the anthropological horizon: max scheler, arnold gehlen and the idea of a philosophical anthropology

8/12/2019 THE ANTHROPOLOGICAL HORIZON: MAX SCHELER, ARNOLD GEHLEN AND THE IDEA OF A PHILOSOPHICAL ANTHRO

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THE NTHROPOLOGIC L HORIZON:M X SCHELER RNOLD GEHLEN ND THE IDEA

OF PHILOSOPHICAL NTHROPOLOGY

Anthropology today . . i s not only the name of a d i s c i -p l ine ; the term denotes a fundamental tendency charact e r i s t i c of the present

posi t ionof man with

tohimself and to a l l t h a t i s . According to t h i s tendency,a, th ing i s understood when i t rece ives an anthro-pologica l explana t ion . Today, anthropology not onlyseeks the t r u t h concerning man but a l so claims to havethe power of deciding the meaning of t r u t h as such. Noother epoch has accumulated so grea t and so var ied as to re of knowledge concerning man as the present one.No other epoch has succeeded in present ing i t s knowledgeof man so fo rc ib ly and so cap t iva t ing ly as ours , and noother has succeeded in making t h i s knowledge so quickly

and so eas i ly access ib l e . But a l s o , no epoch i s l e s ssure of i t s knowledge of what man i s than the presentone. In no other epoch has man appeared so myster iousas in ours.

The words are those of Martin Heidegger: the source a book l f i r s tpublished in 1929 and dedicated to the memory of the philosopherMax Scheler,who had died the year before.

But what i s Heidegger t a lk ing about? Of anthropology to besu re , but ce r t a in ly not as i t i s commonly conceived in Bri ta in ,

n e a r l i e r vers ion of t h i s paper was presented a t the seminarModern Conservatisms , organised by Anna Bramwell and Michael

Hurst , on 11 June 1985, a t Tr in i ty College, Oxford.

1 Martin Heidegger, ant and the Problem o Metaphysics t r a n s l .J . S . C h u r c h i l l ) , Bloomington: Indiana Universi ty Press 1962, p.216.

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170 David J Levy

where anthropology i s i d e n t i f i e d , , with the d i sc ip l ineof soc ia l and cu l tu ra l anthropology and, popularly, with the studyof e x o t i c , non-Western, soc ie t i e s . The c lue to Heidegger s usagel i e s in the dedica t ion of t he book to Scheler. For Scheler i s com-

regarded as the founder of the t r a d i t i o n of what came, inCent ra l Europe between the wars, to be ca l led phi losophica l an thropology . y puropse in t h i s paper i s to introduce some of thecentra l , ideas and problems of t h i s t r a d i t i o n , which has ,thus f a r , rece ived l i t t l e a t t en t ion in

Scheler i s the seminal of modern phi losophica l anthro-pology, whose l a t e r works, the posthumouslyessay Die SteZZung des Menschenim Kosmos,2 provide a recurr ingpoin t of re ference for h i s successors . One of the aims of t h i spaper must therefore be to e luc ida t e what Scheler, h i s fol lowersand c r i t i c s , mean by phi losophica l anthropology , as wel l as toske tch something of the content of h is work and of the ways inwhich his was taken up and, more of ten than not , t r a n s -formed in the years a f t e r h i s death. The l a t t e r top ic i s v a s t ,and for prac t i ca l reasons I s h a l l l a rge ly confine my discuss ion ofpos t -Scheler ian phi losophica l anthropology to the work of ArnoldGehlen, especia l ly his i n f l u e n t i a l t r e a t i s e Der Mensch: seineNaturund seine SteZZung in der WeZt 3

The jux tapos i t ion of Gehlen s name to t h a t of Scheler i s aptfo r many reasons. His to r i ca l ly speaking, Der Mensch i s a c l a s s i c

in the pos t -Scheler ian t r a d i t i o n . I t has run through many edi t ionssince i t was f i r s t published in 1940; and i t i s f requent ly r e f e r -red t o , not l e a s t r a d i c a l wri t e r s , such as Habermas andthe theo logian Moltmann, who recognise the importance of awork whose implicat ions fo r soc i e ty f ind unsympathetic andwhose au thor s p o l i t i c a l views they with understandableSUsplclon. For Gehlen, a f igure in German sociology u n t i lhis death in 1976, es t ab l i shed h i s academic r epu ta t ion under theThird Reich, and in post-war years became t he l ead ing t h e o r i s t ofa resurgent German conservat ism. I f Habermas, the pre-eminent r e

of the younger genera t ion of the Frankfurt School ,

and Moltmann, the fount of much of what i s now termed l i b e r a t i o nt heo logy , take Der Mensch?o se r ious ly, so , I , should we.But t he re i s more than h i s t o r i c a l importance in the examin

at ion of the r e l a t ionsh ip between Scheler s work and Gehlen s .Not only did the twelve years t h a t elapsed between the

Bern: Francke 1927; t r ans l a t ed as Man s Place in NatureHans Meyerhoff, Boston: Beacon Press 1958). In th i s

essay I have used Frank Dunlop s as ye t unpublished t r ans la t ionwhich renders the t i t l e mare accura te ly as 2he Place o f Man in theCosmos, from which a l l are taken. I wish t o acknowledge

y thanks for his permission t o use t h i s t r ans la t ion and for thebenef i t I hqve from his knowledge of both Scheler fs andGehlen s works. His t r ans la t ion of Gehlen s essay Hu-man Nature and I n s t i tu t i o n s w i l l appear in The SaZisbury Review(Vol. V no.2, January 1986).

3 Ber l in 1940; a t r ans la t ion of t h i s work wi l l be published byColumbia Press in the course of 1986.


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The Anthropological Horizon 171

of Sche le r s Die Stellung and Gehelen s Der Mensch see the r i s e topower of a in which the of what i s and what i s nota f u l l y human became a mat ter of l i f e and death for mil l ions ;but Gehlen s se lec t ive development of Sche le r s themes amounts toa thorough-going matura l iza t ion of the older t h inke r s metaphysicaland u l t ima te ly v i s ion of man s nature and condi t ion .

development i s s igna l l ed in t he replacement of Sche le r s termKosmos by the more sober-sounding Welt t o r e f e r t o the context ofman s exis tence in the t i t l e of Gehlen s book. Examination of theconsequences of t h i s process of na tu ra l i za t ion - Gehlen s replace-ment of an metaphysical frame of re ference with one t ha ti s se l f -consc ious ly n a t u r a l - s c i e n t i f i c - brings to some oft he most important problems hidden in the depths of Kant s decep-t i v e l y simple : What i s Man?

