What is a person? This fundamental question is a perennial concern of philosophers and theologians. But, Christian Smith here argues, it also lies at the center of the social scientist’s quest to interpret and explain social life. In this ambitious book, Smith presents a new model for social theory that does justice to the best of our humanistic visions of people, life, and society. Finding much current thinking on personhood to be confusing or misleading, Smith finds inspiration in critical (...) realism and personalism. Drawing on these ideas, he constructs a theory of personhood that forges a middle path between the extremes of positivist science and relativism. Smith then builds on the work of Pierre Bourdieu, Anthony Giddens, and William Sewell to demonstrate the importance of personhood to our understanding of social structures. From there he broadens his scope to consider how we can know what is good in personal and social life and what sociology can tell us about human rights and dignity. Innovative, critical, and constructive,_ What Is a Person?_ offers an inspiring vision of a social science committed to pursuing causal explanations, interpretive understanding, and general knowledge in the service of truth and the moral good. (shrink)

What kind of animals are human beings? And how do our visions of the human shape our theories of social action and institutions? In Moral, Believing Animals>, Christian Smith advances a creative theory of human persons and culture that offers innovative, challenging answers to these and other fundamental questions in sociological, cultural, and religious theory. Smith suggests that human beings have a peculiar set of capacities and proclivities that distinguishes them significantly from other animals on this planet. Despite the (...) vast differences in humanity between cultures and across history, no matter how differently people narrate their lives and histories, there remains an underlying structure of human personhood that helps to order human culture, history, and narration. Drawing on important recent insights in moral philosophy, epistemology, and narrative studies, Smith argues that humans are animals who have an inescapable moral and spiritual dimension. They cannot avoid a fundamental moral orientation in life and this, says Smith, has profound consequences for how sociology must study human beings. (shrink)

Religion and science dialogues that orbit around rational method, knowledge, and truth are often, though not always, contentious. In this article, I suggest a different cluster of gravitational points around which religion and science dialogues might usefully travel: philosophical anthropology, ethics, and love. I propose seeing morality as a natural outgrowth of the human desire to establish and maintain social bonds so as not to experience the condition of being alone. Humans, of all animals, need to feel loved—defined as (...) a compassionate present-with in dynamic dyadic relation such that one experiences the sense of mattering—but that need has an equally natural tendency to be met by creating biased us-and-them distinctions. A “critical” natural ethics, then, is one in which we become aware of and work to undermine our tendency to reify in-group distinctions between “us” and “them.” Religious communities that work intentionally on this can be seen, to some extent, as laboratories of love—or as sites for co-creating knowledge in perilous times. (shrink)

Contemporary Christian ethics encounters the challenge to communicate genuinely Christian normative orientations within the scientific debate in such a way as to render these orientations comprehensible, and to maintain or enhance their plausibility even for non-Christians. This essay, therefore, proceeds from a biblical motif, takes up certain themes from the Christian tradition (in particular the idea of social justice), and connects both with a compelling contemporary approach to ethics by secular moral philosophy, i.e. with Axel Honneth's reception (...) of Hegel, as based on Hegel's theory of recognition. As a first step, elements of an ethics of recognition are developed on the basis of an anthropological recourse to the conditions of intersubjective encounters. These conditions are then brought to bear on the idea of social justice, as developed in the social-Catholic tradition, and as systematically explored in the Pastoral Letter of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, Economic Justice For All (1986). Proceeding from this basis, aspects of a Christian ethics of community service with regard to long-term care can be defined. (shrink)

The irreducibility of language : the history of rhetoric in the age of typewriters -- The failures of empiricism : language, science, and the philosophical tradition -- What is a trope? : the discourse of metaphor and the language of the body -- The nervous systems of modern consciousness : metaphor, physiology, and mind -- Interpretation and life : outlines of an anthropology of knowledge.

