Anthropogeographie im Anthropozän, der Anthropos und darüber hinaus: Lektüre von Helmuth Plessner

Abstract

Questions centered around the „Anthropos in the Anthropocene“ are particularly virulent in Anthropogeography. While the discussion about More-Than-, Post- or Other-Than-Human is present and vivid especially in anglophone theoretical discourse as well as in New Materialism, the German-speaking representative of a Philosophical Anthropology Helmuth Plessner has hardly received any attention. His concept of Eccentric Positionality, among others, seems to be particularly appropriate and striking in this context. Plessner has made remarkable attempts in approximating the essence of the human being and his fellow world, without lapsing into existentialism or making under-complex differentiations. His dialectical, oscillating definition of „Menschlichkeit“ between „Un-“ and „Allzumenschlichkeit“ has great potential for differentiation and insight. This article is intended to re-examine Plessner's Philosophical Anthropology against this background and to encourage new „dives“ in the sense of a German Theory into his, in our view, highly interesting field of Philosophical Anthropology.