In view of the prospects up fo r the human r ace by de-velopments in engineering these problems are of grea t 4p r a c t i c a l importance, qu i t e apa r t from t h e i r t heore t i ca l i n t e r e s t .Assumptions about human nature exerc ise an inf luence on our dec i sions even - espec ia l ly - when they are not throughand made e x p l i c i t . The exp l i ca t ion of the nature of man, i t s cons t i t u e n t f ea tu re s and a t t endan t consequences, i s something t h a tScheler and h i s successors t r i e d to Whatever we th ink oft h e i r answers, the quest ions they asked are ones we a t our

In h i s essay Man and His to ry , Scheler remarks, as Heideggerand so many others were to do, on t he paradox t h a t in an age inwhich h i s t o r i c a l and s tudies have addedso much to our empirical knowledge of men, the essence of what i ti s to be a Man escapes us in a way t h a t i t has never seemed to dobefore. Ours i s an age of competing Weltanschauungen each ofwhich has , a t i t s cen t re , a par t i cu la r of man. At such at ime the cons t ruc t ion of a philosophical anthropology i s the most

meansproblem of y phi losophica l anthropology he

a basic science which i nves t iga te s the essence and essen-

t i a l cons t i tu t ion of man, h i s to the realmsof nature (organic , as well as tothe source of a l l , man s or ig in aswell as h i s psychic and or ig ins inthe world, the forces and powers which move man and whichhe moves, the fundamental t rends and laws of h i spsychic, c u l t u r a l and soc ia l evolut ion along with t h e i ressen t i a l capab i l i t i e s and r e a l i t i e s . 5

4 See, e . g . Hans Jonas s essays Phi losophica l R ef lec t ions on Ex -perimenting with Human and Biologica l Engineering: A Pre-v iew , both in h is Essays: Fram Ancient Creed to Technological Man Univ. of Press 1974, and h i s more r ecen t TheImperative Responsibility: In Search o f an Ethics for the Tech-nological Age idem., 1984. 5

Scheler, o p . c i t . in PhilosophicalPerspectives ( t r a n s l . O.A. Haac) , Boston: Beacon Press 1958, p.65.


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172 David J Levy

Scheler intended t o r e a l i z e t h i s c h a r a c t e r i s t i c a l l y ambitiousprojec t in two complementary t r e a t i s e s devoted, respect ive ly, tophi losophica l anthropology and to metaphysics. Neither was everwri t ten . wo years a f t e r Man and His tory was published Schelerwas dead, leaving behind a sketch of what might have been in ThePlace o f Man in the Cosmos Though only an overview of the themesto be developed in the two unwrit ten books, Die tellung (as Isha l l henceforth re fe r to i t ) r e f l e c t s Sche le r s l i fe long concernwith the inseparable quest ions: What i s man? and What i s man splace in the nature of th ings? The r e s u l t i s a dense but b r i l l -i an t ly suggest ive essay which more than adequately i l l u s t r a t e s thed u a l i s t i c theory of human nature - man as both a par t i cu la r formof l i f e and a uniquely - which i s the hallmark ofh i s anthropology. This i s not the absolute dualism of a Descartes,whose model of man, as immaterial mind se t somehow in a mechanisti ca l ly conceived body, r e s u l t s in the ul t imate ly u n i n t e l l i g i b l emodel of the ghost in the machine . Scheler s i s aqual i f ied dualism which bridges the gap between body and soul - agap which emerges in pure philosophical meditat ion but which i squi te unknown in man s experience of himself as a l i v ing being.The mystery of the or ig ins of what man experiences as the s p i r i t u a laspect of h i s being s t i l l remains in Scheler s theory - i t i s acen t ra l topic of his metaphysics - but the gu l f tha t yawns betweena purely s p i r i t u a l l y conceived mind and a mechanist ical ly conceiv

ed, mater ia l body in the Car tes ian view ofman

i s considerably reduced by the a t t en t ion Scheler pays to the unique charac te r i s t i c sof l iv ing beings. While Descar tes dualism knows only immaterialsoul and mater ia l body, defined as extension in space andcharac ter i sed as mechanist ical ly ordered, Scheler se t s thestudy of man within the context of an examination of organic nature- a realm of being whose uniqueness Descartes denies. Since ther e s u l t of t h i s denia l i s to make man an unin te l l ig ib le compoundand to c lass animals as unthinking, unfeel ing machines, Sche le r sphilosophy of the organism, which s e t s the agenda for his successors as well , deserves our a t t en t ion no less than h i s attempt to

vindica te the r e a l i t y of s p i r i t in a world of otherwise sc ien ti f i c a l l y measurable fac t s .The t hes i s t h a t man s form of l i f e i s d i s t i n c t within the

sphere of nature i s corroborated by evidence drawn from the l i f esciences, from biology and from genetic and comparative psychology.The argument t h a t t h i s i s not a l l there i s to man - t h a t in addi -t ion to a species of l iv ing organism man i s a l so the embodi-ment of s p i r i t in the world i s developed in two ways. Negative ly, Scheler t r i e s to show tha t the ca tegor ies we can derivefrom the idea and experience of organic nature are inadequate toexplain c ruc ia l aspects of human existence. Pos i t ive ly, he r e f e r s

to the source of s p i r i t as a cons t i tu t ive f ac to r of man s being toan admittedly speculat ive metaphysics, r e l a t ed to but a l so d i f f e r -ent from the metaphysical systems of Spinoza and Hegel - accordingto which the process of r e a l i t y as a whole, and of man s being asan enduring moment in t h i s process, must be understood in terms ofthe in terpenet ra t ion of two or ig ina l ly d i s t i n c t pr inc ip les , s p i r i t


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he nthropological Horizon 73

and dr ive . With the emergence of man as a unique form of l i f e ,driven l i ke other species organic compulsions but not motivated

them a lone , , - powerless u n t i l incarna te in the human- enters the world as a formative f ac to r.

Ours i s ne i the r a t ime nor a place which t akes kindly to t h i sso r t of metaphysical specula t ion ; but Scheler thought i t essen t i a lto man s of himself and the cosmos he i nhab i t s . Gehlen,for one, found t h i s aspect of Sche le r s work both unacceptable inand unnecessary to a c r i t i c a l l y t enable philosophical anthropology.In t h i s , a t l e a s t , a Br i t i sh audience i s l i ke ly to share Gehlen sview. o t ha t audience, I can only say be p a t i e n t . The proofof t h i s par t i cu la r pudding i s in the ea t ing; and the metaphysicalingredien t i s an essen t i a l p a r t of the rec ipe . I t s value i s notto be judged taking a spoonful of pure, Scheler ian metaphysicson i t s own, but noting what i t cont r ibutes to the f i n a l product

o those tough-minded souls who consider themselves a l l e rg i c tot h a t smacks of u n s c i e n t i f i c , metaphysical specula t ion ,

I plead only t h a t withhold judgement u n t i l can compareSche le r s anthropology with Geheln s r i v a l product from which metaphysics has been as f a r as poss ib le removed. After a l l , how manypeople who purport to de tes t the t a s t e of f ind a saladdressed without i t myster iously incomplete?

