In contrast to empirical, biological, as well as cultural and social anthropology, the aim of philosophical anthropology is to take up and tie together the results of such empirical research to come to fundamental and comprehensive statements on the peculiar nature and form of the existence of humans. Important contributions to philosophical anthropology have been made by Johann Gottfried Herder and in particular by Immanuel Kant (Anthropologie in pragmatischer Hinsicht abgefasst 1798) and Ludwig Feuerbach, who for his part adopted pivotal themes from French Enlightenment thinkers (Helvetius, d'Holbach, D'Alembert, Voltaire). Ludwig Feuerbach's criticism and inversion of theology became decisive for the Marxian perspective, especially Marxist anthropology.

In Feuerbach and Marx and later in the work of Friedrich Nietzsche, anthropology is regarded not as a part of ...