Levels of Organic Life and the Human PDF Download
Are you looking for read ebook online? Search for your book and save it on your Kindle device, PC, phones or tablets. Download Levels of Organic Life and the Human PDF full book. Access full book title Levels of Organic Life and the Human by Helmuth Plessner. Download full books in PDF and EPUB format.
Author: Helmuth Plessner
Publisher: Fordham University Press
ISBN: 0823284018
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 449
Get Book Here
Book Description
The most important work by a key figure in German thought, Helmuth Plessner’s Levels of Organic Life and the Human, originally published in 1928, appears here for the first time in English, accompanied by a substantial Introduction by J. M. Bernstein, after having served for decades as an influence on thinkers as diverse as Merleau-Ponty, Peter Berger, Habermas, and the new naturalists. The Levels, as it has long been known, draws on phenomenological, biological, and social scientific sources as part of a systematic account of nature, life, and human existence. The book considers non-living nature, plants, non-human animals, and human beings in turn as a sequence of increasingly complex modes of boundary dynamics—simply put, interactions between a thing’s insides and surrounding world. On Plessner’s unique account, living things are classed and analyzed by their “positionality,” or orientation to and within an environment. “Life” is thereby phenomenologically defined, and its universal yet internally variable features such as metabolism, reproduction, and death are explained. The approach provides a foundation not only for philosophical biology but philosophical anthropology as well. According to Plessner’s radical view, the human form of life is excentric—that is, the relation between body and environment is something to which humans themselves are positioned and can take a position. This “excentric positionality” enables human beings to take a stand outside the boundaries of their own body, a possibility with significant implications for knowledge, culture, religion, and technology. Plessner studied zoology and philosophy with Hans Driesch in the 1910s before embarking on a highly productive philosophical career. His work was initially obscured by the superficially similar views of Max Scheler and Martin Heidegger and by his forced exile during World War II. Only in recent decades, as scholarship has moved more squarely into engagement with issues like animality, embodiment, human dignity, social theory, the philosophy of technology, and the philosophy of nature, has the originality and depth of Plessner’s vision been appreciated. A powerful and sophisticated account of embodiment, the Levels shows, with reference both to science and to philosophy, how life can be seen on its own terms to establish its own boundaries, and how, from the standpoint of life, the human establishes itself in relation to the nonhuman. As such, the book is not merely a historical monument but a source for invigorating a range of vital current conversations around the animal, posthumanism, the material turn, and the biology and sociology of cognition. This modern philosophical classic, long-awaited in English translation, is a key book both historically and for today’s interest in understanding philosophy and social theory together with science, without reducing the former to the latter.
Author: Helmuth Plessner
Publisher: Fordham University Press
ISBN: 0823284018
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 449
Get Book Here
Book Description
The most important work by a key figure in German thought, Helmuth Plessner’s Levels of Organic Life and the Human, originally published in 1928, appears here for the first time in English, accompanied by a substantial Introduction by J. M. Bernstein, after having served for decades as an influence on thinkers as diverse as Merleau-Ponty, Peter Berger, Habermas, and the new naturalists. The Levels, as it has long been known, draws on phenomenological, biological, and social scientific sources as part of a systematic account of nature, life, and human existence. The book considers non-living nature, plants, non-human animals, and human beings in turn as a sequence of increasingly complex modes of boundary dynamics—simply put, interactions between a thing’s insides and surrounding world. On Plessner’s unique account, living things are classed and analyzed by their “positionality,” or orientation to and within an environment. “Life” is thereby phenomenologically defined, and its universal yet internally variable features such as metabolism, reproduction, and death are explained. The approach provides a foundation not only for philosophical biology but philosophical anthropology as well. According to Plessner’s radical view, the human form of life is excentric—that is, the relation between body and environment is something to which humans themselves are positioned and can take a position. This “excentric positionality” enables human beings to take a stand outside the boundaries of their own body, a possibility with significant implications for knowledge, culture, religion, and technology. Plessner studied zoology and philosophy with Hans Driesch in the 1910s before embarking on a highly productive philosophical career. His work was initially obscured by the superficially similar views of Max Scheler and Martin Heidegger and by his forced exile during World War II. Only in recent decades, as scholarship has moved more squarely into engagement with issues like animality, embodiment, human dignity, social theory, the philosophy of technology, and the philosophy of nature, has the originality and depth of Plessner’s vision been appreciated. A powerful and sophisticated account of embodiment, the Levels shows, with reference both to science and to philosophy, how life can be seen on its own terms to establish its own boundaries, and how, from the standpoint of life, the human establishes itself in relation to the nonhuman. As such, the book is not merely a historical monument but a source for invigorating a range of vital current conversations around the animal, posthumanism, the material turn, and the biology and sociology of cognition. This modern philosophical classic, long-awaited in English translation, is a key book both historically and for today’s interest in understanding philosophy and social theory together with science, without reducing the former to the latter.
