Abstract

Volume 11 of Eugen Fink’s ‘Collected Works’ brings together Fink's contributions on ancient philosophy since the 1940s: three main texts—the lecture on the ‘Basic Questions of Ancient Philosophy’ (winter semester 1947/48), the seminar on the ‘Principle of Contradiction’ (winter semester 1959/60) and the seminar on Heraclitus (winter semester 1966/67), which he held together with Heidegger—, two smaller works entitled ‘Time and the Concept of Time in Aristotle’ and ‘Asebeia and Techne in the 10th Book of the Nomoi’ (1963 and 1969), and drafts in the context of several seminars on Heraclitus, Parmenides, Plato and Aristotle. The volume shows the important role played by Fink’s analysis of the ancient philosophers for the development of his phenomenological cosmology in the tension between Husserl and Heidegger: In the early thinkers, Fink finds traces of an original philosophy that has the world as a whole as its centre and guiding principle.