A RETROSPECTIVE HISTORY OF 20TH CENTURY ANTHROPOLOGY

The philosophical anthropology of the 20th century took a new turn in abandoning the classical philosophical idea of a substantial union of body and soul. Progressively it freed itself from the idealistic catego­ries which thematized formal essences; it no longer proceeded through a re­flexive analysis of a metaphysica specialis, which treated the concept of the human person as a universal essence. On the contrary, it focused on the concrete life of the subject as involved in human interaction based on the act of exis­tence, and relating to other beings in the context of this world. Undoubtedly, philosophi­cal anthropol­ogy is being progres­ sively acknowledged in circles of "second reflexion," but concrete phi­losophy (Gabriel Marcel), even purified of all substantialist dualism, remains marked by the problem of soul and body because I am my body in the lived unity of my presence to others.

At the same time, Husserl provided philosophical anthropology with methodologi­cal underpinnings. Phenomenology begins by question­ing the essence of conscious­ness and considers lived action. That grasp of human identity still is subsidiary to a sense of constitution on the basis of the pure ego, which is its terminus a quo. In fact, Husserl freed himself from rationalism or empiricism by the concept of intentionality as the perspective of consciousness in encountering things. This under­stands itself according to a double intentionality: through perception it lives among the things of the world and reflects upon itself in its intentional effort. In the end, one must turn to a pure ego "which enters and departs from the scene" in order to appreciate the dynamic source of meaning, for it is the ego in its proper intentionality which understands one's conscious outlook. There are then two intentional out­looks which are not parallel, but mutually imply each other: reflective and non-reflective consciousness. Thus, the phenomenalizing subject can deconstruct the life of the subject in the absence-pres­ence of the self to itself, without losing thereby its perceptive bond to others and to the world. At the same time, in an impersonal mode the reflecting subject attributes to itself what is just passed. Thus the play of nothingness passes through the "I" which is a presence to oneself in the continued process of moving beyond oneself into the future. This directed Sartre toward an imper­sonal founda­tion of the I and Paul Ricoeur to the narrativity of "oneself as an oth­er."

In contrast to Descartes, Husserl holds that consciousness consti­tutes itself in a self-surpassing process of atten­tion to sensible things (aisthesis), that the psyché is the concrete life of the ego and that the Geist is constituted in intersubjective cultural relations. In his later recent philosophical publications this horizon absorbs the whole field of transcendental reflection to the point of transforming into inten­tional meaning -- this time on the basis of the life-world (Lebenswelt) -- the whole project of "reason." This is the source of the attempt of phenomenological philosophy to contemplate the telos of humanity. The philosopher, says Husserl, is a func­tionary of humanity. But as a matter of transcendental subjectivity this returns to the terminus a quo of mean­ing and thence to the constitution in time of the history of reason.

Putting aside the phenomenological idealism of transcendental sub­jectivity as conceived by its author, Heidegger situated the existent in the transcendental exteriorization of its being-in-the-world, underlining thus the extatic ontological dimen­sion of the Dasein as existence open to the total horizon of world. Phenomenology, having become ontological, provides an existential analysis of Dasein. This makes explicit the mani­ festation of exis­tence as "phénomene," in as much as existence is self-constitution understood as emergence in time of its own self-transcen­dence as "being-towards-the-world." The tran­scen­dence of the Dasein immediate­ly manifests its structure of being-with in interrelation to the other existents in the Mitwelt. Experiencing the original affective field (Befindlichkeit) of its "habitat" as feeling of the situation, it expresses its essentially existential mode, which is to say its finitude. This manifests itself in existence under the structural form of concern throughout the whole course of the develop­ment of its being (das Geschehen) from birth to death. In its passion to exist the Dasein comprehends itself between these two terms which constitute it as a finite being, which enables it to realize its existence in the "histor­i­cal" horizon of the world.

Phenomenological ontology as such then is not in principle an existential anthro­pology, even if it draws support therefrom. For phenomenological anthropology is always already within the hermeneu­tic circle in the comprehensive act of philosophy; it cannot escape the fact that it concretely lives its ontological question. This is not a mat­ter of the given experience which constitutes the unique reality each one lives in oneself; rather it is a matter of bringing out the operative struc­tures of concrete existence (the universalizable dimensions) according to which existence is deployed. The ontological différence, Heidegger's fundamental ontology, has been drawn on both by Sartre and by Merleau-Ponty for the metaphysical life of the concrete existent.