At a l l events , even in the scheme of Sche le r s essay, themetaphysical component comes not a t the beginning but towards theend. The opening sec t ions of Die Stel lung are concerned withunderstanding man s as a d i s t i n c t form of l i f e . Schelerdevelops a typology of l i f e farms, p lan t , animal , man - a morphology compatible with a s c i e n t i f i c , n a t u r a l i s t i c understandingof human evolut ion. Let us r e c a l l t h a t the tasks of morphologyand of natura l h i s to ry are ana ly t i ca l ly d i s t i n c t . While Darwinianevolut ionary theory may expla in how the diverse types of l i v ing

come i n to exis tence , the business of morphology, the theoryof farms, i s to e luc ida te what fea tures make each genus and spec iesi t s e l f and no other. Sociobiology, as prac t i sed E.O. Wilsonand h i s fo l lowers , tends to disso lve morphology in evolu t ionary

theory. This, I be l i eve , l eads inevi tab ly to an underest imationof the d i s t inc t iveness of l i f e forms, including t h a t of man. Therecan , in the l a s t r e s o r t , be no incompat ib i l i ty between morphologi-ca l descr ip t ion of the l i f e forms, c h a r a c t e r i s t i c s andmodes of exis tence , of d i ffe ren t spec ies , and a na tu ra l h i s t o r i c a ltheory which hypothe t ica l ly explains t h e i r or ig ins . However, thereduc t ion of morphology to being a der iva t ive of na tu ra l h i s to ryr e s u l t s not only in the dogmatism of par t i cu la r s c i e n t i f i ctheses by making a n a t u r a l i s t i c a l l y conceived evolut ionarytheory the unquest ionable premise which determines a p r i o r i whatcan ex i s t - bu t , in the case of man in p a r t i c u l a r, l eads to f a r -

fe tched at tempts to i den t i fy unique fea tures of existence ( r e l ig ionand a r t , for instance) with aspec ts of the l i ves of other animals .I t i s one of the v i r tues of the philosophical an th ropo log ica l t r adi t i o n t ha t i t i s both wil l ing t o ground the philosophy of man ina philosophy of nature , and able t o recognise t h a t , even where

between human and non-human l i f e e x i s t , the fea tures inquest ion must be understood in the context of qua l i t a t ive ly d i s -


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he nthropoZogica Z Horizon 175

organic l i f e - f i r s t plant l i f e with i t s und i ff e ren t i a t ed d r i v e stowards n u t r i t i o n and reproduct ion , and then animal l i f e in i t sincreas ingly canplex farms, from amoeba t o chimpanzee - i s to reachthe poin t a t which the dis t inc t ion of man wi l l begin to appear.Die t e Z Z u n g ~indeed, l i f e as a l ec tu re e n t i t l e d The UniquePlace of Man delivered in Darmstadt in 1927 - and t h a t t i t l e expresses as well as any what Scheler aimed to es tab l i sh .

I s t he re not , however, something cont radic tory i n r e fe r r ingto both broad s t rokes and ca re fu l s t e p s in cha rac t e r i z ingSche le r s t ex t ? Given the of Sche le r s argument, I thinknot . The empir ica l with which he i l l u s t r a t e s his thes i sare few but t e l l i n g . The argument moves l og ica l ly from one s tepto the next: f i r s t the e f f o r t to def ine man s l i f e formas i t emerges the background of the var ious , success ive lymore complex modes of organic exis tence ; then the at tempt to showt ha t man s r e a l dis t inc t ion i s something more than the d i s t i n c t i v e -ness of one type of arganism among others ; and f i n a l l y the endeav-our to make t h i s mark of ontological d i s t i n c t i o n inthe context of an all-enccmpassing metaphysics.

Scheler was under no i l l u s i o n t ha t h i s t a sk was an easy one.The human and the na tu ra l sc iences have t o ld us so much about thevar i e ty of human s o c i e t i e s , about the complexity o the na tu ra luniverse , and , and about the r e l a t ionsh ips ofdependence and interdependence between one aspect of the world andanother, t h a t the very idea of t a lk ing about man s in thecosmos may seem presumptuous. I s man in fac t definable? Hashe any i d e n t i f i a b l e , onto logica l ly s e t t l e d p lace in the overa l lscheme of things? nd what, in heaven or ear th , i s t he cosmos ?Can the phi losophica l an thropologis t do anything mare than add yetanother world view to the catalogue of those already ava i l ab leon the i n t e l l e c t u a l and ideologica l market? I f t ha t i s a l l hewants to do, the t ask i s easy enough, though whether w i l lat tend to what he says i s another mat ter. But Scheler moreambitious than t h a t . There i s indeed a d i s t i n c t metaphysical andr e l ig ious world view in h i s t e x t and a very conten t ious one too.But Die SteZZung i s much more than a piece of pleading fora par t i cu la r outlook on l i f e . Scheler s to marshal l cor-robora t ive , s c i e n t i f i c evidence in the context of a i l lumina t ing argument i s remarkable; and, as Gehlen was to prove, onedid not have to accept Scheler s conclusions in order t o l ea rnfrom the s teps by which he reached them. One of the marks ofGehlen s response to Sche le r s work i s prec i se ly the way in whichhe was able to l ea rn from the anthropology while r e j ec t ing themetaphysics in which i t was implicated.

The argument of Die SteZZung i s a coherent t h e s i s butthe elements which make i t up a l so have a completeness and coher

ence of t h e i r own. That i s why, while t he re a re no Scheler ians asthere a r e , for , Marxists and Feudians, the work could provide a prime poin t of re ference for some of modern Europe s mostprominent exponents of and psychological theory as wellas se t t ing the agenda for successors in the f i e l d of phi losophica l


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76 avid J levy

anthropology. ie Ste l lung provides not a doct r ine of l i f e but aframework, one might almost say a disp lay case , fo r the i ssuescruc ia l to understanding man's nature and condit ion.

Within the realm of animal l i f e , Scheler dis t inguishes threelevels of psychic process , each of which i s a spec i f i ca t ion of thegenera l and fundamental d r i v e . Gefahlsdrang cha rac te ri s t i c of a l l organisms and found al ready, in und i ff e ren ti a t ed form,in the unconscious movement of p lan t s i n t o the ground and t o -ward' the l igh t . 8 Such dr ives , essen t i a l to sustenance, and r e -product ion, are the defining mark of organic being. The form ofdr ive , unconscious and, as i t were, automatic , found i n p l an t l i f epers i s t s in animal and human l i f e ( fo r example, in the d iges t ivesystem), but as we t u rn to the level of animal l i f e , i t i s supplemented by more speci f ic forms of psychic a c t i v i t y - by i n s t i n c t ,by associa t ive memory and by in te l l igence . Each of these r ep resents an advance in complexity and s p e c i f i c i t y within the organism;and while the f i r s t , i n s t i n c t , i s fcund even in the s imples t an imal, t he o the r s , a s soc ia t ive memory ( i . e . condit ioned ref lexes andthe a b i l i t y to learn from experience) and in te l l igence (whichScheler def ines as ' a sudden burs t of i n s igh t in to a canplex offac t and value within the environment ' ) , appear only as we encount e r t he higher forms of animal l i f e .

Ins t inc t ive behaviour fol lws a f ixed , unal terable pat tern andrepresents a response to t yp ica l ly recurr ing events in the l i f e of

a spec ies . The animal does not learn ins t inc tua l behaviour byt r i a l and error. I t i s ingrained in i t s genet ic formation and i sthe precondit ion of i t s continuing exis tence . The a c t i v i t y of thesimplest animals i s charac ter i sed by i t s wholly ins t inc t ive nature .In higher animals we f ind in addi t ion a capaci ty to l earn by t r i a land er ro r, but t h i s i s not yet in te l l igence as Scheler def ines i t .I s i n t e l l i g e n c e , then , the hallmark of man? In re jec t ing t h i scanmon view, Scheler opens the way to the uncommon perspec t ive ofh i s va r i e ty of metaphysical dualism.

