In the article I sketch the ways in which phenomenology can approach the phenomenon of revolution. After determining, with the help of Arendt, that revolution interprets itself as a radically new beginning, I outline, in the first section, the ways in which phenomenology can incorporate the notion of absolute novelty. The overview presented involves the approaches of Edmund Husserl and Maurice Merleau-Ponty, respectively. In the second section I further develop the understanding of revolution on the basis of Merleau-Ponty’s phenomenology, and then I briefly confront the conclusions with the experience of the ongoing Syrian revolution.