Eugene Fink

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Eugen Fink (born December 11, 1905 in Konstanz , † July 25, 1975 in Freiburg im Breisgau ) was a German philosopher .

Life

Fink was born in 1905 as the son of a civil servant. He spent his first school years with an uncle who was a Catholic pastor; then Fink attended a grammar school in Constance, where he was already noticed by his extraordinary memory. After graduating from high school in 1925, he studied philosophy, history, German and economics, first in Münster and Berlin , then in Freiburg with Edmund Husserl .

In 1929 Fink did his doctorate with Husserl and Martin Heidegger with the dissertation Ververstellung und Bild. Contributions to the phenomenology of unreality . A year later, Husserl retired. Since his teaching, phenomenology , continued to enjoy great popularity and many students came to Freiburg from abroad, Eugen Fink was commissioned by Husserl to hold private seminars, especially for these students. When, after 1933, Husserl was no longer wanted by the National Socialists , Fink decided not to pursue another university career and stayed with Husserl as a private assistant. After his death in 1938, Fink helped bring Husserl's estate to safety in Löwen . In exile in Leuven, he devoted himself entirely to this estate until 1940 all Germans in Belgium were arrested as alleged spies. Fink was interned in a French camp and stayed there until the German Wehrmacht occupied France. After the occupation of France by German troops, Fink was drafted into the Wehrmacht, where he served as a simple soldier in the air defense until May 1945.

After the war, Eugen Fink completed his habilitation at the University of Freiburg with the work The Idea of ​​a Transcendental Methodology, which dates back to 1932 . From 1948 he was a full professor of philosophy and educational science. The legendary Heraklit seminar that Eugen Fink held together with Martin Heidegger in the winter semester of 1966/67 will always remain closely associated with his name . Fink declined to become one of Heidegger's successors on his chair in 1964 because he had considered pedagogy as an important part of his teaching since 1948.

After increasing health problems, Fink retired in 1971. He died of a stroke on July 25, 1975.

His brother was the theologian and historian Karl August Fink .

philosophy

Fink's central concern was to bring up the original phenomenon of the world . Usually what the world means is understood in terms of the being of the things that come within the world:

The world then appears as a kind of gigantic container, as a thing in which all other things are contained, and is thus precisely lacking in its peculiarity. In contrast to this, Fink shows that the world is not itself something thing-like, but the horizon, which forms the condition for every appearance of a being. Fink describes this ontological difference between the world and what is within the world as a "cosmological difference". In further discussions Fink approaches the world phenomenon in a metaphorical language: The "game" and the "dispute" between the clearing "sky" and the sheltering-hiding "earth" essentially belong to the phenomenon of the world. However, Fink does not want these considerations, developed in philosophical proximity to Heidegger, to be understood as pure poetry, but rather as an attempt to adhere originally to the phenomenon of the world that would be missed by a terminology trained on things. The meaning of the talk of the "dispute" between "heaven" and "earth" can be explicated with regard to the world as a necessary condition for the appearance of beings: on the one hand, the world is the open, which every appearance requires ("heaven"); on the other hand, the world is also what is sheltering, in which every being holds and stays in order to appear ("earth").

pedagogy

Fink developed a social phenomenology, coexistential anthropology, and a systematic educational philosophy. After the collapse of generally binding models and world views in modern and late modern times, or, as Fink says with Nietzsche, with the emergence of nihilism, the question arises which productive role the sciences and thus also educational science in general in an accelerated, technicalized and able to play an economized society; ie whether they are able to produce socially relevant model orientation. Fink describes this critical situation of modern man as an emergency. The emergency is the "basic educational situation of our time". Fink begins with an anthropological analysis of fields of action or practices. In the social-phenomenological analysis he describes five “basic phenomena of human existence” as cultural practices: aesthetic ( play ), political ( rule , power , technology ), active-cultural ( work ), sexual ( love ), temporal ( death ) practices are carried out a sixth, pedagogical ( upbringing ) added. These practices are seen as social (coexistent) and bodily practices in time and space of human-political society and as an expression of existential concern for existence after the “end of the great stories” (Lyotard). In upbringing, care and care, learning, amazement and questions as well as advice on coexistent, lifeworld fields of action that react productively to the fragility, finiteness and randomness of human existence and keep open and open the relationship to the world, the other and the stranger. Because there is no longer any authoritative, final or universal meaning of the world and society, it is the task of pedagogy in particular to design and jointly produce meaningful interpretations in bodily and worldly freedom. This is happening with no prospect of achieving a final reconciliation of modern fragility and confusion.

