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The Anthropocene concept emerged from questions raised by scientists about whether human activity has ushered in a new and perilous geological age. The term migrated into the humanities and social sciences and now involves a proliferation of metanarratives about anthropogenic disruptions to systems that support life on this planet. This article develops an interpretive framework drawn from Hans Blumenberg’s theories of myth and metaphor, philosophical anthropology, and philosophy of history to address how Immanuel Kant’s fourth question, “What is the human being?,” has reemerged in the Anthropocene, and to assess which narratives tend to best reflect realistic responses to the current crisis. In contrast to the mythical species-subject Anthropos, Blumenberg’s minimal anthropology characterizes humans as having a permanent bioanthropological need for orientation that requires cultural compensation, including partial reliance on metaphor and myth. As an interpretive optic, this anthro...

This article addresses what philosophical anthropology may contribute to the debate between critical theory and poststructuralism. It examines one prong of Amy Allen’s critique of Judith Butler’s collapse of normal dependency into subjection. Allen is correct that Butler’s assessment of agency necessary for political action in inadequate theoretically. However, I believe that some accounting of the nature of the being for whom suffering and flourishing matter is necessary. To this end, I provide an ontogenesis of intentionality as a response to Butler’s notion of the corporeal vulnerability shared by all human beings. On this basis, I articulate an anthropology that renders intelligible the sources of and links between mutual recognition and agency—as well as clarifying the sense in which the historical association between complementarity and gender can still be a resource for progressive thinking.

Abstract The categories and contours of a normative social theory are prefigured by its 'anthropological' presuppositions. The discourse/communicative-theoretic basis of Habermasian theory was prefigured by a strong anthropological demarcation between an ...

In Beschreibung des Menschen [Description of Humankind], Blumenberg claims that consolation [Trost] ‘played a decisive role in anthropogenesis’, that it made the unbearableness of human contingency bearable (2006, p. 626). Although consolation may be a pat on the back when times are bad, its anthropological function is complex. Consolation embraces and soothes the existential vulnerability for which there ultimately is no solace [Untrostlichkeit]. Consolation presupposes a complex intersubjective and cognitive reflexivity as well as an empathic perspective- taking capacity, which is a source of ethical reflection (2006, p. 651).1 And although consolation is not equivalent to care, as for example in Heidegger’s ontology or in the ethics of care literature, care for oneself and for others, as well as cooperation (ideally) depend on a capacity for consolation. That is, they depend on being able to put oneself empathically in the shoes of others, which is the precursor to compassion. This is normatively significant, for as Blumenberg states in Work on Myth, ‘Only an assessment of the risk involved in the human mode of existence makes it possible to discuss and to evaluate functionally the behavior that was serviceable in mastering it, and to take seriously the tentative inclination to be able to avail ourselves of such serviceability again’ (1985, p. 111).

The Anthropocene concept emerged when scientists questioned whether human activity has ushered in a new and perilous geological age. The term migrated into the humanities and social sciences and now involves a proliferation of metanarratives about anthropogenic disruptions to systems that support life on this planet. This paper develops an interpretive framework drawn from Blumenberg's theories of myth and metaphor, philosophical anthropology, and philosophy of history to address how Kant's fourth question, "What is the human being?" has re-emerged in the Anthropocene, and to assess which narratives best reflect realistic responses to the current crises. In contrast to the mythical species-subject Anthropos, Blumenberg's minimal anthropology characterizes humans as having a permanent bioanthropological need for orientation that requires cultural compensation, including partial reliance on metaphor and myth. As an interpretive optic, this anthropology has the resources to deflate narrative excess associated with some versions of the Anthropocene. In addition, Blumenberg's philosophy of history can shed light on how the Anthropocene is both unprecedented and yet not entirely new insofar as it addresses problems suppressed by modernist progress myths.

This paper maintains that in order to address the question of hope in the present, it behooves us to revisit Kant’s third and fourth questions: “What may we hope?” and “What is the human being?” I reexamine these questions through an analysis of Thomas McCarthy’s recent book Race, Empire, and the Idea of Human Development—in which Kant is both topic and resource—and several works by Hans Blumenberg. I agree with McCarthy that Kant’s anthropology is incomplete and that the postmodern rejection of metanarratives was premature, but I claim that he requires a more complex philosophical anthropology to guide his philosophy of history than he offers. In order to address the question about hope, I reconstruct the anthropology implied in Blumenberg’s writings and claim that his anthropologically-informed philosophy of history can supply conceptual scaffolding missing from McCarthy’s book.

In this paper, I situate Hans Blumenberg historically and conceptually in relation to a subtheme in the famous debate between Martin Heidegger and Ernst Cassirer at Davos, Switzerland in 1929. The subtheme concerns Heidegger’s and Cassirer’s divergent attitudes toward philosophical anthropology as it relates to the starting points and goals of philosophy. I then reconstruct Blumenberg’s anthropology, which involves reconceptualizing Cassirer’s philosophy of symbolic forms in relation to Heidegger’s objections to the philosophical anthropology of his day (e.g., Max Scheler, Helmuth Plessner, and Arnold Gehlen) as unduly anthropocentric. Blumenberg builds on anthropologist Gehlen’s assumption that human beings are biologically underdetermined and therefore world-open. With this starting point, symbolic forms, such as myth and language, make up a compensatory life-world that supports human existence. Action, or self-assertion, which is necessary given the lack of a seamless fit between human beings and the environment, is thus circumscribed and shaped by the historied, cultural constructs that constitute a life-world. Human beings can thus be characterized as a species that continually renegotiates the shape of its existence through its relation to biological limits on the one hand and cultural constants on the other. Because Blumenberg and philosophical anthropology are relatively unexplored by Anglophone philosophers, and because philosophical anthropology is central to Blumenberg’s methodology generally, this study provides an introduction to both.

The interlocutors of Plato's Cratylus agree that “it is far better to learn and to inquire from the things themselves than from their names” (439b6–8). Although surprisingly little attention has been paid to these remarks, at least some commentators view Plato as articulating a preference ...

422 journal of the history of philosophy 46:3 july 2008 anthropologists, such as Max scheler, Helmuth Plessner, and Arnold Gehlen, maintained that anthropology, understood as a study of the invariant condi-tions of human existence, should be the central concern of ...

Abstract
Challenges of the Anthropocene: Why We Still Need Philosophical Anthropology

‘Anthropocene’ refers—at the very least—to our outsize influence on the habitats of all species. A corollary is the ever-accelerating pace of environmental, technological, social, cultural, and economic change that may be inimical to our survival and that of other species. I argue for a new account of anthropos—a new philosophical anthropology. My paper draws on early twentieth-century philosophical anthropology as well as cognitive science and evolutionary anthropology to examine how humans compensated for their biological underdetermination by becoming second-natured, empathetic, cooperative, symbol-using creatures. Examining the capacities for cooperation that emerged in our evolutionary history may help clarify our thinking about contemporary problems that require collective decisions.