The development of "phenomenology" is a consequence of the interpretation of the texts of the major figures, especially Edmund Husserl, and of independent phenomenological research. Quite often, the two projects have gone hand in hand. One major factor in the development of phenomenology during the period under review has been the ongoing publication of the Nachlass of the major figures (Husserliana, Martin Heidegger's Gesamtausgabe, as well as Maurice Merleau-Ponty's lectures). Another is the continuing conversation with analytic philosophy in the English-speaking countries, with structuralism and deconstructionism in France, and with hermeneutics, critical theory, and the tradition of German idealism in Germany.

One major starting point in the conversation with analytic philosophy has been Dagfinn Føllesdal's (1969) paper, which argues that Husserl's concept of Noema is a generalization of the Fregean notion of Sinn. Both the Sinn and the Noema are abstract entities, to be distinguished from...