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Human Nature and Human Interests

Chandran Kukathas

in The Liberal Archipelago: A Theory of Diversity and Freedom

This chapter argues that while diversity may be a permanent feature of human societies, there is a core of human nature which can account for the patterns of human diversity. It defends a ... More

This chapter argues that while diversity may be a permanent feature of human societies, there is a core of human nature which can account for the patterns of human diversity. It defends a philosophical anthropology which asserts that ‘cultural difference is not an essential but only an incidental and transitional attribute of human beings’. Difference is not essential but circumstantial; when circumstances are similar, people will act and choose similarly. Since culture and the historical forms that human life has taken are of no value in themselves, what matters is man, who creates culture and whom culture serves.Less

Jean Paul (1763–1825)

Catherine J. Minter

in The Mind—Body Problem in German Literature 1770–1830: Wezel, Moritz, and Jean Paul

This chapter discusses how Jean Paul's ideas on philosophical anthropology inform his fictional writings. The discussion also offers the mind-body theme as a standard by which the often disputed ... More

This chapter discusses how Jean Paul's ideas on philosophical anthropology inform his fictional writings. The discussion also offers the mind-body theme as a standard by which the often disputed development of Jean Paul's ideas can be profitably measured.Less

Introduction

Catherine J. Minter

in The Mind—Body Problem in German Literature 1770–1830: Wezel, Moritz, and Jean Paul

This chapter discusses the concept of philosophical anthropology during the late 18th century in Germany. A number of German anthropologists during this time are introduced in this chapter, and a few ... More

This chapter discusses the concept of philosophical anthropology during the late 18th century in Germany. A number of German anthropologists during this time are introduced in this chapter, and a few descriptions of the European Enlightenment are provided. The chapter also includes a brief rundown of the discussions in the following chapters, which focus on the mind-body relations in Germany at the turn of the 19th century.Less

The Prosperity Gospel, Humanity, and the Problem of Judgement

Joel Robbins

in Theology and the Anthropology of Christian Life

The prosperity gospel is a type of Christianity that is currently popular in many parts of the world, but it is also a form of the faith that is difficult for anthropologists to accept on its own ... More

The prosperity gospel is a type of Christianity that is currently popular in many parts of the world, but it is also a form of the faith that is difficult for anthropologists to accept on its own terms, since it often seems so obviously to be captive to globally dominant economic ideologies. It is also a kind of Christianity that many theologians find difficult to embrace. This chapter brings anthropology and theology together by looking at the contrasting ways in which the two disciplines reckon with their discomfort with a form of Christianity that is compelling to millions of people. It argues that anthropologists can learn new things about their own fundamental theoretical commitments by examining this contrast from the point of view of theological anthropology and the principled ways that theologians make judgements about the lives of others such as prosperity gospel Christians.Less

Controlling for Pongoland

Nicolas Langlitz

in Chimpanzee Culture Wars: Rethinking Human Nature alongside Japanese, European, and American Cultural Primatologists

This chapter investigates how Christophe Boesch's colleague and codirector Michael Tomasello derived truth claims about the anthropological difference between Homo sapiens and Pan troglodytes from ... More

This chapter investigates how Christophe Boesch's colleague and codirector Michael Tomasello derived truth claims about the anthropological difference between Homo sapiens and Pan troglodytes from controlled experiments comparing the social cognition of human children with that of grown chimpanzees. Tomasello's claim that humans were the only primates capable of culture and cooperation received an enthusiastic reception by German philosophers. Yet Boesch called into question the validity of Tomasello's findings by pointing out that the social behavior of both humans and apes was too contingent on local circumstances for Leipzig kindergarten children and zoo chimpanzees rescued from a Dutch pharmaceutical company to represent all of humanity and chimpanzeehood. He accused Tomasello of not controlling for the different conditions under which Tomasello tested humans and apes. The ensuing controversy over the relationship between laboratory work and fieldwork happened at a time when new statistical methods were opening up vast new possibilities for chimpanzee ethnography, even fostering hopes that experimentation with captive animals would become superfluous because uncontrolled observations in the wild would allow the establishment of causal relations. The chapter then assesses whether Boesch's cultural primatology could inform a different philosophical anthropology than the one drawing from Tomasello's comparative psychology.Less

Anton Wilhelm Amo

Justin E. H. Smith

in Nature, Human Nature, and Human Difference: Race in Early Modern Philosophy

This chapter focuses on the life and work of Anton Wilhelm Amo, who was active in Germany in the period between Leibniz and Kant. It shows how Amo's identity as an African in Europe helped to shape ... More