Merleau-Ponty confirms this concept of meaning in its concrete living significance: the term "sens" connotes a plurality of meanings, such as the sensible, direction and significa­tion by gesture and language, both symbolic and affective. What makes the presence of mean­ing is the "concrete différence" which always is overcome and extended in the time and space of every encounter. Repeating an expression of Husserl, Merleau-Ponty speaks of the "flesh of the world". The term "flesh" is impersonal, expressing a fundamental ontological relation of meaning, that is to say, concretely all forms of rela­tion. It consists of the dynamic sequence of all sensible and signifi­cant relations in the foundational and reciprocal exchange of Nature and Culture.

The concrete chiasm (intersection or fusion of terms) which constitutes the "flesh" of the world is the place where every existent concretely achieves meaning. It is situat­ed in the inter­play from the beginning of the evolution of living things and of people up to their symbolic cultural interrelations. The Ineinander of nature/culture relation as such reversibility or "différence" should be understood as the basic relation of meaning. Différence is found in the reversibility of the concrete and the symbolic, life and lan­guage, ego and the other. Far from the classical substantialist context, Merleau-Ponty opens a new way for philosophy which brings into play the experience of the intersection of figure on foundation in exchange relations. Thus, every dimension can be traced back to the originary ontologi­cal source whence meaning emerges and is exchanged.

To the ontological meaning of Dasein, the notion of body adds singular concrete expression. Already described by Husserl as mediation between psyche and the physical body, bodiliness becomes for Merleau- Ponty the concrete dimension of existence as transcen­dence with others and the world: "the body, the intentional arc which rises over the world." Constitutive of the self, not as "the other of the other" in the Husserlian sense, but in the interexchange of every encounter, the subject lives originally in the ex­change of affective experience found throughout the whole field of intersubjective sensibility (which constitutes intropathie) and of the symbolic exchange signified through gesture and language. The existent emerges in its subjectivity thanks to the ensemble of affective and linguistic relations, from birth to death. This is sustained by the power of desire which signifies the experience of exchange, always evolving yet always already there in the limited and passing opening of the existence shared between the "speakers".

This brief presentation of existence indicates that philosophical anthropology has been renewed thanks to phenomenology with its concrete manifestation of lived experi­ence. This concerns the existential neutrality of fundamental ontology as well as the forma­tion of the transcendental schema of the freedom (the pure ego), but it emerges from the analysis of lived behavior, both interrelational and linguistic, in the mutual recogni­tion between the denizens of the life world.

Change of Perspective: Action

A change of perspective took place in mid-century after the war. Philosophical anthropology, notably with Sartre, assumed a militant role in response to the socio-politi­cal needs of the times. The philosophical goal was not only comprehension, but critical involvement. This qualitative change provoked by social and cultural conflicts was rein­forced by a new vision of the world in its concrete dimension of real and potential global­ization. Not only exchanges between cultures, but techno-scien­tific powers with universal impact evoked a new mode of behavior on the part of philos­ophy. There was a need to reflect no longer merely theoretically, but with a practical view to action. Sartre spoke of action in the mode of coexistence under the pressure of a scarcity of goods which, tied to desire, depended not only on an actual situation, but also on the perverse effects of inertia which checked the achievement of the goals of action.

That warning from French philosophy spread during the second half of the 20th century. Structuralism inverted the humanist perspectives of Sartre to situate the focus of the philosophical perspective upon the linguistic or systematic interplay of signs. Concurrent with this change of mentality there was a great development of the techno-scienc­es; this promoted the sense of a constructed world which distanced one from daily life. In the measure in which for the first time humanity was able to recognize itself as a cultural whole (infor­mation being instantly broadcast by the media on a planetary level) and in which the individual person is taken up in this flow, all of life is subject to a process of objectification. Because the daily world was being transformed in its vital content and traditional values, this imposed a new mode of life in which one finds oneself alienated in one's own subjectivity.

Undoubtedly, human coexistence should reform itself in other forms, but it is no longer possible to escape the globalization of relations at a planetary level; hence what is affirmed on the existential level risks losing all its meaning. Today the subject is measured by artificial intelligence, projects a scientifically de­fined image. The globalization of practical reason is supported also by a new type of rational interpretation of reality. Instrumental reason has transformed the real into an operational mode, thereby introduc­ing a quantita­tive vision of the world and a utilitarian and economic interpretation of humanity. These changes in information and culture not only condition the modes of life, but support new rules of existence. Reason in its concrete planning is preempted by the interplay of instru­mental func­tional possibilities continually reprojected by new technol­ogies. The ordinary person now has lost the resources of Descartes is "good sense."

