Finite but Unbounded: New Approaches in Philosophical Anthropology

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. 

Table of Contents

Martin Gustafsson Introduction 1

Tim Ingold To Human Is a Verb 9

Thomas Schwarz Wentzer Approaching Philosophical Anthropology: Human, the Responsive Being 25

Mark Bevir Situated Agency: A Postfoundational Alternative to Autonomy 47

Martin Gustafsson Notes on Life and Human Nature 67

Emily Martin Ethnography, History and Philosophy of Experimental Psychology 97

Kevin Cahill A Degenerate Case of Action 119

Margaret Lock The Alzheimer Enigma in an Ageing World 133

Margrit Shildrick Individuality, Identity and Supplementarity in Transcorporeal Embodiment 153

Lars Fr. H. Svendsen The Loneliness of the Liberal Individual 173

Vincent Descombes The Dual Nature of the Modern Individual 187