Life Configurations

Karl-Siegbert Rehberg

“Philosophical Anthropology” as an Interpretation of Human Life Forms^*

I. The Rise of Anthropology and the Crisis of Man

The approach generally known as “Philosophical Anthropology” — one that originated in Germany during the 1920s⁸¹ — essentially posed an ancient question in a new way. It represented a reassessment and renewal of the question concerning the fundamental character of the human being as such, a question characteristic of the Western philosophical tradition since antiquity, but one that was now addressed under the particular conditions of the early 20th century.

Max Scheler as the founder and one of the two main authors of the Philosophical Anthropology assumed a fundamental threat to man in modernity. ...