Phenomenology, Anthropology, and Embodiment

This paper examines the central role of human bodily experience in the philosophical anthropology that Eugen Fink developed after the Second World War within the framework of his cosmological ontology. Interpreting human existence by means of the notion of “world” entails a non-Platonic conception of embodiment, which emerges from Fink’s analysis of various existential phenomena, such as power, work, eros, play, ethics, education, coexistence, fashion, and the relation to death. This account of embodiment constitutes a distinctive case within the phenomenological tradition, whose originality stems from the combination of at least three key aspects: the emphasis on the experiential significance of the corporeal and natural dimension of human existence, the interpretation of this dimension as a mode of openness to Being, and its articulation into anthropological structures that can be compared with the anthropological models of Western philosophical history.