The papyri transmit a part of the testimonia relevant to pre-Socratic philosophy. The ʼCorpus dei Papiri Filosofici‛ takes this material only partly into account. In this volume, a team of specialists discusses some of the most important papyrological texts that are major instruments for reconstructing pre-Socratic philosophy and doxography. Furthermore, these texts help to increase our knowledge of how pre-Socratic thought – through contributions to physics, cosmology, ethics, ontology, theology, anthropology, hermeneutics, and aesthetics – paved the way for the (...) canonic scientific fields of European culture. More specifically, each paper tackles papyrological texts concerning the Orphics, the Milesians, Heraclitus, Empedocles, Anaxagoras, the early Atomists, and the Sophists. For the first time in the field of pre-Socratics studies, several papers are devoted to the Herculanean sources, along with others concerning the Graeco-Egyptian papyri and the Derveni Papyrus. (shrink)

Christian Lotz shows in this book that Husserl's Phenomenology and its key concept--subjectivity--is based on a concrete anthropological structure, such as self-affection and the bodily experience of the other. The analysis of the sensual sphere and the lived Body forces Husserl to an ongoing correction of his strong methodological assumptions. Subjectivity turns out to be an ambivalent phenomenon, as the subject is unable to fully present itself to itself, and therefore is forced to allow for a fundamental non-transparency in (...) itself. (shrink)

This essay is concerned with the central issue of philosophical anthropology: the relation between nature and culture. Although Rousseau was the first thinker to introduce this topic within the modern discourse of philosophy and the cultural sciences, it has its origin in Diogenes the Cynic, who was a disciple of Socrates. In my essay I (1) historically introduce a few aspects of philosophical anthropology, (2) deal with the nature–culture exchange, as introduced in Kant, then I (3) relate this (...) topic to the Ancient Cynic Diogenes. Surprisingly, although we usually identify Critical Theory and Freudian psychoanalysis as theories that have shown that cultural progress should not be comprehended as a development from nature to culture, and that instead it should be conceived as a development from culture against (external as well as internal) nature, I show that Cynicism can be conceived as a vivid example within the history of our culture that reveals a double sense of repression and alienation, which is part of human civilization and mankind. (shrink)

Nietzsche’s Catharsis: The Theory of Tragedy and the Anthropology of Power. Nietzsche’s conception of catharsis undercuts the Aristotelian tradition by emphasizing that catharsis does not aim at a purification of the passions but at a cleansing of human judgment from moral sentiment. As such, Nietzsche develops a naturalistic counter-model to eighteenth-century theories of pity. By bringing together ancient Greece and the experience of modernity, this counter-model shifts the concept of catharsis into the realm of the political and enriches the (...) theory of tragedy with an anthropology of power. What is at stake in Nietzsche’s discussion of catharsis is an insight into the instability of normative order, which is triggered by the modern experience of the „phenomenon of Napoleon“ as an overcoming of Enlightenment conceptions of moral conscience. If modernity has to be understood along the lines of tragedy, Napoleon Bonaparte is the cathartic event in the realm of the political. (shrink)

A provocative exploration of how computers are reshaping ideas about what it means to be human profiles the annual Turing Test to assess a computer's capacity for thought while analyzing related philosophical, biological and moral issues.

The articles in this special edition exemplify three major issues in current debates on Sacred Plants: a) the wisdom of Indigenous understandings of sacred plants, b) beneficial emerging uses of sacred plants by non‐Indigenous people, c) the position of Indigenous wisdom for emerging uses of sacred plants.

Der Beitrag beschäftigt sich mit kulturanthropologischen und literarischen Reflexionen auf den Bewegungsmodus des Gehens. Er diskutiert die Frage, inwieweit das Gehen in diesen Diskursen als Linienpraxis aufgefasst wird. Ausgangspunkt ist die Beobachtung, dass die Kulturanthropologie, die dem aufrechten Gang eine Schlüsselfunktion für die Anthropogenese zuweist, diesen zugleich als Produkt eines ›Begradigungsprozesses‹ markiert und an die dichotomische Gegenüberstellung von Natur und Kultur koppelt. In literarischen Texten, aber auch in neueren ökoanthropologischen Ansätzen wird die Natur-Kultur-Opposition und die damit verbundene Privilegierung der geraden (...) Linie kritisch hinterfragt. Setzt die literarische Peripatetik mithin eine alternative Form der Beziehung zwischen Mensch und Umwelt in Szene? Entwirft sie eine Ökologie des Denkens und Wahrnehmens, die sich jenseits der Natur-Kultur-Dichotomie bewegt? Diese Fragen werden an ausgewählten Fallbeispielen beleuchtet. The essay deals with the peripatetic mode of movement as reflected in cultural anthropology and literature. It asks to what extent these discourses view walking as a practice of line-making. The point of departure is the observation that cultural anthropology ascribes a key role to the upright gait within anthropogenesis while associating it with a process of rectilinearization on the one hand and a sharp dichotomy between nature and culture on the other hand. Certain literary texts and recent approaches in ecologically oriented anthropology have, however, challenged the validity of this dichotomy and the concomitant privilege of the straight line. Does literary peripatetics thus propose an alternative way to grasp the relationship between human beings and the environment? Does it outline a new ecology of the mind that supersedes the binary relation between nature and culture? These questions are discussed with reference to selected case studies. (shrink)

