Abstract

In 1923 Helmuth Plessner outlined a Philosophy of Culture that reinterpreted Kant’s transcendental schematism – that is how concretely the categories of the intellect are «realized» – on a perceptive and phenomenological basis. In this way Plessner outlines a topology of senses or (to use a key term of the humanistic tradition) even a topics of sense, a search for fundamental places where sensitivity becomes cultural meaning, the plurality of types of matter match the plurality of human forms of experience. The essay explains why Plessner considered the topics of sense a kind of fourth kantian Critique, a Kritik der Sinne capable of uniting nature and culture, human praxis and material affordances. Finally, the essay shows why thanks to the topics of senses it is possible to fully develop the hermeneutical and phenomenological potential of Plessner’s anthropology.