Sociality as the Human Condition

Philosophical Studies in
Science and Religion

Series Editor
F. LeRon Shults, University of Agder, Norway

Advisory Board
Philip Clayton, Claremont University, USA
George Ellis, University of Cape Town, South Africa
Niels Henrik Gregersen, University of Copenhagen, Denmark
Antje Jackelyn, Bishop of Lund, Sweden
Nancey Murphy, Fuller Theological Seminary, USA
Robert Neville, Boston University, USA
Palmyre Oomen, Radboud University Nijmegen, The Netherlands
V.V. Raman, University of Rochester, USA
Robert John Russell, Graduate Theological Union, USA
Nomanul Haq, University of Pennsylvania, USA
Kang Phee Seng, Centre for Sino-Christian Studies, Hong Kong
Trinh Xuan Thuan, University of Virginia, USA
J. Wentzel van Huyssteen, Princeton Theological Seminary, USA

VOLUME 3

The titles published in this series are listed at brill.nl/pssr

 Sociality as the
Human Condition
Anthropology in Economic, Philosophical and
Theological Perspective

By

Rebekka A. Klein

Translated by

Martina Sitling

LEIDEN BOSTON
2011
First Published as: Rebekka Klein Sozialitt als Conditio Humana. 2010 Edition Ruprecht,
Gttingen.

This book is printed on acid-free paper.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Klein, Rebekka A.
Sociality as the human condition : anthropology in economic, philosophical and theological
perspective / by Rebekka A. Klein ; translated by Martina Sitling.
p. cm. (Philosophical studies in science and religion ; v.3)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-90-04-19199-0 (hardback : alk. paper) 1. Philosophical anthropology.
2. AnthropologyPhilosophy. 3. Anthropology of religion. 4. Social groups. 5. Social
participation. I. Sitling, Martina. II. Title. III. Series.

BD450.K586 2011
301.01dc22
2011012998

ISSN 1877-8542
ISBN 978 90 04 19199 0

Copyright 2011 by Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, The Netherlands.

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Fees are subject to change.
For my mother
Undine Klein
 CONTENTS

Volume Foreword .............................................................................. xiii

Acknowledgements ............................................................................ xv

Introduction ........................................................................................ 1
1 Phenomenological Criticism of Science .............................. 1
2 The Primacy of Philosophical Anthropology ..................... 3
3 Natural Foundation of Anthropology in Current
Economics ................................................................................ 10
4 The Relational Approach to Anthropology in Social
Philosophy ................................................................................ 15
5 The Double Description of Anthropology in Theology ... 20

Chapter One Anthropology as a Representation of

Humanity ........................................................................................ 27
6 Interdisciplinary Anthropology ............................................ 27
7 Anthropology and Sociality in the Individual
Disciplines ................................................................................ 29
7.1 Theological Figures of Thought on Nature and
Humanity ........................................................................ 30
7.1.1 The Difference between Natura Lapsa and
Oeconomia Naturae ........................................ 32
7.1.2 Isomorphism of Nature, Humanity and
Society? ............................................................... 34
7.2 Basic Anthropological Paradigms of Experimental
Economics ....................................................................... 35
7.2.1 Human vs. Rational Behavior ......................... 36
7.2.2 Human vs. Animal Behavior .......................... 38
7.3 Philosophical Points of Entry in Anthropology ....... 42
7.3.1 Anthropology as Human Self-Inquiry .......... 42
7.3.2 Alternatives: The Dualism and Monism of
Anthropology ..................................................... 48
8 Anthropological Key Differences ......................................... 50
8.1 Heidegger: Humanity as the Truth of Being ............ 52
8.2 Agamben: The Dissolution of the Animal
Construct ........................................................................ 56
viii contents

8.3 Adorno: Dehumanization through Society .......... 63

8.4 Conclusion ................................................................. 66
9 The Human Condition as a Concrete Condition of
Existence ................................................................................. 67
9.1 Barthes: The Human Condition as Myth ............. 68
9.2 Arendt: Loss of the Social Human Condition? ... 70
10 Plessner: Humanity and Bodily Existence ........................ 77
10.1 The Broken Relation to the World ........................ 81
10.2 From the Shared World (Mitwelt) to
Interpersonal Relations ............................................ 83
10.3 Conclusion ................................................................. 87
11 Concreteness, Objectivity and Phenomenal Excess ........ 89

Chapter Two The Conflict between Egoism and Altruism ..... 91

12 Possibilities and Limitations of an Empirical
Anthropology ........................................................................ 91
13 The Economic Modeling of Human Social Behavior ..... 94
13.1 The Methodological Paradigm Shifts of
Experimental Economics ......................................... 97
13.2 Skepticism about the Homo Oeconomicus .......... 101
13.3 Backgrounds to the Critical Assessment of the
Homo Oeconomicus Model .................................... 104
14 The Methodology of Experimental Economics ............... 109
14.1 Translatability of Laboratory and Experiential
World .......................................................................... 111
14.1.1 Empirical Explanation and
Methodological Object Constitution in
Experiments ................................................. 111
14.1.2 The Validity of Experimental Findings
Outside of the Laboratory ........................ 114
14.2 Construction Principles of Economic Laboratory
Experiments ............................................................... 117
14.2.1 The Experiment as a Strategic Course
of Action ...................................................... 118
14.2.2 The Experiment as Selective Replication
of Reality ...................................................... 119
14.2.3 Game Theory and Hypothesis Formation
in the Behavioral Experiment .................. 123
15 The Modeling of Social Preferences .................................. 129
15.1 What are Preferences? .............................................. 129
 contents ix

15.2 The Ultimatum Game and Inequity Aversion of

Social Agents .............................................................. 132
16 Norms for Cooperative Behavior ....................................... 136
16.1 Sanctions in Public Goods Games ......................... 136
16.2 Social Norms as a Second-Order Public Good? ... 140
17 From Homo Reciprocans to Homo Altruisticus ......... 148
17.1 Negative Reciprocity: Ultimatum Game ............... 150
17.2 Positive Reciprocity: Trust Game ........................... 150
17.3 Pure Altruism: Dictator Game ............................... 152
17.4 Strong Reciprocity: Altruistic Punishment and
Rewarding ................................................................... 154
18 The Utility Expectation of Altruistic Agents .................... 157
18.1 Psychological, Biological, and Moral Altruism .... 158
18.2 Personal Satisfaction in Altruistic Punishment ... 161
19 Affective Empathy: The Significance of Social
Emotions ................................................................................ 167
20 The Phenomenal Excess of Social Interaction ................. 171
21 Conclusion ............................................................................. 173
21.1 Critique ....................................................................... 173
21.2 Theses .......................................................................... 178
21.3 On the Sense and Nonsense of Talking about
Altruism ...................................................................... 184

Chapter Three Difference in the Interpersonal Relation ......... 187

22 Three Constellations of the Interpersonal Relation ........ 187
23 Human Nature and its Function for the Legitimation
of Political Order .................................................................. 189
23.1 The Separation of Politics and Nature in the
Model of Societal Order .......................................... 191
23.2 The Genesis of Order from Contingence ............. 195
24 Antagonism: The Irreducibility of Difference .................. 198
24.1 Laclau and Mouffe: Antagonism and
Democracy ................................................................. 199
24.2 Critical Assessment of the Liberal, Deliberative
Model of Society ........................................................ 204
25 Recognition: The Pacification of Difference ..................... 206
25.1 Recognition: Normative Demand or Real-Life
Practice? ...................................................................... 208
25.2 Post-Hegelian Perspectives on Recognition ......... 210
x contents

25.2.1
Honneth: Recognition and Its Negative
Forms ........................................................... 210
25.2.2 Taylor: Recognition and the Risk of
Homogenizing Difference ......................... 214
25.2.3 Garca Dttmann: A Critical Assessment
of Restorative Recognition ........................ 217
25.3 Ricurs Concept of Mutual Symbolic
Recognition ................................................................ 221
25.3.1 The Critique of Reciprocity ...................... 222
25.3.2 The Critique of Equal Recognition ......... 223
25.3.3 Symbolic Recognition ................................ 224
25.3.4 States of Peace: Recognition and
Religious Agape .......................................... 225
26 Alterity: Difference as the Source of Responsibility ....... 227
26.1 Levinas Ethical Reconception of Humanity ........ 229
26.2 The Impossibility of Social Inhumanity ................ 232
26.3 The Relationship to the Other as the Third and
the Standards of Justice ............................................ 235
26.4 Beyond the Symmetry of Egalitarian
Relationships .............................................................. 237
26.5 Gods Invisibility ....................................................... 238
27 Conclusion ............................................................................. 241

Chapter Four Humanity and Inhumanity in the Love of

Neighbor ......................................................................................... 245
28 Theological Reservations against an Immanence of the
Social ....................................................................................... 245
29 Biblical Usage and Hermeneutical Function of the
Word Neighbor ................................................................... 252
29.1 The Biblical Contexts of Caring for the Other
Human Being ............................................................. 254
29.2 Who is my Neighbor the Wrong Question? .... 256
29.3 Terminological Delineations ................................... 258
29.4 Hermeneutical Analysis of the Word
Neighbor ................................................................... 259
29.5 Proximity and Distance in the Love of
Neighbor ..................................................................... 260
30 Social Criticism Instead of Morality .................................. 263
31 Meisinger: Anthropological Awareness of Difference .... 267
 contents xi

32 Kierkegaard: Humanity as the Phenomenal Excess of

Gods Love ............................................................................. 271
32.1 Kierkegaards Method of Analysis ......................... 271
32.2 The Negative Definition of the Neighbor ............. 273
32.3 Self-Love and the Deficiencies of Interpersonal
Love ............................................................................. 279
33 Beyond Kierkegaard: The Love of Neighbor and
Inhumanity ............................................................................ 283
33.1 Adorno: The Dead Neighbor .................................. 284
33.2 iek, Santner, Reinhard: The Neighbor as a
Figure of Inhumanity ............................................... 287
34 Humanity and Inhumanity as Reflected by Mercy ......... 291
34.1 Lack of Consequences and Resources ................... 291
34.2 Lack of Expectations ................................................. 293
34.3 Unpredictability: The Phenomenal Abundance
of Practicing Mercy .................................................. 295
34.4 Inhuman Mercilessness ............................................ 297
35 Conclusion ............................................................................. 299

Final Thoughts .................................................................................... 303

36 Multiperspectivity Instead of Transdisciplinarity ........... 303
37 Result of this Study .............................................................. 305

Bibliography ........................................................................................ 309

Index of Names .................................................................................. 321
Index of Subjects ................................................................................ 323
 VOLUME FOREWORD

The PSSR book series seeks to offer critical analyses of and construc-
tive proposals for the interdisciplinary field of science and religion.
In this volume, Dr. Klein addresses the issue of human sociality from
a variety of disciplinary perspectives, with special attention on the
economic study of altruistic behavior and theological reflection on
the love of neighbor. One of the basic goals of the PSSR series is
to demonstrate the mediating role of philosophy in the late modern
dialogue among scholars of science and religion, which Klein accom-
plishes by a careful analysis of the influence of thinkers such as Hei-
degger, Agamben, Arendt and Kierkegaard on this interdisciplinary
discussion.

F. LeRon Shults, Series Editor

University of Agder, Norway
 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

The groundwork for this book was laid in the years 2005 to 2008
during a time of intense interdisciplinary work at the University of
Zurich. Above all, I have to thank Prof. Dr. Dr. h.c. Ernst Fehr of
the Institute for Empirical Research in Economics for giving me the
opportunity of carrying out this unusual endeavor. As the head of the
University Research Priority Program Foundations of Human Social
Behavior: Altruism and Egoism, he provided the external framework
for my work on this project. The excellent working conditions, the
competent organization and the internationally oriented way of wor-
king in his team were of great benefit to me. For providing advice
regarding the studys content, I want to thank Prof. Dr. Dr. h.c. Ingolf
U. Dalferth, director of the Institute for Hermeneutics and Philosophy
of Religion at the University of Zurich. His continuous and persistent
support allowed me to finish this project on time.
For the evaluation and acceptance of the work into the series Philo-
sophical Studies in Science and Religion, I am indebted to the edito-
rial board, especially Prof. F. LeRon Shults of the University of Agder.
It was upon his encouragement that this book was translated into
English. For her fast and thorough work in translating the book into
English, I am deeply indebted to Martina Sitling. Furthermore, I want
to thank Kathleen Ess for providing numerous suggestions concerning
the English style of the book. For the competent help with going to
press, I also want to thank Ms. Liesbeth Hugenholtz at Brill Acade-
mic Publishers. The student assistants from Heidelberg Elisa Victoria
Blum, Annemarie Kaschub, Johannes Lsch and Charlotte Reda offered
their hands-on support for proofreading the final manuscript. This
book is dedicated to my mother, whose financial support made the
English translation possible.

Halle/S., November 2010 Rebekka A. Klein

 INTRODUCTION

1 Phenomenological Criticism of Science

Since antiquity, sociality has been considered a basic condition of

human existence. Aristotle already spoke of the human being as a
zoon politikon, and Seneca used the term homo sociale. But what do
we presently understand by sociality? Has our idea of human beings
as naturally social creatures changed since then? Alongside the classi-
cal disciplines of anthropology (philosophy, theology, pedagogy), soci-
ality is now also the subject of scientific examination in the natural
and social sciences (sociobiology, neuroscience, economics). Within
the framework of these approaches, traditional anthropological ques-
tions and concepts are being reconstructed and remodeled using new
methods. Here, classical questions of anthropology, such as whether
human beings are capable of acting altruistically or whether they pos-
sess natural empathy, are subjected to new ways of finding answers.
Thus, in order to characterize and describe the sociality of human
beings according to the current state of research, we must clarify
what contribution the studies of natural and social sciences can make
to the discourse of the social nature of human beings in philosophy
and theology. To that end, this book will examine current studies on
human cooperative behavior from the discipline of economics along
with thoughts on the nature of conflict in interpersonal relations from
social philosophy and theology.
The methodological aim of this study is to initiate a discourse between
three different social-anthropological descriptions of human beings.
These descriptions, however, are not evaluated from the perspective of
a superordinated approach. Instead, they will be subject to phenom-
enological criticism. Phenomenology conceives of anthropological
concepts as different ways of describing an object. Phenomenological
criticism is based on the intuition that the unique characteristics of an
object of description show themselves precisely in the objects appear-
ance, in its phenomenality to the observer. This applies to experiences
in the lifeworld [Lebenswelt] as well as to the scientific analysis of an
object. As a phenomenon, therefore, an object can never be described
independently of the modality of its observation or description. Con-
sequently, there can also be no perspective-free representation of the
2 introduction

object in a phenomenological analysis that reduces the various aspects

of its appearance to a single, supposedly more objective or more fun-
damental view. The multitude of appearances of an object is resis-
tant to further analysis and cannot be resolved by interdisciplinary
discourse or otherwise. Rather, it is the basic phenomenological task
of an interdisciplinary study to bring its individual perspectives to a
point where they acknowledge that their representations are limited,
and that they need to be supplemented with other perspectives regard-
ing the phenomenality of their object. The object always appears as
something to someone. Thus, phenomenological criticism is called
for wherever this intentional structure is methodologically neglected
or ignored in the representation of an object. This phenomenological
criticism has to demonstrate the extent to which there is a phenomenal
excess regarding the object that cannot be recovered by an objectify-
ing comprehension, but that must be maintained in a hermeneutically
sensitive description of its mode of appearance.
As most phenomena, the sociality of human beings is different
from its empirical or theoretical comprehension. Thus, it has to be
conceived as a phenomenological starting point of anthropologi-
cal description. To mark the difference between the phenomenon of
human sociality and the scientific attempts to describe, comprehend
and explain this phenomenon, the study will refer to the phenom-
enological given as interpersonal sociality. The latter shows itself in
human interaction as an interpersonal sphere, a range of proximity
and distance between human beings. From an empirical perspective,
it can be detected in those modes of behavior in which human beings
affect each other through gestures, looks, words or silence and thereby
make themselves aware of the presence and needs of the other. This
range of interpersonal interaction with one another will represent
the phenomenological starting point of this interdisciplinary study of
social anthropology.
Furthermore, this study aims to demonstrate an excess of the phe-
nomenon of sociality vis--vis its thematizations with regard to the
difference between humanity and inhumanity. Hence, the phenom-
enological analysis is not only meant to reveal the limitations of
anthropological descriptions and to prevent an inappropriate reduc-
tion of its perspectivity; it also pursues a factual concern. It seeks to
be a reminder of the fact that invoking a natural sociality of human
beings must not be blind to the phenomenon of social inhumanity,
which makes the coexistence of human beings impossible at times: The
 introduction 3

span of human social behavior ranges from the violent annihilation of

others to taking responsibility for their vulnerability. Therefore, the
sociality of human beings should not be appropriated as a foundation
of morals and political order, but treated as a twofold phenomenon.
The fundamental argument of the social anthropology developed in
this book is therefore: the social humanity of human beings includes
an excess of inhumanity, and thus must always be discussed in such
a way that the anthropological description shows an awareness of its
dark side, and does not remain indifferent to the phenomenon of the
inhuman.

2 The Primacy of Philosophical Anthropology

The first chapter of this study will clarify what characterizes the social
humanity of human beings, and the extent to which it can be examined
hermeneutically and phenomenologically. To this end, it will primarily
be guided by the questions of philosophical anthropology, because its
ideas, concepts and theories also determine the formation of hypoth-
eses and the interpretation of research results in the empirical sciences.
The possibility of developing an interdisciplinary anthropological
examination based on the natural and social sciences can therefore be
refuted on the following grounds. First, the formulation of research
questions in empirical anthropology presupposes philosophical termi-
nology, both in the establishment of initial hypotheses and later in the
interpretation of empirical data. The premises contained in this termi-
nology, however, should already be reflected upon when choosing the
research question, and not simply adopted as is often done in empiri-
cal research. Second, the approach of empirical anthropology does not
provide enough leeway to be sufficiently clear about the preconditions
of a question and its implied normative preliminary decisions about
the presentation of the object. This, however, is of crucial importance,
especially when it comes to the study of human beings and their
humanity. Therefore, this study describes human beings not with the
help of empirical methods (by asking What is a human being?), but
by initiating a philosophical human self-inquiry and asking What is
human about human beings and their sociality? If the question about
human beings is understood as a philosophical question, various dif-
ferentiations of anthropological cogitation about human beings can
be established.
4 introduction

The first problem arising here for an interdisciplinary study per-

tains to the fact that many ideas about human beings in philosophi-
cal anthropology are traditionally determined by essentialism. They
are meant to determine the essence or nature of human beings. Also
in this tradition, formulas like the animal rationale attempt to iden-
tify the essence of being human with an attribute of human nature
rationality, faculty of speech or free will. However, the distinction
between human and non-human underlying these anthropological
determinations can also be understood and applied in an analytical
manner. In order to shed light on this complex, the first chapter will
highlight various key differences of anthropology with which human-
ity can be conceptualized.
Ever since the time of antiquity, a characteristic of thought about
humanity was that it was defined by separating human from extra-
human entities (divine or animal). From this differentiation developed
the classical concept of human beings, which described them as an
animal rationale, a being that, in contrast to animals, had the capa-
bilities of reason and language. The human attributes of reason and
language, and later of personality and freedom, formed the rationale
for the superiority of human beings to all things animalistic and bar-
baric, i.e., to the irrational. Here, the definition of human nature more
and more took on the function of the rational self-assertion of human
beings in opposition to that which could be defined as opposed to
their human nature, and could thus be contrasted with their own lives
as non-human.
Just like its classical counterpart, the Christian definition of human
beings took this relationship to the extra-human as its starting point.
In Christian occidental culture, therefore, the human attributes of
human nature were interpreted as reflections of the divine in human
beings. Humanity was attributed to human beings insofar as the cre-
ative power of their reason and the freedom to develop their existence
in the world characterized them as similar to God in the eyes of other
creatures. Accordingly, language, freedom and reason formed the
educational ideal of modern humanism in the 18th and 19th century
(Wilhelm von Humboldt, Johann Gottfried Herder), which was based
on Christian principles.1

1
See Pannenberg 2004, 6074.
 introduction 5

The separating distinction of human/extra-human (animal, God) and

the juxtaposing distinction of human/non-human (animal rationale)
determined the anthropological contemplation about human beings in
cultural history. As a consequence, another anthropological difference
was neglected that only entered the awareness of philosophical and
cultural discourse through the 20th century crimes against human-
ity as the dark side of human reason and rationality.2 The awareness
of the inhumanity of human beings, of their aggression and violent
behavior toward the other that defies control by morals or reason led
to a shift in thinking about the human capability to be or to become
human(e). Of course, traces of this shift can be found in earlier thought,
for example in the Leviathan by Thomas Hobbes and his depiction of
human hostility in the state of nature. But a philosophical awareness
of those phenomena in which humanity is not simply perverted into
its opposite (namely, inhumanity), but rather co-exists with it in the
locus of the human being, has only been formed by historical experi-
ences that clearly showed the possibilities of human dehumanization.
The inhuman, even though it could formally be cast as the negation of
human humanity, is nevertheless also witnessed in the locus of the
human being (e.g. in the case of the so-called Muselmann, the living
dead of the Nazi concentration camps)3 and thus from a phenom-
enological perspective is not negating, but indifferent to the humanity
postulated at the locus of the human being. Therefore, with regard to
the social humanity of human beings, there has been discussion about
a paradox of indifference in human social life (Giorgio Agamben,4
Slavoj iek,5 Judith Butler6 etc.) which should be overcome by an
ethics of non-indifference to the humanity of the other (Emmanuel
Levinas).7 The term non-indifference contains a double negation of

2
The book Dialektik der Aufklrung (Dialectic of Enlightenment, first pub-
lished 1947) by Max Horkheimer and Theodor W. Adorno can be cited as a document
of this growing awareness of inhumanity as an Other of reason (see Horkheimer
and Adorno 1972). On the use of the category in postmodern philosophy, also see
Lyotard 1991.
3
See Santner 2005, 100; iek 2005, 160161.
4
See Agamben 2003b.
5
See iek 2005.
6
See Butler 2003.
7
Of course, these authors do not share the same understanding of the paradox of
indifference which is at work in human social life. In fact, they criticize each other for
their misunderstandings of the differentiation human/inhuman. Furthermore, they do
not agree on the point that Levinasian ethics might be the solution of this issue.
6 introduction

humanity here which allows approaching the difference of humanity

and inhumanity without neglecting the dangers of its possible indif-
ference.8 Thus, it is only where the inhuman can be addressed in the
description of the human that the difference of humanity and inhu-
manity is maintained.
The second problem of an interdisciplinary study of various anthro-
pological approaches concerns their understanding of human corpo-
rality. This book holds the view that this is not to be understood as an
exclusively biological category. Where it is utilized for a naturalistic
rationale of human sociality and morals, the awareness of its human
phenomenality is in danger of being lost.9 As a reaction to the possible
reduction of human nature to biology, representatives of 20th cen-
tury philosophical anthropology in Germany (Max Scheler, Helmuth
Plessner, Arnold Gehlen) have presented concepts that take human
beings seriously in their status as a biological creature without reduc-
ing their existence to a purely animal life.10 They tried to base their
understanding of the human capacity for consciousness and reflexiv-
ity in the conduct of life, on fundamental biological principles of life,
thus refraining from excluding biological life from the description of
human nature.11 Consequently, they also gave up on the attempt to
determine an unchangeable and universal human nature and instead
conceived of human beings as visible creatures situated in the world

8
A different understanding of the term non-indifference is proposed by Slavoj
iek who refers to the Kantian distinction of negative and indefinite judgment and
applies it to the differentiation of human/inhuman: He is not human means simply
that he is external to humanity, animal or divine, namely, that he is neither simply
human nor simply inhuman, but marked by a terrifying excess which, although it
negates what we understand as humanity, is inherent to being-human. (iek 2005,
159160).
9
See Arlt 2001, 200: Anthropology would not be a philosophical endeavor if it
did not ask about the humanity of human beings that apparently is not identical with
the form brought forth by nature, the natural morphology (walking upright, sophisti-
cated language, invention and use of tools). (transl. M.S.).
10
For this classification of the concept of philosophical anthropology in the 20th
century, see Arlt 2001, 66179.
11
A different position is put forth by Christian Illies in his Philosophische Anthro-
pologie im biologischen Zeitalter. For him, the concepts of philosophical anthropol-
ogy are mainly attempts to take a part of the human being out of the brackets of
scientific explainability (Illies 2006, 19 [transl. M.S.]). However, he fails to see that the
attempt to forego severing human life and existence is above all an integrative con-
cept of anthropology. The primary interest of Scheler, Plessner and Gehlen thus was
not to remove human beings from a biological context, but to combine the representa-
tion of human existence with an understanding of the biological foundations of life.
 introduction 7

whose bodily existence is dependent on natural as well as cultural

environments of their existence. They described human existence nei-
ther as being determined by a timeless core or essence, nor as being
determined by a specific set of naturalistic characteristics. Instead,
they conceived of human existence as the interplay of innate abilities
and acquired characteristics that are cultivated through living life as a
human among humans.
Entirely in keeping with this approach of philosophical anthro-
pology focused on the concrete existence and corporality of human
beings, and linked to it by her vehement rejection of a biological or
social determination of the range of freedom in human life, Hannah
Arendt has argued against ignoring the connection between human
existence and the (natural) conditions of life on earth.12 She, too, is not
interested in determining the essential character of human beings, but
focuses her description of human beings on what she calls the human
condition, the basic condition of human life on earth.13 Arendt under-
stands the human condition as a description of the practical circum-
stances under which human life on this earth exists. Therefore, it is not
to be understood as a conditio sine qua non (logical condition), but in
the sense of a conditio per quam (practical condition).14 For Arendt,
the crucial practical condition of human existence is the social form
of human life: human beings do not live as solipsistic individuals, but
together with other people; and thus, they have to face the plurality15
and heterogeneity of human interaction. For Arendt, this plurality
is expressed in the difference between one human being and another.
This difference plays such a significant role because it brings out the
uniqueness of a human counterpart in the social relationship. Accord-
ing to Arendt, this is what characterizes humanity. Thus, humanity for
Arendt is not to be identified with the principle of humanness in the

12
With her phenomenology of the three human activities, labor, work and
action, Arendt attempts to maintain the tension between nature and culture, between
biological labor and cultural-artificial work. All three of these human activities are
rooted in the duality of natality and mortality, of birth and death, and thus cannot be
separated from the natural conditions of life (see Arendt 1958, 89).
13
See ibid., 910: To avoid misunderstanding: the human condition is not the same
as human nature, and the sum total of human activities and capabilities which cor-
respond to the human condition does not constitute anything like human nature.
14
See ibid., 7.
15
See ibid., 8: Plurality is the condition of human action because we are all the
same, that is, human, in such a way that nobody is ever the same as anyone else who
ever lived, lives, or will live. (also see ibid., 176).
8 introduction

person of the other in a Kantian sense. On the contrary, this principle

obscures the fact that the concrete human being is human precisely in
that he or she is different from every other human being, that he or
she is unique. Based on her observation of the irreducible plurality of
human life on earth, Arendt criticizes the concept of sociality which is
given in the social sciences. She holds the view that the modern defi-
nition of human beings as social creatures fails to take into account
what she calls human plurality and uniqueness, which is lost in the
process. She criticizes the Latin concept of the homo sociale because
it conceives of human beings as individuals in society and thus levels
the difference between human social and political life. In modernity,
sociality and political actions are treated as synonyms. Arendt has
drawn attention to this especially in her book The Human Condi-
tion (1958). Here, she argues that the description of a human being
as homo sociale, which was first used by Seneca, represents a momen-
tous shift from the Greek to the Roman world view that is based on a
mistranslation of the term zoon politikon.16
According to the Greek world view, the humanity of human beings
is expressed precisely not in sociality, which also occurs in animals,
but in their ability to act politically in the public domain of the polis,
an ability that separates them from animals. Thus, the political occu-
pies a space outside of the social. What is genuinely human is not
sociality, but the bios politikos of human beings:
It is not that Plato or Aristotle was ignorant of, or unconcerned with, the
fact that man cannot live outside the company of men, but they did not
count this condition among the specifically human characteristics; on
the contrary, it was something human life had in common with animal
life, and for this reason alone it could not be fundamentally human. [. . .]
According to Greek thought, the human capacity for political organiza-
tion is not only different from but stands in direct opposition to that
natural association whose center is the home (oikia) and the family.17
In order to provide a rationale for her critique of human sociality,
Arendt works with the antique juxtaposition of polis and oikia, which
differentiates between the sphere of living in which human beings pri-
marily are occupied with providing for their livelihood and the sphere

16
See ibid., 23.28.
17
Ibid., 24.
 introduction 9

of living in which their unique otherness, their alteritas, reveals itself

in their actions and communications with their peers.18
Arendts line of argument carries certainly not a historic, but rather
a systematic truth. If one takes this truth seriously, her statement can
be interpreted as a claim that the description of the human being as
homo sociale fails to live up to the human condition characterized by
human plurality and uniqueness. This claim is justified with the argu-
ment that the human being as homo sociale is ultimately reducible to
the animal sociale. The economical and biological way of life of human
beings cannot be separated from that of animals. As such, however, it
opposes that which Greek philosophy has determined to be the human
attribute of life. In Arendts interpretation, this is the human ability to
speak and to act (zoon politikon). A humanity defined in this way is
therefore no longer taken into account in the concept of homo sociale
and must, according to Arendt, even be placed in direct opposition
to it.
Arendts argumentation, which reaches back toward the anthro-
pological ideal of Greek philosophy, is underpinned by Heideggers
famous demand, formulated in his Humanismusbrief,19 that human
beings no longer be defined by differentiating them from animals, but
instead through a description of their being-in-the-world. Arendt
applies this demand to the description of human sociality and criti-
cizes its inherent reduction of the interpersonal difference between one
human being and another. On the other hand, however, her argumen-
tation also draws attention to the fact that sociality (and not politics,
law and ethics) is often seen as an anthropological category that best
describes the continuity of human life with animal life. In the bio-
logical-evolutionary description of human beings, which seeks not to
comprehend the human essence or nature, but the particularity of
the human species in its continuity to animal life, sociality therefore
becomes a favorite topos in the description of human beings. With its
help, the analogy of human and animal life can be cast into profile.

18
See ibid., 176.
19
Heidegger 2004a, 313364.
10 introduction

3 Natural Foundation of Anthropology in

Current Economics

As a representative for such a biological-evolutionary explanation of

human sociality, the experimental approach for studying human social
behavior in current economics will be analyzed in the second chapter.
From the 1970s and 1980s onwards, economists have increasingly
endeavored to test basic theoretical premises and models of human
social behavior in experiments.20 In their efforts, they have also made
use of theoretical questions that had originated in sociology or social
psychology, but had so far not been subjected to experimental study.21
As a consequence, the approach of experimental economics has been
developed into a transdisciplinary approach. Together with psychol-
ogists, biologists, neuroscientists and ethnologists, the economists
started to develop experimental designs in order to study the foun-
dations of human social behavior within a transdisciplinary frame-
work.22 Their question about the nature of human beings, i.e., about
those variables of social interaction that are true of human behavior in

20
The emergence of experimental economics as a research approach in economics
since the 1960s has been extensively presented in the introduction to the Handbook
of Experimental Economics (Kagel and Roth 1995, 3109). The principal representa-
tives of experimental economics since the 1960s were Vernon L. Smith and Daniel
Kahnemann (Nobel Prize 2002). Heinz Sauermann, Reinhard Selten, Reinhard Tietz
and Otwin Becker were some of the eminent scholars of experimental economics in
Germany (see Sauermann 1967).
21
In his current paper Aktuelle Probleme der empirischen Sozialforschung,
Andreas Diekmann calls it a paradox (Diekmann 2004, 19), that, for example, soci-
ology leaves the experimental examination of norms and sanctions completely to eco-
nomics, a field where social norms and sanctions have only played a minor role in
theory formation until very recently.
22
The publication Foundations of Human Sociality (Henrich et al. 2004) may
be referred to as an example at this point. The book, which was jointly published by
economists, anthropologists and ethnologists, documents the researchers eleven-year-
long effort to find empirical proof for their hypothesis of a universal human nature as
the basis for the manifold social forms of human interaction. By developing a trans-
disciplinary design for behavioral experiments, they established a basis for testing this
hypothesis of a foundation for behavior that is shared by all human beings, not only
in Western countries but also in fifteen non-Western small-scale societies. The results
of the global study confirmed the hypothesis that economic theory, with its exclusive
focus on rational self-interest, indeed cannot adequately describe the actual diversity
of social behavior. At the same time, however, it also became obvious that there are
significantly more variations of behavior within groups and between groups than pre-
viously assumed. One single model of social behavior is not sufficient to explain the
culture-specific and ethnographic diversity of human behavioral patterns.
 introduction 11

general, has with time increasingly become a question about the bio-
logical foundation of human behavior.
A research group at the University of Zurich has recently endeav-
ored to demonstrate, with the help of a natural-science-based research
program (Foundations of Human Social Behavior),23 that especially
the setting of social norms and rules of behavior in human interaction
cannot be explained without exploring the basic biological configura-
tion of human beings. The efforts of these Zurich researchers (among
them Ernst Fehr, Urs Fischbacher, Michael Kosfeld, Tania Singer and
Markus Heinrichs) are part of a bigger movement toward naturalist
explanatory approaches in the human and social sciences.24 Addition-
ally, they represent an expansion of the experimental approach within
the field of economics.25 In order to clarify the character of this expan-
sion of the experimental method, the second chapter will first turn to
the philosophy of science to categorize and reconstruct the experimen-
tal approach within economic studies, thereby also taking a look at the
synthesis of economics with social neuroscience (neuroeconomics).
The critical analysis will show that the experimental method of eco-
nomics with its modeling of social interaction processes consciously
ignores the agents intentions and motives, as well as their intersubjec-
tive communicative and expressive behavior, in order to draw a conse-
quentialist picture of their behavior. It does not determine individual

23
Further information on the academic research program Foundations of Human
Social Behavior at the Institute for Empirical Research in Economics at the Univer-
sity of Zurich can be found on the following web site: http://www.socialbehavior.uzh
.ch (last viewed 09/12/2008).
24
On the complex of problems regarding social science and natural science see
the contributions in the second part of the publication Gesellschaft denken. Eine
erkenntnistheoretische Standortbestimmung der Sozialwissenschaften by Leonhard
Bauer and Klaus Hamberger (Bauer and Hamberger 2002, 79173). Here, the inte-
gration of natural science methods into the treatment of social science problems is
discussed as the predominant mindset (next to formal model analysis) of the social
sciences in the 21st century.
25
See the account of the early history of experimental economics by Alvin E. Roth
(Roth 1993): The first experiments on individual human decision-making behavior
were conducted as early as the 1930s and 1940s by L.L. Thurstone, Stephen W. Rous-
seas and Albert G. Hart. The first experiments on social interaction between human
beings followed in the 1950s and 1960s (Melvin Drescher, Meril Flood, Edward H.
Chamberlin) after the publication of the first fundamental description of game theory
by John von Neumann and Oskar Morgenstern in 1944 (see the authoritative second
edition: Neumann and Morgenstern 21947). Roth sees a connection between the two
events (see Roth 1993, 199).
12 introduction

behavioral intentions, but the agents preferences, which are measur-

able in behavior on the basis of the goods chosen by the agents. At
the same time, however, its modeling of preferences does provide a
method of describing precisely the actual social behavior of human
beings and shows that this behavior cannot satisfactorily be explained
with the model of the homo oeconomicus. The modeling of prosocial
and altruistic behavior in experimental economic research thus makes
a crucial contribution to reforming the idea of human beings in the
economic sciences, which is based on an egotistical self-interest maxi-
mizer. Thus, the second chapter will introduce the findings of experi-
mental economics on the inequity aversion and fairness preference of
economic agents, as well as on the formation and sanctioning of social
norms and the altruistic punishment of norm violators.
However, the approach of experimental economic research has
also provided impulses for the study of human sociality that reach
far beyond their own discipline. For example, it presents a solution
to the free-rider problem (the tragedy of the commons), which is a
central topic of the social sciences: the factors that are responsible for a
permanent solution of the conflict between egoistic and altruistic indi-
viduals can be isolated in a behavioral experiment with a punishment
option. Likewise, the question of whether purely altruistic behavior
exists in human beings can be answered in the framework of experi-
mental modelings: it can be observed that social agents sanction the
compliance with and enforcement of social norms even if it comes
at personal cost. The neuroeconomic studies also offer an explana-
tion for this behavioral pattern: altruistic individuals are hedonistically
motivated; they find satisfaction in their decision to punish antisocial
behavior.
Looking at the modelings of experimental economics and neuro-
economics, it becomes obvious that they establish a view of human
sociality that does not turn a blind eye toward its dark side, the pure
egoism of human beings, and yet shows ways of overcoming it. Thus,
these studies represent the basic concern of this book, which seeks to
describe sociality not only based on a positive anthropology, but also
by taking into account the possibility of lapses and errors in the social
behavior of human beings. In addition, the experimental studies model
a social anthropology that ties in with the debate about the nature and
sociality of human beings in political philosophy and social philoso-
phy. The biologically oriented research program of neuroeconomics is
looking for a foundation of social order in human biology. But from the
 introduction 13

perspective of a methodological concept rooted in natural and social

science, it recasts fundamental questions of political and social theory
that (in different form) have already been playing an important role
in the philosophical justification of the modern state. With the dawn
of modernity, the social order of society could no longer be legiti-
mized by referring to a higher authority (God, nature, tradition), as it
had been in pre-modern societies. The problem arose of how to prove
its legitimacy without taking recourse to the ultimate foundations of
faith and knowledge. From the 17th century onward, the normative
question about the legitimacy of the social order of human societies
has therefore been answered with references to human nature. The
nature of human beings represented universal anthropological con-
stants by which the politically shapeable area of human life could be
delineated and understood. Consequently, human nature was regarded
as a priori, something that preceded the formation of social order. In
this manner, an existing social order could be justified by referring to
a universal anthropology, a practice that, for example, made the estab-
lishment of a state power monopoly in the 17th century seem neces-
sary and plausible. The anthropological rationale for social order that
emerged in the 17th century can also be found in the Zurich research
program Foundations of Human Social Behavior. Here, too, the
subject of human nature and sociality is matter-of-factly interpreted
through establishing an empirical model of the connection between
(biological) human nature and social order.
But this naturalization of human sociality is also fraught with prob-
lems. One problem that arises regarding the interdisciplinary discourse
with neuroeconomics is the Zurich behavioral researchers claim of
providing a universal account with their research projects on human
sociality. They view their field itself as a new empirical foundational
anthropology that can demonstrate that all human social orders
whether they are political, religious, ethical or legal can be traced back
to their biological foundations. The programmatic title of the research
program in Zurich Foundations of Human Social Behavior is aimed
exclusively at the biological foundations of human behavior and, in
the actual implementation of the experiments, exclusively at human
neurobiology.26 Within the boundaries of such a narrow research

26
Here, the neuroeconomic behavioral experiments in Zurich are linked with a
more recent development in neuroscience that increasingly concerns itself with
14 introduction

perspective, the neuroeconomists make unusually expansive explan-

atory claims. Through their modeling of biological determinants of
human behavior, they attempt to give recommendations and progno-
ses for the political and economic control of human behavior. Thus,
they describe the transition from nature to society no longer as the
justifiable establishment of political power, but as a natural evolution-
ary development of society from human biology.
The problem of this naturalistic approach becomes manifest in the
anthropological rationale of neuroeconomics. In its description of
human nature, neuroeconomics invokes an analogy between human
and animal behavior. This analogy is empirically implemented by
modeling human biology and behavior in an experimental design that
is geared toward gaining insight into cause-and-effect relationships. By
adding the referential point of animal behavior to their experimental
modelings, these experiments liken the human being to the animal to
the point of near indistinguishability. Consequently, neuroeconomics
conceives of human beings as creatures that merely behave in reac-
tion to stimuli in a specific behavioral environment. Human sociality
is also studied with this explanatory approach. From a neuroeconomic
viewpoint, human social behavior is always related to neural processes
through which a social stimulus from the environment e.g. the
behavior of a fellow human is evaluated in the brain and linked to a
behavioral motivation. The basic premise of neuroeconomic behavioral
research that human behavior is conditioned by external stimuli and
coordinated by neurobiological processes in the very same manner as
animal behavior does not exclude the possibility that there are spe-
cific cultural incentives for human behavior that go beyond physical
stimuli. But at the same time, this basic premise states that cultural
incentives must be studied within a biological-behavioral-scientific
approach in a way that renders their function completely analogous to
the physical stimuli. In the logic of this research perspective, the inter-
play of cultural incentives with the motivational systems of human
biology is also subject to evolutionary mechanisms and thus is by no
means exempt from the regularities and principles of biological life.

researching the social brain (so-called social neuroscience). See for further informa-
tion the reviews of Matthew Lieberman and Ralph Adolphs (Lieberman 2007; Adolphs
2003).
 introduction 15

This naturalistic interpretation of human social behavior cannot be

maintained in the framework of an interdisciplinary study that seeks
to investigate the phenomenon of human sociality. Therefore, the sec-
ond chapter ends with a phenomenological criticism of the (neuro-)
economic experiments, exploring the ways in which they fail to fulfill
their own claim of presenting a better description of human sociality
based on transdisciplinary integration.

4 The Relational Approach to Anthropology in

Social Philosophy

The third chapter starts with Thomas Hobbes provocative thesis that
human beings are unsocial by nature and that their behavior is gov-
erned by radical egoism.27 Hobbes description of human nature has
challenged modern social anthropology. At least since his doctrine of
the natural state, the statement that human beings are social creatures
that naturally turn to others and care for their well-being has been in
need of empirical and philosophical justification. Based on Hobbes
rejection of the Aristotelian view that the sociality of human beings is
an integral part of their nature, the third chapter provides an overview
of various anthropological approaches in current social philosophy
and ethics. Here, just like in the studies of experimental economics,
human sociality in both its positive and negative form is used as a
basis for the analysis of societal interaction processes. In the tradition
of the English philosophers of state (Thomas Hobbes, Anthony Shaft-
esbury, John Locke), these theories of social philosophy attempt to
describe the possibilities and limits of human society-formation based
on an optimistic or pessimistic assessment of the basic anthropologi-
cal situation.
This approach can indeed be compared to that of experimental
economics, whose modeling of egoistic and altruistic agents gives
both positive and negative connotations to the anthropological pre-
conditions of social interaction. However, its approach differs from
the perspective of social philosophy in that it tries to comprehend the
characteristic of conflict in social interactions through the coexis-
tence of egoistic and altruistic behavior in one and the same context

27
See Hobbes 2002.
16 introduction

of interaction, thus basing itself on both a positive and a negative

anthropology. In contrast, the theories of social philosophy show a
twofold view of sociality only in their plurality. This means that in
order to be able to even begin discussing a similar constellation like
in the chapter about social research in the economic sciences, sev-
eral theories and approaches of social philosophy must be presented
and analyzed. It is also important to take into account the fact that
that the theories of social philosophy apply entirely different methods
in describing human sociality. The potential in social philosophy for
reflection that goes beyond the empirical studies shows itself where a
phenomenological description of the interpersonal encounter begins
before the state of ordered interaction. In such a phenomenological
description, the social dynamics of the interpersonal encounter is not
simply reduced to the juxtaposition of behavioral types (altruists, ego-
ists) as in empirical studies; instead, the difference of one from the other
is revealed as the ground for the negative and positive social conse-
quences of the interpersonal encounter.
A move toward relational anthropology can thereby be observed
in the more recent debates of social philosophy. Unlike in current
economics, the description of sociality is not based on the individual
and his preferences, but on a phenomenological analysis of the basic
structure of the interpersonal relation: In its relational gestalt, human
existence represents the starting point for analyzing the social inter-
actional structure of society. Thus, the dissociation from the meth-
odological individualism of the social sciences first of all implies a
phenomenology of human sociality which makes the inner dynamic
of the interpersonal relation structure the indicator for the potential
for conflict in societal interactions. From the perspective of the phil-
osophical theories analyzed in this book, this relationship structure
is predominantly characterized by the plurality and heterogeneity of
that which is human. Conceptually, this circumstance is taken into
account in that the social relationship is considered to be preceded by
an irreducible difference. Describing this difference, and thus becom-
ing aware of aspects of alterity in the processes of societal interaction,
then, is what characterizes the humanity of human interaction.
Based on this observation regarding the method of social philosophy,
the third chapter discusses the extent to which the structure of differ-
entiation in the social relationship can be the starting point for three
very different descriptions of human sociality. The simple emphasis of
interpersonal difference does not therefore indicate a determination
 introduction 17

of the form that difference can take in the individual philosophical

concepts of human society. Social philosophy, which was only estab-
lished as an autonomous philosophical discipline in the 19th and 20th
century, considers human society to be the basic model of social order.
It uses the term society as an umbrella term for human coexistence
in legal, political, economic, religious and cultural constellations. In
engaging with its object, social philosophy can take on a descriptive-
analytical as well as a normative-critical function. When it proceeds in
a descriptive-analytical way, it examines the individual societal spheres
of the social, exposing the conflicts between their respective logics and
the human way of life. In contrast, when it proceeds in a critical man-
ner, it posits the normative standard of the successful life and on that
basis diagnoses the limitations and deformations under which human
beings must live in society. The two approaches are not to be under-
stood as alternatives, but as complementary to each other. This book
introduces three different approaches from social philosophy and com-
pares them in regard to their profiling of the interpersonal difference:
post-Marxist discourse theory, the critical social theory of recognition,
and the social-phenomenological theory of alterity.
(i) The first theoretical approach takes up Thomas Hobbes descrip-
tion of the human social relationship as antagonistic. The impact of
antagonism, however, is not limited to the natural state, but is also of
central importance in the theory of the formation of human society. In
the radical-democratic theory of society 28 developed by Ernesto Laclau
and Chantal Mouffe, the interpersonal difference is expressed in the
fundamentally irreconcilable confrontation and antagonism of human
beings that can only temporarily be channeled into hegemonic power
options in the framework of societal interactions. Here, interpersonal
difference is interpreted as an inextricable antagonism of societal
agents and groups, and is made the starting point for a critique of
the liberal, deliberative model of society that assumes the possibility
of peaceful coexistence in a rational community engaged in discourse.
The radical-democratic theory of society strongly rejects the ratio-
nal idealization of the liberal model, invoking the genuinely political
character of the social relationship: this is considered to be the origin
of an irreducible difference and the locus of a fundamentally inex-
tricable antagonism of political positions. The function of this basic

28
See Laclau and Mouffe 22001.
18 introduction

antagonistic pattern of the social relationship consists in revealing the

contingency of hegemonic acts of power in the political discourse, and
making sure that none of these acts of power can attain unlimited and
permanent dominance. Therefore, the antagonistic social relationship
is considered to be constitutive of the plurality of political options in
a democratic society.
(ii) In the debate about a politics of recognition, in contrast, inter-
personal difference is interpreted ethically. Its locus is in the individu-
als desire for social recognition. For in the wish to be recognized and
accepted by others the fundamental moral constitution of the social
agent reveals itself: he can achieve an identification with his own iden-
tity only insofar as his individual character is met with the affirmation
and support of those with whom he interacts.29 In the debate about a
politics of recognition, interpersonal difference is therefore interpreted
as the mutual dependence of individuals upon one another, and thus
as the origin of natural human morality. The analysis of the human
desire for recognition therefore also represents the starting point for
the moral interpretation of the sense and purpose of societal con-
flicts. Accordingly, all of these conflicts are ultimately concerned with
this very striving for recognition, which makes human beings moral
subjects in the first place. Thus, the social conflicts themselves have a
moral core. They can only be pacified with a politics of recognition
that allows the agents to dissolve or quell these conflicts in a recipro-
cal and equitable relation of recognition. This point of view is primar-
ily represented in the critical social theory of Axel Honneth30 and the
theory of multiculturalism developed by Charles Taylor.31 By inter-
preting the social relationship as an expression of a pacified conflict,
both theoreticians follow in the footsteps of Georg Wilhelm Friedrich
Hegels theory of recognition. Paul Ricur,32 however, demonstrates
the difference from a hermeneutical-phenomenological interpretation
of the relation of recognition. He asks how the original asymmetry of
the subjects can be preserved in recognition. Responding to the cur-
rent French debate on the phenomenology of the gift and the practice
of agape in Christian religion, he develops an understanding of recog-

29
See Honneth 1996, 22.
30
See Honneth 1996.
31
See Taylor 1994.
32
See Ricur 2005.
 introduction 19

nition that comprehends it not as a social-critical ideal, but as a lived

and actualized gesture.
(iii) In the social-phenomenological theory of alterity developed by
Emmanuel Levinas,33 the sociality of the human being is also inter-
preted ethically. But Levinas attempts to step beyond the basic Hob-
besian paradigm of antagonism in modern political anthropology in
an entirely different way than the theories of recognition. He under-
stands the interpersonal difference with its conflict potentials not as a
transitional phase on the way to a reconciled and egalitarian societal
order in which mutual relationships of recognition determine social
togetherness and coexistence. Instead, he posits the difference and not
the normative ideal of its reconciliation as the insurmountable start-
ing point of describing the interpersonal relation. The difference of one
from the other is not primarily a source of conflict, struggle and antag-
onism among human beings. Rather, it causes a transcendence of the
other, an (intersubjective) withdrawal and elusiveness of the other that
in turn calls the subject to responsibility. This discovery of an ethical
dimension of meaning within the interpersonal encounter is the most
significant insight into the social relationship that Levinas develops in
the course of his social-phenomenological studies: the protagonists of
the interpersonal encounter become indispensable to each other and
aware of a non-negotiable responsibility of one for the other. But this
concrete and unique relationship of responsibility is lost as soon as the
interpersonal encounter is included in the immanence of social orders.
Unlike the social theory of recognition, Levinas believes that the act
of one person selflessly taking on responsibility for the other excludes
a reciprocal or egalitarian relationship between them.34 Instead, the
social relationship to the other is interpreted as the site of an intensi-
fied relationship of difference, in which precisely this one-sided with-
drawal of the other and the asynchronicity of the protagonists of the
social relationship provokes the constitution of ethical subjectivity.
However, Levinas positive, ethical appraisal of the interpersonal dif-
ference comes at a price. He does not give adequate thought to
the social ambivalence of this difference, its potential to lead one to
become the enemy of the other as well as becoming responsible for
the other. His thoughts thus remain indebted to a conception of social

33
See Levinas 1979; 1981.
34
See Levinas 1998, 82.
20 introduction

humanity that does not pay as much attention to its dark side social
inhumanity as it does to the responsible approximation to the other
which occurs in interpersonal difference. Therefore, Levinas concept
ultimately must be critically refered back to the possibility of a nega-
tive anthropology.
The considerations of the third chapter arrive at the following con-
clusion: If it cannot be made clear in the course of social-philosophical
argument how the interpersonal difference is to be interpreted in the
social relationship, then it is also impossible for social philosophy to
give a definitive interpretation of human sociality or an unequivocal
phenomenological description of the phenomenon of social human-
ity. Therefore, the study asks for a perspective of description that can
improve our understanding of the ambiguity of interpersonal differ-
ence in distinct anthropological terms, and that can also explicitly
differentiate it terminologically in its twofold consequence for social
interaction. Only in this way can anthropological reflection prevent an
indifference in the description of social humanity toward the phenom-
ena of social inhumanity (violence, murder, war, disrespect etc.). The
final thesis of this study, which shall be developed in the last chapter,
is that theological anthropology, with its conception of Gods neigh-
bor unfolds an understanding of humanity that can live up to this
demand.

5 The Double Description of Anthropology in Theology

Within interdisciplinary discourse, theological anthropology is usually

challenged like no other perspective of description to prove that its
insights are compatible with the principles of empirical or philosophi-
cal anthropology, whose perspectives are thought of as neutral and uni-
versal. For this reason, many interdisciplinary anthropological studies
in theology attempt to prove the particularity of theological anthropol-
ogy on the basis of its compatibility with a general anthropology, and
claim to justify the religious perspective on human beings in this way.
In the context of this study, which seeks to offer a phenomenological
criticism of all attempts to fundamentally describe human beings, the
contribution of theology cannot be to construct a universal or general
perspective on human beings. Rather, theological anthropology, just
like its non-theological counterparts, must be aware of the difference
between that which it describes as human sociality and that which can
 introduction 21

be differentiated from its representations as the phenomenon of social

humanity. Therefore, its contribution to interdisciplinary discourse is
to be seen in the fact that it offers a representation of human sociality
that is particularly aware of the perspectivity and the limits of repre-
sentation of its object.
It will be my argument in chapter four that theological anthropol-
ogy can demonstrate this by representing human sociality always in
terms of its difference to Gods sociality (love of neighbor). Here, the
word God is to be understood as an index of theological description
indicating that the describer locates herself within a religious horizon
of description and therefore is particularly aware of the contingency of
her intentional approach to the object.35 Thus, theological anthropol-
ogy not only conforms to the limit of every representation of the phe-
nomenon of sociality, but even makes this limit describable within its
own perspective by employing the differentiation of God and the social
world (indexical word God). Therefore, its perspective of descrip-
tion is structurally characterized by a double asymmetry regarding its
intentional object and the latters phenomenal elusiveness: the word
God not only indicates the intentional elusiveness of the object for
its describer (phenomenality of the object) but also the possibility of
an elusiveness of the worlds objects for human intentionality at all
(contingency of the object). Thus, from a methodological standpoint,
theology is not less but even more competent to engage in the inter-
disciplinary discourse on the phenomenon of human sociality than
other perspectives, because it provides the discourse with a grammar
and phenomenology of description that is sensitive to the phenomenal
excess of an objects representation.
Based on this methodological approach, the fourth chapter devel-
ops an independent social-anthropological concept. It presupposes
that the social is not purely immanent, since God is a partaker in the
social field, as the neighbor of human beings. Here, the word neighbor
is to be understood as a hermeneutical category whose function for
everyday social orientation is reinterpreted in the horizon of Gods
presence. In everyday speech, the neighbor is a socially close person
whose immediate familiarity constitutes the point of reference for the
perception of other people. For the most part, this is a person whom

35
See Dalferth 2003, 466474, here 468.
22 introduction

we have a personal kind of relationship with (friendship, family, part-

nership). Their function is to organize the social sphere of proximity
and distance for us through their presence. The neighbors presence
thus represents a yardstick for both social proximity and the distance
between human beings. In the New Testament narratives about the
Good Samaritan (Lk 10: 2537) and the Last Judgment (Mt 25: 3146),
this function of the neighbor is reinterpreted. Because a stranger with
whom no personal, ethical or religious ties exist experiences care, sym-
pathy and help, the immanence of social orientation is transcended.
Human community can now open up to outcasts or marginalized
persons. They can be identified as neighbors of God, to whom God
relates even where interpersonal relations are suspended or denied.
Thus, the stories show that through Gods devotion to human beings
in Jesus Christ, a new form of humanity between human beings is
(made) possible.
In connection with the biblical testimony of love of God and neigh-
bor, the fourth chapter therefore focuses on the question of the extent
to which the discussion of the (other) human being as a neighbor
of God suggests its own description of human sociality. Here, the
analysis of Christian love put forth by the Danish theologian Sren
Kierkegaard36 can serve as a guide: He transfers the twofold Christian
commandment to love God and ones neighbor into a social-critical
phenomenology. Here, he relates the word love not only to partner-
ships or friendships, but includes in it all forms of interpersonal rela-
tion. In this respect, Kierkegaards concept is methodologically close
to the theories of social philosophy discussed in the third chapter, and
like them, it argues for a relational anthropology. Nevertheless, his
phenomenology of Christian love also represents a decidedly theologi-
cal description of human sociality. This is because it reflects the double
perspective of theological anthropology that, unlike the theories of
social philosophy, combines positive and negative anthropology.
With his negative description of interpersonal love, Kierkegaard lays
the groundwork for a positive description of Christian love, which is
capable of revealing the errors and deficiencies of interpersonal love.
His description thereby represents the approach characteristic for theo-
logical anthropology, which describes the human being in its status as
both sinner and saved. Christian love is described as a revision of the

36
See Kierkegaard 1962.
 introduction 23

old social relationship in the light of the new, whose distinctiveness is

first realized with the perception of the fellow human as a neighbor
of God. The phenomenality of Christian love is thus also expressed by
Gods invariable presence in interpersonal love. According to Kierke-
gaard, God functions as the middle term of interpersonal relations of
love.37 His nearness and devotion to human beings, as this was actual-
ized in the humanity displayed by Jesus, disrupts the social patterns
of relationships and behavior, and realigns them. With his critical dis-
tinction between love of self and love of neighbor, Kierkegaard makes
clear how this realignment takes place hermeneutically.38
If we were to interpret this distinction in a consequentialist manner,
as egoistic and altruistic behavior is distinguished in experimental eco-
nomics, our interpretation would fall short. Rather than the sacrifice of
personal gain, Kierkegaard asks about the selflessness and self-denial
of neighborly love. Here, he is thinking of a profound human self-
renunciation that goes beyond an externally effective self-sacrifice for
the other. The self-renunciation which characterizes neighborly love,
however, cannot always be immediately distinguished from selfish
love by observing the social phenomena. Kierkegaard demonstrates
that selfish love in caring for the other can take on such a subtle form
that it appears to be identical with love of neighbor and is actually
mistaken for it. Therefore, the phenomenon of love itself is ambigu-
ous, and the impossibility of completely overcoming this ambiguity
is what guides Kierkegaards thoughts. He by no means assumes that
the social relationship can be freed from the tension of this ambiguity
through Christian love and thus does not offer any vision of replacing
interpersonal love with Christian love. However, by placing interper-
sonal love into the horizon of Christian love, he shows that gaining a
new perspective on the social phenomena is possible. This new per-
spective allows us to use these social phenomena critically to identify
the distinction between self-love and love of neighbor. Kierkegaards
theological social anthropology is not a dualist concept that would
merely juxtapose the positive and negative description of sociality.
Instead, it relates the two concepts to each other in order to guide
readers toward changing their behavior in a process of critical dis-
cernment. Therefore, Kierkegaards analysis of Christian love does not

37
See ibid., 58.
38
See Dalferth 2002.
24 introduction

propagate love of neighbor as an ethical ideal or normative demand.

Instead, it uses a description of the deficiencies of interpersonal love
to show the kind of life reality in which love of neighbor is possible at
all. The description of love of neighbor is therefore always connected
to a critical revision of those forms of interpersonal love that stand in
tense opposition with the ethos of love of neighbor. In this way, his
description of human sociality always remains concrete and related to
the reality of human life.
The last part of the fourth chapter is devoted to the question of
the extent to which Kierkegaards theological description of human
sociality takes up and realizes the initial factual concern of this study,
namely, that the description of human sociality can never turn a blind
eye to the phenomena of social inhumanity and thus must prevent a
possible indifference to humanity and inhumanity. In connection with
the reception of Kierkegaard in critical theory, the fourth chapter con-
cludes with an investigation of whether the method of twofold anthro-
pological description demonstrated by Kierkegaard can be interpreted
in this vein. Based on Theodor W. Adornos39 critique of Kierkegaard,
Slavoj iek, Eric L. Santner and Kenneth Reinhard have attempted
to interpret the Christian figure of the neighbor not in the horizon
of a phenomenology of humanity, but as a figure of inhumanity.40 In
dealing with Kierkegaards analyses of love, Adorno had pointed out
that Kierkegaard stylizes love into a supramundane ideal. He accused
Kierkegaard of presenting a description of the neighbor that emp-
ties the discussion of the neighbor of all empirical significance. Here,
Adorno paid particular attention to Kierkegaards praise of love for a
dead person, which he describes as the litmus test for interpersonal
love because it is not burdened by any reciprocity between the lover
and the loved.41 Adorno, however, sees this perspective as a basis
for the surrender of the social reality of the life of human beings in
Kierkegaards work.
iek and his colleagues productively invert Adornos critique, inter-
preting Kierkegaards dissociation from the social reality of life as a neg-
ative phenomenology of human sociality. They show how Kierkegaard,
in his analysis of Christian love, suspends the ethical interpretation

39
See Adorno 1939/40; 2003.
40
See iek et al. 2005.
41
See Kierkegaard 1962, 345358.
 introduction 25

of sociality as the way to a good life and righteous conduct, thus

enabling a description of sociality that centers on its downside, inhu-
manity. Kierkegaards idealization of love for a dead person thus is to
be considered a symbol for the loss of the actual fellow human being
in modern society. The neighbor denotes a social void within human
society. He functions as a figure manifesting the ostracized, outcast
and negated aspects of humanity in society. In this sense, the real pres-
ence of the neighbor is no longer comprehensible within the symbolic
orders of the social. Here, unlike in Kierkegaards theological interpre-
tation, the figure of the neighbor does not show the new humanity in
tension with the reality of sinful human existence. Instead, it points out
an immanent limit of humanity at the site of the human being himself.
Thus, it lets the two perspectives of human social life that Kierkegaard
had distinguished phenomenologically coincide in the description of
the phenomenon of social inhumanity. This new interpretation cannot
be found in any theological exegesis of the Christian love command-
ment. Therefore, in conclusion, the chapter will take up the suggestion
of asking about inhumanity as a phenomenal absence of interpersonal
sociality and investigate whether the theological perspective, too, is
prepared to describe inhumanity in the paradoxical manner of iek
and his colleagues.
The concluding remarks summarize the results of the individual
chapters with regard to the studys initial question. Again, it will be
made clear why an interdisciplinary study must refrain from sus-
pending the multiperspectivity of the anthropological descriptions
of sociality; to do so would be to abandon the possibility of critical
differentiation and the mutual correction of their knowledge claims
that lies in the difference between the individual approaches of the
disciplines.
 CHAPTER ONE

ANTHROPOLOGY AS A REPRESENTATION OF HUMANITY

6 Interdisciplinary Anthropology

The aim of this study is to describe human sociality within the frame-
work of an interdisciplinary anthropology. Interdisciplinary means
that the object of the study will be examined from multiple perspec-
tives. The presentation of the individual perspectives of description
will, however, not only include an analysis of the respective method-
ological approaches and results, but above all will look at the object
of these descriptions: human existence as it shows itself at the site of
sociality, i.e., in human interaction.
In order to be able to evaluate the factual adequacy of the descrip-
tions which come from different disciplines, this study proposes to
define a hermeneutic-phenomenological criterion for the way anthro-
pological descriptions refer to their object. On the basis of a herme-
neutics and phenomenology of human humanity, the possibilities and
limits of comprehension in the individual descriptive perspectives
can be better evaluated. It will therefore be the task of this chapter
to investigate the possible meanings of humanity and to determine
why an anthropological description of sociality cannot work without
a reflection on human humanity. Here, it will be important to show
in which ways that humanity can be taken into account as a phenom-
enon, rather than just in its representations and descriptions. Before
we tackle this methodological problem, however, we will first deal
with a question of content: what constitutes the humanity of human
beings? Is it their essential nature, the concrete conditions of their
existence on earth (the human condition), or is it the manner of their
phenomenal self-perception (corporality)? To shed light on this mat-
ter, we will systematically examine various positions of 20th century
philosophical anthropology to investigate how human humanity can
not only be normatively justified, but also anthropologically described.
By asking what constitutes human humanity, I want to demonstrate
that human sociality cannot be examined in an interdisciplinary way
without methodologically reflecting on the way anthropology refers
28 chapter one

to its object. Otherwise, the anthropological descriptions may be in

danger of missing their mark; because, as has been explained above,
their object is not simply the empirical fact of the human being, but
its phenomenal concreteness [Gegenstndlichkeit].1
In the following, this chapter will explicitly reflect on the charac-
teristics of the object of the various disciplinary efforts to represent
human sociality in its phenomenal concreteness. To speak of the con-
creteness of the human being and not only of the human being as an
object is to assume that human existence is more than that which can
be objectified with methodological tools; that human existence in itself
is also characterized by forms of concreteness that allow for the repre-
sentation of the object from various perspectives in the first place.
In order to flesh out this hermeneutic-phenomenological approach
to concreteness in the context of anthropology, a short examination of
the corporeal-bodily dimensions of being human is in order. Because
of their bodily existence, human beings are forced to always refer to
others from an irreducibly separate position (interhuman difference).2
It is also their visibility and corporality that enable them to express
themselves and represent themselves in the presence of others.3 In their
expressive behavior, human beings enter into a relationship with oth-
ers, but at the same time remain withdrawn from them. They play
with the manifold modes and forms of their visibility for others and
yet also remain invisible in them, insofar as they are not completely
absorbed into any intersubjective relationship. At all times, their social
presence also contains forms of their absence through which they hide
from the gaze of others and elude the appropriation of their presence.
This interplay of presence and absence is constitutive of the phenom-
enal concreteness of human beings in the social lifeworld. Therefore,
it also represents a yardstick and a frame of reference for the scientific
description of human beings.
When human beings are examined in their concreteness, it means
that their humanity is not viewed as a given precondition of the rep-
resentation and interpretation of human beings, as a human essence
or human nature. Instead, human humanity is to be located in or

1
On the hermeneutics of concreteness also see 11 of this study.
2
See Dalferth and Hunziker 2007, X.
3
See the works of Helmuth Plessner on corporeal phenomenology and their social
significance that are presented in 10, as well as in Blumenberg 2006, 777895.
 anthropology as a representation of humanity 29

rather at the site of their phenomenal concreteness and not outside of

it. It is, as mentioned above, the phenomenal excess of any representa-
tion and interpretation of the phenomenon of the human being that
offers itself to interpretation in all its abundance and at the same time
eludes it.
How can this approach be utilized for an interdisciplinary anthro-
pology? Since this study is conducted in an interdisciplinary manner,
it deals not with only one, but several vastly different ideas of human
sociality that are each considered to be fundamental in various disci-
plines. In the perspectives in question, sociality is viewed either as a
neurobiologically rooted preference structure of human behavior (neu-
roeconomics), or as a basic structure of difference and relationality in
the interhuman relationship (social phenomenology and ethics), or as
a structure of the human relationship to God and neighbor (theol-
ogy). To take account of the fact that these perspectives are not merely
dissimilar, but actually, fundamentally different from each other, this
study is not based on a uniform concept of human sociality that inte-
grates all of the perspectives and that differs from them only in specific
characteristics. As has been explained in 2, such an approach would
not be justified from a phenomenological standpoint, and is in fact
not even feasible. Instead, this study will examine the phenomenon of
human sociality, which can be distinguished and set apart from all of
the discussions about it in the various perspectives.

7 Anthropology and Sociality in the Individual Disciplines

The aim of this study is to analyze human sociality as a basic phe-

nomenological structure of human interaction. The study proposes to
do this from three different perspectives and to point out the particu-
lar relationship between anthropology and sociality that determines
each respective modeling or description. Each of these perspectives
on human sociality must therefore be examined for its basic anthro-
pological concepts, and it must be demonstrated how each perspective
is based on a particular relationship between humanity and sociality
that needs to be more closely defined.
Since the individual perspectives do not necessarily build upon each
other but indeed often stand in opposition to each other, the experi-
mental modeling presented in the second chapter cannot be viewed
as the foundation of the philosophical and theological description of
30 chapter one

sociality even though it certainly may claim to be so. Instead, the

individual perspectives in this study will initially be treated as inde-
pendent and only be directly compared with each other at certain
points of conflict in which they ignore or negate the other perspec-
tives understanding of reality. Therefore, their lines of conflict and
differences will only be traced in the last step at the end of the study.
In the following, the anthropological concept of each perspective
will be outlined in order to profile the defining anthropological differ-
ences of this study. Since the perspectives do not build on each other
in the framework of this study, we will first examine the figures of
thought of theological anthropology, then the anthropological para-
digms of experimental economics, and finally the hermeneutical and
phenomenological foundations of a philosophical anthropology and
its critique of the classical definition of the human being as animal
rationale.

7.1 Theological Figures of Thought on Nature and Humanity

In his book Schpfung im Widerspruch (2003), Dieter Groh exam-
ines how and to what extent the various ideas of nature that influence
the image of the human being are rooted in a theological view of his-
tory and the world. He describes how figures of thought about nature
and human beings in cultural history have significantly contributed to
the preformation of the attitude and even the style of concrete formu-
lations of theories in many academic fields4 by providing a culturally
constructed frame of reference.5 Often, they refer to an unquestioned
basis6 from which a theoretical model about human beings and human
society is developed. The analysis and reconstruction of these ideo-
logical preconditions of academic theory formation is thus essential
in two ways: on the one hand, it makes us acknowledge these precon-
ditions of theory formation and reveal their implications, and on the
other hand, in intercultural and interreligious dialogue, it enables a

4
Groh mainly refers to theology, natural philosophy, political philosophy, econom-
ics, moral philosophy, the natural sciences, and anthropology (see Groh 2003, 17).
5
See ibid., 1523.
6
For identifying these figures of thought, Groh also uses the term symbolic field.
In contrast to paradigm, the term symbolic field accounts for the formation of the-
ories implicitly and across disciplines because it is a cultural construct and not an
explicitly academic one (see ibid., 15).
 anthropology as a representation of humanity 31

provocative discussion about not only the explicit differences, but also
the implicit premises of our own and others constructions.
Of course, Groh concedes that the underlying anthropological
thought patterns of theory formation can only be reconstructed as an
ideal model,7 which implies that their reconstruction cannot claim to
do justice to the various theoretical concepts in every single aspect.
The reconstruction of underlying thought patterns cannot replace the
construction and conceptualization of the questions and problems
within a perspective; nor does it claim to do so.
In the anthropological discourses of European cultural history, Groh
most importantly identifies the determination of an essential human
nature as a thought pattern that is as far-reaching as it is problematic.8
For the determination of essential human nature is based on the
premise that the relationship between human beings and nature is
a relationship of accordance. The human being must be understood
according to its nature, and in anthropological discourse is regarded
as a creature whose possibilities of social and personal self-realization
are determined by the positive or negative determination of its nature.9
Of central interest is the question of whether the human being is good
or evil by nature, because the answer to this question serves to develop
either a progressive or regressive image of human development and
human society.10 Groh tests his hypothesis mainly on the example of
theological interpretations of nature and the human being. He observes
that in these interpretations, human nature is always represented in
terms of an inner nature as a mirror of an external world nature.11
Thus, the construction of humanity in dependence on the respective
concept of nature is also a catalyst for developing a teleological or anti-
teleological view of the world and the course of history.
According to Groh, such an interpretation of the connection
between human nature and the course of history is prefigured in
part by the early Christian tradition of theological anthropologies of

7
See ibid.
8
See ibid., 2023. Groh also criticizes the determination of human nature as a
totalization of particularities (ibid., 20), since it refers to the particular experiences
that human beings have with human beings and universalizes it with the concept of
human nature.
9
See ibid., 16.
10
See ibid., 21.
11
See ibid.
32 chapter one

creation.12 Here, the condition of the world and of human nature is

not a matter of cosmology, but of creation theology and salvation the-
ology. Looking at the anthropological discourses of theology from the
post-biblical origins up to Reformation times, Groh thus identifies one
ideal-typical13 model of nature based on creation theology and one
based on salvation theology and distinguishes the two (in reference to
theological terminology, but not completely identifying them with it)
as natura lapsa and oeconomia naturae, as fallen nature and harmoni-
ous natural balance.14

7.1.1 The Difference between Natura Lapsa and

Oeconomia Naturae
The first model of nature paints a negative and pessimistic picture of
humanity.15 The thought pattern of natura lapsa assumes that after
the fall of the first human being, as portrayed in the Bible in the Book
of Genesis (Gen 23), human nature is corrupted and cannot be
rebuilt at all or only incompletely. The previous unity and perfection
of human nature has thus been irrevocably lost. By including a recep-
tion of the originally anti-teleological Epicurean idea of the aging of
the world (mundus senescens), the concept of a fallen or on a tem-
porally extended plane decaying human nature is also considered
in view of its effects on the external or world nature. The disruption
of the divinely ordained order by the fall of the first human being
results in a sort of derailment of the natural process as a whole and
thus entails cosmic repercussions. This extension of the natura lapsa
idea to an idea that includes external nature is particularly common in
the apocalyptic literature of early Christianity (Apocalypse of Ezra, the
Syrian Apocalypse of Baruch, and the Ethiopian Book of Henoch).16 It
stretches all the way to Reformationist theology, whose idea of human
beings is decidedly based on a theology of sin.17

12
See ibid., 21.
13
See ibid., 16: Since the [. . .] nature models [. . . .] in their purest of forms (as it
were) have not emerged very often in the course of history, it is also seldom possible
to ascribe specific faiths or philosophical schools exclusively to one of the two nature
concepts. (transl. M.S.).
14
See ibid., 1720.
15
See ibid., 1718.
16
See ibid., 2459.
17
See ibid., 474744.
 anthropology as a representation of humanity 33

A positive view of internal and external nature is conveyed in the

second model of nature,18 which assumes that human beings are
capable of gaining insight into the divine well-orderedness of nature
(Rom 2:14). The (post-biblical) doctrine of natural knowledge of God
provides a thought pattern that allows conclusion by analogy from the
constitution of the natural world to God, or rather his plan of salva-
tion, as its creator. Beside the Stoic and Platonic-Aristotelian thinkers
of antiquity, the Eastern and Western church fathers of the second
to the fourth century are largely responsible for the development of
positive anthropology.19 They created the idea of an oikonomia of
God, of a divine plan for salvation that includes the teleological well-
orderedness of the world. It was particularly Clement of Alexandria
and Origen who adapted the Greek term of oikonomia, which had
previously been used by the Stoics and by Xenophon for describing the
cosmos, and reshaped it into a salvation-theological understanding of
nature, the world and human beings.20
Both models enter into a momentous coalition21 in the theology
of John Calvin, who as a good Reformationist believes in the radical
decay of human nature, but at the same time rejects the notion that
the well-orderedness of the world has been permanently disrupted.22
According to Calvin, Gods benevolence toward human beings shows
itself precisely in his insatiable desire for an order23 for human beings;
but he can only bestow this order unto them as a gift of mercy from the
outside through his permanently effective omnipotence in all orders
of the cosmos. On the basis of the separation of creator and creation
that had started to emerge after the Middle Ages, Calvin develops a
functional understanding of the nature of the world. Because of his
positive evaluation of nature in general, he can view it as an external
instrument of God for the gradual reconstruction of humanitys imago
Dei. Thus, Calvins theology (as opposed to Luthers) posits that exter-
nal nature, which is determined and guided by Gods intervention
for the purpose of protecting an imperfect human nature, allows for
a progressive view of the course of the world.24 According to Groh,

18
See ibid., 1820.
19
See ibid., 21.
20
See ibid., 2223.
21
Ibid., 16 (transl. M.S.).
22
See ibid., 708718.
23
Ibid., 719 (transl. M.S.).
24
See ibid., 739741.
34 chapter one

Calvins theology exemplifies the fact that the two ideal-typical models
of natura lapsa and oeconomia naturae can very well be at work within
one theological horizon of thought.

7.1.2 Isomorphism of Nature, Humanity and Society?

An important point of criticism made by Groh regarding the con-
cept of nature in anthropological discourses in theology (and, from
a larger perspective, in Western cultural history as a whole) pertains
to the purported isomorphism of nature, humanity and society in
these concepts.25 The uniformity of these three factors is one of those
unquestioned ideological preconditions of anthropological and soci-
etal theoretical concepts up to the present. The (unfounded) assump-
tion of uniformity of these three factors plays a constitutive role for
fundamental decisions of theory formation, as well as for the empiri-
cal examination of the human being. Based on this observation, Groh
claims that the isomorphism of the three factors will always result
in an ideological basis for explicating the interrelationship between
human nature and societal order. Thus, he writes:
Both of these models of human nature are ideologies. The positive model
serves to justify liberal forms of governance; the negative model serves
to justify authoritarian forms of governance. As the first one [oeconomia
naturae] results in adopting the principle of societal self-regulation, the
second one [natura lapsa] results in adopting the principle of state con-
trol over dangerous elements. However, they are not only ideologies in
their function, but also in their origin: as a totalization of particularities,
as a definition of human nature.26
Grohs ideological criticism may apply to definitions of the human of
the animal rationale type, in which the human in its totality is defined
by universalizing a particular aspect of its existence, e.g. the capability
of acting rationally. With regard to theological anthropology, however,
we can argue against Grohs reasoning that theology did not pit the two
thought patterns of natura lapsa and oeconomia naturae against each
other, but has continuously related them to each other in new con-
nections and coalitions as Groh himself puts it. Theology has thus
not advanced a one-sided idea of human beings27 in order to justify

25
See ibid., 21.
26
Ibid. (transl. M.S.).
27
On the double perspective on human beings in theological anthropology see
5 and the remarks on non-identity in the human self-relationship that Wolfhart
 anthropology as a representation of humanity 35

existing societal forms of governance; instead, due to its double per-

spective on human beings, it has been able to connect the factors of
humanity and nature, as well as humanity and society, in ways that are
far from uncritical. It was only the isolation of a one-dimensional chain
of argument from nature to humanity to society that brought forth
the ideologically narrow thought pattern of modern political anthro-
pologies from Hobbes to Marx, which cast the human as either friend
or foe to its fellow humans and that thus always narrowed down the
aspect of their sociality to the alternative between egoism and altruism,
between a negative concept of humanity and a positive one.

