CHAPTER Introduction Some basic questions in philosophical anthropology The question whether there is indeed a concern in Indian thought of what comes under ...

The paper is a critical analysis of Paul Ricoeur’s philosophy of work as it is formulated in a number of essays from the 1950s and 60s. It begins with a reconstruction of the central theses advanced in ‘Travail et parole’ (1953) and related texts, where Ricoeur sought to outline a philosophical anthropology in which work is given its due. To give work its due, from an anthropological standpoint, is to see it as limited by counter-concept of language, according (...) to Ricoeur. The paper then argues that this way of understanding the anthropological significance of work is not only internally problematic, but at odds with phenomenological insights to be found elsewhere in Ricoeur’s oeuvre, particularly Le Volontaire et l’involontaire (1950). The final section of the paper makes some suggestions for how the phenomenological and anthropological poles of a philosophy of work might be better integrated, and the ‘nexus between speech and work’ better described. (shrink)

Is a conception of human nature still possible or even desirable in light of the “postmetaphysical sensibilities” of our time? Furthermore, can philosophy make any contribution towards the articulation of a tenable conception of human nature given this current intellectual climate? I will argue in this paper that affirmative answers can be given to both of these questions. Section I rehearses briefly some of the difficulties and even dangers involved in working out any conception of human nature at all, let (...) alone one that is philosophically informed. Section II sketches what I argue to be three necessary aspects of a tenable philosophical anthropology. Finally, section III argues that such a philosophical anthropology is only justifiable, given our postmetaphysical sensibilities, by its use of “transcendental arguments” in justifying its claims, ones that nonetheless must repudiate a common but damaging assumption that arguing for the conclusions of such arguments commits one necessarily to a hyper-strong conception of subjectivity. In general, my primary aim in this paper is only to make plausible, not so much to justify, let alone defend, adequately the aspects of a conception of a tenable philosophical anthropology as sketched below. (shrink)

This book explores aspects of William H. Poteat’s philosophical anthropology, which proposes a post-critical alternative to the prevailing dualistic conception of the person and opens a path to recovery of the pre-reflective ontological ground of the person where our personhood can be recovered and re-appropriated.

Helmut Plessner was one of the founders of philosophical anthropology, and his book _The Stages of the Organic and Man_, first published in 1928, has inspired generations of philosophers, biologists, social scientists, and humanities scholars. This volume offers the first substantial introduction to Plessner’s philosophical anthropology in English, not only setting it in context with such familiar figures as Bergson, Cassirer, and Merleau-Ponty, but also showing Plessner’s relevance to contemporary discussions in a wide variety of fields (...) in the humanities and sciences. (shrink)

The first part of the article discusses the conditions under which the “school” of thought known as “philosophical anthropology” arose and the relevance today of the problems it posed, concluding with a look at the recent prevalence taken by biological research. The second part examines the conceptions advanced by its leading figures, Max Scheler, Helmuth Plessner and Arnold Gehlen, and shows how each of them contributed to a “sociologization of anthropological knowledge.” On the basis of this analysis, (...) class='Hi'>philosophical anthropology proves itself capable of making a significant contribution to an interdisciplinary understanding of the conditions of human life and to reflection on the foundations of sociological research and social theory. (shrink)

The thesis of the present volume is critical and dual. (1) Present day philosophy of man and sciences of man suffer from the Greek mis taken polarization of everything human into nature and convention which is (allegedly) good and evil, which is (allegedly) truth and fal sity, which is (allegedly) rationality and irrationality, to wit, the polar ization of all fields of inquiry, the natural and social sciences, as well as ethics and all technology, whether natural or social, into the (...) totally positive and the totally negative. (2) Almost all philosophy and sci ences of man share the erroneous work ethic which is the myth of man's evil nature - the myth of the beast in man, the doctrine of original sin. To mediate or to compromise between the first view of human nature as good with the second view of it as evil, sociologists have devised a modified utilitarianism with deferred gratification so called, and the theory of the evil of artificial competition (capitalist and socialist alike) and of keeping up with the Joneses. Now, the mediation is not necessary. For, the polarization makes for abstract errors which are simplistic views of rationality, such as reductionism and positivism of all sorts, as well as for concrete errors, such as the disposition to condemn repeatedly those human weaknesses which are inevitable, namely man's inability to be perfectly rational, avoid all error, etc. , thus setting man against himself as all too wicked. (shrink)

First and 2d ed. published under title: Philosophical psychology. Includes bibliographies.

