“The Universe of the Person is the Universe of Man?” Expanding the Schelerian Concepts of Philosophical Anthropology and Personhood into the Twenty-First Century

Abstract

In contemporary debates around human nature and its relation to technology and to other animals, the philosophical approaches of early 20th-century philosophical anthropology and personalism are often dismissed as embracing a problematic traditional stance, including on issues such as anthropocentrism or a binary perception of the human world. This chapter argues that these objections can be effectively overcome since philosophical anthropology can be grounded on phenomenology and is closely involved with both the natural and the social sciences (especially biology, but also psychology and sociology), and as such offers a promising basis for exploring questions on human nature and personhood. Loosely drawing on the thought of Max Scheler, this chapter shows that the Schelerian Philosophical Anthropology and personalism can help remove the strong dichotomies between the human and other animals, without losing what is distinctly human in the process. Likewise, the chapter argues that an extended concept of personhood is one key to dismantling problematic divisions, to (re)integrating humans with other forms of life and the individual with the social, and to overcoming the biologist bias with respect to gender and the use of technology, all the while underscoring the importance of aliveness in the investigations of human nature.