Anti-Mechanismus und Neovitalismus in Plessners Theorie des Lebenden

ABSTRACT: ANTIMECHANISM AND NEOVITALISM IN THE THEORY OF LIVING OF HELMUTH PLESSNER For the contemporary German Philosophical Anthropology, the confrontation with biology was considered indispensable. In order to construct the philosophy of nature at the basis of the theory of man, Helmuth Plessner discusses the difficulties encountered by mechanicism in the study of the living. An organism is not assimilated to a simple physical object: it is a subject organized as a totality (Ganzheit). For this reason, the requests raised by Neovitalism are very important, because they put mechanicism in front of its limits (as happened in the contrast between Köhler and Driesch). This does not mean for Plessner to embrace Neovitalism, but to recognize its value and fruitful impact on the conceptual and methodological transformations of contemporary science and philosophy.