Holobiontic Encounters (AI-generated image curated by author)
TABLE OF CONTENTS
1. Introduction
1.1 Structure of the Essay
1.2 The Core of Philosophical Anthropology Listed as Four Basic Points
2. Theorizing the Tension of Being
3. Responsivity as an Anthropological Concept
4. Philosophical Anthropology for Shifting Times
4.1 Centralizing Relations (Point I)
4.2 Anthropology and Chronicling Sensibilities (Point II)
4.3 Focus on Lived Experience on All Levels (Point III)
4.4 Resituating the Subject-Object Relation (Point IV)
5. Conclusion: Fieldwork, or Cultivating a Mode of Experience
The essay that follows will be published in six installments; this, the first, contains section 1.
But you can also download and read or share a .pdf of the complete text of the essay, including the REFERENCES, by scrolling down to the bottom of this post and clicking on the Download tab.
An earlier version of this essay appeared under the title “Reviving Philosophical Anthropology for the Age of Extinction” in Nature & Anthropology 4, 1 (2026): 10003, available online at URL = <https://www.sciepublish.com/article/pii/909>.
The Revival of Philosophical Anthropology in the Age of Extinction: Learning to Find Our Place Again, #1.
1. Introduction
Let’s start with a thought-experiment. Suppose our world was transparent to us in such a way that it allowed us to see the alleles in our cells, our mitochondria, the bacterial communities in our intestines, the fungi growing everywhere, the biochemical exchanges of our immune systems, pollen and spores hovering through the air, amino acids as they are they are broken down and processed, neurons firing and the continuous exchange between our bodies and our environments – in short, the view as depicted in the image above. It would provide a glimpse into the processual, organicist nature of the cosmos.
If we could see and experience like this, would we still see ourselves as individuals? Or would we see a network, and ourselves as an integral part of it? Would “here” and “there” even make sense to us anymore? Would dichotomies like “organism” and “environment” or “internal” and “external” retain their analytical value? Before Antoni van Leeuwenhoek invented the microscope, the world of microbes was hidden to us. The microscope gave us not just access to a new realm of beings, but it relativized our own being. All of a sudden, the first step was made in unraveling a world that we could not see with the naked eye, but that was indispensable for our survival. Even until today, science uncovers more and more relationships that tie us to the many levels and realms found in the biosphere.
Philosophy has largely pursued its own path, and only recently, a genuine “ecological philosophy” or “philosophical ecology” is taking shape. This series of blog posts deals with an important precursor to ecological thought, which was still firmly rooted in philosophy: the paradigm of Philosophical Anthropology (PA).
Philosophical Anthropology had its heyday in the period starting around 1928 to the middle of the 1970s. Originating in the German-speaking part of Europe, it was firmly embedded in the questions and issues that shaped German cultural life during the latter half of the 19th and early part of the 20th centuries. Building on and synthesizing late 19th century discoveries in evolutionary biology, the emerging humanities, debates in existentialist philosophy, and philosophy of life alike, it formulated a unique research agenda. Many debates that demarcated this discipline have been unduly ignored, although a partial resurgence of interest in the work of Helmuth Plessner is evident (De Mul, 2014). Initially, Philosophical Anthropology was concerned with the question “what is the human being”? Granted, this question had also been posed by disciplines such as theology or the sciences. In many cases, the answers were reductionistic, delimiting the human being to overtly materialistic or religious explanations. Notions like homo ludens, homo faber, homo economicus, etc., are mere abstractions from an essentially richer way of being human (Paić, 2018).
These attempts at reductively defining the human being led to the recognition that human beings are fundamentally self-shaping (Selbstgestaltend), including their thoughts, minds, actions, and attitudinal dispositions (Landmann, 1976; Hartung, 2018; Fischer, 2022; Hanna and Paans, 2021; Paans and Ehlen, 2022). This realization undermined the very idea of a “final theory of the human.” Simply put, how is it possible to formulate a final theory if the subject keeps reinventing itself? The point of departure for Philosophical Anthropology seems to have been that to be creative was constitutive of human beings, and that the anthropological research method had to embrace this fact.
Another notion that the major thinkers in this 20th century tradition formulated is relevant as ever: they viewed the human being not just as creative, but also as fundamentally excentric, disjointed, or displaced, and therefore as irremediably cultural, even to the degree that this culture would be humanity’s “second nature.” The creativity ascribed to human beings implied also that they could view themselves as agents in the world, and as such were always curiously “displaced.”
Considering the relevance of Philosophical Anthropology for the present era, we may start with a straightforward observation: the ecological circumstances of the 19th century exhibit some striking parallels with the present. The Industrial Revolution was still underway in Europe, with a range of environmental and socio-political effects. Natural environments were dramatically changed or were irreversibly damaged; urban areas multiplied in size; the apocalyptic belief in the heat death of the universe became scientific mainstream; the modern polis and the associated uncanniness of modernity became entrenched in the collective psyche; the unconscious was postulated as a hidden cause of anxieties, neuroses, and phobias.