Author: Helmuth Plessner
Publisher: Fordham University Press
ISBN: 0823284018
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 449
Get Book Here
Book Description
The most important work by a key figure in German thought, Helmuth Plessner’s Levels of Organic Life and the Human, originally published in 1928, appears here for the first time in English, accompanied by a substantial Introduction by J. M. Bernstein, after having served for decades as an influence on thinkers as diverse as Merleau-Ponty, Peter Berger, Habermas, and the new naturalists. The Levels, as it has long been known, draws on phenomenological, biological, and social scientific sources as part of a systematic account of nature, life, and human existence. The book considers non-living nature, plants, non-human animals, and human beings in turn as a sequence of increasingly complex modes of boundary dynamics—simply put, interactions between a thing’s insides and surrounding world. On Plessner’s unique account, living things are classed and analyzed by their “positionality,” or orientation to and within an environment. “Life” is thereby phenomenologically defined, and its universal yet internally variable features such as metabolism, reproduction, and death are explained. The approach provides a foundation not only for philosophical biology but philosophical anthropology as well. According to Plessner’s radical view, the human form of life is excentric—that is, the relation between body and environment is something to which humans themselves are positioned and can take a position. This “excentric positionality” enables human beings to take a stand outside the boundaries of their own body, a possibility with significant implications for knowledge, culture, religion, and technology. Plessner studied zoology and philosophy with Hans Driesch in the 1910s before embarking on a highly productive philosophical career. His work was initially obscured by the superficially similar views of Max Scheler and Martin Heidegger and by his forced exile during World War II. Only in recent decades, as scholarship has moved more squarely into engagement with issues like animality, embodiment, human dignity, social theory, the philosophy of technology, and the philosophy of nature, has the originality and depth of Plessner’s vision been appreciated. A powerful and sophisticated account of embodiment, the Levels shows, with reference both to science and to philosophy, how life can be seen on its own terms to establish its own boundaries, and how, from the standpoint of life, the human establishes itself in relation to the nonhuman. As such, the book is not merely a historical monument but a source for invigorating a range of vital current conversations around the animal, posthumanism, the material turn, and the biology and sociology of cognition. This modern philosophical classic, long-awaited in English translation, is a key book both historically and for today’s interest in understanding philosophy and social theory together with science, without reducing the former to the latter.
Author: Helmuth Plessner
Publisher: Forms of Living
ISBN: 9780823283989
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 448
Get Book Here
Book Description
A modern classic, this powerful and sophisticated account of embodiment was first published in German in 1928 and now appears in English for the first time. With reference simultaneously to science, social theory, and philosophy, Plessner shows how life can be seen on its own terms to establish its own boundaries. Plessner's account of how the human establishes itself in relation to the nonhuman will invigorate a range of current conversations around the animal, posthumanism, the material turn, and the biology and sociology of cognition.
Author: Ingo Farin
Publisher: State University of New York Press
ISBN: 143849050X
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 479
Get Book Here
Book Description
The human being stands at the center of the humanities and social sciences. In an age that some have dubbed the Anthropocene, this book addresses Heidegger's conception of the human being and its role in the world. Contributors discuss how Heidegger envisages and interprets the human being and what we can learn from his thought. Pluralistic in outlook, this volume covers a broad range of divergent views on Heidegger and his complex conception of the human. A short introductory chapter orients the reader to the significance of the question of the human in Heidegger's works, its topicality, and its relevance for interpreting Heidegger's oeuvre. Chapters are divided into three thematic groups: anthropology and philosophy; human being, otherness, and world; and life, identity, and finitude. This organization facilitates discussions of the systematic interconnection between Heidegger's philosophy and his critical thoughts on anthropology and humanism, as well as his relation to contemporary philosophers and their views on the subject. Various problems in Heidegger's concept of the human are addressed, and moral dimensions and practical imperatives implicit in Heidegger explored in discussions about intersectionality and oppression, the frailty of the human, and the embeddedness of the human being in nature, society, and history.