This chapter focuses on the life and work of Anton Wilhelm Amo, who was active in Germany in the period between Leibniz and Kant. It shows how Amo's identity as an African in Europe helped to shape both his philosophy and its reception, and what lessons may have been drawn in the era for thinking about the relationship between human racial diversity, on the one hand, and the universality of human reason, on the other. Finally, the chapter argues that the position occupied by Amo in the philosophical landscape of early eighteenth-century Germany reveals the likely influence of Leibniz, who had provided a model for a nonracial philosophical anthropology for which he has generally not been given much credit.Less

Philosophical Anthropology and Social Criticism

Raymond Guess

in Reification: A New Look At An Old Idea

As “intellectualism” refers to the way humans are able to form and systematically evaluate beliefs, John Dewey asserted that Western philosophy can be associated with a certain “intellectualist” ... More

As “intellectualism” refers to the way humans are able to form and systematically evaluate beliefs, John Dewey asserted that Western philosophy can be associated with a certain “intellectualist” bias. This chapter exhibits the attempts to look into the vital properties of human beings such as the essentials about the human way of life, human characteristics, and other such information. In examining the historical background of his rethinking of reification and how this concept is related to the concepts of cognition and recognition, Honneth attempts to provide an analysis that extends to two interrelated subplots: the philosophical anthropology observed in the West and the emergence of a different kind of social criticism.Less

From Life to Spirit: The Human World

Beth Cykowski

in Heidegger's Metaphysical Abyss: Between the Human and the Animal

This chapter embarks upon a critical dialogue with The Fundamental Concepts of Metaphysics, focusing on Heidegger’s use of the concept of ‘spirit’. As it is one half of the crucially important ... More

This chapter embarks upon a critical dialogue with The Fundamental Concepts of Metaphysics, focusing on Heidegger’s use of the concept of ‘spirit’. As it is one half of the crucially important life/spirit divide, one would assume that Heidegger would pay as much attention to spirit as he does to life, and, in this vein, analyse anthropology as thoroughly as he does biology. However, Heidegger restricts his comments concerning anthropology to the few cursory remarks in Part One, in which he denounces the discipline as a problematic form of Darstellung. The chapter argues that with these remarks Heidegger ignores the body of work, spearheaded by Max Scheler during the 1920s, known as ‘philosophical anthropology’. Moreover, despite the fact that Heidegger critiques what he sees as deep delusions implicit in anthropology, this German tradition contains insights that resonate with his own project in The Fundamental Concepts of Metaphysics.Less

The Public’s Philosophical Anthropologies: Autonomous and Social Traits

John H. Evans

in What Is a Human?: What the Answers Mean for Human Rights

Almost everyone uses traits in their anthropologies. There are two families of traits used by the public, which are labeled “autonomous” and “social.” Autonomous traits, such as consciousness and the ... More

Almost everyone uses traits in their anthropologies. There are two families of traits used by the public, which are labeled “autonomous” and “social.” Autonomous traits, such as consciousness and the ability to feel pain, are those that would still be relevant if a human never encountered another human. Social traits such as compassion and emotion are those that are used for social interaction. This chapter discusses a group of biology PhD students who use both biological components and the two types of traits. This group shows that biology education has a mixed record of propagating the academic biological anthropology. The other PhD students use the two types of traits without the biological components. The general public focuses on the social traits, and it is argued that anthropologies that focus on this component would be more protective of human rights than components from the academic version.Less

Introduction

Andreas Höfele

in Stage, Stake, and Scaffold: Humans and Animals in Shakespeare's Theatre

The introduction specifies the proximity of theatre and bear-baiting in the cultural topography of Shakespeare’s London. The two entertainments were not just physically close but joined in active ... More

The introduction specifies the proximity of theatre and bear-baiting in the cultural topography of Shakespeare’s London. The two entertainments were not just physically close but joined in active collusion, generating a perceptive overlap which included the scaffold of public execution as a third partner. This overlap provided a highly productive matrix for synopsis (‘seeing together’) of human actors and their animal counterparts in both their likeness and unlikeness. Evidence for the physical presence of animals on Shakespeare’s stage is scanty at best – even the bear in Winter’s Tale could well have been a human actor – but their imaginative presence is all the more powerful and far from innocent. The stage may have been tainted by the messy company of stake and scaffold, but its very closeness to the rending, tearing and killing also made it a unique platform for evoking sympathy for the suffering fellow creature.Less

The Theory of Intersubjectivity as a Theory of the Human Being: George Herbert Mead and the German Tradition of Philosophical Anthropology

Karl-Siegbert Rehberg

in The Timeliness of George Herbert Mead

Karl-Siegbert Rehberg examines Mead’s philosophy in light of the tradition of German philosophical anthropology, including Arnold Gehlen, Helmuth Plessner, and Max Scheler. Gehlen, in particular, who ... More

