New Atlantis, Castalia, the Abbey of Thélème . . .

ABSTRACT This article provides a brief description of the history of that generation of intellectuals usually called the generation of the nineties. The author reflects on that generation’s path, analyzing the fates of a small group of his fellow students who have since crossed the fifty-year mark and have probably reached their peak social maturity. The article emphasizes the great results in philosophical activity that this generation achieved. The author notes the reason for his own alienation from his generation’s path and realizes that it was an internal protest against a desire characteristic of his classmates to withdraw intellectually from their own time in order to be located within a different context, temporal or spatial. The article notes that the very desire was borrowed by the generation of the nineties from the philosophical leaders of the generation of the sixties. The author considers the question of the philosophical generation in the context of the intellectual class’s centuries-old search for its place in society in clear conflict with the social hierarchies existing in the traditional world of agrarian estates.