The Quest for Men: Lecture 1
What does it mean to be a human being?
Plato: ‘’A human being is an unfeathered bird on two legs’’, but then a sceptic picked a chicken and
said: ‘’Look this is Plato’s definition of a man’’.
There are many characteristics when talking about human beings but in anthropology we try to find a
most inclusive definition.
David Hume about Human Nature: ‘’Mankind are so much the same, in all times and places, that
history informs us of nothing new or strange in this particular. Its chief use is only to discover the
constant and universal principles of human nature.’’ David Hume, Inquiry Concerning Human
Understanding 1748.
è Cultural diversity?
è Historical diversity?
Natural and cultural history:
Basic question: Where do we come from, what are we and where are we going?
à looking back to Homo Sapiens 1.0 (past), 2.0 (now), 3.0 (future: Transhumanism,
posthumanism, extra-humanism).
Where does the word philosophical anthropology come from?
Anthropos: human, ‘’Man is the matter of all things’’.
Logos: Reason of language.
à talking about humans
The word was already found in the writings about Aristotle where he meant: gossiping about other
people.
In the 16th century There was a change, humans were no longer the matter of all things, God was.
Copernicus: earth was in the centre of the universe. When that was questioned, it made a shift in our
way of thinking.
à in the 20th century there was a growing discontent with anthropocentrism way of thinking. Putting
the human being in the centre of thinking as a key stone of all philosophical questions was
questioned because of Ecological problems, etc… (we are now living in the Anthropocene because
human beings are changing earth’s climate)
Where does morality come from? In the Christian era it was clear to look at the Bible, it tells
you what to do. But if Christianity fades away, then where do these ideas come from? Maybe we are
the source.
Ontic vs Ontological (Heidegger)
Ontic refers to (all kinds of) beings.
Ontological: awareness of being refers to the reflection of being.
Human beings have consciousness not only about the world but also about himself. For as far we
know, a stone cannot. Also, animals are maybe not able to reflect on their own existence. For
example, primates, elephants or dolphins might have self-awareness.
Heidegger makes this distinction:
Ontic: something is but not necessarily aware of itself.
Ontology: awareness of being, refers to the reflection of being.
à ontology: theory of being
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, Human beings are not only are there (ontic), but also they have an awareness of their being-in-
the-world (ontological).
Self-Reflectivity/reflexivity, trying to give an answer to the question: who are we?
Implicit and explicit images of man
We find images of man in:
- Everyday life (thinking and acting)
- Cultural institutions (e.g. law)
- Art (e.g. the novel The Joke of Milan Kundera: A Tsjech author, the novel is about a student
who has a girlfriend and he writes her a postcard in which he makes a joke about the
communist of the country and this cards arrive with the faculty of the university and he is
expelled because of this little joke and his life is a disaster. à human life is a plan which is
interrupted by all kinds of events)
- Myths and religions (e.g. origin myths, genesis)
- Natural sciences (evolutionary theory, biological anthropology, medicine)
- Social sciences (psychology, sociology, economy, cultural anthropology, business admin)
- Philosophy (e.g. ethics, philosophy of science)
We find many ideas of what it means to be human but mostly they are implicit, and we try to
make them explicit by forming a theory about the basic features.
What distinguishes the image of man in philosophical anthropology from the other images of
man?
Explication of images of man:
- Abstract (versus narrative accounts of arts, mythology), in philosophy we do not make stories
but we formulate it in an abstract way with conceptual knowledge.
- Rational (versus act of faith, as in religion), we try to find a rational explanation.
- Reflective (versus empirical, as in human sciences), philosophers do not do empirical
research. They reflect on human life by using the science of different disciplines but do not
research themselves.
Philosophical anthropology and human sciences:
à similar with respect to their rational approach, argumentation, proof, etc…
à Different because philosophical anthropology does not aim to obtain new empirical
knowledge about human beings, but it reflects on the implicit and sometimes explicit images
inherent in the human sciences.
Example: Homo economicus, the concept in many economic theories presupposing or portraying
humans as consistently rational and narrowly self-interested agents who usually pursue their
subjectively defined ends optimally. In philosophy you can ask: are we indeed rational agents or
is that the kind of myth, presupposition that is not adequate when we look at the behaviour of
human beings.
Is there still room for philosophical anthropology?
Possible answers:
- No, philosophy may be the mother of all sciences, but all of the children have left the house.
