Abstract

The recent liberation of phenomenology’s “metaphysical” word seems to us to present a twofold risk: on the one hand, that of leading us to lose in intension what they will have made us gain in extension - what exactly does the term “metaphysical” mean here, and can we even hope to provide an exact definition? On the other hand, it would convert our former reservations, which may indeed have been excessive, into a temerity that would ultimately be no less so. The aim we have set ourselves here must therefore be modest: to attempt to avert this twofold risk by first equipping ourselves with a clear and unambiguous concept of what is or could legitimately be understood by the term “phenomenological metaphysics; to show then how and why phenomenology, rightly or wrongly, but without really realizing what was preventing it from doing so, has never really managed to do so; to indicate finally the question that a “phenomenological metaphysics” conforming to its concept would have to ask, and to which it would have to commit itself to answer.