This research investigated how contemporary phenomenology and thoughts closely related to phenomenology (especially those of Levinas, Derrida and Richir) inherited Kant’s critique of ontotheology. Thus, this investigation ascended from Kant’s philosophy to medieval philosophy. On the basis of Boulnois’s investigation of the transition of phenomenology in the thirteenth century, it then elucidated how ontotheology emerged in the history of metaphysics. Furthermore, on the basis of this preparatory step, the research clarified that contemporary phenomenology and phenomenology-related thoughts are renovative successors of the non-ontotheological metaphysics promulgated before the emergence of ontotheology. The concrete outcomes of this research are as follows:

1) Regarding Levinas: Through the fourth antinomy, Kant investigated the cosmological argument originated by Aristotle that was inherited into the medieval period and then the modern era. On the one hand, he investigated the thesis that postulates the cessation of the infinite regress of the series of causality. On the other hand, he explored the antithesis that claims the absence of a stopping point in the infinite regress. Against the background of Kant’s discussion, this research clarified Levinas’s notion of ‘illeity’ as presenting the third alternative to the cessation of the infinite regress and the absence of this stop.

2) Regarding Derrida: This research focused its attention on the way Derrida, in ‘Violence and Metaphysics’, refers to Gilson’s reconciliation of the philosophical views of Thomas Aquinas and Duns Scotus, who both adapted Aristotle’s philosophy, to show the proximity between Heidegger’s and Levinas’s thoughts. As a result, this investigation confirmed that Derrida grasped phenomenology in the wake of ancient and medieval metaphysics.

3) Regarding Richir: This research examined Richir’s minutious reading of Schelling, as described in Experience of Thinking and ‘Hyperbole in the positive philosophy of Schelling: Phenomenological approach’. This examination revealed that Richir, inspired by Schelling, who discovered a sort of empiricism in Aristotle and radicalised it as metaphysical empiricism, turned from eidos to facticity.