Scheler had been deeply impressed by the r 'esul t s of the experiments with chimpanzees conducted by Wolfgang Kohler a t the

German research s ta t ion on Tenerife . The f indings , published in1925, showed tha t the problem-solving a c t i v i t i e s of the chimpanzeeinvolve something more than a t r i a l - a n d - e r r o r approach, such astha t displayed in the f renet ic a c t i v i t y of a r a t in a maze.Faced with a problem, such as how to ge t hold of a banana beyondhis immediate reach , the ape w i l l , a f t e r his i n i t i a l at tempt hasf a i l e d , cammonly s i t qui te s t i l l in his enclosure, as though in as t a t e of rapt contemplation. After a pause, his face w i l l changeexpression, and only then does he move to put his new scheme i n topract ice . For obvious reasons , Kohler cal led t h i s an 'Aha ' ex

That there i s r e l a t i v e l y a b s t r a c t , ' i n t e l l i g e n t ' t h o u g h t

involved i s suggested by the sequence, f rus t ra t ion , puzzlement,

7 Apart f ran Buytendijk, the names of Helmuth Plessner and AdolfPortmann deserve specia l mention. These three are a l l subjec ts ofi l luminat ing chapters in Marjorie Grene, Appro::u:::hes to a Philosoph-i ca l Biology ew York: Basic Books 1968. 8

Dunlop's


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he Anthrupological Horizon 1??

considera t ion , i n s igh t , renewed endeavour, which i s evident fromt h e s ehaviour. I f , as Scheler Kohler ' sreading of the evidence i s cor rec t , then in the senseof ' r a t i o n a l l y ' to the so lu t ion of a p r a c t i c a lproblem and leading to a novel approach, i s not the prerogative ofman alone. To be sure , the range of human a c t i v i t y i sgreater than tha t of the ape,and the type of thinking involved i s

and abs t rac t ; but in so fa r as ac t ion i s direc ted toproblems, the difference i s only one of degree. No

could calcula te how one might build the dome of StPete r ' s Cathedral , nor would such a problem occur to him, for thevery idea of a cathedra l , a s t ructure designed not to she l t e r theorganic body from the elements but to t e s t i f y to the glory of God

inexplicable in terms of the problems of aorganic being. A chimpanzee understands well enough the

s igni f icance of a she l t e r, but only man buildsHere, fo r Scheler, was the crux of the . I f ce r t a in

other animals possess i n t e l l igence , what, i f anything, s e t s manapart? The answer he i s s p i r i t . i s a pr incip le of

qui te d i s t i nc t from the drives of l i f e which f indin the problems of

ment. A s p i r i t u a l i s one capable 'No' to h is en-vironment and even to l i f e i t s e l f . A s p i r i t u a l being ' , he wri tes ,

i s therefore no in bondage to i t s drives and i t senvironment, but ' f r ee of i t s environment ' , and as wesha l l c a l l i t 'open to the world' . . . . Such a being hasthe power to 'obj the ' r e s i s t a n c e ' and react ioncent res of h i s environment, which are a l l the animalpossesses . . . he can also grasp the nature Sosein) ofthese objec ts themselves in independence of the l imi tat i ons imposed on th i s world of objects and i t s accessi b i l i t y by the system of v i t a l dr ives and the screen extended in f ron t of i t by the sense organs and the i rfunct ions. 9

The implicat ions of t h i s are enormous and ought to be madeThe most of these l i e in the

notion of man as a uniquely 'world-open' - a notion t h a t wasto be taken up with varying emphasis by the major f igures of pos tScheler ian philosophical anthropology. Animals inhabi t an ' envi ronment' whose perceived content , as the biologis t Jakob von Uex-kul l showed, i s l inked to the v i t a l needs of the o r-

10 y ca t s can s leep through a recorded performance ofHandel 's Fireworks usic which would my neighbours awake, andyet the ca t s s t i r a t a r u s t l i n g sound t h a t even an insomniac would

not not ice . y have no more i n t e r e s t in Handel thanmy ca t s do, but within the range of to which the human

9 10Ib id . Von Uexklill 's experimental work on animal percep-t i on exerted a considerable inf luence on the development of a s c i -en t i f i c bas is for phi losophica l anthropology. Among hiswas Konrad Lorenz.


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ear i s organica l ly at tuned the objec t ive l eve l of noise ,l e s s of i t s s igni f icance , i s an objec t of human a t t en t ion . Man,Scheler remarks, i s uniquely open to biologica l ly i r r e l evan t andeven harmful s t imul i . Man inhabi ts not an environment exclus ive lys t ruc tured by the senses in accord with the needs of the organism,but a world of objec ts - hence the phenomenon of human se l f -consciousness. In knowing the world as a world of objects , man understands himself as one element among others - experienced in uniquefashion for sure and even an objec t of a unique type , but an e lement in the objec t ive pic ture nonetheless . The se l f -consc iouscharac ter of human sub jec t iv i ty i s , we may say, a funct ion of theuniquely objec t ive nature of human perception. y ob j ec t i ve , Ido not mean d i s in te res t ed or unprejudiced - pre judice or prejudgement before a l l the fac t s of t h i s s i tua t ion are known i s , as Hans-

Gadamer shows, a necessary fea ture of judgement 11 -but simply a percept ion of th ings as objec ts commanding a t t en t ionregardless of the shor t - Qt I long-term in te res t s of the organism. I ti s within t h i s wider f i e ld of knowledge tha t the needs of thehuman organism appear as problems, not of pure theory, but ofpract ice .

From th i s objec t i f i ca t ion of the human environment as a worldar i ses the problem of metaphysics. Animals cannot make the i rbodies and movements objec ts for themselves. Hence they have nosense of the objec t iv i ty of space and the i r place within i t . Man,

in con t ras t ,learns to reckon ever more comprehensively with his owncontingent in the universe , with his own s e l f andhis en t i r e physical and psychical apparatus, as with something completely foreign to him, something tha t stands inre la t ion of s t r i c t causa l i ty with other th ings .

Here we see the Kantian inf luence on Scheler emerging, an inf luencewhich becomes more exp l ic i t with what follows. In r i s ing above hisnature as an organism, man makes everything, including himsel f , an

objec t of knowledge from, as i t were, beyond the world of spaceand t ime.

But the centre , whence Man performs the acts of objec t i fi ca t ion of his body and soul , and makes the world in i t sfu l lness of space and t ime in to an objec t - t h i s cent recannot i t s e l f be a p a r t of t h i s world, cannot possess ad e f i n i t e loca t ion in space and t ime: i t can only be s i t -uated in the highest ground of i t s e l f . 12

The echoes of Kant are unmistakeable, but i f the argument i sKantian, Scheler i s using i t in very un-Kantian, metaphysical, way.While Kant and his successors had t yp ica l ly developed i t in the

11 Hans-Georg Gadamer, ruth and ethod ( t r ans l . William Glen-Doepel), London: Sheed Ward 1975, pp. 235ff . 12 S h .c e l e r , Op.Clt.


