Phenomenology has the strongest claim to the mantle of continental philosophy. Edward Baring shows that credit for its prodigious growth goes to a surprising group of early enthusiasts: Catholic intellectuals. Tracing debates in Europe from existentialism to speculative realism, he shows why European philosophy bears the mark of Catholicism.

Edward Baring is Associate Professor of Modern European History at Drew University and was a Guggenheim Fellow. He is author of The Young Derrida and French Philosophy, 1945-1968, which won the Morris D. Forkosch Prize from the Journal of the History of Ideas.