The totality of man and world, man and nature, hoped for in the humanistic tradition, and the spiritual and scientific notion of a continuity of the succession of generations guaranteed by the authority of culture have broken. “The human being as a fragment” - according to Fink's basic anthropological thesis - does not exist as a finished being or as an object. He can only experience himself fragmentarily in relation to himself and the world. Education can no longer be general education in the mode of wholeness and reconciliation. It is fragmentary education and productive handling of the existential emergency of only being able to experience oneself fragmentarily. It thus becomes a practical, existential experiment of meaning under conditions of provisionality and uncertainty. It is thus existential and coexistent practice as the production and design of meaning. It becomes reflexive: On the one hand, in the (phenomenological) variation, different modes of experience in politics, art, love, time and work, differences can be marked and compared. On the other hand, in a skeptical bracketing (reduction), a liberation from the factually valid and a view of the possible can be achieved.

politics

Fink was active in the GEW from the mid-1950s and headed the Oberaudorfer Kreis for higher education reform from 1959 to 1964. Important topics were teacher training and the development of universities of teacher education. In June 1960, as a 'chief ideologist', he presented the Bremen plan of the teachers' unions in the ADGL, which initiated the school reforms of the following years, above all the deconfessionalization of elementary schools and the extension of compulsory schooling. The standard school up to 10th grade was also required.

Publications (selection)

  • On the essence of enthusiasm , Freiburg 1947
  • Oasis of happiness. Thoughts on an ontology of the game . Alber, Freiburg / Munich 1957
  • On the early ontological history of space - time - movement , The Hague 1957
  • Everything and Nothing , The Hague 1959
  • Game as a world symbol , Stuttgart 1960. New edition ed. by Cathrin Nielsen u. Hans Rainer Sepp. (Also includes Oasis of Happiness .) Alber, Freiburg / Munich 2009, ISBN 978-3-495-46315-4
  • Nietzsche's philosophy , Stuttgart 1960
  • Metaphysics and Death , Stuttgart 1969
  • Consciousness Analysis and World Problem . In: Phenomenology - Alive or Dead? Badenia, Karlsruhe 1969, pp. 9-17 ( digitized version ).
  • Metaphysics of education in the understanding of the world by Plato and Aristoteles , Frankfurt / Main 1970, ISBN 978-3-465-01634-2
  • Educational science and life theory , Freiburg 1970
  • Epilogs to Poetry , Frankfurt / Main 1971, ISBN 978-3-465-00861-3
  • Treatise on human violence , Vittorio Klostermann, Frankfurt / Main 1974, first published in two parts in Philosophical Perspektiven Volume 1, pp. 70–175 and Volume 2, pp. 26–133, Frankfurt / Main 1969 and 1970
  • Being and human. On the essence of ontological experience , Freiburg 1977
  • Basic questions of systematic pedagogy , Freiburg 1978
  • Basic phenomena of human existence , 2nd, unchanged edition. Freiburg 1995, ISBN 978-3-495-47399-3
  • Basic questions of ancient philosophy , Würzburg 1985
  • World and Finiteness , Würzburg 1990
  • Nature, Freedom, World: Philosophy of Education , Würzburg 1992
  • Heraclitus. Seminar with Martin Heidegger , Frankfurt / Main 1996 (2), ISBN 978-3-465-02878-9
  • Hegel , Frankfurt 2006 (2), ISBN 978-3-465-03519-0

Complete edition

The Eugen-Fink Complete Edition is text-critical and includes all works published by Fink himself as well as the mostly unpublished works from his extensive estate. In addition to the text-critical apparatus, each volume has an epilogue in which the published texts are situated in terms of development history.

