Earth or Being: The Great Decision of Contemporary Philosophy

This book primarily aims to achieve two objectives. First, it argues that the dominant continental thought, represented by the philosophical authorities that emerged during the French Revolution of May 1968, no longer meets the needs of contemporary thought. Its second, more controversial objective is to posit that contemporary thought struggles to engage with current problems when it chooses Heideggerian abstraction of Being over exploring the idea of ​​Earth as transcendent to original experiences—an idea that characterizes Husserl’s later thought.

The renowned philosopher and thinker José Luis Villacañas analyzes the history of continental philosophy in the 20th century to reconstruct the choice between Being and Earth. He seeks to identify the philosophical policies pursued around 1929, the paths explored, and the turning points that shaped the trajectory of contemporary thought. The author explores Husserl’s late legacy and preoccupation with the life-world, Plesner’s philosophical anthropology of the body, Heidegger’s motivations for ontological difference and his Davos debate with Cassirer on Kantianism, Merleau-Ponty’s phenomenology of nature, and Derrida’s influence. This exploration reveals how a philosophy centered on the question of Being represented a gnostic escape from a world that desired no connection to humanity or the earth—the true transcendent world of philosophy.