Second Nature and Embodiment: Arnold Gehlen’s Philosophical Anthropology and Contemporary Enactivism

This article is focused on the philosophy of Arnold Gehlen, one of the founders, with Max Scheler and Helmuth Plessner, of the important tradition of German philosophical anthropology in the twentieth century, especially thanks to his masterpiece Der Mensch (1940). After a short introductory section on the struggle of various twentieth century philosophers (mostly in the movements of phenomenology and pragmatism) to redeem embodiment from the oblivion in which Western philosophy and science had put it, and also on the recent contribution offered in this field by the development of enactive philosophies and so-called “4E Cognition” approaches, I offer a reconstruction and an interpretation of some fundamental concepts of Gehlen’s philosophical anthropology, with a particular focus on the question of embodiment in "Der Mensch." Then, adopting a historico-philosophical perspective and a comparative methodology, I try to establish a conceptual comparison and connection between some aspects of Gehlen’s thinking (with a particular focus on his notions of second nature, environment, and world) and certain philosophical questions about human embodiment that have recently emerged in the context of the diverse variants of contemporary enactivism (sensorimotor, autopoietic, radical, etc.).