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The nthropological Horizon 79

d i rec t ion of an epistemology which conceives the phenomenal world- the world as i t appears to consciousness - as i nev i t ab ly s t ruc -tured by pr imordia l ly per ta in ing t o o n s i o u s n e s s ~

Scheler what he sees as i t s metaphysical s ign i f i cance . econceives the s p i r i t u a l cen t re , which man discovers within himselfas something apa r t from t he spat io- temporal world of na tu re , as ther e a l i z a t i o n in the world of an aspec t of the or ig ina l Ground ofBeing. Knowing i t s e l f to be apar t from the world, discoversi t s e l f to be d i r e c t l y r e l a t ed to the t ranscendent r e a l i t y whichfounds the very p o s s i b i l i t y of exis tence . This pos i t i on i s c lose rto Hegel than to Kant, but once separated from Scheler s panpsychic v i s ion of the world process in terms of the progress ivei n t e rpene t ra t ion of and dr ive , the Scheler ian concept ofs p i r i t in man as oriented to a world-transcendent of whichi t i s simply t he worldly mani fe s t a t ion , brings us c lose to theclaims made by both Platonism and Bib l i ca l r eve la t ion : accordingto both of d iv ine , world-transcendent t r u t h makes i t s e l fd i r e c t l y known to the human seeker, the prophet of the philosopherwho r i s e s above ea r th ly concerns to the encounter with God.

To pursue t h i s l i n e of enquiry would take us f a r from ourpresent concerns, though i t i s as developed by Eric Voegelin inp a r t i c u l a r, an important par t of the Scheler ian .13 Forour purposes, t i s enough to note t h a t Scheler es t ab l i shes thed i s t i n c t i o n between the an imal s environment and the ob jec t ive

world of human experience, with re ference to de ta i l ed s c i e n t i f i cs tudies of the l imi t s of arwimal percept ion; and t h a t once t h i sd i s t i n c t i o n i s accepted , i t i s easy to understand why man s world,not l imi ted to the pursu i t of the organic imperat ives which ares t i l l the precondit ion of the organism s su rv iva l , i s experienceda s a f i e l d of open and est imable p o s s i b i l i t i e s for ac t ion . We donot have to accept t ha t any metaphysical or r e l ig ious explana t ionof t h i s s i tua t ion can be found in order to understand why i t i st h a t man s discovery of h i s contingency to the world as a whole,and the f in i tude of h i s power to contro l t ha t world, gives r i s e tothe metaphysical and r e l ig ious quest . Social anthropology can

a t t e s t to the var i e ty of forms t h i s takes and to i t s un ive r sa l i ty ;but i t takes a phi losophica l anthropology to explain why i t i sthere a t a l l and why in con t rad i s t inc t ion to many other un ive r sa lfea tures of human l i f e i t i s unique to our spec ies .

I f we want to see what happens when the metaphysical elementi s expunged from phi losophica l anthropology, we cannot do b e t t e rthan t u rn to the work of. Gehlen. Gehlen r e j e c t s Sche le r s theoryof as an otherworldly element t h a t en te r s existence throughman s unique form of being; but he does not abandon the pos i t iont h a t man s i s indeed, a q u a l i t a t i v e l y d i s t i n c t form of l i f e .From Scheler he re ta ins the view t ha t the form of human exis tence

13 See Eric Voegelin, Qrder and History (Vols. 1-4) , Baton Rouge:Louisiana Sta t e Universi ty Press 1955-74. For a comparison of theimpl ica t ions of t h i s development with Gehlen s theory, see my fo r thcoming book Polit ical order: An Essay in Philosophical AnthropologyBaton Rouge: Louisiana Sta t e Univ.Press 1986; the present a r t i c l edraws on Ch.4 of t ha t work especia l ly.


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can bes t be understood by approaching i t through comparison withthe l i f e forms of other animals; and tha t the pic ture t h a t emergesi s of man as a uniquely world-open being. s Ludwig Landgrebeputs i t , Gehlen

takes as the guiding pr incip le of his thes i s the supposi t i on t h a t man must not be understood with a view to whathe has in common with animals , and some subsequently superadded fac to r, but t h a t a l l the fac tors which are eff i caciously act ive in man beginning with the lowest purelyorganic ones, must from the outse t be grasped in the i rspeci f ic s igni f icance . 14

That i s , the specia l s igni f icance they have for the human species.Man i s not comprehensible as one among the animals; not even

one to whom a higher, metaphysically dis t inc t element of s p i r i thas mysteriously been added. He i s quite simply a unique type ofnatura l being whose re la t ionsh ip to the world on which his survival depends i s u t t e r l y d i f f e r e n t from tha t subs is t ing betweenthe animal and i t s environment. Here, as in Scheler, the spec i f i cdifference of man i s perceived as one of kind and not of degree;and, Gehlen avers , no fea ture of man s being can be understood unl e s s i t i s comprehended as a par t i cu la r functional par t in a wholeunique s t ructure of organic existence. Human existence di ffe r sfrom tha t of the animal almost as much as animal existence di ffe r sfrom tha t of the plan t . Indeed, between man and animal there i san increase in freedcm of re la t ionsh ip to the world which i s , i fanything, greater than tha t between the mobile s e l f direc t ing a n imal and the plan t , whose movements i f any) are t o t a l l y subject toforces outside i t s contro l . Even the organic processes and cognit i v e operations ccmmon to man and animal a l ike are , according toGehlen, misunderstood unless they are conceived as elements withina qui te d i s t i nc t ~ of l i f e . The same ac t iv i ty has a to t a l l ydi ffe ren t s igni f icance when performed by man and by animal. Landgrebe ca l l s Gehlen s t h e perfected biologica l approach to phi losophical anthropology. nd so i t i s . But i f t h i s suggests tha twhat we are discussing i s any var i e ty of biologica l determinism,a t l eas t as th i s i s usual ly understood, the imputat ion i s qui temistaken. Biology determines the form of human existence negative ly and not pos i t ive ly - by i t s fa i lu re to provide solut ions tothe problems of the species and in no other way.

Under the influence of evolutionism, na tura l i s t i c anthropologies pr io r to Gehlen s had tended to minimize the d i fferences b e tween human and animal l i f e . Against th i s t rend, Gehlen i n s i s t stha t i t i s precise ly the equat ion of man with animal tha t preventsus from achieving a biologica l understanding of what i s spec i f i c

a l l y human. The biology to which he appeals i s what he ca l l santhropobiology , i . e . an analys is of organic processes in termsof the functions they f i l l or f a i l to f i l l in the context of the

14 Ludwig Landgrebe, Major ProbZems in Contemporary European p h i losophy ( t r ans l . K.R. Reinhardt) , New York: Ungar 1966, p.22.


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The nthropological HOl izon 8

spec i f i c t o t a l i t y of human existence - a form of l i f e which notonly could not be derived from the p o s s i b i l i t i e s of animal ex i s tence, but which the imperative precondit ions of animal surv iva lwould seem to make impossible.

