Guest-editor’s Note “Catching Meteorytes.” Philosophical Anthropology at the Crossroads

• Authors: Brudzińska Jagna
• Languages of publication: EN

Abstracts

EN

This issue of Dialogue and Universalism is dedicated to philosophical anthropology. It aims to give an overview of contemporary research in the field and the diverse possibilities philosophical anthropology. It carries the hope of turning attention to its potential for philosophy in future. Philosophical anthropology is at the crossroads. It can understand itself as a mere legacy of the past, or rise to meet the challenges of the present and the future. Its present state has taught us not to linger in the obvious but to dare into the unknown despite its uncertainty. This issue of Dialogue and Universalism also pursues another aim, however, thematically obeyed philosophical anthropology. The contributors of the issue intend to celebrate the achievements and intellectual profile of Stanisław Czerniak on the occasion of his 70th anniversary. Stanisław Czerniak is a philosopher, philosophy historian, author of over a hundred scientific works, mostly dedicated to philosophical anthropology and contemporary German philosophy. A renowned scholar and, since many years, professor of philosophy at the Institute for Sociology and Philosophy of the Polish Academy of Sciences, he has been very active not only in the field of philosophical research, but also in poetry. Stanisław Czerniak’s work and intellectual path are inseparably interwoven with his efforts as the editor and translator of the most important authors of classical and phenomenologically oriented philosophical anthropology, such as Max Scheler, Helmuth Plessner, Arnold Gehlen and Gernot Böhme, as well as of the representatives of Critical Theory, Max Horkheimer und Theodor Adorno, and the Frankfurt School from Jürgen Habermas to Axel Honneth. In his works he mediates between cultures and philosophical traditions. His reflection is inspired by the philosophical questions concerning the human condition as well as by urgent social issues related to the fundamental problem that is the relationship between society and individuals. This Dialogue and Universalism issue includes Czerniak’s four texts devoted to the philosophical-anthropological theories of Helmuth Plessner, Odo Marquard, Richard Rorty, Jürgen Habermas, Max Scheler, Bernhard Waldenfels, and Arnold Gehlen. The papers present the dramatic situation of the modern human condition, investigating both the limitations of the human situation, like contingency, the lack of obvious meaning to things and the vulnerability of the lived body, and its powerful performativity, solitude and desperation. They also explore the possibility of concrete love, desire, passion, generosity, and the occasional exceptionality of the human condition. The dramatic of these descriptions is not, however, built on piety or self-compassion. In Czerniak’s view apparently meaningless moments and situations of daily life grow into concrete horizons of dramatic individual choices, subjective agency, and distinct gestures, which bear a deeper symbolic sense. Thereby, human life appears interwoven by radical contingency and fractured, but nevertheless able to rise towards a sense of humanity and dignity. Czerniak upholds an understanding of philosophical anthropology that shies away from stiff definitions or the summoning of specific characteristics of the human being. In line with the current philosophical climate he avoids any form of essentialist and a priori anthropology. He rather engages in deep reflection on the anthropological categories through which we strive to describe the human being and gain a proper understanding of the dimensions of its effectiveness in a shared world. These are the categories of corporeality, compensation and mimesis, or of contingency, identity and the human being as such. The contributions of other authors of the issue are polyphonic. In different capacities— as pupil, colleague or intellectual companion—all the authors have worked with Stanisław Czerniak. In this issue of Dialogue and Universalism all they express their appreciation and intellectual kinship with him in their reflections on philosophical anthropology. Moving from Immanuel Kant, Gernot Böhme proposes the category of selfcultivation as the dynamic root of rationality, and at the same time as an anthropological characteristic of the human being. This encompassing prospect is followed by an analysis by Christoph Wulf, in which he tackles the inner plurality of modern anthropology by distinguishing five different but convergent anthropological paradigms connected by a double historicity and culturality. Paweł Dybel and Volker Schürmann explore Helmuth Plessner’s approach to philosophical anthropology. The former introduces the Lacanian discourse into the anthropological debate by referring to Jacques Lacan’s interpretation of the mirror experience as a source of individuation. Schürmann, on the other hand, reflects on Plessner’s and Ernst Cassirer’s relation to modernity taking scepticism as a guideline. The ambiguity of human perception is the core of Giorgio Derossi’s line of thought. He unfolds Maurice Merleau-Ponty’s idea of corporeal intentionality and his late notion of chair du monde. The problem of perception in its philosophical sense of sensual knowledge is also discussed by Serena Cataruzza in theoretical dialogue with Gernot Böhme’s aesthetical theory and with reference to Gestalt theory. Rafał Michalski investigates the social and institutional dimensions of human life with reference to Arnold Gehlen’s philosophy of action. Andrzej Gniazdowski’s contribution focuses on the political sense and motivation of phenomenological anthropology and on Edmund Husserl’s conflicting relationship with this discipline. Also Alice Pugliese and Saulius Geniušas draw from the phenomenological perspective to highlight two peculiar aspects of human concrete life. Pugliese brings to the fore the concept of play as developed by Eugen Fink in his phenomenological anthropology as a fundamental form of human self-understanding. The human capacity to conceive idealities, which are bound to life and experience, is illustrated by Geniušas with reference to musical works. Finally, Jagna Brudzińska unfolds the notion of intentional embodiment in the phenomenological and psychoanalytical sense, stressing the potential of genetic-transcendental phenomenology for anthropology.

• Publisher: Instytut Filozofii i Socjologii Polskiej Akademii Nauk; Fundacja Filozofia Na Rzecz Dialogu
• Journal: Dialogue and Universalism
• Year: 2018
• Issue: 4
• Pages: 5-7

Contributors

author

Brudzińska Jagna

• IFiS PAN Warszawa