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.

The present book is no ordinary anthology, but rather a workroom in which anthropologists and philosophers initiate a dialogue on trust and hope, two important topics for both fields of study. The book combines work between scholars from different universities in the U.S. and Denmark. Thus, besides bringing the two disciplines in dialogue, it also cuts across differences in national contexts and academic style. The interdisciplinary efforts of the contributors demonstrate how such a collaboration can result in new and challenging ways of thinking about trust and hope. Reading the dialogues may, therefore, also inspire others to work in the productive intersection between anthropology and philosophy.

This text, written by professors of philosophy at the Pontifical University of the Holy Cross and the University of Trieste, examines the nature of the human person, the human condition, and what it means to be truly human. Drawing from classical as well as modern philosophy and science, they present a comprehensive and fascinating reflection on human existence, especially characterized by the use of freedom.

What does the cross, both as a historical event and a symbol of religious discourse, tell us about human beings? In this provocative book, Brian Gregor draws together a hermeneutics of the self—through Heidegger, Gadamer, Ricoeur, and Taylor—and a theology of the cross—through Luther, Kierkegaard, Bonhoeffer, and Jüngel—to envision a phenomenology of the cruciform self. The result is a bold and original view of what philosophical anthropology could look like if it took the scandal of the cross seriously instead of reducing it into general philosophical concepts.

ISBN 9042000147 (paperback) NLG 50.00 What makes the person truly human? This is the question that is systematically investigated by Vergote in this fine collection of papers. The integrating themes of the various studies reported here are the exploration of human experience, and the achievement of humanity by the individual. issues in feminist theory.

This book explores the question of what it means to be a human being through sustained and original analyses of three important philosophical topics: relativism, skepticism, and naturalism in the social sciences. Kevin Cahill’s approach involves an original employment of historical and ethnographic material that is both conceptual and empirical in order to address relevant philosophical issues. Specifically, while Cahill avoids interpretative debates, he develops an approach to philosophical critique based on Cora Diamond’s and James Conant’s work on the early Wittgenstein. This makes possible the use of a concept of culture that avoids the dogmatism that not only typifies traditional metaphysics but also frequently mars arguments from ordinary language or phenomenology. This is especially crucial for the third part of the book, which involves a cultural-historical critique of the ontology of the self in Stanley Cavell’s work on skepticism. In pursuing this strategy, the book also mounts a novel and timely defense of the interpretivist tradition in the philosophy of the social sciences. Towards a Philosophical Anthropology of Culture will be of interest to researchers working on the philosophy of the social sciences, Wittgenstein, and philosophical anthropology.

This book will attempt to achieve a constructive and positive correla tion between mythic-symbolic language and philosophical anthropolo gy. It is intended as a reflection on the philosophical accomplishment of Paul Ricoeur. The term mythic-symbolic language in this context means the language of the multivalent symbol given in the myth with its psychological and poetic counterparts. The term symbol is not con ceived as an abstract sign as it is used in symbolic logic, but rather as a concrete phenomenon - religious, psychological, and poetic. The task inherent in this correlation is monumental when one considers the dual dilemma of problematic and possibility which is at its heart. The prob lematic arises out of the apparent difficulty presented by the so-called challenge of modernity which seems to require the elimination of my thic-symbolic language as an intelligible mode of communication. Mythic-symbolic language is sometimes eliminated because in a world molded by abstract conceptualizations of science, such a language is thought to be unintelligible. The claim is that its "primitive" explana tions have been transcended by our modernity. Others believe that the problem of mythic-symbolic language is the problem of the myth. If the mythic forms of language could be eliminated, the truth of such language could be preserved through its translation into an intelligible mode of discourse. The problematic is heightened further by the relation of consider ations of language to philosophical anthropology. Any consideration of language involves a related view of the nature of man.

This book offers a unique account of the role imagination plays in advancing the course of freedom’s actualization. It draws on Paul Ricoeur’s philosophical anthropology of the capable human being as the staging ground for an extended inquiry into the challenges of making freedom a reality within the history of humankind. This book locates the abilities we exercise as capable human beings at the heart of a sustained analysis and reflection on the place of the idea of justice in a hermeneutics for which every expectation regarding rights, liberties, and opportunities must be a hope for humanity as a whole. The vision of a reconciled humanity that for Ricoeur figures in a philosophy of the will provides an initial touchstone for a hermeneutics of liberation rooted in a philosophical anthropology for which the pathétique of human misery is its non- or pre-philosophical source. By setting the idea of the humanity in each of us against the backdrop of the necessity of preserving the tension between the space of our experiences and the horizons of our expectations, the book identifies the ethical and political dimensions of the idea of justice’s federating force with the imperative of respect. Paul Ricoeur’s Philosophical Anthropology as Hermeneutics of Liberation will be of interest to scholars and advanced students working in hermeneutics, phenomenology, ethics, political theory, and aesthetics.

With the rise of imperialism, the centuries-old European tradition of humanist scholarship as the key to understanding the world was jeopardized. Nowhere was this more true than in nineteenth-century Germany. It was there, Andrew Zimmerman argues, that the battle lines of today's "culture wars" were first drawn when anthropology challenged humanism as a basis for human scientific knowledge. Drawing on sources ranging from scientific papers and government correspondence to photographs, pamphlets, and police reports of "freak shows," Zimmerman demonstrates how German imperialism opened the door to antihumanism. As Germans interacted more frequently with peoples and objects from far-flung cultures, they were forced to reevaluate not just those peoples, but also the construction of German identity itself. Anthropologists successfully argued that their discipline addressed these issues more productively—and more accessibly—than humanistic studies. Scholars of anthropology, European and intellectual history, museum studies, the history of science, popular culture, and colonial studies will welcome this book.

Highlighting the most important topics, issues, questions and debates, these two volumes offer full coverage of major subthemes and subfields within the discipline of anthropology.