We find ourselves faced with a new dualism of subject and object which no longer has anything to do with the old Cartesian rationalism but on the contrary emerges from a new form of scientific positivism, subjected to a constructed functional reason. Scientists have developed new techniques which rapidly transform the whole field of life at all its levels, whether material, geographic, vital or socio-economic-cultural. That "con­ structed" world from now on will articulate itself in world terms. It has the power over the subject which is now become an object determined by the system. That is to say, the subject interprets itself also from the point of view of instrumental reason, and thereby is reduced while losing its own existential opening. Thus one finds oneself faced with a new dual­ism. On the one hand, the subject is considered as a rational agent on the instrumental level, abstracting from its lived dimension; on the other hand, the functioning of the constructed world produces situations in which subjects, themselves objectivized and con­structed, must live their lives.

All these situations raise problems for action; they confront individuals and collectivities with their responsibilities with which they have neither prior experience nor any possibility of foreseeing the consequences to follow from action.

Let us take the example of new developments in biology: biological research on the human genome poses the acute ethical problem of the risks of experimentation both to the individual and to the species as a whole. The contemporary mastering of life by the techno-sciences in every domain generates a new collective awareness of the ethical problem. The universality of the system has radicalized that ethical self- awareness and risks itself becoming part of the schema of instrumental reason through availing itself of the positivist presuppositions of the techno-sciences. This results from considering only the utilitarian and quantitative results of material nature and culture and thereby alienating the human condition in general. The subject will be only a system of utility to be run ratio­nally. At this price, even the objective language of the ethicians is reduced to the effectivity of the individual in the collectivity, omitting thereby the behavior of the exis­tential subject in order to consider only positive or empirical factors. Moreover, what survives of the traditional ethic has been absorbed into the present situation and values. In the attempt to guarantee the objectivity of a consensus, ethics constructs itself on purely exteriorized and positive bases, in search of a majori­ty voice to justify the ethical answer.

RESTRUCTURING THE ETHICAL SUBJECT: THE RETURN TO ANTHROPOLOGY

In the light of this distress of ethics and the need for creativity in this field one notes now a renewal of interest in philosophical anthropology. It is no longer questioned that issues of the human person underlie ethical responsibility: they are seen rather as its radical anchor. Of course, this is tied no longer to a theoretical understanding of anthropos, but to a practical anthropology which infolds from the center of action. For example, when the philosopher enters the ethical debate, he or she must critique the issues and reasoning in ethics in function of human interests. Proceeding then to the condi­tions of existence, one must debate actual problems as, for example, otherness, dwelling place, the future of humanity in general, and respect for the individual and for cultural groups. One must question especially the reduction of the practical to only instru­ mental reason, and in a parallel manner the reduction of human life to only techno-scien­tific or techno-economic views of globalization. One certainly must reflect on the new depen­dence of the human in relation to nature and to the new powers of a globalized system of the socio-economic world. The ensemble of applied problems radically trans­forms individual and social life and raises all sorts of new ethical questions. Ethics, in effect, assumes a preponderant place in philosophy in the measure in which it be­comes con­scious of the urgency of redefining all in terms of a destiny which now has come to be shared universal­ly.

Philosophy then is called to action, that is to the elaboration of a prospective strate­gy which not only permits control of applied research, but responds to the problems raised by the new inventions which upset people in their being, nature and traditions. Deontolo­gy certainly should permit regulating the initiatives of science and of all system­atic manners of collective planning in view of living human destiny, both present and future. Therefore, ethics can no longer be only a theoretical science, a reflection either a priori on the essence of action or a posteriori on acquired human experience, but must begin and carry out work on new matters, yet unexplored, which have an immediate impact on the life of individuals, cosmic possibilities, the protection of peoples, or socio-cultural life. There are numerous examples: nuclear energy, control of the internet, genetic manip­ulation like cloning, excessive production of hydrocarbons, effects of socio-econom­ic manipulation, environment, cultural heritage, etc. When one touches upon the integrity of the human in its natural habitat and cultural dimension the whole of existence is put in cause in its goals and values.

