Contemporary philosophy has been characterized by the schism between “analytical” and “continental” philosophers. However, the last decades have shown signs of approximation between these traditions. This situation has motivated a growing interest in the study of the philosophy of the second half of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th century. The result of such efforts has been the delimitation of a sphere of research that, under the title “Origins of Contemporary Philosophy”, begins to re-study an important chapter in the history of recent philosophy, left in oblivion as a result of the rupture mentioned above.

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Identifying the birth of contemporary philosophy implies critically reviewing ideas widely spread in the beginning of analytic philosophy and phenomenology. In both cases, rigorous historiography has been replaced by “creation myths” that, while relevant to determining the identity that each current attributes to itself, ignore a web of complex systematic and historical relationships.

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Analytical philosophy would have emerged in England as a reaction to the British version of Hegelian idealism.  This would have emerged through Russell and Moore, who incorporated into their reflection the logical advances made by Frege. Similarly, phenomenology would be an extemporaneous creation of Husserl, motivated by Brentano's reflections on intentionality and by Frege's critique of psychologism in his first work on the foundations of arithmetic.

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Both myths mask the true motives and authors involved in a process that was not the work of isolated individuals, but of countless thinkers since the beginning of the 19th century. Today, it is no longer possible to ignore the variety of themes and problems involved in the gestation of the two currents and still present, in a linear narrative, a complex, pluridimensional and not yet sufficiently known story. Although since the 1950s several authors have sought to rescue the existing affinities between Frege's and Husserl's motivations, the work of understanding how these motivations led to the construction of what contemporary philosophy is is still a necessity.

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The review of such simplistic approaches requires a re-reading of the entire philosophy of the 19th century, proposing a properly historiographical and properly philosophical history of philosophy, as opposed to a romantically idealized vision.

This romantic vision interprets 19th century philosophy as a heroic overcoming of the impasses of the Enlightenment, after Kant, made through some isolated names such as Nietzsche, Marx and Kierkegaard. However, it is mistaken as history, as philosophy and as the history of philosophy, as it ignores the philosophical production of the period. The fundamental problems remain in this model ultimately unanswered: when does it arise and what characterizes contemporary philosophy? Or even when and why did properly modern philosophies “finish”?

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The study developed by the Group aims to reanalyze the philosophy of the period. Such reanalysis brings changes in the philosophical scenario, with the incorporation of numerous authors that have not yet been deeply studied, either as thinkers with original ideas, or as essential actors in a philosophical transition that occurred involving tradition and rupture. Authors such as Stuart Mill, Bolzano, Herbart, Trendelenburg, Lotze, Brentano, Marty, Stumpf, Fischer, Dilthey, Schleiermacher, Cohen, Natorp, Windelband and Rickert, still need to be properly incorporated in the development of the origins of contemporary philosophy and related between yes.

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Finally, this rereading implies a change of focus and problems in the understanding of this period of philosophy, which involves the identification and reinterpretation of themes of epistemology, logic, philosophy of language and metaphysics, which allow us to understand how plural philosophy is. contemporary. The thematic form of the research seems to be dispersed due to the numerous authors.  However, the questions they raise are recurrent – realm of non-real objectivity, antipsychologism, objectless representations, terms without reference, among others.

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The starting point, and therefore presupposed, is transcendental philosophy. In short, analytic philosophy and hermeneutical phenomenology arise from the same movement of ideals, whose roots are in post-Hegel German-speaking philosophy. This movement must have its own well-defined profile, in addition to the already established and well-studied anti-rationalist, positivist and Hegelian left and right reactions.

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The group's objective is, therefore, to study and establish the relationships between analytical philosophy and phenomenological-hermeneutic philosophy in the process of their formation from the perspective of establishing their common roots, as well as the moment of their mutual isolation. The working hypothesis is that analytic and phenomenological-hermeneutic philosophy represent, from the point of view of the history of philosophy, and despite all their undeniable differences, a common “turn” that can be characterized as the displacement of the concept of validity (Geltung ) for the concept of meaning or signification (Sinn, Bedeutung). The thesis of the existence of a systematic turn of the same nature implies and is based on the thesis, purely historical-philosophical, of a common origin whose process refers to a fourth line of post-Hegel development already mentioned. It is from this double observation that the process of isolation of traditions in the 20th century must be understood, as well as its eventual fate, on which, ultimately, the fate of philosophy itself as a whole depends.