Humanprojekt

What makes the human form of life special? Jung argues that this question can only be answered by relating philosophical, evolutionary, cultural theory and cognitive science approaches to each other. In this way, the author makes an important contribution to a non-reductionist understanding of the human being that makes visible the tense unity of body and spirit.

Das anthropologische Konzept der Verletzlichkeit wird seit einigen Jahren als Alternative zu einem autonomie-zentrierten Zugang zur Medizinethik diskutiert. Was aber genau unter Verletzlichkeit bzw. Vulnerabilität zu verstehen ist, und worin die moralische Relevanz derselben besteht, bleibt eine kontrovers diskutierte Frage. In einem dreijährigen Diskursprojekt haben die Autor/-innen dieses Bandes sich in unterschiedlichen Perspektiven mit dem Konzept der Verletzlichkeit des Menschen befasst. Der Band versammelt als Ergebnis dieses gemeinsamen Diskurses unterschiedliche philosophische, theologische und medizinethische Perspektiven, die sich mit anthropologischen und ethischen Grundlagen des Phänomens der menschlichen Verletzlichkeit, sowie mit seiner Funktion und Relevanz für konkrete medizinethische Fragestellungen befassen.

Obwohl Gesundheit für alle Menschen essentiell ist, unterliegt das Verständnis des Begriffs »Gesundheit« jeweils historisch, regional und kulturell unterschiedlichen Einflüssen. Mit verschiedenen Festlegungen von »Gesundheit und Krankheit« werden auch die Aufgaben der Medizin unterschiedlich definiert.

Dieser Band ist dem Thema »Verständnis(se) von Gesundheit« gewidmet, einem der Kernthemen der interdisziplinären Arbeitsgruppe der Berlin-Brandenburgischen Akademie der Wissenschaften »Zukunft der Medizin: Gesundheit für alle«. Es wird u.a. der Frage nachgegangen, wie die Medizin Krankheiten nicht nur immer besser therapieren kann, sondern wie sie außerdem besser imstande sein könnte, Gesundheit zu bewahren. Die Beiträge zeigen historische Kontinuitäten auf und verbinden diese mit kulturgeschichtlichen Besonderheiten aus allen Regionen der Welt, Europa, China, Indien, Afrika, Südamerika sowie mit philosophischen Aspekten, z.B. der Frage der Verantwortung für die eigene Gesundheit. So ergibt sich ein holistisch(er)er Gesundheitsbegriff, aus dem neue Perspektiven für die evidenzbasierte Medizin erwachsen.

Ein eigener Buchteil ist dem Verständnis von Gesundheit aus Sicht einzelner Patienten und den Empfehlungen an die Politik gewidmet.

Transhumanism is a cultural movement and an interdisciplinary research approach aimed at the global improvement of humans being by means of technology. Transhumanism challenges fundamental boundary distinctions – between nature and technology, humans and animals, humans and machines, persons and things, and between therapy and enhancement. The essays in this volume discuss the implicit metaphysics, anthropology, and ethics of transhumanism.

Experiences can be unfinished, feelings unclear, goals, problems and thoughts diffuse. That's why people are constantly busy in their daily lives trying to find out what's going on with their experiences. In the book, these clarification processes are examined for their consequences in terms of meaning and experience theory, which at the same time accommodate a non-reductive and subtle language practice in dealing with ordinary experience.

What are the interconnections between body and mind, nature and freedom, and what part does the concept of living play in determining them? The essays in this volume examine ontological, anthropological, and ethical dimensions of living through systematic conceptual reflections along with specific analyses of the forms, norms, experiences, and limits of living.

This book endeavors to fill the conceptual gap in theorizing about embodied cognition. The theories of mind and cognition which one could generally call "situated" or "embodied cognition" have gained much attention in the recent decades. However, it has been mostly phenomenology (Heidegger, Merleau-Ponty, etc.), which has served as a philosophical background for their research program. The main goal of this book is to bring the philosophy of classical American pragmatism firmly into play. Although pragmatism has been arguably the first intellectual current which systematically built its theories of knowledge, mind and valuation upon the model of a bodily interaction between an organism and its environment, as the editors and authors argue, it has not been given sufficient attention in the debate and, consequently, its conceptual resources for enriching the embodied mind project are far from being exhausted. In this book, the authors propose concrete subject-areas in which the philosophy of pragmatism can be of help when dealing with particular problems the philosophy of the embodied mind nowadays faces - a prominent example being the inevitable tension between bodily situatedness and the potential universality of symbolic meaning.

People argue about which actions are morally right or wrong, good or evil, permitted or forbidden. Can such questions be decided by reference to an objective moral truth? How can such truth be recognized? What role can the natural sciences play? What is the meaning of variations and changes in our ideas of morality? How much tolerance should we bring to divergent moral opinions, and when is criticism justified?

