Anthropological Holism Research Articles

Analytical Anthropology of Peter Hacker

Purpose. The article is an explication of the features of the anthropological teaching of Peter Hacker in the context of analytical philosophy with consideration to the context of European philosophy within the framework of the Oxford School of ordinary language philosophy. The theoretical basis of the research is determined by the latest research in the English-language analytical philosophical tradition, rethinking the place of anthropological problems in the system of philosophical knowledge. Originality. Referring to primary sources, we reconstructed the philosophical and anthropological teaching of Peter Hacker in the unity of its basic principles and theoretical and practical results. We determined philosophical origins of the key ideas of his philosophical anthropology and substantiated their originality, systematicity and logical argumentation. His philosophical position is defined as anthropological holism, synthesizing the reinterpreted ideas of Aristotle and Wittgenstein. Conclusions. Peter Hacker is the creator of the original version of Analytic Philosophical Anthropology. His anthropology is based on criticism of Cartesian dualism and physicalism, which underlie modern neurosciences and which he tries to overcome on the basis of Wittgenstein’s philosophical "logotherapy". The conceptual framework of his holistic anthropology is a rethought conceptual scheme of the Ordinary language philosophy. Hacker considers consciousness not as a separate mental reality, but one of the powers of human nature – an intellectual ability, which, along with emotional (passionate) and moral, belongs to a person as an integral socio-biological being. Asserting the free will of man, the Oxford thinker criticizes various forms of determinism, especially its most common form in modern science – neurobiological determinism, which is built on false philosophical foundations. This criticism allows the modern British philosopher to build an original, systematic and logically consistent anthropological concept that asserts the immutability of the highest human values – goodness, love and happiness.

Imago diaboli? Luther’s Anthropological Holism

The Flacian controversy in mid-16th century Lutheranism turned on the question whether as a consequence of original sin the image of God in humankind has been lost and replaced by the image of the devil. Is the fallen human being evil per se? Examining Martin Luther’s comments on the story of creation and fall in his Genesis Lectures (1535-1545), I argue that Luther’s insistence on the loss of the imago dei results in an anthropology closer to that of Thomas Aquinas than to Luther’s uncompromising disciple, Matthias Flacius Illyricus. For both Thomas and Luther, original sin is a holistic term that reflects the absence of original righteousness in the essence of the soul. Luther rejects any substantial reading of original sin that would ontologize it as the very substance of the human being. His anthropological holism means that sin has a deleterious effect on the whole human being, including all the powers of body and soul. Sin is privative, a spiritual leprosy that corrupts the whole human being.

The Institutions of Meaning: A Defense of Anthropological Holism by Vincent Descombes

The Institutions of Meaning: A Defense of Anthropological Holism by Vincent Descombes

The Institutions of Meaning: A Defense of Anthropological Holism

The Institutions of Meaning: A Defense of Anthropological Holism

Human biology eats: Contemporary research and future directions

ABSTRACT No abstract. Am. J. Hum. Biol. 24:107–109, 2012. ' 2011 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Human biology eats? Of course humans eat! But what,how much, where, and why—and the consequences forhuman biology both in the short and long term—are ques-tions that can be answered from a variety of perspectives.Often, these perspectives look past one another, generat-ing answers within narrow scientific or ideological boun-daries. But food is sufficiently important enough that weshould, as human biologists, think more deeply andbroadly about it.One way to do so is to recognize that food, eating, andrelated phenomena exist at multiple experiential levels.For example, hunger is a feeling we get when our bodiesneed food; this is an evolved hormonal, physiological, andneurological set of signals that we share with other ani-mals that motivate us to seek food. Raise the intensity abit, and add a more expansive cognitive context, and hun-ger goes from being a feeling to an emotion. Finally, hun-ger is a sociopolitical product (derived from social struc-tures and power differentials) and concept, used to distin-guish the ‘‘food secure’’ from the ‘‘food insecure.’’ All ofthese are, in turn, tied to human biological function.Historically the study of food has been, oddly enough(and despite Levi-Strauss’s The Raw and the Cooked),marginal to anthropology. This is especially puzzling,given its potential as an outstanding domain to realize theideal of anthropological holism (Wiley, 2006). It is notablethough that one of the only early anthropological workson food dealt with hunger, Audrey Richards’ Hunger andWork in a Savage Tribe: A Functional Study of NutritionAmong the Southern Bantu (1932), described the ways inwhich this emotional and physiological state shaped somany aspects of social life, yet said almost nothing of hun-ger’s impact on nutritional status and biological function.Decades later, Sidney Mintz’s political and economic anal-ysis of sugar (Sweetness and Power: The Place of Sugar inModern History, 1985) highlighted both the innate desir-ability of sugar, and how our taste for it emerged at theintersection of historical forces that linked slavery, coloni-alism, industrialization, advertizing, and culinary habits.Such contributions from cultural anthropology demon-strate the power of food to shape our social lives, and yetonly hint at the ways in which it shapes our physical ones.This is where human biologists can contribute the most,by adding this piece to the complex biocultural puzzle ofhuman dietary behavior.Obtaining food is a fundamental problem for all livingorganisms, and adaptations related to diet clearly shapeboth biology and behavior. Humans are no exception. Inthe contexts of human evolutionary studies, food sharing,hunting, cooking, dietary shifts toward higher qualitydiets, and gastronomical flexibility have been invoked ascontributors to our large brain, small gut, life history, ourpropensity for social cooperation, and the demographicsuccess of our species (cf., Milton, 1981; Aiello andWheeler, 1995; Kaplan et al., 2000; Cunnane et al., 2007;Kingston, 2007; Wrangham, 2009). Exposure to differentfoods such as milk has also shaped the contemporarygenetic diversity in our species. Food processing techni-ques, or culinary traditions made possible by our largebrain enhanced our ability to extract nutrients from foods,and became ever more important with the transition tofood production and its reliance on a narrower array offoodstuffs than was typical in the preagricultural period(Katz, 1987).With a focus on food, human biologists are in an excel-lent position to merge these two broad areas of investiga-tion, by considering how our food environment—includingaccess to too little or too much, different types of food-stuffs, or the cognitive concept of food—continues to shapeour biological lives. Through our concern with both theproximate and ultimate causes and consequences of par-ticular diets and patterns of eating, we can use food todemonstrate the value of a biocultural approach withinhuman biology. But furthermore, dietary behavior is cul-tural behavior, and our choices about food (or lack thereof)ramify across social life, and undoubtedly contribute tosocial and cultural change. Work in this area also clearlyhas tremendous policy relevance. If society is to ever suc-cessfully translate scientific knowledge into public healthpolicy aimed at improving diet and health, eating itself mustbe understood in the overall context of our human biology.The papers in this collection were presented in the ple-nary session at the 2011 Human Biology Association meet-ings. They each address food and eating, human biologyand human health, from diverse perspectives. The firstthree consider how the human evolutionary experiencewith food informs our present eating patterns, with a vari-ety of biological and health consequences. Lindeberg out-lines the basic premises of ‘‘evolutionary nutrition’’ andsome clinical research that provides support for adoptingdiets that are more closely aligned with those of our ances-tors (or our best approximation of what those might havebeen). Perhaps no other paradigm has really shaped ourunderstanding of the ‘‘ultimate’’ causes of contemporarychronic diseases (formerly called ‘‘western’’ diseases, butnow sadly rife among the world’s populations) than that ofevolutionary nutrition, which emphasizes the ways in