Author: Susanna Lindberg
Publisher: State University of New York Press
ISBN: 1438492596
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 452
Get Book Here
Book Description
From Technological Humanity to Bio-technical Existence can be framed as a metaphysics of the present. It starts from the current epoch, an era increasingly marked not only by technology but also by technics in the most general sense, and asks how this affects human existence. The book asks what is called technics, what is called humanity, how these relate to one another, and how changes in these notions oblige us to revise the philosophical notion of existence. It investigates how the idea of technological humanity—of technology as an extension and instrument of the human—is discovered and deconstructed by Martin Heidegger, Helmuth Plessner, Michel Foucault, Jacques Derrida, Bernard Stiegler, and Giorgio Agamben. Finally, the book presents a new idea of bio-technical existence, one that underlies these philosophers' works without being fully elaborated. This idea—of technics as a condition of humanity that humans share with other living and technical beings—is the author's own philosophical proposition and the final result of the book.
Author: J. Gordon Betts
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781947172807
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 0
Get Book Here
Book Description
Author: Willem B. Drees
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1108838413
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 203
Get Book Here
Book Description
This book offers scholars, administrators and the broader public an original proposal for the humanities. It argues that these disciplines, while serving society, are intrinsic to our humanity. It offers new bold ideas about how to think with greater humanistic coherence.
Author: Thorsten Benkel
Publisher: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht
ISBN: 3647670219
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 241
Get Book Here
Book Description
The culture of burial and mourning is presently in a state of flux. The idea of using the cremated remains of loved ones to form jewelry no longer belongs to the realm of science fiction but has become a fact of modern life. Today, many countries are open to allowing the ashes of the dead to be turned into ornamental objects. Technically, this produces remembrance artifacts representing the dead. The new aspect is that the mortal remains continue to exist after death in the form of such an artifact, for which previous burial culture has no precedent. How do such "ash diamonds" figure into the mourning process? How do relatives deal with this phenomenon? What is the role of esthetics? How does the social environment react to this "metamorphosis"? And does this represent the renewal of the idea of relics? This book is based on interviews held with persons who decided to go this route of remembering their deceased loved ones. The authors also visited the production facilities of these precious stones, talked with experts about the process, and attended the delivery rituals. In addition to practical, theological, and sociological assessments, the volume includes case studies that provide a forum for those concerned to voice their opinions.
Author: Isaac E. Catt
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN: 1666918563
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 235
Get Book Here
Book Description
In The Human Image in Helmuth Plessner, Pierre Bourdieu, and Psychocentric Culture, Isaac E. Catt offers a unique criticism of naturalistic reductions of humans to animals, to neuro substrates and to DNA. Catt explores a new interpretation of Plessner and Bourdieu, revealing the combinatory logic of semiotic phenomenology in both and their common problematic of communication. Through an emergent synthesis of philosophical anthropology and communicology, this book provides a basis for criticism of the failed mechanistic medical model in psychiatry, a fresh argument for reconceptualizing psychiatry as a human science, and for construction of a new ecological image of communicative being. Throughout the book, alternative attempts to transcend dualisms such as cybernetics, anti-anthropocentrism, and biosemiotics are revealed to risk reification of the very objects of their analysis. Scholars of communication, semiotics, philosophy, psychiatry, cultural studies, mental distress, and psychology will find this book of particular interest.
Author: E. F. Schumacher
Publisher: Harper Collins
ISBN: 0060906111
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 164
Get Book Here
Book Description
The author of the world wide best-seller, Small Is Beautiful, now tackles the subject of Man, the World, and the Meaning of Living. Schumacher writes about man's relation to the world. man has obligations -- to other men, to the earth, to progress and technology, but most importantly himself. If man can fulfill these obligations, then and only then can he enjoy a real relationship with the world, then and only then can he know the meaning of living. Schumacher says we need maps: a "map of knowledge" and a "map of living." The concern of the mapmaker--in this instance, Schumacher--is to find for everything it's proper place. Things out of place tend to get lost; they become invisible and there proper places end to be filled by other things that ought not be there at all and therefore serve to mislead. A Guide for the Perplexed teaches us to be our own map makers. This constantly surprising, always stimulating book will be welcomed by a large audience, including the many new fans who believe strongly in what Schumacher has to say.
