Abstract

The project of a «philosophical cosmology» that Fink formulates in his post-war writings is motivated by the requirement of «thinking the world itself». I aim to bring out the originality of this philosophical programme by means of a critical examination of two competing conceptions of the world. Thus I explicitate Fink’s criticisms of the understanding of the world as «totality of beings», which is crucial for the metaphysical tradition, and of the existential comprehension as «horizon of human praxis», which is decisive for Heidegger’s fundamental ontology. At the end of this inquiry it appears that Fink’s conception of the world as «a process of individuation» represents a remarkable approach situated beyond the alternative of a thinglike view and an existential view of the world.