Abstract

The main task of a phenomenological approach to anthropology is that of clarifying its main concepts through an analysis of experience. Focusing on appearance rather than on introspective analysis, phenomenology is based upon a “givenness” which is independent of any interpretation. Firstly, one should recognize that the intentional relation to the world essentially differs in the cases of humans and animals. Animals don’t understand any meaning: even the simplest human feeling is specifically different, since man is a conscious being, who is able to interpret it. The “world” is the possibility condition of any object and, as such, the origin of human understanding. Phenomenologists criticise other approaches, such as Cohen’s Neokantianism: according to Heidegger, the self-relationship of a subject is the source of his responsibility. An agent’s identity requires a totality of possibilities, i.e. a “world”. Accordingly, as Patočka noticed, animals neither act, nor do have a self. Human language has a fundamental role, because it allows the subject to take a certain distance from himself and then, properly speaking, to act