7.2 Basic Anthropological Paradigms of Experimental Economics

In recent years, experimental economics has been developing an idea
of humanity that wholly subscribes to the alternative between ego-
ism and altruism, between a negative and a positive idea of the social
nature of human beings. In its behavioral experiments,28 it devel-
ops a behavioral-economic concept of human sociality by modeling
social interactions and transactions of goods.29 Here, human beings
are examined as homo cooperativus, as beings that are able and will-
ing to contribute to the well-being of the community. Their ability to
cooperate is interpreted as an expression of their sociality and con-
trasted with the neoclassical idea of human beings in economics, the
self-serving homo oeconomicus.
From an epistemological perspective, the new aspect in behav-
ioral science studies on homo cooperativus is that human behavior is

Pannenberg, following a thought of Helmuth Plessner, develops in his Anthropolo-

gie in theologischer Perspektive (Anthropology in Theological Perspective) and
also applies to the social relationship between human beings (see Pannenberg 2004,
3442.157179). By developing his anthropology on the basis of the relationship
between human beings and nature and the field of sin theology (ibid., 27153), Pan-
nenberg shows that the fundamental criterion for describing human beings in theo-
logical anthropology is not the definiteness, but the ambiguity of human existence.
28
In the following, the term experiment will always be used in a narrow sense,
in which experimenting is restricted to a procedure of artificial data collection con-
ducted by an experimenter. Experiments in the narrow sense are in the overwhelm-
ing majority of cases connected to measuring and are performed to gather quantitative
results. ( Janich 1997, 97 [transl. M.S.]). Merely making observations, questioning
people or gathering experiences in other ways cannot be called controlled data collec-
tion in a strictly (natural ) scientific sense.
29
The second chapter will describe in more detail to what extent social behavior
in economics is always modeled analogously to the game theory model of strategic
cooperation between individuals.
36 chapter one

modeled in a transdisciplinary experimental design that combines

methods from both the social and natural sciences through a synthesis
of neuroscientific and economic methods. The economic method can
be understood as a social science method.30 Because the two methods
enter into a synthesis, these studies should be thought of as transdis-
ciplinary experimentation and not only as an interdisciplinary reading
and interpretation of experimental results. At the heart of transdisci-
plinarity lies a research strategy that strives to unify the methodologi-
cal and theoretical pluralism within the social and behavioral sciences.31
The transdisciplinary modeling of human social behavior serves to
develop method paradigms that give a wider scientific foundation to
the hypotheses of behavioral economic research, thereby expanding
their relevance.32

7.2.1 Human vs. Rational Behavior

In their inception, the hypotheses of experimental economics about
human behavior emerge from a confrontation with the neoclassical
economic explanatory model33 for rational behavior: the homo oeco-
nomicus.34 Neoclassical economics constructs rational behavior by
developing mathematical models for determining the preference rela-
tions of behavior. In these models it always presupposes economic
subjects (homo oeconomicus) to have a self-serving preference relation.
In contrast, experimental economics are advancing the hypothesis that
human beings align their behavior to social norms and behavioral rules

30
Why and to what extent economics can be understood as a social science is fun-
damentally established by Bruno S. Frey, an economist and happiness researcher, in
his book konomie ist Sozialwissenschaft (Frey 1990).
31
The thesis of a new synthesis between the social and behavioral sciences in exper-
imental economics is explicitly advanced and argumentatively supported by Herbert
Gintis (see Gintis 2007; 2009).
32
As an example, see the study on behavioral patterns of altruistic punishment in
economics, neurobiology and psychobiology: Henrich et al. 2004; Henrich et al. 2001;
Gintis et al. 2005; Fehr and Fischbacher 2003; Fehr et al. 2002; Fehr and Gchter 2002;
DeQuervain and Fischbacher 2004; Fehr and Rockenbach 2003; Fehr and Singer 2005;
Singer et al. 2006; Bernhard et al. 2006; Fehr et al. 2005; Kosfeld and Heinrichs et al.
2005; Knoch et al. 2006; Fehr and Fischbacher 2004a; Fehr and Fischbacher 2004b;
Fehr and Fischbacher 2005; Fehr 2005; Fehr 2004; Fehr 2001.
33
See the definition of economics in Kirchgssner 22000, 2: Economics is the
attempt to explain human behavior by assuming that individual persons behave ratio-
nally. (transl. M.S.).
34
On the background and relevance of the homo oeconomicus model in the social
sciences and philosophy see Kirchgssner 22000; Manstetten 2000; Demeulenaere
2003; Rolle 2005. For the discussion in theology, see this recent work: Dietz 2005.
 anthropology as a representation of humanity 37

and thus are not as self-serving as the neoclassical model predicts and
purports. In order to prove its hypothesis, experimental economics
seeks to show empirically that human behavior can be modeled not
only by egoistic, but also by social preferences. The latter can be stud-
ied predominantly in cooperative and prosocial patterns of behavior
(strong reciprocity, altruism).
In recent years, individual experimental studies35 have indeed pro-
vided empirical proof that not only egoistic, but also altruistic prefer-
ence relations play an important role in the various basic situations of
human social behavior, a finding which sharply contradicts the claims
of the canonical model of rational behavior. However, this result has
only been proven in experiments with test subjects at European univer-
sities and American colleges in the artificial environment of a behav-
ioral laboratory. On the basis of this limited experimental evidence,
however, behavioral researchers have already developed the hypothe-
sis that social preference behavior could be a universal characteristic of
human nature in the sense of a biological-empirical behavioral disposi-
tion. They presumed that the existence of social preferences manifests
itself in a culturally invariant willingness to cooperate, which human
beings display in social dilemma situations. Social dilemma situations
are situations in which human beings face decisions to behave either
in a prosocial or antisocial manner toward their fellow humans.
In order to validate their hypothesis that human beings are prosocial
and altruistic by nature beyond the setting of laboratory studies, econ-
omists Ernst Fehr, Herbert Gintis, Colin Camerer and Samuel Bowles,
together with several ethnologists, psychologists and anthropologists
(Joseph Henrich and Robert Boyd, among others), conducted world-
wide field experiments on human social behavior.36 In a large-scale
study with fifteen small-scale societies on three continents, behavioral
experiments on the significance of fairness and cooperation were con-
ducted. Here, the researchers came to the conclusion that there are
significantly more culturally determined differences between the basic
patterns of social interaction than they had previously assumed.37 But

35
See note 32.
36
Our goal was [. . .] to explore the motives that underlie the diversity of human
sociality. (Henrich et al. 2004, 10). The analysis of the empirical field studies in fifteen
small-scale societies in Henrich et al. 2004 arrives at the conclusion, however, that
the respective cultural context exerts a very high influence on the realization of social
preferences in behavior (see ibid., 854).
37
See ibid., 5.
38 chapter one

the field studies also showed that the social behavior of human beings
indeed cannot be fully explained by the neoclassical standard model
of an individually rational maximizer of self-interest.38 The assumption
that the empirical behavior of human beings can also be modeled by
social preference relations thus proved to be justified.

7.2.2 Human vs. Animal Behavior

In the wake of its cross-cultural field studies, experimental economics
has now begun to investigate the biological foundations of the diver-
gences from the neoclassical standard model of economics that had
been observed in experiments. For this purpose, a new field of study
was founded: neuroeconomics. The central hypothesis guiding the
insights of neuroeconomics is that not only cognitive, but predomi-
nantly emotional and affective neural motivational systems of behavior
are participating causes in evaluating the social utility of an interac-
tion. Specifically, neuroeconomic experiment design is characterized
by combining the behavioral-scientific modeling of social interactions
with the neuroscientific study of the brain. The combination of social
and neuroscientific research tools thus has led to the development of a
new experimental paradigm for the modeling of human social interac-
tion and decision behavior.
With the help of imaging techniques and other neuroscientific
methods of observation, researchers were able to design behavioral
experiments that were precisely geared to study those neural centers
in the brain that are active during a decision process. They were able to
show that in the case of prosocial decisions, there are two particularly
active neural centers: first, centers responsible for creating negative
social emotions such as schadenfreude, envy and revengefulness;39 and
second, centers in charge of processing anticipated satisfaction.40 The
value of a neuroeconomic modeling of human social decision-making
behavior thus lies in the possibility of empirically proving the influ-
ence of emotions on rational deliberations over advantages and utility
in the brain.
Further evidence gathered through the neuroeconomic model-
ing of human behavior was also used to support the hypothesis of
economists Ernst Fehr and Urs Fischbacher about the existence of a

38
See ibid.
39
Also see Sanfey and Rilling et al. 2003.
40
See DeQuervain and Fischbacher et al. 2004.
 anthropology as a representation of humanity 39

biological altruism in human beings.41 According to the behaviorist-

economist definition, human beings are altruistic agents in that they
(i) stand up for the well-being of others or of their social group at
personal cost and (ii) actualize the unique behavior pattern of strong
reciprocity that contributes to the maintenance of cooperation norms
in individual or group interactions by human beings. This definition of
altruism in the sense of (i) can initially be applied to all kinds of bio-
logical organisms and living beings. But beyond that, neuroeconomic
modeling claims that altruistic behavior in human beings manifests
itself in a specific behavior pattern (ii) that cannot be found in other
living beings. The thesis of a specifically human altruism that is pre-
sented here can be supported with the following quotation:
Experimental evidence indicates that human altruism is a powerful force
and unique in the animal world. [. . .] Human societies represent a large
anomaly in the animal world. They are based on a detailed division of
labour and cooperation of genetically unrelated individuals in large
groups. [. . .] In contrast, most animal species exhibit little division of
labour and cooperation is limited to small groups. [. . .] Exceptions are
social insects such as ants and bees, or the naked mole rat; however, their
cooperation is based on a substantial amount of genetic relatedness.42
The quotation shows that Fehr and Fischbacher have consistently
developed their hypothesis about a specifically human altruism in the
context of a biological anthropology. But their thesis of a biological
altruism in human beings can also be called unusual within the natu-
ralistic theoretical horizon that they are focusing on. From a socio-
biological perspective, the altruism of living beings is always subject to
the caveat that every phenotype of altruistic behavior can be traced back
to a genetically determined, inclusive fitness advantage of interrelated
organisms and thus is self-serving, in that it provides the organism with
a genetic advantage. Thus the basic problem of socio-biological altru-
ism research consists in ignoring any altruism that extends beyond the
genetic relationship between human beings.43 In contrast to this, Fehr

41
See Fehr and Fischbacher 2003.
42
Fehr and Fischbacher 2005, 6. The quoted passages are identical with Fehr and
Fischbacher 2003, 785.
43
See the portrayal of this situation in Meisinger 1996, 249: The basic problem of
[socio-biological] altruism research is the extension of altruistic behavior to geneti-
cally unrelated human beings. [. . .] The classical theories of altruism theory, group
selection, selection of relatives, and reciprocal altruism attempt to explain altruism in
the context of Darwinist biology. Such approaches are often understood as a legiti-
mization of a naturalistic idea of human beings and a reductionist interpretation of
40 chapter one

and Fischbacher claim that homo sapiens is the only known biological
species showing cooperation between individuals that are not related
to each other in a narrow sense,44 while animals limit their cooperation
to closer familial relationships. It is a characteristic of such a human
form of altruism that human individuals live together in society-type
social forms whose way functionality is not based on family relation-
ships and biological hierarchies but on a shared system of norms and
values that regulates individual behavior. In order to account for the
specificity of human social behavior in the context of a biological and
evolutionary anthropology, Fehr and Fischbacher aim to develop a
model of altruism that is valid independently of selective mechanisms
that benefit the inclusive fitness of related individuals.
Fehr and Fischbachers neuroeconomic modeling of human altru-
ism is predominantly based on two models of socio-biological altruism
research while at the same time distancing itself from them:

(i) The model of reciprocal or direct altruism by Robert Trivers45

explains altruistic behavior with the principle of reciprocity. Altru-
ists behave selflessly toward other individuals because they expect
them to reciprocate by helping them in the future. In the long run,
then, altruists benefit from their cooperative behavior because
short-term personal investments will be offset by the reciprocal
compensation of the other individual in the future.
(ii) The model of reputational or indirect altruism46 by Martin A.
Sigmund and Karl Nowak is also based on the premise that altru-
ists can gain an advantage over other individuals through their
cooperative behavior, but the advantage is an indirect result of
such behavior. In large groups, altruists can present themselves
to third parties as fair and unselfish in order to gain a reputa-
tional advantage with regard to future acts of cooperation with
new cooperation partners. They therefore act selflessly in order to
profit from future cooperation.

human morals [. . .]. But they do not succeed in explaining altruistic behavior extend-
ing beyond the closest relatives. [. . .] True altruism is unthinkable for living beings
that are observed purely in terms of biology. (transl. M.S.).
44
Not related in the biological sense already applies to organisms from the second
or third degree of relation on. Under this premise, the biological organization struc-
ture of human societies mainly distinguishes itself from those of ants or termites in the
fact that biologically unrelated individuals interact with each other on a large scale.
45
Trivers 1971.
46
Nowak and Sigmund 1998a; 1998b.
 anthropology as a representation of humanity 41

Neuroeconomics is critical of these two models of altruism because

they fail to explain altruistic behavior in singular interactions between
individuals that are not closely related or acquainted. In addition, these
models do not account for the ability of human beings to anticipate
the consequences of their behavior in advance and to include them in
their actual calculations of utility and decision-making. This situation
has far-reaching implications for deeming a behavioral pattern to be
altruistic. Provided that individuals will take into account not only
the short-term personal costs, but also the long-term personal advan-
tages and disadvantages of a certain behavior and weigh them against
each other, it becomes obvious that they can make a decision at one
point in time in order to gain a cooperative advantage at another point
in time. Thus, neither reciprocal altruism nor reputational altruism
can explain altruistic behavior in a way that does not ultimately reduce
altruism to mere self-interest.
In order to overcome the basic problem of socio-biological altru-
ism models, Fehr and Fischbacher have invoked the behavioral pattern
of strong reciprocity among human beings. According to its defini-
tion, strong reciprocity shows itself in the altruistic punishment of
antisocial modes of behavior and the altruistic reward of prosocial
modes of behavior.47 In order to prove empirically that both forms of
strong reciprocity are purely altruistic modes of behavior, Fehr and
Fischbacher modeled them in singular interactional processes between
individuals that are not related to or acquainted with each other. A
so-called one-shot experimental design ensures that no advantages
of reciprocity or reputation can have an impact on behavior. An addi-
tional relevant factor for the experimental modeling of human altru-
ism was that human beings were put into a situation in which they had
to interact with each other under conditions of anonymity.
The interest of economists Fehr and Fischbacher in an empirically
verifiable modeling of altruistic behavior and their attempt to surpass
the socio-biological altruism models shows that they, with the help
of neuroeconomic methods, seek to develop an autonomous perspec-
tive on human social behavior that satisfactorily explains this behav-
ior on both a biological and a behavioral level. In an anthropological
perspective, they present the altruistic behavior pattern of strong reci-
procity as a differentia specifica that sets human social behavior apart
from animal social behavior. They also claim to be able to use their

47
See Fehr and Fischbacher 2003, 785.
42 chapter one

neuroscientific observations for giving a realistic representation of not

only rational, but also human body-bound behavior.48

7.3 Philosophical Points of Entry in Anthropology

The following basic anthropological question seems to be equally sig-
nificant for both the experimental economists Fehr and Fischbacher
and the representatives of a philosophical anthropology: What con-
stitutes the differentia specifica of human beings compared to other
living beings? Is it (still) possible to determine this differentia specifica
in the context of biology, or does it require a different frame of refer-
ence that locates human beings outside of the biological determinants
of behavior, namely, in culture? The fact that both lines of inquiry aim
to give a definition of human beings, i.e., to determine their essential
nature on the basis of similarity and difference to other living beings,
makes their basic conception a problematic one. This will be demon-
strated in the following passages through a hermeneutical critique of
the anthropological definition.
This critique is motivated by the notion that without determining
the idiosyncrasy of the basic question and object of anthropological
study, it is impossible to assess whether the various academic descrip-
tions of the human being, which gain their knowledge about human
beings by using different methods, are able to do justice to the object
of their study. Two steps are necessary to justify a critique of the
methods and results of the individual disciplines: first, hermeneutical
criteria must be established for whether a description of the human
being can legitimately be called a representation of its humanity; and
second, it must be made clear why a description of the human being
is not to be mistaken for a definition of its essential nature. For this
task, the humanity of the human being must be defined based on its
phenomenal concreteness [Gegenstndlichkeit], and not on its biologi-
cal foundations or cultural characteristics.

7.3.1 Anthropology as Human Self-Inquiry

In experimental economics, any examination of the human being is
based on developing an appropriate experimental modeling of human

48
A more extensive discussion and critique of the experimental modelings of
human sociality will be deferred at this point because for now, the focus will be on
the anthropological differentiations of the philosophical perspective.
 anthropology as a representation of humanity 43

interaction that enables researchers to establish and verify hypoth-

eses about human social behavior. There are no explicit reflections
on the potential hermeneutical implications of these hypotheses, i.e.,
the aspect of how their objects of study are represented. In contrast,
philosophical anthropology is interested in and open to hermeneutical
and phenomenological questions. The following section will discuss
the orientation of philosophical anthropology in connection with the
example of Hans Blumenbergs ideas.
Those texts by Hans Blumenberg in which he explicitly deals with
the basic questions of a philosophical anthropology have only become
accessible through the publication of the posthumous volume Bes-
chreibung des Menschen (2006).49 This book contains a number of
considerations dealing with both the hermeneutical basis and the phil-
osophical rationale for the question of the human being.50 Blumenberg
demonstrates that the continued task of philosophical anthropology,
even after the scientific examination of the human, is to consider the
starting position and hermeneutical characteristic of the anthropo-
logical line of inquiry.51 The legitimacy of philosophical anthropology
thus is not called into question by present developments in the human
sciences.
According to Blumenberg, the unique aspect of anthropology lies in
the fact that the object it refers to exists because of an act of human
self-inquiry, which is not the case with any other object of inquiry.
When human beings ask about the human being as such, they ask
neither about the immanent structures of their consciousness (subjec-
tivity) nor about the existence and shape of something existing out-
side of them (objectivity).52 Instead, they ask about those beings who
ask the question. The question of the human being thus is the only
question in which the asker at first glance seems to be identical with
that which is asked about.53 However, it is important to note that by

49
Oliver Mller has already demonstrated that the work of Hans Blumenberg not
only contains a historical phenomenology of cave exits [Hhlenausgnge] in the
posthumous volumes, but also describes the attempt of a phenomenological anthro-
pology of consciousness (see Mller 2005, 313324). Also see the discussions about
Blumenbergs anthropology in the essay collection Auf Distanz zur Natur (Klein
2009) and Mllers essay in that book (Klein 2009, 101116).
50
See Blumenberg 2006, 478549.
51
See ibid., 482.
52
See ibid., 503504.
53
See ibid., 503.
44 chapter one

posing this question, human beings do indeed ask about themselves,

but specifically about themselves as human beings. Thus, they ask about
creatures whose existence cannot be described without also looking at
their self-relationship, which in turn is impossible to consider without
also looking at a world dimension.54
The awareness that the question of the human being is a question
of human self-knowledge which is not absorbed into pure subjectiv-
ity can be integrated into a scientific discussion about human beings,
insofar as the ability of the human being to ask about itself and to be
aware of its situation in the world fundamentally sets it apart from
other living beings and thus represents a definitive characteristic of
its essential nature.55 And yet, in Blumenbergs work, the knowledge
about the self-reflexive starting position of anthropology remains a pro-
prium of philosophy that always precedes56 the methodological disci-
plination of the question about the human being in the sciences and
that always lies beyond their grasp.57
In his posthumously published texts, Blumenberg has demonstrated
time after time the extent to which the universalizing basic anthro-
pological question of What are human beings as such?58 is in need
of revision, and he has done so by subjecting it to various modifica-
tions. For him, the possibility of answering the question about the
human being in a positive way is by no means a given. For this rea-
son, Blumenberg continues to emphasize throughout his thoughts that
when it comes to the human beings question about itself, the apparent

54
See ibid.
55
Thus, Carl Linnaeus chose the name for the biological species of human beings
in his taxonomy (1735) in reference not to a specific biological characteristic, but to
human self-knowledge. Human beings are those living beings that can be classified as
their own species because of their capability of self-awareness (homo sapiens).
56
See Blumenbergs objection to the claim that philosophical anthropology could
be replaced by the human sciences in Blumenberg 2006, 498: To me, this seems to
be even one of its [the philosophical question about the human being; R.K.] most
important functions: to declare that the sum of scientific answers is not the answer to
the formerly asked question. Disciplines that today call themselves [. . .] anthropologies
[. . .] would be inconceivable without a philosophical question potential that precedes
them. (transl. M.S.).
57
It is Blumenbergs opinion that all scientific studies of human beings in their
sum do not [yield; M.S.] anything that could be called an answer to the philosophical
question. (ibid., 499 [transl. M.S.]).
58
Blumenberg points out that especially the question of human beings as such
refers from the outset to a generalization of the answer and thus to an abstract object.
Things would be different if the question was about some human beings that could be
referred to concretely (see ibid., 503504).
 anthropology as a representation of humanity 45

identity between the asker and the object of inquiry is actually not a
given at all:
Why do we have to ask at all what the human being is, if we are one our-
selves? This is a starting position that we do not have for any other object
of inquiry. Knowing the answer to this question should be the surest of
all knowledge as a matter of course. So sure, in fact, that it should be
safe to say that he who asks what the human being is does not want to
receive an answer at all, much like Pilate did not want an answer to his
question What is truth? in this case, because none is required. But
the identity of the asker with that about which he asks does not seem
to be as evident as the borderline case that Descartes constructed for
himself at the beginning of modernity: Whoever asks about that which
is absolutely certain can, in any case, be absolutely certain that he dem-
onstrates his own existence to himself by asking the question. But this
identity of consciousness and its content does not extend any further, or
at least not much further. In any case, we ourselves are not the contents
of our consciousness beyond the fact that we exist, insofar as we have
consciousness at all.
That which is meant with the question of What is the human being?
must lie beyond the immediate contents of our consciousness. Because
after all, the answer to this question should tell us about the essence of
the human being, or at least its essential aspects.59
Blumenbergs philosophical anthropology strives to ask about not only
the essence, but also the essential aspects of human existence. To this
end, he formulates the basic hermeneutical situation of the question
about the human being in analogy with the Cartesian problem of cer-
tainty. Unlike the question about certainty, which aims at the mere
existence of human self-consciousness, the question about what the
human being is cannot simply be answered by pointing out the mere
existence of self-consciousness. For this question is about something
that cannot immediately be called into consciousness. For this, Blu-
menberg deduces the fate of the absolute indirectness of anthropo-
logical theory.60 Since anthropology usually focuses on the universal
aspects of human existence, it cannot utilize the (supposed) immediacy
of self-experience in order to gain clarity about its object. It is not even
able to make self-experience the starting point of its considerations if
it has developed into critical-methodological self-observation, because

59
Ibid., 503 (transl. M.S.).
60
Ibid., 527 (transl. M.S.).
46 chapter one

self-consciousness lacks the object to which it can refer.61 The basic

anthropological question of What is the human being as such? there-
fore must always be set apart from the question of self-consciousness:
What am I?
Blumenberg explains the uncertainty of the existence of a definitive
answer to the question of what the human being is with the lack of
immediate self-experience, which precedes the rationality of anthro-
pology and must always be compensated for in it. The question about
the human being is asked in the face of missing evidence and thus is
geared toward a specific mode of response. All anthropological theo-
ries endeavor to name all those and only those characteristics that are
required for the function of differentiating [the human being] from
other things.62 According to Blumenberg, the determination of the
human differentia specifica sometimes causes anthropology to see its
task as merely making an inventory of positive defining characteris-
tics of the human being.63 In his opinion, this practice leads to posi-
tivistic reductionism. For this reason, he modifies the question about
the human being. He replaces the basic anthropological question of
what the human being is with the new question of How is the human
being possible?64 (anthropogenesis), thereby questioning the legiti-
macy of an anthropology that merely describes the actuality of the
human being, but not its possibility.65
His new starting question of How is the human being possible? is
a question that seeks to guide us toward the contingency of human
beings.66 In his opinion, anthropological thought must take into
account the contingent existence of the human being because this is
the only way to avoid the consequence that anthropology assumes
human existence to be a given and a necessity.67 By introducing the
contingent existence of human beings, Blumenberg succeeds in pro-
gressing from the construction of necessary questions about human
essence to the construction of possible human self-descriptions. If it

61
Here, Blumenberg refers to Immanuel Kants critical resolution of the concept
of soul into consciousness in time that is constituted in the inner sense (see ibid.,
527528).
62
Ibid., 504 (transl. M.S.).
63
See ibid.
64
See ibid., 535.
65
See ibid.
66
Ibid., 511 (transl. M.S.).
67
Ibid., 550 (transl. M.S.).
 anthropology as a representation of humanity 47

is further assumed that the starting point of anthropological descrip-

tion should not be the introspective self-awareness, but the mundane
self-experience of the human being, then that which characterizes
mundane human beings, i.e., their lack of immediate self-evidence,
can also be understood as a productive impulse of their cultural and
philosophical attempts to find (or invent) themselves. The notion that
human beings are not the object of immediate experience but can only
be represented indirectly demands a plurality of attempts to describe
and represent them. Here, the ideal-typical descriptions of the human
being in the cultural sciences may also serve as an example.68
In Blumbergs view, one of the genuine achievements of human
beings is that they can invent a multitude of possible self-concepts
for themselves through the creation of cultural symbols precisely
because they are never determined in pure immediacy. Thus, Blumen-
bergs anthropology always describes the human being in a perspective
of becoming, i.e., in a perspective that is based on the improbability69
and un-self-evidence of the human being and attempts to replicate
these features in a philosophical description of the human being.
Such a description must represent not those characteristics that are
important for defining essential human nature, but those character-
istics that have become crucial for the development and idiosyncrasy
of the human being.70 In the anthropological perspective proposed by
Blumenberg, what constitutes an essential characteristic of human life
thus can only be assessed retrospectively from the present status, by
looking back into a past that searches for the contingent conditions of
becoming human.
Blumenbergs line of argument opens up a new perspective on the
manifold scientific and philosophical definitions of the human being.
First and foremost, it demonstrates that these definitions must not be
misunderstood as essentialist. Instead, their hermeneutical function is
to take a particular aspect as an example for highlighting that which

68
For a compilation of ideal-typical answers from the cultural sciences see Rsel
1975. From Ernst Cassirers animal symbolicum to Helmuth Plessners homo sociologi-
cus, scientific thought always supposes a model of human life in its studies and thus
reduces its complexity. However, these ideal types are no longer essentialist determi-
nations of human nature, but instead they convey aspects by which human beings can
represent and interpret their existence in the world.
69
See Blumenberg 2006, 550: Human beings are improbability incarnate. (transl.
M.S.).
70
Ibid., 518 (transl. M.S.; emphasis added R.K.).
48 chapter one

characterizes human beings in general. Every attempt at defining the

human being thus is geared toward representing one specific human
characteristic as an absolute and therefore threatens to totalize that
which is determined as essential individually (see 7.1.2).

7.3.2 Alternatives: The Dualism and Monism of Anthropology

The anthropological definition of antiquity that viewed rationality as
an essential characteristic of humanity (animal rationale) was given
a new form in the age of modernity. A tendency emerged to inter-
pret human nature as dualistic by juxtaposing the material nature of
humanity with a second, spiritual nature.71 In its analytical abstraction,
the differentiation between first and second nature was readily called
into question when the human being became the object of the natural
sciences in the 19th century.72 In the context of Darwinist evolution
theory, which interpreted the definition of animal rationale monisti-
cally, rationality and spirit were declared to be an accidental byproduct
of the evolution of life. The assertion of a second human nature inde-
pendent from the first one now only sounded like an indefensible phil-
osophical speculation that was not compatible with scientific findings
about human beings. It then became a new strategy of anthropology to
describe human nature with those natural characteristics that set them
apart from other living beings. However, the postulated existence of
the human being as a special being within nature was cast into doubt
at the moment when those rational abilities and cultural skills that
had been exclusively attributed to human beings were found in other
primates as well, particularly in highly developed apes.73 The endeavor

71
With his differentiation between res cogitans and res extensa, Ren Descartes can
be called the originator of a dualistic anthropology (see Illies 2006, 2931).
72
See ibid., 1819.
73
The cultural social life of animals has been described in numerous publications
by Frans De Waal (among others). De Waal follows the hypothesis that the behavior
of chimpanzees or bonobos is structured like the behavior of human beings, not only
with regard to aggression and violence, but also with regard to morals and social-
ity. De Waal describes the human-like behavior of animals as a model for the inner
nature of human beings (thus the title of one publication: Our Inner Ape, De Waal
2005). See De Waal 1989; De Waal 1996; De Waal 1997; De Waal 2001a; De Waal
2001b; De Waal and Tyack 2003; De Waal 2005; De Waal 2006. The studies of Jane
Goodall also put chimpanzees and bonobos into close proximity to human beings
(see Goodall 1986; 1990). Hypotheses about the social behavior of apes are also cur-
rently assessed by a group of researchers at the Max-Planck-Institute for Evolutionary
Anthropology in Leipzig (Germany). The results, which largely contradict those of De
Waal, can be tracked in the following publications: Hauser et al. 2003; Brosnan and
 anthropology as a representation of humanity 49

to assert the uniqueness of human beings at the point of species was

thereby reduced ad absurdum. From the perspective of evolutionary
biology, there is no gap or quantum leap from animal to human being,
but merely gradual differences in the evolutionary line of life. The 20th
century attempt to reestablish philosophical anthropology against the
dominance of an evolutionary and biological perspective on the human
being thus was fraught with certain problems.
As a reaction to the biological human and behavioral sciences, the
main representatives of so-called philosophical anthropology in the
20th century (Max Scheler, Helmuth Plessner, Arnold Gehlen) and
their successors endeavored to develop alternatives to the monistic
and dualistic theoretical concepts of anthropology.74 They reinvented
anthropology as a philosophy of life whose description of human exis-
tence as a self-interpreting existence also included the aspect of bodily
human existence. With mediating terms such as body (Plessner),
distance (Blumenberg), feeling (Schmitz) etc., it was now possible
to describe structures of existence that set human beings apart from
other biological life forms (animal, plant) and at the same time des-
ignate their humanity.75 The philosophical analysis of these anthropo-
logical mediating terms focused on emphasizing structural aspects of
human existence that do not ignore their bodily-corporeal form. They
helped prepare a viable path for contemporary anthropology: to focus
on (phenomenological) structural description rather than on essen-
tialist definition.
In this paragraph it has been demonstrated that the definition of
human beings by way of their differentia specifica to animals is inher-
ently problematic because firstly, it fails to grasp the hermeneutical
characteristic of its object and thus the basic anthropological situation
of the question about the human being, and secondly, it subjects this
question from the outset to the curious logic of a definition of human
nature that aims to cast human beings as necessarily existing living
beings while losing sight of their contingency. Following Dieter Groh,
it can be said that such a course of action makes anthropology highly
susceptible to ideological constructs. Therefore, it is necessary to look

De Waal 2004; Brosnan et al. 2005; Dubreuil et al. 2006; Roma et al. 2006; Brosnan
and De Waal 2006; Brosnan et al. 2006; Jensen et al. 2006.
74
See Arlt 2001, 66179.
75
For an overview of seminal 20th century approaches also see Fuchs 2000,
4385.
50 chapter one

for other forms of making the human being the object of examination,
forms that refrain from determining their humanity through their bio-
logical difference to animals or their cultural difference to nature.

8 Anthropological Key Differences

Beside the attempts to revise and reinvent the tradition of philosophical

anthropology in the 20th century, there has also been severe criticism.
This section will introduce several critical voices in order to outline
the key differences [Leitdifferenzen] of an anthropology that can give
a description of human humanity that serves as an alternative to the
definition of human beings based on a biological foundation or on
cultural characteristics. However, this chapter will not approach this
topic chronologically, but in a systematic manner focusing on specific
problems.

(i) In his conception of a hermeneutical phenomenology, Martin

Heidegger76 worked on the premise that the Being [Sein] of
human beings only shows itself at the site of a hermeneutical clari-
fication of human being-there [Da-Sein] as a self-relationship
comprehending itself and the world.77 Thus, it cannot be found in
a general definition and essential determination of human beings.
He therefore rejected both the basic lines of inquiry of classical
philosophical anthropology and the approaches of empirically
studying and biologically explicating the human being. Precisely
because Heideggers relationship to philosophical and biological
anthropology was tense, his thoughts on human humanity are rel-
evant at this point and will be used in a first step in approaching
a closer definition of the category of humanity which is the topic
of this study.
(ii) Following that, Heideggers critique of the anthropological prin-
ciple of thought called the humanism of metaphysics can be
developed further based on the example of the work of Italian phi-
losopher Giorgio Agamben.78 Following Heideggers accusation
that the metaphysical tradition of thought reduces the Being of

76
See Heideggers work Being and Time (Heidegger 2001).
77
Arlt 2001, 46 (transl. M.S.).
78
See Agamben 2004.
 anthropology as a representation of humanity 51

the human being to a mere entity [Seiendes] and thus ultimately

abandons [it] to the realm of animalitas,79 Agamben attempts to
understand the basic layout of an anthropology that has always
determined human nature by its difference to the extra-human
(deitas, animalitas). Agamben views the ancient idea of life and
its essential indeterminacy (or resistance to being determined) as
the background to humanistic anthropology. In order to forge
a new anthropological approach in the context of late modern
thought, he first examines, in a historical perspective, the biopo-
litical function that the animal construct fulfils for anthropology
in Western civilization. Then, he takes the dissolution of human-
ist thought that he has observed in that civilization as an oppor-
tunity to develop the difference between the human being and the
animal not as a differentiation from the extra-human, but as an
inner-human separation.
(iii) Another consequence of criticizing the humanist constructions
of the human being that determine its nature through differen-
tiation from something non-human, i.e., from an ambiguously
defined Other of their humanity, is the choice of the category of
the inhuman as the key concept of a negative anthropology by
Theodor W. Adorno. Adornos anthropology and moral philoso-
phy are based on the supposition that all positive determinations
of human beings and the good life have failed. For Adorno, this
verdict of the failed objectivity and positivity of the human also
extends to Heideggers proposed determination of human exis-
tence as being-there [Dasein], which programmatically neutral-
izes the sphere of entities [Seiendes] as well as the metaphysical
concept of Being [Sein] by claiming ontological purity and thus
fails to comprehend the actual, concrete gestalt of human beings.80
Adornos critique of Heidegger shall not be repeated here, but
shall serve merely as a hint toward his motive for developing
a completely different kind of anthropology that does not aim
to discuss the essential nature of human beings, but rather the
disappearance of their humanity in modern society. Because the
conceptions of anthropology that rely on the positivity of human
beings and morals fail, says Adorno, their destruction can only

79
Heidegger 2004a, 323 (transl. M.S.).
80
See Adorno 1973, 97100.
52 chapter one

be taken as a starting point for a new idea of human beings that

no longer ignores the possibility of dehumanization the loss of
humanity at the site of the human being itself. Here, the category
of the inhuman is no longer a counter-principle of the human,
but a significantly more concrete determination of its existence
than any abstract determinations of humanity or the postulate
of an alleged ontological singularity of the human species could
ever be.

8.1 Heidegger: Humanity as the Truth of Being

In the ancient philosophical tradition, human nature had always been
defined by differentiating the humanity of the human being from its
opposite. The opposite of the human could take many different forms
and thus contribute to the manifold positive definitions of human
nature. According to Heidegger, this differentiation first happened in
ancient Rome when the Romans saw themselves as homo humanus,
in contrast and opposition to the homo barbarus, from which they set
themselves apart due to their paideia, their education handed down
from the Greeks.81 Following in the footsteps of the Romans, the
humanist thought of the Renaissance, along with 18th century human-
ism in Germany (Johann Joachim Winckelmann, Johann Wolfgang
Goethe, Friedrich Schiller), thus was rooted in the studium humanita-
tis, a revival of Hellenism.82
In his so-called Humanismusbrief 83 (Letter on Humanism, 1946),
Martin Heidegger turns against humanism as an approach based on
an idea of the human being that he calls metaphysical: Every deter-
mination of the essence of man that already presupposes an inter-
pretation of beings without asking about the truth of Being, whether
knowingly or not, is metaphysical.84 According to Heidegger, such a
way of thinking that seeks to determine the human being with regard
to an already established interpretation of nature, history, world, and
the ground of the world85 has accompanied philosophical tradition
since Plato and still dominates the modern natural sciences,86 which

81
See Heidegger 2004a, 320.
82
See ibid.
83
Ibid., 313364. English Translation: Heidegger 21993, 213267.
84
Heidegger 21993, 225226.
85
Ibid., 225.
86
See Heidegger 2004a, 324.
 anthropology as a representation of humanity 53

with their empirical and technical constructions of the human being

are merely heirs to the philosophical tradition. In Heideggers opinion,
all conceptions about the Being of the human being that determine
its essential nature on the basis of metaphysics in the above described
sense are part of an approach that prevents a determination of the true
existence of the human being even as a question.87 For the humanist
approach ignores that which determines being human at heart, i.e.,
its connection to the truth of Being, as Heidegger calls it. Thus,
humanist thought always constitutes itself as a counter-movement to
the proper understanding of the Being of human beings.
Heidegger claims to have uncovered a metaphysical thought opera-
tion in the humanist approach that always obscures the true Being
of human beings. And yet, he does not abandon the concern for the
human being as an endeavor to attain the true knowledge of its human-
ity. Instead, he tries to use his critique of the humanist approach of
anthropology to push through to an object-appropriate line of inquiry
without falling back on the conceptual pre-decisions of the philo-
sophical tradition. In an attempt to find new thought patterns in his
Humanismusbrief, Heidegger questions the foundation of thinking
about the human being that is reflected in the definition of the human
being as animal rationale: Are we really on the right track toward the
essence of man as long as we set him off as one living creature among
others in contrast to plants, beasts, and God?88
For Heidegger, this question about man as a living creature is
precisely the wrong question. He makes it clear that thinking about
the human being should start in an entirely different place than in
determining humanity by presupposing an essential human nature.
He accuses the latter of giving primacy to animalitas over the actual
true humanitas of the human. Thus, this approach is patently unable
to truly think human humanity. But Heidegger also sees a close con-
nection between his endeavors and the original cause of humanism.
Humanism wanted to free human beings to access their humanity
by setting them apart from animals.89 Heidegger shares the opinion

87
See Heidegger 21993, 226: In defining the humanity of man humanism not
only does not ask about the relation of Being to the essence of man; because of its
metaphysical origin humanism even impedes the question by neither recognizing nor
understanding it.
88
Ibid., 227.
89
Heideggers idea of humanism includes its liberating dimension: But if one
understands humanism in general as a concern that man become free for his humanity
54 chapter one

that human humanity is not simply a given or an empirical fact, but

needs to be brought to awareness and to be liberated as essential
human nature. However, Heideggers path to liberation is wholly
different from that of humanism. He in no way disputes that the
scientific-technological90 or metaphysical91 determination of essential
human nature can yield some knowledge,92 but he doubts that this
knowledge can account for the true essence of human beings.93 In
Heideggers own words: Metaphysics determines the human being as
homo animalis, as a being that always locates its identity within being
as one being among others94 and thus is recognized by the logic of
separation and differentiation from the non-human. But how can the
metaphysical mentality of humanism be overcome without also advo-
cating inhumanity, barbarism and irrationality, those things that the
essential nature of the human being was to be separated from in the
first place?95
Heidegger proposes to overcome humanism not with new answers,
but with a different line of inquiry, which he calls the question of
the ontological-historical meaning or the truth of human existence.96
Unlike the humanist approach that he criticizes, he views the humani-
tas of the human being as an ontological mode of its existence through
which the human being becomes truly human (homo humanus) in the
first place.97 But what is this ontological mode, this execution of Being,
if the human being cannot and must not locate the reason for its Being
in the approximation to entities, in setting itself apart from animals?
Heidegger demonstrates the difference of his ontological-historical
examination of the human being from the humanist approach pri-
marily by marking a different mode of asking about the human being:
the Being of the human is not adequately expressed in a theoretical
determination of its essential nature that thinks of the human as a
specific kind of living creature among others,98 but only in the perfor-

and find his worth in it, then humanism differs according to ones conception of the
freedom and nature of man. (ibid., 225).
90
See Heidegger 2004a, 324.
91
See ibid., 330.
92
See ibid., 323.
93
See ibid., 324325.
94
Heidegger 21993, 227.
95
See Heidegger 2004a, 346.
96
See ibid., 345346.
97
See ibid., 352.
98
Heidegger 21993, 228.
 anthropology as a representation of humanity 55

mance of an experience of essential nature in which something happens

that brings to the surface the [human] essence [. . .] of Being99 and
in Heideggers thought, this always also means its essential quality.
The essential quality of human existence is the privilege only granted
to the human being to think the essence of [its] being and not merely
to give accounts of the nature and history of [its] constitution and
activities.100
For Heidegger, only the awareness of the true relationship of the
human to Being can lead the way to the true awareness about being
human. Being human must be laid open in its belonging to the truth
of Being by the act of thinking in order to avoid any more lapses into
the mistaken determinations of the human-animal-difference. There-
fore, the human humanity that Heidegger focuses on can only be dis-
cussed where being human and thus the human self-understanding is
made the basis of thinking about the human being from the very start.101
Beyond that, as Heidegger states in the Humanismusbrief, being
human is to be understood as answering the call of Being. Human
beings thus cannot comprehend or determine their true existence cog-
nitively by, for example, describing themselves as living beings with
rationality and freedom. Instead, they receive their existence in under-
standing the truth of Being by allowing themselves to be made the (as
Heidegger calls it) shepherd[s] of Being,102 the protectors of their
truth. This is why Heidegger describes being human as an answer to
a call because, in contrast to Jean-Paul Sartres existentialism,103 he
seeks to comprehend the existence of the human being through its
passive, listening character and not its active, choosing one. Human
beings are aware of their existence by allowing the truth of Being to
be articulated historically. By ignoring this set of circumstances, the
determination of essential human nature in classical humanism is
borne by an idea of the human that fails to capture its essence, the
historically experienced fate104 of its existence.

99
Ibid.
100
Ibid.
101
See Heidegger 2004a, 347349.
102
Ibid., 342 (transl. M.S.).
103
Heidegger accuses Sartres existentialism of merely reversing the metaphysical
thought operation that put substance before the existence of human beings. (see ibid.,
328).
104
See ibid., 326.
56 chapter one

In Heideggers opinion, then, the essence of being human is not

rooted in theoretical cognitive achievement, but in the historical expe-
rience of ones own existence that has the character of listening and
responding to a truth that reveals itself to and conceals itself from
human beings in history. This response to the truth intensifies in the
so-called ek-sistence [Ek-sistieren] of human beings, which Heideg-
ger describes as an eventful occurrence in which human beings are
liberated from their bond to the entities [Seiendes] and thus inducted
into the resulting openness of a world.105 The induction into that
which Heidegger calls world106 becomes the basis of a human self-
understanding that, unlike the determinations of homo animalis, is no
longer exclusively based on their differentiation from animals. In the
experiential space of the world, human existence can be conducted
in a way that assigns human beings a sojourn, or a site where they
can unfold their humanity independently from the comparison to ani-
mals.107 According to Heidegger, the essential quality of being human
thus is always rooted in the possibility of describing human humanity
as a self-understanding that is based on the hermeneutical experience
of a historical fate of Being in the world.

8.2 Agamben: The Dissolution of the Animal Construct

The philosopher Giorgio Agamben attempts to follow Heideggers
critique of the humanist understanding of the human being. At the
same time, he reacts more resolutely than Heidegger to the inquiries of
humanism that are presently cropping up in the face of the influence
of the biological life sciences on anthropology. In his book The Open:
Man and Animal,108 published for the first time in 2002, Agamben
attempts to explain the humanization of the animal (animal ratio-
nale) as a politically motivated thought operation.109

105
Heidegger himself translates ek-sistence not as the emergence of an inside into
expression, but as an emergence of human beings into the truth of Being. Human
beings are abandoned (set out) and made free to understand themselves in the indi-
rectness and openness of a world. (see ibid.).
106
See ibid., 350.
107
It is problematic that Heidegger himself is tempted to reapply his determination
of being human to being animal and to comprehend animals via human beings. As an
example, see his thesis of the world-deprivation of the animal in his lecture Grund-
begriffe der Metaphysik (Heidegger 2004b).
108
Agamben 2004.
109
Although Agamben stages his considerations as a re-reading of the ontological-
historical difference between the world deprivation of animals and the world openness
 anthropology as a representation of humanity 57

Following Michel Foucaults concept of biopolitics,110 Agamben

therefore places much stronger emphasis on the political and ethical
context of thinking about the human than Heidegger.111 He rejects
the notion that the explanatory recording and ordering descrip-
tion of human physiology is an a-political mandate that science and
biotechnology exert on the life of human beings. In his view, every
endeavor to define the creature called human being continues to free
up political room for maneuver insofar as the humanization of human
beings in the humanism of tradition has always been articulated as
a relationship of human dominance112 over animals, and thus ulti-
mately Agamben continues as the dominance of human beings
over themselves. And this notion has not fundamentally changed in
the modern life sciences that strive to biologize the essential nature of
human beings. With their descriptions of human beings, they are at
the center of a political conflict about the preservation or destruction
of the true humanity of human beings.
Agambens thesis that human beings hold dominion over them-
selves by humanizing the creatures that they are also forms the basis
for his term of animalitas. According to Agamben, animal nature is to
be thought of as not only a factor existing outside of the human being
(the animal), but also as a self-description of the human being (homo
animalis). Here, Agamben retraces Heideggers footsteps. But he goes
beyond him when he shows that animal nature is not excluded from
the Being of the human being in humanism, but instead is under-
stood as a mobile border113 within human beings themselves. Where
the human begins and the animal in the human ends is the result of
a biopolitical and not of a biological differentiation. Agamben refers
to the separation of human from animal nature as an anthropological

of human beings in Martin Heidegger, at the core, his theories are geared toward
Michel Foucaults concept of biopolitics and Hannah Arendts interpretation of the
human condition as the natural and cultural conditionality of being human (see
Arendt 1958, 78).
110
Foucault provides a short, comprehensive overview about the conception of a
biopolitics in his lecture from March 17, 1976: Foucault 1996.
111
Agamben himself, though, believes that this political intensification of anthro-
pology can already be located in Heideggers own line of inquiry: The ontological
paradigm of truth as the conflict between concealedness and unconcealedness is, in
Heidegger, immediately and originarily a political paradigm (Agamben 2004, 73).
112
Agamben identifies humanism with the rational project of dominating over ani-
mal life (see ibid., 90.19).
113
Ibid., 15.
58 chapter one

machine or a device.114 It is the product of an initial separation of

human life, performed by human beings themselves, that as a move-
ment of inclusion or exclusion gives rise to an economy of animal-
human relations.
The basic thesis of Agambens anthropology book is thus: The
development of the human being is not to be understood as a self-
contained event in the developmental logic of natural or human his-
tory, but instead as an ongoing event of a continuously occurring
self-exploration of human humanity through the logic of an animal-
human-difference. Should the separation process within the human
being grind to a halt one day, as Agamben is afraid it will in pres-
ent times, human culture threatens to descend into nihilism.115 Unlike
Heidegger, then, Agamben does not simply leave behind the animal
nature of the human being. He clarifies his thesis of a peculiar economy
of becoming human by analyzing several cornerstones of the manifold
variations of anthropological thought systems that have determined the
relations between human beings and animals in the East-West culture
for centuries. He identifies a countercurrent dynamic as an economy
of these relations: the humanization of animals on the one hand and
the animalization of humans on the other have mutually caused and
strengthened each other. The classical humanist construction of the
human being is not the only variant of anthropogenesis116 but brings
forth a counter-movement that responds to its counterpart. The direc-
tion of the gaze in the relation between human beings and animals can
be reversed: it occurs as becoming-human, as the inclusion of an ani-
mal external aspect (animal rationale), but also as becoming-animal,
as the exclusion of a human inner aspect (the biological man-ape).117
Both variations118 of anthropogenesis, the humanization and animal-

114
Ibid., 26.
115
See ibid., 22.
116
Agambens understanding of the word anthropogenesis is entirely different
from Hans Blumenbergs (see 7.3.1). For Blumenberg, anthropogenesis includes
proof of the contingency of human beings and their (biologically speaking) improb-
able potential for self-preservation. In contrast, Agamben uses the expression in anal-
ogy to Heideggers talk about humanism: anthropogenesis is that basic ontological
thought operation of metaphysics through which the animal physis dominates human
beings and through which the humanity of human beings shall be liberated (see ibid.,
9798).
117
See ibid., 3334.
118
Interestingly, Agamben focuses his thoughts almost exclusively on the relation-
ship between human beings and animals, ignoring that an analysis of the paradigm of
 anthropology as a representation of humanity 59

ization of the human creature, have one thing in common: they con-
tain a continuous process of decision and re-decision about what the
human being is and what the animal is.119 For Agamben, drawing the
line between the human and the animal thus remains a risky political
act of culture creation that must be performed again and again in the
conflict between both possibilities.
How, then, does Agamben deal with naturalistic description of the
human? His claim that anthropogenesis is dependent on the produc-
tion of an animal construct,120 a non-human artifact that keeps gener-
ating new differentiations between the animal and the human, is based
on the premise that the human being as a species does not possess
a biologically distinctive nature121 that substantially distinguishes it
from other living beings.122 Agamben discovers the impossibility of
finding clear differences between human beings and animals in the
biological sphere even in the work of the inventor of the biological
species name for human beings, the nature researcher and zoologist
Carl Linnaeus.123
When Linnaeus introduces the species term of homo sapiens for
human beings in the tenth edition of his Systema Naturae124 by rank-
ing human beings with the primates, he does not cite a biological dif-
ference, but a philosophical aphorism (nosce te ipsum) as the feature
distinguishing human beings from primates. This means that human
beings are solely defined as human by their capacity for self-awareness.
To make his own point, Agamben reads Linnaeus aphorism as the

becoming human should also be extended to the paradigm of the deitas-humanitas dif-
ferentiation. Here, it would have been necessary to discuss the thesis that philosophi-
cal anthropology and its constructions of humanity always have a hidden reference to
Christology and its doctrine of dual nature (see Haeffner 32000, 169).
119
See Agamben 2004, 36.
120
On the animal construct as a political argument, also see Jobst 2004. In his dis-
course analytical study Das Tier-Konstrukt und die Geburt des Rassismus, Jobst
investigates the function of the animal construct as a dispositive of power constella-
tions. In a perspective informed by religious theory, he identifies the origin of ani-
mal constructs as a Greco-Christian hegemony in contrast to the ethical universalism
of Judaism. According to Jobst, this hegemony repeats itself in the Jewish holocaust
of the 20th century. Unlike Agamben, Jobst views the animal construct merely as a
destructive stereotype of social exclusion and does not reflect on its anthropological
function and significance. Also unlike Agamben, however, Jobst investigates the reli-
gious roots of the animal dispositive.
121
Agamben 2004, 26.
122
See ibid.
123
See ibid., 2327.
124
Linnaeus 1735.
60 chapter one

expression of a human experience of difference. In Agambens inter-

pretation, Linnaeus statement that man is the animal that must rec-
ognize itself as human to be human125 turns into the statement that
man must recognize himself in a non-man in order to be human.126
Thus, in order to be able to determine human nature, that which is
non-human but nevertheless inherent in human beings must be deter-
mined. At this point, a momentous differentiation for anthropological
thought emerges. According to Agamben, a construction of the non-
human is constitutive of the self-awareness of human beings. How-
ever, he presents the non-human as ambivalent and interpretative: as
a difference or fracture in the human being, it can manifest itself both
as a humanization or an animalization of the human being.
Agamben presents one more peculiar interpretation in the con-
text of his analysis of Italian Renaissance humanism.127 In his view,
the usage of the word man as a nomen dignitas, which is rooted in
Renaissance humanism, represents the attempt to replace the non-
existent biological hierarchy and individual nature of the human being
with an artificially created term of dignity. In his brief interpretation
of the script De Hominis Dignitate128 by Giovanni Pico della Miran-
dola, Agamben shows that even the apparent founding document
of early modern humanism does not make dignity (which is never
mentioned in the text) the requirement for discovering free will and
self-determination, but the indeterminacy and inconstancy of human
beings (nati sumus condicione, ut id simus, quod esse volumes).129 In
Picos writing, human beings are depicted as chameleons, as creatures
that can change their essential nature autonomously and continuously
(se ipsam transformantis naturae).130 Thus, they are created as beings
that do not and cannot have a clearly defined determination of their
essential nature. Pico justifies this argument with creation theology, as
he points out that human beings even were created without a defin-
ing model. Thus, human beings are completely unlimited in their
development and have the God-given task to determine their essential
nature completely autonomously.131

125
Agamben 2004, 26.
126
Ibid., 27.
127
See ibid., 2931.
128
Quoted in Pico 1997.
129
Ibid., 1213.
130
Ibid., 1011.
131
See ibid., 89.
 anthropology as a representation of humanity 61

Agamben now reverses this positive description of the freedom of

human nature between divine gift and human task into the negative.
He concludes: The humanist discovery of man is the discovery that
he lacks himself [. . .].132 He states that what is described in Picos
writing is precisely not the determinedness and identity of essential
human nature, but the lack of any essential nature whatsoever, which
is why human beings can only hope to attain fragile identities and are
exposed to the invasion of inhumanity.133
At this point, Agambens own argumentative interest emerges quite
clearly. He claims that any determination of the human nature holds
the human being suspended between a celestial and a terrestrial nature,
between animal and human.134 There is no determination of essential
human nature that can truly protect the humanity of the human being
against this unsteadiness or fluctuation. But Agambens thesis that
essential human nature can never be determined conclusively and that
therefore anthropogenesis must be defined as an antagonistic process
of juxtaposing the human and the animal is only a preparation for his
actual point that the anthropogenesis and its construction of human/
non-human is indeed preceded by an indifference. Agambens thesis
can be outlined in three argumentative steps:

(i) Essential human nature does not exist in itself (substance), but is
caused by a construction of the non-human that manifests itself
in the artifact of the human animal (animal rationale).
(ii) The non-human category is essentially ambiguous because the
non-human is not to be located outside of the human being, but
instead marks a site of inclusion or exclusion of animal life in the
human being itself.
(iii) If the non-human is thought of as a fracture135 between human-
ity and animality in the human, this fracture produces, beside the
human and the animal life, also an indifferent life that is neither
human nor animal. Anthropogenesis thus turns out to be the ori-
gin of inhumanity as well.

132
Agamben 2004, 30.
133
See ibid.
134
Ibid., 29.
135
See ibid., 36.
62 chapter one

These three argumentative steps lead Agamben to the establish-

ment of his actual main thesis: the assertion (also postulated in other
publications)136 of an existence of a bare life whose essential indetermi-
nacy not only designates a non-differentiability of human beings and
animals, but also a non-differentiability of life and death. The bare life
is neither human nor animal; instead, it is constituted in a biopolitical
zone of non-knowledge137 between the two.
Agamben develops his main thesis in the following line of argu-
ment: it is the nature of the so-called anthropological machine138 to
create the figures of the human and at the same time its antagonists,
the figures of the non-human, and thus cannot come to a standstill
by its own power. Only if the differentiation of the human from the
non-human is examined from both sides, i.e., if the humanization
of the animal and the animalization of the human are juxtaposed as
mirror-image operations for the purpose of a separation of the gen-
uinely human within human beings, instead of bringing them into
coincidence only then does it become completely clear that the
merging of human being and animal (animal rationale) is not the ori-
gin of this differentiation, but rather an indifference or fracture which
cannot be mended from either side.139 Thus, in the midst of this ten-
sion within the human being that gives birth to the human, something
emerges whose exclusion or inclusion legitimizes every anthropological
determination.
In this perspective, the human-animal differentiations of anthropol-
ogy reveal the fragile identity of the human being, an identity that is
based on an indifferent threshold and not on solid ground, according
to Agambens thesis. Agamben uses the term threshold for a topo-
logical process in which what was presupposed as external [. . .] now
reappears, as in a Mbius strip or a Leyden jar, in the inside [. . .].140
For Agamben, the threshold thus is not a point of intersection or
transition, but an ontological border zone in which inside and outside
as that which has been separated by an order of thought, merge and
blend with one another to the point of indistinguishability. Accord-
ing to Agamben, such a border zone in which a rational and orderly

136
Agamben 1998; 2000; 2006.
137
Agamben 2004, 90.
138
Ibid., 37.
139
Ibid., 36.
140
Agamben 1998, 28.
 anthropology as a representation of humanity 63

conduct of life is no longer possible constitutes a zone of inhumanity.141

Since orders of thought also have an ontological character for Agam-
ben, this inhumanity is indeed an actually existing place for him, as
can be seen in his remarks on Third Reich concentration camps, state-
less migrants or comatose patients in the intermediate stage between
life and death.142 All these places are characterized by excluding as not
(yet) human an already human being143 from the scope of humanity.
In his argument, Agamben calls attention to a threefold difference.
The differentiation between the human and the animal is always the
origin of anthropological rationality. Not only does it point forward
to two opposed thought processes (humanization/animalization of the
human being), but it also points backward to a site between them, in
which the two originally separate from each other and reveal a central
void of humanity. Agamben calls this the site of inhumanity in human
beings. He argues for making this site, in which the ambiguity of life
becomes tangible, the starting point for a biopolitical conception of
anthropology.
It is essential for Agambens conception that it points out the blur-
riness of anthropological differentiations of human life. He takes up a
basic intuition of recent phenomenology: within every order of thought
there remains a residue that is unaccounted for and that cannot be
represented by the order of thoughts basic differentiations. However,
the problematic aspect of Agambens conception is that it wants to
ontologize this blurriness or void of anthropological differentiations
regarding human life by talking about a site of inhumanity.

8.3 Adorno: Dehumanization through Society

Like Heidegger and Agamben, Theodor W. Adorno deals with the cat-
egory of the inhuman and its consequences for a social phenomenol-
ogy and ontology of being human. In his thoughts about the human

141
In earlier publications, Agamben had referred to this site as the bare or the
sacred life. He presents the thesis that all orders of life base their legitimacy and sanc-
tioning power on a sovereign act by suspending and excluding from their order that
which cannot be positively an object of their form of order. This results in a lawless
territory outside of the orders (of life). In it, its first constituent is a bare or naked life
that is characterized by being killable, i.e., by the fact that it can be negated as life. This
can be compared to publications from Agambens so-called Homo Sacer Project (see
Agamben 1998; 2000; 2006).
142
Evidence of this can also be found in his anthropology book: Agamben 2004, 37.
143
Ibid.
64 chapter one

being, he assumes that the discussion of human humanity has become

obsolete in modern times and has been replaced by its negation, the
discussion of the inhuman. However, unlike Agamben, he conceives
of the inhuman not as indifference, but as a definite negation of the
ethical humanity of human beings:
We may not know what absolute good is or the absolute norm, we may
not even know what man is or the human [das Menschliche] or human-
ity [die Humanitt] but what the inhuman [das Unmenschliche] is we
know very well indeed. I would say that the place of moral philosophy
today lies more in the concrete denunciation of the inhuman, than in
the vague [unverbindlichen] and abstract attempts to situate man in his
existence.144
Considering all positive determinations of the human being and the
good life to have failed, Adorno concludes that a critical understand-
ing of anthropology cannot be based in ontology or metaphysics, but
instead in a societal-theoretical analysis of the social constitution of
the human being. For Adorno, thought about the human being that
strives to determine the human without first analyzing how human
beings are conditioned by the social circumstances in which they live
is not only wrong; it is actually unable to say anything concrete at all
about human beings in view of the present situation. Such a way of
thinking loses itself in the abstractions of a terminological definition
of humanity in which the particular is always absorbed into the gen-
eral, the negative always neutralized by the positive.145 Methodologi-
cally speaking, concrete knowledge about the human can thus only be
gained by applying the principle of determined negation [bestimmte
Negation].
In the case of the human being, determined negation146 signifies the
exploration and identification of concrete inhumanity, i.e., of ways of
life and places in which human beings are determined by the superior-
ity of social circumstances and radically experience their own power-
lessness. For Adorno, too, the inhuman resides not outside of human

144
Adorno 2000, 175.
145
This criticism is aimed in particular at the Hegelian idea of dialectics that Adorno
analyzes in his Negative Dialectics and criticizes it by referring to the term of the
insolubly non-identical (see Adorno 1973, 158161).
146
In Adornos work, the term determined negation (of existence) connects on the
one hand to a philosophical approach that is aimed against the separation of theory
and practice, and on the other hand to a protest against the loss of empirical reality
in social ontology. See Schweppenhuser 42005.
 anthropology as a representation of humanity 65

beings but instead marks the site of their existence in a negative man-
ner.147 However, unlike Agamben, Adorno does not view the inhuman
as a constitutive indeterminacy of human life between humanity and
animality; from his perspective of social criticism, it indicates the pres-
ent social state of human coexistence.
In his book Minima Moralia (1951), which contains a free collec-
tion of aphorisms, Adorno develops the notion that the disappearance
of human humanity is caused by the overwhelming objectivity148 of
social structures in modern society.149 The structure of modern soci-
ety, with its technical progress and consequent rationalization and
economization of human interaction and exchange dynamics, leads
to a loss of interpersonal relations [Zwischenmenschlichkeit].150 For
Adorno, Zwischenmenschlichkeit shows itself in an individuality of
human relationships that is not absorbed into the dominant generality
of social structures but still is very much in danger of being dissolved
and destroyed by them.151 The dominance of rules and norms of inter-
action in modern societies successively transforms individual circum-
stances into administered and institutionally regulated circumstances.
In these circumstances, Adorno states, the humanity of human beings
is lost to the extent that it comes to represent no more than a mask for
the tacit acceptance of the inhuman.152 Where the individual structures
of human interaction are suspended by the objective social structures
of society, Adorno speaks of a disappearance of humanity that he calls
the liquidation of the particular153 by the general.
Adornos anthropological reflections aim to understand what has
caused human humanity in current society to become impossible. He
implicitly equates human humanity with an ideal of individuality in
interhuman relations. Where this ideal cannot be actualized, human
beings are dehumanized by society. It is a strong point of Adornos
analysis that it does not stop at merely criticizing modern dehuman-
ized society but also tries to think of possible ways to counteract this

147
See Breuer 1985, 3451.
148
Adorno 2006, 15.
149
See ibid., 1516.
150
In his collection of aphorisms, Adorno uses an analysis of the manifold social
relationship patterns of human beings to show how impossible it has become for
people to co-exist under present conditions. (ibid., 37).
151
See ibid.
152
See ibid., 29.
153
Ibid., 17.
66 chapter one

dehumanization. According to Adorno, one possible way to rescue the

humanity of human beings lies in their concrete resistance to every-
thing that incites them to simply play along within the structures of an
inhuman society and thereby to give up their individuality.
Thus, Adornos reflections represent an attempt to interpret human
humanity not within the horizon of a biological differentiation between
human beings and animals or the cultural characteristics of the huma-
num (rationality, language, freedom), but to develop it from the phe-
nomenon of social interpersonal relations. A problematic aspect of his
thoughts is that he wholly identifies human humanity with the indi-
viduality and particularity of the individual and sets them in opposi-
tion to the structures of social generality (society), thereby remaining
stuck in the modern juxtaposition of individual vs. society, of particu-
lar vs. general, and unable to develop a conception of social human-
ity that is independent from these concepts. Adornos argumentation
does, however, achieve a reversal of humanist thinking: his analysis of
the negativity of being human is not a method to determine human
nature once and for all, but a method that is meant to unsettle the
way of thinking about human beings. It does not exclude the concreti-
zations of social inhumanity, but instead considers them the starting
point of thinking about the humanity of the human.154

8.4 Conclusion
Reflections on the legitimacy of anthropological key differences and
critique of an anthropology whose concept of human beings is based
on a determination of their essential nature have influenced the
thoughts of Heidegger, Agamben and Adorno. What is remarkable
about Heideggers and Agambens analyses is that they trace back both
the humanist and naturalist descriptions of the human being to one
and the same thought process. Both disciplines assume that human
nature cannot be determined without also constructing its opposite, the
non-human. For Heidegger, the humanist determinations of human
nature portray human beings as lost to their animality, and Agamben
discovers in them a peculiar biopolitical rationality of anthropology
that must always focus on the difference between human beings and
animals. While Heidegger attempts to re-establish human humanity
through his ontological-historical understanding of the truth of

154
See Adorno 1996, 248249.
 anthropology as a representation of humanity 67

human existence, Agamben intends to show that the anthropological

differentiation of human beings and animals is based on an indifferent,
ambivalent life.
Unlike Heidegger and Agamben, Adorno interprets the inhuman
as the concrete negation of the human at the site of human coexis-
tence and values it as an instrument of social criticism in thinking
about human humanity. When Adorno talks about humanity, he first
and foremost is interested in an analysis of the real societal condi-
tions which make being human not only possible and successful, but
also lead to its failure and perversion. In addition to the hermeneutics
and phenomenology of the human self-concept, which are the focus
of Heideggers thoughts on the human, Agamben and Adorno empha-
size the political, societal and ethical conditions of human existence.
Here, especially Adornos anthropological reflections are aimed not
only at the questions of validity, but just as much at the real and prac-
tical conditions that determine the factual existence of human beings.
Therefore, they can be understood not as an examination of human
nature, but as anthropological descriptions of the social condition of
humanity.

9 The Human Condition as a Concrete

Condition of Existence

In modernity, the term human condition refers to the universal basic

conditions of existence shared by all human beings. With the discus-
sion of this term, the question of the human being is recast in a spe-
cific new way. The scientific description of the world as a causality, the
radical mechanization of the lifeworld, the complete culturalization of
the natural environment and the exploration of virtual living spaces
and human modes of existence have changed the way the human and
its world are perceived. These developments show quite clearly that
the conditions in which humans live are always subject to change and
can be increasingly determined by humans themselves. The notion
that human nature is timeless and immutable is not readily compat-
ible with all of this. Instead, scholars now have turned to examining
those conditions of being human that irreducibly and permanently
determine human life throughout all of those changes.
In the 20th century in particular, the human condition has become
the topos of a discussion about humanity that explores the constant
characteristics within the manifold modes of appearance of human
68 chapter one

life. Precisely the awareness that the conditions in which the human
lives are subject to continuous change has caused the existential self-
examination of the human being to take on a central importance.
Hanging on to the human, to that which conditions human life, was
supposed to guarantee a continuity that had seemingly vanished from
a rapidly changing world. With the exposure of the historical, con-
tingent conditions of human existence and with the awareness of the
cultural disposability [Verfgbarkeit] of their life circumstances, it was
possible to imagine human self-transformation and self-empowerment
beyond anything that had been thinkable before. In this process the
awareness of the indisposable, untouchable basic constants of human
existence and life reality (death, birth, joy, pain etc.) that are shared
by all human beings acted as a counterbalance to slow down the core
forces of technological progress and uninhibited cultural development.

9.1 Barthes: The Human Condition as Myth

The specifically modern interest in discussing the human condition is
motivated by the attempt to cope with the uncertainty of the traditional
experience of the world with recourse to anthropological constants
and basic existential givens of human life. In his book Mythologies155
from 1964, Roland Barthes thus views the discussion of the human
condition as a contemporary form of mythology and refers to it as
the myth of Adamism. He illustrates his thesis with the example
of the then-famous photography exhibition The Family of Man.156
In the aftermath of the Second World War, this exhibition was hosted
at the New York Museum of Modern Art and showed a series of
photos that were taken in different countries and cultures across the
world and that displayed human gestures taken from everyday life. The
message the exhibition aimed to convey in showing the diversity of
gestures and forms of human behavior was that these modes of behav-
ior manifest an identical human nature in the form of basic constants
of human expressive behavior. For according to this view, the various
behavioral modes of human beings are all based on a common and
unchangeable essential nature that is magically produced.157 Barthes
concludes: The myth of the human condition rests on a very old

155
Barthes 1972.
156
For documentation see Steichen 2006.
157
Barthes 1972, 100.
 anthropology as a representation of humanity 69

mystification, which always consists in placing Nature at the bottom

of History.158 Thus, Barthes understands the question of the human
condition as an expression of the search for an existential foothold in
the swirl of diversity found in the forms and shapes of human life on
earth. The universalities of human identity are birth and death, work
and joy, laughter and tears. Like a mythical basis of existence, they
serve to ban the uncertainty that emerges from the plurality of lifes
modes of appearance in the modern world. For Barthes, the discus-
sion of the human condition represents a rational strategy of defusing
differences which actually are signs of the openness, multi-dimension-
ality and changeability of the human being and its world: So that I
rather fear that the final justification of all this Adamism is to give
to the immobility of the world the alibi of a wisdom and lyricism
which only make the gestures of man look eternal the better to defuse
them.159
Barthes contemporary diagnosis of a return of anthropological
myths in the form of the human condition is based on the notion that
differences in human behavior are usually interpreted as unsettling and
threatening. The diversity of human beings in expression and behav-
ior bears a potential for social conflict that, in the face of a pluralist
world, must be defused by the myth of an originally identical human
nature in all historical manifestations. Barthes sees the danger of the
myth of identical human condition in the fact that it is designed to
dissolve or trivialize the actual difference of modes of appearance and
forms of expression present in human life. According to Barthes, the
discussion of the human condition replaces the phenomena of human
life with a foundation and creates a legitimization for the suspension
of human diversity.
Barthes shows that the discussion of the human condition can be
used to create a justificatory narrative for the suspension of human
plurality and difference. In this way, talk about the human condi-
tion can even contribute to the solidification of differences between
human beings by interpreting the contingent and changeable forms
of the expression of the human as eternal truths. Thus, although a
photography exhibition like The Family of Man shows the diver-
sity of human behavior, this behavior is not accepted as a difference

158
Ibid., 101.
159
Ibid., 102.
70 chapter one

but forced into an assumed identity of human nature that takes on

mythological qualities in its function of explaining the world. If we
pursue this train of thought, every discussion of the human condition
is potentially in danger of turning into an anthropological oblivion
of difference [Differenzvergessenheit] insofar as it does not reveal the
plurality of human behavior but instead eradicates it by reducing it to
one immutable human nature.
Barthes statements show that the question about the basic condi-
tions of human existence has emerged from a way of coping with the
deep uncertainty of human self-experience and world-experience in
modernity. If in reaction the human condition is understood exclu-
sively as the universality, identity and unity of the human in the diver-
sity of its appearances, reflections about the human being are in danger
of taking on a mythological quality and failing to capture the concrete
form of human life. This, however, is not the case when the plurality
of the human itself is interpreted as the human condition.

9.2 Arendt: Loss of the Social Human Condition?

In her book The Human Condition from 1958, Hannah Arendt
makes an attempt to re-appropriate political action, which had been
considered a basic condition of human existence in antiquity, for the
modern question about the human condition.160 Following in the foot-
steps of the Aristotelian Politics, she thinks of the human being as
a creature whose experiential horizon is bound to the natural con-
ditions of living on earth but who at the same time can only exist
as a human being within the cultural experiential space of a human
world.161 Arendt describes the position of the human being in the
world as a position between natural and cultural conditionality and
does not attempt to separate the biological from the cultural existence
of humanity.162 With this integrative approach, she expresses the par-
ticularity of the line of inquiry she considers necessary for the discus-
sion of the human condition.

160
Seyla Benhabib has demonstrated that Hannah Arendts work can be read in the
context of a theory of modernity (see Benhabib 1996).
161
See Arendt 1958, 111.
162
Recently, Martha Nussbaum has adopted a similar position regarding the idea of
human nature. She also refers to Greek antiquity for unfolding her normative descrip-
tion of being human (see Nussbaum 1995).
 anthropology as a representation of humanity 71

In her reflections, Arendt does not foreground any one aspect of

being human, nor does she make one condition of human life the
starting point of her description. Instead, she bases her thoughts on
several basic conditions that determine human existence: life and earth,
natality and mortality, worldliness and plurality.163 However, the con-
ditions of human existence [. . .] can never explain what we are or
answer the question of who we are for the simple reason that they
never condition us absolutely.164 Arendt thus draws a strict distinc-
tion between contemplating the human conditions and attempting an
unequivocal determination or definition of human nature. The condi-
tions of human existence are not accessible from a position outside of
human existence, but only within the commonly shared experiences of
human beings that live together and speak to each other.165 This is the
core statement of Arendts book. In order to make it plausible, Arendt
begins by focusing her description of being human on how the human
experience of the world has been unsettled by the modern sciences.
The concrete occasion prompting these reflections was the first Rus-
sian Sputnik mission into space (1957), which at the time seemed to
herald the immediately impending possibility of an extra-terrestrial
existence for humanity. According to Arendt, this previously unre-
alizable possibility for human life to leave earth behind and settle on
another planet demonstrates that human beings are not earth-bound
creatures in the same sense as other living beings.166 Not only are
they able to transgress their natural conditionality with the help of
cultural skills, but it is also possible to imagine possibilities of their
existence that are entirely dissociated from the natural conditions of
life on earth and enable the artificial conditioning of their existence.
For example, ever since astrophysics discovered the telescope, human
beings have been capable of orienting their own existence not only to
the physical laws of earth, but also to those of the cosmos that can now
be studied with the help of the telescope. Thus, they are in a position
to leave their natural habitat, first in thinking and later in action, as the

163
See Arendt 1958, 11. Especially her discovery of natality as a basic condition of
the human self-concept has found its way into bioethical debates, some of them quite
recent (see Habermas 2006, 5860).
164
Arendt 1958, 11.
165
See ibid., 175181. Arendt also refers to the human act of speaking to each
other as a second birth, following the terminology of a second human nature (see
ibid., 176).
166
See ibid., 11.
72 chapter one

development of manned space travel after the publication of Arendts

book has shown.
In her book, Arendt argues that the cultural achievements of human
beings do not free them from their conditionality; instead, these
achievements continuously develop into new conditions of human
existence that, in turn, they are subject to again.167 Thus, Arendt views
technical and cultural achievements not as acts of liberation from the
natural conditionality of human life, but only as a way of produc-
ing new, artificial conditions of human life.168 This also includes the
detachment from the world169 enabled by the scientific perspective,
which for Arendt is not a theoretical, contemplative attitude, but a
practical construction of and dominion over reality.170 For her, scien-
tific objectivity is identical with a methodological and terminological
reification171 [Vergegenstndlichung] of the world. This reification is
not a contemplative ideal, but a practical, action-oriented goal.172 The
reification of the world produces realities that become the condition
for all subsequent human thoughts and actions and do not represent
the human experiential horizon, but actively reconfigure it. Precisely
for this reason, science is one of the basic conditions of human life
par excellence.
The awareness that human beings in modernity have radically sub-
jected themselves to self-generated conditions motivates Arendt to
confront a thesis, going back to Karl Marx, about the (self-)alienation
of human beings through gainful labor in the capitalist production
process.173 Arendt responds to Marxs critique of modern society by
attributing the alienation of human beings to the loss of their social
human condition. She develops a phenomenology of the three human
activities (vita activa), in which political action takes up a prime posi-

167
See ibid., 9.
168
See ibid.
169
See ibid., 257268.
170
See ibid., 268273.
171
See ibid., 139144.
172
Arendt tries to demonstrate in her book that modernity has effected a conse-
quential reversal within the hierarchy of the human activities of labor, work and
action by elevating goal-oriented work, i.e., producing things, to be the only pre-
ferred activity of human beings (see particularly ibid., 294304). According to Arendt,
this is particularly obvious in the scientific reduction of experience to experimental
action, which implicitly rests on the conviction that only that can be known which
can be produced by human beings (see ibid., 295).
173
See Marxs Paris manuscripts from 1844 (Marx 1987).
 anthropology as a representation of humanity 73

tion: she argues that not the labor in the cycle of birth and death or
the manufacturing of things in the production process (work) are
the basis of human humanity, but only their capability for political
action.174 Arendt defines political action as an activity which is open
to all human beings and which is connected to the natural commu-
nal spirit of human beings.175 Because action takes place exclusively in
the presence of other human beings, it is only possible in the context
of the actuality of people talking to each other.176 Since the result of
such an event unfolding in human interaction is rather unpredictable,
action is unproductive in an economic sense.177 Human beings talking
to each other do not need to use objects as instruments to stabilize
their interaction, nor do they have to obey the natural laws of survival
while talking and interacting with each other. Instead, in sharing word
and deed, they are free to appear as who they are.178 To take action in
this sense means to make a beginning that is based on nothing but
human beings talking to each other. Arendt therefore refers to action
as the second birth179 of human beings.
In her conception of the human condition, political action is the
only human activity whose performance causes human beings to
become who they are (or should be) in the actual sense.180 According
to Arendt, the displacement and replacement of this activity and the
political public sphere181 or the commonality that it creates is the root
of human failure and self-alienation that is radicalized in the reduction
of human activity to gainful labor. For human interaction, which is
the origin of humanity and is a requirement for action, can only take
place in the public sphere that modern society has deemed dispensable
by commercializing and objectifying it.

