Philosophical Anthropology

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 philosophy but as the only possible “primary philosophy.” As such, philosophical anthropology takes the part of the traditional ontology (in terms of an onto-theology) or metaphysics: “The new philosophy makes man… the only, universal and most prominent subject of philosophy—the anthropology thus…an universal science” (Feuerbach Werke:3:319). In this a tendency is expressed that has become a characteristic principle for modern philosophy as a whole, namely, in Martin Heidegger's (1963) words, to conduct reasoning “starting from man and towards man” (p. 86).

This far-reaching intention loses its predominance in the philosophical anthropology of the twentieth century. Here, above all, the works of Max Scheler (Die Stellung des Menschen im Kosmos [Man's Place in Nature]), Helmut Plessner (Die Stufen des Organischen und der Mensch [Man and the Stages of the Organic]) and Arnold Gehlen (Der Mensch. Seine Natur und seine Stellung in der Welt [Man: His Nature and His Place in the World]) have to be mentioned. Their influence on sociological theorizing all in all was not as strong as could have been expected for material reasons. For the most part, this may be explained by the fact that these works were not translated into English or only with great delay. However, especially phenomenological sociology was inspired substantially by the thinking of Helmut Plessner, while the anthropology of Arnold Gehlen and the theory of institutions founded on Gehlen's work became seminal for one of the most influential works of twentieth-century sociological theory, Peter L. Berger's and Thomas Luckmann's The Social Construction of Reality. Furthermore, this anthropology supplied decisive philosophical presuppositions for Niklas Luhmann's “functional structural” theory of social systems, especially with its assumption of an essential openness to the world (Weltoffenheit) and of homo sapiens as a “deficient being” (Maengelwesen).

The pivotal axiom of philosophical anthropology was already formulated by Herder, when he spoke of man as the “nondetermined” animal. This living being can only exist if it behaves toward itself and toward the reality surrounding it and if it defines and interprets itself and its world. In this sense, Gehlen says, “By nature man is a cultural being.” Similarly, Ernst Cassirer has defined man by extending the traditional designation of man as animal rationale and by describing him as “animal symbolicum” (meaning, a symbol using animal).

The destination, even constraint, to culture is, according to the concurring insight of philosophical anthropology, not to be added to the naturalness of humanity; rather, it is intended if not demanded by this naturalness (defined by eccentricity, reduction of instinct, abundance of impetus, brain of great volume, upright walk). In this respect, philosophical anthropology contradicts a dualism of body and soul, as it has, deriving from Descartes, dominated modern philosophy for a long time. Likewise, philosophical [Page 563]anthropology opposes old and new variants of an anthropological reductionism, where humans are explained either exclusively by their animality (as recently in certain directions of sociobiology or molecular biology) or is understood in the way of machines which they themselves have created. The latter also arose very early (cf. Jean d'Alembert's “l'homme machine”) and refers nowadays above all to research on artificial intelligence and the development of intelligent machines (robots) inspired by it.

...