ABSTRACT
The founder of the theory known as phenomenalism or neo-criticism is Charles Renouvier. Renouvier believes that he is freeing himself from the conception of the subject as the centre of reference of the real, and yet, since he must have some centre of reference, he treats the object as such a centre. The purely naturalistic character of the categories in phenomenalism is emphasized more in the school of Renouvier. Thus Dauriac, borrowing the idea of contingency from Boutroux and misunderstanding altogether the Kantian categories, comes to maintain the contingency of the categories. The most noteworthy thing in Renouvier’s work is his attempt to solve, according to his own principles, the Antinomies of Pure Reason. Phenomenalism regards the category of number as nothing more than the relation of plurality to quantitative unity. J. J. Gourd’s criticism was merely negative; he confined himself to showing that the conception of the phenomenon when developed was self-destructive.
