Fink's speculative phenomenology: Between constitution and transcendence

Research in Phenomenology

Volumn 37, Issue 1, 2007, Pages 3-31

  Moran, Dermot ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY COLLEGE DUBLIN   (Ireland)

Author keywords

Fink; Heidegger; Husserl; Metaphysics; Phenomenology

Indexed keywords

EID: 61149336903     PISSN: 00855553     EISSN: 15691640     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1163/156916407X169799     Document Type: Article

References (59)

1. Ronald Bruzina, Edmund Husserl and Eugen Fink: Beginnings and Ends in Phenomenology 1928-1938 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2004). Xxvii + 627 pp. Hereafter cited as Beginnings and Ends.
2. Eugen Fink, VI. Cartesianische Meditation. Teil I. Die Idee einer transzendentalen Methodenlehre. Texte aus dem Nachlaß Eugen Tinks (1932) mit Anmerkungen und Beilagen aus dem Nachlaß Edmund Husserls (1933/34), ed. Hans Ebeling, Jann Holl and Guy van Kerckhoven (Dordrecht : Kluwer, 1988);
3. translated with introduction by Ronald Bruzina as Sixth Cartesian Meditation. The Idea of a Transcendental Theory of Method with Textual Annotations by Edmund Husserl (Bloomington : Indiana University Press, 1995).
4. For an insightful review of Bruzina's translation, see Burt C. Hopkins, "Book Review: Eugen Fink, Sixth Cartesian Meditation: The Idea of a Transcendental Theory of Method," Husserl Studies 14 (1997): 64-74.
5. See Ronald Bruzina, "Eugen Fink and Maurice Merleau-Ponty: The Philosophical Lineage in Phenomenology," in Merleau-Ponty's Reading of Husserl, ed. Lester Embree and Ted Toadvine (Dordrecht: Kluwer, 2002), 173-200
6. and idem, "Jan Patočka-Eugen Fink, Gesprächspartner im Denken über den Schein hinaus," Internationale Zeitschrift für Philosophie 1 (1998)
7. and "Leben in der Welt, Welt im Leben? Thesen zwischen Landgrebe, Fink und Patocka," in Lebenswelten. Ludwig Landgrebe - Eugen Fink - Jan Patocka, Publikationen der Reihe der Österreichischen Gesellschaft für Phänomenologie (Frankfurt: Peter Lang, 2003), 29-43.
8. Beginnings and Ends, 458.
9. See Karl Schuhmann, Husserl-Chronik. Denk-und Lebensweg Edmund Husserls (The Hague: Nijhoff, 1977), 364.
10. Sixth Cartesian Meditation, xxv.
11. See also 146, where Fink writes: 'The truth is that the Absolute is not the unity of two non-self-sufficient moments that, while indeed mutually complementary, also delimit and finitize each other, but is the infinite unity of the constant passage of one "moment" (constitution) to the other (world)'.
12. Herbert Spiegelberg with Karl Schuhmann. The Phenomenological Movement. A Historical Introduction, 3rd ed. (Dordrecht: Kluwer, 1994), 242.
13. E. Husserl, Cartesianische Meditationen und Pariser Vorträge, hrsg. Stephan Strasser, Husserliana I (The Hague: Nijhoff, 1950), 182, §65;
14. translated by D. Cairns as Cartesian Meditations (The Hague: Nijhoff, 1967), 156.
15. S. Luft, "Phänomenologie der Phänomenologie." Systematik und Methodologie der Phänomenologie in der Auseinandersetzung zwischen Husserl und Fink, Phaenomenologica 166 (Dordrecht: Kluwer, 2002), 157 n. 40.
16. See Stein's letter to Ingarden, 19 February 1918, in Edith Stein, Self-Portrait in Letters, 1916-1942, vol. 5 of The Collected Works of Edith Stein, trans. Josephine Koeppel (Washington, DC: ICS Publications, 1993), 22. Hereafter cited as Self-Portrait in Letters.
17. Self-Portrait in Letters, 23.
18. E. Husserl, Erfahrung und Urteil. Untersuchungen zur Genealogie der Logik, redigiert und hrsg. Ludwig Landgrebe (Prague: Academia-Verlag, 1938; 7. Aufl. Hamburg: Felix Meiner, 1999);
19. translated by J. S. Churchill and K. Amerik as Experience and Judgment: Investigations in a Genealogy of Logic, revised and edited by L. Landgrebe (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1973).
