Abstract

The proper goal of a philosophical anthropology is to provide a unified view of the whole human being. An analysis of the philosophical anthropology of Max Scheler, as set forth in his Man's Place In Nature, discloses both that an adequate philosophical anthropology must account for the human being's world openness while avoiding Scheler's dualistic metaphysical scheme. The framework of a philosophy of culture, as explicated in Ernst Cassiere's An Essay on Man, provides the best means for meeting the goal of a philosophical anthropology. Cassirer's account of the symbolic animal allows us to comprehend the human being's biological and cultural nature in a single synoptic vision. This account of the human being is then defended against two contemporary challenges. Daniel Dennett's mechanistic physicalism, elaborated in his Brainstorms and The Intentional Stance, treats the human being as a complex physical mechanism substantially similar to other mechanisms, such as thermostats. Dennett's account of the human being, though, is unable to account for the cultural, social, and intersubjective dimensions of human life and so, it is argued, fails. Michel Foucault's poststructuralism is then analyzed. Foucault's archaeology of the human sciences, The Order of Things, and his genealogy of disciplinary practices, Discipline and Punish, potentially undermine the project of a philosophical anthropology by radically historicizing human nature, arguing that the human being is the determined product of shifting structural forces. An analysis of these works, though, together with Foucault's work on technologies of the self, discloses that Foucault presupposes a substantive vision of human nature. This account of human nature is consistent in many respects with Cassirer's account of the symbolic animal. Dennett's and Foucault's common mistake is to offer an account of human nature that begins, not with an anthropological perspective, but from a position that objectifies the human being. We conclude that contemporary philosophy is insufficiently anthropologically informed and argue for a renewal of the anthropological question