Fink and Gadamer: Phenomenology, Hermeneutics and the Aesthetics of Play

In the present contribution I will try to sketch an attempt of critical comparison between Eugen Fink’s phenomenological account of play [Spiel] and the role played by the notion of play in the context of Hans-Georg Gadamer’s hermeneutical philosophy. Due to the limits, in terms of length and structure, of a single book chapter, and also due to the breadth and complexity of this topic in the philosophies of both these great German thinkers, it is not my aim to ambitiously provide here a systematic or all-encompassing investigation of all the aspects of Fink’s and Gadamer’s philosophies of play. From this point of view, the present contribution must be rather understood only as a preliminary exploration of a topic that I potentially hope to investigate in a more complete, detailed and systematic way in some future comparative works on these authors.