This contribution deals with Ernst Cassirer's appreciative attitude to the philosophical anthropology of his time and its self-conception. The question of the relationship between Cassirer's philosophical anthropology and his philosophy of culture with its basis in the theory of symbolism presuppose or explain one another is investigated on the basis of four critical points. The unpublished texts on the subject (ECN 6) and in particular the concluding remarks revolve around the question of the interrelationship between the biological and (...) the symbolic or cultural dimensions of human existence. The final demonstration of six possible anthropological »constants« of human existence serve to supplement the methodological discussion with substantive issues. (shrink)

In order to answer the question formulated in the title, we firstly need to point out some theoretical constraints. A lot of parallels allow us to speak about a‘philosophy of symbolic structures’ or, better, about a ‘philosophy of structural symbolic systems’ in Lévi-Strauss theory. This is possible only if we establish an equivalence between the concepts ‘Form’ and ‘Structure,’ as they are used by Lévi-Strauss and Cassirer. The orientation of this implicit philosophy of Lévi-Strauss is not that of a philosophy (...) of culture based on a philosophical-anthropological reflection (as it is the case with Cassirer), but a scientific research of concrete primitive societies, together with their empirical cultures and their unconscious, hidden laws of formation. (shrink)

This paper explores a Rastafari perspective on consciousness development and relates this to developmental stage theories of consciousness evolution from the psychology of religion. The empirical material is from fieldwork on an online Rastafari community with global reach but run by a group based in Trinidad. The people on this particular forum align with the “spiritual, but not religious” trend in contemporary religiosity, which means they are more focused on interior questions of consciousness raising than on religious externals. This paper (...) interprets empirical material from the dialogues on this forum in light of Rastafari theorist Dennis Forsythe. It compares this Rastafari theory of stages of consciousness, symbolized by the animals Anancy, lion, and lamb, to developmental theories of consciousness evolution. These are drawn from psychology and the psychology of religion (Maslow 1970; Kohlberg 1981; Fowler 1981; Gilligan 1982; Wilber 2007), which focus on preconventional, traditional, modern, pluralist, and integral stages. (shrink)

Sometime, at your leisure—if you want to know what philosophy is—go into a large bookstore and browse. Check a variety of books in psychology, anthropology, physics, chemistry, archeology, astronomy, and other nonfiction fields. Look at the last chapter in each book. In a surprising number of cases, you will find that the author has chosen to round out his work with a final summation of what the book is all about. That is, having written a whole book on a (...) specialized subject in which he is probably an authority, he finds that he also has ideas about the larger meaning of the facts that he has written about. The final chapter may be called “Conclusions,” “Epilogue,” “Postscript,” “My Personal View,” “Implications,” “Comments," ,“ “Speculations,” or (as in one case) “So What?” But in every instance, the author is trying to elucidate the larger implications of his subject matter and to clarify how he thinks it relates to other fields or to life. He has an urge to tell us the meaning of all his facts taken together. He wants to share with us the philosophic implications of what he has written. When he does this, the author has moved beyond the role of a field specialist. He is a philosopher. (shrink)

Anthropology of Consciousness, EarlyView.

Usually, humor is not theorized specifically, but identified with the comic and laughter. This paper deals with the internal logic of humorous operations in the context of Freud's writings on humor, in order to make them productive for medial anthropology. Unlike conventional anthropologies, medial anthropology is interested in the ontologizing effects of operations that can be understood in a technical way. Correspondingly, humoresque operations are to be studied anew as techniques of the Dionysian connection of pleasure and reality (...) principle. German Humor wird gemeinhin nicht eigens theoretisiert, sondern umstandslos mit dem Komischen und dem Lachen identifiziert. In diesem Aufsatz geht es darum, die Eigenlogik von humoresken Operationen vor dem Hintergrund von Freuds Auslassungen zum Humor herauszuarbeiten und für eine mediale Anthropologie produktiv zu machen. Im Unterschied zu herkömmlichen Anthropologien interessiert sich eine mediale Anthropologie für die ontologisierenden und wirklichkeitskonstituierenden Effekte technisch zu fassender Operationen. Humoreske Operationen sind entsprechend als Techniken der dionysischen Verschaltung von Lust- und Realitätsprinzip neu zu beleuchten. (shrink)