What is a human being? The twentieth and twenty-first century tradition known as 'philosophical anthropology' has approached this question with unusual sophistication, experimentalism, and subtlety. Such innovations as Arnold Gehlen's description of humans as naturally 'deficient' beings in need of artificial institutions to survive; Max Scheler's concept of 'spirit' (Geist) as the physically and organically irreducible realm of persons and spiritual acts; and Helmuth Plessner's analysis of the way human embodiment transcends spatial locations and limitations ('ex-centric positionality') have (...) inspired generations of European intellectuals. This edited collection from an international network of scholars critically engages the philosophical anthropologies of Scheler, Plessner, Gehlen, Blumenberg, and others in unparalleled detail, showing their applicability to the themes of nature and naturalism, organic life, comparative primatology, cultural anthropology, paleoanthropology, the body, addiction, and death. The volume sets a new standard for Anglophone scholarship on this tradition and will be required reading for specialists in twentieth-century philosophy, history of the human sciences, history of the life sciences, and philosophies of human nature. (shrink)

Philosophical Anthropology is one of the post-Husserlian splinters -- a dizzying mix and match of phenomeno-psycho-anthro-philosophical hyphenated schools of thought. It arose first in the 1920's out of the same intellectual promptings as existentialism, which it briefly rivaled. It differs from existentialism and other phenomenologies in fine ways which Landmann combs scrupulously, along with distinctions among the sub-specialties that have proliferated within the field itself. Fortunately, two more general premises distinguish it from other forms of anthropology. (...) First, taking anthropology in its broadest sense as man's search for a self-conception, it allows a signal, shaping importance to its own formulations: culturally speaking, and psychologically too, man tries, tends to fit his self-image. Second, embracing man and everything human as its focus, it assumes phenomenology's grandest claims: reconciliation of the inward and the outer, and, by inference at least, a proper holistic restoration of the essential human sphere. The impulse and the method are widely evident now and several disciplines seem to be quivering toward some such point of convergence. But it is a moot point whether Philosophical Anthropology will stake out the ground. Landmann traces it from its substantive origins with the Greeks down through its most niggling modern self-assertions in a strictly academic survey of high-philosophical or similarly accredited propositions, The argumentative appeals (Freud, Nietzsche) seem rather dated now; and there is a further difficulty in that the action and its object are one and the same, the medium, so to speak, is the message -- i.e., thought about man. While this is a necessary aspect of the method, it can be disorienting. Scholars, however, will know where they are, and this will admit admirably to conventional, general uses. (shrink)

In this paper it is argued that philosophical anthropology is central to ethics and politics. The denial of this has facilitated the triumph of debased notions of humans developed by Hobbes which has facilitated the enslavement of people to the logic of the global market, a logic which is now destroying the ecological conditions for civilization and most life on Earth. Reviving the classical understanding of the central place of philosophical anthropology to ethics and politics, the (...) early work of Hegel and Marx is explicated, defended and further developed by interpreting this through developments in post-mechanistic science. Overcoming the opposition between the sciences and the humanities, it is suggested that the conception of humans developed in this way can orient people in their struggle for the liberty to avert a global ecological catastrophe. (shrink)

In a renowned essay, Odo Marquard’s set a cornerstone in defining anthropology from a history of concepts point of view. In the light of more recent researches, some of his conclusions are here reconsidered and criticised. The concept of anthropology, as developed by Herder, Kant, Wilhelm von Humboldt, romantic philosophers and physicians, and finally by Hegel and some of his followers, offers no evidence for Marquard’s alleged opposition between anthropology and philosophy of history. On the one side, (...) in Kant’s or Hegel’s work anthropology is not as peripheral as Marquard argued; on the other side, romantic anthropologists developed a deep interest towards historical perspectives. Rather, anthropology was quite often considered as a nonmetaphysical alternative to psychology. These results also suggest a revision as to the role of anthropology on a broader historical scale. (shrink)

