Abstract

In this "contribution to philosophical anthropology" the author offers a competent examination of the body-soul relationship which represents primarily a phenomenological characterization of various psycho-somatic relations. The essential difference of the two substances of body and "personal spiritual soul" is to be established as "the indispensable presupposition" of "the wonderful and intimate unity" of man,, and this unique unity is systematically to be defended against all forms of exaggerated dualism and monism. In order to secure this fundamental philosophical truth about the constitution of man against any sceptical questioning, the nature of philosophical knowledge is determined in a long introduction which summarizes an earlier epistemological publication of the author and utilizes its recognitions to manifest possibility and need of an independent philosophical discussion of psycho-somatic relations. Philosophical knowledge is described as a kind of cognition of its own, differing in method and contents from scientific efforts. While science studies contingent facts and conditions in empirical observation and by way of inductive reasoning, essential structures, necessary relations, and strictly deduced states of affairs constitute the object of philosophical knowledge. The latter uses the intuition of essences discovered in the Phenomenological School of Munich as the main method of its endeavors and as the foundation of demonstrative procedures.