Double Session: Philosophical Anthropology I & II (Honenberger, Michelini, Davis, Moss, Blad, Wasmuth)

Plessner's Die Stufen (1928) offers a sweeping, systematic philosophical account of the place of human beings in the natural world – or, as Plessner put it, a “philosophical anthropology” set in the context of a new “philosophy of nature.” The central theoretical innovation of Plessner's work is the concept of Positionalität, which highlights major structural differences between species-typical forms of organism-environment interaction, and leads Plessner to conclude that human beings' relation to their environments is distinctively characterized by the species-typicality (for humans) of mediation of their organism-environment interaction by non-species-typical artifactual conditions (natürlichen Künstlichkeit), and their associated capacity to take an extra-bodily perceptual standpoint (Exzentrizität). (For review, see Grene 1974a, 1974b, Fischer 2009, and Honenberger 2012.)
Here I review Plessner's detailed engagement, in Die Stufen, with the biological literature of his day – particularly Darwin, Jakob von Uexküll, and Hans Driesch. On the basis of this review, I identify two types of interdisciplinary integration characteristic of Plessner's procedure that (I argue) offer lessons for contemporary inquiries situated at the border of biology, anthropology, and philosophy. The first integration is methodological, regarding the co-operation of biology, anthropology, and philosophy in the theoretical approach to objects of common concern to each. (In Plessner's account, these objects prominently include nature itself, organic life, plants, non-human animals, and human beings, as well as adaptation, nutrition, memory, and similar features.) The second integration is substantive, involving substantive claims about the constitution, distinction, and relation of a number of these objects of common concern.

Driesch, Hans. 1908. The Science and Philosophy of the Organism, 2 vols. London: Adam and Charles Black.

Fischer, Joachim. 2009. “Exploring the Core Identity of Philosophical Anthropology through the Works of Max Scheler, Helmuth Plessner, and Arnold Gehlen.” Iris: European Journal of Philosophy and Public Debate. 1 (1): pp. 153-170.

Grene, Marjorie. 1974a. “The Structure of Living Things III: Helmuth Plessner's Theory of Organic Modals” in The Understanding of Nature: Essays in the Philosophy of Biology. Dordrecht, Holland/ Boston, USA: D. Reidel Publishing Company.

______. 1974b. “People and Other Animals” in The Understanding of Nature: Essays in the Philosophy of Biology. Dordrecht, Holland/ Boston, USA: D. Reidel Publishing Company.

______ and Niles Eldridge. 1992. Interactions: The Biological Context of Social Systems. New York: Columbia University Press.

Honenberger, Phillip. 2012. Mediating Life: Animality, Artifactuality, and the Question of Human Distinctiveness in the Philosophical Anthropologies of Scheler, Plessner, Gehlen, and Mead. Ph.D dissertation, Temple University.

Moss, Lenny. 2005. “Darwinism, Dualism and Biological Agency.” in Hösle, V., and Illies, C., (eds.) Darwinism & Philosophy. Notre Dame, Ill.: University of Notre Dame Press.

Plessner, Helmuth. 1928. Die Stufen des Organischen und der Mensch: Einleitung in die philosophische Anthropologie. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter & Co. [The Levels of the Organic and Man: Introduction to Philosophical Anthropology. Scott Davis, trans. Unpublished manuscript]