174
See Arendt 1958, 175247.
175
See ibid., 208209.
176
See ibid., 206.
177
Arendt refers to this as the process character of action: ibid., 230236.
178
Arendt assumes that action and speech are characterized by human self-
revelation and not by self-masking (see ibid., 175181). This approach is at odds with
modern sociological role theory. See e.g. Goffman 1959. Goffman describes the role
as an intentionally created impression that evokes a certain perception of the situa-
tion in the other.
179
Arendt 1958, 176.
180
For Arendt, the questions of who human beings are and who they should be are
not questions that, in the spirit of practical Aristotelian philosophy, can be answered
separately.
181
See Arendt 1985, 5058.
74 chapter one

The tendency to completely replace action and speech with labor

and work distinguishes the modern idea of human community from
its ancient predecessors. According to Arendt, the way was already
paved for this development in early modernity through the reinterpre-
tation of the political in the sense of a social power hierarchy.182 The
consequence of this reinterpretation is that modern man is not a zoon
politikon, not a creature of political action, but a social creature. While
the Greeks did not consider sociality a unique characteristic of human
beings, but a characteristic shared by human beings and animals,
human sociality is elevated to a basic condition of being human in
modernity, where human beings are thought of as individuals within
a society. In Arendts view, this far-reaching shift was already set in
motion by Senecas crucial act of translating the Greek term of zoon
politikon into Latin as animal sociale. However, it first came to full
expression in the Middle Ages, when the political nature of human
beings was expressly identified with their social nature.183
According to Arendt, the communal life of the social creatures that
human beings have become in modernity is determined by the societal
system of social norms and by commercialized trade. This form of
sociality, Arendt states, has a crucial downside: it replaces the presence
of a human world in the action of the individual with the conform-
ism and rational calculation that are oriented toward institutions and
goods, but not toward a human counterpart.184 But Arendt believes
that the concrete presence of a fellow human being in action and
speech cannot be replaced by any social institution or material good.
For it is only in interpersonal encounter that human beings can dare
to enter the adventure of enduring the uncertainty and instability of
free contact in speech and action.185 The connection and separation
that takes place in these encounters between human beings is, says

182
This does not only concern the social system of society. Arendt points out that
science, too, gains more and more knowledge that cannot be presented verbally, but
only mathematically and verified technically. Thus, its findings are withdrawn from
the human sphere of action and the interhuman event of talking to each other (see
ibid., 3).
183
See ibid., 23: homo est naturaliter politicus, id est, socialis. This is a verbatim
quote of the Index Rerum of the Taurin Thomas Edition. But Arendt refers to
the Summa Theologica I.96.4 and II.2.109.3 to verify this wording (in meaning)
in Thomas Aquinas. The following passage could also be cited: Summa Theologica
I.II.72.4c: homo naturaliter est animal sociale.
184
See Arendt 1958, 3849.
185
See ibid., 188192.
 anthropology as a representation of humanity 75

Arendt, not tangible, since there are no tangible objects into which it
could solidify [. . .].186
In order to emphasize the essential importance of a phenomenol-
ogy of human action, Arendt reminds us of yet another interpretation
of the human condition, which states that human life on this earth
is always determined by plurality.187 By thinking of human beings
as determined by plurality, Arendt wants to explain why they can
encounter each other in a different way than other living beings. She
points to the fact that human beings are capable of telling each other
apart, thereby revealing their uniqueness. To be capable of unique-
ness means more than just being able to be distinct from each other
and to coexist.188 Arendt refers to the more of human plurality as
a web of interpersonal relations [Zwischenmenschlichkeit]. Interper-
sonal relations exist between human beings and do not extend to the
relation between humans and objects.189 This is realized in the human
capability of being-different-from-each-other, which is expressed as
a difference of the one from the other in the relationship between
human beings. This is the core of that which Arendt identifies as the
conditionality of human existence through plurality.
The lines of inquiry about the human condition that are character-
istic of modernity are condensed in Arendts book. She responds to
these lines of inquiry by using an alternative reading of pre-modern
tradition (Greek and Roman antiquity) to interpret the scientific and
technological achievements of modernity as movements that displace

186
Ibid., 183.
187
Although Arendt distances herself from the notion of reducing human plurality
to the characteristic of diversity, her reference to the fact of plurality can be taken as
evidence of a fundamental heterogeneity of human life: Plurality is the condition of
human action because we are all the same, that is, human, in such a way that nobody
is ever the same as anyone else who ever lived, lives or will live. (see ibid., 8).
188
See ibid., 176. Arendts phenomenological description of human difference
could also be reconstructed as mutual recognition of uniqueness or as a reciprocal
asymmetry in interhuman relationships.
189
Werner Goldschmidt therefore claims that Hannah Arendt actually does not
have a concept of the social. For her, society with its inherent social question is
always an (albeit en masse) human-nature relationship and not a human-human rela-
tionship; for the latter, she has reserved the sphere of the political. The idea of a social
emancipation, i.e., a society based on freedom, equality and solidarity (brotherhood)
in which shared, non-hierarchical human cooperation is also realized in the sphere
of work etc., that is, in the relationship between human beings and nature [. . .], is an
entirely alien concept to the thinking of Hannah Arendt. (Goldschmidt 1994, 225
[transl. M.S.]).
76 chapter one

and replace human sociality, thereby questioning the justification of the

modern idea of human beings as social creatures. Arendts argument
is built on the retrospectively perceived difference between a social
and a political existence of human beings in antiquity. She claims that
even in Roman antiquity, to be among men190 (inter homines esse)
is a genuinely political term that exclusively refers to life in the polis,
the city state, and is to be distinguished from the natural sociality
of human beings in house and family.191 In modernity, on the other
hand, human beings become the object of social sciences and treated
as social animals while their political existence is ignored.192 The loss
of their true sociality, which lies in the interhuman encounter, causes
their human existence to dissolve into the anonymous mechanisms
and social techniques of mass society.
Arendt herself outlines an anthropology that places the political, cre-
ative and free action and speech of human beings and their relatedness
to a shared environment at the center of human self-understanding.
Arendts attempt to regain an idea of humanity through social criti-
cism shows the possibilities and limits of an anthropology that focuses
on the human condition of sociality, on human plurality. However, the
fact that Arendt presents her argument for an anthropology focused
on the concrete social life conditions of human beings as the rehabili-
tation of an already existing, ancient idea of human beings is highly
questionable and historically inadequate.193 What is more, her reflec-
tions fail to address the question of social inhumanity, which has been
touched upon in the previous section in the analysis of Adorno. Her
notion that interpersonal relations might be the root of the excess of
humanity in every ordered form of human coexistence can be taken
as a sign that she, much like Adorno, would consider the difference
between the human and the inhuman as a difference between the
interpersonal and the societal type of sociality. However, a reflection
on the possible indifference of that distinction at the site of the human
being as proposed by Agamben is absent in Arendts work.

190
Arendt 1958, 7.
191
Arendt refers to a sharp distinction between the natural and political organi-
zational structures of human life (see ibid., 24).
192
See ibid., 323.
193
23 of the second chapter will explain that the distinction between politics and
society that guides Arendts thinking is not a distinction made in ancient philosophy
and will only become relevant with the legal philosophy of Georg Wilhelm Friedrich
Hegel.
 anthropology as a representation of humanity 77

10 Plessner: Humanity and Bodily Existence

The rehabilitation of the bodily existence of human beings, in combi-

nation with a phenomenology of the body, represents another impor-
tant step beyond the classical humanist idea of human beings. To show
the possibilities of such a combination, this section is dedicated to the
early texts of Helmuth Plessner, which establish a relationship between
anthropology and bio-philosophy.194 Plessners work, which character-
istically always positions itself between disciplines and research areas,
is relevant at this point because it argues that the conditions of human
life cannot be defined conclusively by biology, but can be investigated
in the context of a bio-philosophical examination of human existence.195
Plessner thus attempts to integrate biology and anthropology in a way
that enables him to describe the humanity of the human being without
ignoring its bodily, corporeal existence.
According to Plessner, a description of the human being as a crea-
ture with a special position in nature defines the broadest possible
context for the philosophical exposition of the possibilities for human
life.196 Other philosophers of his time had decidedly rejected such a
broad context of human existence as anthropologism.197 In contrast,
Plessner consciously includes the discussion of the biological condi-
tions of human life into the context of his studies as an opportunity
for understanding the human being. The biology of human beings and
their mode of existence cannot be isolated from one another. In the
1920s, at the same time as Heidegger, Plessner thus attempts to develop
a reconstruction of human existence that is rooted in natural philoso-
phy. In contrast to Heidegger, he emphasizes that human beings can
also be aware of their humanity in a bio-philosophically articulated
self-understanding,198 because their humanity manifests itself in the

194
See Plessner 2003a. Plessners work Die Einheit der Sinne (1923) will not be
referred to in this study.
195
See Plessner 2003e, 228229.
196
See Plessner 2003b, 314.
197
Above all, Plessners teachers Edmund Husserl and Martin Heidegger must be
mentioned here. See Husserls lecture on phenomenology and anthropology (Husserl
1989, 164181).
198
In his preface to the 2nd edition of Die Stufen des Organischen und der
Mensch, Plessner extensively deals with Heideggers claim of the methodological
primate of existence over life (Plessner 2003a, 21 [transl. M.S.]). He rejects the notion
that Heidegger was, before or after the so-called turn in his thinking, capable of making
a contribution to philosophical anthropology at all (see ibid., 22). Plessners evaluation
78 chapter one

biological indirectness and ambiguity of their behavior.199 Therefore,

the fulcrum for the articulation of a human self-understanding is the
reflection on the bodily existence of human beings, which human
beings do not have but are: Therefore, man does not only have a
body that he may someday discard like a coat, but he is the body. [. . .]
He also is that in which he is not himself, and he is it in no external
and inferior and subordinated sense.200
By talking about the bodily existence of the human, Plessner thus
wants to refute the notion that the body is only the material shell
of the human spirit being. Body and spirit cannot be isolated from
one another, because human beings are nothing more than their
bodies. Still, the examination of the body only becomes a medium
when the body is not seen as purely physical, but also in its spiritual
possibilities.201 The study of the human body as an object that unifies
material and spirit instead of separating them thus requires a point
of view and a method that is able to overcome the strongly dualistic202
streak of traditional ideas about the human in modernity, as well as
the empirically restricted, purely biological view of human beings.203
In contrast to an anthropology that is specifically devoted to ques-
tions of the humanities (subject and meaning theory), Plessner thus
develops his hermeneutical phenomenology of the human on the basis
of natural and bio-philosophical ideas. In his Die Stufen des Organi-
schen und der Mensch (1928), he unfolds an integrative concept in
which the reality of the human being is not posited theoretically but
instead is explained as one possibility among other possibilities of bio-
logical life.204 Human beings are real as possible entities [das Seiende]
this is how Plessners concept in Stufen could be distinguished from
Heideggers. That which defines human existence is not only revealed
in light of the ontological difference between Being and entities; rather,
it is possible to make anthropological descriptions by simply observ-
ing the physical world to which human beings belong through the

demonstrates that he considers a philosophical anthropology that completely ignores

biological behavioral research to be inconceivable.
199
See ibid., 27.
200
Plessner 2003e, 226 [transl. M.S.].
201
Plessner 2003a, 27 [transl. M.S.].
202
See ibid., 101.
203
See ibid., 63.
204
For this reason, Plessners anthropology has also been referred to as the outline
of an ontology of the possible (Haucke 2000, 16 [transl. M.S.]).
 anthropology as a representation of humanity 79

lens of natural philosophy. Therefore, physical existence cannot simply

be ignored in the philosophical examination of the human; indeed, it
must be placed at the center of the hermeneutical phenomenology of
the human. At the same time, however, Plessner in no way suggests
a naturalistic foundation205 or rationale206 for philosophical reflection
on humanity. Moreover, his bio-philosophical description of human
existence is connected to an extensive critique of philosophical exis-
tentialism.207 Plessner insists that human existence cannot be analyzed
solely by describing phenomena such as consciousness or language.
Instead, any attempt at explication must start with an analysis of the
non-verbal structures of organic life.
In Plessners view, what is to be called life in the context of a
bio-philosophical description of human beings is not only conveyed
through an examination of the material and physical foundations of
life, but primarily through an examination of the tangible structures
of the aliveness in bodily objects [Krperdinge]. Plessner calls bodily
objects, which have the characteristic of appearing concretely, alive
or living. In his description of the human from 1928, he thus devel-
ops a phenomenology of being-alive [Lebendigsein] that portrays the
genesis of human existence from the positionality of the human body
in the midst of objects of perception. His thesis can be summed up as
follows: the human body can be described as an object among objects
and yet must always be more than an object, namely, a lived body.208
Thus, his phenomenology of life uses the terms of Leib and Krper
as tools for understanding the human being as a spiritual-moral and
as a natural existence on the basis of one position of experience.209
With the dual designation of the organic modality of human exis-
tence as having a (physical) body [Krper] and being a (living) body

205
See Plessner 2003e, 144146. In this text from 1931 (Macht und Menschli-
che Natur/Power and Human Nature), Plessner mainly objects to anthropological
reinforcement of the political, and in particular of government actions. Here, Plessner
emphasizes once again that there is no way to prove the claim that human beings can
only be comprehended in a purely biological way.
206
See Plessner 2003a, 123.
207
Plessner once again clearly registers his resistance against an existentialist analy-
sis of human existence and a consciousness-theoretical determination of human beings
in the 2nd preface of his Stufen, which he wrote in 1964 (see ibid., 1334).
208
Plessner explicitly refers to the so-called double aspect of human existence as
physical body and as living body in the physical body in ibid., 367.
209
Ibid., 49 (transl. M.S.).
80 chapter one

[Leib],210 Plessner emphasizes the notion that the human body occu-
pies a dual role. Not only can it be viewed under two different aspects
(as a subject and as an object), but it also imprints its ambiguity onto
human existence as a whole. It is the center of the spatial orientation
of human existence in that it situates human beings in a location in
space, and at the same time, it is their medium of indirectly putting
themselves in relation to this location. Thus, human beings in their
corporality are never just there (as a condition), but at the same time,
they also set themselves apart from their environment (as an object).
In the performance of this twofold orientation, human beings are as
a (living) body in the (physical) body: Man is his living body [Leib]
[. . .] and also has this body as a physical object.211 By describing the
corporality of human beings as a dual role, Plessner points out that
a bio-philosophical examination of the physical existence of human
beings cannot ignore that human existence in its bodily existence at
the same time has a phenomenological structure. For in human beings,
the bodys purely physical mode of actuality is always already medi-
ated in the mode of existence of the living body and thus tied to the
reflective human experience. Thus, Plessner writes, human beings not
only live and experience, but they experience their experience.212 This
notion, however, does not give primacy to the subjectivity of experi-
ence within the understanding of human existence, but names a struc-
ture of distancing and concreteness in the human relation to the world
that affects the conduct of life.
In order to justify his approach regarding the perception of the
phenomenal form of human beings, Plessner distances himself from
the method of introspection. He considers introspection insufficient
because it fails to relate the terminological results of its thinking back
to the process of perception. In his opinion, introspection is thus inad-
equate for an anthropology that aims to describe the existence and the
life of human beings equally. Looking at the identifiers of living things
described by Plessner, it becomes clear that the characteristics which
evoke the impression of aliveness in a physical object are not expe-
rienced internally, but manifest themselves in the external visibility

210
Translators note.
211
Plessner 2003d, 238 (transl. M.S.).
212
Plessner 2003a, 364 (transl. M.S.).
 anthropology as a representation of humanity 81

of its appearance and form. It is crucially important for Plessner that

organic life is alive and does not only appear to be alive.

10.1 The Broken Relation to the World

In Die Stufen des Organischen und der Mensch, Plessner endeavors
to integrate anthropology into a systematic examination of organic
life. Making organic life and thus biology his starting point is an obvi-
ous choice for him because there are no substantial biological differ-
ences between human beings and animals on an organic level. Unlike
inorganic life, which has no direction and form-gaining appearance
in and of itself, the object-appearance213 [Dingerscheinung] of organic
life manifests itself in a phenomenal quality that inanimate objects do
not possess. Plessner investigates this notion in his analysis of the
perceptual objects [Wahrnehmungsding] and its various modes of
appearance that he calls existence modes of aliveness.214
The sensory perception of an object is characterized by the percep-
tion of a spatial difference between interior and exterior that makes it
possible to set one object apart from another and to delimit it in its
environment. If an object is perceived to be alive, however, its delinea-
tion is not only determined by the exterior, but it manifests itself as an
internal relation or as a specific relatedness of organism and environ-
ment. The living thing can not only be found in its environment, but
it is at the same time positioned within it and against it.215 For a living
body implies its own limit in such a way that it not only fills a place
in space but also claims, on its own strength, a position in space in
which it presents itself to its environment.216 Plessner therefore uses
the term positionality217 to refer to the inverse relationship of a body
to its own delimitation. He describes the connection and separation
of body and environment in living things as inverted in principle and
proposes to think of it as an entanglement between limited body and
the adjoining medium.218

213
With the term thing-appearance [Dingerscheinung], Plessner introduces an
idea of the concreteness of human beings that does not ignore the form or mode of
appearance of the human body in favor of pure materiality (see ibid., 136).
214
See ibid., 177.
215
See Plessners account of the bodys relationship to its border: ibid., 149156.
216
See ibid., 186.215.
217
Ibid., 28.184.215 (transl. M.S.).
218
See ibid., 154155.
82 chapter one

The positionality of living perceptual objects is also the criterion

for differentiating between different types of aliveness.219 Living beings
(plants, animals, human beings) are all positioned in material thing-
ness in their own specific way. But they only claim thingness for
their existence insofar as their physical delimitation is not a real, verifi-
able border, but a border crossing220 between inside and outside that
keeps itself open in its relationship to the environment. In this respect,
living things are not only positioned into a body, but also transcend
it at the same time. Within the order of perceptual things, the body
of living beings therefore always presents itself in the form of an open
immanence. Its positionality shows how life is geared toward an envi-
ronment and how it sets itself apart from it at the same time.
This, however, does not yet explain why certain living things are
alive as human beings and others as plants or animals.221 To clarify
this difference, Plessner distinguishes between a centric and an eccen-
tric positionality.222 Unlike the inorganic life of a plant, animal life
is always positioned frontally to its environment due to its position
in space.223 Unlike the animal, which acts from the center of its living
body, human beings actualize the relationship to their environment
in an eccentric relation to the world.224 Thus, the eccentric position
marks their difference to the aliveness of animals. With it, human
beings do not suspend the positionality of their living body, but they
transcend it by being able to stand outside of [themselves] within
[their] perspective.225 The being-outside-of-oneself, the exteriority of
their bodily existence, gives them a range of possibilities in which they
can behave toward themselves as things in the world and have dis-
tance from [themselves]226 at the same time.
Plessner does not describe this range between the human organisms
distance from and relatedness to an environment as a range mediated by
the media and symbols of culture, but rather as a fracture, a hiatus
and also as the empty throughway of mediation between body and

219
See ibid., 192193.
220
Ibid., 154 (transl. M.S.).
221
See ibid., 246382.
222
See ibid., 364.
223
See ibid., 308.
224
See ibid., 364.
225
Plessner 2003e, 223 (transl. M.S.).
226
Plessner 2003a, 362 (transl. M.S.).
 anthropology as a representation of humanity 83

environment.227 The site of mediation between body and environment

thus cannot be identified as such. Instead, it is characterized as a bor-
der that must always be crossed whenever the being-inside of ones
own living body changes into a being-outside of the living body. This
notion marks an idiosyncrasy in Plessners anthropology. According
to Plessner, such a transition point or immanent border of the body
is essential to being human, and it enables the singular particularity
of human existence. The Krper-Leib-body of the human being in its
living organizational form thus already possesses a structure that can
be called human insofar as an indissolubly dual aspect of existence228
is realized within it. This structure of life enables human beings to
position themselves in and toward their environment in a way that
is characterized by a distantiation of themselves, as well as of others.
However, unlike animals, human beings may therefore also have a
problem with relating to their environment.229 The distance in the
conduct of life that emerges from the living body and its positionality
not only helps human beings to distance themselves from themselves,
but it also opens up an almost boundless multitude of potential self-
representations that makes a definite identity impossible.230 Therefore,
states Plessner, the existence of human beings appears to be rooted in
nothing.231 In later works, Plessner also developed the social and polit-
ical implications of this concept of an indefinable human nature.232

10.2 From the Shared World (Mitwelt) to Interpersonal Relations

Plessners reflections on the corporality of human existence tie the
description of human self-understanding back to the experience of
bodily concreteness. However, he does not view concreteness as a
culturally mediated relation to the self, but as the phenomenological
circumstance of an originally broken human relation to the world. This
idea of the bodily existence of human beings is also relevant to Pless-
ners critical analyses of human community and sociality. According

227
Ibid., 365 (transl. M.S.).
228
Ibid. (transl. M.S.).
229
Plessner refers to conflict as the middle of human existence (see ibid., 391392),
because human beings cannot be at rest at any point of their existence due to the
fracture at the root of their existence, due to their manner of positionality.
230
The expressivity of human existence therefore represents one of the three basic
anthropological laws in Plessners Die Stufen des Organischen (see ibid., 396419).
231
See ibid., 365.
232
See Plessner 2003e and Schrmann 1997.
84 chapter one

to Plessner, human sociality must be described on the basis of the

social shared world [Mitwelt] of humanity, which does not dissolve
into mere interpersonal relations with other human beings [Zwischen-
menschlichkeit]. Thus, an adequate idea of human sociality can only be
derived from looking at the difference between interpersonal relations
and the shared world of the humanity.
As a consequence of his bio-philosophical analysis of human exis-
tence in Die Stufen des Organischen, Plessner develops a threefold
possibility for human beings to relate to reality. For the human, reality
exists as an outside world [Aussenwelt], an inside world [Innenwelt]
and a shared world [Mitwelt].233 In addition to the outside and inside
worlds, there is a social sphere of reality that Plessner calls the shared
world.234 This shared world is characterized by the fact that it places
human beings in relation to other life, without first consciously relat-
ing to that lifes existence.235 Due to the entanglement of outside and
inside in their relation to the world, other living beings are always
present to them, and thus their existence does not have to be discov-
ered through a process of mental awareness.236 The eccentric position-
ality of their bodies causes human beings to become aware of other
beings not through conscious acts of relating to an external reality.
Rather, the shared existence of others is already a permanent precon-
dition in every aspect of life, due to the inverse positioning in rela-
tion to themselves. Due to their broken relation to the world, human
beings do not need to relate to a social shared world by secondary
means, i.e., by empathically projecting their own experience onto
others. Instead, the entanglement of inside and outside causes them to
always consider themselves part of this shared world.237 Thus, Plessner
states, the epistemological problem of being aware of others minds
is an inadequately applied theoretical problem which suffers from
theorys abstractness. It is evoked by a dualistic pre-decision about

233
See Plessner 2003a, 356382.
234
See ibid., 375382.
235
See ibid., 375. According to Plessner, the shared world has the same basal sta-
tus as the outside and inside worlds. It differs from human world-existence and self-
existence only in its intensified form of vitality.
236
Plessner explicitly points out that the shared world is not something that can
only gain consciousness due to specific perceptions. (ibid., 375).
237
See ibid., 376.
 anthropology as a representation of humanity 85

human nature that ignores the shared existence with others as the
primary sphere of human existence.238
According to Plessner, the shared world is the form of a human
beings own position perceived as the sphere of other human beings.239
These words show that Plessners anthropology locates the origin of
human sociality not in intersubjectivity, in an act of relating to oth-
ers added to subjectivity, but much earlier.240 The shared existence of
others plays an integral part in comprehending ones own position
and thus provides the communal mode of existence for human life
in general. Plessner therefore also refers to the shared world as the
we-sphere of human existence. Only within this structure can the
internal existence of the person241 and the reality of the human spirit,
which Plessner thinks of as a consciousness that situates itself at the
site of the body in the midst of the world, be realized.242
However, insofar as the shared world is not limited to the narrower
sphere of life among human beings, but also includes other living
beings, it is not yet a label for the exclusively interpersonal relation.
Plessner approaches the latter by further differentiating his shared
world concept, or rather its concrete relational structure.243 Thus he
writes that human beings are able to maintain a shared world rela-
tionship with all living beings, but a real mutual relationship (in the
objective, not the antagonistic sense) is only known to human beings
[in their relation to their fellow humans].244 Plessner defines the
mutual relationship in the objective sense as the specifically human
form of being with each other (or against each other) and also takes it
as a basis for his idea of the personhood of human beings. In conflict,
which includes a mutual distancing of the one from the other, the
explicit I, You, He of personhood emerges. In contrast to other
social relational structures, the relationship between human beings is

238
See ibid., 376378.
239
Ibid., 375 (transl. M.S.).
240
See Haucke 2000, 163, and Plessner 2003a, 377: The shared world is real as long
as one single person exists, because it represents the sphere secured by the form of
eccentric position that is the basis of every selection in the first, second, third person
singular and plural. (transl. M.S.).
241
Plessner 2003a, 377 (transl. M.S.).
242
See ibid., 378.
243
However, the focus on the presence of fellow human beings always remains a
narrowing down of the shared world concept in Plessners anthropology (see ibid.,
379381).
244
Ibid., 382 (transl. M.S.).
86 chapter one

thus characterized by the possibility of a mutual objectification from

which the personal structure of life emerges.245 Personal relations, then,
make human beings at once unique and replaceable: they can change
their position in the structure of mutual relationships and yet always
maintain a position that is different from that of others.
In conclusion, the extent to which it is possible to progress from
the bio-philosophical and hermeneutical analysis of the shared human
world, to social-theoretical terminology will be discussed. In spite of
the bio-philosophical broadness that characterizes Stufen, there is
a connection to social-theoretical reflections that one condensed in
Plessners later work.246 Plessners point here lies in the notion that
a bio-philosophical approach to anthropology enables him to under-
mine the reductionist tendencies of social and political anthropology.
An example of this is his inclusion and interpretation of the difference
between community and society. Following the now classical differen-
tiation of Ferdinand Tnnies,247 Plessner also discusses the difference
between a human coexistence based on personal relationships and one
based on normative societal structures.248 But Plessner gives this differ-
entiation a different accentuation than Tnnies, who interprets com-
munity as the more natural social model of human beings.
For Plessner, the ambiguity of human behavior, in the impossibility
of its having an unbroken relation to the shared world, necessitates
the establishment of normative societal structures that provide human
beings with an additional social sphere beyond their personal rela-
tionships. Unlike Arendt and her concept of the human condition,
Plessner believes that being human in itself takes on a societal dimen-
sion. For him, the humanity of organic life is expressed in its ability to
perform social objectification, to find an intensified form of refracting
social life relationships; and the artificially created institutions of soci-
etal order provide for these abilities splendidly. According to Plessner,

245
See ibid., 381382.
246
See Plessner 2003e.
247
See Tnnies 1979. According to Ferdinand Tnnies, society is to be under-
stood as an aggregate of natural and artificial individuals that relate to each other not
through mutual bonding and responsibility, but through the mechanisms of exchange.
He juxtaposes this concept with a model of society that, in analogy to an organism, is
based on mutual dependence.
248
Kurt Rttgers sees Plessner and Tnnies united in the defense of the shared
basic thesis that the social is not absorbed into the societal, but that there is also the
communal (Tnnies) and that the social should nevertheless also not be absorbed
into the communal (Plessner). (Rttgers 2002, 95 [transl. M.S.]).
 anthropology as a representation of humanity 87

sociability is therefore an expression of the need for human beings to

develop social strategies in order to cope with their permanently bro-
ken relations to the world and to themselves. They need a social sphere
to enact their indirect self-perception in a playful and distancing man-
ner. Plessner has this in mind when he postulates the anthropological
law of natural artificiality in his Stufen.249
According to Plessner, the humanity of human beings shows itself
in the phenomenological structure of a distanced self-perception that
is rooted in the organic structure of human life. The natural artifi-
ciality of society therefore does not contradict the bio-philosophical
description of human beings, but is rather one of its consequences.
That human beings organize their existence not only in the spheres of
personal familiarity (community) but also in the anonymous, social
systems of a society is a sign of the twofold possibility of their life,
whose tension here intensifies to the point of ambiguity: Inside our
own selves, there exist not only the forces that crave and support com-
munity, but also the distancing forces that crave society, in the living
body as well as in the soul, in every social relationship, one of them
awaits its awakening as long as the other is still in effect.250
In this way, Plessners social phenomenology unearths a conflict
quite similar to the one pointed out by Arendt in her juxtaposition of
ancient politics and modern society. Plessner, however, unfolds this
conflict as a tension between community-craving and society-craving
forces at the site of the human being itself and not as an irreconcilable
opposition between being human and society (Adorno). For Plessner,
the difference between the social forms is rooted in the conflicting
nature and ambiguity of human beings, in their ability to transgress
the range of proximity to and distance from their fellow humans on
both ends of the continuum. In this, his thought goes beyond that of
Arendt and Adorno.

10.3 Conclusion
In Die Stufen des Organischen, Plessner develops his description of
human beings out of a bio-philosophical examination of the phenom-
enological structures of the aliveness of bodily things. In the course
of his analyses, he graduates his description of life into regional life

249
See Plessner 2003a, 383396.
250
Plessner 2003e, 115 (transl. M.S.).
88 chapter one

circles from the perceptual thing to the living organism to human

beings. This approach has the advantage of avoiding false dichoto-
mies like that of nature and spirit in the description of human life.
Nevertheless, Plessners expansion of bio-philosophical analyses to
a phenomenology of human life is not without its problems. For it
is questionable whether the corporeal-phenomenological self-under-
standing of human beings always needs to encompass the whole plu-
rality of life forms in order to integrate the bodily existence of human
beings into a description of their existence in general.
In the context of his study on the corporeal phenomenology of
Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Gnter Figal has proposed a correction to
Plessners approach.251 Unlike Plessner, he holds the view that the
singular particularity of being human should not be lifted out of the
general structures of biological life by analyzing a particular phenom-
enological structure. In a complete reversal, he suggests that instead,
organic life should be analyzed on the basis of the human mode of
existence: Human beings are an intensification of nature; what nature
is, is expressed in them in particular conciseness. If that is so, the phe-
nomenological self-clarification of human beings leads into nature. It
leads from us to an understanding of life and yet does not lead away
from us.252
Thus, such a reversed phenomenological examination of human life
must show to what extent the human being is open to the possibility
of representing their bodily existence, and is able to see in this pos-
sibility both the natural and the cultural complexities of its existence.
Accordingly, the starting point of a hermeneutical phenomenology of
the human does not lie solely in the phenomenon of biological life,
but in the human view of the world and of themselves. According to
Figal, the description of human beings must start with an analysis of
the hermeneutical experience in which human beings can access their
concrete bodily existence. In the following, this approach will be out-
lined briefly in terms of its methodological implications of a confron-
tation with the scientific description of human beings.

251
See the comparison of Merleau-Ponty and Plessner in Figal 2006, 36: While
Plessner arrives at the aliveness of living beings by focusing on their concreteness,
Merleau-Ponty determines the concreteness of living beings from their living refer-
ence to things. (transl. M.S.).
252
Ibid., 362 (transl. M.S.).
 anthropology as a representation of humanity 89

11 Concreteness, Objectivity and Phenomenal Excess

From a hermeneutical perspective, every anthropological descrip-

tion must first be understood as a representation of its object. Thus, a
hermeneutical discussion of the phenomenal concreteness of human
beings within the framework of an interdisciplinary anthropology must
elaborate on the difference between accessing an object in a scientific
and methodological way, and relating to it in an effort to understand
it. This difference is essential in the context of an interdisciplinary
study, because it can be assumed that the individual perspectives of
the study will discuss and present their object in their own respec-
tive manners. The different ways of access make it partly impossible
to reduce the results of these perspectives to a common denomina-
tor. But in order to critically evaluate these approaches, instead of just
compiling them, the hermeneutical reference to their object of study
will be introduced as a transcendent reference of the description of
human beings. Here, this hermeneutical reference provides the critical
horizon for understanding how scientific access to human life must
situate itself so that it can communicate the possibilities and limits of
its investigation across interdisciplinary borders.
In the natural sciences, scientific objects can be observed, measured
and statistically represented through the mathematical analysis of
their principle of operation. In the context of a hermeneutical per-
spective, however, the objective reference is by no means completely
absorbed by the scientific representation.253 Instead, the objective ref-
erence demonstrates what a representation must be prepared to do if
it wants to approach its object in a hermeneutical manner. That which
the representation shall be focused on in this case, and that which rep-
resents the objectivity of its approach, will be referred to in the follow-
ing as the phenomenal concreteness [Gegenstndlichkeit] of the object.
Here and this is where the hermeneutic-phenomenological and the
transcendental philosophical examination part ways254 phenomenal
concreteness is to be understood as something that remains external
to the representation itself.255 If a representation strives to account for

253
Also see Gadamer 61990.
254
A similar differentiation can be found in Plessner 2003a, 86: The experience of
the concrete must be distinguished from an epistemological idea of concreteness that
thinks of concreteness more formally as a relation of two relations.
255
See Figal 2006, 126141.
90 chapter one

phenomenal concreteness, it must describe its object in a way that

ensures its continuous reference to its exteriority, to its elusiveness to
methodological access.
Talking about the exteriority of the object at this point makes it
clear that every representation does have an elusive element, namely,
the objective reference. The phenomenal concreteness of the object, its
mode of appearance for an observer, is not entirely absorbed into any
of its representations. Nevertheless, it is precisely the concrete pres-
ence of something that continues to incite us toward representation.
The fact that the object confronts and resists representation means that
every attempt of representation must take into account the fact that
an object takes on a certain appearance from within itself. This can
only be validated insofar as the concrete is not prematurely equated
with that which is recognized in its representation. The phenomenal
concreteness of an object is only perceived where we also think beyond
its methodological examination. In the following, this thinking beyond
the methodological examination of the object shall be referred to as the
perception of a more, a phenomenal excess inherent in every repre-
sentation and methodological examination. The phenomenal excess is
that aspect of the absent presence of the object that is never ultimately
captured by its representation and that thus incites us inexhaustibly
toward renewed, toward different ways of representation. This excess
is also the root of the phenomenological assertion that phenomenal
concreteness cannot be determined by theory nor pinned down by
pragmatic action, which is also made clear in the exteriority of the
concrete. The full interpretive power of a description of human beings
for the world in which we live can only be gauged when taking into
account the phenomenal concreteness of its representation. Therefore,
a description of the humanity of human beings must focus on their
concrete phenomenality; in this study, more specifically, it must focus
on the phenomenal excess of humanity in human interaction and must
protect it against its being ignored in scientific representation.
 CHAPTER TWO

THE CONFLICT BETWEEN EGOISM AND ALTRUISM

12 Possibilities and Limitations of an

Empirical Anthropology

The first chapter of this study focused on the possibility of a hermeneutic-

phenomenological self-inquiry of human existence. It was shown that
the basic task of an interdisciplinary anthropology is not seeking an
essentialist determination of human nature, but adequately interpreting
and representing the phenomenon of human humanity. In the context
of its sociality, the humanity of human beings is to be interpreted nei-
ther in terms of the biological difference between human beings and
animals nor as a description of the cultural characteristics or rational
abilities of the human animal. Such an interpretation neglects those
phenomenal forms of expression and structures of humanity that
precede the biological and cultural defining characteristics of human
beings. Therefore, the possibilities and limitations of being human in
social interaction can only be described insufficiently.
The humanity of human beings does not refer to a characteristic
that is common to all human beings, but rather to the inherent capa-
bility of all human beings to relate to themselves and to others. There-
fore a better phenomenological description of humanity requires that
humanity be interpreted by analyzing interhuman differences. Thus,
the focus in the examination of humanity now shifts from the human/
animal difference to the human/human difference. Interhuman differ-
ence is the origin of social community formation, and also the source
of unsocial enmity between human beings. It enables the experience of
proximity as well as that of distance. To account for this natural ambi-
guity of interpersonal relations, social-anthropological description
cannot ignore the forms and patterns of social inhumanity in concrete
encounters between human beings. In acknowledging and describing
the inhuman, i.e., applying a negative phenomenology of human soci-
ality, it must be shown to what extent the humanity of human beings
cannot only be established normatively, but also described at the site
of the human being.
92 chapter two

The second chapter will examine studies from the field of empirical
social anthropology in experimental economics. These studies are not
only dedicated to the empirical observation of human social behavior
in economic and neuroscientific experiments; in addition, they also
attempt to provide a naturalist1 explanation for the observed social
behavior. This naturalist explanation is based on the anthropologi-
cal assumption that the human body can be regarded as an animal
organism with a special biological status. Of course, the findings of the
first chapter contradict this explanatory approach, as they have clearly
shown that anthropology does not need any biological underpinnings
to integrate the bodily existence of human beings into a description
of their humanity. Rather, the bodily-corporeal dimension of human
humanity can be asserted within a phenomenology of the corporeal
self- and world-perception of human beings. Hence, three problems
have to be considered in regard to the integration of an anthropol-
ogy that uses empirical research methods and scientific explanatory
approaches into an interdisciplinary study of human sociality. Briefly
outlined, they are:
(i) Double description: The hermeneutic-phenomenological descrip-
tion of human beings fundamentally differs from the social-scientific
and natural-scientific explanation attempted in the behavioral studies
of experimental economics and neuroeconomics. Therefore, empiri-
cal explanation and phenomenological description cannot be realized
together in a single act of interpretation. What is shown to be the
humanity of human beings in phenomenological analysis cannot be
measured like an object or exactly dated like an empirical process.
Thus, a double description of empirical studies is necessary if they
are to take into account the phenomenon of humanity. This double

1
From the beginning of the 17th century on, naturalism can designate any doc-
trine that in some way declares nature the basis and norm of all appearances, also in
history, culture, morals and the arts. (Gawlick 1984, 517 [transl. M.S.]). Here and in
the following passages, however, naturalism is understood as a position stating that
only the natural-scientific method is capable of providing true knowledge about and
descriptions of reality. Related to this position is a refutation of any and all claims of
validity or truth that are independent from the natural-scientific method of gaining
knowledge. Thus, naturalism itself can no longer be justified in a scientific, empirical
way, but only philosophically. An overview and discussion of the possible ideas and
variations of naturalism can be found in an essay collection edited by Geert Keil
and Herbert Schndelbach (Keil and Schndelbach 2000). A systematic compilation
and critical analysis of contemporary philosophical-naturalist positions can be found
in the essay collection edited by Thomas Sukopp and Gerhard Vollmer (Sukopp and
Vollmer 2007).
 the conflict between egoism and altruism 93

description must not only critically reconstruct the methodologically

secured way to empirical knowledge, but also find a way to discuss
those aspects of the study object that cannot be represented by empiri-
cal methods.
(ii) Reducing instead of rejecting the empirical constructs: Although
human life can be replicated and examined by technical means in
artificial conditions, these methodologically produced replications of
human life nevertheless do not represent its phenomenal concrete-
ness. Thus, the natural-scientific explanation of human beings must
be made aware that its approach to the object is a constructed one.
Nevertheless, this study will not consider empirical constructions to
be a corruption or falsification of the actual mode of human existence.
In the methodologically gained experiences in the experiment, human
life is rendered differently than it is, but it is not rendered as something
else. Thus, the difference between methodological and phenomeno-
logical experience is not a difference in which both approaches to the
object exist on the same level and merely ascribe different meanings
to one and the same object. Rather, the difference between the two
only becomes obvious once the validity claims of the methodological
constructions are scaled back without being disposed of entirely in a
phenomenological description.
(iii) The basic task of a phenomenological critical analysis: The main
task of a hermeneutic-phenomenological examination of experimental
social research is to discuss those aspects of the phenomena that can-
not be recorded and comprehended with the scientific method, but
which nevertheless belong to the area of human life and its attempts
of self-comprehension. This phenomenal excess of the object vis--vis
the scientific method demonstrates the limitation of the methodologi-
cal perspective and allows the gathering of entirely different and new
knowledge about human beings, which would not be the case if the
examination exclusively and unquestioningly adhered to the construc-
tions of empiricism.
The potential contributions of economic experimental studies of
human beings to an interdisciplinary anthropology of the homo sociale
must be discussed by examining and evaluating their empirical results
from a hermeneutic-phenomenological perspective according to the
three aspects outlined above.2 Such an approach implies that the object

2
An increased focus of experimental economics on a perceived situational similar-
ity between laboratory and the lifeworld is proposed by Gth and Kliemt 2003: The
94 chapter two

of empirical research should not be prematurely identified with the

methodologically gained results of said research. Therefore, the follow-
ing portrayal of experimental social research is not (only) dedicated
to the precise reporting of empirical evidence, but more to the critical
discussion of this evidence.3

13 The Economic Modeling of Human Social Behavior

Since the 1980s, the field of experimental economics has been emerg-
ing as one of the key areas of research in current economics.4 It
includes all economic studies that use experimental methods.5 There-
fore, it is not the homogeneity of subjects and questions that defines
the field, but its focus on the experimental method, which previously
had been generally considered to be unsuitable for the economic and
social sciences.6 The starting point for the reassessment7 of the experi-
mental method in economics toward the end of the 20th century was
the interest of several economists in empirically examining the axi-
omatic suppositions of standard economic theory. These pioneers of
experimental economics include, among others, Amos Tversky, Daniel
Kahnemann, Vernon L. Smith and Charlie Plott.

economic subjects who are or have been subjected to certain situations follow a dic-
tum of linking similar things with similar expectations. In this respect, the similarity of
the situation perceived in the laboratory with the situation that is of interest in reality
thus is by no means insignificant. As far as the perceptions of subjects play a decisive
role for their actions, these considerations of similarity must be taken into account
[. . .] (ibid., 27 [transl. M.S.]). However, Gth and Kliemt do not deduce a phenom-
enological concern from their proposition, but refer to psychological approaches in
order to explain selective performances of perception and framing effects. They also
point out the distinction between the congruity/incongruity of theory with empirical
data and the congruity/incongruity of theory with reality, a distinction that has been
largely ignored in behavioral economics (see ibid., 17).
3
In this respect, the following presentation is an external description of the behav-
ioral-scientific explanatory approach that claims to be able to do justice to the object
of experimental studies even though its approach differs in manner from the strictly
methodological approach. The presentation therefore is always confronted with a
basic problem: that the explanatory approach of economic social research itself does
not demonstrate the relevance of hermeneutic-phenomenological aspects.
4
See for example the ground-breaking study of Tversky and Kahnemann 1981.
5
See for this definition Bardsley et al. 2010, 2.
6
See the paradigmatic statement in Friedman 1953, 10.
7
For the early history of experimental economics see Roth 1993 and Bardsley
et al. 2010. Both emphasize that experimental work was only a marginal activity in
economics until the end of the 20th century.
 the conflict between egoism and altruism 95

The reassessment of the experimental method was also brought

about by innovative developments. Experimental designs were created,
allowing the suppositions and predictions of economic models and
theories to be tested in the completely controllable environment of a
computer lab. The development of z-Tree software (Zurich Toolbox
for Readymade Economic Experiments) by Urs Fischbacher in 2007
supported endeavors to conduct behavioral experiments in a labora-
tory, since the program facilitated the implementation of computerized
experiments. Moreover, the further development of the experimental
method gave rise to a completely new field of research toward the end
of the 1990s: the field of neuroeconomics.8
In the wake of the cognitive neuroscientific revolution at the start
of the 1990s, it became possible to examine mental processes non-
invasively through imaging technology, i.e., without physical or neu-
robiological intervention. Moreover, new technologies such as PET
(positron emission tomography) and fMRI (functional magnetic reso-
nance imaging) scanning enabled a real time correlation of observed
behavior with neuron activation in individual brain regions. Econo-
mists were willing to utilize these methodological innovations because
with their help, they were able to subject human psychology, which
they previously had considered a black box, to a precise empirical
data analysis.9 The neuroscientific measurement of thoughts and feel-
ings in the human mind called into question the traditional approach
of determining behavioral preferences through the agents observable
decisions (revealed preference approach) that had been a staple of
standard economic theory. After all, this approach is characterized by
the tenet that the basic psychological forces of human beings cannot
be measured precisely and thus can be ignored in the formulation of
economic models. In contrast, current neuroeconomic studies show
that the influence of individual psychological forces on the behavior
and the decisions of human beings can be precisely measured by neu-
roscientific means.
This book will primarily introduce and discuss those experimental
and neuroeconomic studies that deal with the observation and expla-
nation of social preferences and/or prosocial and altruistic behavior. In

8
For an overview of history, research questions, and methods of neuroeconomics
see the handbook Neuroeconomics: Decision Making and the Brain (Glimcher et al.
2009).
9
See Camerer et al. 2004.
96 chapter two

this area, the research done by Ernst Fehr and his colleagues in Zurich
is particularly relevant. Their primary aim is to confirm and explain
human altruism and the factors for the development of fairness and
other norms in social interaction. Moreover, the studies conducted by
Fehr are among the seminal works contributing to the development of
neuroeconomics as an academic field.10
This chapter will progress in the following manner: first, the meth-
odological premises of economic experimental studies will be recon-
structed and analyzed. Here, the main focus of investigation will be
on the pragmatic approach to designing a behavioral experiment and
the methods applied when modeling behavioral decisions. In addi-
tion, we must take a closer look at the origin of the various types
of behavioral experiments in economic game theory and discuss the
economic model for behavior, the preference model. After that, the
results of individual economic studies on cooperative and altruistic
behavior will be presented and analyzed, with particular attention
being paid to the behavioral pattern of altruistic punishment, defined
as a disposition to punish unfair agents even if costly and when the
punishment provides neither present nor future material rewards. The
use of functional neuro-imaging for the examination of affective and
cognitive decision-making structures of altruistic agents has yielded
new insights about their motivations and expectations. At the same
time, the study11 of the motivation behind altruistic punishment also
shows that neuroeconomic studies are at risk of no longer being able
to make a critical distinction between the neural correlates of the test
subjects affective states and the phenomenology of their motivations
and intentions. Thus, the question of whether personal attitudes and
intentions can be adequately modeled and represented in the frame-
work of a neuroeconomic behavioral experiment will be discussed in
more depth using the example of a neuroeconomic study on the effect
of affective empathy on social behavior. Answering this question has
far-reaching implications for the interdisciplinary significance of neu-
roeconomics.
However, regarding the analysis of economic experimental studies
in this chapter, it should be clear from the start that economic social
research does not intend to provide a phenomenological description

10
See Glimcher et al. 2009, 10.
11
DeQuervain and Fischbacher et al. 2004.
 the conflict between egoism and altruism 97

of social phenomena. Rather, its goal is to explain human sociality as

a strategic interaction between individuals and, in its advanced incar-
nation as neuroeconomics, to identify neural correlates for coopera-
tive and prosocial behavior12 in the human brain. Its methodology is
completely geared toward the technical operationalization and math-
ematically exact representation of human behavior. For this reason,
it may be initially surprising that this book chooses experimental
studies from the field of economics to provide empirical descriptions
of human sociality and not, say, studies from the area of interpre-
tive social research. But this interest in economic behavioral studies
is based on the fact that in recent times, the conduct of experimental
studies in economics has been increasingly related to a theory-critical
agenda and the demand for a methodological paradigm shift within
the field of social research as a whole. Experimental economics intends
to use empiricism to correct the weak points and one-sidedness of
economic human behavioral theory that have already been criticized
in psychology, sociology, and moral philosophy.

13.1 The Methodological Paradigm Shifts of Experimental Economics

Experimental social research in economics and neuroeconomics is
related to three methodological paradigm shifts:
(i) Anthropological reconception: Experimental economics aban-
dons the dualist idea of human beings in favor of an evolutionary
mode of examination.13 Therefore, its synthesis with the endeavor to
naturalize the mind in neuroscience and evolutionary biology repre-
sents an interesting reconception within the framework of social sci-
entific attempts to explain human social behavior. Methodologically
speaking, this reconception is characterized by the integration of a

12
For the difference between cooperative and prosocial behavior see Henrich and
Henrich 2006. Behavior is considered cooperative if it directly contributes to the well-
being of others. Behavior is considered prosocial if it serves to increase the average
level of cooperation in a group.
13
This thesis of a paradigm shift in an economically oriented neurobiology of
human beings can be viewed in detail in Glimcher 2003. In the course of his neuro-
philosophical study Decisions, Uncertainty, and the Brain, neurobiologist Paul W.
Glimcher shows that the synthetic approach of neuroeconomics must be understood
as an overcoming of dualist theorems in anthropology (the Cartesian framework).
The methodological link between the study of sensation and action in neuroeconomic
experiments serves to overcome the neurobiological fixation on philosophical theo-
rems such as consciousness or reflection and to replace them with a strictly empiri-
cal and mathematical construction of human beings.
98 chapter two

natural-scientific view of human beings into a social-scientific perspec-

tive. The goal of this integration is to develop a model for the empiri-
cal explanation and prediction of human behavioral reactions. Such
an integrative model, developed in the context of a transdisciplinary
research field (that of neuroeconomics), is designed to provide access
to the cognitive and affective modes of human behavior, as well as to
the prosocial and antisocial ones, in one single explanatory formula
that combines economic, psychological, biological, and social aspects
of behavior. Thus, experimental social research in economics embod-
ies an explanatory approach that seeks to develop a universally valid
paradigm for the study of human behavior.
(ii) Methodological synthesis of neuroscience and experimental eco-
nomics: The development of a new paradigm and explanatory approach
for human behavior is accompanied by a methodological synthesis
of adjoining research fields (social neuroscience, psychobiological
research, experimental economics) belonging to different disciplines.
The concrete collaboration of researchers that has contributed to this
synthesis is a new development as well. It no longer occurs mostly
by way of discursive communication about the respective disciplin-
ary concepts and terminological predecisions of an empirical study
(interdisciplinary dialogue). Instead, it follows a different paradigm of
generating knowledge: transdisciplinary practical science and integral
knowledge gain.14
In concrete terms, the pragmatism of transdisciplinary experiment-
ing enables researchers to integrate the methods and questions of
vastly different disciplines into a common perspective from the very
start and to thereby collect data that are relevant across the disciplines.
In a transdisciplinary laboratory experiment, the goal is to establish a
complementary explanatory model that encompasses several dimen-
sions of the object. E.g., experimental studies always examine human
beings on a behavioral, an emotional and a cognitive level at the same
time. The researchers then look for causal relationships in the various
dimensions of human behavior. Therefore, economic experimental
studies can also be considered a synthesis of various disciplines meth-
ods of gaining knowledge. The disadvantage of this transdisciplinary
approach is that data are always gathered in a way that ensures that

14
See Mittelstrass 2000, 1011, and Mittelstrass 2003.
 the conflict between egoism and altruism 99

they are compatible with each other afterwards. The field of neuroeco-
nomics itself considers this an advantage:
The behavioral sciences all include models of individual human behav-
ior. These models should be compatible. Indeed, there should be a com-
mon underlying model, enriched in different ways to meet the particular
needs of each discipline. We cannot easily attain this goal at present,
however, as the various behavioral disciplines have incompatible mod-
els. Yet, recent theoretical and empirical developments have created the
conditions for rendering coherent the areas of overlap of the various
behavioral disciplines. [. . .] The standard justification for the fragmenta-
tion of the behavioural disciplines is that each has a model of human
behaviour well suited to its particular object of study. While this is true,
where these objects of study overlap, their models must be compatible.15
This preference for examining the mutually compatible aspects of an
object, however, is quite problematic in terms of scientific methodol-
ogy. The proposed integral mode of examination is designed to ignore
those aspects which are usually allowed to remain different or even
incompatible on various levels of empirical examination, and to sub-
ject them to a unifying perspective even at the stage of access. As a
consequence, the difference between mutually compatible and incom-
patible aspects of an object loses its heuristic value. At the very least,
the limitations of ones own method and ones own point of view
can no longer be indicated by the difference from another mode of
investigation.
(iii) Empirical explanation and the critical assessment of abstract
theory formation: Traditional theoretical models of economics rep-
resent human behavior in mathematic utility functions and strive
to make these utility functions as consistent as possible. In contrast,
experimental economics claims that its models offer an explanation
of the reality of human behavior.16 It therefore abandons the analysis

15
Gintis 2007, 1.
16
It is questionable whether the consistent focus on methodologically gained expe-
riential data and the reliable replicability of evidence suffice to validate the claim of
an empirical explanation. If the methodological approach of experimental economics
is viewed as a pragmatic action from a culturalist perspective, then the systematic
operationalization of life performances [Lebensvollzge] in the behavioral laboratory
serves the purpose of using these life performances to demonstrate those economic
behavioral principles that can be replicated within the framework of a controlled situ-
ation. In this respect, a behavioral experiment does not replicate the real conditions
of behavior, but rather constructs an artificial behavioral environment that serves to
verify model hypotheses.
100 chapter two

of behavior based on mere assertions and assumptions, and criticizes

the unrealistic nature of theoretical economic models. Experimen-
tal economics presents itself as an explanatory approach that only
accepts those hypotheses about human modes of behavior in which
real behavior can be reproduced and explained in laboratory and field
experiments. Therefore, experimental economics is mainly interested
in the empirical validity of economic utility functions. It attempts to
use empirical anthropology for the formation of its models in order to
create a better transition between model thinking and reality.17
In addition, at the point where experimental economics turns into
neuroeconomics, it almost completely disengages from economic
theory formation. It uses neuroscientific behavioral experiments to
demonstrate how human beings can learn from their emotional expe-
riences to make better social decisions, and it models the structure of
these experiences through the neuroscientific procedures of representa-
tion and examination. In its advanced incarnation as neuroeconomics,
experimental economics is able to gain knowledge about human beings
that is far beyond the reach of the economic approach. For example,
the entire area of emotional decision-making is not addressed in tra-
ditional economic theory. However, experimental economics and neu-
roeconomics tend to be strongly opposed to any theory formation that
could prove to be an obstacle for the economics-internal reception of
its research.18
Economic experimental studies thus seek to set themselves apart
by displaying innovative power and by criticizing the traditional dog-
mas and doctrines of their discipline. They are beginning to form a
research field whose possibilities and limits cannot yet be entirely
foreseen and evaluated because of its extraordinary dynamism. The
rise in popularity that experimental economics has seen since the
1990s among other things, Vernon L. Smith and Daniel Kahnemann
received a Nobel Prize for their experimental work in 2002 has
earned it attention in the majority of theoretically oriented economic
and social sciences.19 As a consequence, experimental research has
become more generally accepted and disproved the prejudice that

17
See Guala 2005, 229: [T]he proper role of experimental economics is to mediate
between abstract theory and concrete problem solving in the world.
18
See the discussion in Held et al. 2003.
19
Evidence can also be found in Rubinstein 2001; Erlei 2003; et al. Also see Kurze
Erfolgsgeschichte der experimentellen konomik by Kubon-Gilke et al. 2003.
 the conflict between egoism and altruism 101

experimental research is unnecessary or impractical in economic sci-

ence. At the same time, however, it continues to be confronted with
demands to prove that its experimenting is guided by and contributing
to theory. These demands are fueled by the attempt to re-marginalize
the autonomous type of knowledge constituted by experimentally
gained experiential knowledge as a whole and to reduce it to its util-
ity for theory formation. Unlike the economics-internal confrontation
with experimental research, this study proposes that the autonomy of
experimental studies be acknowledged, and that its findings be taken
seriously and honored as experientially guided insights into human
sociality. Of course, this appreciation cannot be achieved without also
including a phenomenological critical analysis of the experiments.
The three briefly outlined paradigm changes of experimental eco-
nomics and neuroeconomics revise both the anthropological and the
methodological foundations of economic theory formation. They pro-
pose a methodological approach in which economics no longer deduces
human rational behavior from unproven assumptions (as-if construc-
tions) but instead explains it using empirically verifiable hypotheses.
However, economics does not consider the quantitative or qualitative
interview studies of sociology, in which social reality is understood
as a primarily linguistic reality, an adequate method of verification.
Instead, it methodologically focuses on behavioral experiments in
which human social behavior can be modeled in actu, resulting in
a high degree of control over every single interaction. Experimental
economics thus turns to experimental knowledge gain in the classic
natural-scientific sense, thereby committing to a very specific type of
empirical knowledge, which will be described in more detail below.
For now, however, it is necessary to shed more light on the content-
related innovations that experimental economics has brought to eco-
nomics as a whole.

13.2 Skepticism about the Homo Oeconomicus

The attempts within experimental economics to reorient the field
toward empiricism were accompanied by the need to amend and cor-
rect some premises of economic theory that had previously been con-
sidered to be canonical. Likewise, their methodological reorientation
has resulted in a critical reassessment of the content-related premises
of economic theory. Thus, reevaluation of the empirical research field
is also a manifestation of the increasingly distant attitude toward those
102 chapter two

knowledge paradigms of economics established by neoclassical or neo-

liberal theory from the 1870s on; most notably in this context, the
central premise of neoclassical thought that casts the human being as
homo oeconomicus.20
The homo oeconomicus is an economic model that was developed
for the purpose of theoretically representing rational decisions in a
mathematical utility function. It is based on a conception of human
beings that defines them as completely rational agents. In this model,
human beings are conceived of as incarnations of purely rational cal-
culation. By being transferred into everyday life, homo oeconomicus
has become an established contemporary image of human beings.
As a caricature homo oeconomicus represents a creature that is noth-
ing more than an intelligent but heartless calculating machine that
accordingly always behaves in an egoistic and selfish manner toward
other human beings. The scientific value of such a construct of human
beings as purely rational decision subjects is that it enables research-
ers to create a precise mathematical model of human behavior and to
model the social interaction of several rational agents through stable
mathematical balances.
Accordingly, the functional value and performance capability of the
homo oeconomicus model for theory formation are its most important
aspects for the theoretical economic approach. The model provides
a schematic that can give a reliable mathematical representation of
and prognosis for the typical (from an economic viewpoint) decision-
making behavior of individuals. Its applied value is that it can be
used to model the behavior of a bigger group of individuals, i.e., a
behavior aggregate. Thus, the economic behavioral model is a tool for
constructing average types and patterns of behavior. It is based on
theoretical assumptions about human beings that do not need to be
proven empirically, and it defines human beings as strictly rationally
acting individuals who, when confronted with a range of behavioral
options, will always act according to a stable preference order, choos-
ing the option that will best benefit them personally and thus will
always maximize their own benefits in a concrete situation with speci-
fied restrictions.

20
The Latin term homo oeconomicus was first introduced in 1906 by economist
Vilfredo Pareto.
 the conflict between egoism and altruism 103

This minimal definition of homo oeconomicus, which disregards

its countless varieties and differentiations,21 reflects on two central
premises of economic thinking: firstly, the economic idea of behavior
and secondly, the economic idea of rationality. The economic idea of
behavior is based on an assumed difference between the preferences of
an individual (behavioral goals) and their situation-dependent limita-
tions (behavioral restrictions). In order to create a rational construct
of their respective behavioral options, individuals must first define
their goals within a specified range of behavior. Within this range of
behavior, they give top ranking to the behavioral option that promises
to maximally increase their own utility expectation under the given
circumstances. The economic idea of rationality therefore schematizes
a selection from various behavioral options as a means-ends structure
and confines rational behavior to an instrumental use of rationality.
The two above-mentioned structures of human behavior (prefer-
ence + restriction = behavioral option, and means + ends = rational
utility expectation) are even retained in critical modifications of the
homo oeconomicus model because they are a general, fundamental ele-
ment of behavioral economics. By now, however, it has been empiri-
cally disproven that

(i) rational decision-making behavior is exclusively geared toward

egoistic preferences and behavioral goals;22
(ii) only cognitive attitudes and situational perceptions contribute to
the genesis of rational decision-making behavior.23

Thus, the empirical modeling of the basic anthropological assumptions

used in the homo oeconomicus model has at least shown the empirical
limits of the models validity. It has done so mainly by proving that
human behavior is decisively influenced by social norms. It is not yet
clear to what extent this insight will cause the canonical economic

21
Well-known expansions of the homo oeconomicus model are REMM (resource-
ful, evaluating, maximizing man) by Brunner and Meckling (1977) and RREEMM
(resourceful, restricted, expecting, evaluating, maximizing man) by Lindenberg (1985),
as well as Siebenhners (1997) homo oecologicus.
22
An individual who behaves rationally in a social interaction also assesses the
possible utility expectations of his interaction partners and includes them into his
utility function.
23
An individual who behaves rationally in a social interaction assesses his behav-
ioral options not only cognitively, but also emotionally.
104 chapter two

model of human beings to be corrected, or even replaced, in the long

term. But the efforts of empirically verifying and concretizing the
model indicate a fundamental turn of economics from abstract eco-
nomic theory to strictly empirical science; for the formal consistency
and analytical capability of the canonical behavioral model alone are
no longer sufficient for it to be accepted by a research field with a
strictly empirical explanatory claim. The models hypotheses of com-
pletely rational and exclusively self-serving human decision-making
behavior were disproved by empirical studies. Some of these studies
will be introduced in more detail in the following paragraphs (par-
ticularly 1517). Before that, however, we will take a brief look into
those developments that paved the way for an economics-internal
critical assessment of the canonical behavioral model.

13.3 Backgrounds to the Critical Assessment of the Homo

Oeconomicus Model
For many decades now, there has been skepticism within the field of
economics about the anthropological premises of the homo oeconomicus
model. The critical assessment of this model within experimental eco-
nomics and neuroeconomics is therefore not a new development, but
only the intensification of a tendency toward criticism that had not
been able to establish itself previously. There were two main reasons
for the lack of a powerful critical assessment: firstly, there were no
persuasive alternatives to the canonical behavioral model that could
have replaced it, and secondly, the model had not actually been dis-
proven. Additionally, it was frequently supported that the model put
forth a hypothesis so general that it could not be empirically verified
at all.24 Therefore, the skepticism toward the models empirical reality
content was usually brushed aside with the argument that the model
represented an ideal-typical fiction without actual truth content. Its
raison dtre consisted in its usefulness for theory formation, and its
concrete empirical explanatory claim was to be considered insignifi-
cant in comparison.25

24
E.g., this argument can be found in Kirchgssner 22000, 1920.
25
Franz 2004 provides a paradigmatic justification of the homo oeconomicus model.
Armin Falk (2003) provides a critical assessment of the homo oeconomicus from the
perspective of experimental economics. Most importantly, he shows the consequences
of a wrong model of human beings for political advice services and demands its
replacement with the prosocially and cooperatively acting homo reciprocans.
 the conflict between egoism and altruism 105

Now that the field of experimental economics has informed eco-

nomic theorists of its intentions to make the hypotheses of their theo-
retical model empirically verifiable and that it will no longer work with
generalizing assumptions about fictive economic agents and their ratio-
nality, the skepticism toward the reality content of the model has been
given a new justification that had heretofore eluded methodological
articulation. The empirical verification of economic models through
experiments is thus a methodological tool that can help substanti-
ate the anthropological and psychological intuitions that lie behind
its critical assessment. The methodological shift of experimental eco-
nomics toward a scientifically operating social science could therefore
turn out to be a decisive shift for the field of economics as a whole, or
at least for the field of social research within economics. This shift is
based on five important steps of development in the field of econom-
ics, and it can be described as their consequent continuation:
(i) Interdisciplinary opening of sociological and social-psychological
lines of inquiry: The internal critical assessment of the homo oeco-
nomicus in economics has been provoked by a decades-long phase in
which economics has started to open itself to interdisciplinarity. Econ-
omists were increasingly interested in social-scientific and psychologi-
cal lines of inquiry. Examples include the sociological question about
the significance of social norms or the psychological question about
intrinsic factors of motivation for altruistic behavior in human beings.
The consideration of psychologys empirical approaches to explaining
human behavior in particular has made the field of economics aware
of the fact that its basic anthropological assumptions do not reflect
reality. Thus, the economic conception of human beings had been
criticized as wrong because it failed to take into account the influence
of collective learning processes, emotional experiences, and intrinsic
motivations on individual decision-making behavior. However, even
though economics shifted to deal with the insights and findings of
other disciplines, it did so without ever abandoning the economic
explanatory approach for rational behavior. This persistence shows
that the interdisciplinary opening of economics does not mean that it
is prepared to abandon the basic assumptions and models of economic
thinking. Instead, it aims to expand its content matter and to correct
its methodological flaws in order to make economic thought catch up
to the current state of research in other social sciences.
(ii) A new idea of institutions: The methodological shift in econom-
ics from purely theoretical model thinking toward empirical studies of
106 chapter two

human behavior was also preceded by a new way of thinking within

economics: the neo-institutional approach. This research approach
began to gain widespread acceptance in the 1990s. Since then, econ-
omists have shown (renewed) interest in the relevance of institu-
tions and other forms of social order. Institutions already played an
important role in classical national economics, but their relevance for
individual decision-making behavior had been largely ignored in neo-
classical economic theory.
As a whole, the expansion of neoclassical economic theory to include
questions about institutional incentive structures is today referred to
as New Institutional Economics (NIE).26 The basis of NIE is a new
idea about the way institutions work. The crucial difference between
this concept and the neoclassical way of thinking is that NIE regards
institutions as essentially incomplete organizations of human coexis-
tence. Institutions can provide for stability and security in individual
actions, but the guidance of concrete human behavior by institutional
regulations is and can only ever be incomplete, a fact that has been
demonstrated time and again by legal loopholes, unconsidered con-
tingencies in contracts etc. In addition, NIE has found out that the
use of formal and informal normative systems and their enforcement
in society requires the continuous investment of real resources on the
part of the individuals. This investment of resources is acknowledged
by NIE in the modeling of social transaction costs.
(iii) Economics as a Social Science: Following the emergence of
NIE, economic thinking has increasingly expanded to include gen-
eral social-scientific methodology, and its explanatory power is no
longer limited to economic topics and lines of inquiry in the narrow
sense.27 The efforts to forge a modern, applied economics are based on

26
Further terms and concepts related to NIE include the theory of modern insti-
tutionalism, market-external economics or new political economics. Furubotn
and Richter 22005, 501554, emphasize that above all, NIE has curbed the general-
izing potential of the neoclassical analytical apparatus with its theory of institution.
Its revolutionary tendency to create new paradigms in economics is carefully scaled
back, and the intentions of NIE have been limited to introducing additional second-
ary conditions of economic action. In contrast, Frey 1990 clarifies that NIE is mainly
focused on the applicability of economic forms of thought and the interdisciplinary
connectivity of its findings. Voigt 2002, however, emphasizes its economic compe-
tence to analyze informal institutions.
27
See paradigmatically: Frey 1990. Also see the section on konomie als impe-
rialistische Wissenschaft (Economics as Imperialist Science [transl. M.S.]) in
Kirchgssner 22000, 153156. Unlike classical national economics according to Adam
 the conflict between egoism and altruism 107

a methodological differentiation that economist Gebhard Kirchgssner

describes as follows:
The concept of economics that has been introduced and applied here is
radically different. Economics is the attempt to explain human behavior
by supposing that individual persons behave rationally. Individuals act
by making a rational selection from the available options while basing
their decision on the (anticipated) consequences of their actions. This
applies regardless of subject matter: human beings have different pos-
sible courses of action, but they do not behave in fundamentally different
ways when solving social and political problems than when dealing with
economic or legal tasks. Economics as a method and economics as a
subject matter of economic science are two different things.28
Separating economics as an explanatory approach from its subject
matter has successfully demonstrated that the economic method can
be used to examine many subject matters that had previously been
lionized by other social sciences. Now, economics is in a position to
ask how social order comes about, what makes a good society, or how
human beings can be happy, and to offer concrete answers to these
questions. The explanatory approaches and premises of economics can
not only be applied to economy, law and politics, but also to reli-
gion, the arts, morals, the environment, education and health. This
expansion of economics to unorthodox subject matters has gradually
caused economics to take into account the findings of other disciplines
and to even adopt some of their methods (e.g., in the field of neuro-
economics).
(iv) Bounded rationality: Another new approach that has found
widespread acceptance in the field of economics and contributed to
the skepticism toward the homo oeconomicus model is the bounded
rationality approach.29 This explanatory model for human behav-
ior assumes that the rationality of economic agents is limited. It
has brought awareness to the fact that it is not practicable to base
the modeling of decision-making situations on the assumption that

Smith and political economics influenced by Marxism, civil economics was focused
on the analysis of economy as a subsystem of society. In contrast, the last decades of
the 20th century have shown that economic models can be developed for almost all
societal subsystems. The three economists and Nobel Prize winners (1991) James M.
Buchanan, Ronald Coase and Gary S. Becker are considered to be the pioneers of this
development.
28
Kirchgssner 22000, 2 (transl. M.S.).
29
See Selten 1990.
108 chapter two

all potential courses of action are transparent to the agent and can
thus be calculated in a rational manner. For example, interaction
situations can be affected by asymmetrical levels of information, lack
of time, or unforeseeable interferences from third parties. In those
cases, the given situation no longer represents a reasonable decision-
making basis for the subject. Therefore, it is more appropriate to
assume a priori that the ability of human beings to gain information
and to rationally define their behavioral options is limited. Accord-
ingly, it often happens in human behavior that decisions must be made
under conditions of uncertainty. Uncertainty prevents the individual
from making a precise calculation of all courses of action. For this
reason, the bounded rationality approach offers a detailed analysis of
a different type of decision-making rationality: the rationality of deci-
sions made in uncertainty and guided by heuristic rules. For example,
human beings are guided by heuristic rules when they select a behav-
ioral option that they already know from the previous experience in a
similar situation, or one that is tied to a personally significant event or
person.30 As contextual conditions, such decisive factors must be taken
into account in the modeling of human behavior.
(v) Experimental modeling of social interaction: The most significant
methodological step for questioning traditional economic approaches
is the application and examination of the classical models of game
theory through behavioral experiments. Game theory attempts to
apply the economic stereotype of a rational agent to types of situa-
tions in which two or more individuals interact with each other. It
exclusively focuses on the strategic rationality of the involved agents
and represents their decision-making behavior in so-called game trees
(mathematical graphs). The empirical examination of game-theoretical
analyses in the context of experimental economics has made it possible
to prove or disprove the purely theoretical rationality parameters of
game theory with empirical data. In addition, experimental economics
has succeeded in developing new experimental paradigms for game-
theoretical rationality31 that can help to model modes of behavior that
had previously been considered irrational and questionable from an
economic standpoint. However, this development also represented the

30
See Tversky and Kahnemann 1974.
31
Behavioral game theory extends rationality rather than abondoning it. (Cam-
erer 2003, 24). Also see the summarizing paragraph on the further development of the
analytical models of game theory in experimental behavioral studies: ibid., 465476.
 the conflict between egoism and altruism 109

first step toward the emancipation of experimental economics from

the rationality models of game theory. The remaining link between
game theory and experimental economics is the notion that the analy-
sis of social interaction must always start with individuals and their
decisions (the premise of methodological individualism).
The recent economic approaches outlined here represent a new
development that leads away from economics exclusively guided by
principles and toward economics guided by empirical science. These
approaches have helped bring about the shift toward transdisciplinary
forms of knowledge in experimental economics. The synthetic research
approach of neuroeconomics in particular is therefore not a surprising
new invention, but can be described as the consequent continuation
of a tendency that has been developing within economics for some
time. Besides the economic background of experimental studies, it is
necessary to discuss the claim that they offer empirical explanations
[Realerklrungen]. The following section will approach this topic from
the perspective of philosophy of science, which will also serve to reveal
the constructedness of experimental methodology.

14 The Methodology of Experimental Economics

Experimental economics32 examines the social behavior of human

beings in laboratory and field experiments. Much like the natural
experiment in physics, these experiments are based on methods of
examination and observation that serve to gather empirically backed
knowledge about a hypothesis. In the case of experimental econom-
ics, the hypothesis to be examined is that human beings display a
behavioral pattern that is unique in the animal kingdom, the pattern
of strong reciprocity or altruism.
Due to the excellent manageability of its methodology, the field of
experimental economics has recently been of interest to many disci-
plines of empirical social research and in some instances also works

32
In the economic sciences, the term economics does not designate a particular
object such as the economy or the market, but a specific explanatory approach that
can be applied to a wide variety of study objects. Thus, there can be an economics of
racial segregation, an economics of crime, or even an economics of brushing ones
teeth. The explanatory approach of economics is characterized by the fact that it views
human behavior as a decision-making behavior under the conditions of scarcity (see
Voigt 2002, 26).
110 chapter two

in close cooperation with them. Important cooperating disciplines

include social neuroscience, psychobiology, evolutionary anthropol-
ogy, developmental psychology, and primatology. These disciplines
make use of the methodological paradigms of experimental econom-
ics and apply them to new lines of inquiry or research practices. This
demonstrates the crossdisciplinary utility of an experimentally verifi-
able explanatory approach for human social behavior.33 In contrast,
experimental economics is viewed rather critically in those disciplines
that are concerned with the normative theories of justice, fairness,
altruism, and sociality.34 Far more positive points of contact can be
found between the theories of ethical naturalism, which strive to estab-
lish a socio-biological rationale for human morality, and the neurosci-
ence of morality, which investigates the significance of neuroscientific
findings for the ethical self-understanding of human beings.
The following passages will develop a perspective on the studies of
experimental economics that a) does not need to fall back on norma-
tive or naturalistic theoretical horizons and b) also distinguishes itself
from the way the empirical disciplines deal with experimental eco-
nomics. Unlike social research, which simply adopts and applies the
paradigms of experimental economics, this study aims to unfold an
independent reconstruction and critical analysis of behavioral experi-
ments and their knowledge claims from the perspective of philosophy
of science and, in a second step, to evaluate the economic modeling
of human sociality. This study begins with reconstruction because it
can make a more well-founded and justified critical analysis of the
findings of economics after examining the formation of experimen-
tal modelings in detail. Hence, this study is at no point interested in
merely presenting the results of empirical research, but always intent
on examining and confronting the methodological premises and con-
ceptual hypotheses of this research. Another goal of methodologically
reconstructing behavioral-scientific research is to render transparent
the constructedness and method-dependence present in a behavioral-
scientific description of human beings; for only the evidence of the

33
The interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary connectivity of experimental eco-
nomics is well-documented by the two publications Moral Sentiments and Material
Interests (Gintis et al. 2005) and Foundations of Human Sociality (Henrich et al.
2004).
34
See particularly the articles in the journal Analyse & Kritik, Number 27/1 (2005)
on the topic of Ernst Fehr on Human Altruism: An Interdisciplinary Debate.
 the conflict between egoism and altruism 111

constructive character of empirical research work justifies interpret-

ing experimental modelings as perspectival, location-bound rep-
resentations of human beings, and exposing them to dialogue with
other description perspectives instead of considering their naturalist
foundation.

14.1 Translatability of Laboratory and Experiential World

Experimental economics claims that it can explain the biological and
behavioral foundations of human social behavior with the help of scien-
tifically verified methods. It assumes that there is a correlation between
the social behavior of human beings studied in the behavioral labora-
tory and their actual, real social behavior. But from the perspective of
scientific methodology, such a real-scientific explanatory claim is quite
astonishing. After all, the economic experimental studies do not study
physical objects or natural occurrences, but human behavior. Thus,
their subject matter is entirely different from the study objects of the
classic natural experiments in physics. This difference between natural
and human experiments could be a problem in interdisciplinary stud-
ies, mainly because experimental economics bases its validity claim on
the notion that the reliability and precision of research findings from
human experiments is comparable to those from a standardized natu-
ral experiment. This notion is also the basis for their methodological
advantage and the innovation present in its empirical description of
human sociality. However, such a validity claim can by no means be
taken for granted. Rather, it requires justification from the perspec-
tive of philosophy of science. The following passages will investigate
whether such a justification is possible.