Karl-Siegbert Rehberg examines Mead’s philosophy in light of the tradition of German philosophical anthropology, including Arnold Gehlen, Helmuth Plessner, and Max Scheler. Gehlen, in particular, who many Germans consider to be of equal intellectual significance to Martin Heidegger and Carl Schmitt, has not received much attention in the English-speaking world. Gehlen was, however, the first major German author to recognize Mead’s importance and to refer to him in his own creative work. In his chapter Rehberg is driven by an interest in understanding how thinkers of such different attitudes toward democracy can nevertheless show profound affinities in their understanding of human action. In his essay Rehberg provides a novel reevaluation of the relationship between Mead and the broader intellectual tradition of German human sciences scholarship, and he introduces previously unpublished documentation on Gehlen’s study of Mead.Less

The Philosophical Origin of Modern Geography

in The Geographic Imagination of Modernity: Geography, Literature, and Philosophy in German Romanticism

This chapter examines two philosophical origins of modern geography: Herder's philosophical anthropology and the post-Kantian Naturphilosophie. In Herder's view, geographic science appears as an ... More

This chapter examines two philosophical origins of modern geography: Herder's philosophical anthropology and the post-Kantian Naturphilosophie. In Herder's view, geographic science appears as an elaboration of some basic anthropological figures of thought. Herder developed his philosophical anthropology at the same time as, but in opposition to, Kant's critical philosophy. Shaped to a great extent by Schelling, Naturphilosophie formulated a speculative concept of the earth, postulating a primordial, prereflexive unity of man and terrestrial nature. Herder and Schelling sought to root human reason in a productive nature, obviating the divide between man and nature, subject and object.Less

Introduction: After the Controversy

Étienne Balibar

in Citizen Subject: Foundations for Philosophical Anthropology

This introductory chapter traces the evolution of the various hypotheses concerning the upheavals that modernity has produced in the field of philosophical anthropology, as collected in this volume. ... More

This introductory chapter traces the evolution of the various hypotheses concerning the upheavals that modernity has produced in the field of philosophical anthropology, as collected in this volume. It credits the formation of this book to its initial conception as a response to a question raised by Jean-Luc Nancy—“Who comes after the subject?” The chapter also summarizes the contents of the book in brief—breaking it down into three paths which help to interrogate the utterances of the subject of philosophy (autoreference, community, judgment)—and provides an overview into the theoretical approaches that inform the studies conducted in the following chapters.Less

Humanism

William J. Richardson

in Heidegger: Through Phenomenology to Thought

The word “humanism” is a specifically Roman phenomenon, since the word humanus was used to distinguish the homo romanus from the homo barbarus by reason of the ... More

The word “humanism” is a specifically Roman phenomenon, since the word humanus was used to distinguish the homo romanus from the homo barbarus by reason of the Romans' cultural superiority. This was based upon the appropriation of the Greek παιδεί. The essence of the παιδεί is to render man free and steadfast for the intuition of essence. If humanism is taken out of purely historical context, it may be described as the liberating of man unto the dignity that is proper to his nature. This gives it a broader meaning that can apply to any type of philosophical anthropology. Meanwhile, Heidegger interprets man purely out of his relationship with Being—as transcendence.Less

The philosophical anthropology of Edward Shils

Steven Grosby

in The calling of social thought: Rediscovering the work of Edward Shils

The work of Edward Shils is replete with a number of rich anthropological insights that amount to a philosophy of life. His analysis of the different, heterogeneous orientations of the human mind, ... More

The work of Edward Shils is replete with a number of rich anthropological insights that amount to a philosophy of life. His analysis of the different, heterogeneous orientations of the human mind, and the implications of that analysis, represent a philosophical anthropology. It may be that the most productive way to understand the wide-ranging corpus of his writings, including his understanding of the calling of sociology and the purpose of the university, is to approach them from the perspective of the principled pluralism of his philosophical anthropology.Less

Herder: Physiology and Philosophical Anthropology

Stefanie Buchenau

in Herder: Philosophy and Anthropology

This paper focuses on Herder’s contribution to the development of philosophical anthropology by seeing Herder’s philosophy as a response to recent discoveries in medicine and physiology. The major ... More

This paper focuses on Herder’s contribution to the development of philosophical anthropology by seeing Herder’s philosophy as a response to recent discoveries in medicine and physiology. The major impulse came from Haller’s discovery of the irritability of muscle and sensibility of nerves, which challenged philosophical and theological dogmas about the existence of an immaterial soul and its ability to cause what the mind perceives as voluntary motion. It blurred the traditional division of labor between the physician investigating the body and the philosopher and theologian studying the soul. The chapter will explore how Herder makes creative use of Haller’s concept of irritability as a way of demonstrating a neo-Aristotelian account of the soul as pervading and informing the entire body.Less