Introduction: The Motivation of the Beginning Philosopher in the Absolute Situation

Abstract

The lectures prior to the Christmas holidays coalesced into a closed totality, into an introduction to transcendental phenomenol- ogy and the phenomenological philosophy by way of the history of ideas. They considered the history of philosophy from the point of view of that idea of philosophy which had grown out of the Socratic- Platonic reactions against Sophism and which, as an inwardly guiding purposive idea, determined the course of the entire subsequent development of science.