While the 'image of God' continues to be a key concept in Christian anthropology, its toilsome reception bears witness to its linguistic and theological complexity. In their biblical commentaries Augustine and Luther tried to fathom the authentic meaning of Gn 1:26-27. In dialogue with the scientific world of their day, they carried out this task all through their eventful lives as they promoted the recta fides of their ecclesial communities. Interpreting the text in the light of the rule of (...) faith, their efforts were more of an exercise in systematics. The present study attempts to sketch the vitality and commitment of their undertaking, as it outlines its development. Shunning to the best of his abilities any facile solution, the Bishop of Hippo kept on looking for some more articulate understanding; the Reformer continued to treasure tradition just as he critically proposed a christocentric understanding meant to inspire his audience. (shrink)

Can altruism be reconciled with evolutionary theory? Philosopher of biology, Jonathan Birch, discusses “Hamilton’s Rule”.

This simulating book gathers five lectures that ask questions of the broadest general intellectual interest: What is religion? Do other peoples have the same emotional states as we do? Why do humans make use of body imagery? In Circumstantial Deliveries, Rodney Needham shows that the comparative study of societies may furnish the answers. Circumstantial Deliveries challenges the methodology and substance of many conventional ideas about human nature and calls for more radical and comparative analyses. For instance, the author discredits the (...) notion that to primitive peoples the colors red, white, and black symbolize blood, semen, and feces, respectively, arguing that an extensive comparative study of primitive societies discovered no such relationship. These essays sound a common theme: "If a deeper appreciation of the value of life can be had from reading Crime and Punishment, or if a more acute assessment of the springs of action can be acquired from Hamlet, then in principle it should be conceded that like benefits may be derived from a sympathetic observation of other men engaged in their daily affairs.". (shrink)

This book suggests a bold comparative approach to broad cultural differences between Africa and Melanesia. Its theme is personhood, understood in terms of what anthropologists call embodiment. These concepts are applied to questions ranging from the meanings of spirit possession, to the logics of witchcraft and kinship relations, the use of rituals in healing, and even the impact of capitalism. Questioning common assumptions about the huge differences among these discrete areas, the contributions document surprising continuities.

Most scholars think not. But in this pioneering book, John H. Zammito challenges that view by revealing a precritical Kant who was immensely more influential than the one philosophers think they know.

This article highlights the difficulty of creating a code of ethics in anthropology, particularly one that appropriately addresses the nuanced nature of the military and the anthropologists who con...

This book is a volume in the Penn Press Anniversary Collection. To mark its 125th anniversary in 2015, the University of Pennsylvania Press rereleased more than 1,100 titles from Penn Press's distinguished backlist from 1899-1999 that had fallen out of print. Spanning an entire century, the Anniversary Collection offers peer-reviewed scholarship in a wide range of subject areas.

Purpose. The research is aimed at understanding the philosophical and journalistic heritage of M. Scheler during 1914-1919. "The philosophy of war" is regarded as the middle link between the phenomenological and anthropological stages of its philosophical evolution. The theoretical and methodological basis of the study is the philosophical legacy of Max Scheler, as well as the work of domestic and Western researchers devoted to this issue. Problems of Weltkriegsphilosophie become comprehensible based on the historical, logical and comparative principles of historical (...) and philosophical analysis, which allowed to theoretically reconstruct the cultural and historical context, philosophical sources and ideological intentions of the German philosopher. Originality. For the first time in domestic historical and philosophical thought, it proved that the works by Max Scheler of the First World War played an outstanding role in the formation of philosophical anthropology as a separate philosophical trend. Conclusions. The basis of the Weltkriegsphilosophie by Max Scheler is the philosophical comprehension of the war in which the thinker tries to see the high sacral meaning, where the sacrifices that the nation brings to the altar of victory are not in vain: the nation is rallying this sacrifice, its readiness for it. According to Scheler, war is the most effective means of forming the so-called "love communities", to which he refers combat brotherhood, family and nation as a "collective personality", which recognizes itself through war. The philosopher is disappointed to some part with militaristic enthusiasm in his later military journalistic works and calls for a spiritual and moral renewal of Europe, fed from Christian roots. At the heart of this renewal should be the principle of personal solidarity, based on the Christian idea of love. However, Catholic universalism is an insufficient means for the formation of a "love community" and a new man who is co-creator of God that constitutes the main core of the philosophical anthropology of Max Scheler, which emerges in the 20s of the twentieth century. Based on this, the article affirms the existence in Sheler’s works of an intermediate stage between his phenomenology and philosophical anthropology – Weltkriegsphilosophie. (shrink)