14.1.1 Empirical Explanation and Methodological Object

Constitution in Experiments
Like any other discipline, the field of experimental sciences requires
verbal communication to present and interpret its findings. However,
its knowledge gain can never be reduced to just its verbal dimension.
It is crucially based on a technical knowledge of action and effect as
can be gained from experiments. As a means for verifying hypotheses,
experiments are only valid if their findings are reliable and repeatable.
Repeatability means that it must be possible to reproduce the experi-
mental setting and its apparatuses independent of a concrete imple-
mentation of the experiment, and that it is possible to conduct the
112 chapter two

experiment again, producing the same result. Due to this stipulation of

reproducibility, the constitution of a study object in experiments must
be completely controllable and independent from subjective factors of
influence. This can be achieved most easily by using technical methods
of representation and measuring. These methods make it possible to
constitute a study object in an objective and observer-independent
manner. However, from the perspective of natural-scientific research,
the natural characteristics of a study object and their generalizability
determine whether the study object can be considered to be explained
under real conditions by experimental modeling. For example, while
it is easy to observe the laws of gravity under real conditions, the
same cannot be said of the laws of human social behavior, or at least
so it would appear. Therefore, Peter Janichs Kleine Philosophie der
Naturwissenschaften states regarding the limits of experimentation
with human beings:
The experimental sciences have become the model for a type of experi-
ence that guarantees the highest degree of reliability. However, it must not
be overlooked that this reliability is only achieved in the field of technical
reproducibility; in contrast, when it comes to something like (cultural)
historical processes, or economic decisions for that matter, this repro-
ducibility cannot simply be assumed or produced: a human being, for
example, who has memories and can reflect on his or her experiences,
cannot, strictly speaking, step into the same situation twice.35
Peter Janichs statement is based on the notion that human beings are
creatures whose existence is embedded in historical and cultural forms
of life and whose individual perception of a certain situation can never
be repeated in a standardized manner. Thus, Janich asserts that human
beings with their natural experiential horizon are incapable of expe-
riencing a situation several times in exactly the same way. In human
experiments, however, scientists examine their test subjects as if they
could be induced to undergo the same experiences over and over again
simply by controlling the external situational conditions. This practice
fails to take into account that the artificially created laboratory setting
is not identical to the type of situation that the test subjects associ-
ate with the situation of the experiment in their experiential horizon.
Human beings can even relate individual experiences and memories

35
Janich 1997, 104 (emphasis in the original; transl. M.S.).
 the conflict between egoism and altruism 113

to a situation without being fully aware of it. Therefore, total control

over their experiential horizon cannot be ensured even by interviewing
the test subjects after the experiment.
In the face of this fact, it is questionable whether experimental eco-
nomics comes any closer to its goal of explaining the real social life
of human beings by using the experimental methods and technical
instruments of the natural sciences. Indeed, it is much more likely that
the rigorous focus on natural-scientific object study and its concept
of empirical explanation will again produce problems like the unilat-
eral trust in theories formed on the basis of unproven assumptions
in economics. The use of human experiments and the creation of an
empirical anthropology as the basis of economic model formation will
not automatically solve the problem of economic theories that are out
of touch with reality. Indubitably, experiments are an important meth-
odological instrument to gain valid knowledge in the natural sciences.
But the experimental knowledge gain alone does not yet guarantee
knowledge that is more suitable for human life than the formation of
models on the basis of unverified premises.
Thus, from the perspective of philosophy of science, it is problematic
to make human beings with their biographical experiences the objects
of methodologically exact experimental studies. Accepting the fact that
this, indeed, is precisely what experimental economics is doing, this
study will investigate what exactly is studied in experimental studies, if
it is not human beings with individual experiential horizons. In other
words, it is necessary to ask what is actually constituted as the object
in an experimental modeling of interactional processes. Such a line of
inquiry represents a form of science criticism. In addition, it offers a
point of entry to ask about the practical consequences of experimenting
with human beings beyond the goal of constituting a strictly method-
ological object. For example, previously conducted successful neurobi-
ological experiments have made it possible to systematically reproduce
the material basis of human perceptual and experimental structures
through stimulating areas of the brain or administering hormonal sub-
stances. Thus, neuroscientific experimenting is establishing a techni-
cal basis for artificially creating the physiological conditions of human
experience. It is difficult, however, to gauge the far-reaching conse-
quences of making human experiences available through technology
in the interest of reproducibility.
114 chapter two

14.1.2 The Validity of Experimental Findings Outside of the

Laboratory
It is part of the self-concept of experimental economics that experi-
menting creates access to something like an objective reality inde-
pendent from subjective experiential attitudes. The claim that the
experimental method can use available technical testing methods to
provide knowledge that is independent from every human point of
view also has consequences for the discussion about the validity of
experimental findings outside of the laboratory. Thus, it is necessary
to ask how valuable an empirical explanation that is valid in laboratory
conditions can be for understanding human social behavior outside
the laboratory.
Methodological discussion within the field of experimental econom-
ics is mainly concerned with this last problem.36 Unlike science theory,
which delves into how the validity claims of scientific methods can
be justified and critically limited, experimental economics inquires
into the significance of its experimental findings for the prediction of
actual human behavior and asks how they can be applied to the real
world. Thus, it views the issue of translatability between the labora-
tory and the real world not in terms of the clarification and limitation
of its validity claim (philosophy of science), but in terms of finding a
pragmatic approach that ensures the applicability of its study findings
under real conditions outside of the laboratory. Thus, experimental
economics tends to reflect on the limits of its own methods only when
it seems appropriate to use a control method or other supplementary
methods. By forming analogies between the laboratory and the expe-
riential world, it aims to find ways of increasing the significance of
its experimental findings. Experimental economics employs two main
strategies for increasing the real-world significance of its findings:
(i) External validation of laboratory evidence: Experimental eco-
nomics defuses critical inquiries into its own methodological design
by pointing out the limited nature of all individual scientific meth-
ods and instruments, and emphasizes that the findings of laboratory
experiments must necessarily be complemented by field experiments.
The possibility of an external validation of experimental laboratory
findings is thus discussed under the label of external validity issues.37

36
See Gth and Kliemt 2003; Levitt and List 2006.
37
See Guala 2005, 141160.242248.
 the conflict between egoism and altruism 115

For example, in order to externally validate behavioral experiments

that only included test subjects from Western countries, researchers
conducted ethnographical field experiments with fifteen small-scale
societies from different parts of the world.38 By and large, these field
experiments have verified the results of laboratory experiments, but
they also revealed cultural differences that could not have been mod-
eled in the laboratory.39 Thus, it can be observed that the transfer of
experimental laboratory settings into the field represents a supplemen-
tary research strategy that serves to expand the validity of the explana-
tions for behavior found in the laboratory, but not to critically evaluate
the experimental method per se.
In addition, the direct transformation of laboratory experiments
into field experiments represents a first step toward the practical
implementation of laboratory reality in the everyday experiential
world, which is not as harmless as it may seem at first glance. Experi-
ences with field experiments have shown that they yield empirically
significant results mainly when the behavioral setting selected by the
experimenters, such as the laboratory, is marked by very clear and
unambiguous characteristics that can be maintained throughout the
duration of the experiment. This is most likely the case in the lifeworld
of primitive small-scale societies because they are situated in a very
isolated living environment far away from big cities and because their
way of life is still far removed from the complexity and pluralism of
modern civilization. Thus, the supplementation of laboratory experi-
ments with field experiments is a first step toward taking standardized
types of behavior observed in the laboratory and applying them in the
lifeworld of human beings.
(ii) Phenomenological situational similarity in the laboratory: A sec-
ond strategy to increase the significance of experimental findings is
establishing situational similarity between the laboratory and the real
world. This is a non-empirical approach which nevertheless can con-
tribute to increasing the plausibility of experimental findings. Unlike
the transfer from laboratory to field, the experimental situation here

38
The results of these field experiments with fifteen small-scale societies (among
them the Machiguenga, Mapuche, Tsimane, Ache, Achuar and Quichua from South
America; the Orma, Hadza, Sangu and Shona from Africa; the Torguad and Khazax
from Central Asia and the Lamalera, Au and Gnau from Southeast Asia) are sum-
marized in the essay collection Henrich et al. 2004.
39
See ibid., 854.
116 chapter two

is not reproduced in the real world to construct correspondence to

identical paradigms (laws of behavior). Instead, the researchers attempt
to bring a portion of real-world complexity into the laboratory and
establish a correspondence to the level of perceived situational similar-
ity on the part of the test subjects. This implies a research strategy that
aims to ensure not only the external control of behavior but also the
transferability of the laboratory situation to the experiential world of
the test subjects. This strategy is based on the psychological assump-
tion that human beings always go into laboratory situations with the
expectation that things will be similar to the situation outside the labo-
ratory. Thus, there will be certain recognition effects that, if systemati-
cally modeled, can increase the naturalness of behavior.
However, creating situational similarity is only rarely done system-
atically in economic behavioral experiments conducted without the
participation of psychologists. For this reason, economists Werner
Gth and Hartmut Kliemt, in their critical assessment of pure data
generation in economic behavioral experiments, advocate an epis-
temological-critical differentiation between the explanans (a law of
behavior) and the explanandum (real behavior) of a study.40 Regard-
ing the modelings of experimental economics, they have suggested41
responding to the question of whether laboratory findings are able to
be translated to the experiential world by reversing the direction of
the question. Instead of only asking about the relevance of laboratory
findings for the real world, the goal should be to find ways to trans-
fer the experiential world of human beings into the laboratory. Gth
and Kliemt propose to create so-called thick experiments which pro-
vide descriptions of the experimental situation that test subjects are
familiar with.42 In their opinion, experiments have a mostly heuristic
value: they help determine exactly what can be explained with a theo-
retical model and do not represent a justified explanatory approach
as such.
In conclusion, the approaches of experimental economics can be
assessed as follows: the first approach, externally validating experi-

40
In concrete terms, Gth and Kliemt 2003, 27, propose to aim for a description of
the experimental situation that seems familiar to the subjects and to use the advantage
of situational similarity to better determine the subjects real motivation.
41
See ibid.
42
Ibid., 28. (transl. M.S.).
 the conflict between egoism and altruism 117

mental findings though field studies, ignores the problems that come
with a purely methodological object constitution. It runs the risk of
merely testing the feasibility of an experimental method paradigm
under real-world conditions. In contrast, the second approach pres-
ents the possibility of including the test subjects self-understanding
in the methodological constitution of their behavior. Unfortunately,
this proposal for creating lifelike situations in the laboratory is not
widely implemented. Although researchers are aware that a laboratory
setting should display a lifelike situational shape, this intuition is not
realized systematically and purposefully in the experimental design.
Instead, it proves its helpfulness underhandedly, in the creative phase
of experimental design, modelling a behavioral setting in a way that
enables the desired interaction between test subjects in actu. However,
the testing of various modelings during the pilot phase of a behavioral
experiment does not include an actual phenomenological situational
analysis that would take into account the test subjects impressions
and attitudes.

14.2 Construction Principles of Economic Laboratory Experiments

For further orientation, it is useful to delineate and represent the
construction principles of economic laboratory experiments as pre-
cisely as possible. It has already been demonstrated that the conduct
of behavioral experiments with human beings in the laboratory does
not take into account the individual self-perception of the test subjects.
This means that laboratory experiments do not start their investigation
with the position of the study object in life, but with the controlled
production and realization of the study objects constitutional condi-
tions. Here, the experimental study aims to overcome the blurriness
and complexity of the objects pre-scientific or science-external actual-
ity and to establish methodological reliability. We have already seen
that the claim of gaining verified knowledge in a laboratory experi-
ment requires a reproducible form of knowledge gain. Such a form of
knowledge gain can be achieved by establishing a methodological order
of experimental actions. By establishing a methodologically ordered
sequence of actions, it becomes possible to make technical measure-
ments and controlled observations of the study object and to expand
them into empirical facts through statistical evaluation.
However, the evaluation of laboratory measurements is not only
used for gathering data, but also for producing evidence. Empirical
118 chapter two

evidence relates back to theoretical assumptions, i.e., it provides infor-

mation about whether the presented laboratory measurements prove
or disprove a hypothesis.43 Therefore, modeling evidence in an experi-
ment relies on the concretization of theoretical models in hypotheses.
Hypotheses show how and to what extent a model should be valid
for empiricism.44 In economic behavioral experiments, the hypotheses
for examining empiricism are almost always derived from the models
of game-theoretical rationality. To what extent game theory already
determines the experiment in its design phase and during the prepara-
tion of the behavioral setting in the laboratory will be discussed later.
First, however, the constructive and action-pragmatic aspect of experi-
menting will be examined in more detail.

14.2.1 The Experiment as a Strategic Course of Action

Experimenting can be viewed as a sequence of actions that follows
clearly defined principles of construction. This has been shown, for
example, in the context of the approach of methodological cultural-
ism in philosophy of science, which views experiments as a pragmatic-
operational construction of reality.45 According to methodological
culturalism, experimental actions are intended to create pragmatically
accessible conditions for legitimizing certain explanatory approaches.
This methodological categorization of experiments will be briefly out-
lined with regard to the behavioral experiment. A behavioral experi-
ment can be classified as

43
See Guala 2005, 40.
44
See ibid., 220.
45
By referring to scientific practices of knowledge gain, such as the experiment, as
pragmatic-operational constructions, this study follows the approach of methodologi-
cal culturalism in philosophy of science, which traces the possibilities and limits of
knowledge formation in the natural and technical sciences through a methodological
reconstruction of their formation context. The central insight of methodological cul-
turalism is that every natural-scientific experience and object constitution is dependent
on a technical (not a verbal ) foundation of observing, measuring and experimenting.
Based on this insight, culturalism criticizes the fixation on language in lingualistic
science theories in the tradition of Logical Empiricism (Rudolf Carnap) and Critical
Rationalism (Karl Popper). These are accused of not being able to question scientific
paradigms and validity claims in an epistemological-critical way due to their own
obliviousness to the object. See the following publications: Janich 1996; Hartmann
and Janich 1996; Hartmann and Janich 1998; Weingarten 1998; Janich and Weingar-
ten 1999; Janich 2000; Janich 2006.
 the conflict between egoism and altruism 119

(i) a pragmatic construction, because it is based on the practical

implementation of an action sequence in which the experimenter
uses certain technological means (medical devices, computers,
scanners) in an instrumental-rational manner. For example, in
order to test the influence of hormones on behavior, hormones
must be injected into the test subjects bloodstream with an
administration device in the laboratory.
(ii) an operational construction, because it is dependent on technical
methods to constitute its object in the first place. For example,
unrestricted communication among the test subjects in the lab-
oratory is not permitted. Instead, it is reduced to standardized
message options that appear on the computer screen.
(iii) a social construction, because it emerges from the communal
knowledge-gaining efforts of researchers in which the standard-
ized action sequences and knowledge patterns must be reconciled
with each other. This is demonstrated with particular clarity by
the fact that planning and implementing a behavioral experiment
requires coordinated cooperation with other researchers and can-
not be completed alone in the first place.

14.2.2 The Experiment as Selective Replication of Reality

The pragmatic operationalization of objects within a methodological
order only represents one aspect of the methodology of behavioral
experiments. This constructive aspect runs the risk of being misunder-
stood if it is not complemented with the aspect of reality replication.
This second aspect of experimenting can be clarified by distinguishing
between the behavioral experiment and the simulation.46 In a simula-
tion, the implications of a model can be replicated and analyzed in
an artificial system environment (e.g., a flight simulator, a computer
program, a city planning model etc.). A simulation process starts by
abstracting a model in terms of the applied representation mode (e.g.
at the computer), and then its functionality is optimized by modify-
ing or adjusting individual parameters (characteristics). For example,
computer-based simulation of neural networks is used to analyze the

46
Guala 2005, 239, also differentiates between the material examination of an inde-
pendent variables influence on a dependent variable (experiment) and the formal
examination of a theorem under the complete implementation of all of its assump-
tions in an artificial system modeling (simulation or theoretical demonstration). Also
see ibid., 214.
120 chapter two

biochemical exchange of information between neurons. In a simula-

tion, the exchange of information between two neurons is modeled
with the help of threshold functions whose parameters are adjusted so
that the model can be optimized. Such an abstracting method demon-
strates that the simulation models its object in a theoretical and not
an empirical manner.
Although behavioral experiments also realize an objects constitutive
conditions along the lines of abstract construction principles, empiri-
cal modeling differs markedly in at least one respect from the formal
optimization of a selected model aspect in a simulation: the simulation
models its objects in an abstract system environment and therefore
can not be interfered with by real interaction processes in the labo-
ratory or field. In contrast, the conduct of an experiment is precisely
about developing a methodological order in which the natural indi-
vidual behavior of an object (its empirical resistance) still has its place
without causing the methodological order to break down. A model-
ing of interaction processes in behavioral experiments only makes
sense if the human agents have alternative behavioral options within
the respective behavioral setting and if their choice is not guided by
experimenters but occurs freely and based on their own motivation.
Thus, behavioral experiments with human beings presuppose a natural
individual activity of the study object, and it is precisely this individual
activity that is experimented with.
But how does this relate to individual activity if we take into account
that the laboratory experiment was originally developed to observe
determining causal processes? In physics, the experiment is a meth-
odological instrument to determine cause-and-effect relationships
between an independent and a dependent constant. At the same time,
however, it systematically utilizes natural laws in the context of cul-
tural purposive actions; for it is only through experimental modeling
that natural events and physical processes can be subjected to external
control and consequently produced and reproduced under artificial
conditions. Many technical achievements, such as the steam locomo-
tive or the automobile, took a detour, undergoing such experimental
modeling of natural cause-and-effect relationships before becoming
practical action-based knowledge that is available to human beings,
independent of natural development.
In terms of its practical dimension, every experimental action takes
the form of a serviceable construction in which nature enters into the
dominion of human actions and thus can be made useful for human
 the conflict between egoism and altruism 121

beings. There are two crucial methodological consequences of this

knowledge: (i) in experimentally examined processes, the only aspects
that can be explained causally are those that can be realized as a cause-
and-effect relationship between two constants purposively obeying a
rule of action, and (ii) the only acknowledged experimental realization
of the cause-and-effect relationship is one that can produce the effects
by modifying or manipulating exactly one independent constant.
In order to study the effect of independent determining factors on
a constant of the study object, laboratory experiments make use of
so-called ceteris paribus observations. This means that during experi-
mental action, only one individual independent determining factor is
varied or manipulated at a time while all other factors are excluded
or kept unchanged and constant. The correlation between an inde-
pendent and a dependent variable of the study object is considered
causal if modification of the independent variable has a direct effect
on modification of the dependent variable. In order to prove such
a direct effect on the study object, experimenters must make sure
that the causal effect is indeed a true causal effect that has not been
adulterated by uncontrolled determining factors. The ceteris paribus
observation thus serves to explain an effect on the study object in its
monocausal determinedness.
Another strategy of observation is modeling a baseline observation
by including a control group in the design of the behavioral experi-
ment. For this purpose, the test subjects are divided into two groups
before the experiment, one without manipulation of the independent
determining factor (placebo) and one with manipulation of the inde-
pendent determining factor (treatment). The assignment of the test
subjects into the placebo or treatment groups is randomized. This
means that there is no pre-selection of test subjects according to spe-
cific principles. If a significant difference can be proven between the
placebo and the treatment group, the effect of the determining factor
is considered verified.
Thus, one basic condition for the exclusion of uncontrolled deter-
mining factors is a modeling of an experimental setup in the labo-
ratory that is as close to perfect as possible. In that case, the results
and findings of the experiment can claim undoubted validity only in
the context of this specific methodological order.47 This means that

47
See Janich 1997, 116.
122 chapter two

experimental studies can only ever derive knowledge of the type under
the condition xi, xii, xiii . . . xn, y applies on a regionally limited level. But
individual pieces of knowledge can be combined or successively gener-
alized and expanded with methods of external validation.
How, then, can these general insights into the construction princi-
ples of experiments be transferred to modeling behavioral experiments?
The behavioral setting for the test subjects in the laboratory is mainly
determined by the fact that their behavioral options are systematically
limited. Limited in this context means that the material and commu-
nicative conditions for specific interaction processes between the test
subjects have been exactly defined and predetermined. Thus, the eco-
nomic behavioral experiment relies on the creation of a specific type
of situation. At the beginning of the experiment, the test subjects are
given a description of, or directions for, the situation type48 providing
information about the process and the respective behavioral options
of the interaction. They are also given a questionnaire with control
questions meant to determine whether the test subjects understand the
course of action in the experiment. Revealing the experimental method
prevents an unclear or unequal level of information between the test
subjects from becoming a determining factor in the interaction.
Additionally, a behavioral laboratory setting makes it possible to
create clearly defined interaction conditions under which the partici-
pants are only provided with those options of decision-making and
behavior that can be monitored through observation techniques. This
is also the reason why there is no free or uncontrolled communica-
tion between the test subjects in the laboratory. At the beginning of
the experiment, the test subjects are reminded that communication
is strictly prohibited during the entire course of the experiment. The
information exchange between test subjects necessary for carrying out
the experiment always occurs through messages from the experimenter
on a computer screen.
It is critical for experimental economics claim to be able to model
human sociality that their experiments model human behavior as

48
Game instructions given to the test subjects are an adjustment of the abstract
game description in game theory. But the abstract game description is an important
point of reference for all descriptive game instructions, because it serves to prevent
possible so-called framing effects caused by descriptive variance. In his study of fram-
ing effects in public-goods experiments Andreoni 1995 shows that there is a significant
difference between the behavior of persons who are prompted to donate for their own
benefit and the behavior of persons who are prompted to donate out of selflessness.
 the conflict between egoism and altruism 123

an individual decision-making behavior related to a system of rules

and behavior limitations defined by the experimenter. The rules for
interactions between test subjects are developed externally, and their
abidance is controlled throughout the course of the game. The pre-
formulated rules determine who has to make what kind of decision at
what point in the course of the experiment, and what options the other
players have in their response. Since the test subjects know about this
standardization of their behavior beforehand, their behavior can be
referred to as rule-guided decision-making behavior. That means that
all the test subjects decisions and reactions49 observed in the labora-
tory are made in relation to formal institutions.

14.2.3 Game Theory and Hypothesis Formation in the Behavioral

Experiment
Finally, the game-theoretical background of economic laboratory
experiments will be examined more closely. At this point, additional
information about game theory is needed to clarify the hypotheses
guiding the preparation of a laboratory experiment, and determin-
ing the subsequent interpretation of the gathered evidence. Economic
game theory is a mathematical instrument for analyzing strategic
interaction situations. A first descriptive summary was provided by
John von Neumann and Oscar Morgenstern in 1944.50 The goal of
game theory is to analyze and optimize the decision-making behavior
of several individuals in the model of a game situation. It considers
the communal game and its rules to be the basic ordering structure
of the social world. However, the types of situation that economic
game theory considers are different from the role of games in every-
day life, sometimes considerably so. The scenarios of game theory are
mainly modeled on gambling and parlor games, and thus are charac-
terized by a competitive situation. They are about ultimately winning
the game by employing a successful game strategy. Therefore, game
theory considers games entirely in terms of their functional rationality.
Because of this focus on functional rationality, economic game theory

49
In the case of neuroeconomics, whose object it is to examine the biological deter-
minedness of decisions, it is more appropriate to speak of behavioral reactions instead
of free decisions of the economic subjects.
50
The second edition of Theory of Games and Economic Behavior is considered
seminal in this context because it makes some decisive corrections (Neumann and
Morgenstern 21947).
124 chapter two

completely zeroes in on the strategic character of games while ignor-

ing their playful, flippant and extra-ordinary aspects; put briefly,
those aspects of the game that are the basis of its special position in the
sphere of everyday life, compared to other social activities.51
Game theory operates on the premise that human sociality is best
described as a rule-guided interaction. A rule-guided interaction is
defined as an ordered sequence of individual strategic decisions in a
game.52 According to game theory, it is very important for the analysis
of these individual decisions that the players be capable of adjusting
their behavior in response to the behavior of others. Thus, players are
not only aware of their own game strategies, but also of other players
strategies, which they accordingly can make use of if benefitial to
them. Unlike rational decision-making theory,53 game theory takes
into account that social individuals do not make their decisions in
isolation, but in relation to a social environment in which other indi-
viduals also make decisions, and that it is therefore useful to include
these decisions into ones own decision-making process.
However, game theory does not describe social togetherness with
others as a phenomenological structure that connects human beings
on a pre-reflexive or expressive-corporeal level. Thus, game theory
does not describe something like the primary interpersonal rela-
tion of the social encounter examined in the first chapter. Instead, it
attempts to explain social togetherness as an extension of the rational
decision-making behavior of individuals with specific previous knowl-
edge, namely, previous knowledge about the decisions of others. Even
though game theory assumes that the result of a decision in an interac-
tion is always dependent on the decisions of others, or rather must be
coordinated with them, its modeling of sociality nevertheless fails to
include the entire sphere of interaction with other human beings on

51
In his cultural-anthropological study Homo Ludens (Huizinga 1970), Dutch
historian Johan Huizinga describes the playful or immaterial aspect of the game as
its cultural factor. In this way, he decidedly separates the cultural appearance of the
game from the so-called biological theory of the game and criticizes the reduction of
the game to its biological utility as insufficient.
52
See Goffman 1959, 15, who describes the sociological idea of interaction as the
reciprocal influence of individuals upon one anothers actions. However, precisely
this idea of reciprocity and interpersonal intersubjectivity is absent from the theoreti-
cal horizon of economics that is focused on the individual.
53
Rational decision-making theory only represents individual or collective deci-
sions in situations that emerge independently of ones own behavior in this situation
(nature as imagined opponent).
 the conflict between egoism and altruism 125

an emotional and pre-reflexive-corporeal level. It ignores the fact that,

aside from the consequences of decisions, the relationships between the
players, their mutual behavioral expectations, and perceptions influ-
ence the course of the game. This is all the more bewildering when it is
taken into account that, when closely examined, even strategic interac-
tion must transcend the consequentialist calculation of ones own and
others game success. Every consequentialist calculation first requires
an interpretive clarification of the other players intentions and behav-
ioral goals to estimate their potential behavior in the game. In the
course of this chapter, it will be demonstrated that it is precisely these
basic insights into the hermeneutics and phenomenology of human
interaction that economics strives to (re)gain by synthesizing its meth-
ods with those of neurobiology. In contrast, game theory, which is the
primary orientation model of economics, operates on the premise of
unconnected individuals who, although they do not think and act in
isolation in rational decision-making theory, are nevertheless always
seen as singular entities whose ordered interaction must first be real-
ized by mediation through formal institutions (the rules of the game).
Thus, the construction of sociality in game theory is very similar to the
methodological individualism in contractualist theories of society.
It is characteristic of the methodological individualism of game
theory to interpret an individuals decision-making behavior in inter-
actions in terms of its objective utility and target function. This means
that it develops a supra-individual model of decision-making that
organizes all decisions according to the same rationality principle: the
principle of utility maximization. For example, the maximin rule is
considered to be a good decision-making rule according to the prin-
ciple of utility maximization under conditions of uncertainty. The
maximin rule states that when individuals are presented with several
behavioral options, they should always choose the one that helps them
maximize the lowest possible benefit they can gain from this decision
in comparison with all other behavioral options. Thus, game theory
defines a rational decision in terms of utility maximization as an indi-
viduals behavior that is geared to maximize the individuals benefits
under the given circumstances.
In order to apply this model of rational decision-making to con-
crete situations, it is now necessary to define not only the principles of
decision-making, but also the concrete goals of the individual. Game
theory accomplishes this by assuming that individuals strive to maxi-
mize their benefits in relation to a preferential order. The preferential
126 chapter two

order states how individuals evaluate objectively measurable good or

categories of goods. Thus, it provides information about an agents
objective goals of action and their priorities. For example, if individu-
als who are scientists at a university have a preference for becoming
rich and famous as quickly as possible, they will see the only benefit
of an academic exchange with other researchers in co-publishing as
many papers as possible in prestigious academic journals. In con-
trast, if they have a preference for attaining social recognition and
acknowledgement within a research group, they will see the benefit
of interacting with other researchers in collaborating on projects with
them, which will not necessarily only manifest itself in publications
and measurable results. Accordingly, the benefits of an interaction can
be determined quite differently depending on an individuals assumed
preferential order. Game theory accounts for this fact by viewing the
question of what is beneficial about an interaction in a strictly formal
manner. It represents the consequence of every possible game decision
in a mathematical utility function, and formalizes the result on the
basis of the probable outcome of the game. However, it is important
to realize that these utility functions are merely mathematical repre-
sentations of preferential orders and thus do not measure benefits as
such. This means that they first need to be applied to calculate the real
consequences of a decision.
The introduction of objective preferential orders ensures the inter-
personal comparability of game strategies, even in the face of entirely
divergent subjective attitudes and utility expectations. In order to do
the same for the analysis of the game outcome, the target functions of
individual strategies are indicated by numbers, which means that the
consequences related to the players decisions can be presented in the
form of a payoff matrix.54 This matrix gives a numerical representa-
tion of a game strategys success. To determine the optimal result of
a decision, a payment matrix takes into account the strategies of all
participating players, because the result of an interaction is consid-
ered to be the result of the combination of strategies of all players. In

54
The term payoff matrix may lead to the assumption that game theory does not
differentiate between utility/benefits and payoff/profits. However, this is not the case.
In economic theory, the actual goal of human actions is not the maximization of
monetary profit, but the maximization of the value-related benefits of a transaction.
The distinction between payoff/profit and utility/benefits expresses that human beings
are not exclusively materialistic creatures (see Kirchgssner 22000, 1516).
 the conflict between egoism and altruism 127

order to represent the course of an interaction, all imaginable possible

behavioral strategies of the players are put into sequence and summa-
rized in one single payoff matrix (a vector graph or game tree). Here,
classical game theory models behavior entirely in terms of possible
equilibriums of strategic interaction, i.e., it assumes that the players
coordinate their strategies until they have reached a stable symmetrical
equilibrium. Simply put, the premise here is that a strategic interac-
tion will only produce a stable coordination of actions once none of
the players can derive any more benefit from changing their strategy
again (nash equilibrium).
Now, the crucial question is how experimental economics connects
with game theory. It is clear that it uses game theory to gain hypoth-
eses for its experimental approach, thereby attempting to translate
the analytical models of game theory into an experimental design. It
does so by turning game theorys predictions about optimal decision-
making processes into empirical hypotheses and applying them to
interactional situations. This means that economic theory transforms
abstract model situations into methods of decision-making under real
conditions. Its goal is to examine whether the payoff functions pro-
posed by game theory as ideal types can be proved or disproved in
empirically observable behavioral reactions.
In economic behavioral experiments, the interaction between two
or more test subjects is always modeled as a monetary transaction.
In this transaction, a (material) good is transferred back and forth
between the test subjects. Here, economics works on the premise that
every transaction takes places with reference to rules of reciprocity and
fairness. The enforcement of these rules, however, is not monitored
and they therefore have an informal status, unlike the rules of a game.
A transaction can occur between two to n individual players who meet
once (anonymous interaction), between two or more so-called face-
less strangers (interaction between strangers), between two or more
real players and a computer simulation (impersonal interaction), or
between two or more partners who meet repeatedly (repeated interac-
tion). However, the main characteristic of experimental modeling of
interactions in economics is the economic assumption that a trans-
action only represents a real situation for the test subjects if a deci-
sion for or against the transfer of a good has material consequences.
Therefore, the basis of every economic modeling of decision-making
behavior is the so-called assumption of false consciousness:
128 chapter two

We like to think of ourselves as nice, caring, altruistic beings, but then

when put in the appropriate circumstances (when money is at stake),
we just cannot help but act as the cynical agents postulated by economic
models.55
Based on the assumption that human behavior can ultimately only
be explained through material incentive structures, economic labo-
ratory experiments always model social interactions as monetary
transactions. This is also the reason why economists only work with
empirical instruments that enable them to combine the expenses and
consequences of a decision with material costs for the agent (costly
behavior). This method is accompanied by a very pejorative attitude
toward language (Talk is cheap!) that causes economists to evaluate
the verbally articulated attitudes, intentions, and self-assessments of
the test subjects as unrealistic. Accordingly, experimental economists
claim that their studies, in contrast to those of other social scientists,
replicate not the agents subjective attitudes or avowed volition, but
their revealed preferences.56
Moreover, the modeling of transactions with monetary conse-
quences in economical experimental studies has the side effect of
making it possible for the consequences of all dimensions of behavior
to be quantitatively examined and represented. Therefore, the result
of economic modeling is always a mathematical construct of human
behavior that is created with exact scientific methods.
In the evaluation of its behavioral experiments, experimental eco-
nomics makes a connection between the types of situation (games)
and the observed behavioral patterns of the test subjects. For exam-
ple, typical social behavioral patterns can be reciprocal, altruistic, or
egoistic, giving and taking in an interaction. Experimental studies
examine whether these behavioral patterns can all be modeled in a
specific game situation (trust game, ultimatum game, dictator game
etc.). In contrast, neuroeconomic experiments go one step further by
establishing correlations between the observed behavioral patterns and
the neurophysiological experiential structures of an individual. These
experiments investigate whether behavioral patterns are dependent on
neural activations in the test subjects brains. Thus, unlike experimen-

55
Guala 2005, 241.
56
This attitude once more demonstrates the strong distancing of economic social
research from its sociological and socio-psychological equivalents, which assign some
truth value to surveys and interview studies, and thus to the test subjects self-related
statements.
 the conflict between egoism and altruism 129

tal economics, neuroeconomics examines not only the institutional

and social, but also the biological conditions of behavior.

15 The Modeling of Social Preferences

The last section demonstrated that economic game and decision-

making theory presents the social togetherness of human beings as
the coordination of their rational benefit calculations. If these ben-
efit calculations are to be made empirically concrete, statements must
be made about which of the agents preferences determine what will
count as a benefit in an interaction.

15.1 What are Preferences?

By modeling preferences, economics construes relations between an
agent and various selectable goods. Preferences indicate which good an
agent will prefer over other goods if he can choose freely among them.
But unlike motives or reasons, preferences cannot justify an agents
decision for or against a good. Therefore, they must not be mistaken for
moral values, principles, or ideals that motivate the decision-making
behaviors of a human being. Rather, preferences are to be under-
stood as references to money, food, time resources, living space, or
other things that represent human needs. They determine which good
received preferential treatment over other goods. Another important
factor for the modeling of preferences is that preferred goods can be
maximized by the agents decision-making behavior. Thus, preferences
refer to goods that are characterized by their potential to be quantita-
tively increased in value.
Another factor that distinguishes preferences from human experi-
ential attitudes can be explained by citing an example that highlights
the difference between an economic agents preference and a persons
self-understanding:
Take, for example, a homeowner who rents parts of his home to students.
The homeowner believes himself to be neither xenophobic nor sexist.
Nevertheless, looking at a period of several years, it can be observed that
he never rents student rooms to foreign students, and almost exclusively
to female students. The landlords self-understanding and his prefer-
ences contradict each other.57

57
Quante 2003, 55 (transl. M.S.). However, the situational description presented
by Quante ignores the fact that a statistical collection of preferences must also always
130 chapter two

Economics works on the assumption that the preferential behavior of

test subjects does not necessarily coincide with their self-perception
or their subjective evaluation of a situation. Preference models repre-
sent an external perspective on behavior, which does not necessarily
diminish their epistemic value. Even though the majority of women
would not say that their favorite color is red, it is nevertheless remark-
able to learn that a statistical observation of the preferential behavior
of women while shopping has shown that they choose a red article
of clothing with above-average frequency when presented with the
choice between red and blue.58 Thus, preferences are not attitudes that
a person is necessarily explicitly aware of, but behavioral goals that are
defined by manifesting in the consequences of behavior.
Since preferences do not necessarily correlate with conscious behav-
ioral attitudes, their modeling in the behavioral laboratory cannot pro-
vide any insights into the personal motivation of the agents. Indeed,
the empirical modeling of preferences is actually often used in eco-
nomics to contrast the test subjects attitudes and self-assessments
with a different point of view demonstrating that actual behavior is not
expressed at all in the test subjects motives and attitudes.59 Therefore,
the modeling of preferences in economics is accompanied by a criti-
cal attitude toward constricting behavior to a subject and his wishes,
ideas, and intentions. Experimental economics substitutes the primacy
of self-experience on the behavioral level with the primacy of third-
party observation.
Since the agents preferences cannot be observed directly in a behav-
ioral experiment, they must be inferred from observed behavior by

take into account the entire set of other applicants among which the landlord makes
his selection. The landlord only has a xenophobic preference if he chooses a local stu-
dent with above-average frequency even though he would have been able to choose a
foreign student in every individual case.
58
See Hurlbert and Ling 2007.
59
It has been pointed out time and again in countless economic papers that self-
statements and self-positioning performances can only provide limited information
about actual preferences. This is particularly attributed to the fact that cultural pre-
formations of self-statements obscure the view on ones own preferential behavior.
Thus, for example, in a culture in which positive self-statements are not the norm,
it is normal that positive assessments of ones own behavior, such as praise or self-
appreciation are made indirectly, i.e., via a detour of third-party statements. Unlike
qualitative social research, which works with empirical interviews and actually does
value such indirect self-statements, experimental economics represents the view that
preferences cannot be modeled via self-statements at all but actually often contradict
them.
 the conflict between egoism and altruism 131

measuring a set of indicators. In an experiment, indicators are opera-

tionalizable hypotheses about the test subjects preference behavior.
They indicate whether an agent in an interaction game reacts posi-
tively or negatively to a behavioral option offered to him during the
game under condition x. Thus, the determination of indicators includes
detailed information about when a behavioral reaction can be observed
during the game. The previously defined indicators are subsequently
evaluated statistically. Thus, the experimental modeling of a behavioral
preference is ultimately the product of a systematic data analysis.
In the context of preference modeling, experimental economics has
put forth the hypothesis that in social dilemma games, a specifically
new category of preferences can be observed whose existence has not
yet been adequately noted by game theory: the category of social pref-
erences. According to the definition of experimental economics, indi-
viduals with social preferences are agents who realize prosocial goals
in their behavior. They assess the benefit of an interaction not only in
terms of their own interests and needs, but incorporate the interest
of other agents into the selection of their behavioral options: Social
preferences refer to how people rank different allocations of material
payoffs to themselves and others. We use the term self-interested to
refer to people who do not care about the outcome of others.60
The modeling of social preferences is meant to express that social
agents who interact with each other include not only their own ben-
efit, but also the benefit that their interaction partners can derive from
an interaction in the formation of their behavioral strategies. Agents
with social preferences are thus capable of relating their own interests
to those of others in their rational evaluation of the game result. The
modeling of social preferences therefore assumes that, in addition to
the relation between an agent and his material surroundings, there is
a social relation to other agents that causes this agent to opt for proso-
cial decisions and modes of behavior.
The studies of experimental economics have shown that the existence
of social preferences represents a problem that is not only interesting
from a social-scientific perspective, but also relevant for the forma-
tion of economic theories and models. By modeling social preferences,
researchers can represent the utility functions of agents who interact
with each other in situations in which prosocial behavior significantly

60
Camerer and Fehr 2004, 55 (emphasis in the original).
132 chapter two

influences the end result of a monetary transaction. In order to be

able to examine these situations, experimental economics has modified
and extended some paradigms of classic game theory to make them
capable of representing the social benefit of an interaction.61 One of
these game paradigms and the corresponding explanatory approach
will now be analyzed more closely.

15.2 The Ultimatum Game and Inequity Aversion of Social Agents

In 1999, a publication62 by behavioral economists Ernst Fehr and
Klaus M. Schmidt drew attention to the existence of human modes of
behavior that, contrary to the assumptions of the homo oeconomicus
model, cannot be modeled as rational self-interested preferences.
These modes of behavior are characterized by the fact that economic
agents do not take the opportunity of maximizing their own benefit
because they are placed in situations in which their own benefit could
not be maximized without minimizing the benefits of another per-
son. If such an interaction is represented in a monetary payoff matrix,
it turns out that benefit maximization according to the self-interest
principle would cause the interaction partners profit to be less than
the agents own. In the face of these circumstances, a prosocial agent
decides against personal and for social benefit maximization. How-
ever, according to Fehr and Schmidt, such a prosocial preference can
only be proven in a behavioral experiment if the (negative) decision
against maximizing ones own benefit is correlated with the (positive)
decision for a fair payoff function in which both agents receive an
equivalent share of the profits. Thus, Fehr and Schmidt model social
utility functions in a behavioral experiment according to the equiva-
lence rule. This rule states that only the equitable distribution of profits
to both agents represents a fair solution of the game situation (egali-
tarian principle of profit).
In order to find out more about the conditions of a behavioral sit-
uation in which utility is represented by an egalitarian principle of
profit, Fehr and Schmidt conduct a standardized two-person ultima-

61
A graphic overview of the seven games with which social behavioral preferences
are modeled can be found in Camerer and Fehr 2004, 6163. These games are called:
Prisoners Dilemma Game, Public Goods Game, Ultimatum Game, Dictator Game,
Trust Game, Gift Exchange Game, Third-Party Punishment Game.
62
Fehr and Schmidt 1999.
 the conflict between egoism and altruism 133

tum game.63 The ultimatum game is a highly simplified negotiation

situation between two parties. As a situation type, it is defined by
the scenario that two players have the option of participating in an
interaction revolving around the distribution of a specified amount
of money. In the ultimatum game,64 the proposer A has the option of
distributing a specified amount, x, between himself and a responder
B. Proposer A acts as a monopolist, and his offer is defined as an ulti-
matum, i.e., it can only be accepted or rejected, but not modified. The
game progresses as follows:65

A and B interact anonymously via computer screen. But they know

that the other person really exists.66
A receives the specified sum x before the beginning of the game.67
Round 1:
A decides which amount s of x he wants to give to B. He must make
an offer s 0.1x.
Round 2:
B decides whether he (a) accepts As distribution offer or (b) rejects it.
Result:
In case (a), A receives a profit g1 with g1= x s and B a profit of g2
with g2 = s.
In case (b), none of the players receive a profit, and the transaction
is classified as a failure.

63
The ultimatum game was first developed and conducted by Gth et al. 1980.
Then, the decision of the test subjects to equally distribute the games profit was still
classified as irrational because it could not be explained with economic model ratio-
nality. In order to find out whether the equivalence rule is applied by the proposer in
the distribution of the money only out of fear of rejection, Forsythe et al. 1994 tried
to clarify what happens when a responder does not have the option of rejecting the
offer by transforming the ultimatum game into the dictator game (see 17.3). Thus,
the development of the ultimatum game raised new questions and problems, and the
attempts to address these questions and problems in turn resulted in the modification
of the ultimatum game.
64
This description of the ultimatum game is adapted from the statements in Fehr
and Schmidt 1999, 825.
65
The following passage describes the variant of the ultimatum game that is pre-
sented: ibid., 825.
66
In all experiments that are described in the following passages, the experimental
design stipulates that the test subjects do not have visual or verbal contact with each
other. They are placed into separate cubicles at the beginning of the experiment, and
only see each other before or after the experiment, when leaving the laboratory.
67
In game experiments, the amounts in question are real money that is subse-
quently paid in cash to the participants.
134 chapter two

In the course of the experiment, a significant number of test subjects

displayed a behavioral pattern that can be called fair, in the sense
of an egalitarian distribution of profits. The evaluation of numerous
ultimatum experiments68 showed that

(i) Almost no proposer A made an offer of s > 0.5x;

(ii) The majority of proposers A made an offer between s = 0.4x and
s = 0.5x and thus observed the equivalence rule;
(iii) Almost no proposer A made an offer of s < 0.2x;
(iv) As a rule, very low offers of proposers A were rejected by players
B, and the probability of rejection decreased proportionally to s.

In Fehrs and Schmidts article (1999), the results of ultimatum experi-

ments are interpreted as a refutation of the canonical behavioral model
of economics. The model of rational self-interest maximization would
predict the outcome of an ultimatum game to be that proposer A
makes an offer to player B that is as low as possible, in order to keep
his own profit in the game as high as possible from the start. As for
player B, the self-interest model predicts that he will take any offer,
no matter how small, from player A, because this will still be more
profitable for him than receiving profit at all. In contrast, the results
of the empirical implementation of the ultimatum game show first, that
the proposers A tend to make offers that are as fair as possible under
the equivalence rule (0.4x or 0.5x) from the start, and second, that the
responders B actually do see an advantage in rejecting an unfair offer
from the A players, even if they could make a profit, however small,
by accepting it.
Fehr and Schmidt interpret the decision of proposer A against an
unfair distribution result as an aversion to a behavior that results in
unequal profits between the agents (inequity aversion). They claim that
this aversion is significantly influenced by the fact that proposer A con-
siders the distribution of profits to be unfair (inequality perception).69
They believe that the aversion against unfair behavior can motivate
an agent to relinquish the (more rational, from the perspective of
game theory) maximization of his own self-interest. In their article,

68
See Fehr and Schmidt 1999, 826.
69
An individual is inequity averse if he dislikes outcomes that are perceived as
inequitable. (ibid., 820).
 the conflict between egoism and altruism 135

Fehr and Schmidt back up their assertion by interpreting quite a few

other experimental studies. They suggest explaining the agents unself-
ish behavior with their preference for fairness norms. They define
a fairness preference as the preference for a decision that measures
the utility of an interaction not by an agents own benefit, but by the
symmetrical distribution of profits between the interaction partners.
Accordingly, a fairness preference can be modeled empirically as the
decision for the numerical equity of payoff functions.70
Fehrs and Schmidts model represents a trend reversal in the dis-
cussion of social preferences in experimental economics because it
measures fairness preferences in a purely consequentialist manner,
and thus is capable of indicating their influence on the payoff func-
tion of an interaction. This is important to note because there have
been, and continue to be, alternative suggestions.71 As early as 1993,
economist Matthew Rabin suggested representing the reciprocity of
behavioral expectations in an interaction game as fairness equilib-
ria in a payoff function.72 He attempted to show that the conclusion
of a fair game outcome can be explained by modeling the reciprocal
interactions of the participating agents. According to Rabin, a pro-
poser A is significantly more willing to equally share the profit of an
interaction with responder B if he ascribes friendly, cooperative, in a
word: reciprocal, intentions to him. Accordingly, the proposers beliefs
about his counterpart play a decisive role in Rabins model. Therefore,
Rabins model attempts to explain the players intentions and convic-
tions as well as the payoff function. Fehr and Schmidt, however, reject
such modeling for both methodological and practical reasons. Rabins
modeling, they state, (a) complicates the mathematical manageability
and logical simplicity of the model, and (b) limits the applicability of

70
The modeling of an inequity aversion with the help of the equivalence rule does
not necessarily have to be evaluated in a positive way, like Fehr und Schmidt (1999)
do. It can also turn into the basis for modeling social envy or the desire for social
redistribution. This is acceded even by Klaus M. Schmidt himself: This [the social
inequity aversion, R.K.] does not necessarily have to be considered a good attitude;
an excessive tendency toward equality can also be interpreted as envy that in turn
has harmful social and economic consequences. (Cited in an article of Frankfurter
Allgemeine Zeitung: Plickert 2007, transl. M.S.)
71
See Rabin 1993; Levine 1998; Camerer 2003. Various models of social preferences
are tested against each other in experiments by Charness and Rabin 2000.
72
See Rabin 1993.
136 chapter two

the model to two-person games.73 This purely formal rejection of the

modeling of intentions with regard to fairness preferences shows that
the beginnings of the experimental examination of social preferences
were still entirely determined by economic theorys need for manage-
able mathematical models.

16 Norms for Cooperative Behavior

The examination of all conceivable forms of social interaction and

decision-making behavior quickly became the main focus of interest
in recent experimental behavioral studies conducted by economists
Ernst Fehr, Urs Fischbacher, Michael Kosfeld, Simon Gchter, Armin
Falk, Klaus M. Schmidt, and others. The experimental modelings in
these studies are not limited to bilateral types of interaction like the
ultimatum game described above. In addition to bilateral interactions,
the field of experimental economics also directs its research efforts
at the dynamics of group interaction. A crucial instrument for analyz-
ing the functionality and dynamics of group decisions is construing
game situations in which agents have the option of disciplining other
players for non-cooperative behavior. The basic game theoretical para-
digm for the modeling of such situations is interaction games in which
agents can cooperate with each other on a voluntary basis and without
coercion.

16.1 Sanctions in Public Goods Games

The framework of game theory allows for the development of mod-
els for situation types that, according to the rationality parameters
of game theory, are considered dilemma situations due to their clear
illustration of conflict between personal and social benefits in an inter-
action. A social dilemma can be defined as any situation in which a
cooperative or non-cooperative game strategy decides the interactional
outcome, and in which agents do not have any additional behavioral
options.74 Therefore, it may actually be more appropriate to refer to

73
See Fehr and Schmidt 1999, 820.
74
Aside from the ultimatum game described in the last section, the prisoners
dilemma game is the most well-known social dilemma game. In the prisoners
dilemma game, two prisoners have the option of disclosing or withholding informa-
tion that incriminates both players. There is no way of synchronizing the individual
 the conflict between egoism and altruism 137

social dilemma games as evolutionary cooperation games,75 because

their modeling is designed to investigate the situational and incen-
tive conditions for the evolution of cooperative behavior. The goal is
to find out under what conditions cooperation emerges by itself in a
voluntary interaction between players. It is important that cooperative
behavior is not coerced or enforced externally in these games. For the
design of a social dilemma game, this means that the course of the
game must explicitly give the option of cooperation/non-cooperation
to the players.
Cooperation dilemmas can best be modeled in public goods games
that deal with making contributions to a good that is shared by all
players. The public goods game is an n-person game, a game with
more than two players, in which n persons simultaneously decide
which amount x of a specified sum S they want to contribute to a
common project P (0 x S). After that, they receive a payoff G,
which consists of the sum paid to them in the beginning minus the
contribution to the common good and their share of the public good
that is equally distributed among all players (G = S x + P/n). The
behavior of agents in a public goods game can be either cooperative
or non-cooperative. This means that they are free to contribute a
very large sum or nothing at all to a project that will benefit all of the
players equally in the end.
For agents with egoistical preferences, a public goods situation
clearly represents a temptation to exploit the other players by keeping

decisions with each other. Rationally speaking, both players can achieve the best result
if they cooperate with each other and withhold the information. However, on an indi-
vidual level, it is more rational to disclose the incriminating information at the cost of
the other player and thus be exempt from punishment. Thus, in this situation, game
theory offers a cooperative and a non-cooperative solution strategy. The sequential
implementation of the game shows that it is the best strategy to repeat the decision
of the other player from the previous game reciprocally (tit for tat strategy). A more
detailed description of the promising tit for tat strategy in the iterated prisoners
dilemma game is given by Axelrod 2006, 324, who tested this strategy in computer
tournaments as the most successful strategy to solve the dilemma.
75
The term cooperation games is not to be confused with the game-theoretical
distinction between cooperative (coalitional ) and non-cooperative games, as this
distinction refers to the permissibility of agreements between the players in a game-
theoretical modeling. While non-cooperative game theory only permits those agree-
ments that can prevail of their own accord, cooperative or coalitional game theory
also takes into account agreements that need an external authority to be enforced
(see Curiel 1997). Experimentally modeled cooperation games are counted as non-
cooperative games. In them, the rule-guided cooperation of several individual players
is replicated without them being able to agree to this cooperation beforehand.
138 chapter two

ones own contribution to the common project as low as possible (or

even giving nothing at all), in order to profit all the more from the
investments of other players in the end. However, such a strategy is
only profitable in the short term. In repeated interactions, such a strat-
egy destroys the willingness of other players to contribute anything to
the common project at all.76 Thus, this exploitative behavior obstructs
the permanent establishment of cooperative structures in social inter-
action, and demonstrates that public good is at risk as long as the
conflict between egoistical and prosocial agents cannot be decided in
favor of the prosocial agents.
A field study conducted by political scientist Elinor Ostrom in 1990
first takes on the problem of protecting public goods, the so-called
tragedy of the commons,77 in an explicitly empirical way. Ostrom
conducted a comparative study on the local use of common and col-
lective goods (irrigation systems, national parks, high mountain pas-
tures) on several continents. In her study, she was able to show that a
long-term successful protection of public goods against over-use can-
not be safeguarded by institutional settings (e.g. official laws to pro-
tect parks and water reservoirs), and only succeeds if those involved
with the commons (residents, users) themselves establish informal
rules for protecting their public good, and autonomously monitor the
enforcement of these rules. By looking at individual examples, Ostrom
demonstrates that commons users can employ cooperative strategies
to put a stop to free riders who only want to benefit at the expense
of the community. Thus, her study suggests the conclusion that an
effective protection of public goods is only possible if the individuals
in social groups pursue collective strategies to prevent the exploitation
of the public good by individuals by sanctioning antisocial behavior. A
high degree of cooperation and clearly defined, context-adapted rules
for the use of the public good, as well as an autonomous control and
monitoring system, are needed, to prevent the so-called tragedy of the
commons the inevitable destruction of public goods through the
exploitation of natural resources, i.e., pollution, overfishing, overgraz-
ing etc. The local monitoring of usage rules for public goods by the

76
See the results of twelve public goods experiments from all over the world in Fehr
and Schmidt 1999, 838 (table 2). In the implementation of public goods games and a
total participation of 1041 subjects, 73% of the subjects acted as free riders, i.e., they
did not make a contribution to the public good (x = 0).
77
See Ostrom 1990.
 the conflict between egoism and altruism 139

population cannot be replaced by institutional forms of protection, e.g.

the monitoring of nature parks by park rangers or police protection.
Ostroms studies on the use of public goods have drawn attention
to the particular characteristic of public goods situations. Namely,
whenever individual utility maximization increases, collective utility
decreases and vanishes entirely in the long run. Thus, public goods
situations are situation types where the choice between a cooperative
and a non-cooperative behavioral strategy significantly affects the final
outcome of an interaction. In these situations, cooperation is not pos-
sible on an individually rational level, but only on a socially rational
level. In public goods situations, utility can therefore only be generated
if the principle of rational self-interest is violated by the majority of
players. A public good is only truly profitable if all beneficiaries of the
public good, or at least a majority of them, can agree on a cooperative
strategy. In public goods situations, a social conflict between coopera-
tive and non-cooperative agents can be represented in a paradigmatic
manner.
The empirical analysis of public goods situations in Ostrom (1990)
has demonstrated that the collective benefit in an interaction is only
greater than the individual self-interest if every agents willingness to
cooperate can be increased by prosocial incentive conditions. In the
aftermath of Ostroms field studies, attempts were made to model the
functionality of such prosocial incentive conditions for cooperative
behavior in the experimental laboratory. By implementing them into
an experimental design, behavioral economists succeeded in exam-
ining the conditions required for the emergence of social coopera-
tion among commons users more closely. They were working on the
assumption that cooperation is determined by situational as well as
anthropological factors. To be able to model situationally determined
cooperation in experiments, the rules of cooperation games that rep-
resent the institutional setting were extended by an additional option
in which it is possible to punish or reward other players following
an interaction.78 Punishment was meted out either symbolically, by
deducting points, or effectively, by deducting profit.

78
Fehr et al. 1997 describes the evidence for a game in which it is possible to
reciprocally punish or reward other players by determining a transformation vector
for their payoff function following the transaction. The reciprocity effects in the pun-
ishment and reward of other players were significant.
140 chapter two

A two-phase public goods game consisting of a decision about the

amount of an investment in the public good and a punishment option
was first conducted by economists Ernst Fehr and Simon Gchter,
and is documented in the study Punishment in Public Goods Experi-
ments (2000).79 The outcome of the experiment after introducing the
punishment option was significant: as soon as the option to punish
non-cooperative players was introduced, 80% of individuals cooper-
ated fully and invested the entire sum available to them as a contribu-
tion into the common project (x = S). However, this behavior can still
be fully explained in terms of the economic standard model of behav-
ior: Since a non-cooperative player can be punished by all other play-
ers individually, this behavior can turn out to be quite costly for him.
As a rational player, he will decide to behave in a cooperative manner
in the face of such an option to avoid the costs of punishment.
The purpose of cooperation games with punishment options is to
model prosocial incentive conditions in which cooperation can prevail
as a game strategy among the players. Here, the punishment option
represents a strategic incentive condition for cooperative behavior, i.e.,
it can be incorporated into the utility calculation of rational agents. In
social dilemma games, the modeling of a punishment option consti-
tutes a kind of second-order public good,80 because it serves to estab-
lish a cooperative game strategy as a rational game strategy that helps
avoid the costs of punishment. In addition, the results of the experi-
ments show that there are individuals who display a preference toward
cooperation of their own accord. They cooperate in the first round
and only change their game strategy once they are exploited by other
players. They only continue with their cooperative strategy under the
condition that a majority of the players also cooperate (conditional
cooperation). If this is not the case, they prefer to also behave in a
non-cooperative manner. These are also the players who are willing to
punish the other players for non-cooperative behavior.

16.2 Social Norms as a Second-Order Public Good?

The experimental modeling of public goods games has shown that a
sanctioning option significantly increases the agents overall willing-
ness to cooperate. While the players in a public goods game without

79
See Fehr and Gchter 2000; 2002, and Fehr and Schmidt 1999, 836839.
80
See Fehr and Gchter 2002, 137.
 the conflict between egoism and altruism 141

a punishment option abandon their cooperative behavior after the

first round, the introduction of a punishment option causes players to
again contribute to public goods investments. Cooperative behavior
becomes a stable game strategy. This demonstrates that not only the
agents preferences, but also the prosocial incentive conditions of a sit-
uation play a role in determining which modes of behavior will prevail
in the course of an interaction: cooperative or non-cooperative ones.81
According to this insight, experimental economics models cooperative
behavior as the effect of a strategic behavioral setting that gives players
the option to sanction non-cooperative behavior and thus to introduce
costs for non-cooperation.
A new insight discovered by the modeling of public goods games
with punishment options is that the emergence of a stable equilibrium
of cooperation can mainly be explained by the compliance with infor-
mal rules of behavior. Accordingly, from the perspective of experi-
mental economics, the social structure of an interaction consists not
only of the agents preferences and the institutional incentive condi-
tions of the situation, but also of informal arrangements as can be
found in social norms.82 In the wake of its insight into the cooperation-
increasing effect of sanctions, experimental economics has attempted
to model social norms in its experiments.
But the empirical evidence suggesting that the introduction of
sanctioning options has a significant impact on the decision-mak-
ing behavior of rational agents does not yet prove the assertion that
agents punish non-cooperative players in order to penalize a violation
of social norms.83 This is because the second-order public good cre-
ated through sanctions can only be made visible in an experimental
modeling by the contributions of the agents. But is the social norm of
cooperation identical to this behavioral pattern? Have the experiments
presented evidence that allows researchers to explicitly speak of an

81
Also see Fehr and Schmidt 1999, 856.
82
See Furubotn and Richter 22005, 19: In real life, of course, neither the formal
rules of society nor individual contracts are perfect, and individuals do not behave
completely rationally. Characteristically, gaps in the formal constraints are covered, to
some degree, by informal rules. [. . .] From a historical standpoint, we know that infor-
mal conventions existed before formal, legally enforceable rules came into being.
83
Fehr and Fischbacher 2004b, 186, equate the empirical behavioral pattern of
cooperation with the norm of cooperation: To provide evidence for the existence
of conditional cooperation, it is first shown that a large percentage of experimental
subjects indeed obey the norm. [. . .] Typically, the majority of the subjects behave in
a conditionally cooperative manner; that is, they increase their contribution to the
public good if the average contribution of the other group members increases.
142 chapter two

agents preference for the compliance with social norms and against
the violation of norms? In order to pursue this question, we first have
to clarify how norms are modeled in behavioral experiments, and sec-
ond, we must clarify what exactly can be considered a preference for
compliance with social norms in economics.
The studies of experimental economics assign a key function to
the modeling of social norms in the analysis of social preferences
and in the refutation84 of the self-interest hypothesis of economics.
This perceived significance is related to the specific understanding of
human sociality advanced by experimental economics. According to
economics, the essence of social community among human beings is
the communitys ability to evolve into a society as a social order that
encompasses particular group interests. Thus, experimental economics
equates human sociality with norm-guided behavior, and views coop-
eration as a function of compliance with, and enforcement of, social
norms. Ernst Fehr and Urs Fischbacher summarized the economic
understanding of the relation between cooperation and social norms
as follows:
Human societies represent a spectacular outlier with respect to all other
animal species because they are based on large-scale cooperation among
genetically unrelated individuals. In most animal societies, cooperation
is either orders of magnitude less developed compared with humans,
or it is based on substantial genetic relatedness. Cooperation in human
societies is mainly based on social norms, including in modern societies,
where a considerable amount of cooperation is due to the legal enforce-
ment of rules. Legal enforcement mechanisms cannot function unless
they are based on a broad consensus about the normative legitimacy of
the rules in other words, unless the rules are backed by social norms.
Moreover, the very existence of legal enforcement institutions is itself
a product of prior norms about what constitutes appropriate behav-
iour. Thus, it is necessary to explain social norms to explain human
cooperation.85

84
In his article on the experimental refutation of the homo oeconomicus, Schlicht
2003 holds forth that the critical attitude of experimental economics toward this model
can only be understood as a refutation if it is really able to show that the social pref-
erence of norm observance overrides the preference of self-interest. Schlicht doubts
that this is possible. Arguing against the experiments, he cites the so-called argument
of erosion. This argument states that in the long run, social, norm-guided behavior
always adapts to rational self-interest of its own accord because otherwise it could not
prevail at all. However, it would be possible to demonstrate that not all social norms
are eroded by self-interest in this way. For example, it is not the case in the social
convention of tipping.
85
Fehr and Fischbacher 2004b, 185.
 the conflict between egoism and altruism 143

This quote shows that experimental economics derives its understand-

ing of social norms mainly from their dissimilarity to legal norms,
which is found in the informal character of social norms.86 Social norms
are related to legal norms insofar as they can contribute to enforcing
compliance with legal norms within society on an informal level, and
thus help to ensure the acceptance of norms in society. In addition,
the economic understanding of social norms can be characterized by
differentiating it from the sociological understanding. In sociology,
norms have an ontological status, i.e., they represent social realities
whose existence is more presupposed than explained in the descrip-
tion of behavior. In contrast, economics views norms as objective stan-
dards of behavior,87 whose existence and genesis in human interaction
must first of all be proven and explained. Norms exist as shared con-
victions of the members of a group and dictate certain behaviors in
certain situations.88 Thus, they are also determined by situations.
It has already been shown that economic behavioral experiments are
based on a third-party observation of the examined agents decision-
making behavior. This observation occurs objectively and indepen-
dently of what the agents themselves would state as their personal
motivation for their behavior during the experiment. Thus, experi-
mental economics observes behavior by reducing it to objective goods
relations and their hierarchies (preferences). How, then, does the
modeling of norms find its place within this concept of behavior? In
order to operationalize norms in a behavioral experiment, they must
be representable by indicators that act as quantitatively measurable
relations in the agents individual behavior. In addition, experimental
economics works on the assumption that norms are implicitly obeyed
in the behavior of individuals. It is not interested in investigating how
norms can be defined, established, or justified to others. Therefore,
its studies explicitly refer to social and not moral norms. How social,

86
The footnotes of the article of Fehr and Fischbacher 2004b mainly refer to Elster
1989 and various contributions from Hechter and Opp 2001. Of course, at the time,
there was no mention yet of the book The Grammar of Society: The Nature and
Dynamics of Social Norms by Cristina Bicchieri, which was published in 2006 and
has been seminal for all subsequent discussions.
87
Norms are behavioral standards insofar as they indicate the average expectable
behavior within a behavioral aggregate, i.e., in a group of agents subject to scientific
examination.
88
See Fehr and Fischbacher 2004b, 185: Social norms are standards of behaviour
based on widely shared beliefs of how individual group members ought to behave in
a given situation.
144 chapter two

legal, and moral norms can be distinguished from each other can be
briefly demonstrated by outlining some of the characteristics of social
norms:89
(i) Social norms as shared and public behavioral expectations: Much
like moral and legal norms, social norms are defined as shared and
public expectations regarding ones own and others behavior. Unlike
moral and legal norms, however, they only persist as long as the major-
ity of a group or society considers them valid. In contrast, the validity
of moral norms is based on the individual deliberation of normative
reasons that could be cited for or against a certain behavior in a situ-
ation and that must be intersubjectively acceptable. This deliberation
should occur regardless of whether the majority of society members
consider a certain behavior factually necessary or not, for example
when it comes to the moral norm to not kill another human being, no
matter what the circumstances. The prohibition against killing, regard-
less of the circumstances, can be reasonably considered as intersub-
jectively acceptable, even if the majority of society members should
factually not comply with it. Thus, moral norms place unconditional
demands on behavior toward oneself and others, while social norms
are empirically determined.
(ii) Social norms and conventions: The differentiation between social
norms and conventions is somewhat more blurry than that between
social and moral norms. Like conventions, social norms can be under-
stood as empirically determined beliefs about ones own and others
behavior. They express an expectation about either the actual or the
required behavior in a situation. The social norm can be called a con-
vention only if the expectation is empirically fulfilled, i.e., if it can be
descriptively stated that an expectation is fulfilled by all members of a
group in this situation.90
(iii) Social norms and sanctions: Since social norms are not neces-
sarily empirically fulfilled expectations, their observance can be moni-
tored and sanctioned. This can occur through positive (rewarding) as
well as negative (punishment) sanctions. However, the notion that the
observance of norms is necessarily related to a realization or expecta-

89
The following thoughts are my own summary of the differentiations made by
Jon Elster and Cristina Bicchieri in their books (see Elster 1989, 97107; Bicchieri
2006, 846).
90
See Bicchieri 2006, 38.
 the conflict between egoism and altruism 145

tion of sanctions can be contested by solid reasons,91 for not every

belief that normatively codifies others behavior must be connected
to the expectation of a corresponding sanction. Otherwise it would
be impossible to think of an intrinsic motivation for the observance
of norms.
(iv) Social norms as shared or universal behavioral expectations:
Despite their origin in societal processes of socialization, not all norms
have the same status. Therefore, we should differentiate between the
communal norms of social groups and the universal norms of soci-
ety. In Western societies, the norms of fairness and reciprocity that
are modeled by experimental economics have the status of universal
norms, i.e., they apply to all human beings and accompany all societal
interactions between individuals as a behavioral expectation. However,
aside from these universal norms, there are particular norms that only
have empirical validity within a social group and whose observance is
therefore only expected of group members, not of outsiders.
How can the modelings of experimental economics be evaluated
in the context of this characterization of social norms? We have seen
already that economic behavioral models refer to social norms as sec-
ond-order public goods that can be preferred over other behavioral
focuses (e.g. focusing on ones profit) in behavior. Thus, the obser-
vance of social norms is represented by modeling a specific preference
relation of the agent. Experimental economics treats norms that refer
to the agents shared behavioral expectations as behavioral goals that
agents can select either directly, by behaving in a cooperative man-
ner, or indirectly, by punishing non-cooperative other players. The
treatment of norms as selectable goods has already been criticized in
relation to a similar process in John Rawls theory of justice.92 This
criticism was based on the argument that such treatment fails to estab-
lish a difference between the normatively given (what is right) and the

91
The explicit differentiation is between the anticipation of a sanctioning of norms
and the anticipation of their mere observance (see Bicchieri 2006, 11). Also see Social
norms are, like legal ones, public and shared, but, unlike legal rules, which are sup-
ported by formal sanctions, social norms may not be enforced at all. (ibid., 8). The
case is different with Elster 1989, 101, who cites informal sanctions as characteristic
of social norms, but does not unfold an idea of social norms that is as differentiated
and precise as Bicchieris.
92
See Rawls 1971, 132136. Rawls seeks to explain the choice of the two principles
of justice in the original state as the selection of goods in the context of economic
decision-making theory.
146 chapter two

desirable (what is good).93 Analogously, this also applies to the model-

ing of norms in experimental economics. Here, norms are represented
as social behavioral preferences that cannot be formally distinguished
from an orientation toward personal profit. As we have seen already
in the description of public goods experiments, the majority of agents
are only willing to observe a norm of cooperation if the cooperative
behavior becomes more profitable due to the introduction of costs for
non-cooperative behavior. Thus, a majority of agents only observes the
norm of cooperation if an institutional setting renders it compatible
with the agents self-interested preferences. But such a process is not
differentiated enough for a more precise understanding of the rela-
tionship between social norms and social preferences. This has also
been acknowledged in the subsequent research work of experimental
economics.
Due to the fact that preferences in economic behavioral experiments
can only be modeled in a consequentialist manner, i.e., through the
payoff function of behavioral decisions, the decision for or against
norm-compliant behavior in an experiment can only be declared to
be not motivated by self-interest if the sanctioning of other players is
costly for the agent displaying the cooperation preference. Only the
costs of sanctioning have a negative impact on the payoff function
of the agent, while the social norm, as a mere expectation regarding
the behavior of others, remains invisible. Thus, the modeling of social
norms in experimental economics relies on the characteristic of social
norms cited under (iii).
In contrast, little attention has been paid in experimental economics
to the public dimension of social norms mentioned under (i). There is
hardly any research about what kind of common knowledge test sub-
jects have about the underlying norms of a situation. This is made most
strikingly apparent by the fact that experimental economics ignores
that norms are behavior expectations that also express intersubjective
comprehension. Economic modeling is unaware of the social norm as
an intersubjectively communicated and stipulated behavior expecta-
tion that is valid, regardless of sanctions. It is unable to account for
the fact that a norm cannot only be enforced externally, but also be
demanded through gestures and words in the interaction itself. Thus,
its modelings shortchange not only the consequentialism, but also

93
See Habermas 1995, 115.
 the conflict between egoism and altruism 147

the expressive dimension of behavior.94 The neglect of intersubjective

forms of expression demonstrates the reductionism of economic mod-
eling, which puts the observance of norms into alarming proximity
to social control and enforced social disciplining. From the perspec-
tive of economics, norms can determine an agents behavior without
first in some way expressing his understanding of the norm or his
expectation that it will be observed. Thus, the modeling of sanctions
represents the only suitable instrument of economics for the study of
social norms.
In addition, it would be important to differentiate between coop-
eration and social norm conformity for a better representation of the
character of social norms within the framework of economic decision-
making theory. Experimental economics views cooperation merely as
a function of norm-conformity. But the distinction between coop-
erative and non-cooperative behavior is not congruent with the dif-
ferentiation between conformist and non-conformist behavior. The
first distinction indicates a difference that can only be constituted as
dependent upon the determination of a shared utility (public good) in
a situation; the second distinction indicates a difference that can only
be modeled as dependent upon the affiliation to a certain social group
or society, and the behavior expectations that are stipulated in that
group. By tendentially integrating the difference between cooperation
and norm conformity into the behavioral studies of Fehr, Fischbacher,
and Gchter, the researchers also suppress the range of behavior
defined by a distinction between the two. For example, it can be non-
conformist within a group or society to help a stranger. And yet, there
may be individuals within that group who cooperate with strangers
and by doing so, create social utility for the whole group. Precisely the
deviations from the norm-conformity of a social group are of crucial
importance for the ethical conception of human sociality, as will be
demonstrated in more depth in chapters three and four.
Regarding the previously asked question about the understanding of
norms in experimental economics, it can now be said that the model-
ing of social norms in economic behavioral experiments shows several
deficits. It ignores (i) the intersubjective and expressive dimension of

94
See Honneth 2003. Based on phenomena of social invisibility, Honneth describes
the forms and shapes of the social practice of recognition that is dependent on the
exchange of expressive gestures, and refuses to extend this exchange, and thus also the
recognition, to social outcasts.
148 chapter two

social reciprocity in behavior; (ii) the range of behavior that unfolds in

the gap between cooperation and norm-conformity, and it also ignores
(iii) the sociological differentiation between particular group norms
and universal societal norms. In addition, to justify the assumption
that experiments really observe a preference for the observance of
social norms in the agents decision-making behavior, it would be
necessary to clarify the socialization backgrounds of the participating
test subjects either sociologically or ethnologically. Because norms rely
on context, they cannot be studied in neutral behavioral settings like
a laboratory. That means it is not possible to derive an abstraction
from the examined test subjects acting as individuals who were social-
ized either in a pluralist society (Western world) or in a totalitarian
political system (Communist bloc) or in a communally limited tribal
society (small-scale societies). Precisely this awareness was presented
as one of the most important findings of empirical field research in
Elinor Ostroms seminal study on the examination of social sanctions.
In contrast, experimental economics seems to have largely forgotten
about the quality of field studies that do not merely strive to implement
the artificial world of the laboratory experiment into the lifeworld.

17 From Homo Reciprocans to Homo Altruisticus

As has already shown in the example of the public goods game, an

optimal game outcome in social dilemma games, namely, the com-
plete cooperation of all players, cannot be achieved if agents behave
selfishly. Social dilemma games are therefore an excellent way of inves-
tigating how an optimal game outcome can be achieved through the
systematic modification of the institutional setting. Here, experimental
economics works on the hypothesis that cooperative behavior in social
dilemma games only manifests itself under very specific preconditions.
Such behavior is determined by specific empirical incentives for proso-
cial behavior. Prosocial behavior is behavior that is not cooperative
in itself, but leads to the emergence of cooperative game strategies.95
Thus, the game modelings of experimental economics are an attempt
to gain empirical knowledge about how incentive structures for social

95
See Henrich and Henrich 2006.
 the conflict between egoism and altruism 149

agents can be constructed in a way that brings about the establishment

of cooperative behavior. This is achieved by developing institutional
settings that enable agents to create a basis for enforcing cooperation
norms through prosocial behavior.
The following section will examine the modeling of two prosocial
behavioral patterns that, in the opinion of experimental economics,
represent an important precondition for the emergence of cooperation
(human sociality). The modeling of reciprocity in the ultimatum game
and the trust game, the modeling of altruism in the dictator game,
and in the punishment of antisocial behavior can show to what extent
economic agents behave not only in an individually rational manner,
but also in a socially rational manner. Here, the experimentally mod-
eled situation types function as incentive structures that influence the
emergence of two fundamental social behavioral patterns:

(i) The modeling of negative reciprocity in the ultimatum game plays

a role in preventing selfish agents in social interactions from act-
ing unfairly. The modeling of positive reciprocity in the trust game
fulfils the function of prompting selfish agents in social interac-
tions to act fairly.
(ii) The modeling of altruistic rewarding or punishment by other play-
ers fulfils the function of prompting unselfish agents to act in a
way that is materially costly to them without causing the maximi-
zation of personal or reciprocal utility. The action has the purpose
of sanctioning norm-abiding behavior.

Thus, in addition to homo oeconomicus, experimental economics has

examined two other behavioral types: homo reciprocans and homo
altruisticus. Homo reciprocans refers to self-interested agents who act
according to the principle of reciprocity (i). Homo altruisticus refers
to unselfish agents who either directly advance the material good of
others at their own cost, or enforce the observance of social norms
at their own cost (ii). Thus, experimental economics has made a first
step toward the modeling of a plurality of economic agents in order
to replace the singular assumption of the purely egoistic utility maxi-
mizer in the form of the homo oeconomicus. This progress is made
possible by differentiating between egoistic, reciprocal and altruistic
agents.
150 chapter two

17.1 Negative Reciprocity: Ultimatum Game

As already seen in section 15.2, the ultimatum game is a game in
which a fixed amount of money is distributed between two players
by the first player. In this game, the players adopt one of two clearly
defined positions: only the first player is allowed to make a proposal
on how to distribute the money (ultimatum proposal ). In contrast,
the second player has the option of either accepting or rejecting the
first players offer of distribution, but is not allowed to make an offer
himself. If the second player rejects the proposal of the first player, the
transaction fails, and both players lose their profits. Thus, the ultima-
tum game only replicates the action of a proposer and the reaction of
a respondent, and is therefore not an interaction game.
In the ultimatum game, negative reciprocity is understood as the
responders rejection of an unfair offer. By rejecting the offer, he pre-
vents the proposer from receiving the bigger part of the sum. But he
also loses his own profit, allotted to him by the proposer. According
to the economic standard behavioral model, such a behavior cannot
be considered to be a rational decision, because, regardless of the pro-
posers unfair behavior, the responder should be willing to maximize
his personal gain even by small sums, and regardless of the other play-
ers bigger gain. In contrast, the economic model of social preferences
can explain rejection of an unfair distribution offer by alleging that
the responder has engaged in a deliberation of equivalence, and thus
refused the amount allotted by the proposer, finding it unfair. The pos-
sibility that the responder might prevent the transaction if the offer is
unfair prompts most proposers to make a fair offer that immediately
takes into account the interests of the other player. This, too, can be
interpreted as a social preference, because the proposer integrates the
other players interests into his individual utility expectation, classify-
ing them to be equally justified.
The modeling of an ultimatum game constitutes an instrument
that can be used by fair players for prompting selfish players to act
in a cooperative way. It demonstrates that the probability of the play-
ers treating each other unfairly decreases as soon as transactions are
bound to the mutual agreement of cooperation partners.

17.2 Positive Reciprocity: Trust Game

With the modeling of trust games, experimental economics examines
under what conditions an agent displays a positive belief regarding
 the conflict between egoism and altruism 151

the cooperative behavior of an interaction partner. In the course of

the interaction, such beliefs can turn out to be justified or unjustified.
Thus, they always represent a behavioral risk. Since beliefs about other
players in economic experiments are always connected to a decision
for or against a monetary transaction, they also represent a financial
risk. Thus, trust in economic experiments refers more precisely to the
investment of a material good.
In a trust game, an investor has the option of transferring part of
a fixed amount of money to a trustee in order to increase his own
capital. The investor A acts without a binding contract (no formal
institution), but he can multiply his profit in this game if he infor-
mally entrusts the trustee B with an amount of money and if the latter
cooperates with A by subsequently returning this amount. The game
progresses as follows:96

A and B interact anonymously via computer screen, but they know

that the other person really exists.
At the beginning of the game, A and B receive a sum s of s = 12 MU
(money units).97
Round 1:
A decides whether to transfer an amount x of (a) 0 MU; (b) 4 MU;
(c) 8 MU or (d) 12 MU to B.
Rule: In the case of a transfer, the amount is tripled and B receives
3x.
Round 2:
B is informed about As decision and he decides on what amount to
transfer back to A. He can transfer any amount between 0 and 48
MU (0 y s + 3x).
Rule: In the case of a return transfer, the amount is not tripled.
Result:
A receives a payoff g1 of g1 = s x + y.
B receives a payoff g2 of g2 = s + 3x y.

The trust game models the investment of player A as a type of informal

contract agreement. It construes a situation condition in which both

96
The following scenario is a variant of the trust game described in an article about
the influence of the hormone Oxytocin on trust: Kosfeld and Heinrichs et al. 2005.
97
The money in the game experiments is real money that is given to the partici-
pants after the experiment.
152 chapter two

agents must adhere to the norm of reciprocity to make a transaction

happen in the first place. In the trust game, the notion of trust only
pertains to the investor, because he is risking a transaction without
being able to control the trustees return transfer. Subsequently, the
trustee must prove himself to be trustworthy by showing positive reci-
procity, and paying back the entrusted goods.
According to the model of rational self-interest, it is not rational to
entrust a stranger with money without the institutional protection of
a contract. It would make more sense for player A to keep the whole
sum s allotted to him (x = 0). However, from a social and economic
viewpoint, it can indeed be rational to trust in the positive reciprocity
of an interaction partner. Thus, experimental economics views trust as
a prosocial behavioral pattern that enables cooperation and cannot be
reconciled with the model of individual, rational self-interest.

17.3 Pure Altruism: Dictator Game

With the modeling of reciprocity, experimental economics has pro-
vided empirical proof that there are indeed purely altruistic agents
whose preferences cannot be represented by any profit orientation
whatsoever. Altruistic agents differ from reciprocal agents in that they
do not expect their behavior to be reciprocated by the interaction part-
ner. They transfer a part of their capital to others even without gaining
reciprocal or reputational benefits. The seminal game for the modeling
of purely altruistic behavior is the dictator game. The design of the
dictator game is almost analogous to that of the ultimatum game, but
with the difference that the second player (recipient) does not have
the choice of accepting or rejecting the first players (givers) distri-
bution offer. Indeed, the recipient does not take any action at all in
the course of the game, making the position and offer of the giver
dictatorial. To exclude expectations of reciprocity or reputation, the
experiment is only conducted once. Thus, altruistic cooperation can
only manifest itself in one single act of the giver. The game progresses
as follows:98

98
The following scenario is a variant of the dictator game described in Fehr and
Schmidt 1999, 847848.
 the conflict between egoism and altruism 153

A and B interact anonymously via computer screen, but they know

that the other person really exists.
At the beginning of the game, A receives a fixed amount s.99
Round 1:
A decides what amount x of s to give to player B. He must make an
offer of x 0.1s.
Result:
A receives a profit g1 of g1 = s x and B receives a profit g2 of g2 = x.

In the experimental implementation of this game, there was hardly

ever an offer of x > 0.5s. Yet, it is documented that there are indeed
players that divide the sum into equal parts even without the expec-
tation of reciprocal utility (x = 0.5s).100 According to the definition
of experimental economics, they behave altruistically because they
refrain from maximizing their personal gain in order to contribute to
the material well-being of another player. If it is conducted as a one-
shot game, the dictator game represents a form of unconditional coop-
eration that is not based on expectations of reciprocal utility. Thus, the
altruism modeled in the dictator game is not a prosocial behavioral
pattern in the sense defined above. The situation of the dictator game
is designed as an analogy for an anonymous donation to a charitable
organization or something similar, and thus represents an experimen-
tal modeling of the ideal of selfless assistance.
The dictator game has provided the empirical proof that economic
agents can have altruistic preferences. However, the crucial weakness
of the dictator game is that it cannot present the societal utility of an
altruistic cooperation in a larger sense; it cannot explain the evolu-
tion of cooperative behavior beyond individual singular actions just
by looking at the fact that some human beings give away a portion of
their income to strangers without expecting reciprocal utility. For this
reason, experimental economics has begun to relate altruistic behavior
to the observance and enforcement of social norms, and to model it in
the form of strong reciprocity (altruistic punishment and rewarding).

