Holobiontic Encounters (AI-generated image curated by author)
TABLE OF CONTENTS
1. Introduction
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
REFERENCES
The essay that follows will be published in six installments; this, the second, contains section 2.
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, #2.
2. Theorizing the Tension of Being
Scheler, Gehlen, and Plessner advanced their own theories on the tension of being. To be an organism amounts to being situated in a field of often opposing forces. In different ways, this thought is worked out in PA. All three authors responded to key debates that characterized German philosophy and humanities during the latter half of the 19th century and the early decades of the 20th century.
First, the so-called “pessimism controversy.” Pessimism as a philosophical force marked German cultural life during the latter half of the 19th century, although its root causes remain unclear. It formed the backdrop of the emerging existentialist philosophy, which assumed its mature form in a relatively short time in the thought of Arthur Schopenhauer (1788–1860), Søren Kierkegaard (1813–1855), Julius Frauenstädt (1813–1879), Philip Mainländer (1841–1876), and Eduard von Hartmann (1842–1906). The core question of 19th-century pessimism was whether life was worth living at all, a question which unsettled the philosophical establishment and cultural elites alike. In this cultural climate, Schopenhauer’s idea of a cosmic Will or impulsion was reinterpreted by Freud, who relegated it—like many of his contemporaries, to the unconscious, turning it into the foundation for his theory of (sexual) drives and libidinal investment (Nicholls and Liebscher, 2010; Beiser, 2016). The newly discovered scientific idea that the universe would cease to exist because of ongoing natural processes lent credence to the notion of pessimism (Roszak, 1992; Paans and Hanna, 2025). If the universe is moving inevitably towards its demise, what is life worth against this cosmic backdrop?
This discovery concluded a series of displacements of humanity. Copernicus and Galileo refuted the geocentric account of the universe. The Wallace-Darwin theory of evolution explained humanity as the outcome of a long evolutionary process. Biochemistry made emotions, moods, and affects explainable in terms of biochemical processes. Psychoanalysis located motivations and volitions in hidden drives emerging from the unconscious. Functionalism in modernism rejected the notions of an inner, aesthetic life in favor of the rationalization of everyday life. Existentialism stressed the meaninglessness of life, placing the burden on the individual. But the theory of the heat-death of the universe eclipsed all these displacements in its pessimistic overtones. Heidegger’s existentialism emphasized Geworfenheit (thrownness) and Dasein (the existential awareness of one’s individuality), and J.-P. Sartre’s emphasis on the imperative to create meaning in a meaningless universe internalized this feeling of displacement (Heidegger, 1929/2008; Sartre, 1943/2003). Nowadays, the perspectivism built into poststructuralism continues this line of thinking, questioning the relevance of the individual perspective and emphasizing methodological relativism.
Second, during the 19th century, the humanities (Geisteswissenschaften) gradually developed. This marked a reflexive turn in a scientific endeavor that had hitherto sought to explain the world but had given limited attention to the human being itself. Granted, Kant had lectured and written extensively on anthropology and had published his final statement on the matter in 1798 from a “pragmatic point of view” (Kant, 1798/2007). As he put it, anthropology was for him largely Menschenkunde—not a systematic science of the human being, but a practical science comparing the characteristics of various characters, temperaments, and nationalities, a theme that would influence 19th-century Lebensphilosopie. Likewise, Johann Gottfried von Herder compiled his ideas on the “philosophy of a history of humanity” around the same time, emphasizing universal aspects of the human condition, irrespective of culture or geographical location. This descriptive-comparative approach formed the foundation for the social sciences of anthropology and ethnology alike, and has sometimes been criticized for its emphasis on “collecting facts” as if the observer were not implicated in the observation.
The 19th-century tradition of hermeneutics provided a template for the humanities: the observer was not an onlooker, but a participant; and phenomena were not so much observed as experienced. One of the most influential proponents of hermeneutics in the 20th century—Hans-Georg Gadamer—made this aspect central to his approach: the humanities had to make sense of the world in real-time without the luxury of methodological distance (as the natural sciences claimed it had) or time (as history claimed it had) (Gadamer, 1960/1982). As Plessner puts it: while scientists could observe phenomena, the humanities had to resonate with them. The interpreter is always implicated in what is to be interpreted, and so the distance between observer and observed disappears (Despret, 2013; Plessner, 2019: pp. 12–13).
Apart from the pessimism controversy and the formation of the emerging humanities, philosophy had to reckon with advances in biology and biochemistry. The idea of a Wesensschau (essential insight) became increasingly untenable. A purely philosophical description of the human condition was viewed as simplistic, as per point (II) above. Existentialism and phenomenology did not immediately integrate new biological facts about the human being, as they were focused on meaning and the nature of consciousness, respectively. The so-called “materialism controversy” and the rise of Analytic philosophy both advocated a reductionist, scientistic approach to the human condition. The philosophical anthropologists rejected both extremes. They insisted on an interdisciplinary approach that incorporated breakthroughs in biology. They did so in a way that is anti-reductionist. The idea of the “modern synthesis” of Darwinian theory, in which the human being is reduced to a “survival machine,” would have been an alien idea to them, because it would reduce complexity to a simplistic and ultimately mechanistic picture.
