Gehlen, Arnold (1904–1976)

Arnold Gehlen is known as a cofounder of philosophical anthropology and was one of Germany's leading postwar sociologists; he was also a significant time diagnostician. His understanding of man as an organically “deficient being” paved the way for a theory of institutions that is not only substantial but also empirically adaptable. His anthropological views served asa foundation for his contemporary analyses of Western industrial societies, which were farsighted and, as a result of his conspicuous conservatism, also controversial at the same time.

Gehlen received his PhD in 1927 after studying under the philosopher and biologist Hans Driesch; 3 years later he qualified for a tenured professorship under, among others, Hans Freyer, after having written his habilitation. During the Third Reich, Gehlen had a shining career and quickly received professorships in Leipzig, Knigsberg, and Vienna. After serving in the army's administrative council (1941–1942), he was sent to the front and was severely wounded. In 1947, after his denazification, he received his first teaching position as a university professor in Speyer, then later in Aachen, where he taught sociology from 1962 until his retirement.

Like most of his colleagues from Leipzig, Gehlen joined the Nazi Party in 1933 and became a member of the National Socialist German University Lecturers League. He demonstrated his approval of the National Socialistic regime in several ways; for example, in his inauguration lecture in Leipzig 1935. His reference to the “highest systems of leadership” in his first anthropological study (1940) can also be understood as opportunistic. Such declarations of loyalty were never part of Gehlen's scientific thinking, however. His understanding of man as a deficient being (Mngelwesen) did not refer to any racial differences. In his opinion, from a biological point of view the “Aryan” is as inadequate as every other human race. Consequently, Gehlen's anthropology was contrary to official Nazi ideology from the beginning; and he himself was always considered an “uncertain type” by Nazi leadership.

Gehlen's ideological home was not totalitarian National Socialism. It was the world of conservative thinking and order. So it is possible to find him referring specifically to the tradition of political thought where the state was the center of focusas in the work of Hobbes or Hegel. But Gehlen's philosophy was also influenced by many other ideas that were quite diverse: His first phase [Page 564]was shaped partly by existentialist ideas, which are dealt with in his 1931 dissertation. His intensive study of German idealism, especially Fichte, influenced his theory of the freedom of the will and characterized, to a certain extent, the second phase of his work. His anthropological phase began specifically in the mid-1930s. During that period of time Gehlen was one of the first German philosophers to discover American pragmatism, particularly citing the works of John Dewey and George Herbert Mead. The philosophy of life (Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, Bergson) had a major influence on Gehlen's research; he also dealt with Driesch's concept of neovitalism in his dissertation. In the end, the idea of combining philosophical and anthropological studies may have been enhanced by the transdisciplinary atmosphere at the University of Leipzig, which included, among others, the sociologists Hans Freyer and Helmut Schelsky, the psychiatrist Hans Brger-Prinz, and the philosopher Gotthard Gnther.

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