99
The money in the game experiments is real money that is given to the partici-
pants after the experiment.
100
In the study Forsythe et al. 1994, 20% of the players distributed the sum equally,
and in the study Andreoni and Miller 2002, approx. 40% of players distributed the
sum equally.
154 chapter two

17.4 Strong Reciprocity: Altruistic Punishment and Rewarding

The studies on behavioral altruism conducted by Ernst Fehr, Urs Fisch-
bacher, and Simon Gchter model a second type of altruistic behavior
different from purely altruistic giving. Fehr, Fischbacher and Gchter
refer to this behavioral pattern as strong reciprocity and define it as
a specific form of prosocial behavior that is completely altruistic. They
believe that the modeling of strong reciprocity, i.e., of altruistic pun-
ishment and rewarding in social interactions, is particularly capable of
providing information about how social conflicts between egoists and
altruists play out in the framework of an interaction game. Accord-
ing to their definition, altruistic punishment occurs in an interaction
game if one player punishes the unfair behavior of his interaction part-
ner at his own cost. In contrast, altruistic rewarding occurs if a player
rewards the cooperative behavior of his interaction partner at his own
cost. In behavioral experiments, a punishment option can be added to
a wide variety of social dilemma games. Therefore, we will now look
at an example of the game progression of a trust game in which the
investor has the option of punishing the trustee for non-reciprocal
behavior. The game progresses as follows:101

A and B interact anonymously via computer screen, but they know

that the other person really exists.
A and B receive 10 MU (money units) each.102
Round 1:
A decides whether to (a) transfer his 10 MU to B or to (b) hold on
to his 10 MU.
In case (a), B is not allowed to reject the transaction.
Rule: If A decides for option (a), the transferred amount is qua-
drupled. Thus, B receives 40 MU.
Interim Result:
In case (a), B has 50 MU and A has 0 MU. The game enters its sec-
ond round.
In case (b), B has 10 MU and A has 10 MU. The game ends.

101
The following scenario is a variant of the trust game described in an article on
the neural basis of altruistic punishment: DeQuervain and Fischbacher et al. 2004.
102
The money in the game experiments is real money that is given to the partici-
pants after the experiment.
 the conflict between egoism and altruism 155

Round 2:
B decides whether to (a) hold on the 50 MU or (b) to return 25 MU
to A.
Interim Result:
In case (a), B has 50 MU and A has 0 MU.
In case (b), B has 25 MU and A has 25 MU (fair outcome).
Round 3: Punishment Option
In case (a), A is treated unfairly by B. Therefore, A gets the oppor-
tunity to punish B for his unfair behavior.
At the beginning of the third round, players A and B each receive
an additional 20 MU. Player A can use his 20 MU to punish player
B or keep it.
A decides whether to (a) punish B with up to 20 punishment points
or (b) not punish B.

In the study The Neural Basis of Altruistic Punishment (2004),103

player A was presented with one of the following four options in the
third round of the above-described game: In addition to the effective
punishment (i) of player B at no cost to player A, in which player A
had the option of reducing the profit paid to player B at the end of the
game by allotting punishment points to him, there was also a punish-
ment condition, (ii) in which player A had the option of punishing
player B in a purely symbolic way, also at no cost to himself. There
was a further punishment condition (iii), in which the punishment
was costly for both players because player A was only able to allot
punishment points to player B, and thus diminish the latters profits
by also diminishing his own profit. A fourth punishment condition
(iv) served as a control condition. Here, the decision about the return
transfer of the money units in round 2 was not made by player B, but
enforced at random by a computer program. In this way, it was pos-
sible to check whether player As decision was made in direct reaction
to the intentional behavior of B or merely manifested the general urge
to mete out punishment.
Overall, four conditions were tested and compared in the course of
the experiment: (i) intentional-costly; (ii) intentional-free; (iii) inten-
tional-symbolic; (iv) nonintentional-costly. In this summary, the first
adjective always refers to player Bs behavior in round 2 (intentional,

103
DeQuervain and Fischbacher et al. 2004.
156 chapter two

nonintentional), and the second adjective refers either to player

As punishment option (costly or free punishment), or to the con-
sequences of this punishment for the payment of profit to player B
(profit reduction or purely symbolic punishment). Of course, the pun-
ishment option was only offered in games in which player B (or the
computer program) had decided to withhold the 50 MU.
The implementation of the game showed that twelve of fourteen
test subjects punished player B effectively, i.e., by reducing Bs profit
at their own cost.104 Thus, altruistic punishment can be considered
a stable empirical behavioral pattern. In the case of the intentional-
free punishment option, all fourteen test subjects used the punishment
option. Furthermore, by adding the control condition, the experimen-
tal modeling was able to differentiate between a norm violation com-
mitted by another player and one that was effected by a computer
program. Here, the difference between the two options was signifi-
cant: in the case of intentional norm violation, the player Bs profit
was considerably diminished by player A, whereas in the case of the
non-intentional, computer-generated decision, the player Bs profit
was significantly less often reduced by player A (only 3 of 14 play-
ers punished at all). In addition, the contrast between free and costly
punishment in the experimental design served to reveal the agents
altruistic behavior, i.e., diminishing their own profit for the sake of
sanctioning a violation of norms. In the costly punishment condition,
the players gave considerably fewer punishment points to the other
players, but they punished almost as frequently as in the case of a free
punishment option.
In the economists view, the social utility of the altruistic punish-
ment behavioral pattern is also immediately evident: the punishing
behavior of player A contributes to the maintenance and stabilization
of a social norm of cooperation and reciprocity, and thus serves to
increase the cooperation level of (future) transactions between the
players.105 This increased cooperation is due to the fact that (i) coop-
erative norms of behavior can be sanctioned (situational condition),
and (ii) that individuals with altruistic preferences make use of this
option even when they sustain personal damage (anthropological
condition).

104
See ibid., 1256.
105
A significant increase of the cooperation level after the introduction of a punish-
ment option has been proven in the study Fehr and Gchter 2002.
 the conflict between egoism and altruism 157

But what is the difference between a purely altruistic mode of behav-

ior and a behavioral pattern of strong reciprocity, like altruistic pun-
ishment? Unlike pure altruism, altruistic punishment and rewarding
are a form of strong reciprocity because here, the altruistic behavior
is determined by a previous interaction between the individuals, and
because the consequences of this behavior do not benefit a single indi-
vidual, but instead contribute to increasing the cooperation level of
the whole group. Modes of behavior that are not cooperative as such,
but contribute to the increase of cooperation can be called prosocial,
as demonstrated above.106
From the standpoint of experimental economics, the evolution of
cooperative behavior in human societies can be largely explained by
the existence of the prosocial behavioral pattern of strong reciprocity.
This is because the enforcement of negative and positive sanctions in
interactions enables the emergence of a stable system of cooperative
behavioral norms, whose non-observance would be so costly for ego-
istic agents that it is more rational for them to act norm-abidingly in
societal interactions. The experimental evidence for strong reciproc-
ity, and particularly for altruistic punishment, are of central impor-
tance to the experimental modeling of sociality as cooperation because
they provide a possible solution to the conflict between egoistical and
prosocial agents through altruistic behavior.

18 The Utility Expectation of Altruistic Agents

Experimental economics has demonstrated that the altruistic punish-

ment of norm violators generates social utility because it contributes
to the enforcement of a stable norm system within human societies.
But apart from its objective utility for society, altruistic punishment
can only be considered fully explained once the agents personal utility
expectations can be modeled experimentally. In the above-described
trust game, however, punishment can only be represented in its nega-
tive consequences for the agents payoff function. Accordingly, the util-
ity that altruists expect to derive from their behavior must go beyond

106
The distinction between cooperative behavior and prosocial behavior can also be
found in Henrich and Henrich 2006, 222.
158 chapter two

purely monetary profit orientation.107 Thus, from an economic per-

spective, the question must be asked which behavioral goal motivates
altruists to incur personal costs in order to punish another player. Are
they bent on exacting personal vengeance for the other players non-
cooperative behavior, or do they actually pursue supraindividual, col-
lective goals?

18.1 Psychological, Biological, and Moral Altruism

In the social sciences and in moral philosophy, altruistic behavior
can be explained by assuming that the agent has an altruistic motive.
A motive can be defined as an intention, a desire or a judgment that
functions as the cause for altruistic behavior. We have seen already
that the motives of behavior in economic experiments cannot be
clarified by interviewing the test subjects. Unlike other disciplines of
empirical social research, economics does not hold the view that test
subjects self-statements about their motives can provide useful infor-
mation regarding their actual behavior (false consciousness assump-
tion). Therefore, the experiments of economics do not explicitly ask
about the test subjects selfless motives, thereby preventing economic
experiments on altruistic punishment from being related to the psy-
chological idea of altruism, because the modeling of (ultimate) motives
of behavior is of central importance to the psychological idea of
altruism.108 For this reason, experimental economists have also referred
to their understanding of altruism as biological.109 While psychologi-
cal altruism emphasizes the selflessness of the ultimate motives of a
behavior, biological altruism highlights the effective selflessness of

107
See Fehr 2006, 12. In a very differentiated and well-reasoned summary of his
research findings to date, presented at the 2006 Walter Adolf Jhr Lecture at St.
Gallen University, Ernst Fehr has narrowed down the economic consequences of neu-
roscientific experimental studies in particular, to the problem of stable preferences,
the problem of purely monetarily modeled utility expectations, and the possibility
of motivated belief formation in economic subjects. In his opinion, neuroeconom-
ics can use its examination of emotional decision-making processes to show that the
economic assumption of permanently stable preferences does not prove correct in
every empirical setting. Secondly, neuroeconomics can demonstrate that, besides the
monetary utility functions, there are also hedonistic consequences that social agents
derive benefits from. And thirdly, neuroeconomics can point out that there may be a
motivational connection between preferences and behavioral expectations (beliefs).
108
See Batson 1991, 6.
109
See DeQuervain and Fischbacher et al. 2004, 1257.
 the conflict between egoism and altruism 159

behavior.110 Furthermore, the biological idea of altruism has the advan-

tage of being applicable to all kinds of life. On the downside, however,
it cannot explain the particularity of specifically human altruism. In
biological terms, every organism can behave altruistically by provid-
ing an advantage to another organism while reducing its own bio-
logical fitness. The assessment of its behavior as altruistic is thus
neither dependent on selfless motives nor on a personal interest in the
well-being of others, as these things can only be attributed to human
beings. In biological terms, altruistic behavior is explained as the func-
tion of an evolutionary advantage. It was able to prevail as an adaptive
behavioral pattern in the evolution process because genetically related
organisms were able to increase their biological fitness by adopting
this behavior.
In addition to the psychological and biological understandings of
altruism, there is also an understanding that is, in the narrow sense,
moral-philosophical. The starting point of this moral-philosophical
understanding of altruism is the question of whether altruistic motives
can also be normative reasons for altruistic behavior.111 In his justifica-
tion of altruism, for example, the philosopher Thomas Nagel assumes
that altruistic motives must not necessarily be based on interpersonal
feelings like compassion in order to be considered justified.112 Rather,
altruistic motives are to be considered justified if they originate from the
presence of objective reasons that cause a rational subject to acknowl-
edge the reality of other persons and their interests as equal to the
reality of his own interests in his practical deliberations.113 According
to Nagel, this form of interpersonal recognition is based on the struc-
ture of general rationality.114 Altruistic motives are rationally founded

110
On the difference between biological and psychological altruism see Sober and
Wilson 42003.
111
The following thoughts mainly refer to Thomas Nagels argument for the pos-
sibility of rational altruism (see Nagel 1970). In addition, the book by Christopher
Lumer (2000) and the essay collection by Ellen F. Paul (1993) should be considered.
112
The leading representatives of the notion that altruism should be explained on
the basis of moral feelings and affections toward fellow human beings were David
Hume (An Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals, 1751) and Joseph Butler
(Sermons, 1726), who developed their works in opposition to Thomas Hobbes
theory of ethical egoism.
113
See Nagel 1970, 3.
114
See ibid., 79146.
160 chapter two

if they help a human being adopt an impersonal position in order to

put himself in the shoes of others.115
With this background it becomes clear that there is no direct
connection between the understanding of altruism in experimental
economics and the moral-philosophical understanding of altruism.
Experimental economics can only provide limited and conditional
empirical evidence for the rationality of altruism; after all, it does not
examine motives and reasons, but the preferences of altruistic agents.
Additionally, its altruism experiments cannot represent any rational
recognition of other persons, which Nagel considers to be indispens-
able for the normative validity of altruistic motives. Only the explana-
tory approach to fairness behavior developed by Fehr and Schmidt
(1999) incorporates the rational weighing of ones own and others
profits according to the principle of fairness. Fehr and Schmidt claim
that the behavior of prosocial agents can best be explained by taking
into account that these agents include the interests of other players
as equal to their own in their calculations, and thus are particularly
averse to an unfair outcome. Thus, the modeling of their inequity aver-
sion is an instrument that could serve to empirically demonstrate the
rational recognition of another agents equally justified interests. At
this point, however, economics does not yet mention altruistic behav-
ior, because this would require evidence that the fair players voluntary
profit reduction does not occur for reputational reasons or expecta-
tions of future reciprocity. Thus, the altruism model of experimental
economics is far stricter than that of moral philosophy.
As demonstrated above, economic experiments dealing with altru-
ism are most readily compatible with a biological definition of altru-
istic behavior.116 But economics is unable to represent the long-term,
genetically determined utility of altruistic behavior. However, in order
to at least be able to examine the so-called proximate causes117 of
altruistic behaviors evolution, it has expanded its method in a neuro-

115
See ibid., 8284.
116
This has also been explicitly confirmed by Dominique de Quervain, Ernst Fehr
und Urs Fischbacher in DeQuervain and Fischbacher et al. 2004, 1257.
117
The distinction between proximate cause and ultimate cause can be traced
back to Mayr 1961, 1503: [P]roximate causes govern the responses of the individual
(and his organs) to immediate factors of the environment while ultimate causes are
responsible for the evolution of the particular DNA code of information with which
every individual of every species is endowed.
 the conflict between egoism and altruism 161

scientific direction, which will be more closely examined in the fol-

lowing section.

18.2 Personal Satisfaction in Altruistic Punishment

In order to clarify the utility expectations of altruistic agents, econom-
ics has attempted to examine not the motives, but the psychological
motivational structure of altruistic behavior with the help of neuro-
technological third-party observation methods. This means that eco-
nomics has expanded beyond its social-scientific explanatory approach
to include a natural-scientific one, and has entered into a method-
ological synthesis with social neuroscience. Social neuroscience is a
relatively young branch of the neurosciences.118 Using invasive and
non-invasive stimulation methods, it examines those brain areas that
participate in the creation of social cognitive and affective states in
its test subjects. In particular, it models those neural processes that
influence the social behavior of human beings. In cooperation with
social neuroscience, experimental economics has been investigating
which neural activations in the test subjects brains are responsible
for the behavior of altruistic agents. Here, the methods and instru-
ments of social neuroscience enable researchers to observe a test sub-
jects brain in vivo during a decision-making situation. By attempting
to clarify the biological causes of behavior, experimental economics
hopes to draw conclusions about the psychological motivation of the
agents and also about their utility expectations. Thus, economics as
neuroeconomics inquires into the neurobiological microfoundations of
prosocial decision-making behavior.
As in traditional economic behavioral experiments, test subjects in
neuroeconomic experiments participate in interactions within a strate-
gic behavioral setting. But unlike in the experiments described above,
they are additionally observed by neurotechnological means during
their decision-making process.119 One important insight gained by

118
An overview of the methodology and subject fields of social neuroscience is
provided by Lieberman 2007 and Adolphs 2003.
119
For the purpose of neurotechnological observation of rational decision-making
behavior, the mentioned studies use imaging methods like PET (Positron Emission
Tomography) or FMRT (Functional Magnetic Resonance Tomography), but also
inhibitory methods such as TMS (Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation) or invasive
methods such as the application of hormones.
162 chapter two

integrating neuroscientific observation into the trust game with pun-

ishment option described in the last section (17.4), is the insight into
the motivational basis of altruistic punishment. In order to make state-
ments about the player As motivation for punishing player B in the
course of a trust game, As brain was scanned with neurotechnological
instruments. The measuring began when player A learned that player B
did not transfer back the money entrusted to him (10 MU or 40 MU),
as would be fair, but kept it for himself. Measuring ended after player
A had made a decision about whether or not to consequently punish
player B. The measuring of player As brain was conducted with the
help of a positron emission tomography (PET) device, and lasted for
one minute. By using PET, it was possible to measure the activation
of individual brain areas, and to mark the activation of neural centers
in cross-section images of the brain.
The study The Neural Basis of Altruistic Punishment120 by Domi-
nique de Quervain, Urs Fischbacher, and Ernst Fehr resulted in the
following findings for the experimental design described in 17.4: If
player A chooses an effective punishment of player B, i.e., a punish-
ment in which allotting punishment points to player B is costly for
both himself and player B, the neural reward system of player As brain
(more precisely, the nucleus caudate in the brains dorsal striatum)
is activated. This means that there is a positive correlation between
the activation of player As neural reward system and the incurring of
costs for punishing player B.121 Neuroeconomics interprets this posi-
tive correlation as follows: the anticipation of player Bs punishment
stimulates the neural reward system of player As brain, causing an
activation in the dorsal striatum. Other neuroscientific studies had
already linked the activation of this brain region to the anticipation of
rewards that are caused by goal-directed behavior. 122 Thus, it is most
likely that player A is very satisfied when he anticipates the option of
punishing player Bs unfair behavior. According to neuroeconomics,
the positive correlation between satisfaction and altruistic punishment
can bee seen as an indication of a neural mechanism123 being causally

120
DeQuervain and Fischbacher et al. 2004.
121
See ibid., 1257: We did indeed find a positive correlation between caudate acti-
vation [. . .] and investments in punishment.
122
Literature on this secondary evidence can be found: ibid., 1258.
123
Neuroeconomics defines mechanism as an adaptive behavioral pattern on the
organic (and not the genetic) level of an organism (see Mayr 1961, 1503).
 the conflict between egoism and altruism 163

responsible for the fact that altruistic preferences were able to prevail
against individual rational self-interest over the course of evolutionary
history.124 Player As decision to punish non-cooperative behavior is
therefore influenced by the natural configuration of his neural moti-
vational systems.
However, now a chicken and egg question arises in the neuroeco-
nomic explanatory approach toward the relationship between satisfac-
tion and altruistic punishment. In other words: is it the anticipation
of satisfaction that causes player A to invest his profit into punishing
player B, or is it merely the punishment of norm violations itself that
is accompanied by the anticipation of satisfaction? The two following
interpretations of the experiments evidence can be distinguished:

(i) The relationship between satisfaction and punishment modeled for

player A in the experiment is a purely affect-directed behavioral
pattern, in which player As brain is stimulated by the anticipation
of being able to punish another player who has been non-coop-
erative. Player A intentionally brings about the hedonistic conse-
quences of his behavior; his punishment of player B is motivated
by schadenfreude and vengefulness and not by his preference for
a cooperation norm.125
(ii) The relation between satisfaction and punishment modeled for
player A in the experiment is a strategic behavior that is only
accompanied by the feeling of satisfaction. The hedonistic con-
sequences of player As behavior are part of his cost-benefit delib-
erations, informing him that punishment is socially beneficial
because it is a retribution for a violation of norms.

124
Neuroeconomics first assumed that the neural mechanism that forms the basis
for altruistic punishment represents a universal fixture of human nature and thus also
played a decisive role in the evolution of cooperation between genetically unrelated
individuals. Since the publication of Bernhard et al. 2006, however, there is evidence
for the thesis that this universal fixture does not work under the conditions of group
interaction. The study of Helen Bernhard and Ernst Fehr documents the implementa-
tion of a third-party punishment game that was played within small-scale societies in
Papua New Guinea. In the course of the study, it turned out that altruistic punishment
was restricted to members of the same social group. This evidence was interpreted as
an indicator of parochial altruism.
125
The possibility of attributing the behavior of the altruistic punisher to vindictive-
ness is also pointed out by Knutson 2004.
164 chapter two

In the view of neuroeconomics, these two possible interpretations126 of

the experimental evidence can be distinguished by a precise analysis of
neuroscientific indicators. On the basis of two additional observations
of the prefrontal cortex and the dorsal striatum of the test subjects, de
Quervain, Fischbacher and Fehr chose the second explanation in their
article The Neural Basis of Altruistic Punishment.
(i) Activation at the prefrontal cortex: Neuroscientific findings sup-
port the notion that player As behavior is not guided by affects, but
informed by a rational weighing of various behavioral options. In the
case of effective, costly punishment, regions of the prefrontal cortex
are activated in addition to the nucleus caudate. These regions are
responsible for weighing benefits and costs in a decision-making pro-
cess. If player A is altruistically motivated, he thus weighs the material
costs against the hedonistic consequences of his behaviors. If he is
altruistic, he will choose the hedonistic consequences.
(ii) Activation of the dorsal striatum: Additional evidence against
explaining punishment as being a purely affect-guided behavior can be
found in the fact that if there were a direct influence, varying degrees127
of punishment would be reflected in the activation level of the neural
reward center. However, this positive correlation could not be estab-
lished. A test subject who decided to punish the other player more
harshly did not automatically feel greater satisfaction. Thus, the neural
evidence suggests that the motivation for punishment is not purely
schadenfreude.
There is, however, a problem with the results in The Neural Basis
of Altruistic Punishment.128 The presented neuroscientific evidence
uses secondary evidence from other neuroeconomic studies to pro-
duce the interpretation for the current study. Thus, results from vari-
ous experimental studies are combined to present an interpretation of
the current data. At this point, it becomes obvious that the individual
result is gained through the systematic accumulation of evidence from
rather different studies. This, however, might present a methodological
problem.

126
On other possible motives of punishment also see Falk et al. 2005. In the frame-
work of a public goods game, this study models personal vengeance as a main motive
for sanctions, along with maliciousness (schadenfreude) and a sense of fairness. How-
ever, this study does not use neuroscientific examination methods. The indicators for
the motive of behavior are modeled by purely behavioral-scientific means.
127
The experiment allowed for the allotment of 0 to 20 punishment points.
128
DeQuervain and Fischbacher et al. 2004.
 the conflict between egoism and altruism 165

Another critical point is that, although neuroeconomic experiments

on altruistic punishment have shown that the decision to sanction a
social norm is correlated with neural activation in the agents brain,
thereby explaining its motivational background, the examination of
neural activations can give only very limited information about the
intention that preceded the punishment of the non-cooperative player.
In the context of a phenomenological evaluation of the experimental
findings, which will be conducted in the concluding passages of this
section, it is of central importance whether an agents act of punish-
ment is really directed at the other player or at himself.129 In order to
make such an evaluation, we first must present the phenomenology of
the social encounter between the agents in the behavioral experiment.
In the described experimental design, player As satisfaction is
related to the preceding interaction with the other player, an interac-
tion which occurs through media. Player A does not meet the other
player in a face-to-face, corporeal interaction, it is not an encounter
where both parties are physically present. Instead, the other players
presence is mediated by the computer screen, which transmits the
other players reactions. Thus, the trust game is an interactional rela-
tionship in which the other player is not present as a corporeal and
visible counterpart. Thus, possible expectations regarding his behavior
are not formed through a direct perception of, or communication with
him, but instead are predetermined by the experimental modeling and
thus construed.
Therefore, in the trust game player As belief about player B is more
similar to a projection of his own behavioral goals on the other person.
Player A entrusts player B with his money in the hope of receiv-
ing it back from him, and thus profiting from the transaction. If he
learns that the entrusted money has not been transferred back, the
experience constitutes an offense against his implicitly assumed utility
expectations of the other player, expectations which he was unable
to reveal or communicate due to the experimental design. Therefore,
those test subjects who punish the other player for violating a coop-
eration norm mostly respond to a violation of the utility expectation
that they themselves had projected onto the other. The disturbance or

129
On the difference between self-referential (egoistic) and other-referential (altru-
istic) intentionality of a social emotion see Klein 2007, 46. On the significance of this
differentiation for an evaluation of altruistic punishment see especially 20 of this
study.
166 chapter two

destruction of this utility expectation by the other player interrupts

their own expectations of reciprocity and symmetry within the inter-
actional relationship. In neuroeconomic experiments, the attempt to
compensate for this disturbance with a sanction is represented as a
necessary consequence of said disturbance, and is neither justified nor
discussed as a behavioral option that can be distinguished from other
possible responses to the disturbance.
When critically evaluating the neuroeconomic modeling, it must
therefore be kept in mind that the violation of norms may be more
fittingly described as a disappointed behavioral expectation. Such a
violation of ones own expectations within the social structure can-
not be undone simply by punishment. Instead, it provokes a response.
Neuroeconomics interprets this response as follows: by exacting pun-
ishment, player A commits to a superordinate norm, and thus to
the horizon of a universal social order of society, by reinforcing the
behavioral principle of cooperation and reciprocity in the give and
take of an interaction. However, from a phenomenological perspec-
tive, the test subjects reaction can be described as a reaction in which
an excess of the interactional relationship is brought to bear. Player
A, who punishes player B, above all sees his own beliefs destroyed by
the behavior of the other player. The disregard of the social norm that
he had assumed to apply at the site of the other, takes on the charac-
ter of an appeal that cannot be ignored. The punishment of the norm
violator mainly serves as an attempt to rebuild player As own view
of social reality at the cost of anothers view. Therein truly lies the
social conflict. Player As underlying intentions behind the punish-
ment can therefore be called primarily self-referential, regardless of
the characterization of his behavior as altruistic in neuroeconomics.
His intentions are not based on an interactional relationship that
can in any way be influenced or affected by the presence of the other
player. Instead, the interactional relationship in which these intentions
are formed is fully determined by player As own beliefs, which are
transferred to the other (and if necessary, forced on him).
In conclusion, the description presented in this chapter draws atten-
tion to the contribution of neuroeconomics to an understanding of
human social behavior that transcends rational behavior. This con-
tribution consists of the evidence about the central function and sig-
nificance of emotions for human social behavior that neuroeconomics
has presented in its modelings. A study published in 2000 by Ernst
Fehr and Simon Gchter first pointed out the role of negative emo-
 the conflict between egoism and altruism 167

tions in altruistic punishment. However, they only used a point scale

to measure test subjects emotions in a post-experiment questionnaire.
Then, in a 2003 study on altruistic punishment, neuropsychologists
Alan Sanfey and James Rilling used an ultimatum game to demon-
strate that emotions are of central importance for decision making in
situations where test subjects are treated unfairly by another player.130
They define emotion as a neural process in which information and
environmental stimuli are affectively evaluated in the brain. Thus,
unlike what philosophy traditionally called feelings, emotions are not
considered to be a subjects reflexive attitudes, but neural states of
activation responsible for the mental evaluation of objects. However,
neuroeconomics models these neural activation states as causal deter-
minants for behavior, and explains their functionality in terms of an
evolutionary, proximate mechanism.131
This section has made it clear that a phenomenological description
of these experiments cannot simply adopt this explanatory approach.
Instead, such an explanation works on the premise that emotions
observed and measured in experiments are generated in the context of
the test subjects interactional relationship, and are modulated by this
relationship. Thus, emotions are primarily interpersonal phenomena
that cannot be examined without also considering how they are related
to a shared interactional experience. Therefore, from a phenomenolog-
ical perspective, the experiments of neuroeconomics mainly provide
an indication of the influence that shared interactional experiences can
have on human beings behavior toward each other.

19 Affective Empathy: The Significance of Social Emotions

This section will present a neuroeconomic study showing that emotions

can not only be a cause, but also a consequence of social behavior. A
phenomenological evaluation of behavioral experiments has already
argued that social behavior should not be explained independently of
the interactional relationships that an agent enters into with the other
players in the experiment. This also applies to social emotions.
In order to examine the influence of an interaction on the formation
of a social emotion, in 2006 social neuroscientists conducted a study

130
See Sanfey and Rilling et al. 2003.
131
See Fehr and Gchter 2002, 139.
168 chapter two

that sequentialized a game-theoretical interaction paradigm and a

neuroscientific empathy paradigm. Published by neuroscientist Tania
Singer together with Chris Frith and others, the article Empathic
Neural Responses are Modulated by the Perceived Fairness of Others132
gives a more detailed description of the neuroeconomic experimental
design used in this study. The experiment consisted of a social dilemma
game and an experimental modeling of empathy for pain. First, social
neuroscience generally defines empathy as the neural representation of
another persons mental state in ones own brain. Neuroscientific stud-
ies mainly examine the perceptive, emotional and cognitive compo-
nents that contribute to the formation of such a neural representation.
The underlying model of empathy used in the above-mentioned exper-
iment is based on the insight that neural representations of another
persons mental state are primarily rooted in an affective evaluation
of this state.133 In an experiment dedicated to the study of empathy
for pain,134 in which Singer and her team of researchers had already
examined the neural reaction to the perception of another persons
pain, it was determined that the empathic reaction activates those neu-
ral regions in the so-called pain matrix of the brain responsible for
the affective evaluation of ones own physical pain. Thus, the model-
ing of the neural basis of affective empathy provided evidence for the
role played by representing ones own pain in the perceiving of others
pain. From a phenomenological perspective, Singers pain empathy
paradigm formulates a neuroscientific concept for a primacy of self-
reference in empathic reaction. The neural representation of another
persons pain is formed through a self-referential sensation of ones
own pain. Thus, in the brain, ones own body perception becomes the
condition for the possibility of empathy for pain.
In the neuroeconomic study that will be discussed now, researchers
first used a social dilemma game in which player A entrusts player B
with an amount of money, and can multiply the invested amount if

132
Singer et al. 2006.
133
For a definition of empathy see DeVignemont and Singer 2006, 435: There is
empathy if: (i) a person is in an affective state; (ii) this state is isomorphic to another
persons affective state; (iii) this state is elicited by the observation or imagination of
another persons affective state; (iv) the person knows that the other person is the
source of ones own affective state.
134
See Singer et al. 2004.
 the conflict between egoism and altruism 169

player B transfers the money back.135 This game was conducted in the
first part of the study to see which test subjects were cooperative or
non-cooperative when acting as player B. The group of B players was
then divided into two types (B1 = unfair/B2 = fair). After the social
dilemma game, the empathy-for-pain experiment was conducted. At
this point, the test subjects were told that this was a separate experi-
ment that had nothing to do with the preceding social dilemma game.
The researchers assumed that player A had evaluated the behavior of
an unfair player, B1, as negative and the behavior of a fair player, B2, as
positive. This assumed evaluation then formed the basis for the analy-
sis of the second part of the study.
In the empathy-for-pain experiment, player As brain was scanned
using functional magnetic resonance tomography (fMRT),136 while
player B1 and player B2 sat on either side of the scanner. Electrodes
that inflicted painful stimulations on the test subjects were applied
to the hands of A, B1, and B2. Because player A was in the scanner,
he was unable to see the other players hands. For this reason, a red
arrow within the scanner indicated what hand was stimulated with
a pain impulse. The experimental design modeled three conditions:
(i) self condition: the hand of player A is stimulated; (ii) fair condi-
tion: the hand of player B2 is stimulated; (iii) unfair condition: the
hand of player B1 is stimulated. In addition, two different levels of pain
stimulation were applied.
The study was conducted with sixteen men and sixteen women.
However, the only significant result concerned the contrast between
genders. The study found that women in particular showed an empathic
reaction toward their interaction partner regardless of whether he
had previously behaved in a fair or an unfair manner. The contrast
between fair condition and unfair condition was only significant for
male test subjects. Men did not show empathy if the unfair player was
subjected to pain stimulation. Instead, in the case of male test subjects,
it was even possible to prove a neural activation in the nucleus cau-
date, the reward center of the brain that as has been shown above
is responsible for the anticipation of satisfaction. Apparently, the men

135
Unfortunately, the Supplementary Information of the study Singer et al. 2006
does not provide a more detailed description of the interaction game.
136
FMRT is an imaging technique that can precisely localize neural activations and
their functional consequences in the brain and represent them in a brain cross section
image with colored markings.
170 chapter two

interpreted the pain stimulation as a punishment of the unfair player

and felt satisfaction.
On the basis of this evidence, researchers concluded that men have
a natural sense of fairness, and thus might have played a crucial role
in the enforcement of social order in human societies throughout
evolutionary history.137 However, the researchers conceded that the
evidence of the experiment also could have been influenced by the
fact that the experiment only used physical pain as a punishment for
unfair behavior. In contrast to psychological or financial punishment,
this behavioral pattern might be a stronger incentive for men to feel
satisfaction. In that case, the assertion that only men have a natural
sense of fairness that prevails against empathic reactions would again
be up for debate.
From a phenomenological perspective, it is now possible to ask about
the social quality of the intention manifested in the empathic reaction.
Singers experiments found that those brain regions responsible for
the evaluation of ones own physical pain are also activated when other
peoples states of pain are perceived. But if the perception of other
peoples pain is identical to an affective evaluation of ones own pain,
this may suggest that such an affective evaluation is less an act of com-
passion toward the other person, and more a self-referential projection
of ones own pain onto the other. To provide more information about
this, it must be clarified whether the test subjects actually relate their
affective evaluation to the pain of the other, or whether they merely toy
with the possibility that they might feel pain in the other persons situ-
ation. The conclusion suggested by Singer et al., that self-perception
is indispensable for an empathic reaction, is doubtlessly indebted
to the mentalist explanatory approach prevalent in neuroscientific
research, which assumes a principal separation between ones own
and other peoples mental experiences, and does not model an inter-
personal interaction relationship that mediates between the two. Thus,
the range of the perception of other peoples pain is always reduced to
the notion of a self-contained brain: one brain can understand another
brain only insofar as it has already understood itself.

137
See Singer et al. 2006, 468.
 the conflict between egoism and altruism 171

20 The Phenomenal Excess of Social Interaction

As we have seen, neuroeconomics examines neural processes in the

brain that accompany the decision-making behavior of social agents.
The declared explanatory goal of its studies is to identify those neu-
ral mechanisms that have a direct influence on whether humans will
behave in a prosocial or antisocial manner in certain situations. Its
main goal is to find experimental strategies that can serve to dem-
onstrate an unequivocal, causal relationship between neural activa-
tion and test subject behavior. Neuroeconomics bases its explanatory
claim, in contrast to other social-scientific approaches, on the assertion
that it is capable of providing a particularly exact empirical descrip-
tion of human social behavior. However, in the previous sections it
was shown that, in spite of the intentions of neuroeconomics, it can
indeed make sense to interpret an experiment not only in terms of
hard empirical factors, but to also include soft, phenomenological
factors of influence on test subject behavior. For example, the distinc-
tion between self-referentiality and other-referentiality in test subjects
intentions is not wholly meaningless in the evaluation of a behavioral
pattern. The example of altruistic punishment can once again serve to
demonstrate this. The intention with which a punishment is carried
out can be decisive in determining its magnitude and its consequences
for others. Depending on the underlying intention, the magnitude of
a punishment can be either limited or taken to excess. Thus, there
are punishments that are justified as such, but are executed far more
severely than necessary by the punisher. One possible explanation for
this is that punishment can be administered out of schadenfreude
(18.2). This has been confirmed, for example, by the investigation
into acts of torture and abuse committed in the U.S. American prison
camp Abu Ghraib in 2004 in Baghdad. In this case, a number of mili-
tary police officers tortured and abused Iraqi detainees and prisoners
of war without any regard for restrictive legal norms. Although the
military officers put their reputation within the military and the legiti-
macy of their mission at risk, they accepted these costs in order to
pursue their obvious pleasure in torturing the detainees. They violated
international legal norms restricting the punishment of detainees and
protecting them from such degrading forms of castigation. However,
the military police officers were able to establish a social norm within
their group that defined their behavior in this situation as appropriate,
and allowed them to violate the prisoners personal integrity.
172 chapter two

The case of Abu Ghraib shows that the punishment of norm viola-
tors does not only contribute to the evolution of cooperation, but can
also be linked to a disproportional excess of violence.138 The ambiva-
lent nature of punishment has since been confirmed by an economic
experimental study on antisocial punishment, i.e., on the punishment
of prosocial agents.139 It is all the more misleading, then, that experi-
mental economics refers to punishment as altruistic and prosocial
as soon as it comes at a cost for the punisher. After all, neuroscientific
examinations of punishment have shown that the hedonistic motives
of altruistic agents can be attributed to their own schadenfreude,
vengefulness as well as their interest in enforcing a cooperative norm.
Therefore, it is important to distinguish whether the punishers act
on self-referential or other-referential intentions. If other-referential
intentions are at work, they can be related to both the just retribu-
tion for a norm violation, and the well-being of others. In any case,
an other-referential orientation prevents punishment from becoming
a purpose in and of itself, as is the case with schadenfreude. How-
ever, neuroeconomic experiments are unable to identify the difference
between a self-referentially and an other-referentially intentioned
punishment with absolute certainty. Therein also lie their phenom-
enological limitation, and need for complementation. It is careless to
generalize the individual evidence on the altruism of punishment, or
to highlight only the positive, prosocial consequences of punishing
norm violators. Of course, the concerns expressed here do not apply to
the neuroeconomic modeling of altruistic punishment as a whole; they
only address their generalization as an evolutionary model of human
society formation.
In the case of the modeling of empathy as a consequence of social
interaction, it can also be shown that the test subjects intentions
are not identical to a neurophysiological modeling of their decision-
making behavior. The mere examination of neural activations cannot

138
See also the results of the so-called Milgram experiment (Milgram 1963), a re-
enacted prison situation in which the escalation of violence between wardens and pris-
oners were explained by the wardens slavish submission to authority. Similar results
were also provided by the so-called Stanford Prison Experiment by Philip Zimbardo,
which was documented in the film Quiet Rage: The Standford Prison Experiment
by Ken Musen.
139
See Herrmann et al. 2008. In the meantime, experimental economics has also
turned to the examination of antisocial behavior albeit without being able to provide
a plausible explanation for its motivation at this point in time which it was able to
provide for prosocial punishment, at least on a neurobiological basis.
 the conflict between egoism and altruism 173

suffice to draw conclusions about whether the test subjects react

empathically out of compassion for the other person, or whether they
only feel another persons pain as their own, and thus marginalize the
meaning of the others pain. Thus, from a phenomenological perspec-
tive, neuroeconomic experiments do not provide a modeling of the
test subjects intentions and motivations that is differentiated enough
to make statements about whether a social agent merely makes the
other players into an object for the projection of his own expecta-
tions, or if he is genuinely interested in their well-being. Here, the
phenomenal excess of the experimental modeling of behavior is mani-
fest. The economic representation of the social conflict between egoists
and altruists does not describe the phenomenon of their interactional
relationship, and accordingly cannot clarify the phenomenological
horizon of the interaction.

21 Conclusion

This chapter provided a critical analysis of the methods of behavioral

studies conducted by experimental economics and neuroeconomics.
In this analysis, attention was repreatedly drawn to those principles of
construction helpful to the modeling of social reality in experiments,
and it was also shown that the limits of methodological constructabil-
ity of behavior in the laboratory as well as the limits of a neurotechno-
logical third-party observation of the brain both exhibit gaps in their
explanation that cannot be methodologically filled. The gaps in the
economic modeling and explanation of behavior are made particularly
recognizable due to the fact that a differentiated examination of the
test subjects intentions has not been factored into the interpretation
of the studies. Before the presentation and discussion of a completely
different perspective on human sociality, which will occur in the third
chapter, the concluding passages of this section will provide a system-
atic summary of the critical issues concerning the basic anthropologi-
cal decisions of the behavioral-scientific idea of sociality.

21.1 Critique
(i) Naturalization of the social agent: It is the fundamental concern
of experimental economics to make the predominant assumptions of
theoretical models of the economic agent empirically verifiable, and
to question their exclusive validity claim regarding the analysis and
representation of human behavior. Its methodological synthesis with
174 chapter two

neuroscience has enabled economics to prove that the social decision-

making behavior of economic agents in concrete situations is not a
purely rational operation, but one determined by empiricism and
neurobiology. However, it is questionable whether this proof success-
fully realizes the desired knowledge objective. Does a neuroscientific
naturalization of the economic agent already represent an empirically
satisfactory description of human beings preferrable to the homo oeco-
nomicus model?
As an objection to this assertion, it can be argued that neuroeco-
nomics is not even aware of the hermeneutical difference between
a method-dependent and a phenomenological representation of its
study object, and thus squanders an important hermeneutical orienta-
tion potential regarding its study object. Neuroeconomics attempts to
explain the complex interplay of psychology and physiology in the cor-
poreal creatures that are human beings, only in terms of the brains
functional operations. In the framework of its research approach, all
human social modes of behavior are examined in the search for a pos-
sible causation by the central organ of the nervous system. However,
the neuroeconomic focus on the brain of the social agent contradicts
the fact that the brain is an inner organ of the human body that does
not appear in the area of phenomenal externality of interpersonal
perception processes, because it is not intersubjectively accessible. The
brain does not directly participate in the human mode of appearance
significant for the human beings natural perception of self and others.
In other words: if a human being meets another human being in a con-
crete encounter, his perception is not geared to neural activities that
take place in the brain of the other and must be interpreted by him,
but is guided by what the other reveals through body language, facial
expressions, language and expression. Beyond the expressive structure
of the human body, and the linguistic realm of signs and symbols, the
character of social encounters between human beings in the lifeworld
is also determined by the institutions of culture. For example, the
introduction of written language has led to the emergence of an entire
cosmos of symbol and sign systems (in addition to the actual encoun-
ters between human beings) that leads a semiotic-communicative life
of its own.140 The socio-cultural construals of such semiotic processes
gradually developed into institutions that determine the life of human

140
Krger 2004, 189 (transl. M.S.).
 the conflict between egoism and altruism 175

beings independently of their actual encounters. Thus, they transcend

the encounter between human beings in interaction, which neuroeco-
nomics assumes to be the decisive basis for studying the social struc-
tures of human togetherness.
In its replication of social interaction in the laboratory, neuroeco-
nomics also ignores the bodily-corporeal and verbal forms of human
expression, as well as the communicative behavioral incentives emerg-
ing from the spectrum of the interpersonal range of expression, it
creates a standardized behavioral setting without copresent commu-
nicative situations.141 Thus, its experimental modelings consciously
reduce the interpersonal sphere of behavior to those incentive struc-
tures that can function as stimuli in a brain that is situated, along with
the whole body, in a neurotechnological apparatus, or that is under
the controlled influence of an artificially induced hormonal substance.142
Thus, the description of the social agent that emerges from the neuro-
economic correlation analysis evaluating the results of such a method-
ological approach, neglects the aspect of natural interdependent action
between human beings whose perception and communication are part
of their interaction.
(ii) Reductionism and method-dependent representation of human
beings: The hypotheses of experimental economics are verified in
experiments conducted in an artificially created behavioral setting
(laboratory world). The question of whether this setting is phenome-
nologically similar and comparable to the experiences of human beings
in their social lifeworld is of minor importance to the researchers. This
means that experimental economics hardly ever explicitly deals with
hermeneutic-phenomenological perspectives in its own research work
because it does not see the hermeneutic, but rather the methodological
significance of the difference between a lifeworldly perception situa-
tion and a strictly anonymous interaction occurring in front of a com-
puter screen. This indicates that experimental economics interprets the
difference between the lifeworld and laboratory world only in terms of
how this difference can contribute to a better validation of the study

141
This statement only applies to the field of neuroeconomics, which particularly
ignores interpersonal expressive behavior as an influential factor in its modelings. In
contrast, the field of social neuroscience increasingly studies the neural correlates of
the perception of facial expressions and behavioral gestures.
142
See the neuroeconomic studies (not presented here) on the effect of the hor-
mone Oxytocin on human trust: Kosfeld and Heinrichs et al. 2005.
176 chapter two

findings. A closer look, however, reveals that in order to fully under-

stand its study object, neuroeconomics needs to use a wide variety
of hermeneutical understanding practices in the phase of designing
behavior modelings. Afterwards, however, neuroeconomics proceeds
to ignore its own approach, presenting a purely method-dependent
representation of its findings, despite the fact that hermeneutical and
phenomenological research practices have also participated in its
work. Thus, it assumes that all communication processes relevant to
the modeling of behavior can be medially replicated in the laboratory
by using computer technology; following this assumption test subjects
are set up in single cubicles without visual contact, and their interac-
tion occurs via computer screen. Neuroeconomics also assumes that
the test subjects decisions can be sufficiently clarified by representing,
observing, and analyzing simultaneously occurring brain activations.
Thus, the validation of its hypotheses relies exclusively on neuroscien-
tific imaging techniques, and the brain activations observed with this
method are not complemented by a phenomenological description of
the human interactional relationship. From the perspective of econom-
ics, such a soft phenomenology of interaction might, in principle,
even impair the reliability of the study findings, because scientifically
acceptable conclusions must be based on empirical knowledge. The lat-
ter statement ultimately proves the reductionism of neuroeconomics,
because the field rejects and declares irrelevant an interdisciplinary
consideration of its studies that would require it to alternate between
various interpretive perspectives.
(iii) Behaviorist reduction of the human range of behavior: The field
of neuroeconomics has a strictly consequentialist understanding of
social behavior. It examines the structure of social interactions using
the example of goods transactions, and models the monetary conse-
quences of these transactions using statistical methods. Intent on mak-
ing its findings on human social behavior quantitatively measurable
and mathematically specifiable in a form comparable to the natural-
scientific method, neuroeconomics operates on the premise that the
social utility of the examined aggregated behavioral patterns can be
determined by measuring the profit distribution in the behavior aggre-
gate. This means that it considers the payoff structure of a transaction
the (only) empirical indicator for the distinction between prosocial
and antisocial behavior. Thus, it judges the decision-making behavior
of test subjects to be fair if it is aimed at a (numerically) even profit
distribution, and it judges their behavior as unfair if it results in an
asymmetrical profit distribution. In addition to analyzing the payoff
 the conflict between egoism and altruism 177

structure, economics in the form of neuroeconomics has been exam-

ining neurobiological factors that influence behavior to empirically
clarify the anthropological preconditions of prosociality within the
framework of monetary transactions. With the help of neurobiologi-
cal imaging techniques, neuroeconomics has demonstrated that com-
plex neural networks have a significant influence on decision-making
behavior. However, the modelings of neuroeconomics only examined
the neural correlates of decision-making behavior, neglecting the fact
that these neural correlates are influenced by the interactional rela-
tionship between test subjects.
(iv) Formal typification of social agents by preference models: In
addition to the behaviorist distinction between prosocial and anti-
social modes of behavior, experimental economics also establishes a
typification of altruistic and egoistic agents (or their preferences). As
shown above, this typification becomes questionable as soon as the
test subjects intentions come into play, as these intentions are ignored
in experimental modelings. The consequence of such a perspective is
that test subject behavior is sometimes described in a counterintuitive
manner. For example, while economics considers the punishment of
a norm violator to be altruistic and selfless, the phenomenological
viewpoint suggests that punishment does not necessarily aim to pro-
tect a behavioral norm, but can be described much more plausibly as
a reaction to a previous violation of a self-referential belief projected
onto the interaction partner. In this context, it can be assumed that
the economic concept of prosociality and altruism has been conceived
without the test subjects experiential attitudes and intentions in mind.
By merely pointing out the occurrence of punishment and its conse-
quences, empirical studies do not address the underlying motivations
of another players norm-defying behavior, or the reasons why the
examined test subject deems this misbehavior worthy of punishment.
To answer these questions, neuroeconomics would have to be able to
connect the neural activation states that are observed with the help of
imaging techniques to a set of circumstances that can be described as
having been precisely so intended by the agent. But the agents precise
intentions cannot be inferred from the visual representation of neural
activations in the test subjects brain, recorded by a scanner at the time
of decision-making.143

143
The difference between the neuroscientific third-party observation of an emo-
tion and its phenomenological description goes beyond the difference between a
178 chapter two

These points of criticism may suffice to illustrate that even the trans-
disciplinary approach of neuroeconomics, which considers itself a
comprehensive explanatory approach for the integration of all aspects
of human social behavior,144 still leaves many questions regarding
the phenomenology of human behavior unanswered. Therefore, the
experimental examination of the empiricism of social behavior is in
need of being complemented and expanded using the orientation of
other perspectives.

21.2 Theses
Based on the critical analysis developed in the previous section, the
following section will present three theses regarding the exploration
of human social behavior:

(i) The anthropological determination of behavioral types, and the

naturalization of its neurobiological antecedents alone are not suf-
ficient to explain the defining characteristics of human sociality.
(ii) The naturalization of the origins of human cooperation, and
the empirical modeling of a neurally controlled culture of pun-
ishment and rewarding obscure the fact that social encounters
between human beings are also based on political, moral, and
religious motivations that cannot be represented by the neurosci-
ence of behavior.
(iii) Human interaction is not exclusively determined by the interest
of utility maximization, but also by the stipulated mutual agree-
ment in interpersonal difference, i.e., the acknowledgement that
no human being is at the disposal of another [Unverfgbarkeit].
Thus, the interaction between human beings is preceded by a spe-
cific form of interactional relationship.

first-person perspective and a third-person perspective. The difference in perspective

does not adequately describe the two approaches different modes of access to the
explanation or interpretation of the phenomenon of emotion. The experiences of a
person are capable of adopting the experiential attitude of a first, second and third-
person perspective without being able to separate these from each other in principle.
Persons can experience themselves and others from a third-person perspective, just
as they can experience their own I from the second-person perspective as me. Neu-
roscientific third-party observation differs from the phenomenological description of
these experiential attitudes and their perspectives insofar as it explains them not as a
persons modes of experience, but as neural reactions in the brain.
144
The comprehensive explanatory claim of neuroeconomics is explicitly stipulated
by Herbert Gintis in his paper A Framework of the Unification of the Behavioral
Sciences (Gintis 2007).
 the conflict between egoism and altruism 179

Explication of the three theses:

(ad i) The first thesis challenges the exclusive explanatory claim of
experimental economics and neuroeconomics in the field of human
sociality. As has been shown above, the economic approach ignores
various hermeneutical and phenomenological differences of under-
standing [Verstehensdifferenzen] by disputing their relevance to a
method-guided interpretation of the research findings concerning
their study object. The most important among these differences of
understanding, is the distinction between self-referential and other-
referential behavioral reactions, which allows for the formulation of
far-reaching critical inquiries concerning the economic understanding
of altruism and prosociality. To counteract the reductionisms of the
economic explanatory approach, the scope of this study needs to be
extended to include other perspectives in order to develop an idea of
human sociality that is adequate to the humanity of human beings.
(ad ii) The second thesis points out that the explanatory approach
of economics is not only incomplete, but also systematically ignores
and obscures important aspects of human sociality. This is particu-
larly true for the focus of experimental economics on the material
incentive structures of human behavior. One argument against this
approach is that the wide range of possible social behavioral modes in
human interaction should not be reduced to a single behavioral struc-
ture exclusively geared toward external incentives and material goods.
The one-dimensional focus of experimental economics on material
incentive structures, and its neglect of completely different, immate-
rial value, and behavior orientations must be criticized in this respect.
It is true that experimental economics attempts to use their behavior
experiments to correct the one-dimensional view of human beings as
agents who only care about their own interests in decision-making
situations by demonstrating that the fair distribution of profit in a
transaction can also be considered a legitimate utility expectation of
an economic agent. However, it does not abandon the methodological
pre-decision of behavioral economics that, in principle, all human
behavioral decisions relevant in the context of economic model forma-
tion must be related to a utility expectation. Experimental economics
believes that cooperation only arises in interactions between human
beings if naturally inclined egoists are forced to cooperate by the
introduction of costs for unfair behavior. This mechanism allowing
for the social disciplining of egoists can only be set into motion if there
are naturally inclined altruists who enforce a norm at their own cost.
From a neurobiological perspective, these individuals must have an
180 chapter two

underlying hedonistic utility expectation that must be satisfied. This

notion, however, casts into doubt the selflessness of their behavior.
In clarifying the neurobiological foundations of behavior, experi-
mental economics also gains knowledge about the manipulability of
human beings. This is because the neural causal factors of decision-
making cannot only be made visible by non-invasive methods of brain
imaging, but they can also be technically controlled by invasive methods
of hormonal brain stimulation. Until now, the description does not
mention this aspect. In studies with invasive brain stimulation, mate-
rial foundations of decision-making in the test-subjects brains are
selectively blocked. This enables researchers to investigate in vivo
which neural networks have an influence on the formation of a con-
crete decision.145 Another variety of invasive brain stimulation is the
administering of hormone compounds, in which hormonal substances
are introduced to the brains blood stream, and can result, for example,
in excessively risky behavior (from an economic standpoint).146 The
neuroeconomical question of how human beings can be behavior-
ally and biologically conditioned implies the assumption that human
beings always adjust their behavior to external conditions and never
behave freely. Their social behavior toward other human beings is
not based on a decision that is made on the grounds of moral, politi-
cal or religious motivations, but is based either on external circum-
stances (egoists), or on a neurobiologically controlled decision-making
structure in the brain (altruists). Thus, neuroeconomics both meth-

145
Perhaps the most striking example for the tendency within neuroeconomics to
become increasingly reliant on neurotechnology is provided by a study of the inter-
ruption of brain waves on the right side of the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex by tran-
scranial magnetic stimulation, as documented in the article Diminishing Reciprocal
Fairness by Disrupting the Right Prefrontal Cortex (Knoch et al. 2006). The technical
inhibition of the prefrontal cortex has the effect of rendering the test subjects inca-
pable of rejecting an unfair profit distribution offer from their interaction partner.
Instead, they follow only their own rational self-interest, and accept any offer that
promises a profit greater than zero for them. The researchers interpreted this evidence
to mean that the function of the right side of the prefrontal cortex is to block other
brain regions that limit an exclusively self-interested decision of the test subjects and
would cause the subject to consider the social consequences of their decision.
146
At this point, it is appropriate to mention the much-discussed Oxytocin study
by Markus Heinrichs and Michael Kosfeld: Kosfeld and Heinrichs et al. 2005. In this
laboratory study, the test subjects were given an intranasal application of a specified
dose of the hormone Oxytocin. Afterwards, it could be observed that the test subjects
with increased Oxytocin levels could be persuaded to make much riskier offers to their
interaction partners.
 the conflict between egoism and altruism 181

odologically and conceptually ignores decisions that are motivated

by convictions and beliefs.147 Another problem of the neuroeconomic
view of human sociality is that the anthropology underlying this view
harmonizes neurobiology and economic thinking from the very start.
Tensions that might spring up between the biology and the econom-
ics of behavior are systematically ignored. As a result of this, biology
merely serves to underpin the economic idea of behavior.
(ad iii) Neuroeconomics is looking for the origins of human social-
ity in human neurobiology. Its modelings have shown that coopera-
tive principles of behavior in interactions involving two, three or more
individuals only prevail under conditions in which the social conflict
between egoists and altruists in the interaction is pre-stabilized by
the introduction of sanctions for the protection of social norms of
behavior.148 In this context, neuroeconomics always assumes the exis-
tence of universal social norms of cooperation, fairness, and reciproc-
ity. Then, it includes these norms into experimental modeling without
examining their status. Three examples can be given for this practice:
(i) The pre- of the norm: Experimental economics values the pun-
ishment of egoists as an altruistic mode of behavior and classifies it as
socially positive. However, talking about an altruistic preference in this
context only implies that individuals defer their own self-interest for
the sake of a higher goal, i.e., the maintenance of societal order. Based
on this assumption, the economic modeling of altruistic behavior
can identify the conditions that enable human beings to prefer the

147
The first signs that neuroeconomics is starting to address this deficit can be
found in the lecture Neurokonomik, given by Ernst Fehr at St. Gallen Univer-
sity in August 2006 (Fehr 2006). He states: For example, economists assume that
the belief of an individual about the action of other players is independent from the
individuals preferences. This assumption excludes motivated belief formation, and
thus makes it difficult to understand questions concerning religious faith, ideologies,
aggression toward members of other groups, or the structure and content of political
and economic advertising campaigns appealing to peoples emotions. (Fehr 2006, 15
[transl. M.S.]).
148
See Fehr and Fischbacher 2004b, 187: What are the conditions under which the
norm of conditional cooperation enables groups to establish high and stable coopera-
tion? The existence of a large minority of selfish individuals who violate cooperation
norms suggests the need for credible sanctioning threats. In fact, a large amount of
evidence [. . .] indicates that stable cooperation is rarely attained in finitely repeated
public-goods experiments with anonymous interactions and stable group member-
ship where the selfish choice is full defection. [. . .] There are, however, several studies
indicating that the addition of sanctioning behaviour has a powerful impact on coop-
eration rates in these experiments.
182 chapter two

observance of a social norm over their personal interest in profit maxi-

mization. However, it is unable to offer any way of determining how
human beings can completely relinquish their self-interest for the sake
of another person, which would imply an entirely selfless behavior.
A modeling that only focuses on the role of norms in interactions
ignores that human beings in an interactional relationship are not
only confronted with their own beliefs, but above all with the con-
crete demands of their counterparts. It ignores that, in terms of the
lifeworld, the concrete demands of another human being are encoun-
tered before the abstract norm.149 The economic modeling of interac-
tion thus runs the risk of assigning a secondary role to test subjects
interaction partner in the reconstruction of the interaction event. But
the idea that an agent perceives his counterpart in interaction situa-
tions only in terms of formal behavioral standards completely misses
the mark. For to whom or what behavioral standards can be applied,
and to which concrete requirements can they measure up, if there
is no human demand that has been constitutively included in the
equation?
(ii) The equality emphasis of the norm: By referring to a universal
social norm, e.g. the fairness norm, all types of concrete social demands
can be formally made equal to self-interest. At the same time, however,
it is important to note that social demands in such a formal equaliza-
tion cannot be perceived as the demands of others, manifesting some-
thing that cannot be compared to ones own demands, something that
cannot be measured with the yardstick of the connecting and the com-
munal. In other words: the measure of equality that is stipulated by the
social norms of fairness, cooperation, and reciprocity, always runs the
risk of being misunderstood as a homogeneity of social demands, and
thus of provoking the resistance of all that which is not accessible on a
neutral third-party level (i.e., the norm). This last aspect of an ethically
motivated resistance against the norm in the sense of an abstract prin-
ciple is not included into the modelings of experimental economics.
(iii) The legitimation of the norm: The economic modeling of social
norms fails to take into account that social behavioral standards in
modern societies are not permanently determined. Rather, these stan-
dards are subject to constant pressure to prove legitimacy that cannot

149
Also, in the neuroeconomic modeling, the other human being only appears in
the role of the interaction partner who is involved and immediately affected by the
subjects decisions. The demands of third others who are not participating in the
transaction, but are nevertheless affected by it, are not taken into account at all.
 the conflict between egoism and altruism 183

be swept aside by insisting on their natural determination. A respon-

sible examination of norms, and the differentiation between legitimate
demands and repressive norms that create degrading circumstances,
can only be conducted by linking societal standards to the discourse
regarding their legitimacy. Therefore, it cannot simply be assumed that
an empirically existing norm is set non-discursively, i.e., the norm
cannot be legitimized without justifying it in the face of critical inqui-
ries. Furthermore, neuroeconomics does not pay any attention to the
fact that, in modern societies, it is no longer clear which social norms
unquestionably apply in which situations. It simply assumes that there
are universal norms, and that their application in a concrete interac-
tion does not need to be justified discursively.
These critical observations of the status of norms in economic mod-
elings can be reconsidered in a more fundamental way. We have seen
that, structurally speaking, social interaction between human beings
is dependent on the addition of a third instance. In the economic
modeling, this third instance mediates between the agents rationally
motivated self-interests, and is a social norm. By modeling a social
norm in an observation of empirical behavior, an agents belief about
his interaction partner can be structured in a way that makes it pos-
sible to describe it as a belief geared toward objective standards. At
this point, it should not be necessary to reiterate the advantages for
economics that result from the reduction of sociality to norm-abiding
behavior. One remarkable aspect of this reduction is the completely
one-dimensional approach used by experimental economics to deter-
mine the functionality of a social norm. The norm structures the
benefit of a transaction in regard to the interests of the interaction
partners, but it does not take into account their individual well-being.
Instead, it is only concerned with the overall outcome of an equalized
profit distribution. This assessment is clearly confirmed yet again by
the example of altruistic punishment, in which the concrete (financial )
well-being of the interaction partner is disregarded by the punishing
subject because of the interaction partners previous defection from
behaving in a norm-abiding manner. The case would be different if the
social norm were considered to be an expression of a mutual behavior
expectation. But in that case, the norm would not only be allowed
to structure an individuals decision and behavior, but it would also
have to encompass the social events that occur between individuals,
and prepare their decisions. In this sense, the reciprocity of behavior
demanded by the norm could be based in the reciprocity of the inter-
actional relationship.
184 chapter two

21.3 On the Sense and Nonsense of Talking about Altruism

Because the (neuro-)economic research approach does not relate its
scientific observations to the hermeneutical and phenomenologi-
cal dimensions of its study object, it represents an approach to the
explanation of sociality that reduces the manifold possibilities of
social behavior toward oneself and others to an exclusively behav-
iorist dimension. It recognizes only the external, material incentives
for behavior, and examines the biological factors that may determine
the reactions to these incentives. Furthermore, it employs behavioral-
scientific terms and concepts whose validity for an understanding of
human social everyday experience is disputable. Once again, this can
be demonstrated by looking at the question of human altruism. The
necessity of experimental verification is characteristic of the empiri-
cal imprecision of the concept of altruism as such. Purely altruistic
behavior and egoistic behavior cannot be distinguished precisely and
unequivocally: it is possible to assume (and upon further investigation
reveal) the existence of a hidden egoistical interest, or a hidden, selfish
long-term effect motivating every selfless act of assistance and every
unselfish deed. Of course, the suspicion of imprecision that arises in
regard to the empirical explanatory power of the altruism concept for
the lifeworld does not apply to the studies of experimental economics
in the first place, because they take place in a controlled laboratory set-
ting in which all situational aspects can be externally manipulated. But
at the same time, this only confirms that altruism is a social-scientific
category of interpretation only able to claim ultimate validity for the
evaluation of human behavior under very limited conditions. With the
plurality of meanings in the everyday experiential world, every behav-
ior is characterized by indecision, indeterminacy, and multiple levels
of subtlety, and thus always remains obscure for the participants to a
certain extent. Therefore, what at first glance looks like selfless giv-
ing is always open to interpretation in the lifeworld. It is always pos-
sible to second-guess the motives underlying an act of giving, and the
self-referential consequences that a giver pursues with his behavior.
It is always possible to give an alternative description of a perceived
behavior, which once again points to the varied range of human social
behavior ignored by the economic model.
The argumentation can now come to an (intermediate) conclusion:
the approachs of experimental economics and neuroeconomics remain
explanatory, with limited plausibility that provokes a multitude of
 the conflict between egoism and altruism 185

critical inquiries, amendments, and reassessments and ultimately, the

incorporation of other perspectives to ensure continued growth and
reorientation. But regardless of the limitations of these approaches,
the following question remains: what productive implications of the
economic concept of (pro-)sociality and cooperation can be reconsid-
ered, and possibly reassessed from a social-philosophical perspective?
Accordingly, the goal of the following chapter is to contrast the basic
insights gained from the empirical examination of human sociality
with three concepts regarding the interactional relationship between
the fields of ethics and social phenomenology. Since such a contrasting
comparison necessitates an interdisciplinary change of perspectives,
the first step will be to outline the preconditions and tasks of a social-
philosophical discussion of the subject, and to unfold them with regard
to the present state of social-philosophical problem consciousness.
 CHAPTER THREE

DIFFERENCE IN THE INTERPERSONAL RELATION

22 Three Constellations of the Interpersonal Relation

The second chapter of this study focused on the studies of experimen-

tal economics and neuroeconomics as examples for the examination of
human sociality in the social sciences. Following an in-depth analysis
of the methodology of an experimental modeling, it was demonstrated
that this approach to describing social interactions is limited when
it comes to representing the dynamics of interactive human relation-
ships and the social agents self- and other-referential intentions at
work in it. For this reason, the study added phenomenological consid-
erations in order to complement the empirical perspective on human
social behavior.
The third chapter of this study seeks to establish a dialogue with
social-philosophical and ethical approaches that explicitly deal with
the question of how the structure of social interaction can be char-
acterized as a structure of interpersonal relations and interpersonal
difference. Therefore, the focus of attention will shift from the inter-
action and its consequences to the phenomenal field of interpersonal
sociality.1 To this end, this chapter will discuss theoretical concepts
of social philosophy that focus on the potential for conflict in human
social relationships (which the economic studies examined on a bio-
logical and behavioral level). They take the interpersonal relation
as the starting point for their reflections and think about its social,
political and ethical consequences. Methodologically speaking, how-
ever, the social-philosophical approaches reconstruct the dynamics of
social interaction not only at the site of the individual, as experimental
economics did in its description of social preferences. Instead, they

1
Thoughts on interpersonal sociality have already been introduced in 2 and 10.
These sections referred to interpersonal sociality as the phenomenal excess of human
interaction that eludes measurable empirical description and that denotes the sphere
of human behavior in which human beings mutually affect each other and bring about
awareness of each other. This can occur through words, gestures, looks, symbols, or
also through silence.
188 chapter three

go beyond methodological individualism by first considering the basic

phenomenological structure of interpersonal relations. Then, they use
the description of this relationship structure as a starting point for
developing models of human cooperation or conflict and describe the
inner dynamics of this relationship structure in its consequences for
the societal coexistence of humanity.
The three concepts discussed in this chapter are all based on the
assumption of a difference or asymmetry at the root of the interpersonal
encounter. On the basis of this difference, they endeavor to compre-
hend the humane possibility of configuring this encounter politically
and ethically. Here, the descriptions from the various perspectives
range from interpersonal difference as an antagonistic confrontation,
to this very same difference as a site of responsibility for an other,
whose presence in the interpersonal encounter remains transcendent
and elusive. An intermediate position is adopted by those concepts
which deal with the ethics and politics of recognition, in which the
conflict potential of the interpersonal relation is to be pacified by
the ideal of symmetry and reciprocity. All three concepts deal with the
asymmetrical relationship constellations that also served as the start-
ing point in the modelings of experimental economics. There, these
constellations were used to represent social conflicts between altru-
istic and egoistic agents and to examine the causes and conditions
that could lead to solving these conflicts. Unlike economics, the social-
philosophical theories discuss new forms of a social conflict that can be
understood, not by looking at the consequences of human interaction,
but by considering the interactional relationship and the interpersonal
difference at work in it. In addition, the solution of social conflicts
is not viewed only in terms of the evolution of a cooperative human
interaction focused on strong reciprocity. From a social-philosophical
perspective, it is questionable whether a pacification of social conflicts
that aims to establish a symmetrical synchronization of the interaction
partners and their transactions does not misunderstand the nature of
these conflicts as such.
Another factor that must be taken into account in considering
the three possible conceptions of the basic character of interpersonal
relation and difference, is the fact that the basic types of antagonism,
recognition and alterity can each only describe one aspect of the inter-
personal encounter. Unlike the constructions of economic behavioral
science, the discourses of social philosophy cannot create a meaningful
unified perspective, nor do they aim to do so. Therefore, in order to
 difference in the interpersonal relation 189

make the social-philosophical approach plausible, we first have to clar-

ify the preconditions and tasks at the heart of a social-philosophical
discussion of the subject.

23 Human Nature and its Function for the Legitimation

of Political Order

Unlike the strict social sciences, social philosophy does not ask empiri-
cally about how the social patterns of order and behavior, which orga-
nize the societal cooperation of human beings emerge in interaction.
Instead, it inquires philosophically how (social) order is possible at all,
how it can be justified, and what basic rational convictions, affective
passions and natural drives on the part of the human being support
it. Social philosophy, which first established itself as an autonomous
philosophical discipline in the 19th and 20th centuries,2 considers
human society to be the basic model of social order. It uses the term
society as an umbrella term for human coexistence in legal, political,
economic, religious and cultural constellations. Since the distinction
between state and society, between politics, economy and ethics, can
only be taken for granted after the advent of the legal philosophy of
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel,3 it is justified to call social philoso-
phy a genuinely modern discipline of philosophy. At the same time,
the roots of its questions and topics can be traced back all the way
to antiquity.4 Another seminal development for the examination of
its object was the connection, established in the 17th and 18th cen-
turies, between the scientific explication of the human being and the
philosophical justification of social order in British moral philosophy
(Thomas Hobbes, Anthony Shaftesbury, and David Hume).5 Subsequent

2
The establishment of social philosophy as a discipline is connected to the names
of Rudolf Stammler (1896), Ludwig Stein (1897) and Georg Simmel (1894). See also
Rttgers 1997, 5971.
3
The thesis that Hegels legal philosophy first provided the terminological means to
establish social philosophy as a philosophy of human sociability was first presented by
Karl Mayer-Moreau in his book Hegels Socialphilosophie (Mayer-Moreau 1910).
4
Rhemann 1979, 8995, locates the origins of social philosophy in the thoughts
of Empedocles and Socrates, where currently valid social norms are challenged for
the first time. Forschner (1989) begins his introduction into the basic terms of social
philosophy with Aristotles Politics and the determination of human beings to form
nations.
5
This methodological and content-related turn for thinking about the social that
was heralded by Thomas Hobbes theory of the state also leads to the thesis that, in
190 chapter three

to this connection, it has been a continued task of social philosophy

to discuss the possibilities and limitations of a description of human
beings at the site of their sociality.
In engaging with its object, social philosophy can take on a descrip-
tive-analytical as well as a normative-critical function. When proceed-
ing in a descriptive-analytical way, it examines the individual societal
spheres of the social, exposing the conflicts between their respective
logics and the human way of life. In contrast, when proceeding in a
critical manner, it posits the normative standard of the successful life
and on that basis diagnoses the limitations and deformations under
which human beings must live in society.6 The two approaches are
not to be understood as alternatives, but as complementary to each
other.
Even by looking only at the tasks of social philosophy, it should be
clear that it is impossible to examine its object in the same way as the
societal practices and procedures that serve to establish factual order
in human social interaction. The social-philosophical perspective is
thus fundamentally different from the empirical description of human
sociality. This chapter will focus on social-philosophical concepts that
describe the emergence of social forms of order based on the presen-
tation and analysis of the interpersonal relation structure.7 The argu-
mentation will attempt to demonstrate that without the interpersonal

terms of content, modern social philosophy originates in his work. See e.g. Albert
1991, 27.
6
The characterization of the task of social philosophy as critical follows Axel Hon-
neths remarks regarding the tradition and timeliness of social philosophy (Honneth
1994). In his paper, Honneth develops the task of social philosophy on the basis of
its critical intention to diagnose the pathologies of current societal life that emerge
whenever social coexistence is evaluated by the standard of individual self-realization.
When social philosophy inquires into the irreducible social preconditions for a suc-
cessful individual life, it is in need of an underlying ethical concept. To this end, it
paradigmatically uses either a past original state or the expectable future of human
beings as a foil for evaluating the current societal status quo, which it examines with
both diagnostic and therapeutic interest. Thus, social philosophy validates its stan-
dards for a successful social life with the pretext of anthropology. According to Hon-
neth, this transcending perspective is given in all major social-philosophical concepts
since Jean-Jacques Rousseau, with the exception of Michel Foucaults analysis of mod-
ern power structures.
7
The understanding of social philosophy represented here follows Burkhard
Liebschs description of the function of a contemporary social philosophy (see Liebsch
1999, 9). According to Liebsch, who uses a phenomenological approach, social phi-
losophy should no longer base its thought on the abstract opposition of individual vs.
society, but on the interpersonal relation structure and the concrete experience of the
other human being.
 difference in the interpersonal relation 191

structures of humanity, the genesis of social order cannot be conveyed

from a philosophical perspective.
Since Thomas Hobbes, the anthropology underlying the modern dis-
cipline of social philosophy can describe human beings both before
and in their sociality.8 This implies a double perspective on human
beings that considers them in both their unsocial and social modes of
life. The paradigm for this new perspective on human beings is the
thought experiment of the natural state and the doctrine of the social
contract that is based on it. By making an initially ontological distinc-
tion between humanity before sociality (natural state) and humanity
in sociality (societal state), this thought experiment introduced a new
model to social anthropology in the 17th century. In the following sec-
tion, this model will be analyzed and retrospectively contrasted with
the economic understanding of sociality discussed in the last chapter.

23.1 The Separation of Politics and Nature in the Model of

Societal Order
With his philosophical speculation about the natural state of human
beings, Hobbes in the 17th century made a radical break from the
Aristotelian understanding of human social nature and natural moral-
ity.9 In the anthropology underlying Hobbes theory of the state in his
Leviathan (1651),10 human nature is no longer determined, as it was
in antiquity, by the telos of communal human interaction. Instead, it
is posited as a pre-political given of human society. Because Hobbes
recourse to human nature refers not to the political creature (zoon poli-
tikon) but to the natural existence of human beings before any political
order, his doctrine of the natural state can be called anti-Aristotelian.11

8
Thomas Hobbes anthropology and theory of the natural state is taken as a point
of departure here and in the following passages because, unlike any other modern the-
ory of the state, it makes an unsocial human nature the starting point of its reflections
on societal order formation. By doing so, it is the first social theory that integrates an
opposing moment that places the opposition of nature vs. society at the center of its
reflections about the possibilities of peaceful human coexistence.
9
In the 17th century, there were alternative concepts of the natural state, for
example the one developed by John Locke in his Essay Concerning Human Under-
standing (1689). Locke argues that the human mind contains a natural basis for a
supra-individual consciousness for rules and norms. In contrast to Hobbes concept,
this consciousness does not have to be produced by the violent clash of individuals.
10
See Hobbes 2002, 9124.
11
This thesis is also put forward by Axel Honneth in his book The Struggle for
Recognition (Honneth 1996, 911). Hobbes himself contrasts his understanding of
192 chapter three

It describes the establishment of political order as a radical break from

the natural conditions of human beings.
But Hobbes doctrine of the natural state considers the natural exis-
tence of human beings to be not only apolitical and nonhierarchi-
cal, but also atomistic: as individuals, human beings only enter into
a relationship with other human beings in a secondary manner, and
this relationship is always affected by egoistical impulses and pas-
sions.12 The encounter of individual human beings in the natural state
is therefore characterized by the three basic conflicts of competition,
distrust and thirst for glory13 that cause the individuals to assault
each other. Hobbes calls this the war of all against all.14 Thus, unlike
Aristotle, he does not make human nature the integrative element of
a conception of human coexistence. Instead, the natural state is devel-
oped for the purpose of providing a rational insight into the existence
of an artificially created coexistence, a state that holds the monopoly of
power and domination.15 In Hobbes conception, the social order and
coexistence of human beings are for the first time considered to be in
need of legitimation because their form is no longer predetermined
by nature or God. In the Hobbesian doctrine of the state, the unso-
cial natural state of human beings thus functions as an extra-societal
foundation for the legitimation of a societal order based on the model
of a contract in which the various interests of the individuals are rep-
resented and mediated by a third party (the sovereign).
Methodologically speaking, the description of the natural state pre-
cedes the description of society. In this natural state, individuals live in
a nonhierarchical space, which, according to Hobbes, causes them to
perpetually tumble into life-and-death conflicts with each other. Sub-
sequently, the multitude of conflicts and individual interests expands
into a war of all against all, which puts the individuals lives in such
grave danger that they agree to form a state.16 Thus, Hobbes views the
sociability of the individual not as an end in itself, because human

human nature with that of Aristotle by claiming that Aristotles talk of a political
creature only applies to bees and ants (see Hobbes 2002, 127).
12
See Hobbes 2002, 4049.
13
See ibid., 94.
14
Ibid., 95.
15
See ibid., 130.
16
See ibid.
 difference in the interpersonal relation 193

beings require social coexistence not by nature,17 but only as a means

of self-preservation.
Hobbes doctrine of the natural state can be read in two different
ways. The first reading forms the basis for the modelings of experi-
mental economics and neuroeconomics. The second reading will be
discussed in more detail in the following section.
From a historical perspective, Hobbes development of the doctrine
of the natural state is inextricably linked to the social upheavals of the
religious and civil wars at the beginning of the 17th century. Hob-
bes wrote his Leviathan based on his experiences of these conflicts,
thereby creating the prototype of a naturalistic justification of society.
In Hobbes own opinion, the description of human beings he pro-
vided in the Leviathan was an exact description of human psychol-
ogy and actual human behavior. He believed that the best foundation
for a theory of political order is an anthropology that is as true to
reality as possible. However, his representation of human beings is not
supported by empirical studies or observations of human beings, but
refers only to his personal life experiences. Accordingly, his doctrine
of the natural state constructs an image of human beings that repre-
sents them as creatures bent on self-preservation and pleasure, whose
behavior is mainly motivated by material desires and passions.
The political motive underlying Hobbes conception of the doctrine
of the natural state is the question of how to bring about the transi-
tion from war to peace, or of how peace can emerge from a state of
war. In his imagined situation of the war of all against all, i.e., in a
situation of multi-polar conflict, the transition18 from war to peace is
always made by establishing an order (the foundation of a state). Only
the authority and general power given to the state by all individuals
can ensure the peaceful coexistence of human beings under a central
ruling entity.19 However, individuals enter the societal state as a state
of governance only due to fear of a violent death in the struggle of all

17
See ibid., 9495.
18
The following quote makes clear that Hobbes understanding of war does not
refer to war-time hostilities, but to a conflict situation that is independent of time and
space: For War consisteth not in battle only, or the act of fighting, but in a tract of
time, wherein the will to contend by battle is sufficiently known. [. . .] [S]o the nature
of actual war consisteth not in actual fighting, but in the known disposition thereto
during all the time there is no assurance to the contrary. All other time is Peace.
(ibid., 95).
19
See ibid., 130.
194 chapter three

against all. Thus, their motivation is deeply rooted in an egoistic urge

for self-preservation and is devoid of any moral or political motive
beyond the protection of their own lives.20
Hobbes develops the fiction of the natural state underlying the
political and legal order in his social contract theory on the basis of a
description of a natural human essence. With this description, Hobbes
sets the course for a new social-philosophical model of thought. Based
on an objective and (apparently) impartial examination of human
beings and their natural abilities, it is possible to determine and politi-
cally secure the possibilities and limitations of human coexistence. In
the 18th and 19th century, this model of thought becomes the basis
for the endeavor to examine human beings with the exact methods
of the natural sciences. In this way, the basis for the justification of
human society becomes even more strictly objectified. From this pro-
cess emerges the idea of a natural-scientific foundation of human
social orders as postulated by August Comte.21 But social philosophy
has used the theory of the natural state not just for justifying society,
but also for criticizing it. For Jean-Jacques Rousseau, John Locke or
Anthony Shaftesbury, among others, the natural state no longer serves
to legitimize social order, but becomes the argumentative basis for the
challenge and critical assessment of societal order structures.
With the emergence of historicism in the 19th and 20th centuries,
this model of thought was cast into doubt. The notion began to prevail
that human nature itself cannot be an objective point of reference
outside of social order patterns and institutional frameworks of soci-
ety, but rather became historical along with them. Thus, the function
of human nature for the justification of social order was put into ques-
tion, because a human nature that is always described in dependence
on the historical conditions of society cannot function as an extra-
societal given. It is historically determined itself, and its validity is not
timeless. The insight into the historical determinacy and relativity of
the concept of natural human abilities subsequently called into ques-
tion recourse to that concept for justifying anything.

