METAPHYSICS AND DEATH IN EUGEN FINK’S THOUGHT

The aim of the contribution is to present and then question the thesis of Eugen Fink, Husserl’s last assistant and Heidegger’s student, on the inability of metaphysics to deal adequately with the problem of death. According to Fink, metaphysics, even though it sees the problem of death as its “existential” motive, is unable to transform it into its own object, since metaphysical concepts crumble in the face of the unspeakable power of death. The fatal difficulty of metaphysics consists, however, in the attempt to conceive death in “phenomenal” terms, that is, starting from the presence of the entity based on its individuation; in other words, metaphysical conceptualizations always confront the single thing at the root of the understanding of being as presence. The latter is divided into three fundamental moments: the rise between earth and sky of the entity in its presence; the revealing of things to man, an entity endowed with reason, and therefore the ever-human reference of the apparition of things; the placing of man at the centre of the totality of entities in time. But the philosophical understanding of death can offer us the opportunity to turn to a non- phenomenal dimension, that of absence, from which to fully understand the source moment of the evidence of things in their individuation.