Personal Life-Form and Objective Spirit.Foundations of an Anthropological Philosophy of Mind

• Applicant: Professor Dr. Matthias Wunsch
• Subject Area: Theoretical Philosophy
• Term: from 2014 to 2019
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 251918961

The contemporary philosophy of mind examines the mental dimension of human life primarily in relation to the physical-bodily and the linguistic dimension. The research project starts from the hypothesis that this horizon is too narrow and proposes to extend it by including the dimensions of the lived body (Leib) and the objective spirit. It thus pursues a foundation of an anthropological philosophy of mind. The concept of person is at the heart of this scheme. The dubious consequences of conceptions of personhood, arising from debates about criteria of what constitutes belonging to the class of persons, should be avoided by an analytic-anthropological conception that determines personhood as the human life-form. This view of personhood will then be developed into a new conception of objective spirit.Taking into consideration the internal relation between "life-form" and "life-sphere", the specifically human life-form can be conceived as permeated with openness to the world. The concept of second nature may substantiate the notion of such a life-form, if it copes with the importance of culture, tradition, active self-scrutiny and reflective distance for this life-form. On this basis we gain a conception of objective spirit, which determines it as the life-sphere corresponding to the human life-form and brings it in a relation of interdependence with the "personal spirit". The consequences with respect to a conception of the lived body are important: On the one hand the lived body is a constituent of the personal spirit and therefore indispensable for the conception of objective spirit; on the other hand the lived body is not only determined in a physical-bodily way but also marked by the objective spirit in various ways.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants