What Structure of the World?

A Key to Interpreting Eugen Fink's Cosmological Ontology

Abstract

Ontology nowadays does not simply allude to the reality in front of me, since the word ‘being’ already presupposes a relationship to the subjective field; as Husserl and the phenomenologists have taught, ontology and the analysis of experience cannot be separated. If, however, philosophical research is based on such a presupposition, the following question can arise: how do we have to understand the being of the world? Is the structure of the world something stable or are there several possibilities of experiencing and perceiving the world before considering cultural differences? The purpose of this article is to investigate Eugen Fink’s complex answer to these questions. Although Fink’s first post-war works seem to suggest a relativistic solution, their interpretation in the context of his whole ontology indicates an original system of thought, in which different directions of answering can coexist.