Phenomenological Reviews

Book | Chapter

185975

The mortal self

toward a transcendental-pragmatic anthropology

Sami Pihlström

pp. 229-252

Abstract

Human well-being and the good life are, obviously, regarded as vitally important topics of research within the humanities and the social sciences in general, as well as philosophy in particular. Philosophical explorations of "human nature' — that is, philosophical anthropology, as it has been traditionally understood — may also be expected to make fundamental contributions to our understanding of these and related issues. Those contributions presumably differ from those of the special sciences, because philosophical anthropology investigates not only class="EmphasisTypeItalic ">factual ques-tions of human nature — what human beings are actually like — but also normative ones concerning the ways in which human lives ought to be led. However, clearly, the good life cannot be understood at all if we fail to pay attention to the "darker' sides of human existence, including our experiences of evil, pain, suffering, guilt, and death. Philosophical anthropology, in short, is seriously incomplete without investigations of death and mortality.1 As Martin Heidegger famously maintained, our existence is deeply characterized by "being-toward-death', Sein-zum-Tode, which is inseparable from our "being-in-the-world' generally, our in-der-Welt-Sein.2

Publication details

Published in:

Honenberger Phillip (2016) Naturalism and philosophical anthropology: Nature, life, and the human between transcendental and empirical perspectives. Basingstoke, Palgrave Macmillan.

Pages: 229-252

DOI: 10.1057/9781137500885_11

Full citation:

Pihlström Sami (2016) „The mortal self: toward a transcendental-pragmatic anthropology“, In: P. Honenberger (ed.), Naturalism and philosophical anthropology, Basingstoke, Palgrave Macmillan, 229–252.