Historico-Cultural Anthropology as the Centre of the Sciences of Culture

Abstract

According to Kant the human being depends on what he must and may be. The human being is nothing by and of himself and must make himself into who he is and turn himself into who he must become, whilst in so doing he frequently hurls himself against his very own limits. The study and categorization of these relationships and interconnections constitute, for Kant, the duty of pragmatic anthropology. In contrast to physiological anthropology, which examines the biological conditions of human existence, pragmatic anthropology studies the field of human action and human freedom. If we wish to discharge of this duty properly, it is first of all necessary to resolve one question: What is it that we understand, today, by anthropology? What meaning does this term have for the humanities, for the sciences of cultures, for cultural studies? As I see it, anthropology today can only be developed within the framework of the historical and philosophical study of culture, that is to say as historico-cultural anthropology. Anthropology must be guided by a careful reflection of the manner in which it may be conducted after the death of God (Nietzsche), that is to say in the wake of the disappearance of universal anthropology, and after the death of man (Foucault), in the sense of that abstract and European masculine being which served as the template for conceptualizing the individual.