In this article I present an original interpretation of Roy Bhaskar’s project in Dialectic: The Pulse of Freedom. His major move is to separate an ontological dialectic from a critical dialectic, which in Hegel are laminated together. The ontological dialectic, which in Hegel is the self-unfolding of spirit, becomes a realist and relational philosophical anthropology. The critical dialectic, which in Hegel is confined to retracing the steps of spirit, now becomes an active force, dialectical critique, which interposes into the (...) ontological dialectic at the ‘fourth dimension’ of a naturalistically reconfigured account of relational human nature, agency. This account allows Bhaskar to explain and vindicate the crucial role social criticism must play in any realistic project of self-emancipation, and to create a space that didn’t exist in Hegel for an open-ended concrete utopianism. Freedom is thus the actualization of human nature, but is not automatic: the relation of human nature to freedom is mediated historically through dialectical critique, which, informed by concrete utopianism, can have emancipatory power. Content Type Journal Article Category Article Pages 13-44 Authors Craig Reeves, Brunel University Journal Journal of Critical Realism Online ISSN 1572-5138 Print ISSN 1476-7430 Journal Volume Volume 12 Journal Issue Volume 12, Number 1 / 2013. (shrink)

The article is dedicated to the study of the relationship between the diversity of the world of knowledge and the world of man. The role of knowledge in human life is shown, the mechanism of its influence on the human world is revealed, the diversity of knowledge in the context of plurality of language images is revealed, the relationship of such philosophical disciplines as epistemology and philosophical anthropology, which deal with the problems of knowledge and man, respectively, is clarified. (...) It is shown that сurrently, scientists are concerned about knowledge that corresponds to all the canons of classical rationality and yet turns out to be deeply irrational in its moral indifference regarding its use. It is substantiated that the times of classical rationalist euphoria from the success of science are over and it is time to reject the enlightenment illusions about science as a ‘panacea’ for all social ills. The discrimination of pre- and out-scientific knowledge does not meet the modern requirements of the new epistemology. Some anthropological and humanistic parameters of cognition are highlighted, and an attempt is made to offer a certain anthropological view of the world as a whole. It is shown that the turn from epistemology to ontology, which took place in the philosophical thought of the twentieth century, does not mean that epistemology has exhausted the possibilities of its development and should withdraw from the historical arena or relegated to the periphery of philosophical research. Moreover, nowadays we are increasingly talking about a cognitive or epistemological turn in philosophy. Classical epistemology is being replaced by various variants of modern non-classical epistemology, such as the cognitive approach, various versions of modern philosophy and sociology of science and anthropology of cognition, evolutionary and social epistemology, etc. The leading feature that defines and unites these areas of non-classical epistemologies is their anthropologisation, which testifies to the inextricable connection of such philosophical disciplines as epistemology and philosophical anthropology. (shrink)

The field of psychiatry has long struggled with developing models of practice; most underemphasize the interpersonal aspects of clinical practice. This essay is unique in putting intersubjectivity front and centre. It is an attempt to provide a clinical method to re-establish the fragile dialogue of the soul with oneself and with others.

IN HIS CRITICAL METAPHYSICS OF MORALS, Kant insists on keeping the purely rational concepts, laws, and principles of moral philosophy strictly separate from the empirical elements of practical anthropology. This is not to say that he treats the a priori part of the doctrine of morals in isolation from empirical psychological concepts and observations about the special nature of human beings. He allows that such elements are necessarily brought into the formulation of the system of pure morality. Still, he (...) maintains that their integration with this system cannot detract from the purity of the highest principles and fundamental a priori concepts of morality themselves, or cast any doubt on the a priori origin of all practical laws in pure reason alone. Within the system of the metaphysics of morals, the pure part of moral philosophy must therefore be logically dissociated from any particular theory of human nature that includes the principles of a specifically human moral psychology. This measure is mandatory if moral philosophy is not to rely on species-dependent presuppositions when, on the basis of its pure part, it plays its distinctive legislative role for humans as rational beings. As Kant states in the Grundlegung zur Metaphysik der Sitten of 1785, “all moral philosophy rests wholly upon its pure part, and, when applied to the human being, it borrows not the least thing from the knowledge of that being, but rather gives to the human being, as a rational being, laws a priori.” Accordingly, the foundational task of the metaphysical theory of morals must be to investigate the “ideas and the principles of a possible pure will, and not the actions and conditions of human willing [Wollen] as such, which for the most part are drawn from psychology.”. (shrink)

