TRANSCENDENTAL ILLUSION AND PHENOMENOLOGICAL ORIGINALITY — THE WORLD-EXPERIENCE IN HUSSERL AND FINK

This paper holds that the philosophical relation between Husserl's and Fink's phenomenological philosophies can be characterized in terms of proximity and distance. We proceed by focusing on the philosophical foundation of their projects and, in particular, on the Kantian notion of “transcendental illusion”, which they use, though in different manners, as a way of determining purely philosophical illusions — a preliminary task to found transcendental phenomenology proper. We select this Kantian notion as a central theme inasmuch as it concerns the metaphysical problematic of the world. Our analysis shows that Fink defends the Husserlian thesis that the world is not merely an “idea of pure reason” (Kant), but an experience. In effect, the world is necessarily pregiven to us, though anonymously, in an intentional experience; in other words, intentional experience without the pregiven world is, according to the late Husserl, unthinkable. Fink's characterization of world-experience is radically different from Husserl's. This difference or distance comes from Fink's conception of “enworlding” (Verweltlichung), i. e., the self-actualization of constituting subjectivity in the world-actualization. Fink's very idea of this type of correlation has two specific enabling functions: (1) the world's originally enframing function (die ursprünglich einrahmende Funktion) of the entity into the world itself and (2) the event-like character of the “intruding” (Eindringen) of the subject into the world. Therefore, we conclude that Fink's phenomenological contribution to philosophy consists not only in his genuine reflection on, and analysis of, the phenomenological conception of correlation at the deep level of world-experience, but also in his metaphysical reformulation of the traditional concept of the world.