Search

In this article I argue that, with the liberation of the hand from the tasks of locomotion in human evolution, unconscious use of the hands begins to create cultural forms. The first feature of the...

Wie machen wir uns als Menschen? Diese Frage liegt vor allen Problemen der Philosophie und der Wissenschaften vom Menschen. In diesem Band wird sie als Grundfrage der Anthropologie behandelt. Anthropologie ist als »erste Philosophie« eine Reflexion über die Selbst-Verständigung des Menschen. Wie der Mensch sich macht, wird als Entwurf seiner selbst untersucht. Gunter Gebauer exploriert das Projekt aus verschiedenen Richtungen, die in das Zentrum der aktuellen Wissenschaften vom Menschen führen: die Körpertechniken, der Habitus, die Sprache, die Selbstsorge, die Empathie. Der Band wendet sich an Leser*innen mit Interesse an einem vertieften Verständnis des Menschen und der Wissenschaften vom Menschen.

Este ensaio tem a intenção de discutir os critérios para compreender a beleza no futebol tendo como referência reversa as categorias de beleza aplicadas às obras de arte. O futebol, ao contrário das artes, tem como característica um equilíbrio dramático que visa a impedir a concretização de um jogo belo pela equipe adversária.

Hermeneutics, as a core area of humanities, explores the requirements and processes which enable cultural understanding. Traditional hermeneutic theories systematically undervalue the role of the body in understanding. Instead of accepting understanding as a mental process, I want to show that there is immediate understanding with the body - an intuitive understanding which precedes understanding by linguistic means. If physical understanding is recognized linguistically, it can make a significant contribution to the cultural understanding of the self and the other. Empathy is an important function in the process of understanding. A model of linguistic understanding consolidated in physical processes is to be developed using new neurobiological work on empathetic processes

In this chapter, Gebauer applies Bourdieu’s notion of habitus to Wittgenstein’s concepts of “life-form” and “certainty”. Not only is the human being contained in the rule-structured world; the world is also contained in acting human beings in the sense that each one possesses a specific life-form. By adopting a life-form, people also adopt a whole network of certainties. In Wittgenstein’s discussion of these concepts, it is clear that his thought is not oriented toward epistemological knowledge of the world but toward the individual subject’s relationship with herself. In the grammatical form of the first person, language creates an interchange through which the unexpressed bodily reactions can enter into the language-game.

In his last writings, Wittgenstein proposes a solution to the question of how language is able to grasp inner experiences and to be understood by other persons. His key concept for the language-games of feelings is that of primitive reactions. An injured person feels pain; at the same time his behavior is part of the pain and is a picture of his pain. In the Last Writings, Wittgenstein integrates his concepts of feeling, picture, and seeing-as into a coherent conception. His discussion of aspect-seeing is interpreted in relation to his lifelong ethical struggle for a good life. For Wittgenstein, the possibility of changing aspects when examining his own personality seems to bring a sense of calm to his restless investigations.

The use of language is capable of adapting to the extremely diverse situations of a game and of responding adequately to each one, a capacity that can be understood with reference to Bourdieu’s concept of habitus. Language-games begin to occupy a central place in Wittgenstein’s philosophy. From primitive language-games he moves on to more complex forms that function with the help of “paradigms”. Even the more complicated uses of language remain tied to the body’s practical use. Wittgenstein looks at rule-following in the language games as a “technique” that has its origins in the body, structured by social practice. The final problem of this chapter is the question of how the factual existence of regular actions can give rise to the normative concept of rules.

In his work as an architect, Wittgenstein gained important insights that would lead him to a new philosophical thinking. They are contained in the notes originally published in the Wiener Ausgabe, which are of inestimable value for understanding the path leading to the Philosophical Investigations. His new orientation is centered around practical human action and the spatial dimension of thought. The human body, movements, and actions now come into play. In Wittgenstein’s new way of doing philosophy, one can see that his architectural work seems to have developed a spatial and object-oriented engagement with things in the world. In this chapter of this book, Gebauer shows how Wittgenstein integrated the physical space of action into his thinking, and how he incorporated the self into this world.

At the core of Wittgenstein’s anthropological philosophy now stands the relation among social practice, the speaker’s structured body, and the use of ordinary language: The speaker adopts the immanent order of the world through her actions, and establishes an accord with the other participants in shared practices. As the paradigm for this use of language, Wittgenstein proposes the game, in the sense of a game of movement. This analogy brings together all his reflections on the emergence of language-games and learning, including the concept of mental states (intending, calculating, thinking), the discussion of rule following, the critique of a private language, and his assumption of certainty as the foundation of language-games, and unites them all in a coherent whole.