How do we begin to philosophize? What are the main features of natural, prephilosophical consciousness, and what is its relation to philosophical consciousness? This study investigates the answers given to these questions in Hegel's "Phenomenology of Spirit" and in his phenomenology. Husserl stresses that the transition to philosophy is not a continuous one, but requires something like a leap. Hegel underlines that entering into philosophy has the character of a path. In spite of this difference in emphasis, there is a discontinuous as well as a developmental aspect of such a transition in each of the two philosophers. Husserl, in his later philosophy, moves closer to Hegel's position when he develops a historical introduction to phenomenology. Although both philosophers view history as a teleological process, an important difference remains: For Hegel, history can be completed; for Husserl, it is an open, unending process.

How do we begin to philosophize? What are the main features of natural, prephilosophical consciousness, and what is its relation to philosophical consciousness? This study investigates the answers given to these questions in Hegel's Phenomenology of Spirit and in Husserl's phenomenology.

Tanja Stahler and Alexander Kozin's elegant translation of Bernhard Waldenfels's Phenomenology of the Alien (Grundmotive einer Phanomenologie des Fremden) introduces the English readership to the philosophy of alien-experience, a multifaceted and multidimensional phenomenon that permeates our everyday experiences of the life-world with immediate implications for the ways we conduct our social, political, and ethical affairs.
With impressive erudition Waldenfels weaves in xenological themes from classical philosophy, contemporary phenomenology, literature, linguistics, sociology, and anthropology to address the boundaries of experience that unite and separate human beings, their collectives, their perceptions, and aspirations. While the debate has long raged in German-speaking circles, Waldenfels's work is largely unavailable to the English-speaking audience, with the only other translation being The Order in the Twilight (1996). Phenomenology of the Alien is a superb introduction to both xenological phenomenology, and the the question of the alien as it has been unfolding in contemporary thought. Bernhard Waldenfels is Professor Emeritus at