ABSTRACT
According to Emile Brehier, the philosophies of existence combine metaphysical empiricism with man’s feeling of anxiety. The word empiricism refers to the element of facticity, to use one of Heidegger’s terms, to that element of fact which is irreducible to any metaphysical construction or interpretation, and which is emphasized by the philosophers of existence. Before the philosophies of existence there had developed in Germany life philosophies, on the one hand, and phenomenology on the other. Life philosophies, anxious above all to bridge the gaps that previous philosophical doctrines had created within reality and within the human individual, insisted upon the two ideas of unity and continuity. The philosophies of existence have tended perhaps to separate too rigorously and to isolate the various elements between which life philosophies had posited an all too easy continuity. Scheler was one of Husserl’s disciples and his thought may in fact be regarded as a kind of transition between phenomenology and the philosophy of existence.
