To the sources of German anthropology

From the point of view of the history of thought, the last issue of the International German review meets a real need: it allows you to identify the contours of a very rich tradition of reflection, which remains largely overlooked in France. Given the magnitude of the task, the volume does not claim to be complete. Rather, it is a question of presenting a significant sample of current research which, in France and Germany, shed light on “ the way in which anthropological theory and empirical sciences have interacted throughout the period (P. 10). It should be noted that the term “ anthropology “Note here the study of man taken in all of his natural and cultural dimensions, including both empirical observation and a speculative and normative reflection. Such a definition inevitably raises the question of the unity of this theoretical field, which questions the traditional boundaries that separate natural sciences, social sciences, philosophy, and – even if it is more marginal – more marginal – Art (cf. the article by Tanja Van Hoorn, which relates to literature). On this point, Olivier Agard and Céline Trautmann-Waller, who led the volume, adopt a position close to that which Foucault defended in Words and things : anthropology can only be defined from the way it “ Learn to other disciplines (P. 5) and which she discusses, interprets or criticizes the results. Even if some contributions questions the contribution of linguistics, it is the relationship with biology that played the leading role here. The problem which crosses the whole volume is indeed that of the definition of the specificity of man in the face of the progress of the natural sciences which, with natural history then the theory of evolution, claim to treat it as a living Among the others.

The emergence of anthropological discourse

The first two articles focus on the second half of the XVIII^e century, a pivotal period during which the modern anthropological problem is built. Removing the hypothesis of Niklas Luhmann, which reports the birth of modern anthropology to social transformations that take place in Europe from the end of the XVII^e century, these studies joined the chronological division from German sources that Foucault offered in Words and things. While in 1750, the anthropological problem was still posed in terms specific to the classical age (anthropology then designates the study of the union of the soul and the body), the last years of XVIII^e century mark the appearance in Germany, in Schiller in particular, of a “ Social anthropology of civilization (P. 39), in the wake of naturalistic theories of the history of the Scottish school, and in particular the work of Ferguson and Hutcheson.

A precious contribution to the history of ethnology

The following three texts make it possible to measure the complexity of the links which unite German ethnology with the natural sciences. At the start of XIX^e A century, Humboldt relies on the model of comparative anatomy to affirm that the idea of ​​humanity must be enriched by the confrontation of nations and their singular characters. This transposition of the comparative method is all the easier since for Humboldt and his contemporaries, the differences between human groups are both physical and cultural. But this circulation of theoretical models between nature and culture should not lead to folding one on the other. Wilhelm Wundt’s intellectual itinerary, traced by Michel Spain, shows that the “ Psychology of peoples “That he develops in the second part of his career implies a refusal to stick to the physiological approach specific to experimental psychology. His desire to question the human mind from the diversity of its cultural productions will have considerable influence. If it directly inspires the Kulturgeschichte From Karl Lamprecht and the theory of cultural orbs by Friedrich Ratzel, the psychology of peoples also meets a certain echo among French historians and, through Franz Boas, among American ethnologists.

At the same time as it forges its intellectual tools, German ethnology is also transformed into its empirical investigation procedures. Through the way in which three German anthropologists describe their stay in Polynesia (Georg Heinrich Langsdorff, Adolf Bastian and Karl von Den Steinen), Céline Trautmann-Waller traces the evolution of the report to “ ground »Between 1800 and 1920: with the progressive professionalization of ethnology, which changed the conditions of stay and specifies the theoretical requirements, the overhanging look of travel accounts is replaced by a careful description of customs and myths, and moral discourse On the customs of Polynesians gives way to a critical reflection on the role of colonialism in the destruction of these cultures.

Philosophical anthropology in the face of Darwinism

One of the central characteristics of the German tradition is the importance of it throughout the period covered by this volume, philosophical discourse on man. For this philosophical anthropology, which takes very diverse forms, Darwin’s theory represents an essential challenge, because it radically challenges the place of man in nature. The question of the value granted to the vertical station makes it possible to understand the importance of this upheaval: long considered as proof that man occupied the summit of creation, it is reinterpreted as the result of a process of contingent evolution. However, it is not necessarily the demystifying dimension of Darwinism that is problematic to philosophers: a thinker like Nietzsche, who relies on the theory of evolution to dismiss the metaphysical conception of man, however refuses to accept A definition of life he deems too utilitarian: to the concept of fighting for survival, he wants to substitute that of will of power.

L’ “ Philosophical anthropology Which was formed in Germany from the 1920s around philosophers like Max Scheler and Arnold Gehlen offers a completely different knotting between philosophy and biology. Joachim Fischer shows that instead of entering into a relationship of confrontation with biological knowledge, as does both creationism and culturalism, it strives to identify within the evidence of evidence of evidence that man introduces a break in the field of life. Rereading Herder from anti-Darwinian inspiration that insists on prematurement and biological incompletion of the human being (neotenia), the proponents of philosophical anthropology seek in the concept of “ deficient creature “(Mängelwesen) The means to overcome the denunciation of anthropology led by Husserl and Heidegger. For Olivier Agard, the interest of this tradition of thought is to question the diagnosis of the death of man pronounced by Foucault: having integrated and exceeded a radical questioning of the “ anthropologism “Modernity, authors like Scheler or Blumenberg offer a non -substantialist conception of the man in which he sees a resource to respond to the problems that” raises today “ The prospect of living engineering (P. 186).

Through this journey of the debates in which the figure of man has taken shape, was disputed and redefined, this issue of the International German review stands out as a precious tool for anyone interested in the history of anthropology.