20
See ibid., 97: The passions that incline men to peace are fear of death, desire of
such things as are necessary to commodious living, and a hope by their industry to
obtain them.
21
Here, it is useful to refer to Comtes Cours de philosophie positive (Comte
1990). This idea of a scientific-rational foundation of society is taken up again by Ernst
Cassirer in his book The Myth of the State (see Cassirer 2007, 289).
 difference in the interpersonal relation 195

In contrast, the modelings of experimental economics and neuro-

economics draw on the philosophical thought experiment of a natural
state preceding the societal integration of human beings into a law-
based state of governance. Their work is based on the assumption of
a nonhierarchical interaction between single individuals. But econom-
ics seeks to use its experimental modelings to support the argument
that the purely speculative understanding of human beings underlying
Hobbes philosophical thought experiment should be replaced with a
scientifically verified concept of human beings. Furthermore, it seeks
to show that Hobbes premise of an unsocial human nature can be
disproved by verifying the natural prosociality of human beings. Social
coexistence is already possible under the conditions of the natural state
if the conflict between human egoism and altruism can be won by the
latter. While Hobbes describes human beings before the societal state
as pure egoists, the economic modelings were able to show how the
natural altruism of human beings can become the motor for enforcing
societal norms of behavior. Therefore, instead of assuming a gener-
ally unsocial human nature, economic modelings describe a conflict
between antisocial and prosocial agents in social interaction. The ques-
tion remains whether economics has already tapped the full reflective
potential of this philosophical thought experiment, just by providing
the positivist description of human beings espoused by it with empiri-
cal underpinnings, corrections and expansions.

23.2 The Genesis of Order from Contingence

The previous section showed that Thomas Hobbes construction of the
natural state is rooted in the genuinely modern idea that social and
political patterns of order are not naturally given, but rather are con-
stituted by an artificial break from human nature. According to Ger-
hard Gamm,22 the theory of the social contract has thus not only (as
shown above) provided a new social-anthropological model of thought
for the justification of the formation of political order, but it was also
the first concept to point out that this formation of order is contin-
gent on historical occurrences. In order to understand the implica-
tions of this second argument, it is necessary to disclose the strategy of

22
See Gamm 2001, 727.
196 chapter three

justification underlying the theory of the social contract in its dynam-

ics beyond Hobbes original model.
Hobbes develops the theory of the social contract from a seemingly
extra-historical a priori concept, the natural state of human beings.
In this way, the theory reduces the complexity of societys underlying
social structures to an ideal type, the singularity of a conflict or war
between human egoisms.23 But by methodologically extracting human
nature from the formation of order within society, the theory of the
social contract also takes recourse to an ultimate foundation of social
order formation and derives from it the principle of necessary domin-
ion to legitimize the order formation. In its dependence on a seem-
ingly ahistoric natural state, the theory of the social contract attempts
to defuse the radical contingency and lack of origin of the social and
political genesis of order and to provide it with a seemingly timeless
justification. But Hobbes construction, which strives to provide soci-
ety with a foundation based on a timelessly valid anthropology, has
failed to stand the test of time in the societal dynamics of modernity.
However, the insight that the natural state is by no means ahistoric
and eternally valid did not cause social contract theory to be dismissed,
but to be corrected, re-determined and consolidated. It was possible
to reinterpret the theory of the social contract as a paradigm for a
reflexive theory of the genesis of social order. This theory is aware of
the contingent provisions of every social order formation and remains
transparent through the construction of a natural or original state.24
In the course of the further development of Hobbes social con-
tract theory, two things have become clear: first, the construction of an
extra-societal natural state is always based on the premises of the pres-
ent state of society. The pre-societal state referred to as natural state
describes that which, from a regulative perspective, is to be excluded
from the present societal order as a non-rational living option for
human beings, which destroys and suspends the societal order. Second,
on the basis of this insight, the social contract is no longer a neutral
regulator; instead, its establishment is made possible by a hegemonic
strategy that is supposed to establish a very specific idea of society as
the only necessary and legitimate possibility of order formation.

23
See ibid., 1516.
24
See e.g. the reformulation of the classical contract theories with the help of ratio-
nal decision theory in Rawls 1971, 102168.
 difference in the interpersonal relation 197

These observations form the basis for a new potential for reflection.
From this perspective, the analytical and heuristic significance of the
social contract theory is not to be found in the fact that it knows and
assumes a definitive natural state of human beings; rather, the more
interesting aspect is that it acknowledges a constitutive exteriority of
the identity and totality of social and political forms of order and main-
tains it for the reflection on the emergence of order. Another function
of this constitutive exteriority is to point out that the predominance
of a very specific form of order (namely, the order of the social con-
tract) is impossible without the exclusion of alternative forms of order.
If the conflict between these forms were to be maintained indefinitely,
human coexistence would be impossible (Hobbes state of nature). For
this reason, the conflict can only be pacified by the hegemonic pre-
dominance of one regulative power. Therefore, the conflict of egoisms
in the natural state as a constitutive exteriority is not only a condition
for the possibility of society, but also a constitutive part of it.
This insight, which is central to the reflexive understanding of the
possibilities and limitations of the modern idea of society, can now
in turn be applied to the modeling of sociality in economics, which
assumes a dual social nature of human beings (prosocial/antisocial).
Experimental economics attempts to draw a picture of human society
that posits the biological nature of human beings as the condition for
the emergence of social regulative patterns. Its explanatory claim and
the associated experimental modelings, however, are based on a grave
methodological self-misunderstanding. This has been demonstrated
already: the representations and interpretations of experimental eco-
nomics always ignore the constructedness of its own methodology and
the associated consequences of technologically mastering its human
object of study.25 The understanding of nature that underlies its inter-
pretations thus contradicts its own constructive treatment of this
nature in experiment. While experimental economics claims to pro-
vide a better description of human nature than philosophical theory
and to present it as it is, it ignores the crucial insight resulting from the
critical understanding of the social contract theory, and at the same
time reconfirms the relevance and significance of social contract the-
ory for social-philosophical thought. Precisely because experimental
economics as neuroeconomics attempts to give its findings the form of

25
This thesis has been developed and justified in the first chapter in 14.2.
198 chapter three

a naturalistic a priori conception of social reality, and because it nur-

tures the prejudice that the political theory of the natural state is noth-
ing more than an inadequate philosophical speculation about human
nature that can be empirically corrected, it squanders the potential for
philosophical reflection contained in the distinction between a natu-
ral and societal state, and with it the chance to understand human
nature as a constitutive exteriority, i.e., as a factor that eludes societal
regulatives. Instead, its modelings turn the biological nature of human
beings into an artifact that can be manipulated with social techniques
and whose biological consciousness correlates can be conditioned and
manipulated in a way that makes it possible to enforce a very specific
idea of society, namely that which rests on the universal principles of
fairness and justice, as the norm of social interaction patterns.
Thus, the model of the natural and empirical origins of the human
societal form of life developed in experimental economics and neu-
roeconomics is by no means an unbiased depiction of reality that
could be uncritically taken as fact to support philosophical consider-
ations. Rather, neuroeconomic experiments model not only empirical
evidence, but a practical method to draw on human biology for the
establishment of a very specific form of human coexistence. By sys-
tematically investigating the possibility of establishing a social frame-
work that leads to a specific behavioral type in the examined behavior
aggregate, it creates the pragmatic conditions for the societal appro-
priation and disciplining of human beings and their egoism.

24 Antagonism: The Irreducibility of Difference

From the perspective of the Hobbesian social contract, the natural state
constitutes a legal and political vacuum that is primarily determined
by individual antagonisms. According to Hobbes, the momentum of
these antagonisms results from the natural human drives and passions
that cause individuals to engage each other in a life-and-death struggle.
The scarcity of available goods also contributes to hostile relationships
among individuals. The individuals egoisms and the scarcity of goods
in the natural state lead to a situation where no individual is safe from
the others. In Hobbes perspective, society understood as an objec-
tive order brought about by the establishment of a legal relationship
among the individuals puts an absolute stop to this situation by end-
ing the anthropologically determined antagonisms with the help of a
 difference in the interpersonal relation 199

rational agreement, i.e., the social contract. Thus, the social contract is
meant to permanently and irrevocably overcome these antagonisms by
transferring the liberties of the individual to an impartial sovereign.
Hobbes explains the necessity of such a transfer by claiming (i) that
the individual can accept, for rational reasons, that hostile antagonisms
can be overcome by appointing a central ruling power, and (ii) that
the sovereigns power permanently keeps them in check and directs
them toward a common good. The highest purpose of appointing a
sovereign is thus to arrest the conflicts between human beings before
they escalate into hostile antagonism.

24.1 Laclau and Mouffe: Antagonism and Democracy

Hobbes theory of the social contract is based on the premise that
societal order begins where hostile antagonisms can be permanently
resolved and overcome. From this perspective, human sociability is the
result of a centralization and monopolization of power. But not only
the natural state as such, but also its transition into a social contract is
a precarious premise full of preconditions. In the following sections,
this premise will be critically examined by reintroducing antagonism
into the social-philosophical concept of society. The idea that conflicts
and antagonisms between human beings can simply be excised from
a description of social reality, whisked away by unanimous, rational
consensus, is a political vision that, just like the speculation about the
natural state, must be examined in terms of its justification and pre-
conditions. What this means exactly can be demonstrated with the
example of the deconstruction of those societal concepts that propose
a liberal reading of the social contract theory.
In contemporary social philosophy, a universal, contract-theoretical
foundation of society is appreciated mainly in the liberal theoretical
approaches. Thus, the conviction that societal orders are primar-
ily based on a rational agreement between human beings has been
accepted as a key principle of societal theory. Its proponents include
the contractualist, linguist and discourse-theoretical approaches in
20th century social philosophy (John Rawls, Jrgen Habermas etc.). It
is connected to a number of cosmopolitan ideas about human coexis-
tence (human rights, universality of the liberal democracy model etc.).
The situation is different on the side of leftist and post-Marxist social
theories. It is precisely the universal idea of the necessity of a soci-
etal consensus championed by the liberal approaches that is presently
200 chapter three

being challenged by deconstructivist social theories of the political left.

In order to describe this idea, the following sections will discuss as an
example the theory of discourse and democracy developed by Ernesto
Laclau and Chantal Mouffe.26
Laclaus and Mouffes theory of discourse and democracy rejects
the political logic of the rationally necessary associated with the social
contract theory and replaces it with a political logic that emphasizes
the presence of a specific form of contingency in societal order forma-
tion. For Laclau and Mouffe, contingency manifests itself primarily in
the hegemonic and antagonistic structures of the political discourse
practices in society. In their jointly authored work Hegemony and
Socialist Strategy27 (published in English in 1985), they criticize the
rational idealization of society espoused by liberal societal theories. In
opposition to these theories, they develop an alternative understand-
ing of societal order formation. For Laclau and Mouffe, the consti-
tutive structure of society is not (as in the Hobbesian paradigm) a
contract or unanimous agreement, but the conflict or antagonism of
political identities that Hobbes had relegated to his description of the
natural state. Laclau and Mouffe view social conflicts within society as
antagonistic since they manifest the impossibility of an ultimate and
definitive consolidation of societal order.28 Thus, the irreducibility of
these conflicts represents an immanent limit to the formation of order.
In this context, Laclau and Mouffe do not understand antagonistic
conflict as an objective discrepancy between different options of soci-
etal order, but as a dynamic process of differentiation that brings forth
all of these options in the first place.29
Laclaus and Mouffes approach is based on the thesis that the liberal
conception of society aims at an objective and self-contained order-
ing structure of the social. In their view, this goal is not compatible
with the reality of political life in a world of pluralist democracies.
Therefore, the starting point for Laclaus and Mouffes argumentation
is the observation that precisely the antagonisms that the social con-
tract theory locates outside of society are constitutive of the political

26
See Laclau 1990; Laclau and Mouffe 22001; Mouffe 1993; 2000; 2005.
27
Laclau and Mouffe 22001.
28
See the definition of antagonism in the book Hegemony and Socialist Strategy:
[A]ntagonism, as a witness of the impossibility of a final structure, is the experience
of the limit of the social. Strictly speaking, antagonisms are not internal but external
to society; or rather, they constitute the limit of society. (ibid., 125).
29
See ibid., 122127.
 difference in the interpersonal relation 201

decision-making process and of the pluralism of political options in

a democratic society. For this reason, they attempt to reclaim the
term antagonism for their theory of society. In their view, societal
discourse is always about a political conflict between different parties
and about taking a point of view that can be distinguished from other
points of view (us/them difference). According to Laclau and Mouffe,
this discourse can never be about the dissolution of partisan positions
through the parties unanimous rational agreement on a common
position. Instead, these different positions should be provided with a
symbolic space of legitimate confrontation and articulation.
According to Laclau and Mouffe, the efforts to rid society of poten-
tial antagonisms through consensus-oriented, democratic methods are
fueled by the suspension and negation of the basic political dimen-
sion of society. Consequently, they posit the political as a counter-
principle to that which liberal societal theory thinks of as the social.30
The political is defined by power conflicts and is always determined by
the confrontational emergence of a hegemonic position. Power con-
flicts cannot be reconciled in democratic discourses, but they can be
transitioned into legitimate forms of articulation (radical democratic
approach). According to Mouffe, such legitimate forms of articulation
are established by channeling conflicts agonistically, i.e., by articulat-
ing conflicts on the level of adversarial politics (agonism) and not on
the level of militant hostility (antagonism).31 Thus, a constitutive factor
for the articulation of conflicts in post-Marxist societal theory is the
formation of clearly differentiated political options that, by confront-
ing each other, enable the individual political forces to represent them-
selves and to set themselves apart from each other.32 Accordingly, the
formation of political fronts (left, right) is not something that precedes
political practice and must be overcome by it, but is indeed one of its
core tasks.
Unlike the liberal understanding of society, the post-Marxist under-
standing of society assumes that political conflicts as political conflicts
should never be solved or suspended with rational means. Rather, they
are irreducible as conflicts, and their agonistic articulation in political
practice has a constitutive relevance for the functionality of human

30
This thought is again pointedly expressed in Mouffe 2005, 1718.
31
See ibid., 2931, and Mouffe 2000, 80107.
32
See Mouffe 2005, 2934.
202 chapter three

societies. Laclau and Mouffe justify this argument in two ways.33 First,
they point out that the reality of antagonistic power structures must
not be obscured or impaired in societal discourse by creating the illu-
sion that differences could be harmonized or ultimately made to dis-
appear by making everyone agree on the same rational methodological
principles, as is the case in the discourse theory of Jrgen Habermas,
among others.34 For there is the risk that that which is excluded as
irrational by a societal order turns against it in a subversive manner.
In order to prevent this from happening, the dynamics of collective
identification must be laid open and the conflict between them must
be acknowledged as an influential force in political discourse.
Furthermore, the reference to political anthropology is a crucial
constitutive element of the post-Marxist understanding of society.
Mouffe explains the constitutive importance of antagonism for politi-
cal discourse by pointing out that political conflict in a democracy is
rooted in human affective bonding that not only allows, but down-
right demands passionate partisanship and collective identification.
These affective identifications are a basic anthropological condition of
sociability in general. The inner dynamics of every political discourse
is rooted in a conflict between individual and collective patterns of
identification, which due to its foundation in human affects, cannot be
solved with rationality, but only fought out in a reasonable manner.
These thoughts point to a possible connection between post-Marxist
political theory and psychoanalysis, and suggest a willingness to adopt
insights and reflections from this discipline.35 Looking at some reflec-
tions by Jacques Lacan, this idea comes into sharper focus. Drawing
on Sigmund Freuds work, Lacan endeavored to interpret the affects
of human beings as passions of collective desires [desir] or enjoyment
[ jouissance].36 Here, desire and enjoyment are to be understood as
two modes of forming collective identities. While desire is focused on
an imaginary object that can only be desired as a non-identity, i.e.,
in an actual lack of identification, enjoyment organizes itself through
the construction of real, symbolic instances that represent ones own
identity as distinct from someone elses. The point of both modes is

33
The twofold justification strategy presented here can be found: ibid., 1719.2529.
34
See Habermas 1983/1987.
35
This integration occurs by way of Slavoj ieks work on psychoanalysis and
political theory in Mouffe 2005, 2529 (see iek 1989; 1991; 1998).
36
See the introduction to Lacan by Peter Widmer (2007).
 difference in the interpersonal relation 203

that the formation of identity occurs against the foil of a constitutive

exteriority, a counterpart to ones own identity. But this counterpart is
either unavailable for identification (desire) or, as a symbolic construct
(enjoyment), is the site of identity formation that occurs by setting
itself apart from others. These reflections are congruent with Laclaus
and Mouffes thoughts.37
By attributing the formation of a collective political identity to a
passion of desire and enjoyment that always eludes human beings
themselves, it is now possible to also lay open its antagonistic escala-
tion potential for society. As soon as a group perceives the identity
of another group as a real threat to the enjoyment of its own identity
constructs, there is the risk that a friend-enemy-relationship emerges
in which the others become the object of hate and disdain. Thus,
the search for political identification in the collective enjoyment of
an object also contains an aggressive and destructive potential that
according to Mouffe can only be kept from escalating by the dem-
ocratic process of confrontational articulation and disarticulation of
political identities.38
Psychoanalytical theory can thus serve to highlight the ambiguity
of human beings as social creatures: the desiring and enjoying human
being is just as capable of hate and hostility as of fraternization and
social reciprocity. A complete elimination of this ambiguity will always
remain an illusion and, Mouffe states, bears a great risk for the demo-
cratic structure of society. In order to account for the ambiguous social
nature of human beings, political conflicts in social-philosophical the-
ory must therefore have conceptual status. In her book On the Politi-
cal, Mouffe argues39 that the affective passions of human beings in a
democracy cannot simply be subordinated to rational methodological
and regulative principles; rather, their constitutive role in the emer-
gence of democratic political options must be acknowledged. Only
then can these passions be prevented from turning into subversive

37
According to the poststructuralist discourse theory of society (Laclau and
Mouffe), the political identity can only be established via an empty (or emptied) signi-
fier (signifier without signified), which allows for a dimension of unknown meaning in
the discourse and in this way can come to symbolize the equivalence of very different
discursive moments. In Laclaus and Mouffes terms, the empty signifier can also be
referred to as the horizon or boundary of a perspective (see Stheli 2001, 201). It is
both a site of the discourses imaginary closure and part of the discourse itself.
38
See Mouffe 2005, 1719.
39
See ibid., 2529.
204 chapter three

dynamics that threaten the democratic order from within. Nationalist

ideologies and terrorism are the key factors Mouffe has in mind when
she discusses the subversive risk potentials of antagonistic structures
repressed by society.40

24.2 Critical Assessment of the Liberal, Deliberative Model of Society

The previous reflections, based on the deconstruction of the liberal
societal models political visions, have added new insights to the
understanding of human sociality. In this section, these insights will
be systematically summarized. Once again, the approach developed by
Laclau and Mouffe will serve as a point of reference. In their books,
they both formulate a radical criticism of the liberal model of soci-
ety, observing that the deliberative understanding of societal discourse
practices presents itself as a decidedly apolitical understanding of soci-
ety, which abandons crucial insights of social anthropology in favor of
an unequivocally optimistic and positive conception of human beings.
Therefore, Laclau and Mouffe call for a (re)politicization of the under-
standing of human beings and society. On the basis of their reflec-
tions on the political as an articulation of antagonistic conflict, they
challenge the idea of sociality as an objective order of human life.41 In
her book On the Political, Mouffe in particular has demonstrated
ways of differentiating between politics, understood as a societal insti-
tution and method, and the political,42 which she uses as a category of
reflection on the limits of human sociality. Accordingly, the political
aspect of politics is not its empirical method, but that which makes
it a discursive practice of society. According to Mouffe, a discursive
practice is defined by the fact that the structures of its organization
must always be contingently produced within it. The political and
everything that belong to politics as a discursive practice thus eludes
stabilization by an extra-discursive foundation (e.g., the construction
of a timeless natural state).
Thus, in Laclaus and Mouffes concept, the ability to politicize soci-
ety is no longer bound by the limits of natural law. In their view, every

40
See ibid., 2728.7683.
41
See Laclaus apt formulation: The political is not an internal moment of the
social but, on the contrary, that which shows the impossibility of establishing the
social as an objective order (Laclau 1990, 160).
42
See Mouffe 2005, 89.
 difference in the interpersonal relation 205

formation of societal order can be called political in the sense that it

can be attributed to a form of hegemony.43 This hegemony is based on
the contingent exclusion of alternative possibilities of societal order
formation. Laclaus and Mouffes criticism of the liberal-democratic
understanding of politics, and thus the liberal perspective on human
sociality, can be summarized in the following four theses:
(i) The individualism of the liberal model of politics fails to recognize
the nature and existence of collective identifications constituted
with the help of an us/them distinction.
(ii) The anthropology of the liberal model of politics ignores the role of
human passions that manifest themselves in collective identifications.
(iii) The liberal model represents a moralizing understanding of politics
insofar as it describes the antagonism, which is constitutive of the
political, with moral categories (right, wrong) instead of political
categories (left, right) and thus provides a distorted image of the
democratic decision-making processes.
(iv) The liberal model of politics is based on the image of a consen-
sus-oriented, reconciled society that does not take serious the
irreducibly hegemonic nature of every establishment of order, i.e.,
the creation of contingent power structures through the temporary
exclusion of other, alternative possibilities.
Laclaus and Mouffes theses point to structural aspects of human soci-
ality that cannot be comprehended in the context of the liberal under-
standing of human beings and society. The liberal model of society
ignores various structural aspects of the human social relationship,
which runs the risk that particularly the antagonistic social structure
will manifest itself in other forms than those of democratically legiti-
mate conflict and discourse. The theory of discourse and society, with
its premise of antagonism as a basic structure of human sociality, thus
argues for a rigorous acknowledgment of the antagonistic dimensions
of human coexistence, and accuses the liberal theory of society of reduc-
ing societys political dimension to a rational balance of interests which
moves between moral demands and economic profits. In this dialec-
tic of morals and economics, the political has only an instrumental

43
According to Laclau and Mouffe, hegemony includes the exclusion of alternative
possibilities of identity and order formation within societal practice. But this exclusion
is not presented as an irreducibly determined form of identity and order formation,
but as one that has become contingent and thus in turn surmountable. Laclau and
Mouffe take up the moment of exclusion following the political theory of Carl Schmitt
(see Schmitt 1922, and others).
206 chapter three

value. Its own momentum and its constitutively associated sociopoliti-

cal anthropology of antagonistic confrontation are ignored.
Critical assessments of Laclaus and Mouffes theory of society
show both the strengths and weaknesses of their understanding of
social relationship patterns.44 A strong point of their conception is the
emphasis on the dynamic and unfinished formation of political and
social identity, which enables them to demonstrate how human inter-
ests can also be articulated in the form of conflict and opposition and
transitioned into hegemonic positions. However, Laclau and Mouffe
neglect or ignore the question of how institutional arrangements and
stable social formations nevertheless managed to emerge in societal
life a question which had been of particular interest to economic
behavioral research.

25 Recognition: The Pacification of Difference

An entirely different approach to the conflict potential of interpersonal

encounters presents itself in the debate over the ethics and politics of
recognition. In the following passages, this debate will be discussed
as a second example for a social-philosophical theory inspired by
the social ambiguity of human cooperation and conflict. While some
deconstructivist social theories unreservedly affirm the antagonistic
confrontation contained in interpersonal difference, other social-
philosophical approaches attempt to base their reflections on the socia-
bility and sociality of human beings on a social phenomenology that
identifies a moral motive at the very root of interpersonal relations: the
desire for receiving recognition from the other.
The term recognition, which shall now be the focus of our atten-
tion, is considered to be one of the most central terms of contempo-
rary social philosophy. It can serve as the basis for a phenomenological
analysis of the anthropological preconditions of societal morals, laws
and politics, as well as for a hermeneutical reflection on the deep struc-
ture of human social practices and forms of life. Often, recognition by
others is prematurely and unthinkingly elevated to the rank of a uni-
versal basic human need, while disregard by others, non-recognition,
is given the status of a morally reprehensible violation of the other.45

44
See Stheli 2001, 217.
45
E.g. in Taylor 1994, 60.
 difference in the interpersonal relation 207

Additionally, critical social theory understands the relation of recogni-

tion as a normative regulator and interprets it as a condition for the
ability of society to experience moral progress. Thus, recognition by
others has been made a conditio sine qua non for normative theories
of society.46
Taking stock of how social philosophy uses the term recognition, it
becomes clear that the terminology of recognition has been an incom-
parably successful concept in social and political theory. In his book47
on the subject-theoretical premises of the term recognition, political
scientist and philosopher Markus Verweyst gives a very apt analysis:
If we take a look around in contemporary social philosophy, we cannot
help but get the impression that, like a magnet, the term recognition
attracts the attention of all kinds of theoretical positions. This category
seems to be capable of pooling the power of practical philosophical
thoughts just as well as it is capable of enriching the legitimacy potential
of communitarian positions. It can be just as easily related to difference
as to identity. [. . .] Recognition aligns itself with both subversion and
tradition, with the particular and the general [. . .].
In this debate about recognition, which can easily be read as a social-
philosophical reaction to the social processes of change in the Western
industrial nations, [. . .] unity apparently can only be achieved regard-
ing the basic subject-theoretical premise. This premise states that the
positive experience of recognition is indispensable for the development
of a successful self-relationship. In such basal terms, this sentence can
hardly be disputed. But confusion arises from the fact that it is not even
attempted to venture beyond this basic and somewhat vague question.
Merely pointing out the importance of positive recognition for a suc-
cessful self-relation seems to exhaust its problem potential. After the
subject became normative prematurely, the only remaining questions
are about who or what deserves recognition, how practical power arises
from withholding recognition, or what preconditions must be fulfilled to
make the struggle for recognition seem legitimate.48
The awareness of the problem which Verweyst calls for regarding the
partly unexamined positive evaluation of recognition, mostly applies
to those approaches that unreservedly affirm the term recognition.
However, awareness of a problem regarding recognition is not as

46
One paradigmatic example for such an interest in the term recognition is Honneth
1996.
47
Verweyst 2000.
48
Ibid., 1112 (transl. M.S.).
208 chapter three

absent from the debate as Verweyst claims.49 Indeed, there is some

reflection on the fact that recognition as a demand on the other person
can also contain an element of asserting ownership, of construction
and appropriation of the other, that turns recognition into an ethically
inacceptable and unjustifiable demand. At the same time, this insight
does not challenge or invalidate the close connection between identity
and recognition that was first pointed out by the idealistic philoso-
phy of consciousness. Instead, it gains a different meaning: Insofar
as human self-relation cannot be conceived of without the relation of
recognition that relates the human self to others, the relation of recog-
nition can only be lived on the borderline between the appropriation
of and dependence on the other. Therefore, it is just as important to
analyze the ethical ambiguity of recognition as it is to affirm its indis-
pensability for the emergence of a positive self-relation.

25.1 Recognition: Normative Demand or Real-Life Practice?

The following section will provide a basic outline of two entirely differ-
ent models for the relation of recognition. The first model endeavors
to understand recognition in the context of a critical social theory of
intersubjectivity, while the second model regards recognition as a sym-
bolic practice or gesture that resists the reciprocal logic of the intersub-
jective model (If you recognize me, I shall recognize you in turn). For
the purpose of comparing the two models, the relation of recognition
will be considered as a social configuration in which human beings
engage with each other according to the notion that one cannot be
without the other. The following two attempts at interpretation will
establish an ideal-typical comparison between what is recognized in a
relation of recognition and where recognition is located.
(i) Post-Hegelian (Axel Honneth, Charles Taylor): Drawing on the
understanding of intersubjectivity in Hegels early works, the term

49
See the passages on Garca Dttmann and Ricur in this section. For further
discussion of the problem of ethical illegitimacy of recognition, it is useful to look
into Patchen Markells provocative critical analysis of the political term of recognition
(Markell 2003). In his book Bound by Recognition, Markell develops a terminology
of acknowledgment as an alternative to the terminology of recognition. He wants
to show that the focus on the identity of the other recognized does not prevent the
recognizer from closing himself off against the other and imposing his own will. This
constitutes recognition as an act of social injustice in itself. In order to counter this
appropriating movement of recognition, an alternative register of social reference is
necessary, which Markell finds in acknowledgement.
 difference in the interpersonal relation 209

recognition can serve as a key for examining the original close connec-
tion between a subjects relation to himself and his relation to others.
Human beings are incapable of developing self-understanding without
identifying themselves at the site of another self. Thus, recognition is
based on a duplification of subjectivity at the site of the other. Drawing
on Hegels terminology, the theory of philosophical intersubjectivity
thus presents a terminological framework for the exploration of soci-
etal reality within the horizon of recognition.
(ii) Hermeneutical (Paul Ricur): By focusing on describing how
the relation of recognition is performed, recognition can be examined
as a practiced social act and not merely as formal intersubjectivity.
Drawing on a hermeneutical examination of aspects of life in which
recognition is realized, it can therefore be demonstrated that recogni-
tion does not suspend the asymmetry in the relationship between self
and others, but transcends it with the element of mutuality. There-
fore, recognition should not be considered primarily a human desire
or demand, but a liveable opportunity that emerges in the relationship
between human beings through the use of symbols and gestures of
recognition.
Looking at these two perspectives, which present recognition in the
contexts of intersubjectivity and mutuality between human beings,
opens up paths for exploring the anthropological character of recogni-
tion in greater depth. We therefore return once more to the thoughts
of Markus Verweyst. In his subject-theoretical analyses of recognition,
which follow in the footsteps of Martin Heidegger, Jean-Paul Sartre,
Sigmund Freud and Jacques Lacan, Verweyst has shown that the
human desire for recognition is rooted in a craving that decentralizes
the subject of recognition, i.e., it does not allow the direction of the
subjects individual longing to find closure or consummation.50 Sub-
jects who are in need of recognition are thus unable to give direction
to their own individual longing. Even within themselves, the desire
for recognition already comes up against the limit of an elusive other,
which not only constitutes the desire for recognition, but above all
continues it. This means that the premise of a desire for recognition
makes it necessary to acknowledge a momentum in the demand for
recognition that is beyond ones own control, and to think of recog-
nition not as a demand, but as a subjects need. But this need also

50
See Verweyst 2000, 409.
210 chapter three

provokes the desire to enjoy being recognized by others again and

again through symbolic instances. Thus, the fact that the desire for
recognition remains elusive, beyond the control of the subject of rec-
ognition himself, turns out to be the real driving force of his conflicted
attempts to satisfy the desire for recognition, at least temporarily, in
the symbolic orders of life. Drawing on Verweysts thoughts, the fol-
lowing section will critically examine the two different approaches to
the understanding of recognition.

25.2 Post-Hegelian Perspectives on Recognition

Among the voices in the social-philosophical discourse on recogni-
tion that draw on and distinguish themselves from the Hegelian term,
a prominent position is held by Axel Honneth, who has made the
term productive for his moral-philosophical conception of a critical
and normative theory of society.51 In a similar vein, Charles Taylor has
developed a political understanding of recognition in the context of
the discourse on the universalism and particularism of ethical values.52
In contrast, Alexander Garca Dttmann argues against a restorative
interpretation of the political term of recognition and strives to reap-
propriate it for a theory of interculturality that also takes into account
demands for recognition, which in principle cannot be integrated into
societal coexistence.53

25.2.1 Honneth: Recognition and Its Negative Forms

In his book The Struggle for Recognition54 (first published in 1992),
Axel Honneth adopts the figure of recognition from a systematical
rereading of Hegels early Jena writings and fragments. Thus, Honneths
initial approach to the terminology of recognition consists in critically
reviewing the textual fragments of a theory of recognition, which must
first be reconstructed from the writings of Hegels Jena period (1802
1807).55 Here Honneths interest mainly centers on Hegels treatment
of Fichtes reinterpretation of the natural state doctrine, System der

51
See Honneth 1996.
52
See Taylor 1994.
53
See Garca Dttmann 2000.
54
The debate that was triggered by the book is documented in the following pub-
lications: Halbig and Quante 2004; Fraser and Honneth 2003.
55
See Honneth 1996, 31140.
 difference in the interpersonal relation 211

Sittlichkeit56 (System of Ethical Life) from 1802/03, and the first

draft of the Jenaer Realphilosophie57 from 1803/04.58 The thrust of
the two writings is read as an example of the significant shift in Hegels
early thought, in which Hegel gradually abandons Aristotelianism in
favor of a theory of the subject rooted in the philosophy of conscious-
ness. Honneth is particularly interested in precisely that which Hegel
himself (in Honneths reading) is slowly discarding: a model for the
process of human society formation that has always been character-
ized by elementary forms of intersubjective coexistence.59
According to Honneth, the natural morality of human beings
favored in Hegels early writings60 represents an alternative concept
to Hobbes artificial doctrine of the natural state, which constructs
a state of human beings before sociality. Unlike Hobbes, Hegel con-
siders the nature of human beings to be their moral potential, which
develops into a universal principle in the course of the history of the
human spirit or, as the young Hegel refers to it, in the becoming of
morality [Werden der Sittlichkeit]. This development occurs through
a process of repeated negations, which Hegel also applies in his later
system. According to Honneths interpretation, Hegel, by using a the-
ory of conflict to make Fichtes model of recognition more dynamic,61
takes an (albeit speculative) step toward a concrete realization of that
which Johann Gottlieb Fichte had referred to as the mutuality at the
heart of the human legal relationship.62 Subsequently, however, this
attempt at concretization leads to a definition of recognition that is
entirely unlike what Fichte had in mind. In Honneths view, the point
of Hegels intersubjective theory of recognition is the reinterpretation
of the Hobbesian motif of struggle as a moral medium and an ethi-
cal dynamic. Understood as a practical conflict between individuals,
struggle is the social medium for progressing into the moral wholeness
of individual existence. In Honneths words, [i]ndividuals only can

56
Hegel 2002.
57
Hegel 1974.
58
In this aspect, he is followed by Ricur, who expands these analyses to Hegels
law philosophy (see Ricur 2005, 171218).
59
Honneth 1996, 14.
60
In addition to Hegel, Jean-Jacques Rousseau and John Locke should also be men-
tioned in this context.
61
Honneth 1996, 17.
62
Specifically, Honneth refers to Fichtes work The Foundations of Natural
Law/Grundlage des Naturrechts (see ibid., 16).
212 chapter three

completely identify with themselves to the degree to which their pecu-

liarities and traits meet with the approval and support of their partners
in interaction.63 If this fails to happen, individuals feel impelled to
enter into social conflict.
Honneth does not find much to criticize about the early Hegelian
theory of recognition; he only notes that Hegels later philosophy of
subjectivity and the spirit abandons the precedence of intersubjectivity
and thus a strong understanding of intersubjectivity.64 Instead of criti-
cizing this, Honneth attempts to continue and validate Hegels early
speculative-philosophical idea of recognition by confronting it with
an empirical-sociological model of intersubjectivity (George Herbert
Mead) and by analyzing the phenomenological structures of recogni-
tion in the human lifeworld. Honneths understanding of recognition
can thus be regarded as a post-Hegelian perspective.
Honneth bases his interpretation of the term recognition on a the-
ory of intersubjectivity, and understands intersubjectivity as a doubling
of subjectivity, i.e., as an original connection between self-reflection
and orientation toward the other. In his critical theory of society, he
accordingly defines the specifically modern pattern of social inter-
action as a network consisting of different relations of recognition,
which in their formal structure also provide an interpretative context
for a normative social-philosophical assessment of the processes of
societal development.65 Honneth specifically identifies love, law, and
solidarity as fundamental prerequisites for this development. As ideal-
typical forms of recognition, they enable the human subject to tap into
new forms of positive self-relation (self-confidence, self-respect, self-
esteem). Additionally, they can be used to reconstruct a moral logic
of the subjects social conflicts (physical abuse, social exclusion, col-
lective degradation). Honneths heuristics of social phenomena also
complements every successful form of recognition with a negative
form, i.e., an experience of disrespect that makes recognition structur-
ally impossible. Here, however, the social conflict with its underlying
moral motivation is always geared toward the same goal: to create the
intersubjective prerequisites and basic conditions of a successful life
that are the sine qua non of individualization and personal integrity.

63
Ibid., 22.
64
See ibid., 2930.
65
See ibid., 175.
 difference in the interpersonal relation 213

What is the social-phenomenological range of Honneths concept

of recognition? Honneth emphatically characterizes the desire for
recognition as a moral feeling and shows that its articulation in the
social conflict is the expression of a moral motive. However, he states,
the individuals desire to experience recognition by others always cul-
minates in a subject-related moral demand on others. The claim for
recognition is thus rooted in a claim for the successful formation of
identity and not in the others claim on the subject which he answers
by giving recognition to this other. Thus, Honneths concept of rec-
ognition, which focuses on the subjects identity with himself that
can only be produced through recognition by others, obscures the
phenomenal excess of the social relationship that emerges from the
encounter between human beings. This is due to the fact that Hon-
neths approach is based on a theory of intersubjectivity which con-
ceives of social mutuality as a doubling of subjectivity. Honneth does
not explicitly discuss the extent to which the self-assertion underly-
ing recognition can or cannot be related to another persons demand
for recognition, because he discusses neither the alterity of the self in
the desire for recognition as described by Verweyst, nor the transcen-
dence of the other (which will be treated in 26) in the relation of
intersubjectivity. Honneth is not aware of the other as a constitutive
element in evoking the subjects desire for recognition (alterity of the
self), nor does he acknowledge the other that continues to elude the
demand for recognition and thereby intensifies it into a desire that can
never be fully satisfied (transcendence of the other). Hence, his posi-
tive assessment of conflict as the moral medium of societal progress
must be taken with a grain of salt. He does not take conflict seriously
in terms of its fundamental antagonistic structure; instead, he formu-
lates criteria for the moral legitimation of social conflict and claims
that by meeting these criteria, social conflict can ultimately be settled
and overcome. Adopting an ideal-typical perspective, he only consid-
ers those conflicts to be legitimate which are concerned with realiz-
ing a horizon of moral values for society as a whole. Thus, Honneths
concept bestows societal legitimacy upon social conflict by developing
a model of recognition that is based on the assumption that all indi-
viduals share a common goal of societal interaction, which is repre-
sented as the moral motive of recognition. This motive consists in the
realization of human freedom through the individuals self-realization
in his individuality. However, Honneth is not capable of answering
214 chapter three

the question of whether this individuality provides space for human

pluralism and interpersonal difference.

25.2.2 Taylor: Recognition and the Risk of Homogenizing Difference

In contrast to Axel Honneth, but with similar intentions, Charles Tay-
lor has adopted and critically discussed the term recognition in the
context of a political theory of multiculturalism. Multiculturalism is
a normative theory of ethical pluralism developed in opposition to
particularism (e.g. nationalism, minority politics). It conceives of the
demand for recognition as a form of identity politics. In this context,
the dynamics of identity politics are defined as the demands of social
groups that create collective identities and, based on these identities,
rally for the representation of their demands and interests in political
discourse. The theory of multiculturalism, with regard to the iden-
tity politics of these groups, provides normative criteria that can serve
to integrate the demands of different collective identities within the
framework of a publicly accepted definition of the good life. Unlike
Honneth, whose arguments are mostly moral-philosophical, Taylor
thus emphasizes the emergence of collective identities relevant to social
and political discourse. Also unlike Honneth, Taylor shows in his
essay The Politics of Recognition66 (from 1994) the extent to which
the present prominence of the recognition debate can be explained
historically.
In Taylors view, the conflict potential of the demand for recogni-
tion is primarily the result of the cultural invention of an ethical ideal
that did not exist before the age of modernity: the ideal of an authentic
identity. This ideal assumes that identity must articulate itself as a form
of interiority, as an authentic human self-understanding that initially
emerges without any external references. Whereas human identity in
pre-modern times was largely determined by social status in a more
or less hierarchical societal order, it became the object of autonomous
self-determination in modernity. According to Taylor, however, the
fact that identity is not formed monologically, but always in dialogue
with others, and is thus dependent on intersubjective relationships,
only becomes problematic in the 18th century with the invention of
a particular form of morality. He therefore calls that century the era

66
Taylor 1994.
 difference in the interpersonal relation 215

of authenticity.67 With its implicit demand for an internally produced

and authentically responsible identity, modern thinking provides the
kindling that fuels conflicts of recognition.
This is connected with the fact that whatever the subjects interior
perspective considers authentic and right does not necessarily coincide
with others social perception; therefore, it must first defend itself in
the context of human social existence. By focusing on the importance
of relations of recognition, and, even more importantly, by becoming
aware of their vulnerability, the modern aberration68 of the under-
standing of identity in contemporary social philosophy can now be
corrected, since the individual event of discovering ones own identity
is reconstructed as a fundamentally intersubjective process.
In addition to placing the discourse of recognition in a historical
context, Taylors analyses are geared toward finding answers to the fol-
lowing questions: to what extent can recognition as the recognition of
the equality of different cultural identities be seen as a legitimate polit-
ical demand? And to what extent can or must the fulfillment of this
demand for recognition take on the form of an equal recognition that
evens out differences? According to Taylor, an affirmative answer to
the second question would be linked to an inacceptable form of recog-
nition, which would disqualify the demand for recognition on a moral
level.69 If recognition leads to a homogenization of cultural differences,
its value for a theory of multiculturalism is called into question.
Taylor thus turns the politics of recognition into a question of reflec-
tive moral judgment: is it legitimate to recognize this or that demand
for recognition? And which criteria are at play if this or that demand
is accepted? Taylor thus engages completely in an argumentative con-
flict between a justification and a refutation of demands for recogni-
tion. But this conflict is implicitly regulated by his understanding of
political discourse as a means of reaching consensus. Society can only
dispute the legitimacy of demands for recognition if universal value
standards for the comparison of cultures are applied. This, however,
does not mean that Taylor declares every difference between cultures to
be irrelevant or ultimately resolvable. Much to the contrary, he sharply
denounces a politics of recognition that generalizes various demands,

67
Taylor relates this development above all to Jean-Jacques Rousseaus discovery of
a human moral self-understanding that he refers to as le sentiment de lexistence.
68
However, Taylor himself does not use this term.
69
See Taylor 1994, 71.
216 chapter three

a politics that implicitly invoke[s] our standards to judge all civiliza-

tions and cultures,70 finds those standards confirmed and thus fails
to acknowledge the authentic identity of these cultures.71 In Taylors
view, the search for universal standards of recognition can therefore
only be concerned with the attribution of relative values because it is
impossible to reach an ultimate, final verdict about the equal value of
human cultures.72
Taylor thus attempts to keep the political discourse of demands
for recognition open, but does not completely abandon the project
of forming universal value judgments:73 the identity of others, or of
other cultures, can only be recognized if they can be encountered in
an attitude of openness based on the assumption of equal value and
geared toward a fused horizon of standards.74 According to Tay-
lor, this fused horizon of standards not only forms the context for
the comparison with others as to whether They correspond to Us,
but also for self-modification in which We may develop new criteria
which acknowledge and integrate the identity of others. Thus, Taylor
(also) intends to demonstrate that any judgment of the recognition or
non-recognition of identities must be connected with (a) the recogni-
tion of a fundamental cultural difference and (b) the insight that We
do not possess universal criteria of judgment and thus can only ever
make relative comparisons between Us and others.
It is a strong point of Taylors approach that he names the preser-
vation of difference as a criterion of recognition and explicitly rejects
the emphasis on equality in the comparison of cultures. This posi-
tion is also connected with his insight that the neutrality of value
standards by which others are recognized and judged is an illusion.
Unlike Honneth, Taylor is aware of the fact that the implicit or explicit
demand for equality within the demand for recognition itself repre-
sents a moral problem. He discusses recognition as a problem insofar

70
Ibid.
71
Taylor always refers to such a value judgment as ethnocentric.
72
Among other things, Taylor here takes recourse to Herders idea that the ultimate
harmony of coexistence of different cultures is hidden as a secret in divine providence
that human beings can only assume and not know (see Taylor 1994, 71).
73
See the following quote: But what the presumption [of equal value] requires of
us is not only peremptory and inauthentic judgments of equal value, but a willingness
to be open to comparative cultural study [. . .]. What it requires above all is an admis-
sion that we are very far away from that ultimate horizon from which the relative
worth of different cultures might be evident. (ibid., 73).
74
Ibid., 70.
 difference in the interpersonal relation 217

as it is manifested as a homogenizing equal treatment of individual or

collective identity claims. But by linking recognition to a value judg-
ment that presents itself, hermeneutically moderated, as an attitude
of openness toward the other, Taylor ignores the fact that the desire
for recognition carries within itself the demand for reciprocity, which
prevents one party from approaching the other in a distanced and
neutral manner, and from estimating their equal value; instead, this
demand is always determined by the desire that ones recognition of
the other should be reciprocated by the others recognition of oneself.
Furthermore, Taylor ignores the alterity of the subject of recognition,
as Honneth did, and fails to acknowledge that the desire for recogni-
tion articulates itself as an existential human longing that cannot be
controlled, rejected or rationally dissolved. A fundamental difficulty
of the concept of recognition, introduced by Honneth and Taylor to
the social-philosophical debate, is that it latently aims for the ideal of
an identity which is formed by finding self-confirmation in the other,
and which consequently does not sufficiently honor the alterity of the
self and the others unavailability to the self.

25.2.3 Garca Dttmann: A Critical Assessment of Restorative

Recognition
One must therefore wrest the concept of recognition from restora-
tion, one must reinvent it and use it against the restorations apolo-
gists, in cultures, between cultures.75 With these words, Alexander
Garca Dttmann begins his response to the interpretation of the con-
cept of recognition in the context of identity politics and multicultur-
alism. Unlike those theorists who understand recognition by the other
as an element of successful identity formation, Garca Dttmann, in
his book Between Cultures (first published in 1997), does not want
to focus on the search for and confirmation of identity, but on the
fractures and the tension in the interpersonal relation that show in the
struggle for recognition. Thus, Garca Dttmann attempts to develop
an alternative terminological register for the relation of recognition,
based not on the identity of the subject, but on the double differ-
ence between the participants in the relation of recognition.76 Garca
Dttmann rejects the restorative interpretation, which understands

75
Garca Dttmann 2000, 1.
76
See ibid., 36.
218 chapter three

recognition as the formation of identity through constant confirmation

of the others connection and belonging to oneself. Against this appro-
priating movement of restoration, Garca Dttmann wants to develop
an understanding of recognition that allows for acknowledging the
double character of recognition, its rootedness in the heterogeneity
and ambiguity of the interpersonal relation.77 In order to open up a
new theoretical horizon, Garca Dttmann presents a detailed analy-
sis of the inner dynamics of the relation of recognition that is based
on interpersonal difference.78 Unlike other theoretical concepts, he
thus approaches the demand for recognition by examining the exces-
siveness that lies in the act of recognition even before any possible or
impossible fulfillment of recognition. In order to point out that there
is a significant difference between wanting to be recognized and actu-
ally being recognized, Garca Dttmann differentiates between that
which is to be recognized and that which is recognized. On the basis
of this difference, he locates an excess in the relation of recognition
that undermines the identity of demand and fulfillment.79 That which
wants to be recognized by the other, and that which is ultimately rec-
ognized by the other, are not identical. The demand for recognition
does not proceed with the certainty that that which is to be recognized
will always end up as that which is recognized, because the act of rec-
ognition cannot yet draw on its anticipated result, the affirmation and
confirmation of the recognized. Instead, it must completely give in to
the insecurity and uncertainty that opens up between the demand on
the one side and the response to it on the other. In Garca Dttmanns
words: The performative act of recognition remains not-one with
itself, thereby keeping the demand for recognition open.80
Garca Dttmann once again reformulates the recognition differ-
ence as the difference between the confirmation and the establishment
of that which is to be recognized.81 At first glance, the two seem to
be identical, because that which is to be recognized, which seeks to
be confirmed by recognition, specifies what it wants to be recognized
as. But Garca Dttmann rejects this notion: As that which is to be
recognized, i.e., in the mode of the demand, it is not yet recognized,

77
See ibid., 46.
78
See ibid., 36.4669.
79
See ibid., 4.
80
Ibid.
81
See ibid., 4647.
 difference in the interpersonal relation 219

and thus still remains fully in the uncertainty of its fulfillment. It is

not yet clear whether the call for recognition will be answered at all.
The hermeneutical circle of recognizing something as something has
not yet closed through the mention of that which is to be recognized,
i.e., at the site in which the demand and the claim occur. The demand
to be recognized as this or that does not yet establish the identity of
that which is to be recognized, and may not be established at all if
the demand for recognition is not met. Garca Dttmann insists on
the impossibility of establishing identity, which is contained in the
action of recognition. Thus, he views the demand articulated in the
desire for recognition not as an expression of self-assertion, but of
self-deviation;82 because that which demands to be recognized steps
out of itself in its claim on the other and thereby deviates from itself.
It must first assert itself as this or that. Otherwise, it would be able to
rest in itself and to conceal its need to be recognized.
But that which recognizes, that which responds to the demand to be
recognized, also deviates from itself in the act of recognition; because
in the act of recognition, the confirmation of that which is to be rec-
ognized is already anticipated, but at the same time, it is first being
established in that moment. That which the recognizer ultimately
encounters as the recognized, is uncertain, and will bring the recog-
nizer with it into a state of being not-one [Uneinigkeit], just as it has
done to that which is to be recognized, which issued the demand for
recognition. This notion constitutes a point of contact between Garca
Dttmanns and Verweysts ideas. But unlike Verweysts subject-
theoretical conception, Garca Dttmanns perspective describes the
action of recognition on both sides of the recognition relation as an
excessive action in which the self does not experience an individual-
izing Ver-Ichlichung, a change which produces [an] identity; rather,
it experiences a Ver-nderung, a change which effects otherness.83
The self experiences this uncertainty and change because it responds
to the hole that opens up within the double difference (the to-be-
recognized/the recognized; the recognizer/the recognized). Fur-
thermore, Garca Dttmann points out the unforeseeable nature of
the change that occurs in the act of recognizing. He shows that this
unexpected change cannot be arrested or stabilized by a (continued)

82
See ibid., 7.
83
Ibid., 48.
220 chapter three

repetition of the act of recognition with identical participants, because

every one of these repetitions produces a difference that must be rec-
ognized and confirmed again as such. Thus, the act of recognition
never finds ultimate closure, but continues to be put to the test.
In his argumentation, Garca Dttmann now turns against a usage
of the terminology of recognition in the sense of (re-)cognition. In his
opinion, the concept of recognition that he establishes in contrast to
the restoration of identities uses the irreducible tension between the
confirmation and the establishment of that which is to be recognized
to close itself off against a mere re-identification of that which is to
be recognized. Garca Dttmann holds that such an understanding
guides the consensual discourse theory of recognition (Axel Honneth,
Jrgen Habermas).84 With reference to Taylor as well, he accuses this
theory of a conceptual simplification [of the terminology of recog-
nition] with far-reaching political consequences.85 In his opinion,
Honneths and Habermas terminology of recognition, which aims at
recognizing oneself in the other, describes an ideological circle of rec-
ognition in which the desire for recognition cannot really be univer-
salized, because its own contradictory tension is not recognized. The
consequence of this self-misperception of recognition is that the poli-
tics of recognition pave the way for a societal conformism that strives
to establish a pre-constituted symmetry between that which recognizes
and that which is to be recognized. This symmetry then becomes the
a priori precondition for a reconciled and peaceful society, which is to
be ultimately realized through the struggles for recognition. The ulti-
mate or final recognition of all by all that is heralded in the struggle
for recognition, can thus only ever be anticipated and is, Garca Dtt-
mann states, the instrument of a manipulative understanding of poli-
tics, which holds out the prospect of something that is unable to be the
issue at stake: the ultimate overall prevalence of societal anticipatory
beliefs. According to Garca Dttmann, the post-Hegelian theories of
recognition emerging from the philosophy of identity are thus based
on a misperception of the recognition events inner dynamics: for even
though they use the demand for recognition heuristically in order to
analyze and evaluate real societal conflicts in normative terms, they

84
See ibid., 140162.
85
Ibid., 146.
 difference in the interpersonal relation 221

fail to acknowledge the difference and tension at the site of the act of
recognition itself.

25.3 Ricurs Concept of Mutual Symbolic Recognition

In closing, this chapter will now discuss a second model of recogni-
tion that draws on Paul Ricur and is based on the premise of the
elusiveness and transcendence of the other in the mutual relation of
recognition. The understanding of recognition developed by Ricur
represents an autonomous model, because it expressly distances itself
from the normativity of the term recognition posited by the post-
Hegelian perspective, and takes up the dialogue with this perspective
from a decidedly hermeneutical standpoint. Additionally, Ricurs
approach is much more conciliatory than Garca Dttmanns, whose
position can really only be defined in terms of its refutation of Hon-
neth and Taylor. In contrast, Ricur unfolds new and heretofore
unnoticed aspects of recognition by constructively confronting other
social theorists. Furthermore, his remarks on recognition connect the
term to the discourses of contemporary French philosophy, thereby
reshaping the understanding of recognition by placing it into a new
theoretical horizon. Ricurs description of the relation of recognition
focuses on presenting recognition as an experience that we can indeed
have, but in which we cannot overcome the interpersonal difference
and asymmetry. Ricur therefore contemplates whether recognition is
an ability of the capable human being [homme capable]. Ricurs con-
ception of a capable human being is characterized by the fact that it
always imbues the descriptive portrayal of basal human capabilities
speaking, acting, narrating, being accountable for actions with a
normative meaning. Capable human beings are individuals that are
potentially capable of always becoming better than they are now. Thus,
they are not at odds with their fallibility [home faillible]; rather, the
tension between success and failure is a basic condition of human exis-
tence that cannot be overcome.86
In his book The Course of Recognition87 from 2005, Ricur
decidedly positions himself against Hobbes social-philosophical con-
cept, which fails to acknowledge the moral motives underlying the
beginnings of human community. He takes a stand against attempts

86
See Ricur 1986.
87
Ricur 2005.
222 chapter three

to naturalize human sociality, insisting that the problem of human

interaction and coexistence, which the term recognition denotes, is
a problem of fundamentally political nature.88 Much like Arendt, he
therefore insists on the primacy of the political when it comes to the
representation and description of human coexistence. Unlike Arendt,
however, he does not believe that the present social existence of human
beings is conditioned by a societal structure that destroys the unique-
ness of human being-together. Instead, Ricurs understanding of
the interpersonal relation is motivated by a critical reading of the
philosophical works of Emmanuel Levinas. In Ricurs view, Levinas
understanding of human being-together is informed by an original
asymmetry between self and other. On the basis of his dialogue with
Levinas work, Ricur manages to establish a perspective on interper-
sonal relations that is based on asymmetry and popularizes it in the
discourses about recognition.

25.3.1 The Critique of Reciprocity

In the wider context of his study on the semantic field of the term
recognition, Ricur examines the interpersonal relation of recogni-
tion by complementing the vernacular ambiguity of the word rec-
ognition in that he points out three philosophical dimensions of
its meaning: identification, self-recognition and mutual recognition.
Thus, recognition can represent a capability to think, a capability to
act, and a human capability for social mutuality. In his conversations
with countless other positions and authors (including Axel Honneth,
Emmanuel Levinas, Jacques Taminiaux, Laurent Thvenot, Marcel
Henaff and Marcel Mauss), Ricur identifies two primary aspects that
he considers to be in need of correction and worthy of a more detailed
discussion:
(i) The anti-economic aspect of recognition: Even though the relation
of recognition is based on mutuality, this mutuality is not identical
with the reciprocity of a relationship of exchange.
(ii) The anti-legalistic aspect of recognition: The asymmetry of the rela-
tion of recognition, which recognition is supposed to overcome by
equalizing the unequal, cannot be erased in an understanding of
recognition as an actual life practice.

88
See ibid., 207.
 difference in the interpersonal relation 223

Ricur thus casts recognition into profile by delineating it against

two other forms of relationship. The first aspect aims at differentiat-
ing recognition from the relation of economic exchange, in which the
interaction partners are interested in an exchange of goods. But that
which is exchanged can only have the status of an exchangeable thing.
A priceless good a gift or a present that asks for nothing in return
does not figure into the reciprocal logic of the exchange relation and is
excluded from it. But precisely those goods that cannot be bought are
of particular importance to Ricur when he inquires about the mutu-
ality of the relation of recognition. For him, the reciprocity demanded
by the economic exchange relation is a transcendental assumption that
artificially imposes the symmetrical reciprocity of giving and taking.
Ricur rejects this notion of reciprocity and argues for looking into an
actual, practiced mutuality between the protagonists of the relation of
recognition, a mutuality that is actually open to the heterogeneity of
the participants mutual demands on each other. Hence, he suggests
that the model of mutuality in recognition should not be the give and
take of exchange, but two separate acts of giving (a first and a second
giving). In these individual acts, that which is given is to be recognized
as a gift, and thus per se not something that needs to be responded
to and returned. Recognition thus means recognizing the given gifts
unavailability. What characterizes the structure of recognition is not
the economy of giving and taking, but the exchange of gifts, i.e., a
mutuality in which there is no more giving and taking, but only the
triad of giving, receiving and responding. Here, Ricurs addition of
an act of receiving can be understood as analogous to Garca Dtt-
manns emphasis on the range of meanings that opens up between that
which recognizes and that which is to be recognized. Only in being
received does the gift attain a symbolic dimension of significance and
thus an increase in significance that can neither be measured nor
calculated.

25.3.2 The Critique of Equal Recognition

Ricur clarifies the second point of criticism mentioned above,
regarding the traditional understanding of recognition, by emphasiz-
ing that recognition emerges from an original asymmetry between the
protagonists of the relation of recognition. Time and again, Ricur
uses this notion in his argument to point out the aspect of twofold
alterity in the relation of recognition. The alterity of this relation is
expressed in the fact that the one is not the other, as Ricur puts
224 chapter three

it. This means that the agents asymmetrical position in the lifeworld
cannot be reduced even within the relation of mutual recognition, e.g.
by making them mere carriers of a formal relation of recognition and
thus rendering them equal. Ricurs main interest here is to delineate
the relation of recognition against the legal relation, which he links to
this formal interpretation of the ethical standard of justice. The legal
understanding of justice interprets the equality of the recognition rela-
tions protagonists as a relation of formal equivalence. Thus, it is intent
on organizing the exchange of those recognizing each other in a sym-
metrical manner. Ricur views this as an attempt at comparing the
incomparable i.e., the heterogeneous claims of the agents in the rela-
tion of recognition. In his opinion, however, this attempt results in the
loss of that dimension of significance in the recognition relationship
which goes far beyond the recognition of equal rights among free legal
entities. Here, Ricur refers to an alterity that is constitutive of the
relation of recognition, an otherness that enables the protagonists of
this relation not only to commune with each other, but also to become
and remain singularities. Due to the irreplaceable character of each
of the partners,89 which is at risk of being lost in the formally equal-
izing relation of recognition, it becomes possible that a just distance
is maintained at the heart of mutuality [of recognition], a just distance
that integrates respect into intimacy.90 And according to Ricur, the
latter is absolutely indispensable for the ethical form of recognition.

25.3.3 Symbolic Recognition

The understanding of recognition that Ricur develops, on the basis of
the two main aspects of an interpersonal relation of recognition relies
mentioned above, on the insight that recognition as a real experience
can only unfold in the mode of symbolic communication. Drawing
on some thoughts by Marcel Henaff, Ricur therefore points out that
the ceremonial reciprocity of the exchange of gifts is that preferred site
in which practiced mutuality can occur in a way that maintains the
uniqueness and elusiveness of the protagonists in the relation of rec-
ognition; for the reciprocity of the exchange of gifts implies a recogni-
tion that does not (reflexively) recognize itself but is absorbed into the

89
Ibid., 263.
90
Ibid.
 difference in the interpersonal relation 225

gesture or the symbolization of recognition.91 The exchange of gifts

makes use of the symbolic order of societal relationships, but at the
same time, it leaves behind its immanent logic in order to give shape to
an experience in which the givers generosity on the one hand and the
recipients lack of expectation on the other can manifest themselves.
Ricur describes both, generosity and lack of expectation, as modali-
ties of recognition in which recognition can be experienced without
a transgression against or appropriation of the other. Here, the atti-
tude of receiving with which the gift is accepted ensures that it not be
misunderstood as a gift that must be reciprocated and connected to
the expectation of a gift in return. On the other hand, the gratitude
with which the gift is accepted also creates the distance through which
the act of giving can be separated from the expectation of a reciprocal
gift. In this gesture of receiving, which can also be a wordless gesture,
Ricur sees the expression of the essential nature of a practiced rela-
tion of recognition.

25.3.4 States of Peace: Recognition and Religious Agape

In order to distinguish his own perspective of a practiced, performa-
tive relation of recognition from those models which posit a demand
for recognition without looking at its actual practical forms, Ricur
concludes his reflections by describing various symbolic forms in
which gestures and symbols of recognition can be analyzed phenom-
enologically. He calls these symbolic forms states of peace. But with
his description of these states of peace, he explicitly does not intend
to question or revise the conflict potential of the human desire for
recognition that had been so central in the normative understanding
of recognition. Instead, he wants to point out that, beside the conflict
potential of the desire for recognition, our culture also harbors stores
of tradition concerning the practiced relation of recognition. Among
these traditional elements are the symbolic forms of recognition found
in religion. Here, Ricur chooses to focus on agape or the gift of love,
which he characterizes as unilateral generosity as opposed to the
reciprocal relation of the exchange of gifts. The remarkable aspect of
agape as a form of religious ethos is that it is free from all desire for

91
See ibid., 236: I would add that we can take this relationship of mutuality as a
kind of recognition that does not recognize itself, to the extent that it is more invested
in the gesture than in the words that accompany it.
226 chapter three

mutuality and gives without any expectation of receiving a gift in

return. The gift of love thus may seem peculiarly lost in this world.
Because its giving is one-sided, it cannot be linked with the reciprocity
of the justice relation or the mutuality of the relation of recognition.
Thus, its giving eludes both legal relations, focused on the symmetry
of giver and recipient, and economic relations that are focused on the
reciprocity of giving. For Ricur, the practice of agape is connected to
a special form of communication: the gift of love cannot be claimed;
it expresses itself in a poetical use of the imperative, in the metaphor
and in praise. In the peculiar symbolic form of agape, Ricur sees a
model of how the normative reciprocity of recognition at the site of
giving and taking can be interrupted and opened up to a different
experience. The description of this experience enables us to regain our
trust in the openness of recognition and its capability of doing justice
to the mutual alterity of those that recognize each other.
The above considerations of Ricurs understanding of recognition
can now be summarized. According to Ricur, recognition can only
be adequately understood if the inter-personal mutuality of the rec-
ognition relation manages to integrate the aspect of a (twofold) alter-
ity. Accordingly, Ricur states, the relation of recognition cannot be
understood as a doubling of subjectivity, but as a doubling of alterity.
Thus, the central aspect of his perspective is not the subjects recog-
nition, which is in danger of turning into self-assertion by means of
the other (instrumental). Instead, it is recognition by the other in the
sense of a mutual recognition of elusiveness. But above all, recogni-
tion does not remain for Ricur a moral demand that is articulated
with regard to a universalist development of social relationships into
an ethical totality; instead, it is conceived as a possibility for capable
human beings, and thus as a possibility for human beings who can
become better than they are. In Ricurs perspective, human beings
are capable of actually experiencing recognition, albeit in an indirect
and symbolic way. His understanding of recognition thus goes beyond
the normative approach of recognition theory and attempts to coun-
ter the unrealizable demand and the struggle for recognition with
the description of practiced recognition (peaceful states of recogni-
tion). Beyond that, Ricur points out that the religious ethos harbors
untapped potentials for thinking about the ethical challenge that is
connected with the original asymmetry in the relation of recognition.
He shares this notion with a thinker who has made the transcendence
 difference in the interpersonal relation 227

and alterity of the other the very center of his reflections on the social
phenomenology of human existence.

26 Alterity: Difference as the Source of Responsibility

In conclusion, this chapter will turn to Emmanuel Levinas and his

attempt to combine reflections on the interpersonal relation with a
phenomenological and ethical reconception of humanity on the basis
of the ethos of religion. Levinas theory is situated, as it were, between
social philosophy, ethics, and the philosophy of religion; it is impos-
sible to categorize it as wholly belonging to one of these three modes
of thought. Discussing his arguments thus already offers a transition to
the reflections of the next chapter, which will deal with the theological
understanding of sociality and humanity. At the same time, Levinas
explicitly takes up the basic question of this study how to find a
description of human sociality that is adequate for the phenomenon
of human humanity by locating the humanity of the interpersonal
relation in the transcendence of the other.92 Thus, Levinas radicalizes
the question about social humanity by narrowing it down to a (purely)
ethical question, and he focuses more deeply on the question of the
phenomenal excess contained in the interpersonal relation than any of
the other approaches introduced in this study. He does so by showing
how this excess can be revealed and discussed through a phenomeno-
logical description. The most significant insight into the relationship
between humanity and sociality that Levinas develops in the course
of his social-phenomenological studies, is his discovery of an ethical
dimension of meaning within the interpersonal encounter: the pro-
tagonists of this encounter become indispensable to one another and
aware of a non-negotiable responsibility of each for the other. This
concrete and unique relationship of responsibility is lost as soon as the
interpersonal encounter is included in the immanence of social orders.
It must therefore be discussed and considered separately.
Levinas thoughts center on the term alterity, which denotes an oth-
erness, or transcendence of the other, in the interpersonal encounter.

92
In the secondary literature on Levinas, it has become a common practice to capi-
talize the word other. However, this will not be done here in order to maintain a
consistency of terms in all chapters.
228 chapter three

Levinas uses this term to refer to a social encounter that culminates

neither in conflict nor in recognition, but in responsibility. Thus, he
attempts to step beyond the basic Hobbesian paradigm of antagonism
in modern political anthropology in an entirely different way than do
the theories of recognition. He does not conceive of the interpersonal
difference with its conflict potentials as a transitional phase on the
way to a reconciled and egalitarian societal order in which mutual
relationships of recognition determine social togetherness and coexis-
tence. Instead, he posits the difference, and not the normative ideal of
its reconciliation as the insurmountable starting point for describing
the interpersonal relation.
On the other hand, Levinas concept also gives an entirely differ-
ent meaning to the insurmountable and thus permanent difference
among human beings than do the theories of political antagonism.
For him, the difference of one from the other is not primarily a source
of conflict, struggle and antagonism among human beings. Rather, it
causes a transcendence of the other, an (intersubjective) withdrawal
and elusiveness of the other that in turn calls the subject to respon-
sibility. However, Levinas positive, ethical appraisal of the interper-
sonal difference comes at a price. He does not give adequate thought
to the social ambivalence of this difference, its potential to lead to
becoming the enemy of the other as well as becoming responsible for
the other. His thoughts thus remain indebted to a new conception of
social humanity that does not pay as much attention to its dark side
social inhumanity as it does to the responsible approach to the other
occurring in interpersonal difference.93
The following presentation of selected theses and arguments
of Levinas social philosophy does not proceed in a chronologi-
cal or reconstructive manner; instead, it will point out those aspects
and consequences of Levinas thought that are relevant for profil-
ing his emphatically ethical view on the social structure of human
coexistence.

93
Levinas neglect of the possibility of inhumanity, which he declares to be an
impossibility of being human (see 26.2), is criticized by Slavoj iek (see iek 2005,
158). The inhuman eludes the subjects relationship to the others face, and it is pre-
cisely there that it unfolds its violence against humanity.
 difference in the interpersonal relation 229

26.1 Levinas Ethical Reconception of Humanity

Levinas thinks of the sociality of human beings as the site of tak-
ing responsibility, a responsibility that is rooted not in a contractu-
ally agreed upon bond and thus a one-sided obligation, but in the
proximity of another human being that shows his infinite withdrawal
and elusiveness for the subject.94 Since the withdrawal of the other in
this encounter extends to infinity, so that it does not allow for giving
a measure to responsibility, the subjects act of taking responsibility
that responds to the others withdrawal must also be thought of as
infinite and unlimited. For Levinas, encountering the other to his face
(visage)95 is the basic phenomenological datum for this act of taking
responsibility. This encounter with the others face denotes an experi-
ence of radical distance within the experience of interpersonal prox-
imity.96 He calls the encounter of a strangers human face, which is not
simply identical to another persons visible countenance, the experi-
ence of a trace. With this metaphor of the trace, he expresses that the
dimension of elusiveness manifested in the others face is a dimen-
sion of meaning that cannot be comprehended through any form of
social intentionality be it other-referential or self-referential. Rather,
to do it justice, it must be conceptualized phenomenologically as a
disruption or disturbance affecting the subject within the relation of
intentionality.
Levinas provides the following argument for the phenomenologi-
cal adequacy of his assertion that a specific significance of the human
face is the key to understanding the interpersonal encounter: precisely
the non-appearance of ones own subjectivity at the site of the other,
which is (negatively) denoted by the others human face, expresses the
experience of abstraction and disruption that can enforce the reversal

94
See Levinas 1998, XIXV.
95
The term face expresses a transgression of the intersubjective dimensions of
understanding: The way in which the other presents himself, exceeding the idea of the
other in me, we here name face. (Levinas 1979, 50 [emphasis in the original]).
96
Levinas remarks show that for him, the proximity of the other human being has
neither a hermeneutical nor an empirical significance. His understanding of inter-
personal proximity is based in a phenomenology of the human beings passion and
passivity, since it ethically places the social interplay between proximity and distance
under the primacy of an unconscious and immediate affection by the other. See the
following passage from Otherwise than Being: The relationship of proximity can-
not be reduced to any modality of distance or geometrical contiguity, nor to a simple
representation of a neighbor [. . .] the subject is affected without the source of affec-
tion becoming a theme of representation. (Levinas 1981, 100101).
230 chapter three

of the egological perspective and the adoption of a concrete responsi-

bility toward others hardship and suffering not limited by the context
of the social encounter. In the encounter with the others face, whose
transcendence can suspend the I of intentional reference, a different
kind of interpersonal encounter is thus manifested; it goes beyond
that which has been discussed as the basis for the connection between
human beings in the phenomenological theories of intersubjectivity
and social intentionality.
Another significant aspect of Levinas thought is that the encounter
with the others face represents an experience in which a human being
is no longer reduced to the significance that has been assigned to him
due to communally, religiously, culturally or economically determined
references of the shared life. To the contrary: the context-free signifi-
cance of the others face in the interpersonal encounter always and
that is Levinas point precedes the social references that are based
on an initiative of the I toward the other human being. The others
presence in the strangeness and transcendence of his face can thus
never be an object of experience.97 With his face, the other does not
enter into a relationship with the subject on his own terms; instead,
his entering-into-withdrawal actually disrupts the experience of the
manifold forms of his concreteness.
For the concrete experience of such a disruption of every intentional
reference to others, Levinas points, among other things, to the others
act of speaking: Speaking is first and foremost this way of coming
from behind ones appearance, behind ones form; an opening in the
opening.98 On the subjects side, speaking corresponds to hearing a
performance that, unlike imagining and seeing the other, is in no way
formative, but purely perceptive. Thus, in the moment of speaking,
or rather, of expressing oneself, the others presence, just as in the
visual exposure of the countenance in the face, remains elusive for the
subject, because the other evades the controlling reference and social
initiative of the I, not only in a partial, limited way, but absolutely,
and incorporates this I into hearing and perceiving.
Thus, in the face of the manifold forms of intersubjective under-
standing, Levinas insists on a specific significance of the others tran-

97
See the juxtaposition of infinity and transcendence against concreteness in Levi-
nas: To think the infinite, the transcendent, the Stranger, is hence not to think an
object. (Levinas 1979, 49).
98
Levinas 2003, 31.
 difference in the interpersonal relation 231

scendence, a presence of the other human being that cannot be reduced

to the dialectics of concealment and exposure of meaning. The with-
drawal denoted by the others face is not an expression of complete
concealment99 that can be taken in an entirely negative way. Instead,
it represents an expression of unconcealed absence that always enters
in a precise relation to the present, and hence to that which is present
as the other in social relationships. As long as the others absence in
the strange face does not become concrete but remains abstract and is
not appropriated in a meaningful way, it can maintain its significance
in social relationships by appearing as an excess of these references.
However, if the significance of the others face, and thus the trace of
its transcendence, is disregarded by the immediate classification of the
other into the social worlds orders of meaning and significance, the
other is mistaken for something he is not. Therefore, it is important
that the transcendence of the face, the trace of its meaning, is accepted
as a trace and is not turned into something other than it is.100 For only
as a trace does it elude the intentional correlation, the mutual determi-
nation of the relationships participants that generates meaning within
the framework of the signs semiotic and symbolic orders. Therefore,
the appropriate way to encounter the others face is to let oneself be
informed by its unique actuality101 in the interpersonal encounter.
Beyond that which has already been said, Levinas theses can be
further narrowed down. Levinas claims that the way in which inter-
personal encounters occur can only be adequately understood if it is
clear that the other always eludes the subjects attributive denotation
(my friend, my father, my teacher, my enemy etc.) that is, to
the extent that he is experienced in the transcendence of his strange
face. Phenomenologically speaking, this implies that, for a critical
understanding of the dynamics of social interactions, it is not only
necessary to point toward their constitutive and contextual conditions,
but also to the invasion of another type of significance, to an excess
that is always produced by the social encounter as an event between
human beings. This dimension of the interpersonal encounter, which
Levinas calls its ethical modality, can be examined once it becomes

99
A face does not function in proximity as a sign of a hidden God who would
impose the neighbor on me. (Levinas 1981, 9394).
100
See Levinas 2003, 4344.
101
Levinas 1979, 69.
232 chapter three

clear that it bears witness to a constitutive exteriority102 of the social

orders of meaning and relationships, and thus cannot be understood
and unveiled within the immanence of these orders of meaning. The
meaning of that which Levinas calls face thus manifests itself only
as the concrete trace of meaning of an absence which is present in
the face, which, as an elusive entity, enters into the social orders of
meaning of interpersonal presence, and through its withdrawal, makes
it possible for the social order patterns of reference to be undermined
in the interpersonal encounter. The epiphany of the face Levinas talks
about is thus the site of a non-original social genesis of meaning, which
enables the others alterity to forestall the definitive power of social
patterns of order and orientation in a diachronic sense. The belated-
ness of every response of the I to the others presence thereby opens
up the temporal experiential horizon of a future without content,103
an absence in the modality of time, through which in turn the arrival
of the other can be marked.
The unique non-intentionality of the interpersonal encounter thus
guides the philosophical analysis of the human social relationship in
Levinas work. The interesting aspect for us is that he comprehends
the connection between humanity and sociality, not as a philosophi-
cal connection of justification (see 23), but as a phenomenological
connection of discovery for the social humanity of human beings.
This approach implies that Levinas identifies humanity with a specific
description of the interpersonal encounter. But how does his phenom-
enological rediscovery of this encounter relate to the phenomenon of
social inhumanity?

