HOSTAGES OF UNCERTAINTY. INDIVIDUAL, COMMUNITY, INSTITUTIONS IN THE LIGHT OF THE PHILOSOPHICAL ANTHROPOLOGY

Abstract

The paper includes a characterization and an analysis of chosen conceptions of the philosophical anthropology that can be helpful in research on the grounds of the condition of present human beings. In a chronological way the author shows a historical expansion of problematic aspects and the changes of its interests. She studies the questions that were asked by Max Sheler, Helmuth Plessner and Arnold Gehlen with the special references to the last of them. The utility of coming back to the philosophical anthropology is indicated by the relation to a stand of later philosopher Odo Marquard who recurred to the questions of his great predecessors and creatively elaborated their observations. In an indirect way the paper presents the advantages of searching for academic inspiration in ideas of past explorers because of all the knowledge about the present that can be taken from the past.