All these questions oblige ethicians to return to the original structure of meaning which conditions existents in their individual autonomy and their coexis­tence. It is neces­sary to rediscover the foundations which assure authentic ethical reflection. Here philo­sophical anthropology can provide important help in response to two questions: first, protecting the foundations of life, and second, ethical concerns.

The Analysis of Anthropological Structures

Phenomenological anthropology enables ethics to free itself from instrumental and utilitarian reason, while responding fundamentally to the original intent of developing consen­sus, which is in risk of remaining tied to a purely extrinsic rationality of discourse. This is a matter of regaining contact with communicative action and understanding the bases in action of its central justifications.

Today our life and that of others are redirected by the develop­ment of a globalized world. How can one respond on that basis to the three fundamental ethical directions suggested by Paul Ricoeur in his Soi-même comme un autre, that is: self-esteem, concern for the other, and solidarity according to institutionalized justice in the face of the anonymous globally omnipresent institutional system? One must return to the source and renew the bond of the subject to its lived roots. Phenomenological anthropolo­gy recalls the fundamental dimensions of existence: (a) bodiliness in all its dimensions: perspective, spatio-temporal, affective and expressive, (b) the recognition of the other, and (c) the world as lived horizon or habitat.

(a) The concept of "bodiliness" by Merleau-Ponty indicates the structure of open­ness of the existent to the world and to others on the basis of the practical dispositions which condition action. The analysis of bodiliness takes up the modalities of the existent. My body is the opening by which existence engages the sensible through active percep­tion and experi­ence; it is the dynamic milieu of the senses at once internal and exter­nal. It consists in the active-passive relation of one's relational and linguistic gestures which tie one to other existents and enable one to recognize oneself in relation to the other who mani­fests his or her subjective identity.

(b) As sensible, motor, affective and expressive, the body is experienced in every encounter, and is at the root of every lived experience of sense. Both actively and pas­sively it is a source which recognizes itself in every encounter. It is the other which enables me to take my own stand (in the Sartrean sense of an ethical and immediately perceptive subjectivity: testifying to the "feeling" of remorse, pride in self . . .). Those sentiments, lived in the immediacy of one who is "for the other", are possible only be­cause of the affective relational inter-play is always found in the Ineinander of natural and cultural life. Bodiliness therefore is immediately an affective relation, an intropathy. It mani­fests our relation with the lived other which in an unreflected mode is at the level of our common existential openness to the world. For example, behavior is not the same when it is a matter of respect for life with regard to a human or an animal, even if even vegetable life relates us affec­tively to the living. In that sense, even on the most abstract cultural level, all behavior finds its roots.

The phenomenological analysis of affectivity uncovers the meaning of behavior. It points out the way to comprehend the other through the mediation of feeling. "Feelings" of compassion, remorse and shame are the different affective forms found in every encounter. Similarly "feel­ings" of respect and re­sponsibility are the affective forms tied to ethical action. These are, as it were, the affective resonance of the subject with regard to the ethical goals of the other in action.

(c) Bodiliness is experienced in the affective resonance to the world as its existen­tial horizon. On the one hand, cosmic nature is the vital objective anchorage of techno-science. But that concept of the cosmos is second phenomenologically by comparison to that of the life-world. It is always on the basis of our affective insertion as being-in-the-world that we discover our "habitat". The world opens us up to existence, that is, to bodiliness, in as much as it is the perceptive horizon in which things and others are perceptible for our senses. But that is only an horizon of perception; it is intrinsi­cally signifi­cant with spatio-temporal depth only to the point in which it retains the traces of the past and anticipations of the future. Vestiges of the past, the world lived as habitat points back to cultural traditions and institutions which present themselves as the unspo­ ken horizon of memory; anticipations of the future, in so far as the cultural and natural potentialities at the same time join to offer the ingredients of a new world to be constructed.

These three existential dimensions of bodiliness, recognition of others and affectivi­ty in the habitat that is the world, define the structure of the existent. At all costs, that existential structure should be preserved in any existential reconstruction at any level. In other words, the existential structure must be able to maintain itself in the most elaborate forms of constructivist reason, at the risk otherwise of a tower of Babel, that is, a collapse into phenomenological and anthropological insignificance.

Interest in Ethics

Phenomenological anthropology which interprets the original anchorage of affectiv­ity makes it possible to discover the emergence of meaning in all that is human since the dawn of life.

