ABSTRACT
A modern notion due to the spectacular discoveries of science ever since the seventeenth century when philosophy attached its destiny to the scientific investigations. The notion of progress is similarly due to the collapse of age-old institutions in the eighteenth century. Philosophy is always the same and different, worn out concepts return with a different emphasis, in a new light, and become indeed novelties. If Plotinus is a distant disciple of Plato, G. F. W. Hegel of Meister Eckhart, and Karl Marx of the Abbot Joachim, the second man in each pair amply deserves to be acknowledged for his difference from the model. In philosophy, it has another name too: reality. But reality or truth, one philosopher induces the other to pursue what is, after all, a common search. The wisdom, or even the error in the philosopher's search attracts the apprentice.