It does not require much imagination to identify the parallels with the present. Industrialization occurs everywhere on the globe; the ecosystemic integrity of the Earth weakens; natural habitats are fragmented or destroyed; the collective psyche must deal with ecosystemic destruction on a global scale; climate change impact communities around the globe; digital technology puts human cognition and its place in the cosmos in question. Postmodern relativism has failed to formulate a coherent philosophical research paradigm to conceptualize the present, leaving room for a reinvigorated anthropology to “make sense” of the present and future.
This timeframe has been called the Holocene extinction or “the Age of Extinction” (Wagler, 2011; Keck et al., 2025). Simultaneously, there have been other characterizations, ranging from Anthropocene to Ecocene and Symbiocene, even veering into the ominous, like Chtulhucene or even Cyanocene (Albrecht, 2009; Haraway, 2017; Sagan, 2017). It seems uncontroversial to characterize the early 21st century as a time in which humanity as a planetary force becomes increasingly aware of its own impact on the biosphere. As the time between unfolding events and their communication around the globe becomes almost instantantaneous, cause and effect can be immediately linked. We might even view this shortened feedback loop as a form of environmental input. Mediated by visual and digital culture, a ceaseless series of inputs communicates the state of the planet.
What can Philosophical Anthropology contribute to the “Age of Extinction”? What constitutes its relevance for the present and the future, alongside empirical anthropological and scientific approaches? To answer this question, I analyze how the original anthropological philosophers framed their anthropological approaches in response to the issues of their own time. Then, I relate their ideas to our present situation, showing how their concerns are still urgent, and how they provide a revivification of Philosophical Anthropology. That is, it yields an anthropological approach that resonates with their interests, methodological innovations, and aims, yet is fully adapted and relevant for the present. As a preliminary remark, I would like to draw attention to the fact that while humans produce anthropology, its scope of inquiry is not limited to humans and human activity. Indeed, one of the lessons that the current, human-induced waves of extinction highlight is the fact that non-human actors—whether substances, animals, bacteria, fungi, or chemical compounds—play decisive roles in how humanity conceptualizes its role in the world. To leave the solution of the climate crisis and its associated ecological destruction to the natural sciences alone is to downplay and underestimate the role that anthropology can play.
In particular, the Protagorean (and high-modernist) conception of “man as the measure of all things” invented and developed the technology that caused our current ecological predicament in the first place. It requires a different and broadened form of thought that ventures beyond the technocratic mindset to solve the problems caused by its widespread application. To develop such forms of thinking, Philosophical Anthropology needs to re-examine the place of humanity in the cosmos—maximally broadly defined to include a host of non-human actors—and embracing a methodological anti-reductionism. The approach explored by the classical thinkers of Philosophical Anthropology provides the conceptual toolkit to accomplish this shift in thinking. To avail ourselves of the possibilities that these tools offer, critical engagement with its original resources is needed, taking the best of what it has to offer on board to nurture new forms of thinking and ultimately relating to the world.
Philosophical Anthropology avoids the philosophical pitfalls of what Robert Hanna and I have called “the mechanistic worldview” (Hanna and Paans, 2020) as well as the constrictions of the high-modern mindset. It is based on a precursor theory of what we would nowadays call 4E cognition, ecological psychology, or affect theory. However, it also fully includes perspectivism and the individual’s point of view and experiences. As such, it is continuous with Kantian transcendental idealism (with its emphasis on the subject as nexus of experience). Simultaneously, it includes the perspectivism so typical of existentialism and poststructuralism, though without falling into the trap of unconstrained relativism or nihilism. Still, it is resolutely pro-science, in the sense that it treats biology and ecology as the prime sciences.
These features make it at once grounded on the measure-based methods of the natural sciences, while easily connecting to the ecological thought of the late 20th and early 21st centuries. As with all hybrids, it has a complex relation to the philosophical currents of the 20th century. Nevertheless, its ceaselessly interdisciplinary and connective mindset makes it highly relevant for the self-understanding of humanity in a complex world. For this reason, we should consider a conscious and purposive revival of this discipline, especially in a time in which academic specialization turns into the greatest hurdle for progress, narrowing our understanding of the world instead of broadening and deepening it. Philosophical Anthropology demonstrates how to use the latest insights of the sciences without being constrained by them, applying these accomplishments to construct a fully developed theory of the human being and his place in the cosmos.
1.1. Structure of the Essay
I begin by examining several structural similarities in the Philosophical Anthropologies of Max Scheler (1874–1928), Arnold Gehlen (1904–1976), and Helmuth Plessner (1892–1985). In Section 1.2, I list four basic points of Philosophical Anthropology, conceived as a theoretical paradigm.
Section 2 is a synoptic overview of their philosophical-anthropological context and the themes that Scheler, Gehlen, and Plessner inherited from the past, summarized in four points. This examination segues into a critical discussion of their theoretical assumptions, highlighting limitations and possibilities. In Section 3, I discuss the notion of responsivity as a core concept to think about Philosophical Anthropology. In Section 4, I will introduce a new framework for practicing Philosophical Anthropology in the Age of Extinction, by revisiting and expanding on the four points introduced in Section 1.2. Section 4 highlights the contours of a new and invigorated version of Philosophical Anthropology for application in the fields of eco-criticism, ecology, and posthumanism.
