Preface to Phenomenology in Italy

Certain episodes in this history are revealing of the particular connection established between Italian philosophical culture and Phenomenology: Banfi’s early appreciation of the relevance of Phenomenology as a means to redefine the relation between philosophy and science; the first ever translation into a foreign language of The Crisis of European Sciences, with the Italian version produced by Enzo Paci in 1961; the attempt to combine Phenomenology and Marxist theory; and the discovery of the logical and pre-categorial problem and its relation to the theme of history. These are but some examples of the (at times pioneering) acuity with which Italian scholars have received, understood and redeveloped Husserlian philosophy. They have been able to “feel them to the full” by retracing “the same steps as the Author” (to quote Keats)—no mean achievement, given that they had to engage with an essentially new philosophical program whose foundational texts only gradually became available in translation. Not only that, but they have also met the—more or less explicit and conscious—goal of developing a genuinely “Italian Phenomenology.”