20. For a detailed reconstruction of the manuscripts used by L. Landgrebe in the composition of Experience and Judgment, see Dieter Lohmar, "Zur der Entstehung und den Ausgangsmaterialen von Edmund Husserls Werk Erfahrung und Urteil" Husserl Studies 13, no. 1 (1996): 31-71.
21. The collaboration and tension between Husserl and Heidegger is well documented by Thomas Sheehan in E. Husserl, Psychological and Transcendental Phenomenology and the Confrontation with Heidegger (1927-31): The Encyclopaedia Britannica Article, The Amsterdam Lectures "Phenomenology and Anthropology" and Husserl's Marginal Note in Being and Time, and Kant and the Problem of Metaphysics, trans. T. Sheehan and R. E. Palmer, in Husserl, Collected Works, vol. 6 (Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1997), passim.
22. Georg Misch, Dilthey's son-in-law, sent Husserl a copy of the first part of his Lebensphilosophie und Phänomenologie: Eine Auseinandersetzung der Diltheyschen Richtung mit Heidegger und Husserl (now 3rd ed., Stuttgart: Teubner, 1967), which treated of the relationship between Dilthey and Heidegger's philosophy. The second part would be about Husserl and Dilthey. Clearly, Husserl was being accorded second place to Heidegger by Misch.
23. See The Phenomenological Movement. A Historical Introduction, 245.
24. E. Husserl, Die Krisis der europäischen Wissenschaften und die transzendentale Phänomenologie. Eine Einleitung in die phä nomenologische Philosophie, hrsg. W. Biemel, Husserliana VI (1962; reprint The Hague: Nijhoff, 1976), 345;
25. translated by David Carr as The Crisis of European Sciences and Transcendental Phenomenology. An Introduction to Phenomenological Philosophy (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1970), 297. Hereafter cited as Crisis.
26. E. Husserl, Analysen zur passiven Synthesis. Aus Vorlesungs-und Forschungsmanuskripten (1918-1926), hrsg. M. Fleischer, Husserliana XI (Dordrecht: Kluwer, 1988);
27. translated by Anthony J. Steinbock as Analyses Concerning Passive and Active Synthesis. Lectures on Transcendental Logic, vol. 9 of Husserl, Collected Works (Dordrecht: Kluwer, 2001).
28. This doctoral thesis was originally published in Husserl's Jahrbuch 9 (1930)
29. and is reprinted in E. Fink, Studien zur Phänomenologie 1930-1939, Phaenomenologica 21 (The Hague: Nijhoff 1966), 1-78.
30. These manuscripts have only recently been published as Husserliana XXXIII: E. Husserl, Die 'Bernauer Manuskripte'über das Zeitbewußtsein (1917/18), hrsg. Rudolf Bernet & Dieter Lohmar (Dordrecht: Kluwer, 2001).
31. J Bruzina, Beginnings and Ends, 12.
32. Bruzina, Beginnings and Ends, 128.
33. For an excellent study of the negative and positive connotations of 'construction' in both Husserl and Heidegger, see R. Bruzina, "Construction in Phenomenology," in The Reach of Reflection: Issues for Phenornenology's Second Century, Proceedings of Center for Advanced Research in Phenomenology Symposium, Florida Atlantic University, 2001, ed. Lester Embree, Samuel J. Julian, and Steve Crowell, 3 vols. (West Harford: Electron Press, 2001), 1:46-71.
34. For a discussion of these various approaches to Fink, see Sebastian Luft, "Phänomenologie der Phänomenologie." Systematik und Methodologie der Phänomenologie in der Auseinandersetzung zwischen Husserl und Fink, Phaenomenologica 166 (Dordrecht: Kluwer, 2002), 146ff.
35. Sixth Cartesian Meditation, lxxxiii n. 119.
36. translated by Roy Elveton as "The Phenomenological Philosophy of Edmund Husserl and Contemporary Criticism," in The Phenomenology of Husserl, Selected Critical and Contemporary Readings, ed. Roy Elveton, 2nd ed. (Seattle: Noesis Press, 2000), 70-139.
37. E. Fink, "Was will die Phänomenologie Edmund Husserls?" in Studien zur Phänomenologie 1930-1939, 157-78;
38. translated by Arthur Grugan as "What Does the Phenomenology of Edmund Husserl Want to Accomplish?" Research in Phenomenology 2 (1972): 5-27.
