Philosophical Anthropology

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[antropologia filosofica]

Philosophical Anthropology

Since the 1990s there has been a renaissance of "philosophical anthropology." If youlook at the philosophical anthropology, it might be necessary to go back to the 1920s:to the elaborated cognitive resources in German philosophy.

There has to be differentiate two philosophical events: The emergence of the"Philosophical Anthropology" in the strict sense of the specific approach ofphilosophers like Max Scheler, Helmuth Plessner and Arnold Gehlen; of thinkers intheir environment (Karl Löwith, Erich Rothacker, and Adolf Portmann); and of furtherbiological (Hans Driesch, Jakob von Uexküll, and Paul Alsberg) and philosophicalauthors (Friedrich Nietzsche, Wilhem Dilthey, and Henri Bergson). At the same time

there has been established the "philosophical anthropology" as a special discipline inphilosophy, in which various sciences and approaches are involved.The website [Philosophical Anthropology] follows this differentiation: the potentialduplication of German philosophy in the 1920s concerning the question of “man”. Ourparticularly interest is the very special approach "Philosophical Anthropology": thework of Max Scheler, Helmuth Plessner and Arnold Gehlen.

I. The approach "Philosophical Anthropology" "Philosophical Anthropology" in this sense is a specific approach in the 20th, whichincludes so different thinkers as Max Scheler, Helmuth Plessner, and Arnold Gehlen.

This group also include authors like Paul Alsberg, F.J.J. Buytendijk or Erich Rothacker,and - a little later - Adolf Portmann and Dieter Claessens; and in some respects, PeterSloterdijk too.



The group is full of differences and rivalries, so that the allocation is sometimescontroversial, and it always makes a difference whether one thinks PhilosophicalAnthropology from the point of Scheler, Plessner or Gehlen. There are plausiblereasons to handle the philosophical differences between the authors as secondly.Under the title "Philosophical Anthropology" (with big “P”) there are seen thesimilarities between these thinkers (perhaps even a theory program). To recognizetheir specific approach concerning the question of “man” and all other questions of

philosophy, thinkers and researchers could have been identified about their jointlydifference against other approaches in philosophy - the neokantian thought,phenomenology and hermeneutic philosophy, linguistic analysis approach, philosophyof existence, or naturalistic theories.

These thinkers are challenged of modernity: both in form of empirical science(especially Biology, but also Ethnology), as well as modernity in its social and politicalcrisis phenomena's. They have unique categories and theorems in the intermingling of



parallels to the American pragmatic philosophy (James, Dewey, Mead).

II The discipline philosophical anthropology Under "philosophical anthropology" in a broader sense one can simultaneously speakof a philosophical discipline: in addition to an in competing with other disciplines ofphilosophy (metaphysics, epistemology, ethics, philosophy of language, ontology) as akey philosophical discipline.

These "philosophical anthropology" unfolds in various dimensions:

1st. philosophical anthropology as a philosophical discipline is related to severalsciences: psychology, anthropology, biology, sociology, science and technology,cultural studies.

2nd. In this discipline philosophical anthropology different directions of thought are tofound, besides the "Philosophical Anthropology" in the strict sense: life philosophy,phenomenology, culture, philosophy, structuralism, Historical Materialism etc.

3rd. The philosophical anthropology as a discipline gets critics from differentdirections: from Philosophy of Existence, Critical Theory, Analytic Philosophy,Poststructuralism, Theory of Social Systems.

4th. The discipline discovers its own history of relevant anthropological questions andconceptions, and important reference authors (Protagoras, Pico della Mirandola,

Hobbes, Rousseau, Herder and Schiller, but also Feuerbach and Lotze, etc.) withinthe history of European philosophy. The discipline reconstructs the implicitanthropologies of different cultures and epoches.

If this distinction between "Philosophy anthropology" in the strict sense (a specificapproach or paradigm) and 'philosophical anthropology’ in a broad sense (a discipline)is right, it can be seen that under the new challenges of the renaissance of thisphilosophic thought both lines of discourse are revived. There is a revitalizing of"Philosophical anthropology" in the sense of Scheler, Plessner, and Gehlen. Secondly,it comes to new approaches within the discipline "philosophical anthropology." Thisrenaissance of philosophical anthropology answers on a constellation of challenges, ofwhich at least four are to mention: the promotion of biology, with the development of

neurobiology; the development of computer technology, with their model of cognition,in which the human spirit is partially substituted; the relative weakening of the linguisticturn; and the fading of a specific philosophical project of modernity: the philosophy ofhistory.

Literature in English:



Thought, 113-130 Karl-Siegbert Rehberg: Philosophical Anthropology from the End of World War I to

the 1940s and in a Current Perspective, 131-152 Joachim Fischer: Exploring the Core Identity of Philosophical Anthropology throughthe Works of Max Scheler, Helmuth Plessner, and Arnold Gehlen, 153-170Gunter Gebauer/Christoph Wulf: Afte the 'Death of Man': From PhilosophicalAnthropology to Historical Anthropology, 171-186 Axel Honneth: Problems of Ethical Pluralism: Arnold Gehlens's AnthropologicalEthics, 187-194 Hans-Peter Krüger: The Public Nature of Human Beings. Parallels betweenClassical Pragmatisms and Helmuth Plessner's Philosophical Anthropology, 195-204 Franz Josef Wetz: Culture - A Testament to Indigence, 205-227

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