ABSTRACT
This chapter aims to draw a cartography of the phenomenological movement that presents the dynamic specific to each of its main currents as well as their systematic and historical relation to each other. It presents the philosophical framework within which the ‘breakthrough of a newly grounded philosophy’, namely phenomenology, was made possible, and analyses the fundamental features that characterize this philosophical breakthrough. The chapter examines the different shifts that contributed to renewing the meaning and scope of phenomenology and constituted it as the tradition of thought that became the cornerstone of continental philosophy throughout the 20th century. The impact of Martin Heidegger’s hermeneutic shift on the phenomenological movement was strong enough to deeply modify the meaning, the scope and the goals of phenomenology. In order to describe the paradigmatic reversal of the intentional analysis operated by Emmanuel Levinas, Jean-Luc Marion coined the term ‘counter-intentionality’, which he later appropriated as a keystone of his own phenomenology of givenness.
