Адам табиғаты: философиялық және антропологиялық көзқарасдар

Branch of anthropology and philosophy
philosophical anthropology

Philosophical anthropology, sometimes called anthropological philosophy, is a discipline dealing with questions of metaphysics and phenomenology of the human person. Philosophical anthropology is distinct from Philosophy of Anthropology, the study of the philosophical conceptions underlying anthropological work.

Plato identified the human essence with the soul, affirming that the material body is its prison from which the soul yearns for to be liberated because it wants to see, know and contemplate the pure hyperuranic ideas. According to the Phaedrus, after death, souls transmigrate from a body to another. Therefore Plato introduced an irreducible mind–body dualism. Aristotle defined the man as the union of two substances, the body and the soul, within the socalled theory of hylomorphism. Man is a type of animal with a specific characteristic that makes him superior than any other living entity: it is the rational soul. The soul is not something of extraneous to the body, but it is the principle that organizes, structures, gives life and form to the body's matter. The Aristotelian soul's conception is described in the threaty On the Soul from a theoretical point of view, and in the Politics and Nicomachean Ethics from a practical one. Augustine saw the human being as a perfect unity of two substances: soul and body. He was much closer in this anthropological view to Aristotle than to Plato. In his late treatise On Care to Be Had for the Dead sec. 5 (420 AD) he insisted that the body is essential part of the human person:

Augustine's favourite figure to describe body soul unity is marriage: caro tua, coniux tua – your body is your wife. Initially, the two elements were in perfect harmony. After the fall of humanity they are now experiencing dramatic combat between one another. They are two categorically different things: the body is a three dimensional object composed of the four elements, whereas the soul has no spatial dimensions. Soul is a kind of substance, participating in reason, fit for ruling the body. Augustine was not preoccupied, as Plato and Descartes were, with going too much into detail in his efforts to explain the metaphysics of the soul body union. It sufficed for him to admit that they were metaphysically distinct. To be a human is to be a composite of soul and body, and that the soul is superior to the body. The latter statement is grounded in his hierarchical classification of things into those that merely exist, those that exist and live, and those that exist, live, and have intelligence or reason. According to N. Blasquez, Augustine's dualism of substances of the body and soul doesn't stop him from seeing the unity of body and soul as a substance itself. Following Aristotle and other ancient philosophers, he defined man as a rational mortal animal – animal rationale mortale. Augustine also believed in the otherworldly Life of the soul and in the final resurrection of the flesh.

Since its development in the 1920s, in the milieu of Germany Weimar culture, philosophical anthropology has been turned into a philosophical discipline, competing with the other traditional sub disciplines of philosophy such as epistemology, ethics, metaphysics, logic, and aesthetics. It is the attempt to unify disparate ways of understanding behaviour of humans as both creatures of their social environments and creators of their own values. Although the majority of philosophers throughout the history of philosophy can be said to have a distinctive "anthropology" that undergirds their thought, philosophical anthropology itself, as a specific discipline in philosophy, arose within the later modern period as an outgrowth from developing methods in philosophy, such as phenomenology and existentialism. The former, which draws its energy from methodical reflection on human experience (first person perspective) as from the philosopher's own personal experience, naturally aided the emergence of philosophical explorations of human nature and the human condition.

