Second Nature and Embodiment

This article discusses the common ground between William James and the tradition of philosophical anthropology. Recent commentators on this overlap have characterised philosophical anthropology as combining science (in particular biology and medicine) and Kantian teleology, for instance in Kant’s seminal definition of anthropology as being concerned with what the human being makes of itself, as distinct from what attributes it is given by nature. This article registers the tension between Kantian thinking, which reckons to ground experience in a priori categories, and William James’s psychology, which begins and ends with experience. It explores overlap between James’s approach and the characteristic holism of 18th-century philosophical anthropology, which centres on the idea of understanding and analysing the human as a whole, and presents the main anthropological elements of James’s position, namely his antipathy to separation, his concerns about the binomial terms of traditional philosophy, his preference for experience over substances, his sense that this holist doctrine of experience shows a way out of sterile impasses, a preference for description over causation, and scepticism. It then goes on to register the common ground with key ideas in the work of anthropologists from around 1800, along with some references to anthropologists who come in James’s wake, in particular Max Scheler and Arnold Gehlen, in order to reconceptualise the connection between James’s ideas and the tradition of anthropological thinking in German letters since the late 18th-century, beyond its characterisation as a combination of scientific positivism and teleology.

“Philosophical Anthropology,” which is reconstructed here, does not deal with anthropology as a philosophical subdiscipline but rather as a particular philosophical approach within twentieth-century German philosophy, connected with thinkers such as Max Scheler, Helmuth Plessner and Arnold Gehlen. This paper attempts a more precise description of the core identity of Philosophical Anthropology as a paradigm, observes the differences between the authors within the paradigm, and differentiates the paradigm as a whole from other twentieth-century philosophical approaches, such as transcendental philosophy, evolutionary theory or naturalism, existentialism, and hermeneutic philosophy. In determining the human being as “excentric positionality,” Philosophical Anthropology arrives at unique categorical intertwinings between the biological, social and cultural sciences.

The relations between the thought of Arendt, Boff, Scheler, and Morin, although odd, have in common the sense of fighting oppression, each one in their own way, and promoting human emancipation. Arendt had her personal and intellectual life marked by the oppression she witnessed and suffered with the advent of totalitarian regimes in Europe, and her intellectual attempt to study and understand this phenomenon. Leonardo Boff will have his personal and intellectual life marked by the oppression he witnessed and experienced from the military dictatorships that ruled Brazil and Latin America in the 60s and 70s In his third phase, Boff (2010) states that currently there are two wounds that burn: the wound of immense poverty and the environmental wound For Boff, this scenario is clearly founded on a cosmology that is soon to be overcome, the one Boff calls the Cosmology of Domination, based on an anthropocentrism founded on instrumental-analytical reason Edgar Morin will influence Leonardo Boff's thinking, offering, from the 1970s, new perspectives for the understanding of epistemology and thinking itself, known as complex thinking, which will create the basis for the awakening of the ecological paradigm or ecological or systemic thinking. According to Scheler (1986) in order to understand the error and contradictions in the various traditions of philosophical anthropology. Max Scheler uses the methodological conception "tabula rasa", coined by John Locke (1632 - 1704). For Scheler, it is necessary to make a tabula rasa of all the anthropological traditions in order to systematize a new philosophical anthropology. For Scheler, the beginning of this method is the knowledge of the history of man's self-consciousness, and later, to understand the ideas of man and their correlation with the historical and anthropological conception. This work aimed to show how the thinkers Arendt, Boff, Morin, and Scheler articulate and propose, each one in his own way, a universal proposal with the purpose of overcoming the problems of their times. It was found that there is convergence between the philosophical and epistemological conceptions in their thoughts in order to combat oppression and promote Human Emancipation.

