Early phenomenologists experienced the philosophy as a total life-orienting calling

Evidence

Levinas’ trajectory was typical of many phenomenology converts. He had been studying philosophy just over the French border in Strasbourg in 1928 when he saw someone in the town reading a Husserl book. Intrigued, he read it himself, and immediately arranged a transfer so he could study with Husserl in person. It changed his whole way of thinking. As he wrote, ‘For the young Germans I met in Freiburg, this new philosophy is more than a new theory; it is a new ideal of life, a new page of history, almost a new religion.’ — Sarah Bakewell, At the Existentialist Café, 125

Categorization

• DEFINE: Shows how phenomenology was received as more than a doctrine — a formative context for understanding why the movement spread so fervently.
• XREF: connects to: Phenomenology appealed to early adopters as a synthesis of psychology’s method and philosophy’s ambition — Sarah Bakewell, At the Existentialist Café: Freedom,…, 149; Philosophy as a way of life survived as a shadow tradition beside academic philosophy — Sarah Bakewell, At the Existentialist Café: Freedom,…, 56; Phenomenology demanded a transformative mode of thinking that also yielded concrete results — Sarah Bakewell, At the Existentialist Café: Freedom,…, 150 (+1 more)

Broader Connections

• Phenomenology appealed to early adopters as a synthesis of psychology’s method and philosophy’s ambition #expands (0.85) — Sarah Bakewell, At the Existentialist Café, 149
• Phenomenology demanded a transformative mode of thinking that also yielded concrete results #expands (0.80) — Sarah Bakewell, At the Existentialist Café, 150
• Philosophy as a way of life survived as a shadow tradition beside academic philosophy #corroborates (0.78) — Sarah Bakewell, At the Existentialist Café, 56
• The perceived intellectual reconciliation of philosophies is founded on a prior lived synthesis #corroborates (0.72) — Fredric Jameson, Marxism and Form, 421