Eugen Fink and French Phenomenology

• Applicant: Professor Dr. Alexander Schnell
• Subject Area: History of Philosophy
• Term: from 2021 to 2024
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 452174347

The project aims at evaluating Eugen Fink’s importance to the phenomenological movement outside of Germany. We argue that besides having been an important collaborator of Husserl and Heidegger, Fink has also made essential contributions to phenomenology and these can be measured by his influence on scholars outside of Germany. We focus mainly on Fink’s reception in France, where the phenomenological movement has found a fertile soil after WWII.By showing Fink’s influence on representants of early and contemporary French phenomenology we propose to contribute to recent interpretations that propose to treat Fink as an original figure of the history of phenomenology. This originality manifests itself not only in the historical aspects of his reading outside of Germany but also – and with equal importance – in the posterity of Finkian themes in contemporary phenomenological research.After more than a hundred years of phenomenological tradition, we can witness today the apparition of some major research topics introduced by Fink in the centre of contemporary efforts to pertain phenomenology and to open it up to discussions with other philosophical or scientific approaches. In the proposed research we organize the analysis of these Finkian motives around two major thematical axes: cosmology and methodology (related to an original ontology). These methodological axes should then permit to integrate other research domains related to Fink.Besides the theoretical aims of the project, however, we also find it important to put an accent on the institutional work. This project aims at bringing together the researchers involved in the publication of Fink’s collective works and the newly founded Eugen-Fink-Zentrum in Wuppertal. Our goal is to establish an infrastructure giving the most visibility to the Fink-research in Europe and to start building networks with colleagues overseas. In this sense, we do not only propose to analyse Fink’s reception outside of Germany but also to contribute to this reception through institutions.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants
• International Connection: Czech Republic
• Partner Organisation: Czech Science Foundation
• Cooperation Partner: Professor Dr. Hans Rainer Sepp