ABSTRACT
In founding fundamental ontology in Heidegger's early work, one of his main targets was to demarcate his philosophy from the dominant currents of his time: Lebensphilosophie and phenomenology. Lebensphilosophie is associated with a number of late 19th- and early 20th-century authors and philosophical currents: Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, and Dilthey in Germany; Bergson in France; Unamuno and Ortega y Gasset in Spain. Lebensphilosophie, together with Husserl's phenomenology, took the center stage in philosophy in its attempt to go beyond transcendental idealism that dominated philosophical thinking since Descartes, Kant, and Hegel. This chapter discusses three of the more emblematic representatives of these philosophies disclosing their critical thinking developed in their most prominent concepts and works: Henri Bergson's Creative Evolution (1907); Wilhelm Dilthey's Erlebnis and The Formation of the Historical World in the Human Sciences (1910); and Edmund Husserl's phenomenological reduction and The Crisis of European Sciences and Transcendental Phenomenology (1936).