The relationship between anthropology as the study of human beings and ethics as the study of what humans ought to do is close and multifaceted. The authors address the following questions: Are moral norms grounded in human nature or are they independent of it? Does ethics take into account human weaknesses or is morality absolute? If people change, do the requirements of morality change as well?

Humans shape themselves and their world through technology. Muller examines how the technological development has constituted and altered people’s understanding of themselves and, by extension, their relationship to the world. Since our behavior is shaped by our deeper anthropological and ontological beliefs, this study seeks to contribute to self-enlightenment about the nature of our behavior in a technological civilization.

Persons regard themselves as individuals, ascribe characteristic features to themselves, mentally project episodes of their lives, and think about themselves. This book provides a philosophical analysis of this complex capacity and explores its preconditions. For the first time, it weaves together analytic, phenomenological, and empirical insights into an integrated understanding of identity and self-consciousness.

The analysis of the causal efficacy of reasons and their non-reducibility to deterministic causes is a central concern of Julian Nida-Rümelin’s practical philosophy. According to him human freedom reveals itself in the meaning of reasons for our social practices. This volume contains texts from Nida-Rümelin concerning the relationship between freedom and reason, critical discussions from renowned authors as well as responses from Nida-Rümelin.

The question of what characterizes feelings of being alive is a puzzling and controversial one. Are we dealing with a unique affective phenomenon or can it be integrated into existing classifications of emotions and moods? What might be the natural basis for such feelings? What could be considered their specifically human dimension? These issues are addressed by researchers from various disciplines, including philosophy of mind and emotions, psychology, and history of art.
This volume contains original papers on the topic of feelings of being alive by Fiorella Battaglia, Eva-Maria Engelen, Joerg Fingerhut, Thomas Fuchs, Alice Holzhey-Kunz, Matthias Jung, Tanja Klemm, Riccardo Manzotti, Sabine Marienberg, Matthew Ratcliffe, Arbogast Schmitt, Jan Slaby, and Achim Stephan.

Advances in biotechnology have enabled interventions in the human organism (genetic, psychopharmological, and technical) that promise to increase physical and intellectual performance over the 'normal' or 'natural' boundary, as well as to make possible targeted changes in human experience. The author investigates ethical debates surrounding these issues with a particular focus on arguments that employ a normative concept of a person that allows or disallows for these particular interventions.

Culture is a uniquely human property. Although precursors to cultural practices are found in other animals, these precursors differ in kind from the conditions of human culture that have emerged through evolutionary processes. In order to illuminate the mutual dependence of biological-genetic and cultural evolution, the author investigates technology and the use of tools, as well as the way these abilities are transmitted, in order to understand what properties and abilities separate human beings from animals.

Humans are being that not only lead their lives but also experience them. Why? This volume examines this question from the perspective of multiple disciplines in the natural and social sciences. The contributions investigate the ways in which personal feeling and individual experience are central components in our dealings with our social and physical environment.

Humans are creatures of articulation: an essential part of our form of life is the expression of what appears to us significant in what we experience and how we behave. The aim of this volume is to proceed from this realisation to an integrative anthropology that not only takes into account the uniqueness of our form of life, but also our evolutionary context. This has important consequences for our understanding of our corporeality, actions, language, consciousness and morals.

The question of the nature of man has occupied human beings everywhere and in every period including the present. The scientists, politicians, theologians, journalists, and writers assembled here give their personal responses to the question in fifty incisive contributions representing different cultural traditions.
What is to be expected? Clearly not a conclusive answer to the question but rather a dazzling spectrum of contemporary positions regarding human self-understanding both critical and constructive, pointed and profound.

Everybody who thinks or speaks possesses consciousness – but nobody is capable of defining exactly what consciousness is. The phenomenon ‘consciousness’, therefore, is a persistent enigma which is being continually addressed by various disciplines. This volume encompasses the functions of consciousness as analysed by a consortium of scholars from the life sciences and humanities. Empirical results taken from psychiatry and psychology, linguistic and philosophical act and speech analyses, as well as, historical perspectives are all placed in context with one another.

• renowned contributors
• provides an extensive and systematic introduction

Freedom of will is one of the central concepts we use to define ourselves as human. Through the discoveries made in the fields of neuroscience and brain research however, the very basis of those concepts have come into question: Is our freedom simply the result of regulated processes? Or is our freedom to be found within the loopholes of that regulation? Or does freedom belong to a realm beyond the control of the biological and the physical?
The evolution of freedom is the Human Project group’s first focus. The scholars involved, representing neurobiology, zoology, psychology, psychiatry, and philosophy, have developed a concept of freedom which can be explained through the life sciences and at the same time, can be grasped by cultural studies. This exemplary interdisciplinary procedure requires each discipline to examine their fundamental convictions in order to arrive at a clear understanding of the terms and concepts used.