Arbeit als Weltverhältnis. Annäherungen an Finks Grundphänomen der Arbeit

Abstract

Labor as a Worldly Relation. Approaches to Fink’s Fundamental Phenomenon of Labor This paper makes an attempt in exploring the relationship between world and labor in Fink’s philosophy. Although Fink considered labor as a “human basic phenomenon,” the worldliness of labor remains unevolved. I suppose that Fink implicitly deals with this matter in his reflections upon labor and nature. Hence, this paper examines Fink’s critical stance towards the traditional notion of labor/nature and his alternative proposition: “wilderness.” An analysis of the latter shows that labor does not simply create products (artificial objects), but regional ontologies (“Seiendheiten”) of the natural and artificial as such. In so doing, labor reveals itself as an ontological activity. I propose that “wilderness” is governed by an eminent but unthematised spatial sense, which will be unfolded by interpreting “wilderness” as a frontier, thus pondering the limitations of both labor and entities as such. The application of the concept of “Umwelt” enables us to approach labor’s worldliness.

Keywords

• labor
• nature
• world
• wilderness
• human being