There i s some analogy between Gehlen s approach and tha t ofthe Gestal t psychologists , among whom Kohler i s one of the mostprominent. Like them, Gehlen argues tha t experience - even t h a t ofhuman existence as a d i s t i n c t l i f e form - cannot be adequatelyunderstood as merely the sum of i t s ana ly t i ca l ly par t s .Gestal t psychologists argue tha t human experience i s no t , as behaviourism supposes, a succession of d i sc re te sensat ions along a

time axis . In men as wel l as animals, the cen t ra l nervoussystem performs a primordial synthe t ic funct ion , causing the eventsof the world, and even the warld i t s e l f to be apprehended as a l -ready const i tu ted wholes . Neither we nor the animals add sensa t ions together to form exper ience . The sensa t ions , which behaviour is t s and moderm post-Iockean empir ic i s t s in genera las the primary blocks of experience, are r e a l enough; butthey enter the of the ect only so f a r as they are ex-perienced as s ign i f i can t elements within a formed p ic tu re of theway things seem to be. In other wards, the s igni f icance of anevent i s inseparable from i t s context and from the subjec t ive lycons t i tu ted form in which i t i s apprehended. The pa t t e rns of experience precede the moments t h a t bear them out .

The Gestal t t h a t concerns Gehlen i s the form of human l i f e asa whole. n actual ly exis t ing l i f e form, such as man s , i s onlypa r t i a l l y i n t e l l i g ib l e in terms of i t s evolut ionary or ig ins . Tograsp i t s own orig inal fea tures , i . e . those whose or ig ins l i e ini t s d i s t i n c t i v e formal proper t ies , i t must be understood as a t o t a l -i t y in which the ana ly t i ca l ly separable elements stand as funct ioning par ts of a whole capable of maintaining i t s e l f in the world.Seen in th i s way Gehlen argues, human existence s tands out as

d i s t i n c t from any other form of l i f e . While animal andl i f e are characterized by the adaptat ion of the to

environment, in man both organic adaptat ion and f ixed environ

ment are notable by t h e i r absence. In comparison with non-humananimals man appears , as Herder put i t two hundred ago, ad e f i c i e n t being, both ins t inc tua l and the

s o r t of bcxiily tha t would, by themselves,ensure surv iva l .

This very lack of adaptat ion i s man s mark of dis t inc t ion .

All human funct ions , such as sensa t ion , f ee l ing , percept ion , language, derive from t h i s t h e i r speci f ic meaning,a meaning and a which i s not comparable withthe r o l e they in animal l i f e . These funct ions are

not a simple ac tua l i za t ion of a pr io r adaptat ion to agiven environment. . . . are funct ions on which abeing which does not oy, in an firmcorre la t ion of environment and of

depend. They must therefare be understood asthe se l f -ac t iva ted performance by vi r tue of which mantransforms the pr iva t ive ex i s ten t i a l condit ions of an


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underprivi leged being in to the chances of his surv iva l .Man, by vi r tue of his nature, must of necess i ty be anact ive being , and the quintessence and sum t o t a l of tha tnature which he transforms by his act ion into tha t whichserves l i f e i s the world of culture and c iv i l i za t ion DerMensch, pp.25ff . )

But in order to be able to ac t , man stands in neednot only of a v i s t a of poss ib i l i t i e s but , in addi t ion , ofan actual independence of di rec t impulses; in shor t , thesa t i s fac t ion of his needs and wants must be inhib i ted tosome extent ra the r than being immediately f u l f i l l e d .Whereas in the animal sensat ion and react ion are di rec t lyin te r re la ted , man owns the poss ib i l i ty of t raversing theworld in non-compulsive sensat ions t r iebfreien

Empfind-ungen) and of thus gaining a perspect ive of world overman . I t i s t h i s capab i l i ty of re ta in ing and r e s t r a i ning impulses which brings to l igh t man s inwardness .All the sensori-motorial performances are not only carr iedout mechanically but with a self-awareness which moves theminto the realm of ccgnit ion and makes them subject to cont r o l . Man must became conscious of himself in order to beable to survive as a human being. He must acquire knowledge in order to become act ive; he must be act ive in orderto s tay al ive tomorrow. Der Mensch, p.40).15

In t h i s argument from biological deficiency l i e s the sourceof Gehlen s in f luen t ia l theory of ins t i tu t ions - a theory which hedeveloped most fu l ly in Urmensch und Spatkultur (1956) and whichhas, through the work of Peter Berger and Thomas Luckmann, evenpenetrated the world of English and American sociology. In br i e f ,what Gehlen claims i s tha t ins t i tu t ions are the human, cu l tu ra lsubs t i tu te for the absent , behavioural guidance of ins t inc t . Thisperspect ive on the anthropological roots of ins t i tu t iona l i za t ionprovides, l ike Scheler s analys is of the roots of man s re l ig iousques t , an instance of the way in which phi losophica l anthropology

i s able to explain a feature of human exis tence , diverse and yetuniversa l , whose divers i ty and universa l i ty soc ia l anthropologycan only chronic le . 16

By appeal to the anthropobiological fac tor of organic def iciency in combination with cu l tu ra l c rea t iv i ty - a combination d i f -f i cu l t to explain in evolut ionary terms but unmistakeable in amorphology of l i f e forms - Gehlen believed that he had found a wayround what he saw as the insuperable d i f f i c u l t i e s of Scheler smetaphysical dualism. That his achievement in c la r i fy ing ce r t a indis t inc t ive features of human l i f e in these terms was considerablei s hardly to be denied. There a r e however, cer ta in problems in -

15 I b i d . , p.23. 16 See my a r t i c l e Po l i t i c s , Nature and Freedom:On the Natural Foundations of the Po l i t i c a l Cond.ition ,Journal o fthe Brit ish Society for Phenomenonology, Vol. XV no.3 (October1984), pp. 286-300. This i s a version of the th i rd chapter of myPol i t ical order (see footnote 13).


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The nthropo logica Horizon 83

herent in such an approach - problems tha t emerge most c l e a r l ywhen Gehlen's anthropology i s looked a t in the l igh t of Sche le r ' sown survey of contemporary views of human nature.

In Man and His to ry ' , Scheler dis t inguishes f ive separate'fundamental ideas of man which exerted an inf luence on h i s contemporaries . Each represents a d i s t i nc t anthropological image,from whose assumptions fundamentally di ffe ren t ideas of the na tu re ,s t ructure and or ig in of man derive. The f ive are : the Chr is t iandoctr ine of man as a div ine ly created but f a l l e n and s in fu l being;the Greek view of man as uniquely r a t i o n a l being; the n a t u r a l i s t i canthropology which sees man as essen t i a l ly hano faber the makerand t ransformer of the world; the pan-Romantic or Dionysian view,which Scheler associa tes above a l l which the then in f luen t ia lviews of I.udwig Klages, according to which man i s a defec t ive product of evolut ion, 'a complete dese r t e r from l i f e , al ienated fromnature by the very s p i r i t or 'mind' in which he t akes such pr ide ;and, f i n a l l y, what Scheler ca l l s the ' pos tu la t ing atheism of s e riousness and r e s p o n s i b i l i t y ' , most r igorous ly represented inNicolai Hartmann's philosophy, which p ic tu res man as the uniquelypurposeful inhabi tant of an otherwise mechanistic universe.

