Stories of Lynx; or, Husserlian Concepts in Transformation: France, 1945–1960

This article, part of a longer study of Edmund Husserl's influence in France, discusses three concepts—individuality, science, and Europe—that in the postwar period became central to the reception of Husserl. Then, around 1960—particularly in the work of Jacques Derrida, Emmanuel Levinas, and Gilbert Simondon—these concepts came to define the place of Husserl in modern thought. Husserl's phenomenology structured the use and meaning of these concepts for a new generation of French philosophy; at the same time, it came under increased scrutiny, at least in part on account of these three concepts. Efforts to render Husserl useful and contemporary, together with efforts to overcome his thought, played a definitive part in the critical rethinking of individuality, scientificity, and European identity that influenced the 1960s as well as the tense and fragile position that these concepts occupied in the philosophy of those years.