Late nineteenth-century German anthropology had to compete for intellectual legitimacy with the established academic humanities (Geisteswissenschaften), above all history. Whereas humanists interpreted literary documents to create narratives about great civilizations, anthropologists represented and viewed objects, such as skulls or artifacts, to create what they regarded as natural scientific knowledge about so-called 'natural peoples'-colonized societies of Africa, the Pacific, and the Americas. Anthropologists thus invoked a venerable tradition that presented looking at objects as a more certain source of knowledge than (...) reading texts. Visual representations, especially of the colonized, not only allowed anthropologists allegedly objective insight into humanity but also put them in direct contact with popular audiences of ethnographic spectacles, exotic photography, and even pornographic images. Anthropologists thus sought to create a peculiar kind of anthropological vision that both differentiated them from humanists as 'objective' natural scientists but also distinguished them from the leering 'Schaulust' that they believed characterized popular consumption of exotic images. To do so they invented technologies of visual representation that eschewed the subject position figured by linear perspective. These novel optics dispensed with the leering subject posited by popular spectacles and the knowing subject posited by humanism and created an anti-humanist form of knowledge. (shrink)

Philosophical anthropology is the philosophical study of the conditions of human existence and the issues that confront people in the conduct of their everyday lives. This book surveys, from a contemplative, philosophical point of view, a wide variety of human-interest issues, including happiness, luck, aging, the meaning of life, optimism and pessimism, morality, and faith and belief. The author's deliberations blend historical, theoretical, and personal perspectives into philosophical appreciation of the human condition. The philosophers of Greek antiquity took philosophy (...) to center around just this issue of intelligent living - of determining the nature of life under the guidance of reason. Such a perspective puts philosophical agenda - a position it contested with the philosophy of nature throughout classical antiquity. In more recent times, however, its prominence has declined - no doubt, the author suggests, because modern man's achievements have been more notable in the natural than in the human science. (shrink)

Textures of the Ordinary shows how anthropology finds a companionship with philosophy in the exploration of everyday life. Based on two decades of ethnographic work among low-income urban families in India, Das shows how the notion of texture aligns ethnography with the anthropological tone in Wittgenstein and Cavell, as well as in literary texts. The book shows different routes of return to the everyday as it is corroded not only by catastrophic events but also by repetitive and routine violence (...) within everyday life itself. As an alternative to normative ethics, this book develops ordinary ethics as attentiveness to the other and as the ability of small acts of care to stand up to horrific violence. Textures of the Ordinary offers a model of thinking in which concepts and experience are shown to be mutually vulnerable. The book is an intellectually intimate invitation into the ordinary, that which is most simple yet most difficult to perceive in our lives. (shrink)

In this article, I examine the relation between phenomenology and anthropology by placing Foucault's first published piece, “Introduction to Binswanger's Dream and Existence“ in dialectical tension with The Order of Things. I argue that the early work, which so far hasn't received much critical attention, is of particular interest because, whereas OT is notoriously critical of anthropological confusions in general, and of “Man” as an empirico‐transcendental double in particular, IB views “existential anthropology” as a unique opportunity to establish (...) a new and fruitful relation between transcendental forms and empirical contents. This is because IB focuses on a specific object, “Menschsein”, which is neither the transcendental subject nor an empirical being. Thus for the young Foucault, existential anthropology occupies a fertile methodological middle ground between transcendental approaches and empirical forms of analysis. I first interpret anthropology in the light of phenomenology and defend the view that Menschsein is neither a transcendental structure nor a concrete particular, but the instantiation of the first in the second. I argue that for anthropology to yield the full theoretical benefits Foucault claims for it, the particular cases of Menschsein examined in existential analysis have to be regarded as exemplary. I then read phenomenology back in the light of anthropology and examine how, for Foucault, the analysis of Menschsein in dreams benefits fundamental ontology by affording us a clearer view of some of the main existentiale than the focus on everyday waking experience in Being and Time. Finally, I turn to the limits and difficulties of this early position and my reading of it, and to their consequences for Foucault's later view. (shrink)