It is edited by Stephan Graetzel , Cathrin Nielsen and Hans Rainer Sepp with the assistance of Annette Hilt and Franz-Anton Schwarz. The edition is made up of 20 volumes and will be published by Verlag Karl Alber , Freiburg i. Br. / Munich

Dept. I: Phenomenology and Philosophy

  • Vol. 1: Proximity and Distance. Phenomenology studies . 2011. ISBN 978-3-495-46301-7
  • Vol. 2: Draft texts on phenomenology
  • Vol. 3: Phenomenological workshop. Fink's collaboration with Edmund Husserl (4 volumes)
    • Vol. 1: The doctoral thesis and first years of assistance at Husserl . 2006. ISBN 978-3-495-46303-1
    • Vol. 2: Bernauer Zeitmanuskripte, Cartesian meditations and the system of phenomenological philosophy. 2008. ISBN 978-3-495-46304-8
    • Vol. 3: Grammata: on Husserl's crisis writings, Dorothy Ott seminars, interpretations on Kant and Hegel, notes on conversations in the area of ​​Freiburg phenomenology. 2011. ISBN 978-3-495-46305-5
  • Vol. 4: On the essence of philosophy

Dept. II: Ontology - Cosmology - Anthropology

  • Vol. 5: Being and Finiteness (2 volumes)
  • Vol. 6: Being - Truth - World . 2018. ISBN 978-3-495-46314-7
  • Vol. 7: Game as a world symbol . 2010. ISBN 978-3-495-46315-4
  • Vol. 8: Basic phenomena of human existence
  • Vol. 9: Fashion. A seductive game
  • Vol. 10: Epilogues on Poetry

Dept. III: Philosophical History of Ideas

  • Vol. 11: Basic questions of ancient philosophy
  • Vol. 12: Descartes - Leibniz - Kant
  • Vol. 13: Epilegomena to I. Kant's Critique of Pure Reason (3 volumes). 2011. ISBN 978-3-495-46302-4
  • Vol. 14: Hegel
  • Vol. 15: Nietzsche

Dept. IV: Social Philosophy and Pedagogy

  • Vol. 16: Existence and Co-Existence
  • Vol. 17: Society - State - Education (2 volumes)
  • Vol. 18: Philosophy of Education (3 volumes)
  • Vol. 19: Metaphysics of Education. In the understanding of the world by Plato and Aristotle
  • Vol. 20: History of Pedagogy in Modern Times (2 volumes)

