Abstract

WHEN NIETZSCHE CALLED MAN THE YET UNFINISHED ANIMAL, he echoed a phrase that had remote origins. In classical German philosophy, the idea of man as a Mängelwesen, a lacking and underdetermined being, was shared by Herder, Kant, and even Hegel and Marx, among others. It was brought to clear expression by Schiller when he wrote: “With the animal and plant, Nature did not only specify their dispositions but she also carried these out herself. With man, however, she merely provided the disposition and left its execution up to him.” What distinguishes man from animals, according to these thinkers, is the unfinished character of the gifts he is endowed with by nature; at the same time, this underdetermined quality is responsible for human openness and adaptability. To play on the myth of the birth of eros in the Symposium, one could say that for man poverty is resourcefulness.