Blumenberg, Anthropology (original) (raw)

Hans Blumenberg's Philosophical Anthropology: After Heidegger and Cassirer

In this paper, I situate Hans Blumenberg historically and conceptually in relation to a subtheme in the famous debate between Martin Heidegger and Ernst Cassirer at Davos, Switzerland in 1929. The subtheme concerns Heidegger’s and Cassirer’s divergent attitudes toward philosophical anthropology as it relates to the starting points and goals of philosophy. I then reconstruct Blumenberg’s anthropology, which involves reconceptualizing Cassirer’s philosophy of symbolic forms in relation to Heidegger’s objections to the philosophical anthropology of his day (e.g., Max Scheler, Helmuth Plessner, and Arnold Gehlen) as unduly anthropocentric. Blumenberg builds on anthropologist Gehlen’s assumption that human beings are biologically underdetermined and therefore world-open. With this starting point, symbolic forms, such as myth and language, make up a compensatory life-world that supports human existence. Action, or self-assertion, which is necessary given the lack of a seamless fit between human beings and the environment, is thus circumscribed and shaped by the historied, cultural constructs that constitute a life-world. Human beings can thus be characterized as a species that continually renegotiates the shape of its existence through its relation to biological limits on the one hand and cultural constants on the other. Because Blumenberg and philosophical anthropology are relatively unexplored by Anglophone philosophers, and because philosophical anthropology is central to Blumenberg’s methodology generally, this study provides an introduction to both.

Political aspects in Hans Blumenberg’s philosophy

The scientific community in the humanities agrees that the work of the German post-war philosopher Hans Blumenberg is fascinating, compelling and inspiring, although the texts remain to some extent hard to understand. His extensive exchange with authors like Carl Schmitt, Jacob Taubes or Hannah Arendt show the often forgotten and sometimes systematically hidden political aspects of his philosophy. The theory of modernity, the theory of myth and of course his metaphorology are the main areas of debate which can be checked for their political implications and ramifications. However, the a priori exclusion of republican arguments and ideas points to a systematic problem in Blumenberg’s thought. All his thinking remains in the framework of what has been called “subject-philosophy”, it seems. While his early publications allowed a certain critique of ideology (from the perspective of metaphorology), this gesture almost disappears in his later writings. It is basically the single subject which works on myth, which seems to project “significance” (Bedeutsamkeit) into the world, which makes sense of his life in anecdotes. However, human self-assertion is always a common project, an inherited technique which creates not only myths but also institutions and law. The political aspects in Blumenberg’s work therefore also make transparent the limitations of his thought.

Preface to: Philosophical Anthropology. Historical Perspectives

2010

1. Without further specification, the word «anthropology» has nowadays little to do with philosophy. Rather, especially but not exclusively in English-speaking countries, it is mainly used to denote the field of «cultural anthropology» 1 . As we shall see, the names of several philosophers recur in what one may call -to avoid confusion -the pre-history of cultural anthropology. However, the history of cultural anthropology is the history of the development of a scientific community (together with its institutions: private societies, public organisations, academic departments, and so on) recognising itself in a certain methodological approach 2 . Since the core of this methodology, generally speaking, is the «fieldwork», cultural anthropology is clearly independent of philosophy and frequently opposes its «armchair» methodology 3 .

Buffon, Blumenbach, Lichtenberg, and the Origins of Modern Anthropology

This essay proposes to look at eighteenth-century Anthropology from a disciplinary perspective, understanding ‘Anthropology’ as the empirical and scientific study of humanity in its global setting, pursuing radical questions about humanity’s origins, unity, and variety. Following research by Michèle Duchet, Wolf Lepenies, and Frank Dougherty, the paper traces the roots of the discipline called ‘anthropology’ in Enlightenment Natural History, and attributes key roles to the Frenchman Buffon and the Göttingen professor Johann Friedrich Blumenbach in its establishment an independent science of man. The paper argues that in its attempt to understand human variety as the product of climate, geography, and ways of living, Enlightenment anthropology had an emancipatory function by arguing that human diversity was a (rational) response to environmental factors varying around the world. By linking difference to territory and environment, however, it also ran the risk of essentializing differences among humans, and within its conceptual frame it allowed little space for mobile and nomadic cultures.

Pannenberg's Anthropology--An Uncritical Analysis.docx

Anthropology occupies an important place in Pannenberg’s systematic theology. This importance marks a shift in orientation within academic theology especially because this shift functions in Pannenberg’s theology as point of contact with other academic, social, and scientific disciplines. In this paper I will discuss Pannenberg’s anthropology, especially as it relates to his methodology and functions as a point of contact with other disciplines. As such, Pannenberg’s anthropology is at the same time an answer, from a theological perspective, to non-theological points of view. The very fact that theological anthropology is intrinsically linked with Pannenberg’s methodology, and because of this can function as an answer to non-theological viewpoints, indicates that Pannenberg’s theology stands in many ways radically opposed to other influential theologies of the twentieth century, especially to the theology of Karl Barth. How this is the case I will try to make clear through the discussion in my paper and the focus of the conclusion. I will first focus on Pannenberg’s anthropology and its intrinsic link to his methodology. Then I will show how his anthropology, partly because of his methodology, can function as an answer to non-theological points of view on the human being. In the conclusion I will point to the significance of Pannenberg’s viewpoint with some comparative comments in relation to the theology of Karl Barth.