For the moment only the th i rd and four th posi t ions need concern us . For Gehlen's anthropology i s a synthesis between thena tura l i s t i c image of man the maker and the pess imis t ic v i ta l i smof the 'Dionysian' view. I t i s worth quoting the paragraph inwhich Scheler iden t i f i e s the roo t supposi t ions of the l a t t e r inorder to bring out how fu l ly they enter the premises of Gehlen'sin some ways qui te or ig ina l anthropology. Theodor Lessing, whomScheler c a l l s the ' ad ro i t pUbl ic is t of t h i s i d e a , encapsulated i tin the formula Man i s a species of predatory ape t h a t graduallywent mad with pride over i t s so-ca l led mind . '

17

The Dutch anatomist Louis B10k . . . more appropr ia te ly summedup the r e s u l t s of his inves t iga t ion in t h i s sentence: Mani s an i n f a n t i l e ape with deranged sec re t ions . ' In a s imi larway, the Ber l in physician Paul Alsberg claims to have d i scovered a ' p r inc ip le of humanity' not concerned with morpholqgica l comparison in the ' p r inc ip le of degenerat ing organic func t ions . ' Strongly influenced by Schopenhauer, theargument runs l i k e t h i s : an stands qui te defenceless inhis environment, a l toge the r f a r l e s s adapted to i t than hisc loses t animal re la t ives . Unable to fu r the r develop hisorganic funct ions, man has, therefore , developed a tendencyto use as few organic funct ions as poss ib le and to replacethem by tools (language and conceptua l iza t ion are judged tobe ' immaterial t o o l s ) which make i t unnecessary to developand sharpen the sensory organs. According to t h i s theory,in te l l igence i s not an a pr ior i s p i r i t u a l power requi r ingt h i s disuse and making i t poss ib le , bu t , r a t h e r, the r e s u l tof the fundamental r e f u s a l to use these organic funct ions ,indeed, one of the modes of Schopenhauer's 'negat ion ofl i f e by the wi l l , . 17

Scheler, Philosophical Perspectives p.83.


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Typical ly, as in Klages own work th i s l ine of thought placesthe pr incip le of s p i r i t in rad ica l opposi t ion to the l i f e fo rce .In t h i s way the s p i r i t / l i f e dualism, found in Scheler s metaphysi c s , i s reformulated as a pr incip le of contradic t ion runningthrough the very ~ of human existence. While Scheler lookedforward to an ever- increasing sp i r i tua l i za t ion of l i f e , Klagestaught tha t only a reawakening of the in-dwelling impulses of na ture could save mankind from the sp i r i t ua l l y induced atrophy of thel i f e force . This idea became a major component in the anthropology of National Socialism, with i t s pers i s t en t appeal to a reneweduni ty of blood and s o i l , recurrent symbols evoking respect ive lythe inner and outer aspects of a s ingle pr incip le of l i f e whosep o l i t i c a l expression would be the biologica l ly based, r a c i a lcommunity.

Gehlen s argument apparent ly precludes th i s posi t ion . By adhering with exemplary r igour to the consequences of regarding manas an organical ly def ic ien t being, he ru les out the poss ib i l i ty offa l l ing back on the l i f e force as a solu t ion to the problems ofexistence. At the .same t ime, his anthropology remains s igni f icant l y bound by the l imi t s of the Dionysian premise. Thus in aroundabout way he confirms the prac t i ca l implicat ions of Klagescu l t of l i f e , even while denying the poss ib i l i ty of depending onthe forces to whcih Klages himself appeals .

From the natura l def ic iencies of man Gehlen deduces not thedua l i s t i c opposi t ion of l i f e and s p i r i t , but the necess i ty of aconsciously farmed cu l tu ra l order embodied in l imi t ing , au thor i ta t ive ins t i tu t ions . The inventiveness of human consciousness andthe order of cul ture deriving from i t a r e anthropological necessi t i e s ; and Gehlen reveal ingly describes consciousness as the auxi l i a r y means of the organic process which, in man a t l e a s t , i sotherwise f a t a l l y defec t ive . To Klages he rep l i es tha t we cannotf a l l back on what i s no longer e ffec t ive ly present in the humanconst i tu t ion . In place of the absent order of ins t inc tua l regula t ion , man must regula te h is l i f e by crea t ing ins t i tu t ions . Lacking the natura l endowment tha t would assure survival , he must

equip himself with tools and weapons such as only conscious i n t e l -l igence could devise.A cer ta in separat ion from nature i s man s fa te , for only in

standing back from his immediate environment can he perceive i t asan open world of objec t ive ly estimable poss ib i l i t i e s . This i s inturn the precondit ion for the t ransformative act ion on which humansurvival depends. Object i f ica t ion of the environment, a funct ionof human consciousness, permits the achievement of a humanly habi t a b l e world of cul ture . And cul ture i s the only nature in whichman can ex i s t .

Thus s ta r t ing from premises iden t i ca l with those of Klages

and the back to na ture school , Gehlen a r r ives a t the posi t ion hewas l a t e r to formulate in the anti-Rousseauist ic slogan back toc u l t u r e . The contras t here i s apparent , but when we ask what i si t s implicat ion fa r human act ion , i t begins to disappear. Thei n s t i tu t ioLa l i zed world of cul ture i s , as Gehlendescr ibes i t , aproduct of se l f -conscious , i n t e l l i gen t , t ransformative ac t iv i ty.


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he nthropological Horizon 85

s such , i t stands opposed to the human imposs ib i l i ty of raw na ture - the v i t a l i s t i c utopia of blood and s o i l . But cu l tu re i sa l so defined as an organic necess i ty for the ex is tence of a p a r t i -

cular form of l i f e . True, i t i s formed by consciously d i rec t eda c t i v i t y ; but consciousness i s only the aux i l i a ry func t ion of anotherwise def i c i en t organism. The human organism may be pecu l i a r,but i t i s not u t t e r l y except iona l . In par t i cu la r , i t i s no except i on t o the genera l ru le tha t organisms are oriented t o t h e i r ownsurv iva l . I f , as Gehlen i n s i s t s , consciousness i s an aux i l i a rymeans of the organic p r o c e s s , then i t s purposes are governed bythe s ingle imperat ive of assuring organic surv iva l . Culture i sthe human form of nature in the qui te spec i f i c sense t h a t t i sthrough cu l tu ra l means - t o o l s , weapons, i n s t i t u t i o n s - t h a t menachieve t h e i r purely na tu ra l ends. s much as for any more simp-l i s t i c na,turalism, the for surv iva l i s the ul t imate datumof Gehlen s anthropology. Within t h i s scheme of th ings there canbe no va l id c r i t e r i o n of r i g h t or wrong beyond the momentary r e -quirements of the s t ruggle .

Inf luenced by von UexkUll, according to whom there i s a : s t r i c tcorrespondence between the l i f e requirements of a spec ies and theway i t experiences i t s surroundings, but aware with Scheler of thepecul ia r openness of human percept ion , Gehlen maintains t h a t man sconsciousness can i l lumine only as much as i s needed for an improvement in the l i f e chances of the spec ies . To the ex ten t t h a ti t seeks to r i s e above i t s aux i l i a ry func t ion or bel ieves i t s e l fcapable of grasping an e th ica l or t r u t h t h a t t ranscendsand so r e l a t i v i s e s the s t ruggle for su rv iva l , consciousness becomes, as Klages thought i t always was, diseased .

