The purpose of this article is to investigate - on the background provided by the phenomenological critique of the European philosophy - the way in which phenomenology itself, having already a one-century long tradition, can adopt a critical perspective on itself. We attempt, therefore, to regard phenomenology as tradition, precisely because its beginnings were characterized by a reconsideration of the entire tradition. Young Heidegger's critique of phenomenology in its early stages (Husserl and Scheler) will serve here as a starting point for investigating, from this perspective, the reasons that (later, around the year 1929) made Heidegger to stop using the word "phenomenology" in the titles of his courses and seminars. This renunciation is connected, in our view, with his simultaneous renunciation of understanding philosophy as "scientific philosophy". The wider frame of the present research is given by some late statements made by Heidegger regarding the future destiny of what it will still be called (or not) phenomenology.
