Abstract

The article examines the phenomenological notion of the beginning based on the author’s thesis that the transformation of the history of philosophy in the second half of the nineteenth century implies the introduction of personal, existential or life motives. Hence, the history of philosophy ceases to be valid as one and unique, but becomes multiple and heterogeneous. Edmund Husserl thus recognizes three fundamental flows. First, the history of failed attempts of philosophy to realize its telos. In the second place is the history of the constitution of natural sciences as a sign of the triumph of false intelligence. Finally, phenomenology sees itself as the philosophy of beginning, the promise of realizing what philosophers have always wanted. Husserl sees the roots of Europe in philosophy, but philosophy in the true sense of the word did not begin. Hence, European philosophy is necessarily a specter, a creation that has missed its own beginning. The failure of philosophical Europe does not consist in the errors and misconceptions that return again and again. It is contained in the fact that authentic European philosophy does not know how to begin in the true and authentic way. Its beginnings are false, they are only a simulation of initiation. Husserl’s specter appears by refusing to appear.