers, though often confronting a hostile intellectual climate, were nevertheless persistent and profoundly influential—through their own works, and through their students. The two sources associated with their names, The Graduate Faculty of The New School for Social Research, and the circle around John Wild first at Harvard and later at Northwestern and Yale, produced a sizable portion of the now second generation American phenomenological philosophers.