literature

  • Anselm Böhmer (Ed.): Eugen Fink: Social Philosophy - Anthropology - Cosmology - Pedagogy - Methodology. Würzburg: Königshausen and Neumann 2006 ISBN 3-8260-3216-0
  • Anselm Böhmer: Cosmological Didactics: Learning and Teaching with Eugen Fink. Würzburg: Königshausen and Neumann 2002 ISBN 3-8260-2210-6
  • Ronald Bruzina: Edmund Husserl and Eugen Fink: beginnings and ends in phenomenology, 1928–1938. New Haven 2004 ISBN 0-300-09209-1
  • Matthias Burchardt: Education in relation to the world - On the educational anthropology of Eugen Finks. Würzburg 2001 ISBN 3-8260-1973-3
  • Thomas Franz:  Fink Eugen. In: Biographisch-Bibliographisches Kirchenlexikon (BBKL). Volume 23, Bautz, Nordhausen 2004, ISBN 3-88309-155-3 , Sp. 377-383.  ( Article / beginning of article in Internet archive )
  • Antonius Greiner: "In the well-deep bottom of things" - world and education with Eugen Fink . Alber, Freiburg / Munich 2008, ISBN 978-3-495-48285-8
  • Annette Hilt, Cathrin Nielsen (ed.): Education in the technical age. Being, human and world according to Eugen Fink . Alber, Freiburg / Munich 2005, ISBN 978-3-495-48165-3
  • Hartmut Meyer-Wolters: Coexistence and Freedom. Eugen Fink's anthropology and educational theory , Würzburg 1992. ISBN 3-88479-673-9
  • Axel Ossenkop, Guy van Kerckhoven, Rainer Fink: Eugen Fink (1905–1975). Life picture of the Freiburg phenomenologist . Picture monograph. Alber, Freiburg i. Br. / Munich 2015, ISBN 978-3-495-48702-0
  • Katharina Schenk-Mair: The cosmology of Eugen Finks. Würzburg 1997 ISBN 3-8260-1206-2
  • Hans Rainer Sepp, Amin Wildermuth (Hrsg.): Concepts of the phenomenal. Heinrich Barth - Eugen Fink - Jan Patočka . Orbis Phenomenologicus. Perspectives. New series 22. Königshausen & Neumann, Würzburg 2010. ISBN 978-3-8260-3900-3
  • Helmuth Vetter (ed.): Lebenswelten. Ludwig Landgrebe, Eugen Fink, Jan Patocka. With a selection from the unpublished correspondence between Landgrebe and Patocka . Frankfurt a. M. 2003. ISBN 3-631-50137-4
  • Stephen Wirth: Man and World. The Anthropo-Cosmology Eugen Finks. Mainz 1995 ISBN 3-928624-25-3

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Fink, Eugen (1992): Nature, Freedom, World. Philosophy of education. Published by Franz-A. Black. Wurzburg.
  2. ↑ Fink, Eugen (1987): Existence and Coexistence: Basic Problems of the Human Community. Wurzburg.
  3. ^ Fink, Eugen (1970): Erziehungswissenschaft und Lebenslehre. Freiburg i.Br.
  4. ↑ Malte Brinkmann: Advising - Asking - Learning. On the triangular structure of generative experience in the phenomenology of the child, aging and in Eugen Fink . In: T. Shchyttsova (Ed.): In statu nascendi. Being born and the intergenerational dimension of human coexistence . Nordhausen 2012, pp. 205-230.
  5. ↑ Eugen Fink: Existence and Coexistence: Basic Problems of the Human Community . Wuerzburg 1987.
  6. ↑ Meyer-Wolters, Hartmut (1992): Coexistence and Freedom. Eugen Fink's anthropology and educational theory. Wurzburg; Meyer-Wolters, Hartmut (1997): Self-determination as an emergency solution. On the topicality of the anthropological and educational theory thinking of Eugen Fink. In: Quarterly magazine for scientific pedagogy. Vol. 73. H. 3. pp. 206-225.
  7. ^ Schütz, Egon (1992): Anthropology and technical education. On the educational work and legacy of Eugen Fink. In: Power and Powerlessness of Education. Weinheim. Pp. 149-168. See also here: https://www.erziehungswissenschaften.hu-berlin.de/de/allgemeine/egon-schuetz-archiv
  8. ^ Manfred Heinemann: From General Studies to University Reform: The "Oberaudorfer Talks" as a forum for trade union university policy 1950–1968 . In: Manfred Heinemann (Ed.): Edition education and science 1st Academy, Berlin 1996, ISBN 978-3-05-002901-6 .
  9. ^ Karl Bungardt: From the "Framework" to the "Bremen Plan". (PDF) Friedrich Ebert Foundation, accessed on January 21, 2019 .
  10. ↑ Bremen plan. In: Der Spiegel. October 12, 1960. Retrieved January 19, 2019 .
personal data
SURNAME Fink, Eugene
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German philosopher
DATE OF BIRTH December 11, 1905
PLACE OF BIRTH Constancy
DATE OF DEATH July 25, 1975
Place of death Freiburg in Breisgau