How do human beings become human? This question lies behind the so-called human sciences. But these disciplines are scattered among many different departments and hold up a cracked mirror to humankind. This is why, in the view of Paul Ricoeur, we need to develop a philosophical anthropology, one that has a much older history but still offers many untapped resources. This appeal to a specifically philosophical approach to questions regarding what it was to be human did not (...) stop Ricoeur from entering into dialogue with other disciplines and approaches, such as psychoanalysis, history, sociology, anthropology, linguistics and the philosophy of language, in order to offer an up-to-date reflection on what he saw as the fundamental issues. For there is clearly not a simple, single answer to the question what is it to be human? Ricoeur therefore takes up the complexity of this question in terms of the tensions he sees between the voluntary and the involuntary, acting and suffering, autonomy and vulnerability, capacity and fragility, and identity and otherness. The texts brought together in this volume provide an overall view of the development of Ricoeurs philosophical thinking on the question of what it is to be human, from his early 1939 lecture on Attention to his remarks on receiving the Kluge Prize in 2004, a few months before his death. (shrink)

Cultural and historical variability is completely overwhelming and within its context it is almostimpossible to decipher something “essential”, some “invariant variable” which would comprise a clueto what the human is, – this idea is presented as the main presupposition of Eugen Fink’s philosophicalanthropology. A major direction of Fink’s works is a fundamental critique of traditional ontology anda search for a worldly thinking that would be more appropriate or implicit in human “worldly” existence.While following Husserl’s transcendental philosophy, Fink opened up a (...) new philosophical domainthat is implicit in transcendental mode of awareness. His effort consisted in “revealing” what is alreadyamidst us, what we have silently guessed and lived but dared not speak. This “revelation” is at thebasis of Fink’s conception of education. Education is a movement from authority to autonomy, fromsubmission to “pregiven” and ready-made answers toward the creative, the free activity which is itsown source.Keywords: being human, temporality, freedom, productivity, creativity, political self-understanding. (shrink)

This book explores the question of what it means to be a human being through sustained and original analyses of three important philosophical topics: relativism, skepticism, and naturalism in the social sciences. Kevin Cahill's approach involves an original employment of historical and ethnographic material that is both conceptual and empirical in order to address relevant philosophical issues. Specifically, while Cahill avoids interpretative debates, he develops an approach to philosophical critique based on Cora Diamond's and James Conant's work (...) on the early Wittgenstein. This makes possible the use of a concept of culture that avoids the dogmatism that not only typifies traditional metaphysics but also frequently mars arguments from ordinary language or phenomenology. This is especially crucial for the third part of the book, which involves a cultural-historical critique of the ontology of the self in Stanley Cavell's work on skepticism. In pursuing this strategy, the book also mounts a novel and timely defense of the interpretivist tradition in the philosophy of the social sciences. Towards a Philosophical Anthropology of Culture will be of interest to researchers working on the philosophy of the social sciences, Wittgenstein, and philosophical anthropology. (shrink)

Philosophical anthropology is the philosophical study of the conditions of human existence and the issues that confront people in the conduct of their everyday lives. This book surveys, from a contemplative, philosophical point of view, a wide variety of human-interest issues, including happiness, luck, aging, the meaning of life, optimism and pessimism, morality, and faith and belief. The author's deliberations blend historical, theoretical, and personal perspectives into philosophical appreciation of the human condition. The philosophers of (...) Greek antiquity took philosophy to center around just this issue of intelligent living - of determining the nature of life under the guidance of reason. Such a perspective puts philosophical agenda - a position it contested with the philosophy of nature throughout classical antiquity. In more recent times, however, its prominence has declined - no doubt, the author suggests, because modern man's achievements have been more notable in the natural than in the human science. (shrink)

The guest editor introduces No. 3 Vol. 1 (2012), "Philosophical Anthropology and Social Analysis." .

