About the Center

Inspired by Dr. Amedeo Giorgi, the Simon Silverman Phenomenology was founded in 1980 at Duquesne University. It was an expression of the phenomenological orientation of the University’s philosophy and psychology departments. The late president of Humanities Press, Simon Silverman, was the Center’s first major benefactor and so the Center proudly bears his name.

The collection is devoted to the phenomenological movement that was inaugurated at the turn of the century by the German philosopher Edmund Husserl, and is still ongoing today, and to two precursors, Kierkegaard and Nietzsche. Phenomenology is conceived by the Center rather broadly, embracing, for example, existentialism and other contemporary Continental schools.