TY - JOUR A1 - Krüger, Hans-Peter T1 - How is the Human Life-Form of Mind Really Possible in Nature? BT - Parallels Between John Dewey and Helmuth Plessner JF - Human studies N2 - J. Dewey and H. Plessner both and independently of one another treated the central question of what new task philosophy must set itself if the assumption is correct that the life-form of mind, i.e., the mental life-form of humans, arose in nature and must also sustain itself in the future within nature. If nature has to reconceived so as to make the irreducible qualities of life and mind truly possible, then it can no longer be restricted to the role of physical material. Conversely humans cannot no longer take on the role of God outside and independent of nature. Instead these philosophers distinguish between three plateaus (Dewey) or stages (Plessner), between physical (inorganic) nature, psycho-physical (living) nature and the nature that is mental life. This distinction is drawn such that a connection between the plateaus is truly possible. The third level, that of the mental form of life, answers mentally within conduct to the break with the first two levels. Hence it depends in the future as well on the continuously renewed difference (between the precarious and the stable for Dewey, between immediacy and mediation for Plessner) in our experience of nature. Within this difference nature as a whole remains an open unknown, which is why we can credit Dewey with a philosophy of diversified and negative holism, Plessner with a differential philosophy of the negativity of the absolute. KW - Evolution of the human KW - Non-reductive naturalism KW - Open holism KW - Life forms KW - Philosophical anthropology KW - Presuppositions of evolution Y1 - 2019 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1007/s10746-017-9429-5 SN - 0163-8548 SN - 1572-851X VL - 42 IS - 1 SP - 47 EP - 64 PB - Springer CY - Dordrecht ER - TY - CHAP A1 - Krüger, Hans-Peter T1 - Closed environment and open world BT - On the significance of Uexkull's biology for Helmuth Plessner's natural philosophy T2 - Jakob von Uexküll and philosophy: life, environments, anthropology N2 - According to Plessner, both adaptation and selection can be conceived not just as requested by the environment but also as actively proceeding from the organism. In this respect, Plessner finds in Uexküll’s new biology a powerful counterweight to the constraints of Darwinism. However, despite all the points in common in their respective understanding of the problem, Plessner reproaches to Uexküll to have entirely missed the intermediate layer of the lived body [Leib] between the organism and its environment. Unlike Uexküll, concerning the more developed animals, Plessner took up elements of animal psychology from Wolfgang Köhler and Frederik Jacobus Johannes Buytendijk. Finally, Plessner finds insufficiencies also in Uexküll’s distinction between the notion of world and the notion of environment, which would lead to the parallel positing of different environments. In reaction to Uexküll’s leveling of all environments, Plessner drafted a philosophical-anthropological spectrum between the intelligent way of living observed in the great apes, whose intelligence had been demonstrated, and the co-wordly life of the symbolic mind as seen in the personal sphere of human life. Y1 - 2020 SN - 978-0-429-27909-6 SN - 978-0-367-23273-3 U6 - https://doi.org/10.4324/9780429279096 SP - 89 EP - 105 PB - Routledge CY - London ER -