Pragmatism, the single originally American philosophical tradition, has in recent decades once again become widely discussed in many fields of philosophy, including metaphysics, epistemology, philosophy of science, philosophy of religion, and moral philosophy. This study seeks to show, both historically and systematically, that the issue of «human nature, » the main problem of philosophical anthropology, is (or at least should be) at the center of pragmatistic philosophizing. The author formulates a contemporary version of pragmatism largely based on (...) William James's (1842-1910) work, arguing that such a neo-Jamesian framework also can meet postmodernistic and irrationalistic threats. (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)

Philosophical anthropology, as Helmuth Plessner has explored it, vindicates its relative priority towards ethics, because it can set out the anthropological prerequisites for considering the moral subject as the embodied person. This claim, however, is still an open question. Walter Schulz has argued that the prevalence of science in contemporary life brings ethics to the fore and forces philosophical anthropology to an auxiliary exploration of ‘leading figures of thehuman’. Jürgen Habermas endorses Plessner’s exploration of the issue (...) of the body, in order to oppose biotechnological naturalism. Thus, he enlarges his discourse on ethics through the ethics of the human species by defining the moral agent as the embodied person. Nevertheless, philosophical anthropology is a broader theoretical endeavour that cannot be reduced to ethics. (shrink)

This is the first book-length work to focus on the philosophical and anthropological contribution of Mabogo More, a prominent and influential black South African existentialist thinker.

According to the author, philosophical anthropology offers the key to better relations among nations, inasmuch as its objective, scientific view of men seen in their cultural contexts eliminates guesswork in the solution of problems arising among conflicting cultures. Brilliantly imaginative yet realistic, Prof. Northrop's theory takes note of the dependency of cultural institutions upon the epistemological orientation of a people towards the facts of physical science. His primary value being world peace, he advocates understanding other peoples through understanding (...) their epistemology. A rare combination of both social science and philosophy, this challenging work includes several reprinted essays.--J. E. M. (shrink)

What is “human being”? In this book, Thomas Langan draws on a lifetime of study to offer a new understanding of this central question of our existence, turning to phenomenology and philosophical anthropology to help us better understand who we are as individuals and communities and what makes us act the way we do. While recognizing the human being as an individual with a particular genetic makeup and history, Langan also probes the real essence of human being that (...) philosophers have tended to ignore. He argues that human being is the result of the experiences of humans throughout time—an ontological reality that not only incorporates our collective memories, institutions, habits, ethical practices, and religious faiths but also unfolds in time with its own history to inform individuals in the present. He provides tools and descriptions for accessing this broader historical and present-day reality, investigating deeper structures of human being to show how those historical roots can be appropriated and made meaningful. Building on Langan’s earlier works, _Human Being_ is also readily accessible on its own. Langan shows how the larger issues discussed in those books, ranging from the Catholic tradition to high technology, relate to being human while he brings to light new philosophical insights and ideas. Because human beings continue to evolve, informing our everyday understanding of the world, Langan shows how vital it is for us to think through the sense of human being and how great a challenge that is in today’s society. His work offers insight into human being that invites readers to think and live more deeply in their humanity—and to face the challenges of a rapidly changing world by reawakening perennial quests for love and the divine, and the very search for meaning itself. (shrink)

_Purpose._ The study aims to substantiate philosophical anthropology as a space for the development of biopolitics, which is a relatively new synthetic scientific knowledge of the political in the biological and the biological in the political, which, however, has its roots in the era of antiquity. The analysis of biopolitics in the context of contemporary global challenges, in particular the COVID-19 pandemic, is carried out, which allows to actualize a new direction of biopolitics – microbiopolitics. _Theoretical basis._ The (...) study is based on an understanding of the initial, in relation to biopolitics, the nature of philosophical anthropology. While philosophical anthropology seeks an answer to the question – who is _Homo sapiens_, given the biosocial nature of man, biopolitics specifies the question in the form – who is _homo politicus_ in modern socio-political space with a focus on the imperative of a human-centred approach in the social sciences. The study is based on scientific works by specialists in philosophical anthropology and biopolitics. _Originality._ The authors substantiate the expediency and relevance of considering philosophical anthropology as a contextual space for the evolution of biopolitical knowledge from the natural philosophy of Antiquity to modern microbiopolitics. _Conclusions._ Philosophical anthropology is seen as a specific epistemological landscape in which fields of scientific knowledge are formed and developed that are in one way or another involved in the philosophical problems of man: philosophical psychology, social anthropology, philosophy of medicine, humanology, philosophy of education, ethics, as well as biophilosophy, bioethics, and, in particular, biopolitics. (shrink)

