ABSTRACT
The roots of contemporary philosophy can be traced back to the trends of nineteenth century thought. Of all modern philosophical trends, existentialism is the strongest. French existentialism is more interesting as a literary than as a philosophical phenomenon. Two basic trends may be distinguished: atheistic; and Roman Catholic. German existentialism is not an anthropology or an ethic or a critique of culture, but a philosophy of being, and specifically a metaphysics. A rekindling of interest in the object is even stronger in present-day ontology and metaphysics than in phenomenology. In Germany and France, there appeared a trend which soon swept the academic establishments and captured the academic imagination: the philosophy of life, or vitalism. Friedrich Nietzsche — a onesided, biologistically interpreted Nietzsche — was again the inspiration behind the naturalistic branch of vitalism. Critical realism starts from the universal conviction of human common sense which defies the objections of critical philosophy.
