The Contemporary Significance of the Anthropological Turn

Abstract

The fundamental questions of "What is human place in Being" and "What is man" are being marginalised by human proprietary from Modernity, such as capital, political institutions, natural sciences and modern technology. Traditional metaphysics is deaf to Modernity, and general anthropology also does not touch human Essence and the Being of human beings. The result is that the human existence is at stake. German philosophers, Max Scheler, Helmuth Plessner and Arnold Gehlen, predicted these realities and endeavoured to establish all-encompassing and epochal philosophical anthropology, dedicating to exploring the issues of the times. This paper follows the philosophical anthropology paradigm where in reference to other creatures and in the midst of the liberation of self-consciousness, humans gradually reveal a unique place and project themselves into the human social realm, starting with the two core categories, Person and Man. Finally, it concludes that philosophical anthropology clings to Zeitgeist (spirit of the times) and creates a worldview and a basic rationale for the contemporary to develop the methodology in response to the issues of Modernity.