- Historical or/and cultural reconstruction of images of man from the past or in other cultures
(because of variety and historical development)
- Philosophy aims at integration of the fully fragmented sciences
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, - The philosopher as conceptual stunt man or woman, often philosophers think about things
that are not there or not yet there and often this is the start of a new discipline.
- Transcendental reconstruction of the anthropological presuppositions underlying all of our
thinking and acting, making presuppositions explicit.
Transcendental Philosophy:
No search for new facts but making explicit what is already implicitly given in a theory of practice.
Example: the phenomenon of law and punishment presupposes human responsibility.
Explication of presuppositions, conditions of possibility, foundations.
(critical) analysis of inadequate presuppositions.
Contribution to the foundation of the human sciences
Anthropological self-reflection in everyday life. It is our task to reflect, without life is not worth living
(Socrates)
Three aspects of anthropological self-reflection:
Reconstruct of implicit images of man
Construction of coherent and consistent images of man (critical)
Deconstruction of inadequate images of man
Philosophical anthropology – some representatives
Germany: Nietzsche, Dilthey, Heidegger, Plessner, Scheler, Arendt, Gadamer, Marquard, Sloterdijk.
England/USA: Wittgenstein, Ryle, Searle, Dennett
France: Foucault, Ricoeur, Derrida, Stiegles
Italy: Vattimo, Agamben
Spain: Ortega y Gasset
Netherlands: Plessner (went from Germany to Groningen due to WOII), De Boer, Nauta, Sperna
Weiland, Oudemans, Verbeek
n.b. Philosophical anthropology: discipline (vs. ethics, philosophy of science) and/or paradigm within
philosophy (vs existentialism, behaviourism, structuralism)
Fundamental Characteristics of human beings (Terminology)
- Life categories (Dilthey)
- Material a priori (Plessner)
- Existentials (Heidegger)
- Postulates (De Boer)
- Form of life (Wittgenstein, Oudemans)
Life Categories:
Refer to basic characteristics of the human life form, such as hunger and thirst, sex, feeling,
knowledge, will, ecstasy, religion, humour, illness, mortality, art, etc.
Although relatively stable, life categories are no timeless categories, but they show a certain
variability in time (evolution, natural and cultural history) and space (diversity of cultures)
We may compare life categories with the grammar and vocabulary of a natural language
Three different images of man in the human sciences (and everyday life)
- The mechanistic model
- The organismic model
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, - The narrative model
Characteristics of the mechanistic model:
- Humans are complex machines but at the end of the day they are machines like everything
(more complex than stones or animals)
- Julien Offray de la Mettrie: L’homme Machine
- Metaphor: man is a machine
- Explanation: Deductive-nomological (nomos: law, deductive: derive from laws)
- Key concepts: atomism, natural laws, causality, observation, repeatability.
- Prediction: In principle total and precise though uncertain in (often complex) reality.
Instrumental reality.
- Descartes: Man defer from animals because we have a spiritual part, how are matter and
mind related to each other?
- La Mettrie: we can explain everything on material suppositions. If you know the relevant
laws, you can predict human behaviour and control the world. Modern technologies is a
result of this new way of looking at the world.
- Anthropological implications: man is determined by internal (genes) and/or external
(environment) factors. There is no such thing as free will. Behaviour is caused by laws
(societal or natural). Human beings are being governed, freedom is an illusion.
Characteristics of the organismic model:
- Metaphor: man is an organism (human societies are considered as organisms). Applied to
human culture.
- Explanation: Functional, an organismic model: how does it contribute to the functioning of
the organism?
- Key concepts: structure, function, holism (can only understand one aspect when looking at
the whole), goal-directed, equifinality (more/multiple ways to realize certain goals).
- Prediction: in principle less precise, but tendencies are more certain. (sunflower grows in
direction of the sun, but the plant is an agent, has its own will in order to realize its aims, you
cannot predict because it is dependent on the environment. It is less precise but more
certain because even if you cannot know how the environment changes you can still be
certain it goes with nature)
- Control: less predictable but more certain.
- Anthropological implications: some sort of subjectivity, organisms are active shaping of
environment.
Characteristics of the narrative model:
- Metaphor: man is a story. The kind of answers you get when you ask someone: ‘’who are
you?’’
- Explanation: hermeneutic
- Key concepts: meaning, reason, holism, unicity (each life story is a unique story), chance, life
experience
- Control: (ir)rational persuasion
- Anthropological implications: the subject plays an important role, but this does not mean
that he is master in its own house (his own life story, history is a plan interrupted by
unexpected events)
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