Cultural Landscapes in the Ancient Andes: Archaeologies of Place (review)

MOORE, IERRY D. Cultural Landscapes in the Ancient Andes: Archaeologies of Place. Gainesville: U of Florida P, 2005. 304 pages.As the subtitle indicates, Jerry Moore's book is about archaeologies of place, but the problems he deals with are not limited to the specifically identifiable places that most often concern archaeologists. As an archaeologist, Moore's primary objects of analyses are the material objects and places of ancient Andean societies, but he argues that they must be understood in the context of social space. Of course, this is not new to archaeology: the goal of all archaeological analysis ultimately is to attempt to understand other cultures. Moore argues, however, that the only way to do so is through an anthropological holism that takes into consideration the various domains implicated in the architecture and the built environment of ancient societies. Moore explains that traditional archaeological research, including his own, has not sufficiently developed this anthropological holism, and the tour central chapters of his book develop lines of analysis that have been neglected in Andean archaeology.Following the introduction, the second chapter attempts to demonstrate how the consideration of sound can be incorporated into archaeological analysis. In order to demonstrate the significance of sound, Moore argues that the relationship between proximity of sound-permeable dwellings correlates to degrees of social cohesion: communities of closely situated huts where conversations were easily overheard reflect a high degree of social cohesion, while the dispersion of huts over greater distances indicates the presence of social tension. Moore recognizes that there are other possible reasons why huts might be dispersed, but in general his data seem to support the correlation between degrees of proximity and degrees of social cohesion.The third chapter argues that types of ceremonial architecture correspond to varying social conceptions of religious (118). Moore hypothesizes that permanent, large-scale, public architecture is not consistent with religious authority based on shamanic practices but rather indicates either a religious authority based on the mastery of a canon of knowledge or some other kind of political authority. The premise of this argument is that different conceptions of power and authority employ distinct modes of practice and are therefore materially expressed in distinct (120). In support, Moore presents ethnographic evidence from a number of contemporary South American societies that corroborates his hypothesis.The fourth chapter draws on ritual theory to explore the ways in which an understanding of ritual may inform archaeological analysis and vice versa. Moore explains that the design logic of types of architecture corresponds to types of ritual practices. …

"De reunión en reunión": la observación participante en el conocimiento etnográfico de procesos políticos 'urbanos'

Discuto la validez de hacer observación participante de reuniones entre gobernantes y gobernados para conocer procesos políticos 'urbanos' considerando mi investigación sobre las implicancias de la política facciosa en la producción de representaciones y acciones sobre la política municipal. En el campo, la experimentación de frecuentes y prolongadas "reuniones" entre los actores mencionados chocaba con el supuesto de que ellas debían representar el universo mayor de agentes que invocaban, que debían ser partes de una totalidad mayor: la comunidad política urbana - el barrio o la ciudad. Para trascender este supuesto y demostrar el carácter constituyente de las "reuniones" en dichos procesos muestro la importancia de priorizar el sentido indexical de la acción, desnaturalizar el concepto de sociedad y precisar el holismo antropológico en el estudio de mundos contemporáneos. El argumento valdrá para cuestionar estudios de antropología urbana que esquivan la reflexión sobre las implicancias del estudio etnográfico de "mundos nativos" al investigador.