Philosophy’s 25-Years Principle: Philosophy between Intuitive Understanding and Discursive Reasoning

The present paper has two objectives. First, it explicates the story, initially portrayed by Eckart Förster, that philosophy allegedly started with publishing of Kant’s CPR and ended a quarter century later when Hegel’s Phenomenology of Mind appeared. We address the questions in what sense this happened and how is this development to be interpreted? Secondly, we demonstrate that similar radical transition from new, “true” beginning of philosophy to its apparent finishing took place in two other, high profile occasions in the history of Western philosophy, in two key points of its development: in the years 390-365 bc, between the early and the late Plato, and between 1898 and 1922, between Russell and Wittgenstein’s Tractatus. These three short-lived, spectacular transitions from philosophy’s alleged start to its alleged ultimate accomplishment give us good reason to speak about a specific 25-years principle in philosophy. In a peculiar way, this principle reveals philosophy’s true nature.