„Der Grundriß unseres Lebens ist in der Tat ein ‚Riß‘“. Ansätze zu einer Anthropologie der Negativität bei Eugen Fink

“The draft of our life is, indeed, a ‘rift’.” Towards an Outline of the Anthropology of Negativity in Eugen Fink --- Eugen Fink’s engagement with the nature of human being articulates essential truths about being human, without presupposing a positive essence of humanity; at the same time, it anchors this humanity in a structural negativity by placing it back into being torn open by the world. The world, in this context, is not a positive entity, but rather the “outline” of our existence in the here and now, which turns us into fragments of a whole characterized by withdrawal. It is precisely in the simultaneity of concrete situating and its transcendence through withdrawal that the crucial point of an anthropology of negativity lies, understood in the sense of the double genitive. Thus, the expression can be read once as a genetivus subjectivus (anthropology of negativity), whereby the finitude is conceived through the Absolute of “tearing,” as Fink primarily explores in his early speculative reflections following “the ontological paradox” of the subject, which here appears as a “distortion” of the Absolute. However, this meontic reading simultaneously gives rise to a reversal towards an anthropology of negativity, which will shape Fink’s middle and later thought. Here, human modes of being are to be read as ciphers of the experience of negativity.