Bennett and Hacker criticize a number of neuroscientists and philosophers for attributing capacities which belong to the human being as a whole, like perceiving or deciding, to a “part” of the human being, viz. the brain. They call this type of mistake the “mereological fallacy”. Interestingly, the authors say that these capacities cannot be ascribed to the mind either. They reject not only materialistic monism but also Cartesian dualism, arguing that many predicates describing human life do not refer to physical (...) or mental properties, nor to the sum of such properties. I agree with this important principle and with the critique of the mereological fallacy which it underpins, but I have two objections to the authors’ view. Firstly, I think that the brain is not literally a part of the human being, as suggested. Secondly, Bennett and Hacker do not offer an account of body and mind which explains in a systematic way how the domain of phenomena which transcends the mental and the physical relates to the mental and the physical. I first argue that Helmuth Plessner’s philosophical anthropology provides the kind of account we need. Then, drawing on Plessner, I present an alternative view of the mereological relationships between brain and human being. My criticism does not undercut Bennett and Hacker’s diagnosis of the mereological fallacy but rather gives it a more solid philosophical–anthropological foundation. (shrink)

Philosophic anthropology, Pursuing philosophy's traditional search for reflective self-Knowledge seeks to crystallize the ideas of man underpinning empirical research and moral ideals. Neither the claim that pure speculation can produce factual knowledge nor the contention that a higher synthesis of empirical findings can become philosophy is acceptable. Philosophic anthropology is, Therefore, Most usefully conceived as a critique which traces the necessary presuppositions of the study of man in its various forms of the more rules we apply.

Philosophic anthropology, Pursuing philosophy's traditional search for reflective self-Knowledge seeks to crystallize the ideas of man underpinning empirical research and moral ideals. Neither the claim that pure speculation can produce factual knowledge nor the contention that a higher synthesis of empirical findings can become philosophy is acceptable. Philosophic anthropology is, Therefore, Most usefully conceived as a critique which traces the necessary presuppositions of the study of man in its various forms of the more rules we apply.

The Bakhtin Circle’s conception of language is very much still alive, still productive, in the language sciences today. My claim in this paper is that to understand the Bakhtin Circle’s continuing relevance to the language sciences, we have to look beyond the linguistic theory itself, to the philosophical groundwork laid for this project by Bakhtin in what he himself referred to as his philosophical anthropology. This philosophical anthropology, at the center of which stands an architectonics (...) of self—other relations, opens the door for a radical rethinking of what language is and how it works; a rethinking that in turn opens up and coincides with new directions being explored in the language sciences today. Within the context of Bakhtin scholarship, this paper also argues for taking Bakhtin’s early philosophical works more seriously when discussing the Bakhtin Circle’s conception of language. (shrink)

Resumen En este artículo se tratará de mostrar hasta qué punto y en qué sentido se puede considerar la filosofía orteguiana como una forma de antropología filosófica, explicando cómo su tratamiento de la técnica conforma el punto diferencial respecto del resto de propuestas de esta corriente. Para ello, expondremos algunas ideas del propio Ortega sobre el tema, contrastando su evolución intelectual con la del propio campo de la antropología filosófica; un campo cuya pro- blematicidad añade varios grados de dificultad a (...) este análisis. Concluiremos que la propuesta “antropo-técnica” orteguiana constituye, a la vez, un fiel reflejo de las discusiones de su tiempo -con Scheler y Heidegger a la cabeza-; pero, tam bién, una concepción única por su tratamiento específico de la técnica y el lugar que se le otorga a esta dimensión.In this article we will try to show to what extent and in what sense Orteguian philosophy can be considered a form of philosophical anthropology, explaining how its treatment of technology forms the differentialpoint with respect to the rest of the proposals of this current. To this end, we willpresent some of Ortega's own ideas on the subject, contrasting his intellectual evolution with that of the field ofphilosophical anthropology itself; a field whose problematic nature adds various degrees of difficulty to this analysis. We will conclude that Ortega's "anthropo- technical" proposal constitutes, at the same time, a faithful reflection of the discussions of his time -with Scheler and Heidegger at its lead-; but, also, a unique conception due to its specific treatment of technology and the place given to this dimension. (shrink)

