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The present volume is rich in essential phenomenological descriptions¹ and insightful historico-critical analyses,² some of which cannot be fully appreciated, however, except by close examination on the part of the reader. Accordingly, such a task ought to be left to the consideration and judgment of the latter, save where such discussions are directly relevant to the topics I will be dwelling upon. I prefer, then, to approach the matters and questions contained here otherwise, namely, archeologically. In this I follow José Huertas-Jourda, the editor of the corresponding³ French volume, in his felicitous terminological choice,⁴ although I adopt it here for my purposes in an etymological sense, i.e., as signifying a return to principles or origins.⁵ This, after all, is consistent not only with the spirit and practice of phenomenology, as acknowledged by Aron Gurwitsch often enough, but as well with what he has actually said, to wit: it is a question of the principle of phenomenological idealism, according to which everything that exists and everything that is valid exists and is valid due to certain acts and groups of acts, and it cannot derive its radical clarification and its ultimate justification except from an analysis of conscious life in which it presents itself in its existence and in its validity.

DOI: 10.1007/978-90-481-2831-0_1

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