The idea of the human being as embedded in larger natural, social, or cosmic structures permeated classical PA. For Scheler, this embeddedness was observable in the “position in the cosmos” that humanity occupied. His approach is dualistic: humanity is seen as subject to an impersonal Will or impulsion and the cultural quality of Spirit (Geist) (Pavesic, 2008: pp. 35–40; Scheler, 2009). While the Will represents a cosmic volition or motivation (such as reproductive drives, ambitions, or primary survival functions), it is essentially without a teleological endpoint, latching on to arbitrary objects. The cultural quality of Spirit is unable to motivate individuals but provides them with images or ideas that serve as attractors. Scheler’s idea is that once social contexts reach a certain level, the quality of Spirit permeates a society, enabling it to self-consciously shape its guiding images. The notion of an impersonal Will goes back to Schopenhauer’s magnum opus The World as Will and Representation, while the idea of an ascending and culturally expressed Spirit can be traced back to Hegel’s ideas in the Phenomenology of Spirit (Hegel, 1807/2019; Schopenahuer, 1818/2010).
The resulting picture is dynamic: Scheler recognizes the necessity for acting, adjusting expectations, gaining new skills, and imagining. Various cultural forms and organizations (like tribalism, feudalism, monarchy, democracy) can be traced back to a series if “images” or “self-conceptualizations” of human beings and their place in the cosmos. On Scheler’s account, the “ground of the world,” or the most basic cause that explains the world as it appears, remains unfinished. By means of this insight, Scheler distances himself from earlier essentialist anthropologies that tried to reduce humanity to the pinnacle of a divine creation, a thoroughly natural being, a political animal, or a biological machine. Due to being positioned between Will and Spirit, human nature is itself unfinished. As Gehlen would note, all kinds of attempts at describing it involve an arbitrary selection and are therefore doomed to fail as explanations (Gehlen, 1988: p. 322).
Like Scheler, Gehlen postulated a gap between what human beings are and the kind of things they must do to survive. Given the absence of brute power, protective fur, or excessive hunting prowess, human beings are unspecialized creatures, and as such, “world-open” (Weltoffen) (Gehlen, 1988: p. 108). They rely on their brain’s intellectual power to orient themselves, as the world constitutes a “field of surprises” for them (Gehlen, 1988: p. 122). The specialized animal is at home in its world due to its finely tuned physical adaptations, while human beings find themselves delivered over to it. For Gehlen, the human being is flawed, and its physical form falls short of naturally occupying its place in the world. This strange predicament generates an impulse towards culturation. This feature marks human beings as unique—we are “naturally cultural” (Gehlen, 1988: p. 108). We invent a “second nature” as our natural environment. This second nature (i.e., culture) compensates for our shortcomings in the natural domain. So, cultural techniques like farming, architecture, and art all contribute to survival by providing protection from natural factors. Yet, the imperative to act effectively remains. The measures we take to survive need to respond effectively to the circumstances. Knowledge and acting for Gehlen (following Scheler) are fundamentally connected (Scheler, 2009: pp. 58–59). Knowing is aimed at acting. From this viewpoint, Gehlen explains the human capacities to imagine, to know, and to act:
We represent the world in our consciousness. It is not restricted to the narrow realm of the here and now, to the perceivable; instead, in our consciousness, we exist in a spatiotemporal world which knows no boundaries and in which what we know is just as valuable as what we have experienced. (Gehlen, 1988: p. 293).
Correspondingly, the philosopher Alphonso Lingis has made a similar point:
Knowledge is not given to us in a sudden illumination of the mind; to know is to strive, to work. We learn that this chipped stone can serve to cut and to chop; that stone, blunted, can serve to grind.… Once we see what we can do with a broken branch, a chipped stone, a bone or steel knife, we figure out what falling rocks, streaming water, and the roots of trees do by themselves. (Lingis, 2018: p. 448).
Fundamentally, human beings are world-open (Weltoffen). Knowledge comes about through practice and the formation of theories about the world or environment in which we find ourselves. This trait supports survival: “[b]y anticipating the future, the human being creates the conditions that enable him to survive in it (Gehlen, 1988: p. 328). The rather Schopenhauerian consequence of this anticipation, however, is unfulfillment: humanity cannot “act on instinct” alone. To survive, it requires impulses that are world-open and that can be controlled and directed (Gehlen, 1988: p. 334). Non-verbal thought is the medium that directs and orients the complex of ideas that are communicated and framed by capacities such has language and mathematics. The link between Scheler and Gehlen is dual: both emphasize that human action is an emergent phenomenon, manifesting itself once two phenomena intersect. For Scheler, these phenomena are basic Will-based impulsions and Spirit-generated images. For Gehlen, it is non-verbal thought operating on the capacity for language-use and conceptualization. These theories have the advantage that the whole of human behavior need not be reduced to a single feature or capacity that “explains it all”. Both theories point to the reflexivity involved in action: language, imagination, and mental imagery have tangible effects on the agent who produces them. Reflexivity places the human being beside itself: human beings can evaluate themselves and their action relative to the world or the images they have produced. If needed, action can be taken to close or minimize this gap. Put in Schopenhauer’s terms: it is the representation of representation (Schopenhauer, 1818/2010: pp. 70–71/§12; Gehlen, 1988: p. 338). For Scheler and Gehlen, humans are caught between tensions or drives that move in different directions. This position generates a higher-level viewpoint by which human beings grasp or conceptualize their place in the world (for Gehlen) or the cosmos (for Scheler) (Scheler, 2009: pp. 62–66). In both cases, we deal with a displacement within the human being.
