Philosophical Anthropology

Explaining individual action through interpretation of its meaning is only the beginning of tasks of a human science, according to a European intellectual tradition that combines philosophy, history, psychodynamic theories and other cultural influences. Some of the thinkers working in this tradition have named the subject philosophical anthropology to indicate that it combines traditional concerns and methods of philosophy -- especially continental philosophy -- and substantive theories about human culture, society, economy, into a broad framework for understanding human nature. This agenda of this tradition is quite different either from the philosophy of social science as it is pursued in the English-speaking tradition, and from the self-proclaimed empirical orientation of English-speaking social sciences. Its influence beyond the European continent ebbs and flows during periods of optimism and pessimism about the prospects of behavioral and social science that is quantitative, experimental, and influenced by natural science.

A continual thread through this tradition is the standing it gives to social, cultural, and economic factors independent of the beliefs and desires in individual agents, and the strength it accords these forces providing meaning to their actions that people do not themselves recognize. This real meaning of human events, undetected by their participants, directs individual human lives toward some outcome instead of others. ~ Page 139

9/22/2020