Historico-critical edition of two volumes within the Complete Edition of the works of Eugen Fink: Vol. 2 (Projects of Phenomenology, 1930-32, contains the VI. Cartesian Meditation) and Vol. 16 (Existence and Co-Existence)

• Applicant: Professor Dr. Stephan Grätzel
• Subject Area: Practical Philosophy ; History of Philosophy
• Term: from 2015 to 2017
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 280908119

Fink's access to phenomenology and its methods is distinguished by the fact, how he focuses on lifeworld and how lifeworld gives room for acting in its very constitution. There is no longer a transcendental subject, who gains knowledge of its constitution in phenomenological reduction, but it is the human being gaining experience by intersubjectively structured phenomena, e.g. love and death, strife and labor, play and education, thereby shaping lifeworld and its space of action.Beyond philosophy, phenomenology gains impact both for analytic and hermeneutic methodology in the cultural and social sciences. With the edition of the before mentioned volumes, the development of phenomenology is reconstructed as reflection on the constitution of experience and knowledge, which provides a ground for securing the field and method of the sciences of lifeworld, i.e., the Humanities, cultural and social sciences. Fink develops this critical impact subsequent to Husserl's late works in his VI. Cartesian Meditation and in texts connected with this; this is part of vol. II which will be edited within this project. The texts of vol. XVI were written 20-30 years after these early works, yet they follow lines of thoughts Fink already drafted then: How to mundanize transcendental phenomenolgy to reach concrete topics of research. Here, he applies phenomenological reduction of the structures of knowledge and judgment to issues of political and social philosophy. Further, he works this out to a hermeneutic methodology.By publishing the edition of these two volumes, both from the early and the late years of Fink's philosophy, when he developed his cosmological approach to phenomenology, the project reconstructs the development of the phenomenological movement. This development means a meta-disciplinary fundament for the humanities and the sciences of the lifeworld in their specific fields and methodologies. Due to the growing interest in methods of phenomenology - namely the lifeworld, its structures and practices -, the projects fills a desiderate of an interdisciplinary quest for a self-reflective point of view within and towards the humanities and the social sciences.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants
• International Connection: Belgium
• Co-Investigator: Professor Dr. Guy van Kerckhoven