Anthropology's Interrogation of Philosophy from the Eighteenth to the Twentieth Century presents and discusses key aspects of the German tradition of philosophical anthropology from the eighteenth to the twentieth century, centering on the concept of anthropology as a study of the ‘whole, concrete man’ (Heinrich Weber, 1810). Philosophical anthropology appears during the last decades of the eighteenth century in the often practically-oriented writings of men such as Ernst Platner, Karl Wezel, and Johann Herder, and is then taken up in the twentieth century by thinkers including Max Scheler, Helmut Plessner, Arnold Gehlen, and Hans Blumenberg. In presenting this tradition, the book serves two primary purposes. Firstly, it introduces English readers in a coherent manner to key aspects of a two-hundred year tradition in German thought. Secondly, the book analyzes in an unprecedented manner, even in German scholarship, the connections between the philosophical debates associated with anthropology at the end of the eighteenth century and ongoing philosophical issues in the twentieth century. Specifically, author Jerome Carroll argues that late eighteenth century anthropology diverges pointedly from traditional, "foundational" approaches to philosophy, for instance rejecting philosophy’s quest for absolute foundations for knowledge or a priori categories and turning to a more descriptive account of man’s "being in the world." Notably, by drawing on the epistemological, ontological, and methodological aspects and implications of anthropological holism, this book reads the philosophical significance of classical twentieth century anthropology through the lens of eighteenth century writings on anthropology.

One of the most famous philosophical controversies, and one of the most significant for the history of late twentieth and early twenty-first century philosophy, was one in which H. Paul Grice and Sir Peter Strawson defended the analytic/synthetic distinction against Morton White’s and Quine’s arguments against it (in 1956, in 1950, and in 1951 respectively). I shall specifically examine Grice and Strawson’s Paradigm Case Argument in support of the distinction and their reductio argument against Quine’s ‘elimination’ of the synonymy relation; in so doing I will also be addressing Scott Soames’s use of the same form of argument against Quine’s ‘elimination’ of sentence-meaning. I shall argue that those reductio arguments fail to undermine Quine’s and White’s arguments against the analytic/synthetic distinction and, considering Grice’s latest views of the controversy, show how the arguments of Atlas (2005) provide a Gricean and Chomskyan defence of the analytic/synthetic distinction. I shall also examine critically Saul Kripke’s famous ‘argument from linguistic intuition’ in defence of essential properties. It too is a form of the Paradigm Case Argument in the Gricean fashion. I shall argue that the arguments from linguistic intuition fail to support the dogma of essential properties. In the next section I shall point out to future historians of English-speaking twentieth-century philosophy some of the salient features of the development of the ideas.1

In his 1965 introduction to the thought of Scheler, Manfred Frings noted that Scheler belonged to a group of European thinkers, which included Heidegger, Husserl, and Nicolai Hartmann, whose message has remained almost unheard of in the United States.' Thirty years later, little has changed for Scheler. Despite his substantial influence on the development of contemporary European philosophy and the wide scope of subjects he treated, points that Frings noted in 1965, Scheler has not received the kind of attention accorded Husserl and, even more, Heidegger As early as 1961, Hans Meyerhoff notes in his introduction to Man's Place in Nature, Max Scheler died in 1928 at the age of fifty-four. He was a major thinker in contemporary philosophy; yet he has been a kind of forgotten man, and unjustly so.3 Indeed, while there has been an increased interest in some aspects of Scheler's philosophy, witness the publication recently of a collection of selected writings, On Feeling, Knowing, and Valuing, what some have considered Scheler's greatest work, Man's Place in Nature, has been allowed to go out of print.4 In David Holbrook's 1987 historical survey of the philosophical anthropology movement, Hundred Years of Philosophical Anthropology, Scheler warrants only a few brief lines, despite being recognized as the founder of that discipline.5 Over the past several decades there has been a marked decline in Scheler scholarship until today few if any articles on his work are published. I believe that this represents a loss to philosophers and students of philosophy and in this article argue for a renewed interest in the work of Scheler.6 Scheler's philosophical career is generally divided into three periods according to his primary interests. first period ends in 1912 and is characterized by his interest in Neo-Kantianism and ethics. From 1912 to about 1921 Scheler's work was characterized by his interest in phenomenology and his conversion to Catholicism. last period ended in 1928 with Scheler's untimely death and is characterized by his dual interests in philosophical anthropology and the sociology of knowledge. It was during this period that Scheler wrote Man's Place, his attempt to answer the questions What is man? and What is man's place in the nature of things? Man's Place was written as an introduction to a planned and more comprehensive philosophical anthropology which Scheler was unable to complete prior to his death. essays collected in Philosophical Perspectives were all composed during this period and reflect Scheler's anthropological interests. It was, according to his own testament, his interest in human nature that most preoccupied Scheler. The questions `What is Man?' and `What is man's place in the nature of things?' have occupied me more deeply than any other philosophical question since the first awakening of my philosophical consciousness (MP 3). It is Scheler's work on philosophical anthropology that I wish to consider here. This work has had a considerable influence on the development of the philosophical anthropology movement and remains today of considerable import for any one interested in questions concerning human nature. It is the claim that there are sufficient grounds for renewing our acquaintance with Scheler's philosophical anthropology that I wish to defend in this article. I believe it is in fact worthwhile to bring Scheler's philosophical anthropology to the attention of contemporary philosophers, both in its own right and as a stimulus for a renewal of thought concerning human nature. In much contemporary philosophy over the past twenty years any discussion of human nature, philosophical anthropology, or humanism has been treated with an undeserved disdain. It may now be time to reconsider these issues. A second concern of this article is with the kind of reception we ought to give Scheler's philosophical anthropology. Scheler's critical reception in the past has tended to be quite polarized, with critics either overlooking obvious shortcomings and praising him to a degree not warranted or dismissing his philosophical views as curious and of little import. …

