OUR UNDERSTANDING OF OURSELVES and our place in nature constitutes, if not the central, at least a central problem of metaphysics. Yet, faced with this question, modern philosophical thought has for the most part swung helplessly between an empty idealism and an absurd reductivism. It is time we overcame our narrow factionalism and learned not only to think more independently ourselves about persons, minds, and living nature, but to profit from the efforts of those who have already given us concepts (...) and arguments which could help us along this road. Among such writings, Helmuth Plessner's major work, Die Stufen des Organischen und der Mensch, seems to me outstanding, in that it provides both a firm rational basis for the biological sciences, in their many-levelled structure, and for the sciences of man. (shrink)

Frontmatter -- VORWORT ZUR ERSTEN AUFLAGE -- VORWORT ZUR ZWEITEN AUFLAGE -- INHALT -- Erstes Kapitel. ZIEL UND GEGENSTAND DER UNTERSUCHUNG -- Zweites Kapitel. DER CARTESIANISCHE EINWAND UND DIE PROBLEMSTELLUNG -- Drittes Kapitel. DIE THESE -- Viertes Kapitel. DIE DASEINSWEISEN DER LEBENDIGKEIT -- Fünftes Kapitel. DIE ORGANISATIONSWEISEN DES LEBENDIGEN DASEINS. PFLANZE UND TIER -- Sechstes Kapitel. DIE SPHÄRE DES TIERES -- Siebentes Kapitel: Die Sphaere des Menschen -- NACHTRAG -- SACHREGISTER -- NAMENSREGISTER -- Backmatter.

Abstract John McDowell argues for minimal empiricism via using the notion of second nature of human beings. I should like to invite him to discuss Helmuth Plessner's Philosophical Anthropology in order to elaborate a more substantial conception of second nature. McDowell seems to think that it is adequate for his more epistemological aim to remind us of second nature as though it were to be taken for granted. But I think, following Plessner, that this right reminder needs a therapeutic elaboration (...) in Kant's sense of propaedeutics. What had been called our second nature found itself being questioned in order to limit the range of ways of treating the self we can authorize. (shrink)