We use the concept of affectivity in the sense of an originating dimension and not of an analysis of affects. Phenomenologically we can suggest this only on the basis of a mature affective experience. The body appears in every lived experience as the milieu of exchange which leads to the recognition of others through intropathy, based on the reverbera­tion of the "affective" sense of pleasure or displeasure. This affective sense is reopened already by the new born who lives an experience fused to the mother, and through her to the affectivity of parental desire. That fused presence introduc­es the existent, from the beginning of life, to the affective "dimension" much before having for oneself the experience of desire as relational. The infant experiences need in recognizing otherness at the time of the breaking away by its birth. This provides at the same time a notion of return to the fusional dependence and a movement of instal­la­tion in being as a project of effective existence. This consti­tutes the transcen­dence of the subject, its existential step. The infant is able to reflect itself as in a mirror through its bodiliness before discovering its distinctive otherness through eventually meeting the other, which encounter constitutes one as a relational subject, situat­ed in relation to an "oth­er."

Finally, the affective experience of jealousy, made possible by the presence of the other parent -- the other of the other -- enables the infant to discover the possibilities of putting one's self at a distance as well as the experience of reality constituted as objec­tively signifi­cant. The temporality of the infant, already manifest in the negative phase of separation, becomes self-conscious in what has been called the Oedipus complex, that is in the reduplication of the desire of desire, where one discovers the objectivity of an affective, sexed other. This introduces the self as the pole of a differentiated sexed rela­tion, which prefigures one's future affective and sexual autonomy as an adult. One could hypothesize that the relational play of sexual "life" is already at work even before the relation of otherness at the moment of separa­tion, though in an impersonal manner in its first fused manifestations. Here the constitu­tive meaning remains undifferenti­ated and yet to be decided by lived pleasure or non-pleasure. It could be that the meaning of life as sexual­ized "difference" is the radical source of all meaning, lived unreflectively and sustained symboli­cally by parental desire. Without doubt, only the speaking subject (or more strictly, philos­ophy) can theorize the earlier experience of life as the lived past of the affective ego.

From the emergence of meaning on the basis of this sexed-experience present from the first recognition of distinctiveness or otherness, one can hypothesize that the meaning attached to the original sexed affectivity is reflected in every encounter or interplay of otherness, whatever be the dimensions of the exchange of different divisions and relations of meaning. One need not conclude that the sexed dimension is identified with the sexual difference, but only that differentiation as a relation of meaning in the reciprocal exchange of the feminine and masculine bears the mark of meaning which becomes sensible or significant at all levels. From the beginning of its entry into language, meaning is autonomous in defining all its levels of meaning. Contrarily, life expresses itself in each person according to the situated condition of man or woman, which polarizes the whole course of existence in all its meetings. This is not, however, to be confused with the tension of effec­tive sexual life, of which is birth, its most intimate expression.

Surely, the meaning of affectivity thus described is expressed in phenomenological language only at the cultural level of a consciousness able to reflect it. But inversely, it is on the basis of that origin of meaning that existence comes into possession of itself in the course of its journey between birth and death. On this basis it establishes its "bio-logical" destiny: it is anchored and achieves its own dynamism of "sense." In that case, the ratio­nal dimension also emerges through a reciprocally constitutive sharing of the truth according to the manner of the affective anchoring in which the individual is situated. In other words, there is no integrating truth which is not differentiated in its structure. It is necessary then to recognize the affective sexed situation of all action whatever it might be, inasmuch as meaning emerges in lived interaction -- which is true of all societies and of all human cultures.

This means also that the coordinates of interrelational experience are borne by an originating affectivity, whatever might be said of the separations and reintegrations which gener­ate the most abstract formalizations. Hence, ethics too should be able to separate out the affective implications lived in all circumstances, and in its practical projections maintain the sensed expressions of the originating bodiliness.

In that light, interest in ethics has its source in the analysis of affectivity as a significant dynamic force. The question is whether affectivity as a source of meaning can induce an ethical attitude. It could be suggested that affectivity enables the existent to understand itself in response to ethical problems on the basis of the comprehensive condi­tion of relatedness to the other. On that basis, every person becomes capable of identifying their experiences, even their collective ones, in their shared relations lived affectively. That origi­nating affective communication gives meaning to feeling as an ethical "intu­ition." It also can open feeling to meaning that surpass­es ethical experience, which one ultimately is called to transcend.