Publication Details

Abstract

The study deals with the genealogy of the meaning of anthropology. We encounter it first in Aristotle’s negative definition of anthropology as a “narrative about man” with features of a gossip. Second time we encounter it in Kant’s dual definition of anthropology. From a pragmatic point of view he perceives it as a normative narrative about people from the position of a participant and from the perspective of the primacy of the “life-world”. The third instance is its secular status of a human as the “as yet undetermined animal” (Nietzsche), who is not “just” an animal but neither is he God. The fourth instance is the status of anthropology as a practical knowledge of oneself in relation to oneself (culture) in the synthesis of knowledge of human sciences (Scheler, Gehlen, Plessner). Finally, its current self-understanding is the result of the development of the human rights agenda after 1945 with regard to “the image of man” with “human dignity.”