In this article, we argue that there is an essential difference between social intelligence and creative intelligence, and that they have their foundation in human sexuality. For sex differences, we refer to the vast psychological, neurological, and cognitive science research where problem-solving, verbal skills, logical reasoning, and other topics are dealt with. Intelligence tests suggest that, on average, neither sex has more general intelligence than the other. Though people are equals in general intelligence, they are different in special forms of (...) intelligence such as social intelligence and creative intelligence, the former dominant in women, the latter dominant in men. The dominance of creative intelligence in men needs to be explained. The focus of our research is on the strictly anthropological aspects, and consequently our explanation for this fact is based on the male-female polarity in the mating systems. Sexual dimorphism does not only regard bodily differences but implies different forms of sex life. Sex researchers distinguish between two levels of sexual intercourse: procreative sex and recreational sex, and to these we would add “creative sex.” On all three levels, there is a behavioral difference between men and women, including the subjective experience. These differences are as well attributed to culture as genetically founded in nature. Sexual reproduction is only possible if females cooperate. Their biological inheritance makes females play a decisive role in mate choice. Recreational sex for the purpose of pleasure rather than reproduction results from female extended sexual activity. Creative sex, on the contrary, is a specifically male performance of sexuality. We identify creative sex with eroticism. Eroticism evolved through the transformation of the sexual drive into a mental state of expectation and fantasizing. Hence, sex differences (that nowadays are covered up by cultural egalitarianism) continue to be the evolutionary origin of the difference between social and creative intelligence. (shrink)

The exclusive relationship, either as a pair or even as a married pair, has regained its attraction. Obviously, the traditional roles, the economically dependent woman who stands by the side of the ‘strong man’, no longer represent the pair bond.

This paper is about erotic love as source of the self. Unlike in the Platonic tradition, love is interpreted in the light of human mating systems. Following modern sociobiological theories I reconstruct the pair-bond as the original site in the evolution of man. For the philosophy of mind it follows that the unity of personal consciousness can be explained as a dialectic of emotional nearness to and distance from the beloved other.

The pair-bond model of human origin proposed by Lovejoy in his “Reexamining Human Origins in Light of Ardipithecus ramidus” combines fossil records with the unique sexual behavior of modern humans. This construct, however, seems to lack an emotionally important element. By connecting ovulatory crypsis with frontal copulation and face-to-face contact, the transition to the complexity and subtlety of human emotional life becomes more evident. Reproductive success and emotional representation are considered as two interacting levels in the phylogenetic scale. Thus, the (...) behavioral frame of sociobiology is extended to psychobiological phenomena and a bridge is built between natural sciences and philosophy. Light from both sides will be thrown on the origin of man, including his unique cultural history. (shrink)

This paper proposes that the human mind in its creativity and emotional self-awareness is the result of the evolutionary transition from sexuality to eroticism. Eroticism is arrived at and defined by the high amount of energy displayed in animal sexuality. We propose that the unique human emotional intelligence is due to this “overflow” of mating energy. What from the survival viewpoint looks like an enormous waste of time and energy reveals itself to be an unexpected psychological benefit. The diversion of (...) sexual energy from procreation — a process that results in erotic fantasies — turns intimacy into a source of human self -consciousness. This places different emphasis on the meaning of eroticism and provides a coherent scenario of mental development beyond mere cognitive capacities. Arguments are presented on how erotic imagination, or sexual excitation as an end in itself, promotes the human propensity for explorative curiosity; data from ethology, psychology, sociology, and neuroscience are presented to support these arguments. As philosophical anthropologists, we do not provide new empirical data, but the available results of comparative behavioral research confirm our hypothesis. (shrink)

In this paper I claim that the metaphysical concept of culture has come to an end. Among the European authors Georg Simmel is the foremost who has deconstructed the myth of culture as a substantial totality beyond relations or prior to them. Two tenets of research have prepared the end of all-inclusive culture: First, Simmel's formal access that considers society as the modality of interactions and relations between individuals, thus overcoming the social evolutionism of Auguste Comte; second, his critical exegesis (...) of idealistic philosophy of history, thus leaving behind the Hegelian tradition. Although Simmel adheres in some statements to the outdated idea of morphological unity, his sociological and epistemological thinking paved the way for the concept of social identity as a network of series connected loosely by contiguity. This type of connection is confirmed by the present feeling of life as individual self-invention according to changing situations. (shrink)

This article is about Eroticism as a key-concept in the psychological understanding of the human mind. The meaning of the term can be defined as follows: Eroticism is the way humans experience sexuality as a self-sufficient mental activity. Sexuality underlies different social rules in varying cultural contexts and may lead to different ways of thinking, but there is no evidence that cultural diversity actually leads to fundamentally different ways of feeling. The constant disposition for recreational rather than procreational sex makes (...) eroticism a medium of human creativity. In this sense, eroticism is considered a central factor in the process of hominisation. The crucial cognitive competence which makes for the uniqueness of our species is due to the transformation of sexuality into eroticism and its disposition for social learning. In the animal kingdom, sex contributes to the welfare of the horde, while in human society eroticism contributes to individual self-recognition and paves the way to moral awareness. Methodologically, I plead for a cooperation of psychological and anthropological research, each utilizing and combining the complementary aspects of both approaches. (shrink)