Deep Brain Stimulation (DBS) represents a key area of neuromodulation that has gained wide adoption for the treatment of neurological and experimental testing for psychiatric disorders. It is associated with specific therapeutic effects based on the precision of an evolving mechanistic neuroscientific understanding. At the same time, there are obstacles to achieving symptom relief because of the incompleteness of such an understanding. These obstacles are at least in part based on the complexity of neuropsychiatric disorders and the incompleteness of DBS (...) devices to represent prosthetics that modulate the breadth of pathological processes implicated in these disorders. Neuroprostheses, such as an implanted DBS system, can have vast effects on subjects in addition to the specific neuropsychiatric changes they are intended to produce. These effects largely represent blind spots in the current debate on neuromodulation. Anthropological accounts can illustrate the broad existential dimensions of patients’ illness and responses to neural implants. In combination with current neuroscientific understanding, neuropsychiatric anthropology may illuminate the possibilities and limits of neurodevices as technical “world enablers”. (shrink)

In the advertising discourse of human genetic database projects, of genetic ancestry tracing companies, and in popular books on anthropological genetics, what I refer to as the anthropological gene and genome appear as documents of human history, by far surpassing the written record and oral history in scope and accuracy as archives of our past. How did macromolecules become "documents of human evolutionary history"? Historically, molecular anthropology, a term introduced by Emile Zuckerkandl in 1962 to characterize the study of (...) primate phylogeny and human evolution on the molecular level, asserted its claim to the privilege of interpretation regarding hominoid, hominid, and human phylogeny and evolution vis-à-vis other historical sciences such as evolutionary biology, physical anthropology, and paleoanthropology. This process will be discussed on the basis of three key conferences on primate classification and evolution that brought together exponents of the respective fields and that were held in approximately ten-years intervals between the early 1960s and the 1980s. I show how the anthropological gene and genome gained their status as the most fundamental, clean, and direct records of historical information, and how the prioritizing of these epistemic objects was part of a complex involving the objectivity of numbers, logic, and mathematics, the objectivity of machines and instruments, and the objectivity seen to reside in the epistemic objects themselves. (shrink)

Axel Honneth, The Struggle for Recognition: The Moral Grammer of Social Conflicts (reviewed by Christopher Zurn).

This book argues for the importance of cosmopolitanism as a theory of human being, as a methodology for social science, and as a moral and political program.

I examine the ways in which the theological and philosophical debate surrounding transhumanism might profit by a detailed engagement with contemporary biology, in particular with the mainline accounts of species and speciation. After a short introduction, I provide a very brief primer on species concepts and speciation in contemporary biological taxonomy. Then in a third section I draw out some implications for the prospects of our being able intentionally to intervene in human evolution for the production of new species out (...) of Homo sapiens. In a fourth section Account of Human Nature? And Where Does This Leave Transhumanism?”) I bring in the debate over the proper relationship between biological and theological conceptions of human nature, laying out the major options available and considering their possible implications for our understanding of transhumanism. In a fifth section several concrete examples are drawn out pertaining to particular subdisciplines within theology. I conclude by briefly laying out some suggestions for future work, focusing on tasks that theologians specifically ought to pursue. (shrink)

Previous chapter Rhuthmology as Poetics and Historical Anthropology One of the unpublished sketches of The Birth of the Tragedy entitled The Dionysian Conception of the World ends up with a quite interesting theory of language, which anticipates some important features of discourse and poem theory developed in the second half of the 20th century. In order to accurately describe the Dionysian forms of expression, Nietzsche feels - Sur le concept de rythme – Nouvel article.

"Mr. Bloch has attempted to establish what he calls a 'literary anthropology.' The project is important and ambitious. It seems to me that Mr. Bloch has completely achieved this ambition." –Michel Foucault "Bloch's Study is a genuinely interdisciplinary one, bringing together elements of history, ethnology, philology, philosophy, economics and literature, with the undoubted ambition of generating a new synthesis which will enable us to read the Middle Ages in a different light. Stated simply, and in terms which do justice (...) neither to the density nor the subtlety of his argument, Bloch's thesis is this: that medieval society perceived itself in terms of a vertical mode of descent from origins. This model is articulated etymologically in medieval theories of grammar and language, and is consequently reflected in historical and theological writings; it is also latent in the genealogical structure of the aristocratic family as it began to be organized in France in the twelfth century, and is made manifest in such systems of signs as heraldry and the adoption of patronymns.... It is an ingenious and compelling synthesis which no medievalist, even on this side of the Atlantic, can afford to ignore." –Nicholas Mann, Times Literary Supplement. (shrink)