Poetics of Intergenerational Relations. To the Importance of Eugen Fink’s Cosmological Substantiation of Educational Coexistence

Abstract

German philosopher Eugen Fink outlined a new pedagogical theory based on his original post-metaphysical (post-Husserlian) ontology of the world (cosmology). A kind of cosmological equality between adult and child envisaged by Fink allows to conceive of educational intergenerational relations as a realm of joint creation of heuristic situations and symbols that arise due to the ontological (cosmological) irreducibility of difference between adult and child. It is argued that the importance of Fink’s cosmological substantiation of educational co-existence (“erzieherischer Ko-Existenz”) consists not only in the overcoming of the adult-centered thinking, but also in clarification of certain basic principles of intergenerational con-creativity. In this regard, it is shown that the Fink’s famous thesis „die Ethik gründet in der Physik“implies that the ethics of the adult–child co-existence is (or can be) performed as poetics i.e. as a creative relationship that proceeds from bodily-affective interplay between different periods of life.

Wenn das Fragen und Denken des erwachsenen Erziehers dem Staunen des Kindes

nahebleibt, sich nicht weniger aussetzt, als es dabei von der reinen Einfalt

eines unendlichen Zutrauens sich gestimmt weiß, dann kann es zwischen den Partnern

des Erziehungsgeschäftes zu einer gemeinschaftlichen Sinn-Gebung kommen,

können plötzlich neue Möglichkeiten des Existierens und Handelns aufleuchten

und eine kollektive Praxis begründen.

(Eugen Fink)