This fundamental displacement is the “basic category” of PA, especially so in the thought of Plessner (Plessner, 2009). However, we must first see what it is a displacement from. For Plessner, organic life is a relation of its body to its boundary (Plessner, 2019: p. 115). Plessner notes here something that Gehlen underestimated when he named the skin “unspecialized.” Through its interface, organisms engage in a range of transactions with their environment. We should notice that organic beings are plastic: they can reform, deform, grow, stretch, and so-on. They can also respond, and Plessner specifically notes the pervasiveness of rhythm here: heartbeat, fluctuations of hormones, blood pressure, metabolic rates, Circadian rhythms… they are “key moments of life” (Plessner, 2019: pp. 116–117). These all occur in a body that posits itself over against an environment. The body exists in a Gegenfield (opposing field) to which it must respond and which it requires for orientation and choice. What unites these thinkers is their intuition that the environment structures knowledge acquisition while, at the same time, being shaped by it. They spatialized cognition, paving the way for theories of “ecological perception” and 4E-cognition alike, in which the environment and perceptual functions are involved in a reciprocal process (Gibson, 1966; Bateson, 2000; Alexander, 2025).
The body maintains a structural stability over time, even if processes of aging or growing change its shape. Organic beings possess a relatively stable form that posits, as it were, two directions. One is inward, experiencing itself as a functioning system. One might notice, for instance, that one is hungry or tired; this feeling is bodily experienced. In the other direction, the experience is outward: one might notice something to eat in the environment, spot a place to sleep, or watch for predators. One experiences oneself as being embedded in a larger environment. Organic life engages continuously in a metabolism and the (seasonal) rhythms of its environment: we eat, digest, warm ourselves, and secrete waste (Plessner, 2019: pp. 182–183).
Plessner applies this insight to the positionality of organic life: animals live in the here and now, but also have some mastery over their bodies. They can anticipate events, experience stress, fear, and joy. In a basic sense, the animal can refer to itself. Its form—although interactive through exchanges with the environment and possessing a certain freedom of action—is open to the world. It lives from its center and as a center (Plessner, 2019: pp. 269–270). Human beings possess these characteristics but add a particular positional feature. Human beings are bodies (as in physical, biological entities), are in these bodies (as psychic states), and are outside their bodies (as observers to this psychophysical relation). As indicated, PA questions the entire subject-object relationship, displacing it in a further field. For Plessner, the human being is alive, living, and living. Personhood consists in experiencing the rift of excentric positionality. Humans live their lives from the inside and the outside. It is a part of their constitution to be positioned on both inside and outside. This tension always remains—the third viewpoint does not result in a kind of Hegelian Aufhebung, i.e., “sublation” or reconciliation (Plessner, 2019: p. 271). Like Scheler and Gehlen, Plessner’s account hinges on an inherent experiential and lived tension that characterizes the “human place in the cosmos”. In Fischer’s words:
The rupture in the living entity is not to be understood as a breakthrough of the mind, which could essentially operate for itself. Excentric positionality is intended to describe the situation of a living entity that has an in-built detached viewpoint, an excentric point that cannot exist without the energy of the centrally positioned body, from whose realm of responsibility it remains removed. (Fischer, 2009: p. 161).
We are, therefore, always (minimally) in two places at once, without ever settling for one of them in favor of the other—indeed, our constitution is such that we almost simultaneously inhabit and embody these viewpoints.
In all three classical positions, displacement (excentric positionality) forms the background for conceptualizing the human capacity to act. For Scheler, this capacity is torn between instinctive drives without clear direction on one hand, and the imagery that the Spirit furnishes on the other. To act is never a simple given: human decisions are always a compound of factors that belong to different realms of the organismic life, whether natural or cultural. Some influences might be (partially) biologically determined or may emerge through inclination and habituation. The type of desires formed by an individual depends on its environment (the “nature”) and its capacity either to overcome certain inherited images or to shape new imagery (the “nurture”). So, for Scheler, the inner environment of drives is controlled by a dual capacity that is both internal and external. It is dependent on environmental input, as well as on the capacity for introspection and on the cultivation or selection of certain images over others. As Theodore Roszak points out, there is a direct link here to Freud’s concepts of the drives and their link to fantasies: both have their roots in the physical constitution of the human being (Roszak, 1992).
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