Abstract

The other Hölderlin, an unheroic, unprophetic, un-German, in a word: a poor Hölderlin, might have played an essential role in the development of Eugen Fink’s experienceable ontology as an/other form of idealism. Understood cosmologically as a “quarrel” or “game” between heaven and earth, it is designed to realize Husserl’s term “Weltbewusstseinsleben” as illustrated by Fink’s remark: “Coexistence in cognition is at the same time a testimony to the heavenly spirit.” Thus, a twofold question arises: If, in cognition, coexistence is at the same time a testimony to the heavenly spirit, what is it outside of cognition, if anything? And how does it come to cognition? Reading Fink and Hölderlin together, I suggest the following answers: 1. In cognition, coexistence is at the same time a testimony to the “heavenly”, that is to say: higher, i.e. communal spirit, precisely because 2. it is nothing outside of cognition–nothing but the cosmological laceration of man, the openness of human beings to the world, about which 3. nothing more can be said than that it has always already been there for us to know, for it is being brought to our cognition time and again: through poetry.