Finite but Unbounded: New Approaches in Philosophical Anthropology

The Berlin Studies in Knowledge Research (BSKR) series aims to foster systematic research into the variety of forms of knowledge as well as to uncover aspects of their underlying unity. The conception of the discipline of epistemology it seeks to promote is a generous-one which encompasses a study of the full variety of forms, practices and dynamics of knowledge, as well as their mutually interacting points of contact and their respective mechanisms of interpenetration. It seeks thereby to bring about a reorientation of the discipline of epistemology, undoing artificial restrictions in its scope and achieving a greater appreciation of the heterogeneity of different forms of knowledge. The series BSKR is associated with the Innovationszentrum Wissensforschung (IZW) / Center for Knowledge Research at the TU Berlin, Germany.

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World-leading anthropologists and philosophers pursue the perplexing question fundamental to both disciplines: What is it to think of ourselves as human? A common theme is the open-ended and context-dependent nature of our notion of the human, one upshot of which is that perplexities over that notion can only be dealt with in a piecemeal fashion, and in relation to concrete real-life circumstances. Philosophical anthropology, understood as the exploration of such perplexities, will thus be both recognizably philosophical in character and inextricably bound up with anthropological fieldwork. The volume is put together accordingly: Precisely by mixing ostensibly philosophical papers with papers that engage in close anthropological study of concrete issues, it is meant to reflect the vital tie between these two aspects of the overall philosophical-anthropological enterprise. The collection will be of great interest to philosophers and anthropologists alike, and essential reading for anyone interested in the interconnections between the two disciplines.