26.2 The Impossibility of Social Inhumanity

Just like the social-philosophical concepts described earlier in this
chapter, Levinas paints a picture of the interpersonal encounter that
draws on the modern paradigm of the warlike natural state of human
beings by paying attention to its conflict potential. In his presentation
of sociality, he thus takes up experiences of social conflict, as it occurs
in extreme form: war, murder, struggle and violence. Particularly

102
Levinas first identifies the constitutive exteriority of the social relationship as
an idea of the infinite; subsequently, he calls the transcendence of the human face an
exteriority and illeity, an indirectness, or simply a detour of the encounter.
103
Levinas 1987, 89.
 difference in the interpersonal relation 233

his major works Totality and Infinity and Otherwise than Being
or Beyond Essence, first published in 1961 and 1974, show how the
Hobbesian scenario of a war among human egoisms both informs his
thinking and provokes him to talk philosophically about peace and to
develop an alternative concept to this scenario.104
But unlike Hobbes, Levinas does not think of war as an inevitable
natural condition of human existence.105 Instead, he understands war
and peace as two different phenomenologies of humanity and its rela-
tionship to the world. War is characterized by the fact that the world
and the subject enter into an extensive process of isolation against an
other (totality of being). In war, the world is characterized by antago-
nistic conflicts of interest that are imbued with the dignity of objective
necessity. Hence, war is a totalitarian phenomenology of the world.
It is the nature of war that it implements an order of being that does
not know or permit any exteriority. The structure of objective neces-
sity, which is imposed upon all decisions and actions of the individual,
stands in contrast to the fact that war also overrides the uniqueness
of the individual. In war, the individual becomes merely the carrier of
an ultimate meaning that is determined and assigned in a totalitarian
manner. The totality of being, the objective order, makes his interests
as determinable as objects. In this sense, war only permits a life that
is inhuman.
In the face of wars reality, Levinas inquires into a phenomenology of
peace and understands this as a perspective on the world and the sub-
ject that is above all characterized by an understanding of the interper-
sonal encounter. In order to characterize this interpersonal encounter,
Levinas explicitly distances himself from the idea of a peace in which
reason [. . .] reigns;106 because for him, this rational peace would once
again be a totalization of the world under a principle and thus merely
a variation of wars basic structure. In Levinas opinion, rational peace
merely reduces and limits the conflict of interest by weakening it
into a relationship of commerce and exchange without shattering the
underlying structure of the egos dominion over the other. In contrast,
the peace Levinas is talking about is understood as a point of view
that eludes the rational strategies of suppressing antagonisms the

104
See Levinas 1981, 45; Levinas 1979, 2130.
105
See the remarks on Levinas understanding of war in Stegmaier 2002, 150151.
106
Levinas 1981, 4.
234 chapter three

calculation of mutual advantages, diplomatic mediation and the poli-

tics of equilibrium. Levinas attempts to think about peace by promot-
ing a messianic, prophetic eschatology, i.e., a changed understanding
of the temporality of subjectivity and the world. With this notion,
he ultimately also abandons an ontological determination of being.
The eschatological-messianic reality of subject and world introduced
by Levinas subjects the understanding of time to an infinitization,
which shatters the omnipresent telos of time as history and thus the
totality of being. Instead, the experience of time is reconceptualized as
an experience with an absolutely other the infinite and thus as a
non-synchronism with existence in ontological terms.
Thus, Levinas new approach toward a phenomenology of peace
does not simply posit peace in contrast to the phenomenology of war.
Instead, it attempts to undermine the totalitarian structure of war by
introducing the constitutive exteriority of time (the idea of the infi-
nite) for the description of the temporality of the interpersonal rela-
tion.107 The idea of the infinite can remove the foundation from the
evidence of totalitarian social structures. Therefore, says Levinas, to
escape the experiences of inhumanity, murder and cruelty i.e., to
suspend their seemingly immediate evidence means to break with
the objective ontological order of the world that is reflected in the
phenomenology of war.
How does Levinas conceive of the relationship between the human-
ity and inhumanity of human beings? He is of the opinion that an
antagonistic confrontation of human egoisms, which is characteris-
tic of the inhumanity of war, cannot emerge from the interpersonal
encounter, but only from the objective ontological order of the world.
His description of a human cooperation thus takes its starting point
from an irreducible claim of the other on the I (You will not kill!108).
However, he believes that this claim must be answered not just on the
level of politics, law and morals, but on the level of the interpersonal
encounter itself. It manifests the impossibility of a total annihilation
of the other (murder), thereby establishing the possibility of one per-
son taking responsibility for the other. Thus, the description of the
interpersonal encounter as a relationship of responsibility caused by

107
See Levinas linking of infinity and exteriority: What remains ever exterior to
thought is thought in the idea of infinity. (Levinas 1979, 25).
108
Levinas 1983, 34.
 difference in the interpersonal relation 235

the impossibility of murder is enough to make the social humanity of

this encounter plausible. Accordingly, for Levinas, the interpersonal
encounter always remains the affectively and diachronically consti-
tuted event of an encounter between elusive others. This event must
be understood as a form of diachronic creation of meaning, because it
absolutely eludes being tracked within a temporal pattern; on the other
hand, it is not completely closed off from temporal experience, either.
Thus, in order to comprehend the point of Levinas reflections, both
aspects of the creation of meaning must stay present: the withdrawal
into an origin of the interpersonal encounter which has no begin-
ning and the reference of this encounter to the constitution of human
responsibility and thereby to a new understanding of social humanity.
Therefore, says Levinas, the framework for the discovery of humanity
is the transcendence and alterity of the other human being, which is
expressed in the event of questioning the subject and his ethical caring
for the other.

26.3 The Relationship to the Other as the Third and the

Standards of Justice
Levinas reflections on the diachronic temporality of the interpersonal
encounter have as their background an ethical demand for the percep-
tion of the others proximity and the acknowledgment of his hardship
and need. In terms of moral philosophy, such a demand could simply
be formulated as a guiding principle (e.g. You shall not kill). In Levi-
nas view, such a commandment form of ethics, which uses universal
values and norms to regulate the relationship toward the other human
being once and for all, and thus creates a form of justice among human
beings that is time-transcending, only prevents individuals from tak-
ing concrete responsibility. Nevertheless, he does not entirely reject
the legal, political, economic and moral categories of knowledge about
the other; instead, he wants his argumentation to serve as a warning
that these categories can prevent proximity to another human being if
they subordinate his presence to a linguistic rule; because in this way,
concrete attention to the other becomes dependent on the appearance
of a third (a rule, institution, or standard of comparison) beside the
other.
In Levinas phenomenological description, the proximity to the
human other precedes social attributions as well as moral and legal
norms that seek to regulate the relationship to the other through a
236 chapter three

relationship to a third. But this does not make the relationship to the
third entirely irrelevant for Levinas. He writes: There must be jus-
tice among incomparable ones.109 The interpersonal encounter that
he describes is thus not only a relationship between a You and an I.
Instead, it is based on the distinction between the other and the third.
For Levinas, this is a distinction that can only be made from a very
specific perspective. In an interview from 1975, he says:
But in reality, the relationship with another is never uniquely the rela-
tionship with the other: from this moment on, the third is represented
in the other; that is, in the very appearance of the other the third already
regards me. And this, nevertheless, makes the relation between justice
and the responsibility with regard to the other extremely narrow.110
The responsibility to the other and the justice that I owe him in rela-
tion to a third (rule, norm) and as a third (legal subject, cooperation
partner) thus stand side by side at the site of the interpersonal encoun-
ter. For Levinas, being with the other also means being in relation to
a third in a twofold sense: first, because the other human being also
presents himself to ethical subjectivity as a socially determined third,
namely, as his friend, his father, his teacher, his judge, his business
partner etc. These forms of presentation cannot be switched off they
are present in every interpersonal encounter:
But being must be understood on the basis of beings other. To be on the
ground of the signification of an approach is to be with another for or
against a third party, with the other and the third party against oneself,
in justice.111
But the forms of the other humans presence within a social relation-
ship must be distinguished from that relationship to the third which
is encountered at the site of the other in his face. Levinas description
of the interpersonal encounter thus already implies a perception of the
elusive other who is the third, albeit a third that cannot be seen as a
third which is presented through the social order (TR). Levinas calls
this the illeity of the other human being. Illeity means an interrup-
tion or reversal of the relationship to the other human being in which
the other turns out to be a strange other (TI ) as well. In Levinas words:
in the encounter with the other, there remains an It at the root of the

109
Levinas 1981, 16.
110
Levinas 1998, 82.
111
Levinas 1981, 16 (emphasis in the original).
 difference in the interpersonal relation 237

You, which does not signify the You of an I.112 Illeity thus denotes
a form of the others strangeness that always precedes the forms of his
(social) presence for the fellow human.
In addition to the face and to illeity, Levinas establishes the term
non-indifference for describing the ethical significance of the inter-
personal encounter. Non-indifference denotes a difference between
self and other that cannot be discussed via an interrelationship of ele-
ments which would make self and other indifferent to each other, but
only via a constitutive exteriority of all relationality (the infinite).
Thus, non-indifference refers to a relationship between human beings
that allows them to maintain the distinction of the third, the distinc-
tion between TR and TI, at the site of the other human being; and
from there, it also prevents his presence from being dissolved into the
totality of social relations.

26.4 Beyond the Symmetry of Egalitarian Relationships

In the first chapter, it was shown that the understanding of human
sociality in economic behavioral experiments is always oriented toward
the ideal of a symmetrical and egalitarian social relationship. The con-
crete relationship to another human being is based on an analogizing
transfer of the subjects self-understanding to the other: the I transfers
his own idea of a good and right coexistence, which he sees realized in
the observance of universal norms of fairness and justice, to the other
human being and attempts to enforce his own interest in cooperation
if necessary, even against the resistance of his interaction partner.
In this model, sociality can only be thought of as the initiative of an
individual acting self-referentially. The passions, emotions, affects, and
passivity of a subject who lets himself be affected by an other are taken
into account only as far as they can be modeled as neural mechanisms
in the brain that lead to the agents rational decision-making behavior.
In the end, experimental economics only takes into account the social
humanity of the interpersonal encounter insofar as it can be integrated
into and made compatible with its concept of a rational agent.
In Levinas work but also elsewhere an entirely different attribu-
tion of justice and sociality can be found. He rejects the rationalistic
model of justice which acts on the assumption that there is a reciprocal

112
See a similar phrase in Levinas text God and Philosophy (Levinas 1998, 69).
238 chapter three

balance of interests. He criticizes this model as a figure based on an

ontological totality of the social. His reflections arrive at the conclu-
sion that the focus on the reciprocity of human interests excludes any
form of selfless responsibility for the other.113 For Levinas, responsi-
bility is a relationship to the others need and suffering that is gen-
uinely free of interest or hierarchy. Thus, it does not manifest itself
in a concern of the formal equality of contributions and earnings in
human cooperation. Levinas concept is, therefore, not about human
being-with-each-other, but is rather concerned with the structure of a
concrete responsibility of the one for the other that provides a space
for human uniqueness within the social relation. Levinas posits the
departure without return114 that includes the subject in the need
and suffering of the other, in contrast to the reciprocity of balanced
interests. For Levinas, the relationship to the elusive other necessarily
remains without a common measure.115 The relation of responsibility
thus is not simply rooted in a different rationality than the antagonism
of egoisms; rather, it can only be thought of as decidedly non-rational,
as being affected by the others transcendence and alterity.
Levinas argues for a better116 conception of human sociality that is
capable of preserving the relationship to another human being as a
third, a social counterpart, not only due to the demand of the norm,
but due to ethical proximity. Accordingly, the norm of justice is not
fulfilled through the mutual recognition of identity claims, but in that
the desire of being noticed by the other first takes a detour via the
others proximity in his elusiveness. Without interpersonal proximity,
states Levinas, the demand for justice would remain devoid of con-
crete responsibility and thus ethically empty.

26.5 Gods Invisibility

Levinas demands that we think about social humanity in a way that is
not only different from, but utterly alien to the conventional under-
standing of human sociality. He distances himself from the philo-

113
Levinas in turn emphasizes in an interview in 1975: [T]o make possible a dis-
interested responsibility for another excludes reciprocity (Levinas 1998, 82).
114
Levinas 1986, 349.
115
See Levinas 2001, 80: It is a relationship not with what is inordinate with respect
to a theme but with what is incommensurable with it.
116
See e.g. Levinas 1998, 118119.
 difference in the interpersonal relation 239

sophically posited norms of intelligibility and of sense.117 Instead,

he attempts to think beyond the ontological totality of the real which
they create, and to describe an encounter in which the others tran-
scendence is maintained by the subject. In order to make plausible
his demand for an awareness of this transcendence of the other,
Levinas continuously draws on religious philosophical thought that
allows him to develop his argument for the ethical excess of meaning
in the interpersonal encounter. In distinction to his own approach,
he labels any thought as atheism, which is incapable of conceiving
of anything other than that which is equal to it and complies with
its own standards.118 This can be taken as evidence for what guides
his own understanding of religion and phenomenology. His thinking
understands the divine as the center of religion and regards it as a
philosophical idea that has the function of reserving mental space for
the non-rational, non-concrete, non-presentable, and thereby, for
all that is not comprehensible about reality within orders of significa-
tion. This is necessarily connected with the idea of Gods invisibil-
ity. Beyond its immanent function for thinking, the idea of the divine
also has the function of permitting a genesis of positive meaning that
originates from this negative limit of the comprehensible, presentable
and thinkable. The idea of the divine that Levinas unfolds therefore
does not enable us to raise the ontological problem of Gods existence
or non-existence, which underlies philosophical theism. Levinas con-
ceives of the idea of the divine outside of being and non-being, as a
non-ontological modality.119
The negation of the ontological question of being paves the way
for combining Levinas idea of the divine with his thoughts about
interpersonal humanity. In his conception, Gods invisibility does not
have any significance for the selfhood of human beings, but it can
be used to construct the interpersonal for-relation, the reference to
the other. Levinas wants to positively concretize the negativity of the
divine, its non-presentability, in the others proximity and distance
in the interpersonal encounter. In this encounter, the divine becomes
an origin without a beginning for the genesis of the phenomenon of
social humanity, i.e., for the meaning and significance which one can

117
Levinas 1981, 95.
118
See Levinas 1998, 160.
119
See Levinas 1993.
240 chapter three

obtain for the other in his singularity. Levinas therefore also calls this
idea of the divine an an-archy, i.e., an idea signifying with a sig-
nificance prior to presence [. . .].120 The tautology of significance and
signifying at this point is to be interpreted as the precedence of the
idea of the divine before all philosophical attempts to posit a first cause
of meaning. All meanings receive their significance not from a com-
mon origin, but from their lack of origin, which, as a precise absence
of the divine in the world, differs from the omnipresence of the One
God. But Gods absence is more radical than the absence of the strange
human face121 that gains meaning at the site of the other human being
in the midst of the worlds presence. It can therefore taken by itself
only be thought of as negative, whereas for the human being, it can
only obtain significance positively, i.e., as the proximity in the inter-
personal encounter.
Levinas does not impose a dialectical structure on the tension
between Gods negativity in invisibility and Gods positivity in the
interpersonal encounter. Instead, he illuminates this tension by taking
up the relation of the elusive other to God in the way that he sees it
as present in religious experience. If God becomes the subject matter
in religious experience, then the relationship to him is determined by
a diachronicity, i.e., by an interruption, by asynchronicity and exorbi-
tance, so that strictly speaking it is an experience that is unbearable
for the human I, but which can affect it all the more at the site of
the other human being. Thus, Levinas also describes the ethical rela-
tionship as a religious relationship. This occurs when a human being
encounters Gods absence and invisibility at the site of the other. Thus,
for Levinas, human sociality in its authentic form is religious, and as a
religious experience it is also ethical. This undifferentiated amalgama-
tion may be considered a weakness of Levinas approach, which makes
the religious-philosophical horizon of his social-philosophical reflec-
tions less than completely persuasive. On the other hand, it is a major
strength of his concept that the ethical dimension of relationships is not
thought of as particular, i.e., added to the social event wihtin a specific

120
Levinas 1998, 64.
121
See the distinction between God and neighbor in Levinas: And it is from the
analysis just carried out that God is not simply the first other, or the other par excel-
lence, or the absolutely other, but other than the other, other otherwise, and other
with an alterity prior to the ethical obligation to the other and different from every
neighbor [. . .]. (ibid., 69).
 difference in the interpersonal relation 241

perspective, but rather as being always present in the social event in a

non-original sense. With this concept, every interpersonal encounter
becomes the (potential) site of a relation of responsibility without hav-
ing to be explicitly driven by a moral motive. In this regard, Levinas
contribution shows that the alternative of affirmation vs. reversal of
social conflict in interpersonal encounters, as discussed in the other
social-philosophical concepts in this chapter, can be undermined by
a new interpretation of the interpersonal encounter in a phenomeno-
logical perspective.

27 Conclusion

This chapter has discussed the question of an adequate interpretation

of the social relationship which precedes the concrete interaction of
human beings and determines the success or failure of this interaction.
The argumentation of this chapter has shown that it is possible to think
beyond the individualistic perspective on sociality which focuses on the
intentions and motivations of individuals entering into the interaction
relation (see the discussion in the last chapter). It did so by inquiring
into the consequences for societal interaction not by looking at indi-
viduals, but at their relationship to each other. Here, the individuals
relationship to each other was viewed as a relationship of difference of
one from the other, whose existence Hannah Arendt considered the
basic condition for the maintenance of humanity. However, unlike in
Arendts work, the interpersonal difference was not a priori considered
indispensable for a description of the phenomenon of social human-
ity; instead, other possible interpretations of this relation of difference
were explored. Based on an analysis of Thomas Hobbes anthropology,
it was shown that the interpersonal difference, in social-philosophical
theory, can also be regarded as the starting point for antagonistic con-
frontation, conflict and murder among human beings and thus should
not be identified uncritically with the phenomenon of social human-
ity. A social-phenomenological description of human interaction must
therefore pay attention to the difference between humanity and inhu-
manity at the site of the interpersonal relation itself.
Additionally, this chapter combined considerations of the phe-
nomenology of the interpersonal relation with the modern theory of
political order formation. The separation of nature and society and the
elusiveness of the human being in society are essential to this theory.
242 chapter three

In the course of the discussion, however, the elusiveness of the human

being was not taken to denote a collective singular that serves to estab-
lish a norm of humanity based on natural law. Instead, it was under-
stood as the interpersonal relation that precedes the genesis of social
order, and whose dynamics are at work even in a social relationship
that is ordered by politics, laws, or morals. This interpersonal relation
can be explained and interpreted phenomenologically, which makes it
a good starting point for describing the positive and negative conse-
quences of human sociality in terms of politics, law, or morals.
All descriptions of the interpersonal relation that have been intro-
duced in this chapter were based on either a positive or a negative
view of the basic social situation of human beings: (i) The perspec-
tive of a negative anthropology (conflict of human egoisms) popular-
ized by Hobbes doctrine of the natural state, is maintained in several
social-philosophical concepts, which make antagonistic confrontation
the basic structure of political and societal relationship constellations,
and present a corresponding concept of the possibilities and limits of
human society. (ii) In contrast, other concepts both distance them-
selves from and draw on Hobbes perspective in an attempt to estab-
lish a positive anthropology. They do so by revealing the desire for the
recognition of ones own identity by others in the midst of social and
political conflicts. This desire for recognition is the real moral motive
at the heart of social conflicts; for it reveals that the protagonists of
social conflicts always remain dependent on each other even in their
difference. (iii) The Hobbesian paradigm of antagonistic confronta-
tion is completely overcome in Levinas social-philosophical concept
of humanity, which no longer makes the interpersonal relation the
starting point for conflict with the other, a conflict that is rooted in the
subjects self-assertion and can ultimately be pacified, overcome and
reconciled. Instead, he makes this relation of difference the starting
point for an ethical excess of meaning in the interpersonal encounter
in which the social humanity of human beings shows itself as a phe-
nomenon. According to Levinas, the encounter between human beings
thus becomes the site of a non-negotiable responsibility of the one for
the other, even before the perception of the other is determined and
regulated through societal order by politics, laws and morals. In this
way, Levinas attempts to point out that the interpersonal difference
is not to be interpreted egologically in a Hobbesian sense and should
not be understood as isolation and enmity among human beings. This
difference does not necessarily have negative social consequences, but
 difference in the interpersonal relation 243

rather can become the starting point for taking responsibility for the
other.
Hobbes negative anthropology represents the provocative insight
that human beings can be social, but do not have to be. His anthro-
pological provocation, made it necessary to justify the philosophical
claim that human beings are social creatures by nature. Human social-
ity thus is no longer an integral element of the human condition. In
the attempts to honor the impact of Hobbes insight within the hori-
zon of the social-philosophical theory of societal interaction, a two-
fold approach to his negative anthropology has emerged: on one side,
Hobbes negative anthropology is confirmed in order to find socially
acceptable forms for the articulation and settling of conflicts within
society, based on the basic constellation of an antagonistic confronta-
tion (theories of antagonism); on the other side, it is merely viewed as
a necessary transitional stage on the way to a positive anthropology,
i.e., a peaceful coexistence of human beings (theories of recognition).
Following in Hobbes footsteps, the social-philosophical concepts still
debate which of the two anthropologies should be preferred for the
description of human sociality; or rather, how the way from one to the
other can be established. In contrast, the economic studies on sociality
presented in the last chapter model the dynamics of a simultaneous-
ness of positive and negative anthropology, and ask what empirical
conditions and biological causes can make the positive anthropology
prevail. The potential of social-philosophical reflection to go beyond
the empirical studies can be seen where a phenomenological descrip-
tion of the interpersonal encounter commences before the state of
ordered interaction. In such a phenomenological description, the
social dynamic of the interpersonal encounter is not simply reduced
to the juxtaposition of behavioral types (altruists, egoists), as it is in
empirical studies; instead, the difference of the one from the other is
revealed as the cause of the negative and positive social consequences
of the interpersonal encounter. But this also means that the interper-
sonal encounter is an ambiguous starting point for the description of
human sociality. For example, it remained uncertain in the argument
of this chapter whether the transcendence of the other in this encoun-
ter provokes an act of taking responsibility (Levinas), or whether the
others strangeness and distance rather triggers aversion and aggres-
sion against him (Hobbes).
If it cant be made clear in the course of social-philosophical argu-
ment how the difference of one from the other is to be interpreted
244 chapter three

in the interpersonal relation, then it is also impossible for social phi-

losophy to give a definitive interpretation of human sociality or an
unequivocal phenomenological description of the phenomenon of
social humanity. Likewise, the question of whether human interaction
is based on a positive or a negative anthropology is not a question
that social-philosophical reflection can answer conclusively. And even
empirical studies can only examine what conditions cause a nega-
tive or a positive reaction to the other. The orders of politics, law and
morals are also unable to permanently resolve the ambiguity between
social humanity and inhumanity manifested at the site of the inter-
personal encounter. Therefore, human pluralism, which, according to
Hannah Arendt, constitutes the human condition of sociality, can be a
guideline for the social-philosophical conceptions of sociality, but only
on the condition that its anthropological implications and social con-
sequences are reflected upon and examined comprehensively. For the
criterion of maintaining and preserving difference alone i.e., positing
pluralism instead of plurality, and singularity instead of human diver-
sity is not enough to validate the ambiguous social meaning that
takes shape at the site of the interpersonal encounter. Therefore, we
have to look for a perspective of description that can define the ambi-
guity of interpersonal difference in distinct anthropological terms and
that can also explicitly differentiate that difference terminologically in
terms of its twofold consequence for social interaction. Only in this
way can anthropological reflection prevent an indifference to the phe-
nomena of social inhumanity (violence, murder, war, disrespect etc.)
in the description of social humanity. The thesis of this study, which
shall be developed further in the final chapter, is that theological social
anthropology with its conception of Gods neighbor, who is situated in
the tension between old and new existence, contains an understanding
of humanity that can live up to this demand.
 CHAPTER FOUR

HUMANITY AND INHUMANITY IN

THE LOVE OF NEIGHBOR

28 Theological Reservations against an

Immanence of the Social

The object of theology is the development of an entity that can nei-

ther be anthropologized nor politicized: God is nobodys friend and
nobodys enemy.1 In this chapter, the Christian ethos of the love of
neighbor will be interpreted as a contribution to an interdisciplinary
approach to human sociality. This chapter thus adds yet another per-
spective to the interpretations and representations of human sociality
that have been discussed in the previous chapters. At the same time, it
is important to note that these theological reflections on humanity and
sociality are not meant to present an internal discussion of the ethics
and dogmatics of Christian theology that is isolated from the other
perspectives. Rather, the same questions that guided the examination
of the other two perspectives will be approached in the context of
theological concepts. The key questions were: what understanding of
human beings and human sociality is developed in the respective per-
spectives? To what extent does anthropology function as a regulator
for the description of social structures and for a theory or modeling
of human sociability? Can the dichotomy of humanity and society be
undermined by a phenomenological description of the interpersonal
encounter that demonstrates an excess of meaning when compared to
the subject-based reconstruction of human sociality?
If the questions of this study are examined from the perspective
of Protestant theology, the description of human beings cannot begin
by simply presenting specific characteristics such as human nature or
reason. According to theological anthropology, there are two reasons
why these positive characteristics can no longer describe the human
condition: first, theological anthropology works on the premise that

1
Blumenberg 2000, 348 (emphasis in the original; transl. M.S.).
246 chapter four

humanity after the fall of Adam, lives in a condition of sinfulness;

therefore, the human condition is determined by a corruption of their
natural existence.2 Second, theological anthropology works on the
premise that in Gods becoming human, a new foundation for human
existence was established. Human beings are now able to see the dif-
ference, caused and initiated by Gods presence, between their old and
new existence. This human self-differentiation becomes the herme-
neutical key to a theological description of human beings. By making
them aware of the corruption of their existence and offering a revision
of this corruption, this ability to self-differentiate allows human beings
to see what constitutes the humanity of their existence. Therefore, the
theological perspective on human beings does not simply add another
positive or negative description of human beings to those of the non-
theological anthropologies. Rather, it always sees human existence as
a state of tension which subjects the old existence to a critical revision
in the light of the new existence. One task of theological anthropology
is therefore to point out the immanent limits of anthropological dis-
course in the other perspectives, and to revise their descriptions of the
phenomenon of interpersonal sociality from a theological perspective.3
Discussion of an old and a new human existence offers a vocabulary
for the social-phenomenological distinction between various aspects of
interpersonal sociality. This theological vocabulary enables us to keep
the description of social phenomena open to the difference of human
and inhuman sociality and to initiate a revision of the inhuman reali-
ties of life.
Based on these premises of the theological perspective, it follows
that their contribution to the discussion of human existence and soci-
ality would be underdetermined in terms of both methods and con-
tent, if its descriptions were to be reduced to another reconstruction of
the factors the human being and society or any intermediate figures
between the two. However, the method of the theological perspective
is characterized by the discussion of human beings and their social life

2
For example, the idea of sinfulness as the basic condition of human existence
takes up a very central position in Pannenbergs presentation of theological anthropol-
ogy (see Pannenberg 2004, 80153).
3
In his study on Anthropology in Theological Perspective, Pannenberg describes
how anthropology took on a central position in 19th century Protestant theology,
which in the 20th century gave way to a tendency of criticizing this so-called anthro-
pocentrism. Here, he mainly thinks of Karl Barths theology (see ibid., 1123).
 humanity and inhumanity in the love of neighbor 247

structures always in light of a third factor, namely, Gods presence in

this world.4 In its evaluation of the understandings of God articulated
by human beings, it thus always refers to an entity (God) that is not
appropriated by empirical, religious, (social-)anthropological or moral
distinctions; i.e., an entity that cannot be comprehended positively or
negatively in the sense of an either-or. Here, God is distinct from
all references to his presence insofar as he cannot be appropriated in
theological representations, neither subjectively nor objectively. Thus,
God is not a hermeneutical object of representation, but guides the
direction of interpretation (from God) in which all the worlds objects
can be described theologically.5 Therefore, the theological perspective
interprets human beings and their sociality to the extent that Gods
presence is manifest in them. God thus does not refer to a specific
object of the world as opposed to other objects.6 Instead, the theo-
logical reference to God offers a mode of concreteness, or rather, the
experience of concreteness in the world, whose representation makes
it possible to distinguish a religious view of reality from other points
of view.
It is characteristic of the Christian understanding of Gods presence
that human beings and the world can be described as the object of
divine devotion in Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ thus refers to that object
in the world in which God has revealed his presence, such that it can
be identified as Gods self-presence for human beings and experienced
as Gods devotion to human beings.7 In Jesus Christ, God showed his
devotion by defining his relationship to human beings as a relationship

4
For this reason, Ingolf U. Dalferth has talked about God as an indexical means
of aligning our perception whose guiding function cannot be replaced by other indi-
cators, because God reveals the fundamental contingence [of the overall context in
which we live and orient ourselves; R.K.] (Dalferth 2003, 466474, here 468 [empha-
sis in the original; transl. M.S.]). Also see Pannenberg 1976 who differentiates between
God as an object and theological statements about him. Drawing on Schleiermacher
(Schleiermacher 1999, 45, 1226), he also makes Gods co-presence [Mitgesetztsein]
in our experience of reality a fundamental topic of theology. However, Pannenberg
does not discuss how the difference between God and God, i.e., Gods concreteness
in its elusiveness can be approached theologically.
5
See Dalferth 2003.
6
Also see Jean-Luc Marions phenomenological study, in which he attempts to
think of a God who stands outside the existence of things (see Marion 1991, 6183).
7
The Christian church reminds us of this experience of Gods self-presence in the
testimony of the Holy Scripture and the sacraments of the worship service.
248 chapter four

of proximity 8 to the bodily, concrete and thus visible existence of

human beings. Therefore, at the site of God incarnate, God himself
creates and actualizes the self-understanding of a new human being,9
who lives due to the actuality of Gods devotion. Thus, the Christian
understanding of the human being is rooted in Gods act of devotion,
whereby God was made tangible in Jesus Christs bodily presence, and
in the cross and the resurrection unmistakably anticipated all human
initiatives that refer to this presence.
This Christian understanding differs from other religious under-
standings of human beings in that it allows God and human beings
to become very close in this world, thereby expressing the special prox-
imity between human beings and God that is rooted in Gods devotion
to human beings. Gods proximity in Jesus Christ is the mode of pres-
ence of a God who has become a human being himself. By becoming
human, he has (i) enabled human beings to have a precise understand-
ing of his presence and (ii) made an unmistakable commitment to
human beings to maintain this mode of his presence in the world.
This Christian understanding of human beings differs from non-
religious understandings of human beings insofar as it is based on a dif-
ferent experience. Its description of humanity is not based on human
self-experience,10 but on an experience that was able to occur with the
human being Jesus Christ, in that he is the manifestation of Gods
humanity and not the humanity of a human being. From a theological
perspective, the experience of Jesus humanity was thus possible neither

8
The fact that the Christian idea of God specifically discusses a God that is close
to human beings is also made clear in the Lords Prayer, which connects all Christians.
In this prayer (Mt 6:913 and Lk 11:24), God is addressed as Father, which denotes
special familiarity and proximity. In his exegetic interpretation of the Lords Prayer,
Jean Zumstein writes: By taking such an expression [Father] and applying it to God,
Jesus makes a very momentous theological decision: he wants to emphasize that God is
not far away, but that he is close by. He wants to bear witness to a God who is defined
by the love and care that he bestows on his people. (Zumstein 2002, 29 [transl. M.S.;
emphasis added R.K.]). Precisely because the prayer does not make a statement about
Jesus as a person, it can be considered authentic (see ibid., 14).
9
From a theological perspective, the question about the (historical) person of
Jesus and his relationship to God is always also a question about Jesus salvific mean-
ing for us (see Dalferth 1994, 124135.8284).
10
See Eberhard Jngels distinction between self-experience and the experience of
faith: The theological discourse on the eschatologically new human being [. . .] neces-
sarily goes beyond the self-experience of human beings by expecting them to have
another experience with their self-experience. (Jngel 1980, 291 [transl. M.S.]).
 humanity and inhumanity in the love of neighbor 249

as a self-experience nor as an experience among human beings alone.

It can therefore only be accessed in the experience of a new humanity
that exists because of Gods devotion to human beings, which has
anticipated and preceded their own self-experience. On the basis of the
new humanity of one human being (Jesus), who became real and alive
due to Gods presence, and thereby enabled all human beings to expe-
rience a new self-presence of their humanity, the whole experiential
horizon of life can be transformed into a new experiential horizon for
those who believe in this actuality. And this is precisely what is meant
by Jesus soteriological significance for humanity. In the new experi-
ential horizon of those who believe in Jesus Christ, the understanding
of humanity just like the experience of all other worldly objects is
initiated by and rooted in Gods devotion to human beings. It is not
determined by the human beings own initiatives or those of other
human beings. The same thing can now be shown regarding a theo-
logical understanding of human sociality.
The theological description of human beings and their sociality
transcends the immanence of human experience in two ways. First,
its premise is based on the new experience of humanity made pos-
sible in the encounter with Jesus Christ. And second, it discusses this
new experience as an excess of experience that is not merely added to
the old experiences, but instead transforms them in light of the new
experience. Theologically speaking, the new experience of humanity
cannot be described based on the experience of the self or the other,
but only based on Gods devotion to human beings. Since Gods devo-
tion appears significantly in Jesus Christ as Gods proximity to human
beings, it can always be described as a God-given excess of humanity,
in contrast to the self-understanding developed by human beings in
the immanence of their togetherness, both with themselves and other
human beings. This excess of humanity, which was brought into the
world through Jesus Christ, and in which once again God newly dem-
onstrated his devotion to human beings and creation, can therefore be
characterized theologically through a representation of human beings
as neighbors of God. This last thought will be pursued in the following
section.
If human beings are presented as Gods neighbors not only with
regard to God, but also to their fellow humans, there are several
hermeneutical implications. For if the human being not as a generic
human being, but as a fellow human being is Gods neighbor, this
250 chapter four

means that, from a theological perspective, the fellow human not only
makes it possible to experience Gods proximity to humanity, but also
that interpersonal proximity gains a new significance and a different
meaning in the actuality of Gods proximity. This presumes, however,
that Gods proximity is experienced in such a way that human beings
can correspond to it simply through loving devotion to their neigh-
bors. Of course, from a Christian perspective, the divine excess that
shows itself in the human being as Gods neighbors cannot simply
be described through the others transcendence in the interpersonal
encounter, as could the excess of alterity in social encounters that
was discussed in the third chapter (see 26). Instead, it emerges from
a social experience that is guided by Gods effective presence in the
interpersonal encounter.
This presence of God became concrete in Jesus Christ, but at the
same time, it retains its intangible significance that transcends the con-
creteness of the world. Therefore, it can only be comprehended as the
immanent limit of all human references to God. This limit of Gods
presence for human beings can be conveyed by pointing out that Jesus
Christ himself was a symbol, not only for the successful experience of
Gods presence, but also for the failure of human efforts to relate to
the divine self-presence in him in a such way that it could remain in
the world as a complete and wholly concrete presence (cross). After
Jesus death and resurrection, Gods presence can therefore only be
experienced through the representation of Jesus concreteness in the
sacraments of the Christian worship service. After Christs resurrec-
tion and the subsequent disappearance of his bodily self-presence,
Gods humanity can now be manifested as spiritual actuality, which
cannot be represented by repeating the experience, but only by bearing
testimony to it.
The theological testimony to the spiritual actuality of Jesus human-
ity is not a testimony that alienates human beings from the reality
of human life; it is rather a testimony that is to be understood as a
re-description of this reality from a Christian perspective. Precisely
because it is guided by a (new) description of the world, the Christian
understanding of humanity does not refer to a humanity that conceals
itself from the world, but includes all experiences of humanity in its
Christian interpretation. In the horizon of the world, it appears when
human self-experiences are transcended into the new experience of
humanity in Jesus Christ, and are revised in its light.
 humanity and inhumanity in the love of neighbor 251

This perspective, which transcends and revises the immanence of

the human experiential horizon, is linked to the theological herme-
neutics of humanity. Unlike non-theological concepts, the theological
point of view cannot relate the two factors of humanity and soci-
ality to each other without also referring to a third, namely, Gods
presence, as another mode of the worlds concreteness. But this third
factor is not simply added to the two others: it redefines the constel-
lation between the two and, most importantly, reveals their immanent
limit. Thus, although being a believer redefines and recreates a human
being in his humanity, he can only ever experience his newness as a
tension between old and new existence in the life reality of the world.
Therefore, he cannot bring forth this new humanity from within him-
self, but can only experience it as a revision of his old existence. The
same is true in the relationship to the fellow human. In one sense, the
human being here acts as Gods neighbor who has experienced Gods
merciful attention and passes it on to other human beings; but at the
same time, his relationship to the other human being is part of the
interpersonal reality in which they both live and whose ambiguous
social dynamics can never be completely evaded, not even by neigh-
bors of God.
Thus, the description of the human situation from the perspec-
tive of Christian faith is always informed by a tension that cannot be
resolved under the circumstances of the human condition, i.e., within
the framework of a temporally and spatially limited human existence.
Therefore, in theology, human beings are always described in a two-
fold perspective, which contrasts their newness with their old modes
of existence, reveals these old modes in their reversal of newness, and
thus allows human beings to step out of the previously undiscovered
ambiguity of their life reality. This anthropological approach can now
be used for a theological description of human sociality guided by the
idea of a tense coexistence of old and new human existence. The aim
of this chapter is to show the implications of the Christian perspective
on human beings for an understanding of the phenomena of interper-
sonal sociality. This will be done by interpreting Christian love and
mercy as basic forms of the relation to and behavior toward the fellow
human.
252 chapter four

29 Biblical Usage and Hermeneutical Function

of the Word Neighbor

In the Christian social ethos,11 love of neighbor traditionally takes up a

key role in guiding behavior toward fellow humans.12 It is understood
as a selfless readiness to help, which goes beyond social reciprocity13
and is characteristic of the Christian way of life. The central position of
loving ones neighbor in the Christian social ethos cannot be deduced
historically or exegetically.14 Nevertheless, the theological perspec-
tive explores the term love of neighbor by interpreting the biblical-
theological testimony about the neighbor. When we look at the way in
which biblical texts talk about the love of neighbor, the contemporary
discourse on love of neighbor must always be newly located and made
clear in terms of its points of reference.
The following examination of biblical passages featuring the theo-
logical discussion of the neighbor will mainly focus on texts from the

11
In the following passages, the word ethos is used synonymously with life orien-
tation. Thus, it does not necessarily refer to a decidedly ethical life orientation that, in
the words of Trutz Rendtorff, always represents a superlative form of human beings
natural experience of reality (see Rendtorff 1980, I, 11 [transl. M.S.]).
12
The fact that the Christian social ethos is by no means uniform but quite hetero-
geneous can be demonstrated by the Golden Rule (Mt 7:12; Lk 6:31), which will not
be discussed here. Unlike love of neighbor and mercy, the golden rule is a behavioral
guideline calling for strict reciprocity in the interaction with other human beings (So
in everything, do to others what you would have them do to you, for this sums up the
Law and the Prophets.). The focus on love of neighbor in this study is not a result of
ignoring this heterogeneity of the Christian social ethos and the multitude of its bibli-
cal and after-biblical orientations. Rather, it posits that love of neighbor is particularly
well-suited for examining the anthropological implications of Christian sociality.
13
The notion that love of neighbor retains a fundamentally reciprocal orientation
has most recently been suggested by Eva Harasta in a systematic-theological interpre-
tation of love of neighbor in Augustine and Karl Barth (see Harasta 2006). However,
Harasta does not differentiate between reciprocity and mutuality, as this study did in
the last chapter following Ricur.
14
Michael Ebersohn is one of the voices arguing against a homogenization of the
Christian social ethos under the concept of love of neighbor (see Ebersohn 1993, 2).
He points out at least four aspects of behavioral guidance that are characteristic for
the Christian ethos: love of neighbor, mercy, love of enemies, and the Golden Rule.
The differences between the four aspects can be demonstrated simply by looking at
their different levels of prominence in the traditions of the Old and the New Testa-
ment: while the commandment to love ones neighbor does not yet take up a central
position in the Old Testament, mercy and charity can be considered almost universal
values of Judaism. The commandment to love ones enemies can only be found in the
synoptic tradition of the New Testament while the Golden Rule is a guideline shared
by nearly all cultures.
 humanity and inhumanity in the love of neighbor 253

New Testament, because in its context of the message of Christs gos-

pel, the call to love ones neighbor is considered to be the most impor-
tant commandment of Jesus teachings.15 Overall, love of neighbor is
mentioned nine times in the New Testament (Mt 5:43; 19:19; 22:39;
Mk 12:31.33; Lk 10:27; Rom 13:9; Gal 5:14; Jas 2:8). However, its great
significance for the testimony of the New Testament is not just based
on the number of passages, but above all on the fact that in the New
Testament, loving ones neighbor is considered to be the central social
directive for the human life.16 Together with the commandment to love
God (Mk 12:2834 parr.), it is called the summary of all command-
ments. Paul even regards it as the fulfillment of the Torah, for whoever
loves his fellow humans has fulfilled the entire law (Rom 13:8).
The elements of the so-called twofold commandment of love can
already be found in Deut 6:5 and Lev 19:18 in the Old Testament.
Love your neighbor as yourself, it says in Lev 19:18, and Deut 6:5
urges to [l]ove the LORD your God with all your heart. But love
of neighbor is only mentioned once explicitly (Lev 19:18). However,
the command to show hospitality to the alien coming to Israel from
abroad (Lev 19:34; Deut 10:19)17 already anticipates the expansion of
loving ones neighbor into loving ones enemies in the New Testa-
ment (Mt 5:43). These passages from the Old Testament show that the
command to love ones neighbor as a whole is not an invention of the
Christian Gospel, but can be traced back to the tradition of the Old
Testament. However, the combination of loving God and loving ones
neighbor in the New Testament does not have a direct equivalent in
the Old Testament. In any case, it is also important for the Christian-
theological interpretation of love of neighbor that the commandment
to love ones neighbor is an element of Jewish tradition and continues
to be interpreted within that tradition to this day.18 The twofold com-
mandment of love, as a key commandment of the Judaism of his time,
is included in the teachings of Jesus; its historical genesis is therefore
to be understood in the horizon of a dispute about the understanding
and meaning of the Torah.19

15
See Mathys 21990, 160.
16
See ibid., 159.
17
See Meisinger 1996, 1012.
18
In recent times, this has again been pointed out in several publications written by
both Christian and Jewish scholars (see Moenikes 2007; Goodman 2008).
19
In his article on the exegesis of the Sermon on the Mount, Heinz-Wolfgang Kuhn
decided to emphasize the close association of loving ones neighbor with the Jewish
254 chapter four

29.1 The Biblical Contexts of Caring for the Other Human Being
The formulations and narrative contexts in which the neighbor is
mentioned in the New Testament vary considerably from case to case.20
This is also relevant for the theological interpretation of the under-
standing of Christian love of neighbor because the various formula-
tions of the commandment to love ones neighbor found in the New
Testament display a significant semantic breadth21 and thus only
receive their concrete meaning from the respective contexts of their
usage. An individual exegesis of the New Testament passages on lov-
ing ones neighbor cannot be undertaken in the context of this study.22
In the face of the various theologies and epistemological horizons of
the biblical texts, it is evident that it would be impossible to find a
unified perspective that could serve as a basis for the systematic devel-
opment of the topic in this study. However, it is useful to make some
systematic observations on the concept of loving ones neighbor in the
New Testament, which will show the extent to which the mention of
the neighbor differs in the individual theological testimonies.
In the parallel passages of the synoptic Gospels (Mt 22:39; Mk 12:31;
Lk 10:27),23 the commandment to love ones neighbor is directly linked
to the commandment to love God. In other passages, this link is indi-
rectly addressed by way of the exegetic tradition, but not explicitly
mentioned in the texts themselves (Mt 5:43; 19:19; Rom 13:9; Gal 5:14;
Jas 2:8). Exegetically, the combination of love of neighbor and love of
God can be traced back to a development in Hellenistic, not Rabbinical

understanding of the Torah (see Kuhn 1989). Kuhn attempts to understand the com-
mandment to love ones neighbor in the Gospel of Matthew in terms of its divergence
and convergence with the Torah.
20
See Ebersohn 1993, 115.
21
Ibid., 2 (transl. M.S.).
22
Hubert Meisinger makes an attempt to give a complete overview of the New
Testament research on the commandment of love in the first part of his study on
the significance of the Christian commandment of love for sociobiological altruism
research (see Meisinger 1996, 7185). A detailed examination of Old Testament text
passages on the commandment of love is provided by Mathys 21990, and a view on
the commandment to love ones neighbor in the Old Testament that integrates the
synoptic tradition of the New Testament can be found in Ebersohn 1993. The under-
standing of the commandment of love in the epistles of Paul is investigated by Sding
1995, and Augenstein 1993 examines the Gospel of John and the Johannine scriptures
with regard to their inherent understanding of the commandment of love. There have
thus been recent exegetic studies on all the relevant traditions of the commandment
of love in the New Testament, but they will not be discussed here at length.
23
See the detailed exegesis in Ebersohn 1993, 143247.
 humanity and inhumanity in the love of neighbor 255

Judaism.24 Theologically, this development implies that wherever love

of neighbor is mentioned, this act of loving ones neighbor only attains
its significance for guiding Christian life within the horizon of loving
God. Therefore, Christian theology always discusses the twofold com-
mandment of love, whenever the biblical testimony to neighbor-love
is reconstructed.
A common factor in all references to the neighbor in the New Tes-
tament is the fact that the word neighbor is never used as an abstract
category that merely schematizes a concrete reference to another
human being. Rather, in those passages in which the word neighbor
does not appear in the form of a commandment (love your neigh-
bor as yourself ), it always receives a narrative significance. Thus, the
neighbor is not only discussed in a generically formulated sentence,
but is also introduced in images and stories that describe a concrete
encounter between human beings. Important examples include the par-
able of the Good Samaritan (Lk 10:2537) and the account of the final
judgment (Mt 25:4243). In these passages, the respective encounters
with the neighbor are reported in a way that highlights their relevance
for the new humanity of Christians, which also promises a fundamen-
tal reorientation in the social coexistence with other human beings.
Accordingly, the texts portray the loving attention to the other, which
human beings as neighbors of God display not simply as a norm that
must be obeyed in the face of the others need and hardship.25 Instead,
they present it as a challenge of faith in which human beings rec-
tify their own relationship to God in and through their relationship
to their fellow man. This becomes particularly clear in the story about
the visit of the hungry man, the thirsty man, the stranger, the sick man
and the prisoner, within the account of the final judgment (Mt 25:43).

24
Drawing on the works of Christoph Burchard (see Burchard 1970, 5658), Klaus
Berger (see Berger 1972, 142176) and Michael Ebersohn (see Ebersohn 1993, 181),
Meisinger argues for a Hellenistic origin of the twofold commandment (see Meisinger
1996, 28). Likewise, the summation of the commandments that is intended in the
commandment of loving ones neighbor refers to a Hellenistic context, as Becker 1981,
15, points out, since in Rabbinic Judaism, all 613 commandments and prohibitions
had the same rank.
25
The emphasis of the social-diaconal character of loving ones neighbor as car-
ing for the weak and the poor obscures the fact that love of neighbor is about an
orientation of faith that completely redefines humanity and is not only manifested
in individual actions guided by a general norm. A similar thought can be found in
Fischer 2002, 97104, who rejects the reduction of the Christian social ethos to action
as a mistake of modern ethics.
256 chapter four

The people in need, introduced one after the other, are to experience
hospitality and loving care insofar as they are acknowledged as the
neighbors of Christ. According to Mt 25:40, the hospitable person, who
cares for the needy and the poor that come to him, already receives, in
the present, the eternal life newly promised in Jesus Christ.

29.2 Who is my Neighbor the Wrong Question?

In the gospel of Matthew, the stories about the encounter with the
hungry man, the thirsty man, the stranger, the sick man and the pris-
oner accompany the imperative to Love your neighbor as yourself
(Mt 22:39), in which the love of neighbor is phrased as a command-
ment or rule of social coexistence that determines the life of the new
human being in faith. In these instances, it often seems very clear and
obvious who this neighbor is: as an object of Christian care, the neigh-
bor is characterized by need and hardship, and all the Christian must
do is to react to him. Or as Wolfgang Trillhaas states quite matter-of-
factly in his Ethik: Whoever needs us is our neighbor.26
But how self-evident is caring for ones neighbor, really? And to
what degree must it first be demanded within a theological perspec-
tive, and thus in the horizon of the new humanity? This question is
linked to the question of the proportional balance between the love
of neighbor as a narrative element and as a normative rule, and also
to the question of how abstract or concrete the biblical neighbor is.27
The biblical question And who is my neighbor? in Lk 10:29 is not the
first to express skepticism about the obviousness with which Christian
social hermeneutics and the Christian diaconal service build on the
figure of the neighbor but skepticism begins in this question.
The scribe asks who is his neighbor shortly after he has learned that
the twofold commandment of love promises the possibility of attain-
ing eternal life through practical action: Do this and you will live (Lk
10:28), Jesus answers, making it clear that the normative version of the
commandment of love in the Torah represents only the first answer

26
Trillhaas 21965, 263 (transl. M.S.).
27
In this context, Jrgen Becker has talked about an interpretation of the com-
mandment that is both lawlessly flexible and at the same time concrete and that is
made possible by the form of the commandment of love of neighbor in the New
Testament (see Becker 1981, 9).
 humanity and inhumanity in the love of neighbor 257

to the scribes question.28 This turn from commandment to action is

typical for the Gospel of Luke, which emphasizes the close connec-
tion between hearing the Gospel and acting in accordance with. This
connection is also evident when we look at the pericopes Lk 19:2537
(action) and Lk 10:3842 (hearing), which Luke inserts as a unique
material [Sondergut] in his telling of the story of Jesus.29 Unlike other
textual witnesses, the Lukan narrative therefore once again indicates
the need for clarifying something that apparently had been clarified
elsewhere with the normative form of love of neighbor.
In Lk 10:2537, Jesus speaks about behavior that is commensurate
to the promise of the new life and that makes the commandment of
to love ones neighbor concrete: Do this and you will live. This for-
mulation of the Lukan Jesus makes it clear that the mercy that springs
from love for the neighbor is not only an attitude toward the other
human being, but also an action on his behalf, an action whose con-
sequences and practical implications must always be acknowledged
when considering the theological understanding of love of neighbor.
Only if we are aware of these consequences and implications does
the scribes question concerning a phenomenal discrimination of the
neighbor become interesting. If everybody can be a neighbor, there is
no need to distinguish between different neighbors. The scribe has a
different point of view.30 The question And who is my neighbor? indi-
cates that for him, the implementation of the command to love ones
neighbor has considerable room for interpretation. From his point of

28
Jesus confronts the scribe with the discrepancy between a correct answer and
real action (see Bormann 2001, 272 [transl. M.S.]).
29
See Mller 1984, 109111. Paul-Gerhard Mller interprets the emphasis on action
in the Gospel of Luke as a criticism of Israels cultic-liturgical worship service.
30
It cannot be deduced from the text whether the scribe means the question seri-
ously or whether he asks it with the intention of proving the impossibility of fulfilling
the commandment to love ones neighbor. An answer to this question can only be
attempted through the interpretation of its context (according to Mller 1984, 109).
Therefore, my reflections do not understand the scribes question instrumentally, as
if it aims at something else rhetorically, but evaluate it according to its direct and
immediate content. Another loose interpretation of the context is the notion that the
scribes question already concedes the difference between the active and the norma-
tive form of loving ones neighbor that Jesus demands (see Bormann 2001, 272). This
idea probably originates in the practice of applying the categories of law and Gospel
to the biblical text. Zeindler 1996, for example, prominently uses this categorization
and interprets the answer given by Jesus as a change in perspective from the hardship
of the other to the experience of a good deed performed by the other (see Zeindler
1996, 581).
258 chapter four

view, in order to unfold the demands real-life significance, the neigh-

bor must be defined in concrete terms. This means that, even if it is
clear that loving ones neighbor springs from a true understanding of
loving God, and that consequently, the true mode of love is to practice
mercy toward ones fellow humans, the practical application of the
figure of the neighbor in a concrete situation still contains consider-
able hermeneutical difficulties. The scribes question could therefore
be reformulated as How should I apply the term neighbor to real
life? This reformulation also indicates a fundamental hermeneutical
problem regarding the actualization of the biblical commandment to
love ones neighbor: in the light of the fact that God has promised his
proximity to all human beings in Jesus Christ and has thus made all of
them his neighbors, how is it possible to identify one neighbor?

29.3 Terminological Delineations

In the reflections on the biblical contexts of the neighbor, it has
become clear that, from a Christian perspective, the relationship of
a human being to his fellow humans is always preceded by the ques-
tion of his proper relationship to God. The previous section (28) has
briefly outlined the ways in which this relationship to God determines
the social relationship of Christians as a relation of proximity. But
what Gods presence as proximity means for human beings and how
the neighbor and his nearness should therefore be characterized has
yet to be shown. To this end, it is useful to distinguish various usages
of the term neighbor.
First of all, the relationship to the neighbor can be contrasted with
the terms brotherhood and sisterhood, which characterize the com-
munity among Christians.31 The relation to the neighbor differs from
this sense of community in that it does not emerge through commonly
shared beliefs or through participation in the Christian community.
Accordingly, loving and caring for the neighbor is not a matter of a
communal kind of proximity to other human beings constituted by
a common ground between them, such as belonging to an ethnicity,
a biological species or a shared religious denomination. Furthermore,
the relation to the neighbor must also be distinguished from belonging
to humankind,32 which denotes the universal unity and shared identity

31
Also see Becker 1981, 911.
32
See Trillhaas 21965, 262.
 humanity and inhumanity in the love of neighbor 259

of all human beings, as manifested in the attribution of sameness to

single individuals who typify humankind. In contrast, discussion of
the neighbor is geared toward a similar commonality as is the dis-
cussion of Gods creatures. Gods creatures are characterized by their
difference from the creator and not by some kind of common fea-
ture or identity. Theologically speaking, a human being is a creature
of God just like any other living being. But unlike discussion of Gods
creatures, reference to human beings as neighbors clearly refers to
fellow human beings and not fellow creatures, which thereby some-
what reduces the universal scope of reference to the creature, with-
out completely abandoning the framework of creation theology. But
the Christological horizon again refocuses the discussion of human
beings as creatures and images of God by talking about human beings
as new creatures. Human beings are those of Gods creatures who,
through Adam, have completely lost their likeness to God and who
have been promised to regain it in Christ.33 Therefore, the renewal of
human beings in Christ also implies a renewal of the relationship to
fellow humans, which, through Gods proximity to humanity, can be
actively lived as loving care for others.

29.4 Hermeneutical Analysis of the Word Neighbor

The word neighbor, which contains the same root as nigh, mean-
ing near, is an expression accommodating the spatial situatedness
of biblical usage: its literal translation means the one nearest (gr.
plesion). Thus, in the usage of the Bible, this word is not a predicate that
defines or classifies, but one that locates.34 In referring to the neighbor,
however, a human being does not locate himself. Instead, the point of
reference that guides the experiences of oneself and the world is the
human being standing nearest to them. What does this mean?
First of all, the idea of a nearest human being refers to the way in
which human beings encounter each other. They do so by perceiv-
ing each other within a sphere or range of social proximity and dis-
tance. This notion can be made clearer by drawing an analogy to the
spatial perception of a nearby object. Spatial perception is a system
of orientation that organizes itself through relations of somethings

33
See Books I,15 and II,16 of Jean Calvins Institutio Christianae Religionis
(Calvin 2001, 3863.221298).
34
See Dalferth 2002, 41.
260 chapter four

proximity to and distance from the observers standpoint.35 In spatial

perception, that which is near regulates and organizes the distance to
other things. Thus, the object of perception can only be perceived in
terms of its relative proximity and distance to the nearest object that
is accessible from the observers viewpoint. In this way, the nearest
object takes precedence above everything else because it enables the
observer to experience proximity and distance and thus to determine
what distance is. The perception of proximity thus always includes an
element of distance as well, and it always contains a concrete distinc-
tion between proximity and distance determined by the nearest object.
In hermeneutical terms, if we talk about something that is nearest,
we mean the object which provides the key to perceiving distance and
thus regulates how everything else fits together. This notion, that prox-
imity cannot be discussed without distance and that distance cannot
be discussed without the nearest object, can now be applied in contrast
to a hermeneutically truncated understanding of love of neighbor.
If we understand the word neighbor as analogous to the function
of the nearest object for spatial perception just described, then the
neighbor can be understood as a hermeneutical point of reference for
social orientation. This function also clarifies the neighbors signifi-
cance for the social perception of fellow humans. In social terms, the
neighbor is a fellow human whose function is to make us aware of the
range of social proximity and distance between human beings. Thus,
as long as the neighbor guides social perception, the view is opened up
to those dimensions of proximity that can arise out of interpersonal
encounters. This in turn has implications for the theological appro-
priation of the neighbor as the nearest fellow human being.

29.5 Proximity and Distance in the Love of Neighbor

In terms of the interpersonal encounter that makes one person the
neighbor of the other, Christian proximity to the fellow human is not
limited to social relations of proximity. Social relations are only about
a being-nearer-than-the-other among human beings. In the Christian
sense, the word neighbor also refers to a relationship to another per-
son that places this person in a relation of proximity and distance that
characterizes him in a certain way. But in the Christian relationship

35
The following thoughts on the range of proximity and distance are indebted to
the hermeneutical discussion of this problem in Figal 2006, 159164.
 humanity and inhumanity in the love of neighbor 261

of proximity, this does not mean that a human being is closer to the
fellow human because they are connected by a personal relationship
(friendship, family, partnership). Instead, the Christian relationship
of proximity to the fellow human is only characterized through its
reference to God. Thus, it can perceive interpersonal proximity and
distance in a way that would be impossible within the immanence of
social orientation: in the Christian relationship of proximity, a human
being can care for another even if this other human being has not (yet)
been defined by structures of social order, or if this definition does not
recognize the other as a fellow human.
From the perspective of theology, the mention of the neighbor and
his hermeneutical function for social orientation already includes the
entire range of interpersonal proximity and distance, which allows for
the perception of social differences in human coexistence in the first
place. Thus, the starting point of Christian social hermeneutics is not
the irreducibility of the interpersonal difference or asymmetry, but the
relative range of proximity and distance between human beings. The
function of the neighbor as a reference point for social orientation is
also reflected in biblical usage. Sometimes, the neighbor is described
as a geographical neighbor, friend, or countryman, at other times, he
is portrayed as an enemy, outcast or stranger. Thus, social proximity
and distance are equally present in the mention of the neighbor. It can
now be observed that the biblical linguistic usage of the New Testa-
ment radicalizes the discourse of the other human beings proximity
and distance. In the life of Jesus as portrayed in the New Testament,
it is more important to care for the poor stranger who stands outside
the social group than to care for fellow believers and countrymen. This
is not just a special situation that applies to Jesus living with his dis-
ciples, but is an indispensable part of Jesus and his discipless way of
life. Particularly in the Gospel of Mark, embracing societys outcasts,
the outsiders, therefore becomes the touchstone for a true orientation
toward the coming kingdom of God proclaimed by Jesus.
But what is the significance of this radicalization for a social-
hermeneutical understanding of the function of the neighbor? When
it comes to the neighbor at the margins of human society, social prox-
imity denotes a completely different form of belonging than it does
in social relationships which emerge from human community: here,
the word neighbor does not stand for any affiliation represented by
interpersonal distances in measurable space (people living next door,
roommates), corporeal co-presence (people who can be touched, who
262 chapter four

are within reach), history (ones people, nation, generation) or biol-

ogy (familial relationship, belonging to the same species). Instead, it
stands for a belonging that shows itself most strikingly where social
relationships do not exist and social differences are insurmountable.
This may seem paradoxical at first glance. But this form of proximity
is not in itself paradoxical; it is merely at odds with the conventional
understanding of social proximity. It stands in sharp contrast to a
way of looking at interpersonal relations in which proximity is pro-
duced through personal, social or societal patterns of identification. At
the same time, Christian proximity also offers an identification with
another human being, in that it points to that persons humanity as
a humanity that first came into world through Gods loving care for
human beings in Jesus Christ.
By adopting the vocabulary of the neighbor, the theological perspec-
tive therefore does not aim to develop a social hermeneutics that is
exclusively focused on other human beings who are personally close
(family, friends, partner etc.) or who are all equally distant (citizens,
anonymous fellow humans). But neither does the Christian discourse
of the neighbor imply that the structures of social proximity and dis-
tance that manifest difference between human beings are no longer
significant or relevant to the interpersonal encounter. In fact, these
structures continue to exist in their function as organizers of the social
space of experience, and the forms of interpersonal proximity and dis-
tance it contains. But in the changed experiential horizon of Christians
as new human beings, whose humanity has been newly unveiled in
the relationship to God, these social structures are used in a different
way. Because the reference to God interrupts the social regulations
of affiliation and reorganizes the interpersonal relation, the excess of
Christian proximity in the interpersonal encounter can be seen with
particular clarity wherever this encounter was previously disturbed or
broken. Through the loving care given to social outcasts, social conflict
between human beings, which is accompanied by the separation and
exclusion of the other from the human community, is most clearly
revealed. The social conflict is exposed in its own reversal, and can at
the same time be disrupted and revised by a new life reality through
the act of love for the neighbor.
Thus, the love of neighbor does not disrupt the social life reality
by eliminating or negating social separations, but by enabling human
beings to live in interpersonal proximity despite a social negation of
the other. At the same time, this reveals the extent to which the sepa-
 humanity and inhumanity in the love of neighbor 263

ration between human beings that can accompany social conflicts is

an inversion of the interpersonal relation. This inversion can only
be revised through a new understanding of human existence, a new
paradigm of social humanity. In this respect, love of neighbor is also
independent of social order patterns. In the relation to the neighbor,
who can be identified through the relation to God, neighbor-love is
free to abstain from disregarding the presence of another human being
in the interpersonal encounter, and to turn toward him and care for
him instead even when this other person is perceived as a violator of
norms and a troublemaker within the social structures of society.

30 Social Criticism Instead of Morality

The Christian social ethos always develops its orientation for the
behavior toward fellow humans by referring to God: human beings
are the neighbors of God and can thus also become the neighbors of
their fellow humans (Lk 10:36).36 These two perspectives are mediated
by the redefinition of all human ideas about humanity in the real-
ity of the human being Jesus Christ. The Christian social ethos can
be understood to be the comprehensive orientation of all behavior a
Christian displays toward another person an orientation that relates
to the Christians becoming a neighbor of this fellow human being.
As demonstrated above, the fact that the human being is called the
neighbor of God within the Christian social ethos, is rooted in the
experience of a new reality of himself, in which he learns to gain a
new understanding of his own humanity through Gods loving care for
and proximity to human beings. Consequently, he begins to distance
himself from his old self-experiences and self-understandings, which
enables him to revise them wherever they oppose his new humanity.
Therefore, a theological representation of anthropology must always
establish a tense contrast between the new understanding of human-
ity, and the perspectives on the human being that describe his self-
understanding in a non-Christian manner, which can now be

36
As Martin Luther established in his Treatise on Christian Liberty/Abhandlung
ber die christliche Freiheit (see Luther 2006, 174175), love of neighbor is not to
be understood primarily as an imperative, but as a statement of identity of the Chris-
tian human being: as long as he maintains his life orientation of loving God and the
neighbor, he is a neighbor of God (and of his fellow human beings).
264 chapter four

re-described in a Christian manner. This is important because these

non-Christian descriptions of the human being represent an indis-
pensable pre-understanding of his new self-understanding. It is all the
more important, then, for theological anthropology to describe the
tense juxtaposition of old and new existence in terms of social phe-
nomena. It does this primarily, not by developing a special Christian
morality, but by developing a socially critical anthropology. For if the
new existence were to be identified with the moral understanding of
the good and righteous life, its tense relationship to the old existence
would have to be abandoned, or at least subordinated to the normative
description of the good and righteous life. And it has just been shown
that this normative description of human life is most decidedly not the
purpose of Christian anthropology.
Christian anthropology works on the premise that human life is
ambiguous. By differentiating between an old and a new existence, it
enables us to deal with this ambiguity as a difference between old and
new existence, without having to overcome or abandon it for the sake
of a better, unequivocally good perspective of life. In this respect, the
theological perspective on humanity is also guided by the empirical
principle that human beings should be perceived as they are and not
just as they should be. From a Christian perspective, the ambiguity
of the phenomena of human life can be used to give this life a new
orientation. Accordingly, this ambiguity cannot be subordinated or
neglected, but needs to remain as the starting point for the theological
perspective on human beings. The following are the arguments in sup-
port of a theological approach to socially critical anthropology:
(i) The Christian social ethos cannot be represented and analyzed
from the outset as a moral guideline of human life, because this would
require an inappropriate reduction of religious life to one single
aspect. The Christian religion as a system of thought and life is forged
by social practices containing not only moral, but also political, legal
and economic constellations. Accordingly, narrowing down the theo-
logical perspective to the morals of Christian religion would unneces-
sarily reduce the multiplicity of the social constellations of religion.
Moreover, as shown above, the Christian religion develops not only
norms and rules for human coexistence, but also narrative and sym-
bolic patterns of orientation in order to regulate human coexistence
wherever it is not already organized by moral standards of the good
and righteous life. Christian religion thus not only contributes to the
normative orientation of human coexistence; it also provides guidance
where normative standards of orientation do not apply at all. Further-
 humanity and inhumanity in the love of neighbor 265

more, it points out the limits of human coexistence and transcends

the immanence of its structure of social order through a socially criti-
cal orientation. Therefore, it is crucial to Christian religion that the
occurrence of social conflicts is more than just a failure of orientation
toward the ethically good and right.
(ii) If the theological representation were to focus only on what is
ethically good and right, one would have to question the added value
of the theological reference to God in the horizon of the question of
humanity and sociality. Should we understand the reference to God
as a reference to an entity that is redundant for the orientation toward
the good, i.e., that merely provides a factual affirmation and repeti-
tion of this orientation? If so, the reference to God in a theological
description of human social life would be close to superfluous or could
easily be replaced by a moral standard of good or righteous living.
If this is not the case, it must be demonstrated how the reference to
God can show a phenomenal excess in the theological perspective,
even in a non-theological description of human sociality.
This study suggests that the phenomenal excess of the theological
reference to God can be found in the added value of a perspective
on human sociality that transcends the immanence of social patterns
of orientation without abandoning them. The following passages will
therefore present a hermeneutical and phenomenological attempt
to reveal the socially critical potential of the Christian ethos, and to
profile the third perspective presented in this study as a critical per-
spective of evaluation for human sociality. The presentation of the
empirical and philosophical perspectives in the previous chapters has
demonstrated how the relationship of humanity and sociality must be
conceived of in the conflict between egoism and altruism, between
antagonistic confrontation and responsibility for the other. Now the
intention of the theological perspective is to show the immanent limits
of this discourse by referring to a third entity, rather than by present-
ing a third material approach.
(iii) The love of neighbor in its radical form consists in caring for
the social outcasts of society, the outsiders and rejects of social life.
This fact has encouraged theological anthropology to distinguish the
understanding of love of neighbor from a social hermeneutics that is
merely redundant within the general structures of philanthropy.37 The
Christian social ethos contains its own hermeneutics of humanitys

37
See Trillhaas 21965, 262.
266 chapter four

social form of life that cannot be equated with other social guidance
systems, but it can offer a guideline for the patterns of interpersonal
relations. Within this perspective, Christian love of neighbor is char-
acterized by a particular care for the weak, sick, poor and needy, who
stood completely outside of society in Jesus time. At the time, the
guideline of love of neighbor brought care and attention to a very
specific group of people, who were forced to live without any kind of
social proximity to their fellow humans, while today such people are
simply considered to be socially disadvantaged. Further, in order to
show the uniqueness of the love of neighbor, it is also useful to draw
attention to the politically radical program in Jesus teachings (in addi-
tion to the socially radical program) that is expressed in his appeal to
love ones enemies (Mt 5:4345). Here, too, the love of neighbor turns
out to be a form of proximity to those people whose basic rights are
protected today (prisoners of war, terrorists), but whose existence in
Jesus time was entirely outside of social perception, in the sense that
community with these people was impossible.
At this point, some may take issue with the understanding of the
love of neighbor presented here. It could be argued that the theological
understanding of human social life should decidedly not refer only to
a special form of the social relationship. Against this possible objec-
tion, I would like to refer to an argument presented in section 29.4,
which states that in principle, discussion of the neighbor is not based
on a special relationship that differs from the general basic structure of
social proximity among human beings. Instead, the love of neighbor
reinterprets this basic structure by identifying the fellow human as the
neighbor of God. As a neighbor of God, the neighbor is a person who,
on the one hand, has experienced Gods proximity in Jesus Christ, and
who, on the other hand, can become the nearest person for his fellow
human beings due to Gods proximity. If we transfer this insight to
the social radicalization of the love of neighbor in the teachings and
the life of Jesus, we can see that Jesus assumed the social position
of the neighbor by making himself accessible to the stranger, the alien,
to the visibly outcast and socially invisible human beings. Defying the
patterns of social order of his time, he put himself in the neighbors
position and enabled these outcast human beings to partake of a life
with social proximity (see e.g. Mk 2:1317 parr; Mk 10:4652 parr).
 humanity and inhumanity in the love of neighbor 267

31 Meisinger: Anthropological Awareness of Difference

On the basis of these reflections on the hermeneutical function of the

neighbor, we can now proceed to discuss other structural features that
characterize the understanding of the fellow human in the context
of love of neighbor. Here, it is useful to refer to a study which has
already attempted to find structural anthropological features of love of
neighbor. In his book Liebesgebot und Altruismusforschung (1996),
Hubert Meisinger pursues a systematic inquiry into the commandment
of love by developing three key anthropological figures for each of
the various discussions of the commandment in the New Testament. He
calls them the awareness of extension [Erweiterungsbewusstsein], the
awareness of being overburdened [berforderungsbewusstsein], and
the awareness of the threshold [Schwellenbewusstsein] in the love of
neighbor.38 In its systematic focus of the exegetical debate, Meisingers
study attempts to bridge the gap with the social-scientific discussion
about the possibility of human altruism. The results of his study will
be taken up here for further analysis of the hermeneutical structure
of love of neighbor. This implies that they are to be mediated by the
understanding of the figure of the neighbor that has been established
in the framework of this study.
Meisinger analyzes the anthropology of love of neighbor by examin-
ing the communicative structure of the commandment of love in the
New Testament as a structure that places the human being at odds
with himself. According to Meisinger, the commandment of love not
only pertains to the neighbor as the intended recipient of love, but
also to a person whose basic situation does not (yet) correspond to the
commandment of love directed at him, because he cannot fulfill this
commandment all by himself. Within this perspective, a gap opens up
between the orientation of human beings to the commandment of love
and the actual fulfillment of this commandment, a gap that points to
the twofold nature of the commandment as both encouragement and
command. Meisinger explains this difference in anthropological terms
as an awareness of expansion, of being overburdened and of crossing
a threshold. This means that he mainly focuses on those anthropo-
logical aspects of human consciousness associated with a normative
accentuation of the commandment of loving ones neighbor. The

38
See Meisinger 1996, 45.27185, here 183185.
268 chapter four

following overview attempts to establish a hermeneutical classification

of the aspects of anthropological overburdening identified by Meisinger:
(i) According to Meisinger, the awareness of expansion denotes
the question of how to determine the circle of recipients of neigh-
borly love beyond the nearest of neighbors.39 Here, it becomes clear
that Meisinger uses the term neighbor not in the sense of a herme-
neutical point of reference, as described above, but in a literal sense.
Accordingly, he asks the question about the reach of love of neighbor
as if it were about overcoming the nearest person in favor of the more
remote ones. However, if it is as has been demonstrated already
the basic hermeneutical function of the nearest object to refer to the
remote distance, the question about the range of love of neighbor can
be approached in a different way. We can speak of an expansion of its
range insofar as the specific constellations of proximity and distance
which determine a social space are either suspended, or transcended
toward a remote and yet undiscovered distance. But in that case, nei-
ther suspension nor transcendence can be described as ignoring the
neighbor or as overcoming the neighbors proximity, but only as rede-
fining his proximity in a way that allows us to perceive the relational
system of the social experiential space as a whole from a new point of
view. How this change in perception can occur through the adoption
of a description of the social life reality of human beings which revises
previous conceptions, has already been shown.
(ii) Meisinger uses the awareness of being overburdened by loving
ones neighbor to represent the question of whether in the command-
ment to love ones neighbor, human beings reach the limits of their
possibilities and thus may also fail at fulfilling it. However, Meisinger
does not explicitly present the possibility of failure as a consequence of
being overburdened. In his exegesis, he locates the awareness of being
overburdened in the Gospel of Matthew, where it is accompanied by
the possibility of forgiveness, which makes the ultimate failure to fulfill
the commandment to love ones neighbor an impossibility.40 We can
now transfer the notion of being overburdened by the task of loving
ones neighbor into the context of social-hermeneutical reflections by
asking what happens when the hermeneutical guidance represented by
the commandment of loving ones neighbor is misunderstood or not

39
Ibid., 4 (transl. M.S.).
40
See ibid., 183.
 humanity and inhumanity in the love of neighbor 269

understood at all. The neighbors significance cannot be understood

if the commandment to love ones neighbor is not read within the
horizon of the commandment to love God; i.e., when its reference to
God is ignored. In that case, human beings cannot be aware of how
this possibility for love is connected to their life reality as new human
beings, and how they can live up to it. Thus, an overburdening can
only occur where the theological horizon of the commandment to love
ones neighbor is not taken into account.
(iii) According to Meisinger, the awareness of the threshold of
love of neighbor denotes the question of whether the site of love of
neighbor is the site of change toward a new understanding of human-
ity. Hermeneutically speaking, such an awareness of change can be
described as the transformation of the old experiential horizon into a
new one. This transformation occurs in neighborly love because the
fellow human is identified with reference to God. If the neighbor, as
the social point of reference, is redefined in reference to God, i.e., by
God showing his love in making himself present in Jesus Christ as a
neighbor of human beings, a new experience becomes possible. It is an
experience that shows people possibilities of their self-understanding
that they would have been unable to recognize by themselves. And
yet, this new experience in (earthly) human existence always remains
embedded in those experiential patterns of social proximity and dis-
tance that are already familiar to them, and by whose transformation
and revision they move toward the threshold of the new humanity.
These characteristic anthropological dynamics of understanding
neighborly love do not, however, yet reflect the fact that the relation-
ship to the neighbor is a relationship that finds the archetype of its
new humanity in Jesus Christ. Meisingers exegetical reflections are
guided by the basic situation of how the commandment of love is
communicated in the texts of the New Testament. He reflects on the
statements about the commandment of love in these texts in terms of
their consequences for human consciousness and/or understanding.
A different perspective emerges if we describe, not the communication
of the commandment of love as a demand made on human beings
from an external source; but the hermeneutical structure of its per-
formance in light of the new humanity. A description of the perfor-
mance of love of neighbor in the horizon of the new humanity must
adopt the connection between loving God and loving ones neighbor
as its organizing principle, and place it at the center of its descrip-
tion. Based on the connection between loving God and loving ones
270 chapter four

neighbor, Gods love does not approach human beings primarily as a

demand that may overburden them, but as an encouragement that they
can live up to through the comprehension of new humanity in Jesus
Christ, who was a human being through and through. The description
of Gods love that has already been manifested in a human being in
Jesus Christ can then be used as a criterion for the (re-)description of
interpersonal encounters. This definition of love that God has shown
to human beings in Jesus Christ determines the character of loving
care and merciful actions toward the neighbor.
With his focus on the communication situation of the command-
ment of love in the New Testament, Meisinger excludes the inner
unity of loving God and loving ones neighbor from his approach. For
description of the performance of love of neighbor that is attempted
here, this methodological exclusion must be reversed. This does not
mean that this study aims to refute or push aside Meisingers cor-
rectly identified problem of love of neighbor as an experience of differ-
ence, particularly in the awareness of being overburdened. Indeed, a
description of love of neighbor that merely idealizes interpersonal love
by imbuing it with the experience of God in Jesus Christ could contain
great risk in an anthropological sense. However, as it is necessary to
distinguish between false overburdening and beneficial challenge, the
following thoughts aim to emphasize the act of crossing the thresh-
old that is embodied in loving ones neighbor as a new life reality of
human beings which is testified in faith.
Accordingly, the question that was asked in 29.2 must be trans-
formed into a new question at this point. As the Lukan Jesus makes
clear in his story of the Good Samaritan in Lk 10:3035, the idea is
not to identify the one neighbor, among all fellow humans, that Christ
has put next to me, but to become the nearest human being to every
fellow human through ones actions as expressed in Lk 10:36. Thus,
love of neighbor signifies a form of interpersonal relation that is not
about the identification of its protagonists or the consequences of their
actions, but about becoming the new human being, which precedes this
relationship and is only expressed in it. Thus, the question of how to
identify the neighbor in the sense of a phenomenal discrimination of
the object of the loving relation is misguided, because the neighbor is
defined not by his exalted position or his difference from other human
beings, but by his potential to realize a new experience of humanity
with reference to God. Thus, love for the neighbor always remains
different from all other interpersonal relations. The assessment of
 humanity and inhumanity in the love of neighbor 271

the relation between Christian love and interpersonal relations now

demands a more precise description of its phenomenal significance in
human life reality, which it claims in the reference to the neighbor as
another concrete human being.

32 Kierkegaard: Humanity as the Phenomenal

Excess of Gods Love

Sren Kierkegaards study of Christian love provides an interpretation

of love of neighbor that is particularly suited for combination with
social-hermeneutical reflections, because it pays special attention to
the socially critical implications of the new humanity for a Christians
concrete relationship of love toward the fellow human. Therefore, it is
useful to examine his interpretation of love of neighbor in terms of its
similarities and differences to the reflections of the previous section.
In his book Works of Love41 (1847), Kierkegaard analyzes neigh-
borly love in its basic form as a dyadic relationship of love. Here, the
lovers do not interact primarily with each other, but each of them first
interacts with God in order to turn to the other from their respective
relationship with God.42 The relationship of love between neighbors
therefore becomes dynamic: the lovers identify themselves first as
neighbors of God in their relationship to God and then implement,
in their relationship to each other, the determinedness that their exis-
tence has received in their relationship to God. Thus, love of neighbor
is a three-figure relationship. It is a relationship of the human self to
God, which is made concrete in the interpersonal relation of love for
another self, but without ever coming into view out of this relation-
ship itself.

32.1 Kierkegaards Method of Analysis

The description of the basic structure of love of neighbor chosen by
Kierkegaard develops its understanding of love based exclusively on
the relationship to God. The advantage of this clear reference to God
is that it prevents the description of neighborly love from becoming

41
Kierkegaard 1962. For a commentary see Ferreira 2001 and the contributions in
Kierkegaard Studies (1998).
42
See Kierkegaard 1962, 117.
272 chapter four

redundant to non-theological understandings of interpersonal love.

