MARIA CHIARA PIEVATOLO

La possibilità di una antropologia filosofica: la proposta di Arnold Gehlen

N. 160

Summary — Arnold Gehlen’s anthropology is focused on the attempt of reducing knowledge to an anthropical function: by him, knowledge must be explained pragmatically as a kind of experience, of cognitive training proper of the human individuals in practical relation to the environment. But we may object that every form of gnosiological relativism incurs Russell’s paradox: a pragmatistic theory can reduce in functional terms every other theory except itself. This logical contradiction influences Gehlen’s "institutions theory" too. In facts the necessity of social institutions is explained as a compensation of human biological deficiency in comparison with animals: institutions offer the counterbalance to man’s lack of instinct and his consequent exposure to the world without a predetermining behavioral mechanisms But the very existence of historical changes proves that institutions do not stabilize human variableness: indeed, if they worked in conformity with Gehlen’s anthropological explanation, we would see no human variableness on which we could base the explanation itself; and if we see the human variableness, then institutions do not fulfil the function produced in Gehlen’s explanation. Gehlen’s difficulties suggest us a more general question: if we want to accept indeterminateness as a basic anthropological feature, does the traditional connection between anthropology and political philosophy make still sense?