This article addresses the emergence of human personality in evolution. The mechanisms of natural and sexual selection developed by Darwin are not sufficient to explain the sense of self. Therefore we attempt to trace the evolutionary process back to a form of selection termed “emotional selection.” This involves reconstructing selection out of subjective qualities and showing how emotions enable human forms of life that are relevant for the cultural level of cooperation that marks our species. We see a paradigm shift (...) in the concept of emotional selection that binds emotion and evolution closer together, thus closing the explanatory gap between classical ethology and modern evolutionary psychology. (shrink)

Croces philosophische Akademieabhandlung von 1893, für die Philosophische Bibliothek erstmals ins Deutsche übertragen, gehört zu den fundamentalen Texten der neueren Geschichtstheorie. In Anknüpfung insbesondere an die deutschen Geschichtsphilosophen des 19. Jahrhunderts entwickelt Croce einen ästhetischen Ansatz, um die Geschichtswissenschaften vor ihrer positivistischen Auflösung in reine Gelehrsamkeit zu bewahren.

The Vico-Axiom. Man Makes History. The new science of Giambattista Vico is interpreted from the point of view of social history instead of Hegelian idealism.

Philosophie der Lebenskunst beschreibt ein noch unvollendetes Projekt der Zusammenführung zweier Typen von Ethik: der antiken Tugendethik und der modernen Sollensethik. Dieser Band beschreibt die wechselvolle Geschichte der konkreten Anwendung ethischer Reflexion an einzelnen Autoren wie Epikur und Seneca, Montaigne und Gracian, Schopenhauer und Nietzsche bis zu Erich Fromm und Michel Foucault. Auch ostasiatische Weisheitslehren finden in der Darstellung Berücksichtigung. Das Resultat ist ein lebensphilosophischer Begriff moralischer Verpflichtung, die sich aus der Spannung zwischen dem Glücksstreben und der Glücksfähigkeit des Menschen (...) ergibt. In Zeiten der postmodernen Individualisierung und Pluralisierung der Lebensformen erweist sich der alttestamentarische Spruch »Jegliches hat seine Zeit« als Prinzip einer realistischen Lebenskunst. (shrink)

Die Geschichte der Phänomenologie ist die Geschichte der Entfaltung einer Grundidee ihres Begründers Edmund Husserl. So unterschiedliche Temperamente wie Scheler, Heidegger, Sartre und Merleau-Ponty haben sie vorangetrieben - die Enkelgeneration hat sie vornehmlich verwaltet. Ferdinand Fellmann vollzieht die ursprünglichen Intentionen der Disziplin nach und sucht in den nicht unerheblich voneinander abweichenden Positionen den roten Faden. Durch eine unkonventionelle Lesart entrümpelt er die Phänomenologie und hebt jene ihrer Denkformen heraus, an die sich gegenwärtige Fragestellungen anschließen lassen. Im Mittelpunkt steht jene kulturwissenschaftliche (...) Transformation, die die Phänomenologie angesichts der Medialisierung der Lebenswelt als allgemeine Theorie der Medien wieder in den Mittelpunkt rückt. (shrink)

This book is about the mating couple - considered as both the origin and the foundation of a strong social self. Despite increasing self-realisation, the individual always is in need of being justified through an intimate relationship in which both partners accept one another such as they are. In view of the process of global urbanization empathy and reliability are the royal road to overcoming existential loneliness.

The ›zoological turn‹ currently proclaimed by animal ethicians suggests a complete reversal of our view on animal life. As welcome as the overcoming of an anthropocentric outlook may be, one cannot ignore the ideological bias of animal ethics. What looks like a modest surrender of our customary arrogance turns out to be a subtle way of reinforcing human supremacy. In order to debunk this kind of self-deception, the article reconstructs how ethics and biology consistently came together in the 19th century. (...) Accordingly, the question arises which kind of ethics best suits current anthropology. My answer is: a concrete ethics of the art of living that takes into account the ambivalent nature of the relationship between humans and animals. (shrink)

Die Kunstwissenschaft zeichnet sich in den letzten Jahrzehnten dadurch aus, dass sie analog zur Entwicklung in der Kunst keine übergreifende Stilbildung mehr betreibt. In der vorliegenden Publikation nähern sich nun international anerkannte Kunstwissenschaftler, Philosophen und Medienwissenschaftler dem Begriff »Bild« – sowohl durch klassische Bildanalysen und ästhetische Fragestellungen als auch durch Versuche, einen neuen wissenschaftlichen Begriff für Kunst zu finden. Die Autoren, darunter Felix Ensslin, Frieder Nake, Jean-Baptiste Joly, Ute Meta Bauer, Katharina Sykora und Beat Wyss, erörtern, wie wir Bilder lesen (...) und welchen Stellenwert diese in unserem Denken heute einnehmen. Beispielhaft zeigen 30 Kunstwerke, etwa von John Baldessari, Gianfranco Baruchello, Holger Friese, Matthias Hoch, Christian Jankowski, Stephan Jung, Markus Schinwald oder Peter Weibel, die ganze Vielfalt der heutigen Bildproduktion in der Kunst. (shrink)