Abstract

This paper analyzes Helmuth Plessner’s concept of humanity and humanism and its relation to the tradition of European humanistic thought. It tries to demonstrate that Plessner’s idea of humanism is based on his own concept of human nature as an excentric one. As an essential consequence he understands humanism neither in a confuse or vague manner as the pursuit for tolerance and human dignity nor as the affirmation of specific philosophical contents, but as a certain anthropologically grounded attitude or ethos, which is characteristic for all types of European humanism.