Forms and Functions of Exchange in Archaic Societies , Marcel Mauss describes an archaic mode of human relations, the gift, whose analysis allows us to specify the reasons for our daily exchanges. Georg Simmel considers the same demands from the starting-point of Wechselwirkung (effects of reciprocity), which contains the properties of all human relations. Their research is based on the following question: Is society possible? The authors examine this question based on notions of sacrifice, reciprocity, and duration, which allow them (...) to isolate three conditions necessary for the existence of human relations: the personalization of, the commitment to, and the duration of this bond. Although it does not qualify as a response to the question asked above, the human relation appears as the inevitable question of sociological reasoning, able to stimulate and open new research perspectives. Key Words: anthropology • duration • exchange theory • human relations • Marcel Mauss • philosophy • reciprocity • sacrifice • Georg Simmel • sociology. (shrink)

Book synopsis: Held every five years under the auspices of the Kant-Gesellschaft, the International Kant Congress is the world’s largest philosophy conference devoted to the work and legacy of a single thinker. The five-volume set Kant and Philosophy in a Cosmopolitan Sense contains the proceedings of the Eleventh International Kant Congress, which took place in Pisa in 2010. The proceedings consist of 25 plenary talks and 341 papers selected by a team of international referees from over 700 submissions. The contributions (...) span 14 sections: Kant’s Concept of Philosophy; Theory of Cognition and Logic; Ontology and Metaphysics; Ethics; Law and Justice; Religion and Theology; Aesthetics; Anthropology and Psychology; Politics and History; Science, Mathematics, and the Philosophy of Nature; Kant and the Leibnizian Tradition; Kant and the Philosophical Tradition; Kant and Schopenhauer; and Kant’s Heritage. Thanks to cooperation from the Schopenhauer Gesellschaft, the 2010 conference was the first in the history of the International Kant Congress to include a session on Kant and Schopenhauer. (shrink)

These works concern fundamental philosophical problems of time and spacetime, such as the implications of the absolute and relations concepts of motion for the disputes about the character of spacetime, the role of relativity, quantum mechanics, quantum gravity and noncommutative geometry with respect to the controversy concerning the objectivity of the flow of time, the existence of the future, the concept of branching spacetime. One paper presents the views on time of an outstanding representative of phenomenology, Roman Ingarden, thus enriching (...) the book with some questions of philosophical anthropology and ethics. The collection is mainly addressed to research workers and graduate students. (shrink)

