Die Erfindung des Menschen. Kants Vorlesungen ueber die pragmatische Anthropologie, 1772--1795.

摘要

This study centers on the emergence of anthropology as a privileged branch of knowledge in the 18th-century Germany in general (part one), and on Kant's contribution to and conception of anthropology in particular (part two). The first part of the dissertation analyzes the changes in methodological approaches as they unfold within the natural sciences, particularly the medical sciences. As the field of medicine begins to grapple with its own inherent transformation, new methodologies and strikingly different concepts of the human being are brought forth: various schools of thought offer divergent answers to the philosophical problem of causality. The directions taken by these different schools of thought help clarify a disjuncture in the theoretical trajectory of the 18th century. The tension between positivistic sciences, on the one hand, and metaphysics, on the other hand, plays a defining role in the formation of anthropology as a branch of knowledge. I claim that the science of anthropology was formed in part to offer distinctively secular, yet holist answers to the questions of causality with regard to the intellectual as well as the physical constitution of the human being. In the second part, the study examines the specific image of the human being Kant develops. By means of archeological, conceptual analysis of specific tropes I show that, while the science of anthropology fails to fulfill its promise---to offer a holistic view of the human being---Kant is able to deliver just that. The subtext that unfolds during the 23-year time span of the lectures reveals a holistic image of the human being, created through figurative speech. This argument is developed by topical analysis of Kant's account of the dream phenomenon as well as his engagement with the game. The theme of the game especially allows for a conception of the human being that may eschew nominal definitions of its subject---the human being---but instead opens up an image of the human being that is marked primarily by relations, i.e. relations to himself/herself, to his/her social surroundings and to an all-encompassing external nature.