‘Indirect’ or ‘Engaged’: A Comparison of Hans Blumenberg's and Charles Taylor's Debt and Contribution to Philosophical Anthropology

In this entry “philosophical anthropology” is defined broadly as philosophical reflection about the nature of human beings (rather than narrowly as a particular school of thought within twentieth‐century German philosophy), and the topic is treated historically. I begin by discussing several important historical roots of philosophical anthropology in ancient Greek and Renaissance thought. Special attention is then given to Enlightenment contributions – above all Kant, but also Hume, Herder, and others. Comte, Feuerbach, Marx, and Nietzsche are focal points in the section on nineteenth‐century philosophical anthropology. In the section on twentieth‐century contributions, primary attention is devoted to the triumvirate of German philosophical anthropology: Max Scheler, Helmuth Plessner, and Arnold Gehlen. In the concluding section, I respond to several popular arguments against philosophical anthropology and discuss its future prospects in light of current intellectual trends.

In this paper, I situate Hans Blumenberg historically and conceptually in relation to a subtheme in the famous debate between Martin Heidegger and Ernst Cassirer at Davos, Switzerland in 1929. The subtheme concerns Heidegger’s and Cassirer’s divergent attitudes toward philosophical anthropology as it relates to the starting points and goals of philosophy. I then reconstruct Blumenberg’s anthropology, which involves reconceptualizing Cassirer’s philosophy of symbolic forms in relation to Heidegger’s objections to the philosophical anthropology of his day (e.g., Max Scheler, Helmuth Plessner, and Arnold Gehlen) as unduly anthropocentric. Blumenberg builds on anthropologist Gehlen’s assumption that human beings are biologically underdetermined and therefore world-open. With this starting point, symbolic forms, such as myth and language, make up a compensatory life-world that supports human existence. Action, or self-assertion, which is necessary given the lack of a seamless fit between human beings and the environment, is thus circumscribed and shaped by the historied, cultural constructs that constitute a life-world. Human beings can thus be characterized as a species that continually renegotiates the shape of its existence through its relation to biological limits on the one hand and cultural constants on the other. Because Blumenberg and philosophical anthropology are relatively unexplored by Anglophone philosophers, and because philosophical anthropology is central to Blumenberg’s methodology generally, this study provides an introduction to both.