No longer is sociality the preserve of the social sciences, or ‘‘culture’’ the preserve of the humanities or anthropology. By the same token, cognition is no longer the sole preserve of the cognitive sciences. Social cognition (SC) or, sociocognition if you like, is thus a kaleidoscope of research projects that has seen exponential growth over the past 30 or so years.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Identity, Ritual and State in Tibetan Buddhism: The Foundations of Authority in Gelukpa MonasticismChristian P. B. HaskettIdentity, Ritual and State in Tibetan Buddhism: The Foundations of Authority in Gelukpa Monasticism. By Martin A. Mills. London: RoutledgeCurzon, 2003. 404 + xxi pp. with 12 black and white plates.In Tibetan Buddhism, there is a type of teaching called a dmar khrid, a "red instruction," wherein the lama brings students through (...) a teaching as a physician might dissect a corpse, pointing out and explaining the various parts and organs and their places and functions. In Identity, Ritual and State in Tibetan Buddhism, Martin Mills has done very much the same thing, with the exception that the body he examines is still very much alive, and emerges, to my eyes at least, as a new and wholly vital entity. Mills exposes the subcutaneous and sanguine body of Tibetan Buddhism, the bones and muscles that make up its structure, the blood that flows through it, and the organs that keep it alive, in "a plain and open manner," just as in a dmar khrid.1 The value of such a presentation truly cannot be overstated. An attempt to catalog the contents of each chapter would be both impossible and counterproductive, as the wealth of theoretical material and ethnographic detail is a large part of what makes this book so powerful. Instead, I will identify several topics, several of the vital organs alluded to, that are either not commonly noticed in the academic study of Buddhism, or that are given fresh perspective by Mills's anthropological and sociological methodology, and that are so crucial to understanding how it is that Buddhism lives in a typical Himalayan village. The latter portion of this review explains why I place such high value on this book and its potential place in Buddhist-Christian studies.Identity, Ritual and State is an ethnography of Kumbum Monastery in Lingshed, Ladakh (the eastern half of the Kashmir valley, located in Jammu and Kashmir, India), but its concerns are much more far-reaching than a single remote Himalayan village. The central question of the work is "how we are to understand the nature of religious authority in Tibetan Buddhist monasticism" (p. xiii), although it might more properly be the religious authority of Tibetan [End Page 187] Buddhist monastics. This answer is worked out in three overlapping areas of analysis: local ritual activity, ecclesiastical structure of the monastery, and the ritual foundations of Tibetan political thought (p. xvii).Mills convincingly asserts that there is a framework within which Buddhism happens in the Himalayas. The starting point of this framework is birth itself, which establishes the embodied person. The very physicality of personhood has several implications. First, the body is embedded in a very specific local space and place, and personhood is thus not only embodied, but also chthonic—intimately bound up with the earth or soil onto which it is born. At birth, persons are injected into a complex matrix of relations between people and various spirits, such as household gods and protectors, nāga, and itinerant demons. For example, Lingshed is divided into seven subterritories, each under the jurisdiction of a local deity whose physical abode and reign are well known to all in the village.2 These deities are associated with features of the local geography, and they regulate and influence local agricultural and social production, so birth in one area or another signifies a relation with the deity presiding over it. The land itself is imbued with a notion of personhood and agency. The human body is also the repository for pollution (sgrib), which comes about as a result of violating the established hierarchy of space and place and from bringing about changes to the local matrix of embodied persons. Both bodily pollution concerns and the need for proper relations with local spirit numina mandate definite, ongoing ritual attention. Rituals are occasioned in response to births, deaths, spirit possession, unintentional pollution of places or household objects, and movements within the monastic ecclesiastical structure, or happen regularly according to an astrologically and agriculturally influenced calendar.Rituals are performed by monks not only because they are trained specialists, but because... (shrink)

This volume views human existence from various perspectives and asks what its purpose is. The underlying thesis is that humans are creatures of relationships. Any anthropology that fails to take this fact seriously will of necessity remain abstract. Instead the authors are interested in how different academic disciplines describe the variety of relationships in human life, taking into account their ethical and theological dimensions.

Le barbare, c'est celui qui croit à la barbarie ", disait Lévi-Strauss en 1961. C'est à trouver dans leurs siècles des explosions de violence barbare que des personnalités plutôt en marge des grands courants religieux et idéologiques ont ouvert la voie à la genèse d'une anthropologie ouverte à tous les peuples. Désintriquer dans le "Sauvage" ce qu'il a de civilisé et dans le "Civilisé" ce qu'il a de sauvage est la tâche que les penseurs de l'altérité se sont donnée.

This paper offers a reevaluation of the debate between assimilationism and differentialism concerning the anthropological difference. Both sides usually assume that the difference consists in a capacity which humans possess and other animals lack, and that is added to a set of capacities humans share with other animals. A likely candidate for this role is reason. An additive conception of human reason on these lines runs into several difficulties, which can be avoided by thinking of reason transformatively, as providing human (...) capacities with a special rational form. What such a transformative conception amounts to is described in some detail for the special case of human perception. A transformative understanding of reason’s role enables us to formulate a differentialist position that does not fall prey to the usual problems of differentialism. (shrink)

The philosophical parting of the ways between Heidegger’s Fundamental ontology and the Philosophical anthropology of Plessner is well known. Today, however, after the publication of the »Schwarze Hefte«, new aspects of their differences come to light. Accordingly, this article focusses on the purpose of death discussed in »Die Stufen des Organischen« as a genuine thought Plessner inscribed into 20th century philosophy. It argues that the most peculiar difference is to be found in Plessner’s view on death not as a (...) simple element of life but as an external phe- nomenon. In contrast to Plessner, Heidegger’s »Schwarze Hefte« seem to present more of an eschatology than a systematical approach to human self and world. (shrink)

