Philosophical Anthropology and Science: Understanding the Human Project
Philosophical Anthropology and the Anthropomorphic
There are many scientific humanities and a multiplicity of anthropologies. Philosophical anthropology raises suspicions among both philosophers and scientists. In the sharp, anthropology classes, often under names other than the history of philosophy and others, and between scientists, who believe that knowledge of the human being exists. Today, with science, it is meaningless to speak of philosophical anthropology. It is a contradiction: anthropology cannot be philosophical. Therefore, philosophical anthropology needs to be defined in relation to both philosophy and scientific anthropology. If there must be an anthropology that is not scientific, it means that in addition to science and religion, philosophy also has something to say about man.
The scientific anthropologist must have a clear idea of the limits of their science and not draw general conclusions and philosophical studies, exceeding the scientific field. Science cannot tell us what man is. One reason that humans cannot be reduced to what science says is that they only see what humans have been or are, but men can nest a different future. In the philosophical anthropology of the twentieth century, a negative attitude regarding scientific anthropology has dominated. Most authors start from the disqualification of scientific knowledge about man. A serious problem is that those who do philosophical anthropology often show an ignorance of human sciences and scientific anthropology, disabling them from saying something true about the human being. Another problem is the abstract aspect of human beings that these philosophical anthropologies show, which ignore the material reality and disconnect man from the concrete historical conditions and social relations in which he is formed.
Philosophical Knowledge About Man
Philosophical knowledge about man should not be defined negatively against science but must proceed from the necessity and inevitability of scientific knowledge. Today, to develop an interpretation of man, one has to go to all sciences and knowledge that has its object in various aspects of man. This means that the keys to the human being as to what is being are in science. Sciences have made progress in explaining what man is and dismantling illusions, and we must bear in mind what they tell us to understand. A very important value of science is to be consistent with that movement’s relentless deposition of pride and humiliation of human beings.
The Dissolution of the Human Subject
The sciences tell us that what man is, is not in itself but as another in nature and in society. In the modern age, the cascade of progressive humiliations of the human begins. Explaining the human, which is the subject of the sciences, is dissolved in the facts of nature and society. We see that behind human thought, their language, their motivations, hopes, are, on the one hand, society that has to be transmitted, and second, the human brain machine whose purpose seems to be ensuring the survival of the genetic code. But you must admit that science itself is not talking about man, who, for them, is dissolved in the objects of study. The sciences of man stop talking to talk about what they know: language, behavior, culture. They are human sciences in the absence of the humanity of man because, for them, there is none. But the realm of the human cannot be reduced to facts, cannot be reduced to what it is. And here comes philosophical anthropology.
Articulating Philosophical Anthropology with Science
1. The Human Being as a Project
One way of articulating philosophical anthropology with science is from the side: the human being as a project. Human beings have all the biological, psychological, and social determinations that science should explore and investigate, but they are also both a project from what is, or is able to distance themselves from what is by going beyond the traditional patterns of behavior. It’s not just what it is, but it also transcends what is toward what is not. Any project of human being that does not take into account the biological, economic, social, political, and linguistic determinations makes no sense. The problems of the human being are latent problems that are not answered questions from the humanities. Faced with how the human sciences operate, philosophy adds to what it does not correspond to objective knowledge. Science answers what we are. Philosophy asks who we are. Philosophical anthropology is, therefore, knowledge about the human project: on the indeterminacy, the transcendence, or the sameness of man, the man who lies at the natural and social scene that is as a being.
2. The Assessment of Meaning
Another way of articulating philosophical anthropology to science is the assessment of meaning. A key aspect of all knowledge of human beings is the desire to understand the human. Human sciences seek to formulate, express, and convey the sense that the human being gives himself and projects that men try to translate into reality. Cultures explain the reproductive systems of social life and ways of understanding the world and human life. The human sciences are, above all, aware of how humans interact and solve problems. The purpose of philosophical anthropology is the project of a universal, emancipated humanity, and the road is the criticism of the factual conditions of human consciousness.