Naturalism and Philosophical Anthropology ─ Nature, Life, and the Human between Transcendental and Empirical Perspectives

What is a human being? The twentieth and twenty-first century tradition known as 'philosophical anthropology' has approached this question with unusual sophistication, experimentalism, and subtlety. Such innovations as Arnold Gehlen's description of humans as naturally 'deficient' beings in need of artificial institutions to survive; Max Scheler's concept of 'spirit' (Geist) as the physically and organically irreducible realm of persons and spiritual acts; and Helmuth Plessner's analysis of the way human embodiment transcends spatial locations and limitations ('ex-centric positionality') have inspired generations of European intellectuals. This edited collection from an international network of scholars critically engages the philosophical anthropologies of Scheler, Plessner, Gehlen, Blumenberg, and others in unparalleled detail, showing their applicability to the themes of nature and naturalism, organic life, comparative primatology, cultural anthropology, paleoanthropology, the body, addiction, and death.

The volume sets a new standard for Anglophone scholarship on this tradition and will be required reading for specialists in twentieth-century philosophy, history of the human sciences, history of the life sciences, and philosophies of human nature.

Phillip Honenberger is Program Coordinator and Adjunct Fellow at the Consortium for History of Science, Technology and Medicine in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. He holds a PhD in Philosophy from Temple University and a BA in Philosophy and Music from the College of William and Mary. His work has been published in many academic journals and edited volumes.