Gehlen synthesized Scheler, Plessner, and Mead into a philosophical anthropology of instinct-free human agency.

Evidence

Habermas liked the way that Gehlen, in his book on Man (Der Mensch), had linked research results involving themes from Scheler, Plessner and the American pragmatist and social theorist George Mead, in order to produce a systematic anthropology that showed how people could independently transform the unsatisfactory conditions of their lives and create the opportunities to eke out an existence, and how they could build up a system of behaviour patterns that fed on surplus energy and had largely been freed from instinctual drives. — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School, 623

Categorization

• XREF: Mead’s pragmatist social psychology sits oddly inside a conservative German anthropology; connects to the reader’s earlier notes on pragmatism and the social constitution of the self. — connects to: Gehlen argued synthesis now resides in society, not in human minds — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School: Its History,…, 615; Theorizing instinct as socially produced can accidentally naturalize existing social conditions. — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School: Its History,…, 292; Human beings create their own essence through action rather than inheriting a fixed nature — Sarah Bakewell, At the Existentialist Café: Freedom,…, 27
• yield-rescued: below the book’s yield-target cutoff, included anyway for connecting to: Gehlen argued synthesis now resides in society, not in human minds — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School: Its History,…, 615; Theorizing instinct as socially produced can accidentally naturalize existing social conditions. — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School: Its History,…, 292; Human beings create their own essence through action rather than inheriting a fixed nature — Sarah Bakewell, At the Existentialist Café: Freedom,…, 27

Broader Connections

• Theorizing instinct as socially produced can accidentally naturalize existing social conditions. #complicates (0.74) — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School, 292