In this Book
- Political Anthropology
- Book
- 2018
- Published by: Northwestern University Press
- Series: Studies in Phenomenology and Existential Philosophy
summary
In Political Anthropology (originally published in 1931 as Macht und menschliche Natur), Helmuth Plessner considers whether politics—conceived as the struggle for power between groups, nations, and states—belongs to the essence of the human. Building on and complementing ideas from his Levels of the Organic and the Human (1928), Plessner proposes a genealogy of political life and outlines an anthropological foundation of the political. In critical dialogue with thinkers such as Carl Schmitt, Eric Voegelin, and Martin Heidegger, Plessner argues that the political relationships cultures entertain with one other, their struggle for acknowledgement and assertion, are expressions of certain possibilities of the openness and unfathomability of the human.
Translated into English for the first time, and accompanied by an introduction and an epilogue that situate Plessner's thinking both within the context of Weimar-era German political and social thought and within current debates, this succinct book should be of great interest to philosophers, political theorists, and sociologists interested in questions of power and the foundations of the political.
Translated into English for the first time, and accompanied by an introduction and an epilogue that situate Plessner's thinking both within the context of Weimar-era German political and social thought and within current debates, this succinct book should be of great interest to philosophers, political theorists, and sociologists interested in questions of power and the foundations of the political.
Table of Contents
Download Full Book
- Introduction
- pp. vii-xxvi
- The Purpose of This Book
- pp. 3-8
- The Path to Political Anthropology
- 4. Two Possible A Priori Procedures
- pp. 21-24
- 8. The Human as Power
- pp. 47-52
- 9. The Exposure of the Human
- pp. 53-60
- 12. The Human Is Tied to a People
- pp. 83-88
- Index of Names
- pp. 129-130
Additional Information
ISBN
9780810138025
Related ISBN(s)
9780810138001, 9780810138018
MARC Record
OCLC
1076828479
Pages
156
Launched on MUSE
2018-12-04
Language
English
Open Access
No
Copyright
2019