The Awakening of Infinity in Finitude. An Analysis of Eugen Fink’s “Play as Symbol of the World”

• Autor(a) principal: Oliveira, Camila Ferreira de
• Data de Publicação: 2020
• Tipo de documento: Artigo
• Idioma: por
• Título da fonte: Phenomenology, Humanities and Sciences
• Texto Completo: https://phenomenology.com.br/index.php/phe/article/view/64
• topic: Fink; Jogo; Símbolo; Ser humano; Mundo; Fink; Play; World; Symbol; Human Being; Fink; Juego; Mundo; Símbolo; Ser humano

This article aims to present a brief analysis of the Finkian understanding of the play from a cosmological philosophical perspective, a notion structured by Eugen Fink in “Play as Symbol of the World” (1960). In this work, the author claims the possibility of approaching play as a legitimate philosophical problem. He proposes to think it beyond the outlines established by traditional metaphysics, mainly through Platonic philosophy, which conceives the play as a mere reproduction of reality. Fink turns his attention to ritualistic cults and life of primitive communities and argues that, in this context, the “non-actuality” of the play world had a higher ontological character compared to the ordinary things of everyday reality. Therefore he develops his interpretation of the play on the basis of three structuring notions: totality, mediality and the notion of symbol. In this sense, the understanding of play is outlined as an ecstatic opening in relation to the totality of the world, as a manifestation of the infinity of the world in the finite human being.