Od metafizyki do empirii.
From metaphysics to empiricism.

Philosophical anthropology on man.

Summary/Abstract: This essay focuses on three conceptions of man formulated within the German school of philosophical anthropology. I discuss, one by one, theories by Max Scheler, Helmuth Plessner and Arnold Gehlen. First, I emphasize the common to these theoreticians methodological assumptions consisting primarily in an opposition against the Cartesian dualism and in founding a ground for philosophical analysis in the results of scientific research. Second, I present their conceptions of man stressing at the same time dissimilarities that differ them from each other. These differences concern first and foremost their general orientation: while Scheler’s understanding of man is clearly determined by a metaphysical idea of a permanent essence of man, Plessner’s conception focuses rather on a dynamic, historical way of manifesting of their existence. Philosophy by Gehlen in turn presents a picture of man as a biological being who by their own effort, by emerging institutional reality, stabilizes their existence.

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