Europe, as a Theme in Phenomenology

Synonyms

Occident; The West

Introduction

Europe has been a central theme in the phenomenological tradition for several reasons. For most of its early representatives, such as Husserl and Merleau-Ponty, phenomenology was an emphatically European tradition as it built on the conceptual resources of Kantian and Cartesian philosophies, sometimes drawing inspiration also from classical sources such as Plato and Aristotle. Second, although phenomenology is often viewed as a Franco-German tradition, its influence was by no means limited to these countries. As the examples of Roman Ingarden, Emmanuel Levinas, Jan Patočka, or Gustav Sphet demonstrate, phenomenology found a solid footing also outside of Central Europe: in Poland and in the Baltics, in the Czech Republic, and in Russia. The Nordic countries have had strong traditions of phenomenological philosophy, and the same goes for countries such as Italy. Even more importantly, however, Europe is more than the geographical origin of...