Cathrin Nielsen

The paper reconstructs the “speculative exposition” of the correlative distinction between being and cognition called for by Fink in Husserl’s intentional analytics on the basis of his discussion of Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit. In this context, for Fink the chapter “Force and the Understanding, Appearance and the Supersensible World” is key in the Phenomenology asa whole. There, not only the transition fromobject-consciousness to self-consciousness is accomplished but also the question of the basic structure of thinghood in general is raised: From where does being as such and as a whole make itself appear? The paper traces Fink’s reading step by step, which is guided by a radicalisation of “ontological experience” – ontology as an “Er-fahrung (ex-perience)”, which sounds out itself in view of its presuppositions. “Radicalisation”, according to Fink, is the “transition from operative use to the subject”: the living, performative reference itself moves to the abysmal centre of an “inverted world”, which at the same time can be read as an introduction to Fink’s own thinking of a “cosmological difference”.