In the spring of 1929, a philosophical conference took place in the Swiss village of Davos that was destined to leave its unique mark on the history and evolution of philosophical thought. It brought together two leading thinkers of the previous century: Ernst Cassirer and Martin Heidegger. Their confrontation ultimately concerned not only two different interpretive approaches to the work of the philosopher of pure Reason, Immanuel Kant, which emerged from two different schools of thought - neo-Kantianism and phenomenology, which would soon be deconstructed - but also two different approaches to philosophy as a whole.

The conflict was perceived at the time as a clash between old and new thinking. But to the followers of one or the other philosopher, one can always counter Heidegger's words that concluded the discussion: "In the history of philosophy, the first step is to free oneself from the difference of positions and opinions."