MENSCHLICHE NATUR UND AUSDRUCK. HELMUTH PLESSNERS STANDPUNKT

ABSTRACT: HUMAN NATURE AND EXPRESSION. THE POSITION OF HELMUTH PLESSNER In Helmuth Plessner’s anthropological theory, the human being is a psychophysical totality, in which reason and sensibility are deeply intertwined and produce its positional eccentricity. The human being is the subject endowed with a mediated and conscious relationship with himself and with the world. For this reason, his specific “modus vitale” translates into creativity, expression and linguistic communication, but not only. The face is a “mirror of the soul” and is the medium of some of the most significant expressions characteristic of human nature: laughter and crying, which are considered “borderline reactions” of behaviour, and the smile, widely symbolic and ambivalent.