I approach the subject of human enhancement—whether by genetic, pharmacological, or technological means—from the perspective of Thomistic/Aristotelian philosophical anthropology, natural law theory, and virtue ethics. Far from advocating a restricted or monolithic conception of “human nature” from this perspective, I outline a set of broadly-construed, fundamental features of the nature of human persons that coheres with a variety of historical and contemporary philosophical viewpoints. These features include self-conscious awareness, capacity for intellective thought, volitional autonomy, desire for pleasurable (...) experiences, and the necessity of healthy biological functioning. On this basis, I contend that there may be legitimate forms of human enhancement for specific purposes related to the physical, cognitive, and emotive dimensions of human existence. However, wider philosophical considerations call into question whether societal attitudes towards enhancement and the differences that may emerge between those who are enhanced versus the unenhanced may raise insurmountable questions of justice, as well as a loss of virtues associated with what Alasdair MacIntyre refers to as our “acknowledged dependency.” This presentation will navigate towards conclusions differentiating principled from practical objections to specific forms of, and means towards achieving, enhancement of certain human capacities. While critical of some forms of human enhancement, I nevertheless argue that other forms of enhancement are, in principle, morally permissible—and for which any practical concerns may be surmountable—insofar as they positively support human flourishing according to our nature as living, sentient, social, and rational animals. (shrink)

A team of renowned philosophers and a new generation of thinkers come together to offer the first book-length examination of the relationship between philosophical anthropology and animal studies.

This book contextualizes Paul Ricoeur’s philosophy through the lens of philosophical anthropology. It shows how Ricoeur renews this tradition by developing a hermeneutic of human self-expression, a phenomenology of the capable human, and an ethics of life lived “with and for others in just institutions.”.

The article opens (§ 1) with the paradoxical situation of philosophical anthropology between a heralded destiny of decadence (W. Schulz) and the surge of its argumentations and notions in the present-day debate on ethical themes and on the very idea of “human nature,” as well as in the redefinition of social philosophy (J. Habermas and P. Sloterdijk). It seeks, then (§§ 2-5), to trace a sort of “metaphilosophy” of philosophical anthropology, discussing the principal interpretations (H. Schnädelbach, (...) H. Paetzold, O. Marquard, W. Lepenies, etc.) that characterize it as reactive, open to a broader range of disciplines (the natural, human, social and cultural sciences) and installed in the clash between nature and history, intertwining empirical and theoretical elements and capable of providing a descriptive base for moral choices. It then takes up (§§ 6-8) the more recent perspectives of a philosophical anthropology for the twenty-first century that oscillate between its reconstruction around a strong theoretical core – excentric positionality – as a current of unitary thought and the divergent interpretation that focuses on the biopolitical approach, in order to redefine the specifically human along the vertical axis of anthropogenesis and evolutionary comparison and the horizontal axis of the analysis of diverse cultures in search of the premises of human vital practice. It concludes (§ 9) by suggesting an exploration – through the articles that follow – of the role of stimulus that philosophical anthropology and its authors play in the most disparate currents on the scene of contemporary German philosophy, such as critical theory, historical anthropology, neopragmatism, social philosophy, and the philosophy of culture. (shrink)

This book explores aspects of William H. Poteat's philosophical anthropology, which proposes a post-critical alternative to the prevailing dualistic conception of the person and opens a path to recovery of the pre-reflective ontological ground of the person where our personhood can be recovered and re-appropriated.

Explains how new discoveries in anthropology might help politicians solve foreign policy matters.