Purpose. The research is aimed at understanding the philosophical and journalistic heritage of M. Scheler during 1914-1919. "The philosophy of war" is regarded as the middle link between the phenomenological and anthropological stages of its philosophical evolution. The theoretical and methodological basis of the study is the philosophical legacy of Max Scheler, as well as the work of domestic and Western researchers devoted to this issue. Problems of Weltkriegsphilosophie become comprehensible based on the historical, logical and comparative principles of historical and philosophical analysis, which allowed to theoretically reconstruct the cultural and historical context, philosophical sources and ideological intentions of the German philosopher. Originality. For the first time in domestic historical and philosophical thought, it proved that the works by Max Scheler of the First World War played an outstanding role in the formation of philosophical anthropology as a separate philosophical trend. Conclusions. The basis of the Weltkriegsphilosophie by Max Scheler is the philosophical comprehension of the war in which the thinker tries to see the high sacral meaning, where the sacrifices that the nation brings to the altar of victory are not in vain: the nation is rallying this sacrifice, its readiness for it. According to Scheler, war is the most effective means of forming the so-called "love communities", to which he refers combat brotherhood, family and nation as a "collective personality", which recognizes itself through war. The philosopher is disappointed to some part with militaristic enthusiasm in his later military journalistic works and calls for a spiritual and moral renewal of Europe, fed from Christian roots. At the heart of this renewal should be the principle of personal solidarity, based on the Christian idea of love. However, Catholic universalism is an insufficient means for the formation of a "love community" and a new man who is co-creator of God that constitutes the main core of the philosophical anthropology of Max Scheler, which emerges in the 20s of the twentieth century. Based on this, the article affirms the existence in Sheler’s works of an intermediate stage between his phenomenology and philosophical anthropology – Weltkriegsphilosophie (philosophy of the World War).

The aim of this paper is to discuss various attempts to understand the concept of person presented by philosophical and theological anthropology. While many contemporary philosophical theories of personhood follow Kant and his focus on rationality and self-consciousness, Max Scheler, Nicolai Hartmann and Wolfhart Pannenberg offer several interesting alternatives: For Scheler, the person has to be understood in correspondence with the world, which includes also the idea of opening to it and to other persons in our emotional life (especially in love and hatred), but this might culminate to the idealistic idea that the person creates their own world. Hartmann criticises this metaphysical view maintaining that the relational dimension of personhood is to be understood in relation to other persons and the sphere of objective spirit. In his theological anthropology, Wolfhart Pannenberg discusses the notions of the person proposed by philosophical anthropology. He also stresses the significance of the relation to other persons, but maintains that a dialogical relation to other persons must be founded in a relation to God

This article tentatively dissects the basic problems of philosophical anthropology that call for more thorough and more consistent treatment in the future. In the first section the article tracks the problem of anthropology as an integral science of man which deals with problem of human objectivity and one’s subjectivity. It is followed by focusing on philosophical anthropology showing it in three different specific forms, as a “general science”, “universal treatment”, and “prophetic philosophy”. The crucial basic problem is from which angle and with which claim it is applied in outlining the philosophical anthropology and what are its limits. The second section is devoted to the actual “destiny of humanity” as the basic problem of philosophical anthropology reflecting primarily how is this topic addressed by Max Scheler and Arnold Gehlen, two representatives of more detailed understanding of philosophical anthropology. The question of subjectivity as a focal point of understanding the very humanity of a individual human being is finally followed form the perspective of Kierkegaard's spirit determination.

The first part of the article discusses the conditions under which the “school” of thought known as “philosophical anthropology” arose and the relevance today of the problems it posed, concluding with a look at the recent prevalence taken by biological research. The second part examines the conceptions advanced by its leading figures, Max Scheler, Helmuth Plessner and Arnold Gehlen, and shows how each of them contributed to a “sociologization of anthropological knowledge.” On the basis of this analysis, philosophical anthropology proves itself capable of making a significant contribution to an interdisciplinary understanding of the conditions of human life and to reflection on the foundations of sociological research and social theory.

During the first half of the twentieth century, a handful of German speaking scholars examined leadership through the lens of what came to be known as philosophical anthropology, a field of study inaugurated by Max Scheler. Not only do their contributions belong in the history of leadership studies, but the findings of philosophical anthropology can make contributions today. This paper introduces philosophical anthropology and more specifically what Scheler had to say about leadership. One of his primary insights distinguished leaders from what he referred to as exemplary persons, or what we call role models today. This distinction offers a basis for leading by example. Scheler found five universal ideal types that set the tone, so to speak, for any group or society.

The Destiny of Phenomenology: Gadamer on Value, Globalism, and the Growth of Being