Günther Anders: between philosophical anthropology and critique of culture

• Grant number: 22/13240-9
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships abroad - Research Internship - Doctorate
• Start date: January 25, 2023
• End date: December 04, 2023
• Field of knowledge: Humanities - Philosophy - History of Philosophy
• Principal Investigator: Paulo Eduardo Arantes
• Grantee: Felipe Catalani
• Supervisor: Konrad Liessmann
• Host Institution: Faculdade de Filosofia, Letras e Ciências Humanas (FFLCH). Universidade de São Paulo (USP). São Paulo , SP, Brazil
• Institution abroad: University of Vienna, Austria
• Associated to the scholarship: 19/09295-0 - Imagination and morality: a study on the work of Günther Anders, BP.DR

Abstract

Günther Anders' intellectual development has drastic changes, both in terms of the style of writing and of the subject. The author himself comes to speak (ironically), like Heidegger, of a Kehre. His youth writings are deeply marked by the German academic philosophy of the period: there is a constant dialogue (even if conflictive) with phenomenology and with the philosophical disciplines that gain prominence in that period, especially philosophical anthropology. However, his post-1945 work (the period in which he began his reflections that would culminate in the 1956 book Die Antiquiertheit des Menschen) is marked by a distancing from his writings of the 1920s and 1930s, in which Anders sought to elaborate a philosophical anthropology of his own - a "negative anthropology," as he put it, and takes the form of an essayistic cultural critique. What interests us here is to try to understand how certain concepts and certain philosophical procedures of the young Günther Anders, despite these abrupt changes, persist in his mature work. In this context, his notion of "man without world" will be one of the key concepts for this investigation. (AU)