Readers of Pla to wi l l f ind t h i s argument uncomfortably fami li a r . I t r e c a l l s the common pos i t ion of the sophis ts , agains t whomSocrates i s compelled to avow t h a t t he re a re proper ly human caresbeyond mere organic surv iva l and circumstances in which i t i s b e tt e r to choose t o d i e . In Europe in 1940 when Gehlen s book appeared) , to endorse one pos i t ion r a t h e r than the o ther was to makea p o l i t i c a l choice of f a t e f u l proport ions. Today, the choice may

seem l e s s urgent , but the i s sues involved remain unchanged. No oneshould imagine t h a t they are easy, but an argument which makese t h i c a l decis ion subserv ien t to organic imperat ives cannot passunchallenged. I f , a t the end of the day, we do not accept suchanargument, i t must be in f u l l awareness of what i t impl ies . 18 Sucha cons idera t ion f a l l s beyond the scope of t h i s a r t i c l e and, to con-c lude , I should l i k e t o r e tu rn to the with whose words I

, Martin Heidegger, the most sympathetic and percept ive c r i t i cof Sche le r s conception of phi losophica l anthropology and the insp i r a t ion for Ludwig Landgrebe s equal ly percept ive c r i t i c i sm ofGehlen s work. 19

In and Time Heidegger advances the view t h a t humanFor an eloquent and searching discussion of the i s sues involved

see Hans Jonas, The Imperative of Responsibility (note 4 , above) .19

Halle: Max Niemeyer 1927 [Jahrbuch fur Phanomenologie und phano-menologische Forschung Vol. VIII , ed. Edmund Husser l ] .


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86 David J. Levy

exis tence i s fundamentally hermeneutic. y t h i s , he means t h a tman s being depends not on any given f ac t s of l i f e (beyond h i sawareness of his mor ta l i ty ) , but on the i n t e rp re ta t ions he placeson the world. Heidegger t a l k s not of man but of dasein l i t e r -a l l y be ing- the re . Dasein i s essen t i a l ly the whose mode ofbeing i s quest ionable to himself . Human f in i tude i s charac ter i sedby what Heidegger c a l l s man s being-toward-death, h i s consciousness of mor ta l i ty, r a the r than in terms of the r e l a t ionsh ip subs i s t i n g between a cer ta in i d e n t i f i a b l e type of being and the moreor l e s s manipulable th ings of the world. Seen in t h i s way thephi losophica l anthropologis ts approach to man - through a compara t i v e morphology of l i f e forms and, especia l ly in Gehlen s case ,through the exa l t a t ion of the s t ruggle for biologica l survival to

the poin t a t which i t becames the ul t imate re ference poin t f a r theunderstanding of human exis tence - i s only one possible i n t e r p r e ta t i o n , and one which has qui te spec i f i c roots i n ce r t a in currentsof nineteenth-century thought. Thus in Landgrebe s judgement,Gehlen s theory absolu t izes a par t i cu la r in t e rp re ta t ion of what i ss ign i f i can t for man and, in doing so , not only precludes the possi b i l i t y of p o l i t i c a l and e t h i c a l jungement independent of b io log ic a l imperat ives, but i s prevented from comprehending i t s own h i s to r i c a l l y condit ioned or ig in :

The i n t e rp re ta t ion of the force of conscious self-knowledge

and se l f -unders tanding as a mere auxi l iary funct ion of someorganic process i s i t s e l f no more than an interpretat ionwhich i s pos i ted by man in his s t r iv ing to understand hims e l f with in a se t of d e f i n i t e , a l ready establ ished h i s t o ri c a l condi t ions . 20

From the s tandpoint of Scheler, i t could be argued t h a t whatGehlen s anthropology lacks i s any re ference to the s p i r i t u a l d imension and the metaphysical i s sues which t h i s opens up. TheHeideggerian cr i t ic ism i s more r a d i c a l and extends even to Schele r s own conceptions. What Landgrebe th inks i s wrong with Gehlen s

theory i s not t ha t an aspec t of human experience i s missing fromthe p ic tu re , but t h a t the c h a r a c t e r i s t i c approach of phi losophica lanthropology, in seeking to ground i t s e l f in par t i cu la r s c i e n t i f ica l ly establ ished fac t s , inevi tably s t a r t s from a p a r t i a l , takenfor-granted , i n t e rp re ta t ion of the nature of th ings .

20

Instead of i n t e rp re t ing the self-understanding of man asa funct ion of the f a c t i c i t y of l i f e regarded as an u l t imate, [ th is ] i n t e rp re ta t ion of human existence . . . must beunderstood as the funct ion of a very spec i f i c manner ofself-understanding . . In his self-understanding man designsa bluepr in t . of what he can be and should be, and in doingso he reaches out beyond everything t h a t he has been. I ti s precise ly when the problems impl ic i t in the anthropologi c a l approach are followed to the i r conclusions - as i s . .

Landgrebe, o p . c i t . , p.26.


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The n th ropo log ica l H JPizOYl 87

done in exemplary fashion in Gehlen s t r e a t i s e - tha t i tbecomes c lea r ly evident why these problems are not andcannot be narrowly self-confined but point beyond themselves to a di ffe ren t plane . . . on which the approach tothe phenomenon of man t r i e s to derive i t s j u s t i f i c a t i o nfrom the s t ructure of human self-understanding. 21

In Landgrebe a t length, I am not e n d o r s i n g sof the philosophical anthropological projec t from the

standpoint of a purely hermeneutic understanding of human e x i s tence - an approach which seems to me to underest imate theance of the onto logica l ly given condit ions in whicht a t ion takes place. I wish merely to suggest tha tc a l anthropology, as developed by Scheler and h i s successors , a l sohas i t s l imi t a t ions , and t h a t these l imi ta t ions have the i r sourcein a h i s t o r i c a l s i tua t ion in which the f indings ofscience seemed to be the l a s t refuge of ce r t a in ty in aand re l igously uncer ta in world.

With the development of quantum physics in the 1920s and thedisplacment o Newtonian cosmology by Eins te in s of r e l a t -i v i t y the f i e ld of science i t s e l f - including the l i f e sc iencesto which philosophical anthropology appeals - came to be understood as a f i e l d of conf l i c t ing , more or l e s s well corroboratedi n t e rp re ta t ions . In t h i s sense, the on the

primacy of i n t e rp re ta t ion i s both understandable and correc t . Thel i f e process of man i s a f t e r a l l in the l a s t resor t theof man as a se l f - in te rp re t ing being. Only in t h i s process i s theavai lable evidence of the nature of things const i tu ted as s c ience. This means t h a t on the one hand, consciousness must be r ecognised as something more than an aux i l i a ry funct ion of an unquest ionably given l i f e form; and, on the o the r, t h a t the understanding of man and the order he crea tes and inhabi ts must focuson the h i s t o r i c a l process of in whose imper-fec t l i f e man builds h i s temporal as well as on thef icance of h i s form of l i f e as the bes t avai lable s c i e n t i f i c ev i -

dence shows i t to be. The i n t eg ra t ion of a l l these meta-physica l , h i s t o r i c a l , biologica l and hermeneutic, not thepromise of philosophical anthropology, but i t shope, the percept ib le and ever-open horizon of humanstanding.

DAVID J L VY

21 Ib l d . , 6 7p. .

the anthropological horizon: max scheler, arnold gehlen and the idea of a philosophical anthropology

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