39. As Bruzina records (529-30); just why Heidegger was consulted is not clear. When Husserl's son Gerhart heard that Heidegger was involved, he wrote an angry letter to Fink accusing him of collaborating with Heidegger. Fink was forced to write a clarificatory letter to Gerhart explaining that in fact Fink had not sought to involve Heidegger. The Freiburg Faculty had decided to invite Heidegger. For Fink it was an 'act of piety' to submit his Habilitation on Husserl to Freiburg University which had treated its former professor so disgracefully.
40. See E. Fink, Spiel als Weltsymbol (Stuttgart: Kohlhammer, 1960).
41. Jean-Luc Marion, Reduction and Givenness. Investigations of Husserl, Heidegger, and Phenomenology, trans. Thomas A. Carlson (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1998).
42. see his Phénoménologie de la perception (Paris: Gallimard, 1945), 180;
43. translated by C. Smith as Phenomenology of Perception (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1962), 154.
44. See E. Husserl, "Kant und die Idee der Transzendentalphilosophie, " in Erste Philosophie (1923/24).
45. Erster Teil: Kritische Ideengeschichte, hrsg. R. Boehm, Husserliana VII (The Hague: Nijhoff, 1965), 230-87;
46. translated by Ted E. Klein and William E. Pohl as "Kant and the Idea of Transcendental Philosophy," Southwestern Journal of Philosophy 5 (Fall 1974): 9-56.
47. Erste Philosophie (1923/24), 230.
48. See especially Fink's unpublished article, "Die Idee der Transzendentalphilosophie bei Kant und in der Phänomenologie (1935)," which eventually appeared in E. Fink, Nähe und Distanz: Phänomenologische Vorträge und Aufsätze, ed. Franz-Anton Schwarz (Freiburg: Alber, 1976), 7-44.
49. As Bruzina points out in one of his extended endnotes (Beginnings and Ends, 567), there are considerable complications in both Heidegger's and Fink's conceptions of nonbeing. Fink wants to retain the Greek distinction between i.e., between the qualified form of nonbeing and absolute nullity. The different levels of nonbeing encountered in Plato, Neoplatonism, Hegel, Heidegger (who speaks of a nihil negativum), and Fink are occasionally referred to by Bruzina, but tfiere is no clear account of what 'meontic metaphysics' is supposed to be.
50. See his 1952 essay, 'L'analyse intentionnelle et le problème de la pensée spéculative', in Problemes actuels de la phénoménologie, Actes du colloque international de phénoménologie (Brussels, 1951), ed. H. Van Breda (Paris: Desclée de Brouwer, 1952), 53-87.
51. Husserl marginal entry quoted in James G. Hart, "Parts of the Husserl-Fink Conversation," New Yearbook for Phenomenology and Phenomenological Philosophy I (2001), 285.
52. Eugen Fink, VI. Cartesianische Meditation. Teil 2. Ergängzungsband. Texte aus dem Nachlaß Eugen Finks (1932) mit Anmerkungen und Beilagen aus dem Nachlaß Edmund Husserls (1933/34), ed. Guy van Kerckhoven. Husserliana Dokumente II/2 (Dordrecht: Kluwer, 1988), 186-88;
53. See E. Husserl, Natur und Geist. Vorlesungen Sommersemester 1927, hrsg. Michael Weiler, Husserliana XXXII (Dordrecht: Kluwer, 2001), 147.
54. See the texts collected in Eugen Fink, VI. Cartesianische Meditation. Teil 2, 2:106-275.
55. See Dan Zahavi, Husserl and Transcendental Intersubjectivity, trans. Elizabeth A. Behnke (Athens, Ohio: Ohio University Press, 2001), 66ff.
56. and idem, "The Self-Pluralisation of the Primal Life: A Problem in Fink's Husserl-Interpretation," Recherches Husserliennes 2 (1994): 3-18.
57. See Eugen Fink, Actes du Colloque de Cerisy4a-Salle 23-30 juillet 1994, ed. Natalie Depraz, Marc Richir (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 1997);
58. Steven Galt Crowell, "Gnostic Phenomenology: Eugen Fink and the Critique of Transcendental Reason," The New Yearbook for Phenomenology and Phenomenological Philosophy 1 (2001), 257-77;
59. and Sebastian Luft, "Phänomenologie der Phänomenologie. "