Seminar presence is mandatory.
All papers are written in person, by hand.
a 30% text commentary on Heidegger, Nov. 26
a question response on Cassirer worth 20% of the grade in December.
Final written exam is worth 50% of total grade.
3 sections:
1. German Philosophical Anthropology
2. Humanism, Enlightenment & Neo-humanism
3. Post-humanism
There have been so many different conceptions of what a human and animal as is, showing that the relationship between human and animal is very complex and ambiguous.
What is ‘human?’ What is ‘humanity?’ What is the ‘human being?’
Every epoch has its own understanding of this. This is not a biological notion, the course is concerned with the philosophical interpretation. The HiPH changes, the notion of ‘man’ changes.
What we call ‘human’ is always closely tied to philosophical and metaphysical presuppositions about humanity, nature, spirituality, animality, etc.
Also inherently tied to the divisions these notions imply.
These questions are as old as human beings themselves.
We redefine ourselves in light of what we are going through - the challenges, the changes.
PA is therefore fundamentally historic.
PA between humanism and anti-humanism
‘man’ is the result of the history of metaphysics
commonly defined as animal rationale, zoon logon echon.
this relies already on animality and reason - which are technical terms for Aristotle (NOT HIM AGAIN). The genus and the difference, respectively.
Aristotle has a great chain of being, dominated by the highest genera, living being is one of those highest classes. And each of these classes subdivides and gives birth to species.
For Aristotle, human is a species subsumed under the genus of animal, and is separated from the latter with ‘reason.’ That is the notion that segregates humans from non-human animals - logos.
Logos is an attribute essential to humanity.
Just ‘animal rationale’ already contains within it a slew of ideas like ‘essences,’ ‘substances,’ and ‘essential properties.’ So you can’t just use these terms willy-nilly.
an essence implies certain essential properties
in PA ‘man’ is commonly thought of in relationship/distinction to animality.
The ‘anthropological difference’ is a mark of superiority of the human being over animals & nature
! Every definition is bound to a construction/deconstruction of an Other.
Nietzsche, Bergson, and Heidegger mark the emergence of anti-humanist & post-humanist thinking, with Foucault, Derrida and Deleuze continuing the ideas.
Bergson is post-humanist insofar as the force vitale is a universal mover, though of course for him humans are still a special class.
‘man,’ ‘humanity’ are abstract ideal notion, every individual being an instantiation thereof.
Derrida doesn’t like the fact that we generalize the plurality of all different kinds of creatures into just ‘animals,’ and then try to counterpose that to the single generalized notion of ‘humanity.’
anti- and post-humanism are still reflections on the situation of men in the world and their relationship to nature and animality.
Anthropology as a scientific discipline
this is actually completely unrelated to philosophy. In this case, ‘Anthropology’ (or ‘ethnology’) is the study of the evolutionary becoming of the human being as a biological species.
Philosophical anthropology, meanwhile, has a propensity for speculation, works with concepts, their history, and their embeddedness in metaphysical frameworks & cosmological or transcendental contexts.
Levi-Strauss, for instance, is an example of a synthesis of the two.
German Philosophical Anthropologists, an independent current in Continental Philosophy
Scheler, Uexkull, Cassirer, Plessner, Gehlen.
The core of their production was in the first 30 years of the XXth century.
Most of them were looking back on the end of the XIXth century - a time of political, social crisis and a number of scientific and socio-political inventions (technically also “crises”).
Darwin’s theory of evolution is also a kinda important thing for them I guess.
The human being, however, was left undefined. They all revolved around the human being, but still could not define it.
“at no time in history has man become so problematic to himself as in the present (1927)“
Man-animal in Antiquity: the 5th and 4th century B.C.
Homer and Hesiod did not consider humans > animals, and did not create a supercategory of “animals,” they were considered according to their species. There was a universal inferiority to ‘gods.’
They did understand that animals still shared some of the cultural advantages of humans:
ants and bees create elaborate technological constructions, and form “states” of some kind - man was only to a “greater extent” a “politikon zoon.”
The sophists want to do away with this setup. They emphasize the greatness, power, and achievements of man.
Humans develop crafts and technology, create legal systems to regulate their coexistence, and have language, which is the prerequisite of any civilization.
Despite popular opinion, there is no definition of language that excludes all non-human species.
Sophists bring the superiority to the anthropological difference. “Animal life” as a primordial phase of prehistoric men.
Outgroups (barbarians), are thus animals, since they don’t know the language.
The fact that they still have the potential to learn the language is addressed in scientific inquiry, but still commonly ignored in more literal texts.
There is no clear, static motivation for the elevation of man - sometimes to justify power relations, sometimes for some kind of poetic notion.
The Greeks love Egypt.
They knew about buying property in Egypt and what they do for you
Sophists are humanists. SOPHISTS ARE CORRUPTING THE YOUTH WE ALL HATE SOPHISTS.
Logos was originally just ‘language,’ but it transitioned into being ‘reason,’ a psychological faculty. Thus birds may make sounds but do not possess reason. L.
Protagoras says man lacks all physical advantages (claws, fins, whatever) that animals have. But this is compensated by the mental advantages.
Victim complex much?
Plato
One becomes human through education
In principle every human soul is capable of the cognition of ideas.
but the majority of people remain on a purely sensual level.
As a result of reflecting on the senses they can either approach the gods or go even further down to animals.