Max Scheler, from 1900 until 1920 had been a follower of Husserl's phenomenology, the hegemonic form of philosophy in Germany at the time. Scheler sought to apply Husserl's phenomenological approach to different topics. From 1920 Scheler laid the foundation for philosophical anthropology as a philosophical discipline, competing with phenomenology and other philosophic disciplines. Husserl and Martin Heidegger (1889–1976), were the two most authoritative philosophers in Germany at the time, and their criticism to philosophical anthropology and Scheler have had a major impact on the discipline. Scheler defined the human being not so much as a "rational animal" (as has traditionally been the case since Aristotle) but essentially as a "loving being". He breaks down the traditional hylomorphic conception of the human person, and describes the personal being with a tripartite structure of lived body, soul, and spirit. Love and hatred are not psychological emotions, but spiritual, intentional acts of the person, which he categorises as "intentional feelings." Scheler based his philosophical anthropology in a Christian metaphysics of the spirit. Helmuth Plessner would later emancipate philosophical anthropology from Christianity. Particularly influential has been Cassirer's description of man as a symbolic animal, Some authors have argued that Wojtyla influenced philosophical anthropology. In the 20th century, other important contributors and influences to philosophical anthropology were Paul Häberlin (1878–1960), Martin Buber (1878–1965), E. R. Dodds (1893–1979), Hans Georg Gadamer (1900–2002), Eric Voegelin (1901–85), Hans Jonas (1903–93), Josef Pieper (1904–97), Hans Eduard Hengstenberg (1904–98), Jean Paul Sartre (1905–80), Joseph Maréchal (1878–1944), Maurice Merleau Ponty (1908–61), Paul Ricoeur (1913–2005), René Girard (1923–2015), Alasdair MacIntyre (1929–), Pierre Bourdieu (1930–2002), Hans Blumenberg, Jacques Derrida (1930–2004), Emerich Coreth (1919–2006), Leonardo Polo (1926–2013), and P. M. S. Hacker (1939 ).

A large focus of philosophical anthropology is also interpersonal relationships, as an attempt to unify disparate ways of understanding the behaviour of humans as both creatures of their social environments and creators of their own values. It analyses also the ontology that is in play in human relationships – of which intersubjectivity is a major theme. Intersubjectivity is the study of how two individuals, subjects, whose experiences and interpretations of the world are radically different understand and relate to each other. Recently anthropology has begun to shift towards studies of intersubjectivity and other existential/phenomenological themes. Studies of language have also gained new prominence in philosophy and sociology due to language's close ties with the question of intersubjectivity.

The academic Michael D. Jackson is another important philosophical anthropologist. His research and fieldwork concentrate on existential themes of "being in the world" (Dasein) as well as interpersonal relationships. His methodology challenges traditional anthropology due to its focus on first person experience. In his most well known book, Minima Ethnographica which focuses on intersubjectivity and interpersonal relationships, he draws upon his ethnographic fieldwork in order to explore existential theory. In his latest book, Existential Anthropology, he explores the notion of control, stating that humans anthropomorphize inanimate objects around them in order to enter into an interpersonal relationship with them. In this way humans are able to feel as if they have control over situations that they cannot control because rather than treating the object as an object, they treat it as if it is a rational being capable of understanding their feelings and language. Good examples are prayer to gods to alleviate drought or to help a sick person or cursing at a computer that has ceased to function.

A foremost Wittgensteinian, P. M. S. Hacker has recently completed a tetralogy in philosophical anthropology: "The first was Human Nature: The Categorical Framework (2007), which provided the stage set. The second was The Intellectual Powers: A Study of Human Nature (2013), which began the play with the presentation of the intellect and its courtiers. The third The Passions: A Study of Human Nature (2017), which introduced the drama of the passions and the emotions. The fourth and final volume, The Moral Powers: A Study of Human Nature (2020), turns to the moral powers and the will, to good and evil, to pleasure and happiness, to what gives meaning to our lives, and the place of death in our lives. This tetralogy constitutes a Summa Anthropologica in as much as it presents a systematic categorical overview of our thought and talk of human nature, ranging from substance, power, and causation to good and evil and the meaning of life. A sine qua non of any philosophical investigation, according to Grice, is a synopsis of the relevant logico linguistic grammar. It is surely unreasonable that each generation should have to amass afresh these grammatical norms of conceptual exclusion, implication, compatibility, and contextual presupposition, as well as tense and person anomalies and asymmetries. So via the tetralogy I have attempted to provide a compendium of usage of the pertinent categories in philosophical anthropology to assist others in their travels through these landscapes."