Originally published in Recherches Husserliennes 2, 1994, 3-18. Please only quote from published version. The Self-Pluralisation of the Primal Life. A Problem in Fink's Husserl-Interpretation by Dan Zahavi University of Copenhagen That Eugen Fink knew Husserl's thought exceptionally well is indisputable. This is not only manifest in his own writings on Husserl, which are generally characterized by profound insights, but also by several manuscripts that Fink wrote on Husserl's behalf during the period when Fink worked as his assistant. 1 Despite this praise however, I do believe, that one important aspect of Fink's Husserl-interpretation is seriously flawed, namely his account of Husserl's final position vis-à-vis the problem of intersubjectivity, and that Fink consequently failed to perceive the true extent of the transformation that Husserl's thinking underwent in the last period of his life. 2 By disclosing this misinterpretation it will be possible to 1 The most prominent examples are FINK's VI. Cartesianische Meditation, Kluwer Academic Publishers, Dordrecht, 1988, and his article Die phänomenologische Philosophie Edmund Husserls in der gegenwärtigen Kritik, in Kantstudien 38,1933, pp. 319-383, with the famous preface where Husserl writes that »in derselben kein Satz ist, den ich mir nicht vollkommen zueigne, den ich nicht ausdrücklich als meine eigene Überzeugung anerkennen könnte«(p.320). Among FINK's own writings on Husserl the most important are collected in Studien zur Phänomenologie. 1930-1939, Martinus Nijhoff, Den Haag, 1966. A noticeable exception, however, is the influential article Operative Begriffe in Husserls Phänomenologie which can be found in Zeitschrift für philosophische Forschung 11, 1957, pp.321-337. This study is based on research undertaken at the Husserl-Archives in Louvain. I am grateful to Prof. S. IJsseling for the permission to consult and quote from Husserl's unpublished manuscripts. 2 Consequently my interpretation will run counter to one ardently proposed by R. Bruzina in the last years. The thesis namely, »that the essential Husserlian philosophy of the thirties might have to be thought of in a profound way as having been actually a joint product, and that therefore it might have to be interpreted in terms of a dialectical interplay between two philosophical thinkers...« Cf. R. BRUZINA, Solitude and community in the work of philosophy: Husserl and Fink, 1928-1938, in Man and World 22, 1989, p.294.