Humor wird gemeinhin nicht eigens theoretisiert, sondern umstandslos mit dem Komischen und dem Lachen identifiziert. In diesem Aufsatz geht es darum, die Eigenlogik von humoresken Operationen vor dem Hintergrund von Freuds Auslassungen zum Humor herauszuarbeiten und für eine mediale Anthropologie produktiv zu machen. Im Unterschied zu herkömmlichen Anthropologien interessiert sich eine mediale Anthropologie für die ontologisierenden und wirklichkeitskonstituierenden Effekte technisch zu fassender Operationen. Humoreske Operationen sind entsprechend als Techniken der dionysischen Verschaltung von Lust- und Realitätsprinzip neu zu beleuchten. Usually, humor (...) is not theorized specifically, but identified with the comic and laughter. This paper deals with the internal logic of humorous operations in the context of Freud's writings on humor, in order to make them productive for medial anthropology. Unlike conventional anthropologies, medial anthropology is interested in the ontologizing effects of operations that can be understood in a technical way. Correspondingly, humoresque operations are to be studied anew as techniques of the Dionysian connection of pleasure and reality principle. (shrink)

What is a human being according to Augustine of Hippo? The question has occupied a group of researchers from Brazil and Europe and has been explored at two workshops during which the contributors to this volume have discussed anthropological themes in Augustine's vast corpus. In this volume, the reader will find articles on a wide spectrum of Augustine's anthropological ideas. Some contributions focus on specific texts, while others focus on specific theological or philosophical aspects of Augustine's anthropology. The authors (...) of the articles in this volume are convinced that Augustine's anthropology is of major importance for how human beings have been understood in Western civilization for better or for worse. The topic is therefore highly relevant to the present times in which humanity is under pressure from various sides. (shrink)

The present considerations discuss the systematic opposition between a practice of nonviolence to experienced social injustice and violent relationships. At the point, we see existential decisions about war and violence, there are signs of misconduct of responsibility waiver form – the Security Council unable to act, the protective effect for the affected people lapsed, the effectiveness of international law too weak. What emerges in this starting position, especially for the present considerations as a problem, is nothing less than the question (...) of a meaningful rule between legitimate power and illegitimate violence, hence a question that has a historical and a fundamental anthropological side. In the present case should be explicitly asked for the meaning of criteria of modern violence ability. The modern power capability opens up a complex and challenging task field. The historical origin and existential explosiveness are often overlooked. (shrink)

This is a short, but complex and ambitious book. It is argumentative in style and in many places written in the first person. It appeared first in German in 2003, and in 2016 in English translation, to which the two translators added a detailed and informative introduction. The overall aim of the book is to describe and explain how human beings, as users of propositional language and with the ability to refer to themselves, develop into egocentric beings, who find themselves (...) confronted with the world as a whole, and who turn to mysticism or religion in order to find some peace of mind. A wide range of themes and arguments are interwoven along on the way from being an "I"-sayer to... (shrink)

This article proposes a model for the project of integrating the field of clinical psychology with Catholic intellectual tradition. “Integration” here is understood as the project by which psychology’s understanding of the human person is illuminated and perfected by drawing on anthropological knowledge from outside psychology, specifically from Catholic philosophy and divine revelation. The article sets forth a definition of integration in the form of six principles. Ratherthan formulating the principles as descriptive premises, they are formulated as habits of mind, (...) intellectual qualities that one possesses, and when possessed, capacitate one to do Christian scholarly integration. The model is flexible enough to be adapted for use in integrating other social sciences, as well as, to some degree, the hard sciences. (shrink)

While freedom has traditionally been discussed in philosophy and political theory, this paper proposes an anthropological approach to the study of freedom. The focus is on the Japanese word amae, which Takeo Doi calls the ‘key’ to Japanese culture and contrasts with the ‘Western’ concept of freedom. After discussing Doi’s influential work, meanings are reconstructed from interviews and group discussions with Japanese people about amae. The interviewees define amae literally in terms of social ‘non-independence’ and, unlike Doi, understand it in (...) a complex intertwining with freedom on the one hand and autonomy on the other. Overall, the paper argues that amae can hardly serve as a ‘key’ to understanding the Japanese, but can stimulate fruitful anthropological reflections not only on Japanese culture, but also on the concept of freedom. (shrink)