Od metafizyki do empirii. Antropologiczno-filozoficzne wizje człowieka [From metaphysics to empiricism. Philosophical anthropology on man]

• Main Author: Karol Chrobak
• Format: Article
• Language: deu
• Published: Wydawnictwo Naukowe Uniwersytetu Szczecińskiego 2014-06-01
• Series: Analiza i Egzystencja
• Subjects: man; anthropology; Scheler; Plessner; Gehlen
• Online Access: http://egzystencja.whus.pl/wp-content/uploads/2014/08/26-Chrobak-Od-metafizyki-do-empirii.-Antropologiczno-filozoficzne-wizje-cz%C5%82owieka.pdf

This essay focuses on three conceptions of man formulated within the German school of philosophical anthropology. I discuss, one by one, theories by Max Scheler, Helmuth Plessner and Arnold Gehlen. First, I emphasize the common to these theoreticians methodological assumptions consisting primarily in an opposition against the Cartesian dualism and in founding a ground for philosophical analysis in the results of scientific research. Second, I present their conceptions of man stressing at the same time dissimilarities that differ them from each other. These differences concern first and foremost their general orientation: while Scheler’s understanding of man is clearly determined by a metaphysical idea of a permanent essence of man, Plessner’s conception focuses rather on a dynamic, historical way of manifesting of their existence. Philosophy by Gehlen in turn presents a picture of man as a biological being who by their own effort, by emerging institutional reality, stabilizes their existence.