It characterizes the Christian relationship of love from the outset as
a reality of faith that can only be described within the horizon of
theological reference to the authority of God. Thus, love of neigh-
bor is not a secondary definition of interpersonal relations of love,
but possesses its own determinedness that is exhibited phenomenally
in the experiential space of interpersonal relations. This clarity and
originality is the strong point of Kierkegaards analysis of the love of
neighbor. It is an excellent example for the argument postulated in this
study, namely, that the Christian perspective on human beings, with
its tension between old and new existence, represents an autonomous
anthropological perspective that does not build on the key differences
of non-theological anthropologies.
However, Kierkegaards radical break from the basic forms of
human love may have been an (apparent) disadvantage for his analy-
sis of love of neighbor with regard to its relevance for social herme-
neutics and ethics in general. At first glance, it seems as if the love he
has in mind is so transcendental and unwordly that it is impossible to
relate it to the earthly, mundane circumstances of love. Kierkegaard
himself states that it appears as if this love for ones neighbor did not
fit properly within the relationships of earthly existence.43 This and
other statements44 have earned him the accusation that his description
of neighborly love is unsocial and useless for theological ethics.45 Of
course, in the context of this study, which has at no point abstracted
the possibility of an unsocial human nature, such an accusation gains
a wholly different meaning than Kierkegaards critics intended. From
the beginning, this studys premise has been that the egoism of the
individual, his inability to have a social relationship, and the antago-
nistic confrontation as a basic pattern of social interaction, must be
included in the description of sociality. Thus, in the framework of an
interpretation of the socially critical anthropology of Christian love of
neighbor, as has been attempted here, the accusation that Kierkegaard
gives an unsocial description of love does not speak against, but very

43
Ibid., 90. Also see Ferreira 2001, 4398.
44
See e.g. the discussion of the equality of eternity in love of neighbor (Kierke-
gaard 1962, 90). However, Kierkegaard emphasizes at the same time that Christian
love can never take away the characteristics of earthly love (see ibid., 59).
45
See Adorno 2003; Barth 2009, 117228; Lgstrup 1968; 1997. For an opposing
opinion: Ferreira 2001.
 humanity and inhumanity in the love of neighbor 273

clearly for his concept. However, it is yet to be demonstrated in which

sense this applies.
For this reason, the following passages will attempt to understand
Kierkegaards description of love as a theological perspective in the
above-stated sense namely, as a theological perspective on the inter-
personal relation that is not redundant to the moral, political and legal
descriptions of this relationship, but that develops an autonomous reli-
gious view on social life reality that is guided by the difference between
social humanity and inhumanity. Such an attempt must also include a
critical evaluation of those theological interpretations of Kierkegaard
that are only interested in the moral significance of his description
of love of neighbor. Any attempt to interpret Kierkegaards analyses
of Christian love as if they could simply be understood as a proj-
ect of agapeist ethics, or an ethics of alterity in the vein of Levinas,
fails to comprehend the theological, phenomenological and social-
anthropological significance of Kierkegaards description, which goes
far beyond a positive description of human sociality.46 In his analyses
of Christian love, Kierkegaard observes human sociality from the per-
spective of its phenomenal excess: Gods love, which at the same time
signifies the possibility of social humanity for human beings. How-
ever, in Kierkegaards analyses, human beings are shown not only the
possibility of social humanity, but also its permanent reversal in the
interpersonal relations they live in.

32.2 The Negative Definition of the Neighbor

For Kierkegaard, the figure of the neighbor is a figure that can only
be meaningfully discussed in the context of a Christian description
of love. He begins his analysis of the neighbor with God in order
to profile the neighbors position within the relationality of the
interpersonal relation, thereby preventing the presence of the other
person from being (completely) absorbed into this relationality. By
emphasizing that in principle, the recipient of neighborly love can be
everyone,47 Kierkegaard makes clear that this possibility for all human
beings to be neighbors of God also signifies equality (before God).48
Thus, in a relationship of Christian love, the neighbor is at the same

46
See Ferreira 2001 and Welz 2008.
47
See Kierkegaard 1962, 63.
48
See ibid., 6465.
274 chapter four

time both unique and equal to all fellow human beings, because the
human being and the fellow human being as neighbors of God are
represented within their relation of love only through the reference
to God. This means that their concrete social identity is not included
in this relationship. According to Kierkegaard, the love of neighbor
can be equally understood in the sense of a subjective genitive and an
objective genitive, because both the lover and the beloved can only
be distinguished by the love of God occurring between them. Apart
from that, their sameness is emphasized. Thus, Kierkegaards descrip-
tion of the love of neighbor places particular importance on its non-
preferential character.49 The biggest risk that lies in preferring one over
the other and in loving one person more than all others is the failure to
recognize this other person as the neighbor of God.50 Thus, Christian
love replaces the diversity of interpersonal relations in which human
beings interact and behave toward each other, with a relation among
equals that, unlike egalitarian relationships forged by politics, law or
morals, is based on every individuals equal kinship with and rela-
tionship to God.51 In the love of neighbor, no human being is more
to the other than he is in his function of referring to the relationship
to God. Thus, the neighbor negatively signifies what the other human
being can never be in the relationship of preference. This correlates
with another observation that can be made about Kierkegaards analy-
sis of neighborly love.
The central thesis of Kierkegaards analysis is the thesis of the invis-
ibility of (Gods) love in the lovers relationship. Drawing on the bibli-
cal parable of recognizing the tree by its fruits (Lk 6:44), Kierkegaard
argues52 that the essential aspect of Christian love of neighbor lies in
its function of referring to the invisible third in the relationship of
the lovers.53 This invisible third is its reference to God. Kierkegaards
description of the relationship of love as a relationship to God, also
defines the limits for a description of neighborly love as a love among
human beings. The first limit is that in Christian love, unlike in inter-
personal love, it is impossible to discover either the consequences or

49
See ibid., 36.5866.
50
See Ferreira 2001, 5052.
51
Kierkegaard 1962, 80.
52
See ibid., 2333.
53
Kierkegaard calls this loves hidden life (ibid., 23).
 humanity and inhumanity in the love of neighbor 275

the motives of love.54 Thus, according to Kierkegaard, the structure

of love of neighbor cannot be explained by describing the abilities of
human beings or the structure of their will. This fundamentally sets
neighborly love apart from all forms of interpersonal love, and this is
also what Kierkegaard means when he says that its presence among
human beings remains invisible as long as its whence (God) is not
reflected on, and as long as Gods love is not made the criterion for
describing interpersonal love.55 Accordingly, Christian love and care
for the neighbor is not characterized by a particular motivation (affec-
tive or rational) or particular motives (inclination, intention, purpose).
Instead, its nature is precisely that it does not have any motivation or
motive for acting that could be named or perceived by human judg-
ment. The impossibility of describing it in terms of a human action or
mode of behavior is the very reason for its significance in the horizon
of the reference to God.
The second limit that Kierkegaard defines in his description of love
of neighbor is the impossibility of describing it as any kind of human
self-love.56 The love of human beings for themselves can be extended
to other people who are related to or associated with them, but it can
never apply to all human beings equally. Therefore, interpersonal love
that emerges from self-love is not a social relationship that can be
generalized. It can recognize another self, a variant of ones own, in
the other human being, but not a neighbor of God, whom Kierkegaard
calls the other-you.57 Thus, his description of love of neighbor aims
at a new understanding of interpersonal love in the horizon of the
Christian understanding of love. It examines an interpersonal relation
that is established between human beings through the reference to
God, and that does not put the mutual references between the human
participants into effect in the relationship.
In order to further distinguish the nature of Christian love from inter-
personal love, Kierkegaard additionally describes three characteristic

54
Kierkegaards discussion of love being recognized by its fruits (ibid.) is to be
understood in the sense of a question about the essential (characteristic) of Christian
love, and not in a consequentialist sense (see Ferreira 2001, 2426).
55
Kierkegaard expresses this by writing that like is known only by like (Kierkeg-
aard 1962, 33). In interpersonal encounters, love of neighbor can only be recognized
by knowing about love of God.
56
See ibid., 3440.
57
Ibid., 66.
276 chapter four

modalities of love. They refer to the temporal, the receptive and the
intentional aspect of love:58
(i) Temporal: constancy and mutability of love in time;
(ii) Receptive: equality and difference of the objects of love;
(iii) Intentional: the lovers obligations and needs.
In his analyses of Christian love, Kierkegaard shows that the pres-
ence of this love imbues every relationship between human beings
with a meaning that can be expressed by contrasting Christian love
with interpersonal love. First of all, Christian love is constant because
it is not only permanent, but also remains true to itself throughout
the changes of time.59 Second, in Christian love, all human beings can
be objects of love equally, while interpersonal love sees the difference
between people that suggests the preference of one particular human
being.60 Third, interpersonal love is fuelled by the lovers need to be
loved in return by the beloved. In contrast, Christian love is indepen-
dent of this self-centered need, which makes it the only reliable form
of love.61
These three characteristics of Christian love clearly show that
Kierkegaards description of love is motivated by the idea of devel-
oping Christian love in opposition to its counterpart: the deficien-
cies of interpersonal love. In this juxtaposition, the counterpoints to
his description of Christian love are the despair about the beloveds
infidelity or loves slow transformation into hate, jealousy and hab-
it.62 His reflections are driven by the insight that by letting themselves
be guided by Gods love, human beings can love their fellow humans
without falling victim to the deficiencies of interpersonal love. Accord-
ing to Kierkegaard, the object of love must therefore be necessarily
contingent, i.e., it is crucial that our love can refer to any fellow human
we encounter.63 If the object of love is contingent, it follows that
(i) every human being is included in the Christian relationship of love
without any evaluating distinction (lovable unlovable); and that
(ii) the object of love can only be defined negatively because it cannot

58
These three distinctions refer to the second chapter of Works of Love (see
ibid., 3498).
59
Kierkegaard describes this as loves changing and being changed through time
(see ibid., 4652).
60
See ibid., 5866.
61
See ibid., 4057.
62
See ibid., 4952.
63
See ibid., 58.
 humanity and inhumanity in the love of neighbor 277

be described by any particularity that distinguishes one human being

from another.
This thesis that the neighbor is contingent in the relationship of love
represents the culmination of Kierkegaards argument.64 However, the
contingency of the neighbor and its negative determination in inter-
personal relations is not equivalent to the neighbors abstractness or
invisibility. Instead, Kierkegaard develops the contrast between the vis-
ible other and the invisible neighbor in order to show that the neigh-
bor can be found in every human being.65 The neighbor is abstract in
the sense that he cannot be recognized in the fellow human being,
i.e., in his idiosyncratic particularity;66 for the object of neighborly
love is only defined by the reference to God, which remains invisi-
ble.67 Therefore, Kierkegaard can say that loving ones neighbor should
make human beings blind to the visible differences between human
beings.68 This means that the lover does not look at the object of love
in a way that is visible to the human eye, namely, by making a distinc-
tion between lovable and unlovable. Instead, his perception is deter-
mined by the objects concreteness in Jesus actions toward his fellow
humans.69 Thus, the real-life concreteness of the other person is not
negated, and the true object of love, the neighbor, is not an entity that
is located outside of the fellow human. Instead, the fellow human is
perceived in his concrete form as another person, and at the same time
recognized in his function as a neighbor of God through the reference
to Jesus Christ. This tension is the only way to provide a phenom-
enological description of the excess of Gods love in the interpersonal
relation. The abstractness of the neighbor of God thus only signifies
his absence in the world. At the same time, it positively defines that
which is impossible to attain in interpersonal love: a love that is not
determined by the concreteness of the other person.
Based on Kierkegaards reflections, it is possible to state: Gods love
for human beings, revealed to them in Jesus Christ is a characteris-
tic of that life reality which enables a human being to do what he
cannot do through his own strength: to show his fellow humans a

64
See ibid., 6770.7779.
65
See Ferreira 2001, 4352.
66
See Kierkegaard 1962, 73.
67
See ibid., 70.
68
See ibid., 79.
69
As an example, Kierkegaard refers to the Lucan story (Lk 14:714) of Jesus invi-
tation of outcasts (the poor, blind and lame) to the banquet (see ibid., 9091).
278 chapter four

kind of love that is not absorbed in self-reference. One problematic

point of Kierkegaards theological interpretation is that it defines the
humanity of interpersonal love through Gods love and at the same
time emphasizes its transcendence of time. This exaggeration of the
perfection of Christian love puts his interpretation at risk of squander-
ing the anthropological awareness of difference that is characteristic
of theological anthropology. This risk can be found in Kierkegaards
reflections wherever he continuously points out that Christian love
is solely driven by the very perfection of the eternal.70 In addition,
Kierkegaards assertion that Christian love only manifests itself in eter-
nity, in the transcendence of temporal life, is associated with a radical
critique of the finiteness and imperfection of interpersonal love. He
expresses this critique by reducing the discussion of the neighbor to
the discussion of the only object71 of love, in which the relationship
of love can apparently be carried out while completely detached from
the diverse human range of loving and being loved. But such a separa-
tion of love of neighbor from the circumstances of human beings in
the social world is not compatible with the biblical sources of the com-
mandment to love ones neighbor.72 In Lk 10:2537, for example, the
story of the Good Samaritan, the (economic) order of everyday life is
by no means suspended or completely invalidated by the Samaritans
unusual act of helping: in the inn, the wounded man only receives help
because the Samaritan pays the innkeeper for it. Thus, Kierkegaard
seems to be interested in a description of love of neighbor that goes
beyond the biblical testimony and overcomes its narrative indifference
to the real-life circumstances of love.
Therefore, in order to forestall the objection that Kierkegaards
description of neighborly love removes it too far from the basic social
conditions of human life, we have to be aware that he defines neigh-
borly love not only through Gods love, but also through the humanity
of Gods love embodied in Jesus Christ.73 Thus, the love of neighbor is

70
Ibid., 76.
71
Ibid., 67. Also see the discussion of God as the only loved object in Christian
love (ibid., 124).
72
On this story, see Bormann 2001, 272: The detailed description of the correct
and binding agreement between innkeeper and helper [Samaritan] shows that singular
situation and charismatic behavior are not violently opposed to the orders of everyday
life (Lk 10:35). (transl. M.S.).
73
See Kierkegaards statements on the kinship of human beings to God in Jesus
Christ (Kierkegard 1962, 8081) and the numerous parables that he uses for his analy-
ses in Works of Love.
 humanity and inhumanity in the love of neighbor 279

that phenomenon which can connect the perspectives of the eternity

and temporality of human existence; this insight also guides Kierke-
gaards nuanced description of interpersonal life reality from a Chris-
tian perspective.74

32.3 Self-Love and the Deficiencies of Interpersonal Love

If we understand Kierkegaards description of the love of neighbor not
as a description of an exalted ideal of love that is completely detached
from life on earth, but as a description of the deficiencies of inter-
personal love in light of Christian love, then the most important and
central point is his critique of the self-love that dominates interper-
sonal love relationships. In the following passages, this critique will be
discussed in the context of the biblical testimony of love of neighbor.
The biblical demand to love your neighbor as yourself indicates
that the language of the Bible by no means discusses love for the
neighbor without taking reference to the human self and to self-love.
Instead, the intensity of love for the neighbor is defined by comparing
it with self-love: the neighbor should be as near to the human being as
he is to himself. But at the same time, he should not to be any nearer
or be loved more dearly than a human being can love himself. In that
respect, the biblical formulation of the command to love ones neigh-
bor also contains a limitation of the overburdening of human beings.
Moreover, the phrasing indicates that the neighbor is not loved out of
an expectation of reciprocity. Otherwise, as Sigmund Freud correctly
remarked, the demand would be to love thy neighbor as thy neighbor
loves thee.75
Moreover, it is important to note that, originally, the biblical com-
mandment of love was not reduced to a social ethos describing patterns
of private interpersonal relations. In his monograph on the command-
ment of love in the Old Testament, Hans-Peter Mathys points out
that in both the Old Testament and the Old Orient, the word love
[ahava] was not only used for an intimate relationship between close
relatives and friends, but very often also applied in public and political
contexts.76 Here, it had the meaning of making a common cause or
signing a contract. The term could apply to persons but also to states

74
See ibid., 78.
75
Freud 2002, 47.
76
See Mathys 21990, 2425.
280 chapter four

or other impersonal entities. Thus, according to Mathys, the phrase as

yourself [kamoka] following the demand for love of neighbor does
not refer to the neighbors similarity, but provides a point of reference
for the strength and intensity of caring for him: the neighbor is to be
treated in the very same way in which human beings naturally treat
themselves.77
In contrast to the wide range of semantic meaning for the word
love in the Old Testament, the New Testament, especially the Gospel
texts, concentrates on the personal care for a fellow human who is in
need. Here, the care for lepers and the sick in the life of Jesus serves
as an example that sets new standards. The New Testament not only
narrows down the context of the discussion of love of neighbor, from
the wide field of political and socio-economical relationship constel-
lations, to the area of interpersonal proximity and personal contacts
between human beings, but also dispenses with the association with
contracts, laws and agreements that had characterized love as a politi-
cal term in the Old Orient.
In the context of this semantic change, there arises a specifically
modern question that nevertheless is also connected to the texts of
the New Testament: How does the human self relate to itself and to
others in love of neighbor? The phrase as yourself indicates that the
demand of loving ones neighbor does not simply stand in opposition
to self-love. In the biblical directive, neighbor-love and self-love are
not presented as mutually exclusive forms of love. Caring for ones
neighbor thus does not require the elimination or repression of ones
self-love; indeed, the relation to oneself is presented as the archetype
of interpersonal love. The neighbor shall be as close to the person as
the person is to itself.
Kierkegaards analysis of love of neighbor must be credited with
providing a more nuanced account of the relationship between love of
neighbor and love of self. For Kierkegaard, between the as yourself
and the love your neighbor lies the difference between the tempo-
rary and the eternal, between the old and new existence of human
beings, and it is precisely the contrast between self-love and neighbor-
love at the site of caring for the other human being that Kierkegaard
wants to emphasize in his analyses.78 Of course, Kierkegaard does not

77
See ibid., 19.
78
See ibid., 34.
 humanity and inhumanity in the love of neighbor 281

deny that human self-love exists and is justified.79 But he makes it clear
beyond all doubt that caring for another human being as a neighbor
of God cannot be a self-interested act of love, in which a human being
would be incapable of loving the other and himself in the right way.80
But according to Kierkegaard, to love oneself and also the other in
the right way, i.e., in the sense of neighborly love, means to renounce
and deny oneself in ones love for the other. In order to clarify what
this means, Kierkegaards description examines all those phenomena
of caring for the other that seem to contain the beginnings of an indif-
ference between self-interested love and true love of self and neigh-
bor. He demonstrates that selfish love, in caring for the other, can
take on such a subtle form that it appears to be identical with love of
neighbor and is actually mistaken for it. But in fact, it is secretly self-
love81 that remains undiscovered from an external view in this act of
caring for the other.
In order to demonstrate the subtleness of self-interested love,
Kierkegaard distinguishes between self-sacrifice, which only appears
to be an act of sacrificing oneself for the other, and self-renunciation,
which is characteristic of love of neighbor and in which self-love is
truly overcome.82 In his opinion, love of neighbor cannot be described
as sacrificing or giving up ones own self for the sake of another self,
because it is precisely the passion at the heart of such a sacrifice that,
according to Kierkegaard, represents a particularly self-interested
form of caring for another human being. Self-sacrifice for the sake
of the other is selfish love because it conceals the wish to merge with
the other into a new unity. In contrast, the lovers self-renunciation in
love is a criterion for testing the love of neighbor.83 The lovers self-
renunciation in love signifies that the arbitrariness of his choice of love
in his relationship to the other is interrupted by the middle term of
the neighbor.84 In this way, the lover does not love the other human
being just as he pleases, but by looking for aspects of God and not for
himself in the fellow human.

79
See ibid., 39.
80
See ibid.
81
Ibid., 36.
82
See ibid., 67.
83
See ibid., 68.
84
See ibid., 70.
282 chapter four

This means that the selfish search for aspects of oneself in the other
human being can be expressed either in the total devotion of oneself
to another human being (devoted self-love) or in the denial of any
connection to him (faithless self-love).85 Thus, it is impossible to find
out about the true nature of love for the other merely by observing
external behavior, and even the apparently selfless loving care for the
other is not a guarantee that it expresses neighborly love in the Chris-
tian sense. Instead, Kierkegaard recommends paying attention to the
behavior of human subjectivity in the devotion to the other. If the
other is only an object of passions and penchants of the self, which
are satisfied by caring or not caring for him, it cannot be true love of
self and neighbor, because that would involve the renunciation of any
self-referential references to the other. Self-renunciation, according to
Kierkegaard, is not selflessness in the sense that people lose themselves
or overcome their own volition completely in their devotion to the
other. Here, it becomes clear that love of neighbor does not abandon
self-love, but transforms it. Because self-love is put to the test and
limited by self-renunciation in love of neighbor, human beings can
first experience how Christian self-love is possible. Only on the basis
of this experience can they recognize other forms of their self-love in
the inversion of that first experience. In the self-renunciation of loving
ones neighbor, it also becomes clear whether the selfish care for the
other is only an extension of ones own self-love and not true love of
neighbor.86
This differentiated critique of self-love from the perspective of Chris-
tian love shows that Kierkegaards description does not abstract from
human life reality in any way. If anything, it gives more concreteness
and subtle detail to the socially ambiguous and conflicting aspects of
this reality. Self-love in the interpersonal relation can be both a self-
interested passion for the other and self-denying devotion to the other.
Kierkegaards thoughts on the issue are guided by the impossibility
of completely overcoming this ambiguity of interpersonal love. By no
means does he assume that interpersonal love could ever be set free
from the tension of this ambiguity. But by interpreting it in the hori-
zon of Christian love of self and neighbor, he opens up a perspective
on social phenomena that permits us to identify in them the differ-

85
Ibid., 68.
86
See Ferreira 2001, 35.
 humanity and inhumanity in the love of neighbor 283

ence between human and inhuman social life reality. In this way, the
description of interpersonal sociality can remain open to the possibil-
ity of becoming more aware of the perversions of self-love at the site of
the other, and of revising them within ones own perception through
the love for the neighbor.
Therefore, Kierkegaards analysis of Christian love does not propa-
gate love of neighbor as an ethical ideal or normative demand. Instead,
it uses a description of the deficiencies of interpersonal love to show
the kind of life reality in which love of neighbor is possible at all. The
description of love of neighbor is therefore always connected with a
critical revision of those forms of interpersonal love that stand in tense
opposition to the ethos of love of neighbor. In this way, his description
of human sociality always remains concrete and related to human life
reality.

33 Beyond Kierkegaard: The Love of Neighbor

and Inhumanity

According to Kierkegaard, the starting point of the interpersonal

encounter in love of neighbor is not the social proximity and distance
between human beings, but their equality before God. Thus, the neigh-
bor can be found in every other human being (Kierkegaards thesis of
contingency). Moreover, the reference, within love, to the neighbor
implies a form of intersubjectivity that interrupts and eliminates selfish
personal preferences for particular human beings. Every human being
can experience loving care in the same way if he is loved as a neighbor
of God and is perceived in this function in the social encounter.87 The
description of interpersonal love as the love of neighbor thus provides
a perception of the fellow human that is not obstructed by social pre-
conceptions. Herein lies an essential socially critical implication of the
love of neighbor: the sympathy or antipathy for one particular other
human being does not determine how we treat that person, but rather
the fact that he and the self both stand in relation to God, and, tran-
scending all social similarities and differences, are joined together by
that relation to God.

87
The next human being he is ones neighbor this [sic] the next human being
in the sense that the next human being is every other human being. (Kierkegaard
1962, 70).
284 chapter four

The interpretation of Kierkegaards thoughts presented here sees

them as a phenomenologically differentiating description of the pos-
sibility of interpersonal humanity and its actual inversions. This seem-
ingly unproblematic perspective on Kierkegaards analyses of love has
been questioned by various authors. They assert that his discussion
of the neighbor is ambivalent, and that, where the discussion appears
to indicate the possibility of human humanity, it in fact indicates its
impossibility.

33.1 Adorno: The Dead Neighbor

Without a doubt, Kierkegaards argumentation displays a tendency to
juxtapose the definition of the neighbor as an indication of eternity
in time, against the historical mutability of earthly life88 that can only
bring forth difference between human beings, and thus determines the
mutability of their love relationships. For Kierkegaard, then, the neigh-
bor is characterized by his abstractness in the world and by his contin-
gency before God. Theodor W. Adorno has claimed that Kierkegaards
analyses of love present a description of the neighbor that empties
the discussion of the neighbor of all empirical significance.89 However,
it should be obvious by now that for Kierkegaards phenomenologi-
cal analysis of interpersonal love, Adornos accusation is untenable.
Nevertheless, it warrants further attention insofar as it supports the
interpretation of the love of neighbor as a socially critical orientation
that has been presented here.
In his article On Kierkegaards Doctrine of Love90 (first pub-
lished in 1939), Adorno critically remarks that Kierkegaards descrip-
tion of love of neighbor necessarily leads to the conclusion that only
the dead human being, whose earthly difference from other human
beings is eliminated once and for all, could be this ideal neighbor that

88
On the critique of Kierkegaards understanding of temporality that ignores his-
toricity see Adorno 2003, 229.
89
See ibid., 228.
90
This article has been translated into English by Adorno himself and published for
the first time in 1939/40 in the Zeitschrift fr Socialforschung (Adorno 1939/40; see
also Adorno 2003, 265). The new edition of his habilitation, Kierkegaard: Construc-
tions of the Aesthetic (1933, republished in German 1962), includes a new and very
different German version that is referred to here: Adorno 2003, 217236.
 humanity and inhumanity in the love of neighbor 285

Kierkegaard91 allegedly had in mind.92 It is possible to care for such a

dead neighbor without being trapped by false preferential love. Adorno
also accuses Kierkegaard of turning love of neighbor into an unsocial
attitude that does not relate to the other human being. On the one
hand, Kierkegaard views love as a wholly internal quality of human
beings, and on the other, he makes the object of love almost arbitrary
for the lover.93 The consequence of this division of inwardness and
outwardness, argues Adorno, is that Kierkegaards understanding of
love is highly abstract, and is permeated by an ascetic rigorousness94
that combines oppression of the drive [. . .] and oppression of the
mind.95 In the end, he says, Kierkegaards understanding of love only
expresses his misanthropy96 and hinders rather than helps an under-
standing of interpersonal relations.
This tendentious interpretation of Kierkegaards writings on love
has been challenged by several scholars,97 by showing, among other
things, that Kierkegaards argumentation is not as Adorno alleges
guided by the interest of asserting the empirical recognizability or
irrecognizability of the neighbor, but in fact aims to trace the human-
ity of interpersonal love as a renewal of human beings in and through
their relationship to God. Nevertheless, apart from this theologi-
cal correction, it should not be ignored that Adorno himself found
another, more positive meaning in Kierkegaards description of love of
neighbor, by reading it not as an ethical, but as a socially critical con-
cept. Adorno emphasizes that Kierkegaard talks about a neighbor who
would be better dead than alive, and about a mercy toward him that is
without effect or power in the outwardness of the world. Adorno calls
this a demonic consequence of Kierkegaards doctrine of love that he
himself was unaware of: it leaves the world to the devil (instead of to

91
Kierkegaard himself does not explicitly support this thesis, but various state-
ments like death erases all distinctions (Kierkegaard 1962, 74) can be interpreted
to say as much. Also see the tract The Work of Love in Remembering One Dead in
the second part of Works of Love (ibid., 317329), where Kierkegaard states that
remembering a dead person is the most selfless form of love (see ibid., 320).
92
See Adorno 2003, 233236.
93
See ibid., 219.
94
Ibid., 228.
95
Ibid.
96
Ibid.
97
See the section on the lack of outwardness of neighborly love and Kierkegaards
alleged escapism in Ferreira 2001, 8998.
286 chapter four

Gods love).98 Adorno formulates his critical assessment of this con-

sequence from a decidedly social-philosophical viewpoint. He asserts
that the Christian doctrine of love is not exempt from being held
accountable to the social life reality of human beings.99 Even though
Kierkegaard himself rebuffed,100 as Adorno puts it, such an interpre-
tation, his texts must therefore be read as a confrontation with the
social reality of his time. In this sense, they do not unfold a positive
and in this case utopian idea of love, but develop a negative social
ontology and engage in social and societal criticism.101 According to
Adorno, this social criticism is not to be formulated from the stand-
point of religious transcendence in contrast to the concrete life reality
of human beings, but must be located in this life reality itself.
According to Adorno, the neighbor Kierkegaard is talking about
can only be identified in relation to God and not within the earthly
conditions of interpersonal coexistence, because in the present soci-
etal order, the other person can only be perceived in an objectified
and dehumanized form (see 8.3). Human sociality no longer has a
place in societal interactions, and thus human beings are forced to
live in inhuman coexistence with each other. One characteristic of this
situation is the purely negative definition of love of neighbor: its phe-
nomenality can only be articulated as social criticism. In this sense,
Kierkegaards thoughts are a testimony to the annihilation of social
humanity in the society of his time, whereby social humanity can only
be defined by a description of its absence that locates the neighbor
outside of societal interaction.102
We have seen already that it is not the intention of Kierkegaards
phenomenological analysis of interpersonal love to locate the neighbor
outside of human society. Rather, his description of love of neighbor
is interested in a subtle revision of interpersonal love, a revision that
points beyond its indefinable excess, which only reveals itself in the
phenomena of interpersonal love when seen in the light of experienc-
ing Gods love for human beings. Based on this excess of the phe-
nomenon of interpersonal love, Kierkegaard then develops a socially
critical portrait of the perversions and deficiencies of the interpersonal

98
See Adorno 2003, 236.
99
See ibid., 226.
100
See ibid.
101
See ibid., 229230.
102
See ibid., 230.
 humanity and inhumanity in the love of neighbor 287

relation: the new possibility of loving the neighbor in the other human
being can only be perceived in terms of its contrast to the old possibil-
ity of loving oneself in the other human being. Therefore, according
to Kierkegaard, the description of Christian love serves above all to
open our eyes to the ambiguities of the phenomenon of love. Ador-
nos interpretation thus misses the core of Kierkegaards reflections;
however, it also offers a key to extending Kierkegaards rather subtle
interpretative approach into the field of social philosophy. The idea of
using the category of the neighbor as a key figure for a socially criti-
cal analysis of societal interaction has been further developed in the
debate about a political theology of the neighbor.

33.2 iek, Santner, Reinhard: The Neighbor as a

Figure of Inhumanity
In their jointly published book The Neighbor: Three Inquiries in
Political Theology (2005), Slavoj iek, Eric L. Santner and Kenneth
Reinhard take the radicalization of love of neighbor that results from
Kierkegaards opposition against all human forms of love, as an oppor-
tunity to redefine the figure of the neighbor as a category of political
theology.103 In their view and here, they take up Adornos suggestion
the neighbor is an indispensable category of political theology, not in
his presence, but rather in his much more precisely definable absence
in modern society.
Drawing on Jacques Derridas The Politics of Friendship104 (1994),
iek, Santner and Reinhard inquire into the possibility of using the
neighbor as a key figure for an alternative description of the origin of
the political. Adopting a Hobbesian view, Carl Schmitt has argued
that the origin of the political lies in a social conflict that can be stabi-
lized by the authority of a sovereign power standing outside of the law,
who establishes the social order and makes provisions for a state of
exception in which this order is suspended. But according to Schmitt,
this stabilization actually depends on this state of exception, which
is represented within political order as a distinction between friend

103
Following Carl Schmitt, the term political theology will be understood here
as an approach that uses concepts and theorems of theology for the legitimation of
power. As a theory, political theology works mostly with the term sovereignty and
analyzes it in order to show the instability of political distinctions, such as the friend-
enemy-distinction and the power structures associated with them.
104
Derrida 2005 (french original published in 1994).
288 chapter four

and enemy. It is the state of exception (not law and order) that estab-
lishes and stabilizes order. According to this logic, the political order
and community of human beings become unstable and break down
wherever the antagonistic confrontation with the enemy within soci-
ety is no longer possible. Based on this diagnosis, Derrida, but also
iek, Santner and Reinhard, seek an alternative or complementing105
register of the political and the underlying conflict between human
beings. iek, Santner and Reinhold believe that they have found this
register in the figure of the neighbor. In their approach, they describe
a political potential in the Judeo-Christian commandment of love of
neighbor, that had been at risk of being lost in its (modern) reduction
to the privacy of interpersonal sociality.106
According to Adornos diagnosis, Kierkegaards description of the
neighbor can no longer apply to a real fellow human being in modernity
because the discussion of the neighbor has entered a kind of deadlock
in modern society. Today, the neighbor can only be defined by a dead-
lock within society, because the range of social proximity and distance
in the interpersonal relation has been curtailed by the social regulatives
of modern mass society, and because society as the last organizational
unit of the social tends to become totalitarian.107 There is no longer
room for interpersonal proximity, and the relationship to the other
human being is therefore determined by relationships of anonymity
and distance. Societal rules of behavior that represent a higher unity
of legal, economic and universal moral aspects determine the relation-
ships among human beings.108 Two excellent examples for the power
of these structures are the multiculturalist idea of universal tolerance,
which ultimately only serves to keep the other at a safe distance instead
of confronting with him; and the idea of human rights, which can be
abused as an ideological justification of military interventions against
the other. With the establishment of these structures, the behavior
of one human being toward a fellow human is no longer rooted in
an interpersonal relation, but is conditioned by the societal mecha-
nisms of solidarity and social integration, and controlled according

105
See Reinhard 2005, 22.
106
See the interpretation of Derrida by Reinhard (ibid., 19), who no longer wants to
reduce the relation of loving ones neighbor to an area of the social that stands before
or outside of the political.
107
See ibid., 2326.
108
Kenneth Reinhard also points out a link to the analyses of Hannah Arendt (see
ibid., 2426).
 humanity and inhumanity in the love of neighbor 289

to a politics of friend-enemy-distinction. Another consequence of the

spread of societally regulated behavior patterns is that everybody can
be replaced, which has a pathological effect on the subject.109
iek, Santner and Reinhard propose to interpret the neighbor as a
supplementary figure110 to the figure of the sovereign that dominated
the political theology of Carl Schmitt. The sovereign stands outside
of law and order by deciding on the state of exception. The neighbor,
in contrast, functions within the configurations of political theology
as a figure representing the ostracized, outcast and negated aspects
of humanity in society. Precisely in his, as Adorno calls it, demonic
form, the neighbor is a figure in which the seriously misguided devel-
opments of modern society solidify and thus can be exposed. There-
fore, according to iek, Santner and Reinhard, the epitome of the
neighbor in modern society is the so-called Muselmann, the living
dead of the Nazi concentration camps.111 Suspended between his sym-
bolic and his real biological death, the Muselmann represents a social
existence at the zero point.112 He is considered undead, a human being
without a face,113 whose ethical claim to societys responsibility for
him has been left unanswered in the most radical way: he has been
cast out of society into a zone of social non-existence. The encounter
with him, indeed, his very existence in the midst of human society
signals the absolute limit of social humanity, the line that, according
to the universal moral definitions of human dignity, must never be
crossed, and yet is crossed every day in so many ways. The neighbor
thus succinctly manifests an impossibility of fulfilling the command-
ment to love ones neighbor and to identify the neighbor in the other
human being.
According to iek, Santner and Reinhard, the genuinely political
potential of the Judeo-Christian commandment to love ones neigh-
bor in modernity lies in its ability to reveal the inhumanity of human
coexistence in terms of the figure of the neighbor. The neighbor is
the outcast from the political order and community of human beings,
whose presence can no longer be represented in the symbolic orders of

109
Here, Kenneth Reinhard refers above all to Lacans analyses of autism and
Freuds analyses of paranoia (see ibid., 2729).
110
See ibid., 22.
111
See iek et al. 2005, 3.
112
See Santner 2005, 100.
113
See iek 2005, 162.
290 chapter four

the social, but who nevertheless exists in the midst of the human com-
munity.114 Here, in contrast to Kierkegaards theological interpretation,
the figure of the neighbor does not show the new humanity in tension
with the reality of the old human existence. Instead, it points out an
immanent limitation of humanity at the site of the human being him-
self. Thus, it allows the two perspectives on humanity that Kierkegaard
distinguished phenomenologically to coincide in the description of the
phenomenon of social inhumanity. The neighbor defines the fellow
human as a social void of human interaction.
The analyses of iek, Santner and Reinhard show that the figure of
the neighbor not only provides a hermeneutical key for understand-
ing the status quo of human sociality and community, but also in
Adornos sense a key for describing the limits of the project of treat-
ing human beings like social animals by submitting them to the total
control of the structures of social order in society. According to iek,
Santner and Reinhard, there is not only a human, but also an inhu-
man excess115 of interpersonal sociality that provokes the discussion
of the neighbor as a social absence of law and political order at the
site of the human being. This phenomenal absence denotes that form
of social inhumanity, which is possible and real within the human
community.
The provoking discussion of the neighbor as an existence at the
social zero point of human community, is connected with a new inter-
pretation of the Judeo-Christian commandment to love ones neigh-
bor within the horizon of political theology and psychoanalysis. This
new interpretation cannot be found in any theological exegesis of this
commandment. Therefore, in concluding, this chapter will take up the
suggestion of inquiring into inhumanity as a phenomenal absence of
interpersonal sociality, and investigate whether the theological per-
spective, too, can describe inhumanity not only as the perversion of
interpersonal humanity, from the perspective of a phenomenal excess
of love of God in interpersonal love, but also in a positive way. This
will be attempted with a theological description of interpersonal love
as an action done for the neighbor. In the Christian understanding, the

114
Particularly iek and Santner thus link the figure of the neighbor to Giorgio
Agambens paradoxical figure of the homo sacer, which stands for a human being who
can be killed without retribution if society is in a state of exception (see Agamben
2002).
115
See iek 2005, 169.
 humanity and inhumanity in the love of neighbor 291

work of love is characterized by mercy, whose phenomenality can only

be described through the impossibilities of human actions. But these
impossibilities are at the same time indicators of the God-given possi-
bility for human beings to have mercy on the neighbor. In the paradox
of the impossible possibility of mercy, the theological perspective thus
talks about the reality of merciful acts by explaining their phenomenal
excess as divine presence.

34 Humanity and Inhumanity as Reflected by Mercy

The Christian social ethos has always emphasized that love of neighbor
can and should also find expression in forms of prosocial behavior.
Therefore, one possible consequence of love of neighbor is the act of
mercy, i.e., helping a fellow human in need. The act of mercy in the
interpersonal relation has a deeply anti-economic meaning, because
unlike a transaction of goods, it is not focused on mutual giving
and taking. But in the horizon of the eschatologically promised new
humanity, it is not an act of giving that is entirely free of expectations,
either, according to the biblical understanding. This creates a certain
tension in the description of the phenomenon of mercy that will be
discussed in the following passages. In addition, we will also revisit
Kierkegaards analysis of the love of neighbor, which defines acts of
mercy not as visible gifts or as devotion, but as sympathy for others116
which can be present even in the most ineffective and inconsequential
actions, indeed even in the failure of human actions.

34.1 Lack of Consequences and Resources

In his description of Christian mercy, Kierkegaard focuses not on giv-
ing or helping as an ethical act of neighborly love, but on the human
beings inner attitude, which prompts the act of giving and helping.117
For Kierkegaard, practicing mercy is an act of love, even if it can
give nothing and is capable of doing nothing.118 It is thus defined as
an excess of human practices and actions through two main charac-
teristics: as a priceless gift and as powerless giving. This excess can

116
Kierkegaard 1962, 301.
117
See Kierkegaards thoughts on mercy (ibid., 292305). Also see Ferreira 2001,
188199.
118
Kierkegaard 1962, 292.
292 chapter four

therefore be phenomenally described as (i) the absence of a visible gift,

and (ii) as the absence of the resources or assets that would be needed
to help the other.
(i) According to Kierkegaard, merciful acts are characterized by the
fact that their interpersonal efficacy cannot be measured by their con-
sequences. In his remarks on mercy, he insists that human beings can
practice mercy regardless of whether their actions are effective or not.
The gift the merciful person gives to the neighbor remains invisible to
the world, and yet, it is revealed in his actions. Thus, merciful acts do
not have to benefit the neighbor in the sense of bringing an advantage
or of improving his situation. The merciful gift cannot be measured
by the generosity of alms or of how much money is given. Accord-
ing to Kierkegaard, mercy must be distinguished from generosity and
charity,119 which he associates with money and wealth. Mercy can
therefore best be described phenomenally through the absence of a
charitable consequence or effect.
In order to clarify this point, Kierkegaard construes a new version
of the biblical story of the poor widows offering (Mk 12:4144). In
this story, a poor woman puts two small coins into the temple treasury
for charitable purposes. Jesus observes this behavior and considers it
a great gift, because relative to her own possessions, the poor woman
has put more into the treasury than other, wealthier people. In order
to highlight the phenomenal excess of mercy in the womans deed,
Kierkegaard offers a slightly different version of this story: what if the
woman really had not put anything into the treasury because someone
cheated her by switching the cloth into which she had wrapped the
two small coins with an empty one? Would her donation have been
worthless because it did not have any monetary value anymore? Of
course not. Because a large sum of money that astonishes the world
can obscure the mercy of the donation and the offering of the heart120
that gives it.
(ii) Secondly, Kierkegaard emphasizes that mercy does not depend
on the resources a person possesses, which he would be able to pass
on to ease the hardship of the poor. Being able to be merciful is not
identical with being able to do something, but rather goes far beyond

119
Ibid.
120
Ibid., 297.
 humanity and inhumanity in the love of neighbor 293

it: Mercifulness is able to do nothing.121 Kierkegaards description

of mercy once again is the expression of his twofold analysis of inter-
personal life reality. It points out that the question of what merciful
actions are cannot be answered by describing the human capability of
helping. What Christian mercy is thus shows itself in the description
of an action that springs from the incapability of the giver.
In order to clarify this point, Kierkegaard constructs a new version
of the story of the Good Samaritan (Lk 10:2537). In his opinion, by
merely describing the contrast between the helpful Samaritan and the
unhelpful priest and Levite, the biblical story fails to capture the signif-
icance of Christian mercy as an action for the neighbor. In the story, it
seems as if the act of helping is itself mercy. But what if the Samaritan
had been on foot and without money and did not have any means of
saving the wounded man from bleeding to death? Would his attempt
to save the other have been less merciful if he had not succeeded?
Of course not. Because the attempt alone of helping the other is an
expression of the fact that he is not stupefied by his own suffering and
has thereby lost sympathy for the other.122 In that case, this sympathy
for the hardship of others, this suffering along with them, would have
been an act of mercy whose incapability of saving the other would
have been the excess of caring for the neighbor, in contrast to purely
economic or medical help.
Going beyond Kierkegaard, the study will now seek to show that
in mercy, there can also be an excess of the temporal life orientation
of human beings which is significant for social behavior: the excess
of Christian hope that accompanies merciful deeds. In the following
sections, this excess will be demonstrated in the context of a phenom-
enology of humanitys eschatological experience of time.

34.2 Lack of Expectations

In the context of the economy of giving and taking in social interac-
tions, as presented in the second chapter of this study, it has been
shown that human beings are creatures whose behavior toward and
relationships with others are influenced not only by the forms of pres-
ence of these other human beings (co-presence), but also by a tempo-
ral horizon of expectations. Regardless of whether ones own horizon

121
Ibid., 299.
122
Ibid., 301.
294 chapter four

of expectations is interrupted by the presence of others or not, a tem-

poral structure is a constitutive factor for it: the expectation of pos-
sible and impossible behavioral options that lie in the future affects a
persons present behavior toward others. Thus, the distinction between
the present and the future permits human beings to orient themselves
not only in relation to present realities, but also to the future possibili-
ties of their behavior. They align their social behavior not only with an
interpersonal, but also a temporal matrix of meaning. By once more
returning to the narrative of the Good Samaritan in Lk 10:2537, we
can see that the temporal structure of human expectations is also rel-
evant for the theological description of mercifull acts.
The scribes initial question in Lk 10:25, which provides the context
for the question about practicing neighborly love, is this: What must
I do to inherit eternal life? The scribe thus links the question about
loving ones neighbor to an expectation about his inheritance of the
eternal life promised by God. In his answer to the scribes question,
the Lukan Jesus explicitly responds to this expectation by taking up
the scribes reference to eternal life. He tells him: Do this and you will
live (Lk 10:28). The wording Do this and you will live makes it clear
that the Jewish scribe is interested in the commandment of love and
the prescribed behavior toward others for two very specific reasons.
He understands the commandment to love God and ones neighbor
as both the summary of the Torah and connects its observance with
the assurance of its divine promises. He identifies the inheritance
of an eternal life with the promise of the future life possibilities that
result from a persons belonging to God, a promise whose acceptance
according to Jewish understanding, is made concrete in the command-
ments of the Torah.
In light of the context in which the story of the Good Samaritan
is situated in the Lukan pericope, the commandment to love ones
neighbor draws on the notion, common at that time, that a persons
social position is always determined by his affiliation with an ethnic or
social group.123 Analogously, the affiliation of human beings with God
in Judaism is determined by the Torah and its promises. In Christian-
ity, the Torah as a reference point for affiliation is replaced by Jesus

123
In his commentary on Luke, Wolfgang Wiefel points out that the reasons why
the attacked man was denied help are not mentioned in the text itself (see Wiefel
1988, 20).
 humanity and inhumanity in the love of neighbor 295

Christ, who proves to be a sovereign interpreter of the commandments

of the Torah.124 In him, Gods action for the human being is revealed,
which becomes the new criterion for human hope and expectation.
Therefore, practicing mercy toward ones neighbor is no longer only
connected with the expectation of fulfilling Gods law. The merciful act
toward ones neighbor thus does not occur, in the Christian perspec-
tive, in the firm expectation of fulfilling a divine law, and achieving
eternal life as a reward. Rather, the merciful act occurs in the escha-
tological hope that human action that has been commanded can be
transcended through Gods action. Eschatological hope thus expects a
transcendence of the horizon of human action through Gods action
in human beings, and makes this the point of departure for its under-
standing of the future. The eschatological experience of time, which
characterizes Christian action and Christian hope, is thus expressed
in awaiting an anticipation of God in behavior towards ones fellow
human. For awaiting an anticipation of God in human action is more
promising than the fulfillment of all expectations for oneself or oth-
ers ever could be. Based on an analysis of the human eschatological
experience of time, then, we can again address the question of the
expectation of eternal life implied in acts of mercy.

34.3 Unpredictability: The Phenomenal Abundance of

Practicing Mercy
As we have seen already, from a theological perspective, the orienta-
tion of human life toward the future finds its genuine performance
in waiting for the possibilities that emerge from the alignment of the
life horizon with God. Waiting for Gods effective presence in time
is thus not to be confused with an attitude of expectation about the
consequences of ones own or others actions. The human attitude of
expectation sees the future as something that can only turn out to
be an extention, i.e., an improvement or deterioration, of that which
already exists. Human beings orient themselves within time through
a context of meaning time that continuously determines the future
within the horizon of the past and the present. In contrast, waiting for
the future possibilities in human life promised by God which first
gain their form in light of the perspective of Gods presence does not

124
See Kuhn 1989, 210222.
296 chapter four

mean expecting something in terms of waiting for something specific.

Instead, human beings are waiting for something to happen that they
themselves cannot initiate or authorize and that thus always preempts
human initiative. The unpredictability that can emerge from waiting
for Gods anticipation in human life presents itself as an interrup-
tion of the temporal context of meaning and creates an intermediate
time in which strange and unpredictable things can happen, without
it being clear from the outset what these strange and unpredictable
things may be.125
Within the eschatological temporal horizon, human waiting thus
stands in expectation of life possibilities that approach the life reality
of human beings from outside themselves, and that transcend their
own possibilities and realities. They have the power to suspend and
overcome human initiatives. They burst the circular structure of self-
initiated expectations that turn the future into the present. Thus, in
Christian hope, the future is not predetermined by past and present
events, but defined by an excess of the temporal context of mean-
ing (Gods time). In faith, human beings, by waiting for this excess
of time, are free to give themselves over to the effects of that which
cannot be controlled or achieved through their own actions: For no
form of human expectation or lack of expectation can measure up to
that which Gods initiative has in store for the future life of human
beings.
These considerations can now be brought to bear on a theological
description of mercy. Mercy, in its temporal dimension, is a gift or
helping act that is bestowed on an individual because a person has
given himself over to Gods anticipation in his actions, trusting that
this anticipation exceeds the expectable potential of human initiatives,
and provides the person with possibilities that he cannot overlook.
Thus, in the horizon of faith, the cooperation and conflict in human
interaction is once again intensified by the contrast between human
and divine initiatives. Within the horizon of human expectations, the
divine initiative is perceived as doubly asymmetrical: neither ones
own initiatives nor those of others can anticipate or predetermine
the future.

125
The reflections on the unpredictable and unforeseeable in this passage draw
on the motif of anticipation that has been discussed by Bernhard Waldenfels (see
Waldenfels 2004, 8894). For a theological exploration of Gods unforeseeable future
see also Caputo 2006.
 humanity and inhumanity in the love of neighbor 297

With regard to the temporal horizon of mercy, this means that pre-
cisely the attitude of waiting for Gods future life possibilities enables
the merciful person to care for his fellow human in a way that does
not have to be effective according to human standards, but is free to be
inefficient and excessive. For human standards cannot begin to expect
what mercy will bring about: the beginning of Gods initiatives for
human beings, which they can only encounter by waiting and trust-
ing. In this respect, the temporal horizon of practicing mercy is not
sufficiently identified by the negation of the expected as such, but only
by describing the trusting attitude of waiting for Gods effective pres-
ence in time.
Thus, the horizon of expectations in which mercy is performed as
a gift or action for the sake of the neighbor, is not linked to a radical
lack of expectations, but always stands in expectation of Gods future
actions for human beings. The theological description of human actions
for the sake of the neighbor thus cannot be purely negative at this
point; rather, it must refer to the phenomenal abundance of practic-
ing mercy, of its freedom to use resources excessively and inefficiently.
Therefore, another characteristic of the socially critical anthropology
of neighborly love is that it reminds human beings of that which they
are incapable of doing by themselves, in order to show them, through
the God-given abundance of their actions, what they are nevertheless
allowed to do in the reality of their new existence.

34.4 Inhuman Mercilessness

In his description of Christian mercy, Kierkegaard insists that a human
being can give another his merciful sympathy even when he has noth-
ing to give because he himself has nothing, and even when he can do
nothing because the help that is needed exceeds his personal abili-
ties. Mercy is more than a successful intervention by a powerful donor
or rescuer. In this sense, everyone can practice mercy toward the
neighbor even a person who lacks strength or financial means.
Moreover, Kierkegaard uses the description of mercy as a phenomenal
excess of human actions to characterize the phenomenal absence of
mercy in human encounters. In contrast to mercy, merciless behavior
shows itself where people refuse to sympathize with others suffering,
no matter how small. As an example, Kierkegaard refers to the biblical
story of the rich man and poor Lazarus (Lk 16:1931).
The story tells about the poor, sick Lazarus, who is begging for food,
lying in front of a rich mans door. Even though he does not receive
298 chapter four

anything from the rich man, not even sympathy for his suffering, the
rich mans dogs come to him and lick his sores. Then, Lazarus dies.
According to Kierkegaard, this incident is so remarkable because here,
unlike in the story of the Good Samaritan, the contrast is not made
between the behaviors of different people, but between that of a rich
man and his dogs. Even though the rich man would have had all the
power in the world at his disposal to help Lazarus, it is the dogs that
care for him. Kierkegaard thus describes the rich mans behavior
toward Lazarus not just as merciless, but as inhuman mercilessness.126
He emphasizes that [i]n order to shine a light on mercilessness, one
can also use a merciful person placed at his side.127 Instead, the rich
mans behavior is contrasted with that of the dogs, because the man
has abandoned mercy.128 Therefore, according to Kierkegaard, a
complete absence of concern and sensitivity to the suffering of others,
in the human community signifies the social inhumanity. The biblical
story thus uses the difference between the behavior of a human being
and that of an animal in order to provide a phenomenological descrip-
tion of this phenomenal void of mercilessness that cannot be revealed
in human actions, but only in their complete absence. Paradoxically,
the animals behavior displays the mercy actually expected of the
human being, which is juxtaposed with the factual non-existence of
mercy at the site of the human being.
These considerations can now be summarized. According to
Kierkegaard, mercy in interpersonal encounters is manifested in the
possibility of sharing in the suffering of others, even though one has
nothing to give and cannot do anything to help. For Kierkegaard, this
possibility is at the same time an impossibility, because its character
in human action can only be unambiguously demonstrated through
a description of the human inability to make a difference in trying
to help. In Kierkegaards conception, the social humanity of human
beings is thus expressed in an impossible possibility of human actions,
which only becomes obvious as a possibility of human action in the
perspective of God, at the boundaries of human possibility. In con-
trast, social inhumanity is expressed in the human potential to reject
participation in the suffering of others and to withhold any help from

126
Ibid., 299.
127
Ibid.
128
Ibid.
 humanity and inhumanity in the love of neighbor 299

them. It can only be clearly revealed in contrast to the description of

merciful human behavior at the site of the non-human creature. In the
description of the phenomena of mercifulness and mercilessness, the
phenomenal excess and the phenomenal void of interpersonal sociality
become visible.

35 Conclusion

This chapter has argued that the Christian understanding of human

sociality can only become a meaningful independent perspective on
the basis of a theological reference to the entitiy of God. Three ele-
ments fundamental to the Christian understanding of neighborly love
have been developed: the analysis of the neighbor as a hermeneutical
figure of reference in the Christian social ethos, the analysis of the rela-
tion between neighbors as a relation of love; and the analysis of mercy
as a human practice that exists in an eschatological temporal horizon,
and thus enables human beings to give their resources, no matter how
meager, freely and excessively to the neighbor.
The reflections in this chapter further sought to develop an under-
standing of the neighbor that comprehends the neighbor as a category
that, from a theological perspective, can be turned into a universally
valid guideline for the social orientation of human beings. The word
neighbor attains its contour first within the interpersonal life realitys
reference to God and second within the confrontationality of this life
reality. Both of these aspects show that, from a theological perspec-
tive, the usage of the word neighbor is a continuation and expansion
of the vernacular usage of the word. This expansion occurs in three
steps:
(i) Emphasis of the neighbors hermeutical function: Social reality in
terms of proximity and distance of other human beings is devel-
oped through the neighbors presence;
(ii) Definition of this social function by the reference to God: Being a
neighbor does not mean being close to ones fellow humans, but
being close to God;
(iii) Reversal of the direction of the relation to the fellow human: The
other does not become the neighbor through his neediness, but a
person becomes a neighbor to his fellow human by perceiving him
with reference to God.
300 chapter four

In the understanding that has been suggested here, the neighbor takes
up a purely functional position within the social structures of human
coexistence that does not necessarily need to be assigned a substantial
significance. Accordingly, the Christian commandment to love ones
neighbor does not mean that a person must choose the profession of
nurse or become a rescuer in order to be the neighbor of his fellow
human. Rather, the functional position of the neighbor in the descrip-
tion of social relationships and interactions is to be defined by the
humanity of God that has revealed itself in Jesus Christ.
Adopting a functional understanding of the neighbor also enables
us to refute the objection that the religious commandment to love
ones neighbor is of a purely private nature, and that its claim to pub-
lic and political relevance breaks down in view of the requirements of
solidarity and integration in complex modern societies.129 According
to this argument, there is only a contradiction between love of neigh-
bor and societal social integration because Christian love of neigh-
bor does not create social ties that can be universalized.130 But, as has
been shown in the course of this chapter, a primary characteristic of
Christian love of neighbor is that it does not in fact denote a form of
special biological or social affiliation of human beings, but a form
of affiliation among human beings that transcends the particularities
of social relationships. In a Christian perspective, if we talk about the
other human being as a neighbor and about the relationship to him as
the love of neighbor, we do not mean a particular form of a univer-
sal love of humanity in which humanity is respected in the person of
every human. Rather, the commandment of neighbor-love demands a
relationship with the fellow human that knows, beside and beyond the
social particular ties of family, religion and nation, an interpersonal
relation that is interrupted and redefined by God as a middle term,
as Kierkegaard calls it.
Thus, unlike the ties of the religious, ethnic and biological spheres
of human social life, the relation to the neighbor is not regulated by

129
This can also be seen in Brunkhorst 1997, 7275. Here, Brunkhorst draws on
Sigmund Freuds critique of the Christian commandment of love in Civilization and
Its Discontents (Freud 2002) and confirms Freuds diagnosis that the Christian com-
mandment of love even if it can be expanded into love of the most distant [Fern-
stenliebe] cannot be used to establish a solidarity that reaches beyond the close range
of social human relationships. On the problematic aspects of a psychoanalytical inter-
pretation of the Christian commandment of love see Miss 1976, particularly 3093.
130
As an example, see the discussion in Brunkhorst 1997, 7275.
 humanity and inhumanity in the love of neighbor 301

superordinate common elements. Therefore, it is neither universal (in

the sense of a recognition of all human beings equally) nor particular
(in the sense of a recognition of a particular other human being by
virtue of his affiliation to a universal aspect of humanity). Instead, the
relationship to the neighbor can be called a transparticularizing131 ref-
erence to the other human being. In the midst of the social ties that are
mediated by common factors, it establishes an awareness of crossing a
threshold which turns the outer limits of community and society into
inner limits. This becomes particularly clear in Mt 5:4344, where the
commandment to love ones neighbor is introduced as a new com-
mandment: You have heard that it was said, Love your neighbor and
hate your enemy. But I tell you: Love your enemies and pray for those
who persecute you [. . .]. In Mt 5:4344, the jurisdiction of the com-
mandment of love is not only extended from socially near persons to
strangers. Rather, the category of the neighbor is explicitly applied to
the politically extreme figures of the enemy and the persecutor, who
not only stand on the margin, but outside of human society. This rep-
resents an interpretation of the commandment to love ones neighbor
that explicitly establishes its function as a socially critical norm, a norm
which demands that the social ties and relationships of affiliation are
transcended and which thus supports the thesis of a transparticular-
izing threshold character of the commandment to love ones neighbor.
You shall love your neighbor, even if the social or political status of
your fellow humans does not condone or even prohibits dealing with
them. It is hard to imagine a more powerful socially integrative mobi-
lization for interpersonal relations and a more far-reaching expansion
of the horizon of societal solidarity.

131
On the term transparticularization [Transpartikularisieren] see Dabrock 2000,
19. The term is used as a substitute for universalization because it points out the
threshold of responsibility toward the other that cannot be shown in a conception of
universal responsibility.
 FINAL THOUGHTS

36 Multiperspectivity Instead of Transdisciplinarity

This study has compared several methods and forms of representation

from various academic disciplines to examine the social relationship
and interaction between human beings. Thus, in contrast to the inter-
disciplinary paradigm of transdisciplinarity, this study attempted to
define interdisciplinarity through multiperspectivity. To this end, three
perspectives were developed in which human sociality could be exam-
ined as a phenomenon of the humanity of human beings. The repre-
sentation of each of the individual perspectives limited the description
of human sociality to one specific point of view. But at the same time,
the combination of the individual perspectives dissolved this limi-
tation, in that it showed each perspectives own limitations by con-
trasting the specific aspects of each perspective with those of another
perspective. The interaction of the three perspectives was mediated by
the prevalent role of philosophical anthropology and its hermeneuti-
cal and phenomenological practice of human self-inquiry. Thus, the
study did not rely on the scientific representation of its object alone
but aimed at a description of the concrete phenomenality of sociality
and humanity.
The basic task of this study was to deal with the question of how to
gain an understanding of human sociality that takes into account, in
the description of social phenomena, the phenomenological difference
between the humanity and inhumanity of human beings. The focus of
observation was on the difference between social humanity and inhu-
manity because in phenomenological terms, it denotes those phenom-
ena that split open the question about humanity in human coexistence
itself. Using this key difference as an orientation for its descriptions, the
study thus did not justify the humanity of human beings in a norma-
tive manner, but made it plausible by undertaking an anthropological
examination of its difference from inhumanity. The examination of the
behavioral-scientific modelings of sociality in experimental economics
demonstrated that the humanity of human beings cannot be defined
by merely contrasting human with animal behavior, but that it reveals
itself in how a human being treats himself and his fellow humans. The
304 final thoughts

efforts of interpreting and describing the essential phenomenological

aspects of humanity cannot thus be resolved by simply referring to an
empirical correlative of the term human being. The human being is
and remains an object of interpretation.
The approach to the subject of humanity and sociality in this study
was based on philosophical hermeneutics and phenomenology. These
approaches imply that the object of this study could not simply be
identical with the subject matter of each individual theoretical exami-
nation or experimental modeling. As a hermeneutical object, it actu-
ally functioned as a prerequisite to these individual perspectives. In
this way, its description also enabled a critical assessment of those per-
spectives. In the course of the study, three perspectives of experimen-
tal modelings and interpretations of the human being were examined
in order to exemplify those aspects of a description of human social-
ity that are crucial in a philosophical anthropological context. Here,
actual social interactions and relationships of human beings turned
out to be a site that could be interpreted with different concepts: as the
site of conflict between egoists and altruists in human interaction; as
the site of an interpersonal difference that can produce different kinds
of social relationships, from antagonistic confrontation to the act of
taking responsibility, and as a site of tense coexistence between the
old and new social existence of human beings that is expressed in the
loving care for the fellow human as a neighbor of God. The examina-
tion of the individual perspectives did not, however, simply assume
that human beings are social creatures, but also inquired into the pos-
sibility of their unsocial nature or their social inhumanity. Inhuman-
ity is manifest in the behavior of the egoist who in social interactions
maximizes his own profit, indifferent to the behavior of his interaction
partners. It is present in human violence, as manifest in the murder of
another human being out of greed. And finally, it can be found in the
merciless refusal to acknowledge the suffering of those human beings
who stand at the margins of the human community.
Looking at these widely varied perspectives together resulted in the
insight that the characteristics of human sociality cannot be clarified
solely by anthropologically determining behavioral types and natu-
ralizing its psychological preconditions. That which has been con-
structed, tested and concluded in the empirical, socioeconomic and
neuroscientific perspective, must enter an interdisciplinary dialogue
with the insights of other perspectives, and be supplemented and
expanded by them, in order to gain an authority that goes beyond field-
 final thoughts 305

specific questions and interests. Empirical social anthropology thus

cannot take on the function it claims for itself, namely, a fundamental
anthropology for all other perspectives of anthropology. The biological
nature of human beings cannot be reasonably considered to have any
influence on human behavior independently of the phenomenality of
human self-understanding.
The claim of behavioral scientists, that they engage in an interdis-
ciplinary exchange of knowledge by unifying and synthesizing knowl-
edge about human beings in transdisciplinary models, has therefore
been refuted. The transdisciplinary way of gaining knowledge is rooted
in the false premise that there is only one correct interpretation of
human behavior, and that the best way to find this interpretation is to
unify scientific methods and models. Where there are aspects of the
human life that have not (yet) been integrated into scientific explana-
tion and representation of that life, they must be adjusted, in their
concreteness, to the range of scientific methods. Adapting and adjust-
ing objects and their phenomenality to the range of scientific empirical
methods, however, systematically negates their additional function to
enable a critical assessment and discussion of the field-specific inter-
pretations and representations of the human being. Each perspective
and each model for describing human sociality has thus been sub-
jected to the question of how it maintains the difference between a
description of the phenomenon and its method of examination.

37 Result of this Study

This study inquired into the possibilities of finding an understand-

ing of human sociality that is open to an empirically and phenom-
enologically correct description of human social life, while being
able to account for the phenomena of humanity and inhumanity in
hermeneutical and phenomenological terms. In an interdisciplin-
ary perspective, the study examined (i) experimental modelings and
interpretations of human social behavior, (ii) social-philosophical
conceptions of the interpersonal difference in social relationships, and
(iii) theological conceptions that reflect on the socially critical focus
of Christian anthropology which is exhibited in the commandment
to love ones neighbor. As a result of this multiperspectival presenta-
tion of widely divergent descriptions of human sociality, the specific
character of each perspective was made visible, as well as its need to be
306 final thoughts

complemented by other perspectives. In this way, the study succeeded

in gaining clear and distinctive insights about the object of human
sociality while avoiding field-specific limitations in its representation.
In addition to the studys methodological yield, it also made sig-
nificant progress in terms of content. In the course of its examina-
tions, the study succeeded in developing several possible approaches
to answering the initial anthropological question about the conditio
humana of a human, or even humane, sociality. The study argued that
the answer to this question cannot be found by differentiating between
human and animal sociality. Rather, it can be tackled by discussing
how humanity reveals itself in the concrete interaction and relation of
human beings. As demonstrated above, the statement that the sociality
of human beings counts among the conditions that determine their
being-human, i.e., their humanity, is not undisputed in philosophical
and theological social anthropology. The one-sided focus on a positive
description of the humanity of human beings may close off the per-
spective of anthropology against the phenomena of inhumanity that
are manifest in human social life. Thus, in order to provide an answer
to the initial question in the context of this study, the statement that
sociality is the condition of humanity was reversed heuristically and
turned into the more open question of how sociality can become a
site where the humanity of human beings reveals itself, without being
indifferent to inhumanity. In this way, it was possible to outline several
answers to the initial question.
Working on the premise of conflict and the fragility of human coex-
istence, the contrast between egoists and altruists, which character-
izes different types of behavior in experimental economics, provided
a first hint about how human sociality can become the site of human
humanity. But only the resolution of this rigid contrast of behavior
types could provide information about where the humanity of humans
has its genuine origin. Dislocating the phenomenon of conflict from
the perspective of an interaction of individual subjects, and shifting it
to the perspective of a relationship structure between human beings,
which precedes interaction, helped to see that the basic structure of the
human relationship, the indissoluble difference of self and other, is the
origin of conflict in human coexistence. The interpersonal relation is
characterized by singularity: one is not like the other, and this rupture,
this distance between human beings cannot be overcome, bypassed or
reconciled without abandoning the basic phenomenological feature of
human interpersonal life and starting to argue in a non-anthropological
 final thoughts 307

way. Thus, the interaction relationship between human beings is

rooted in an unstable and precarious encounter. This turns the social
relationship into a relationship of indissoluble difference. Therefore,
the phenomenon of human plurality and singularity is indispensable
for any meaningful social-phenomenological conception of sociality.
Based on this analysis, the basic phenomenological element of social
interaction was constantly be sought after, in a description of human
sociality that does not leave out its ambivalence (altruism/egoism, rec-
onciliation/hostility, recognition/disrespect, responsibility for/negation
of the other). From a theological perspective, this ambivalence in the
categories of human sociality could be traced back to a phenomenal
ambiguity of human sociality, which can be explicitly named by
describing Christian love of neighbor in its contrast to human love
relationships. The Christian description of the human being is rooted
in the anthropological tension between the old and new existence.
In the perspective of Gods effective presence in this world, the old
existence of the human being is revised in light of his new existence.
This new existence means that the human being becomes a neigh-
bor, a next one to God, and this also enables him to acknowledge
the difference between humanity and inhumanity in his interpersonal
relations. Therein also lies the socially critical function of theological
anthropology: the neighbor of God, who eludes social attributions and
who reorganizes the sphere of interpersonal proximity and distance
through this elusiveness, indicates both the phenomenal excess and
the social void of interpersonal relations. Thus, the difference between
the humanity and inhumanity of human social life can always be made
explicit by referring to the fellow human as Gods neighbor. At the
same time, this difference is enforced by distinguishing Gods neigh-
bor from the human being as it is approached in a mere interper-
sonal encounter, without reference to Gods presence. In this way, it
is possible for theological anthropology to avoid an indifference in the
description of humanity to the phenomenon of social inhumanity.
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 INDEX OF NAMES
Adorno, Theodor W. 5, 24, 51, 6367,
76, 87, 272, 284290
Agamben, Giorgio 5, 50f, 5667, 76, 290
Arendt, Hannah 79, 57, 7076, 86f,
222, 241, 244, 288
Axelrod, Robert 137
Barth, Karl 246, 252, 272
Barthes, Roland 6870
Batson, C. Daniel 158
Bicchieri, Cristina 143145
Blumenberg, Hans 28, 4347, 49, 58,
245
Bowles, Samuel 37
Boyd, Robert 37
Calvin, John 3334, 259
Camerer, Colin 37, 95, 108, 131f, 135
Cassirer, Ernst 47, 194
Charness, Gary 135
Coase, Ronald 107
Comte, Auguste 194
Dalferth, Ingolf U. 21, 23, 28, 247f, 259
Derrida, Jacques 287f
Descartes 45, 48
Elster, Jon 143145
Falk, Armin 104, 136, 164
Fehr, Ernst 11, 3642, 96, 110, 131136,
138143, 147, 152, 154, 156, 158, 160,
162164, 166f, 181
Ferreira, Jamie 271275, 277, 282, 285,
291
Fichte, Johann Gottlieb 210f
Figal, Gnter 88f, 260
Fischbacher, Urs 11, 36, 3842, 95f,
136, 141143, 147, 154f, 158, 160,
162, 164, 181
Foucault, Michel 57, 190
Freud, Sigmund 202, 209, 279, 289, 300
Frey, Bruno S. 36, 106
Frith, Chris 168
Gchter, Simon 1, 36, 136, 140, 147,
154, 166f
Gadamer, Hans-Georg 89
Garca Dttmann, Alexander 208, 210,
217221, 223
Gehlen, Arnold 6, 49
Gintis, Herbert 36f, 99, 110, 178
Glimcher, Paul W. 9597
Goodall, Jane 48
Guala, Francesco 100, 114, 118f, 128
Gth, Werner 93f, 114, 116, 133
Habermas, Jrgen 71, 146, 199, 202,
220
Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich 18,
64, 76, 189, 208212, 220f
Heidegger, Martin 9, 5058, 63, 66f,
77f, 209
Henrich, Joseph 10, 36f, 97, 110, 115,
148, 157
Hobbes, Thomas 5, 15, 17, 19, 35,
159, 189, 191200, 211, 221, 228, 233,
241243, 287
Honneth, Axel 18, 147, 190f, 207f,
210214, 216f, 220222
Horkheimer, Max 5
Hume, David 159, 189
Husserl, Edmund 77
Jngel, Eberhard 248
Kant, Immanuel 6, 8, 46
Kierkegaard, Sren 2225, 271288,
290293, 297f, 300
Kliemt, Hartmut 93f, 114, 116
Kosfeld, Michael 11, 36, 136, 151, 175,
180
Lacan, Jacques 202, 209, 289
Laclau, Ernesto 17, 199206
Levinas, Emmanuel 5, 19f, 222,
227243, 273
Lindenberg, Siegwart 103
Linnaeus, Carl 44, 59f
Locke, John 15, 191, 194, 211
Lgstrup, Knud Ejler 272
Lumer, Christopher 159
Luther, Martin 33, 263
Markell, Patchen 208
Marx, Karl 17, 35, 72, 107, 199, 201f
322 index of names
Mauss, Marcel 222
Mayr, Ernst 160, 162
Meisinger, Hubert 253255, 267270
Merleau-Ponty, Maurice 88
Milgram, Stanley 172
Morgenstern, Oskar 11, 123
Mouffe, Chantal 17, 199206
Nagel, Thomas 159f
Neumann, John von 11, 123
Nowak, Karl 40
Ostrom, Elinor 138f, 148
Pannenberg, Wolfhart 4, 35, 246f
Pico della Mirandola, Giovanni 60f
Plessner, Helmuth 6, 28, 35, 47, 49,
7789
Rabin, Matthew 135
Rawls, John 145, 196, 199
Reinhard, Kenneth 24, 287290
Ricur, Paul 18, 208f, 211, 221226,
252
Santner, Eric L. 5, 24, 287290
Schleiermacher, Friedrich D.E. 247
Schmidt, Klaus M. 132136, 138, 140f,
152, 160
Schmitt, Carl 205, 287, 289
Sigmund, Martin A. 40
Singer, Tania 11, 36, 168170
Smith, Adam 106f
Sober, Elliot 159
Taylor, Charles 18, 206, 208, 210,
214217, 220f
Trivers, Robert 40
Verweyst, Markus 207210, 213, 219
Waal, Frans de 48f
Waldenfels, Bernhard 296
Wilson, David Sloan 159
Zimbardo, Philip 172
iek, Slavoj 5f, 24f, 202, 228, 287290
 INDEX OF SUBJECTS
Alterity 16f, 19, 188, 213, 217, 223227,
232, 235, 238, 240, 250, 273
Altruism 1, 11, 15, 23, 35f, 37, 3941,
91, 95f, 105, 109f, 128, 148, 152154,
157160, 163, 172, 177, 179, 184, 195,
254, 265, 267, 307
Animal 46, 8f, 14, 30, 34, 3841,
4751, 5363, 6567, 74, 76, 8183,
91f, 109, 142, 290, 298, 303, 306
Antagonism 17, 19, 188, 198202, 205,
228, 233, 238, 243
Body 42, 49, 7783, 85, 87, 92, 168,
174f
Brain 14, 38, 95, 97, 113, 128,
161180, 237
Conflict 1, 12, 1519, 57, 69, 8387,
136, 138f, 154, 157, 166, 173, 181,
187f, 190, 192206, 210215, 220,
225, 228, 232f, 241f, 262265, 287f,
296, 304, 306
Cooperation 3540, 75, 97, 110, 119,
137142, 146157, 163, 165, 172,
178182, 185, 188f, 206, 234,
236238, 296
Creation 32f, 47, 60, 249, 259
Egoism 12, 15, 23, 35, 37, 102f, 128,
137f, 149, 157, 159, 165, 177, 184,
188, 192, 194198, 233f, 238, 242,
265, 272, 307
Emotion 38, 98, 100, 103, 105, 125,
158, 165168, 177f, 181, 237
Empathy 1, 96, 167169, 172
Ethics 5, 9, 15, 29, 185, 188f, 206, 227,
235, 245, 255, 272f
Ethos 24, 225227, 245, 252, 255,
263265, 279, 283, 291, 299
Equality 75, 134f, 182, 215f, 224, 238,
272f, 276, 283
Evolution 9f, 14, 40, 48f, 95, 97, 110,
137, 153, 160, 163, 167, 170, 172, 188
Fairness 12, 37, 96, 110, 127, 135f, 145,
160, 164, 168, 170, 180182, 198, 237
Future 40, 96, 156, 160, 190, 232,
294297
Game Theory 11, 35, 96, 108f, 118,
122127, 131137
Dictator Game 128, 132f, 149,
152f
Prisoners Dilemma Game 132,
136f
Public Goods Game 132, 136138,
140f, 148, 164
Social Dilemma Game 131, 136f,
140, 148, 154, 168f
Ultimatum Game 128, 132136,
149152, 167
Trust Game 128, 132, 149152,
154, 157, 162, 165
Gift 18, 33, 61, 132, 223226, 291f, 296f
God 4f, 13, 2023, 29, 33, 53, 60, 192,
231, 238240, 244255, 258f, 261263,
265f, 269278, 281286, 290f, 294300,
304, 307
Helping 22, 40, 147, 252, 278, 285,
291298
Homo oeconomicus 12, 35f, 101107,
132, 142, 149, 174
Hope 293296
Hostility 5, 201, 203, 307
Human Condition 79, 27, 57, 6776,
86, 243246, 251
Humanism 4, 9, 50, 5258, 60
Humanity 29, 16, 2025, 2735, 42,
4867, 7073, 7679, 84, 86f, 9092,
179, 188, 191, 227229, 232, 251,
255f, 259, 262265, 269273, 278,
284286, 289293, 298, 300307
Inhumanity 29, 20, 24f, 54, 6166,
76, 91, 228, 232, 234, 241, 244, 273,
289f, 298, 303307
Intentionality 21, 165, 229232
Justice 31, 42, 94, 110, 145, 198, 208,
224, 226, 229, 235238
Love 2125, 212, 225f, 245, 248,
251291, 294, 297, 299301, 305
Mercy 33, 251f, 257f, 285, 291293,
295299
324 index of subjects
Motivation 14, 38, 96, 105, 116, 120,
130, 143, 145, 158, 161165, 172f,
177f, 180, 194, 212, 241, 275
Nature 1, 415, 2737, 4262, 6671,
7479, 8388, 91f, 120, 124, 139, 163,
191198, 203, 211, 241, 243, 245, 267,
272, 304f
Naturalism 92, 110
Neighbor 2025, 29, 229, 231, 240,
244, 249301, 304307
Norm 1012, 36, 39f, 64f, 70, 74, 92, 96,
103, 105, 130, 135, 141149, 152f, 156f,
163, 165f, 171f, 177, 179, 181183,
189, 191, 195, 198, 235239, 242, 255,
263f, 301
Phenomenal Excess 2, 21, 29, 89f, 93,
171173, 187, 213, 227, 265, 271, 273,
290292, 297, 299, 307
Politics 9, 18, 57, 70, 76, 87, 107, 188f,
201, 204206, 214217, 220, 234, 242,
244, 274, 287, 289
Preference 12, 16, 29, 3638, 95f,
99, 102f, 126, 128132, 135137,
140153, 156160, 163, 177, 181, 187,
274, 276, 283
Public Good 122, 132, 136141,
145148, 164, 181
Punishment 12, 36, 41, 96, 132, 137,
139141, 144, 149, 153158, 161167,
170172, 177f, 181, 183
Reciprocity 24, 37, 3941, 109, 124,
127, 135, 139, 145, 148157, 160, 166,
181183, 188, 203, 217, 222226, 238,
252, 279
Recognition 1719, 75, 116, 126, 147,
159f, 188, 191, 206228, 238, 242f,
301, 307
Religion 18, 107, 225, 227, 239, 264f,
300
Responsibility 3, 19, 86, 188, 227230,
234238, 241243, 265, 289, 301, 304,
307
Sacrifice 23, 281
Salvation 32f
Sin 25, 32, 35, 246
Sociality 13, 6, 816, 1925, 2730,
35, 37, 42, 48, 74, 76, 8385, 91f, 97,
101, 110f, 122, 124f, 142, 147, 149,
157, 173, 177185, 187, 190f, 185,
197, 204206, 211, 222, 227, 229, 232,
237252, 265, 272f, 283, 286, 288,
290, 299, 303307
Society 8, 1318, 25, 30f, 34f, 40,
51, 63, 65f, 7276, 86f, 106f, 125,
141148, 157, 166, 172, 189207,
210215, 220, 241243, 245f, 261,
263, 265f, 286290, 301
Transcendence 19, 213, 221, 226228,
230232, 235, 238f, 243, 250, 268,
278, 286, 295
Utility 132, 135, 139f, 147, 149f, 153,
156158, 160f, 165f, 176, 178180
Visibility/In- 28, 80, 147, 238240,
274, 277