LEADER 04934nam 22004815 450 001 9910480586203321 005 20210806031942.0 010 $a0-8232-8401-8 024 7 $a10.1515/9780823284016 035 $a(CKB)4100000008527065 035 $a(MiAaPQ)EBC5802726 035 $a(DE-B1597)555377 035 $a(DE-B1597)9780823284016 035 $a(OCoLC)1105557139 035 $a(EXLCZ)994100000008527065 100 $a20200723h20192019 fg 0 101 0 $aeng 135 $aurcnu|||||||| 181 $ctxt$2rdacontent 182 $cc$2rdamedia 183 $acr$2rdacarrier 200 10$aLevels of Organic Life and the Human $eAn Introduction to Philosophical Anthropology /$fHelmuth Plessner 210 1$aNew York, NY :$cFordham University Press,$d[2019] 210 4$dİ2019 215 $a1 online resource (449 pages) 225 0 $aForms of Living 300 $aIncludes index. 327 $tFront matter --$tContents --$tForeword from the Helmuth Plessner Society --$tTranslator?s Preface and Acknowledgments --$tPreface to the First Edition (1928) --$tPreface to the Second Edition (1965) --$tIntroduction --$t1. Aim and Scope of the Study --$t2. The Cartesian Objection and the Nature of the Problem --$t3. The Thesis --$t4. The Modes of Being of Vitality --$t5. The Organizational Modes of Living Being: Plants and Animals --$t6. The Sphere of the Animal --$t7. The Sphere of the Human --$tAppendix --$tGlossary --$tNotes --$tIndex 330 $aThe most important work by a key figure in German thought, Helmuth Plessner?s Levels of Organic Life and the Human, originally published in 1928, appears here for the first time in English, accompanied by a substantial Introduction by J. M. Bernstein, after having served for decades as an influence on thinkers as diverse as Merleau-Ponty, Peter Berger, Habermas, and the new naturalists. The Levels, as it has long been known, draws on phenomenological, biological, and social scientific sources as part of a systematic account of nature, life, and human existence. The book considers non-living nature, plants, non-human animals, and human beings in turn as a sequence of increasingly complex modes of boundary dynamics?simply put, interactions between a thing?s insides and surrounding world. On Plessner?s unique account, living things are classed and analyzed by their ?positionality,? or orientation to and within an environment. ?Life? is thereby phenomenologically defined, and its universal yet internally variable features such as metabolism, reproduction, and death are explained. The approach provides a foundation not only for philosophical biology but philosophical anthropology as well. According to Plessner?s radical view, the human form of life is excentric?that is, the relation between body and environment is something to which humans themselves are positioned and can take a position. This ?excentric positionality? enables human beings to take a stand outside the boundaries of their own body, a possibility with significant implications for knowledge, culture, religion, and technology. Plessner studied zoology and philosophy with Hans Driesch in the 1910s before embarking on a highly productive philosophical career. His work was initially obscured by the superficially similar views of Max Scheler and Martin Heidegger and by his forced exile during World War II. Only in recent decades, as scholarship has moved more squarely into engagement with issues like animality, embodiment, human dignity, social theory, the philosophy of technology, and the philosophy of nature, has the originality and depth of Plessner?s vision been appreciated. A powerful and sophisticated account of embodiment, the Levels shows, with reference both to science and to philosophy, how life can be seen on its own terms to establish its own boundaries, and how, from the standpoint of life, the human establishes itself in relation to the nonhuman. As such, the book is not merely a historical monument but a source for invigorating a range of vital current conversations around the animal, posthumanism, the material turn, and the biology and sociology of cognition. This modern philosophical classic, long-awaited in English translation, is a key book both historically and for today?s interest in understanding philosophy and social theory together with science, without reducing the former to the latter. 410 0$aForms of living. 606 $aBiology$xPhilosophy 608 $aElectronic books. 615 0$aBiology$xPhilosophy. 676 $a570.1 700 $aPlessner$b Helmuth$4aut$4http://id.loc.gov/vocabulary/relators/aut$0152074 701 $aBernstein$b J. M$01038941 701 $aHyatt$b Millay$01038942 801 0$bDE-B1597 801 1$bDE-B1597 906 $aBOOK 912 $a9910480586203321 996 $aLevels of Organic Life and the Human$92460816 997 $aUNINA