Towards a Phenomenology of the Unconscious: Husserl and Fink on Versunkenheit

As a phenomenological concept, absorption refers to the ego's capacity to experience the world from a displaced standpoint. The paper traces the emergence and development of this concept in Husserl's and Fink's writings and demonstrates that while Fink conceived of absorption as a class of intuitive re-presentations, Husserl transformed it into a limit phenomenon, whose analysis calls for a new method. A careful study of absorption compels us to rethink fundamental themes in phenomenology: it forces us to broaden our understanding of sensuous intuition, reconceptualize the nature of self-awareness, stretch the limits of intuitive re-presentations, and rethink the portrayal of phenomenology as a metaphysics of presence. The paper demonstrates that absorbed experiences are characterized by a specific form of self-awareness, that they constitute a distinct type of intuitive re-presentations, that a new method is needed to investigate them, and that their analysis leads towards a phenomenology of the unconscious.

Automated summary

This paper introduces the phenomenological concept of absorption and explores its emergence and development in the writings of Husserl and Fink. It highlights the importance of absorption in phenomenology and its implications for the understanding of sensuous intuition, self-awareness, intuitive re-presentations, and the portrayal of phenomenology.