Philosophical Anthropology: What, Why and How

For past half-century, on other side of English Channel, there has been something called anthropology, which Heidegger did honor of distinguishing from his existential-philosophical fundamental ontology of Dasein in Being and Time. It may have been eclipsed by existential philosophy, especially from a distance, and may have been criticized by European philosophers as diverse as Heidegger, Althusser and Foucault; but it has persisted as a philosophical enterprise, and remains an area of serious philosophical inquiry. Indeed, it has actually been a part of European philosophical landscape for past century and a half, emerging as a main interest and focus of post-Hegelian philosophers (outside of positivist and Neo-Kantian movements) from Feuerbach and Marx to Nietzsche and Dilthey. Yet neither this movement nor very idea of a philosophical anthropology has received any attention to speak of on this side of English Channel, at least within philosophical mainstream. I suspect that this is owing in part to influence of positivistic and Neo-Kantian thought upon development of Anglo-American philosophy, neither of which had a philosophical agenda including or allowing for anything along lines of a philosophical anthropology. It may also be partly owing to influence of Neo-Hegelian philosophy on both sides of Atlantic around turn of century, through which it came to pass that philosophical space such an enterprise might have occupied was filled instead by what neo-Hegelians (following Hegel) called the philosophy of mind being their rather unfortunate translation of Hegel's term Geist. (It is amusing to reflect that, had they translated it as spirit instead, celebrated establishment journal MIND would bear name SPIRIT, and analytical philosophers might now be going around talking about the philosophy of spirit.)