Anthropology is not anthropobiology: Josef Pieper’s discussion with Arnold Gehlen

Abstract

The considerations contained in this article are devoted to explaining the current issue concerning the relationship between philosophical anthropology and biological sciences, and in this context also with neuroscience. Unlike Arnold Gehlen, Joseph Pieper perceives the place of biology only at the starting point of analyzes of philosophical anthropology, i.e. in accordance with its classical understanding, rejecting the anthropobiologist’s thesis that biology plays a role in the explanation of human existence. Two threads are highlighted in the article. The first is a presentation of Gehlen’s most important theses about man, of course as interpreted by Pieper, while the second concerns an original and its interesting assessment by the thinker from Münster. An attempt was then made to explain Pieper’s controversial statement, which rightly emphasized, on the one hand, that anthropology, contrary to what Gehlen believed, cannot be anthropobiology, but only a philosophical anthropology, and on the other hand convinced of the need to open up human philosophy to theology. It was also indicated in what way in the discussion with Gehlen is reflected the contribution of Pieper to anthropology as understood by St. Thomas Aquinas.