The comparative-&-contrastive overview in Section 2 focuses on three key works: Scheler’s The Human Place in the Cosmos (Scheler, 1928), Plessners’ The Levels of Organic Life and the Human (Plessner, 1928), and Gehlen’s Man: His Nature and Place in the Cosmos (Gehlen, 1940). Each of these three authors wrote extensively, and all three works count as seminal in the debate. When appropriate, I will refer to other writings of these authors, their progenitors and contemporaries, but the comparison is limited to these three main works.
A note on terminology: Philosophical Anthropology (PA, written with capitals) is not a philosophical way of reflecting on anthropology. Neither is it a subdiscipline of anthropology, like cultural anthropology or cognitive anthropology.
1.2. The Core of Philosophical Anthropology Listed as Four Basic Points
PA is a distinctive theoretical paradigm in philosophy, the core tenets of which are summarized in basic points I–IV:
(I) Centralizing relations. PA concerns itself with the “human place in the cosmos” at various levels, starting from the idea that an organism is positively and negatively defined by its boundaries. Typically, these boundaries are viewed as porous, allowing for natural and cultural exchanges between organisms and their environments. It follows that PA does not start with metaphysical presuppositions about the human being, but rather seeks to establish conceptual relations with the natural, social, or cultural sciences (Fischer, 2009: p. 155, 2022). The organism itself is not viewed as a simple entity, but as a complex of interlocking functions, processes, and phenomena that operate across varying levels of complexity.
(II) Adaptable and interdisciplinary approach. PA asks the question: “What is the human being?” not from a comparative or critical viewpoint. It combines the core insight of Kant’s transcendental idealism—viz. that our cognitive access to the world is always mediated—combined with a critical inclusion of new empirical advances in biology, ecology and genomics. Consequently, it recognizes that the question “what is the human being?” cannot be answered by reducing the human to the findings of any individual science or by claiming to have found some “hidden essence of the human being. The nature of the human being must be approached from the human being conceived as an embedded totality—including “the entire radius of existence and of nature” (Gehlen, 1988: pp. 4-12; Fischer, 2009, 2022: p. 24). Consequently, the findings of various sciences are incorporated into a theoretical edifice that is open-textured, interdisciplinary, and capable of integrating new findings and conceptions. From this receptive attitude, it comes as no surprise that PA is easily compatible with so-called “4E” accounts of cognition (Alexander , 2025). Although anthropology has recently broadened its scope to consider the human population, classical PA initially focused on the individual. Although all three classical thinkers extended their scope to politics and societies later on, this study is focused on their early works.
(III) Focus on lived experience on all levels. PA concerns itself with one of the readily available phenomena which all human beings share: the experience of experiencing (Plessner, 2019: p. 271; Giammusso, 2012: p. 111). So, PA does not presuppose a philosophical or anthropological viewpoint that one must accept first. The order of explanation starts at the level of bodily experience, only then to expand towards progressively larger areas of application, with the structure of the cosmos as the terminus. PA is an Erfahrungswissenschaft (experiential science) (Fischer, 2009; Rasini, 2011; Giammusso, 2012: p. 151). That is, it seeks to build bridges between experiences that all human beings can (bodily, emotively, affectively) relate to, and using these to advance to generalizable descriptions about the human condition. By approaching the question in this manner, the subjective and objective poles of experience and science are brought into a new dialogue. This connection is established by distinguishing between the body as a lived entity (Leib) and as a biophysical unity (Körper) (Hanna and Thompson, 2003). Or, if one moves one conceptual level up, the distinction between drives and instincts (Trieben, Instinkte) and the capacity for self-consciously selecting courses of action through the Will (Wille), acting (Handlung), or world-openness (Weltoffenheit).
(IV) Resituating the subject-object-relation. The move discussed in (III) also displaces and resituates the subject-object relation in its totality. PA rejected the naïve notion of a subject perceiving objects and held that this relation itself should be analyzed as a totality. Virtually all classical positions in phenomenology, Lebensphilosophie, and PA share this characteristic: they shift the subject-object relationship in such a way that one cannot entertain the thought that one looks from a distant, God’s eye viewpoint or “view from nowhere” at the world. To be certain, the emerging social sciences in the 19th century realized this as well, but PA adds a particular twist to the screw:
[T]he point of view that is generated internally and that, intentionally, establishes the subject-object relation, is placed outside of the body, so that the perception relation is observed at a distance—from an external vantage point. (Fischer, 2009: p. 156)
The purpose of this move is not to aim for an objective or scientistic “view from nowhere”, but to situate the subject-object relation as a totality in an enveloping experiential field. Importantly, it is possible to intelligibly reason about what is observed in this field. Typically, the field in which the subject-object relation is resituated takes various forms, with Scheler adopting an approach that bears significant metaphysical overtones, and Plessner/Gehlen relying on a combined empiricist-philosophical methodology. Consequently, human beings are held to be constituted by the subject-object relationship and the ability to observe this relationship as a totality, thereby situating it. We do not just possess introspection but may also observe ourselves “from the outside” while we are “looking inward,” as it were.
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