project

The aim of this project is to collaboratively develop a new perspective on classical German philosophy. We argue that the philosophy of Kant and post-Kantian authors is profoundly inspired by ‘anthropology’, namely by reflections exploring the distinctly human point of view.
In bringing together an international group of experts, this network seeks to jointly establish the research area of Classical German Anthropology and point out what we can learn from it for current debates on what it means to be a human being. 

What is human nature? The Classical German tradition and the shape of a perennial question.

The controversy on what it means to be human is a perennial one but has been significantly growing again in recent times. On the one hand, the renewed pressure coming from empirical research (in areas such as evolutionary anthropology and psychology), has treated human as an empirically investigable notion, illuminating its specific natural constitution as a distinct species, with a specific natural history. On the other hand, authors have argued from the opposite perspective that such a natural (or biological) approach is misguided when it comes to understanding human nature. They consider the constitution of the human being as essentially social, normative, and non-naturalistic. Yet others, coming from different angles, are suspicious of the very notion of a distinct human nature and reject the whole question, in favor of a non-anthropocentric, post-humanistic, or transhumanistic view. This clash of views on human nature, together with the tensions it involves, has given new momentum to a central philosophical issue: what kind of question is the anthropological one? Is human nature a purely descriptive, or a normative notion? What kind of disciplines can contribute to giving an answer to the question what it means to be human? How are we to combine their perspectives? To what extent is human nature a matter of empirical inquiry and to what extent can it be the object of social dialectic and philosophical investigation? What precisely is “nature” involved in the locution “human nature”?

It is in this context that we think turning to tradition, and in particular to classical German thought, leads to a particularly useful and promising source of insights.

The aim of this project is to trace the human standpoint in post-Kantian philosophy and identify its role as a unifying theme.