Abstract

Relativizing Odo Marquard's well-known assumption of a basic conflict between philosophy of history and philosophical anthropology, the author suggests to interpret Claessens' homination theory - together with Gehlen's theory of institutions, Heinrich Popitz' enquiries upon the artificial society and Günter Dux' analysis of cultural changes - as a contribution towards a philosophicalanthropological concept of history. Peculiar to Claessens' approach is the combination of human inventions in the field of social organization (from small, concrete insulation groups to big, abstract, differentiated societies) with the world of subjective emotionality: in that sense the .genealogy. of the .mediated. or .abstract. in its relationship to the genealogy of the .immediate. or .concrete. appears as the leitmotiv for the entire reconstruction of the history of mankind. German Philosophical Anthropology's central categories such as Plessner's .mediated immediacy. and Scheler's .world-openness. are consequently conceived no more as structural and invariant properties, but as very long-lasting, dramatic historical processes.