Abstract

This dissertation presents an historical investigation of the reception of the phenomenology in France from 1889-1939. It examines anticipations of phenomenology in French thought as well as early encounters of French academic philosophers and religious thinkers with the phenomenological philosophies of Edmund Husserl, Max Scheler and Martin Heidegger. ;Chapter 1 argues that a gradual phenomenological turn in French thought was preceded by aspects of the positivist, idealist and spiritualist currents which defined French philosophy at the end of the nineteenth century. The first impetus came from Henri Bergson's insights into lived duration and intuition and Maurice Blondel's genetic description of action. These were precursors to the interest in Husserlian phenomenology in French philosophical and religious circles which emerged in the mid-1920s. ;Chapter 2 details four phases in the reception of phenomenology among academic philosophers in France. The phases correspond to four successive pairs of interpreters: Leon Noel and Victor Delbos , Lev Shestov and Jean Hering , Bernard Groethuysen and Georges Gurvitch , and Emmanuel Levinas and Jean-Paul Sartre . ;Chapters 3 and 4 turn to theology, and outline two stages in the reception of phenomenology in French religious thought. Chapter 3 addresses the appropriation of Bergsonian and Blondelian phenomenological insights by Edouard Le Roy and Pierre Rousselot respectively, and their application of these themes to theological topics such as the nature of dogma and the act of faith. Chapter 4 examines interpretations of phenomenology by Jean Hering, Gaston Rabeau, Joseph Marechal and members of the Societe Thomiste, including Jacques Maritain. Reasons for the rise and fall of interest in phenomenology among French neo-Thomists are explored. ;The principal finding of this dissertation is that the philosophical and theological receptions of phenomenology in France prior to 1939 proceeded relatively independently of each other due to the different ways Bergson and Blondel influenced these respective spheres and to the different orientations of French philosophers and religious thinkers to the Cartesian and Aristotelian/Thomist intellectual traditions