Gehlen, Arnold (1904–1976)

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GEHLEN, ARNOLD
(1904–1976)

The German social psychologist Arnold Gehlen was born in Leipzig. In 1934 he succeeded his teacher Hans Driesch as professor of philosophy at the University of Leipzig. He went to Königsberg in 1938 and from 1940 to 1944 was at the University of Vienna. In 1948 he became professor of sociology and psychology at the Hochschule für Verwaltungswissenschaften at Speyer. After 1962 he was at the Technische Hochschule in Aachen. He died in Hamburg.

Gehlen, a leading representative of the movement known as philosophical anthropology, sought to reinterpret the concepts of mind and intelligence in biological and sociological terms. His eclectic thought has partial affinities with the pragmatism of G. H. Mead and F. C. S. Schiller, with the integrationalism of Rudolf von Ihering, Maurice Hauriou, and Carl Schmitt, and with the cultural criticism of Oswald Spengler, Hans Freyer, and Martin Heidegger. At the same time, he rejects ontology and metaphysics. He rejects the traditional dualisms of soul and body, mind and matter, theory and practice. He emphasizes the predominant role of collective, or institutional, values as against those of individuals. He discards rationalism and regards present-day civilization as one of late-period decline.

Method and Task of Philosophy

Gehlen rejects the experimental methods of the natural sciences as leading to materialism and rejects the "understanding" approach of the advocates of the Geisteswissenschaften, because it employs contemporary intellectual standards in the analysis of heterogeneous situations. The method of philosophy, Gehlen claims, is the intuitive or phenomenological method that he himself uses to interpret the significance of sociocultural institutions. According to Gehlen the task of philosophy differs from that of science. Disregarding the factual inferences of the sciences as irrelevant, philosophers should "unravel" (freilegen ) the realities that are their proper concern. These realities, or "categories," are the basic qualities of man and of institutions that remain intact after the fullest cultural, social, and historical analyses. Gehlen conceives of such a study of reality as empirical and thus envisages no complete system of categories.

Man's Nature and Power

Gehlen defines man as an "acting, anticipatory, nondetermined, self-delimiting being—a product of culture." Like other philosophical anthropologists, Gehlen views man, compared with other animals, as a vulnerable, deficient being, lacking the powerful instincts and natural weapons of survival of other animals. Man's fabled power of thought is an artificial substitute for his weak instincts. He is reduced to dependence on technical means for his survival. For survival and to liberate himself from anxiety he has had to develop tools and techniques including language, myth, and magic, and has had to create a common, habitual, and stable cultural environment.

This cultural environment is perpetuated in institutions, the historically evolved realities of state, family, law, economy, and so forth. To be "legitimate" an institution need not be useful but must be derived from man's nature as expressed in the cultic, nonutilitarian experiences of ecstasy, trance, and asceticism. Institutions are comprehensive and abstract structures that, through their principle of order, impart autonomy to the individuals participating in the collective entente secrète. The utility of social and cultural institutions is a secondary by-product of their development. Gehlen contrasts unreflective, spontaneous, self-sacrificing action, which he describes as noble (vornehm und edel ), with self-interested and utilitarian action (including its sublimated forms in art, philosophy, and literature), which he designates as base (gemein ).

Theory of Truth

Like certain pragmatists, Gehlen stressed action as the determinant of valid thought. While defining truth in terms of inner coherence and correspondence with facts, Gehlen also distinguished another aspect of truth, which he calls "inner truth." "Essentially irrational, non-scientific and not directly controllable experience has its truth: that is certainty. And it has its form of acting: non-experimental action based on tradition, instinct, habit and conviction" (Der Mensch, p. 330). These illogical, ethical certainties are valid without rational or experimental justification—as a matter of mere "appositeness" or inner sanity. Rational knowledge (Wissenschaft ) cannot take over the function of the idées directrices of society that are the product of Urphantasie, the divinity and energy of the animal component of man.

Pessimism

Gehlen's analysis of his age was unrelievedly somber. His times, according to Gehlen, were marked both by the dissolution of institutions and a shift in individual and social consciousness from irrational certainty to an anarchic intellectualization. This change took place against a historical background in which organic agrarian society was giving way to organized industrial society. The cultural rupture transforms social organisms into "colonies of parasites" riddled with subjectivism, mechanization, a turn toward abstract and mathematical methods in art and science (desensualization), and experimental thinking.

Rising living standards, far from representing progress, create new urges for limitless satisfactions. Such changes lead away from ethical obligation deriving from man's nature to goal-directed efficiency deriving from man's method. These changes entail making the spiritual sphere political and robbing the political sphere of its religious aura. Since science is esoteric, the mass of the people are condemned to be primitive. The eclipse of the nation-state and the trend toward supranational organization and peace will leave a legacy of unresolved conflicts that may lead to a complete loss of individual freedom. Only two very unlikely circumstances could reverse the trend: an unexpected return to legitimate, nonrational values that are not amenable to conscious volition or the rise of a creative personality to provide a new kind of institutional leadership.

According to Gehlen, the philosopher's task in such a world situation is to point to signs of decline and to emphasize the "legitimate" elements in national heritages as expressed in the institutions of state, church, and law. Although present-day society is increasingly alienated from these heritages, they alone represent society's legitimate "reality." Reality has therefore to be sought in the archaic forms of the past.

Bibliography

works by gehlen

Theorie der Willensfreiheit. Berlin: Junker und Dünnhaupt, 1933.

Der Staat und die Philosophie. Leipzig: F. Meiner, 1935.

Der Mensch, seine Natur und Stellung in der Welt. Berlin: Junker und Dünnhaupt, 1940; 6th ed., Bonn, 1958.

Urmensch und Spätkultur. Bonn: Athenaüm, 1956.

Die Seele im technischen Zeitalter. Hamburg, 1957.

Anthropologische Forschung. Hamburg: Rowohlt, 1961. A collection of articles. Bibliography, pp. 144–145.

Zeitschrift für philosophische Forschung 6 (1951–1952): 589–593. A bibliography.

Zeit-Bilder; zur Soziologie und Ästhetik der modernen Malerei. Frankfurt am Main: Athenäum Verlag, 1965.

Theorie der Willensfreiheit und frühe philosophische Schriften. Neuwied, Luchterhand, 1966.

Der Mensch; seine Natur und seine Stellung in der Welt. Frankfurt am Main: Äthenäum Verlag, 1966.

Moral und Hypermoral; eine pluralistische Ethik. Frankfurt am Main: Athenäum Verlag, 1969.

Studien zur Anthropologie und Soziologie. Neuwied, Luchterhand, 1971.

Soziales und instrumentales Handeln; Probleme der Technologie bei Arnold Gehlen und Jürgen Habermas [von] Wilhelm Glaser. Stuttgart: W. Kohlhammer 1972.

Standorte im Zeitstrom: Festschrift f. Arnold Gehlen z. 70. Geburtstag am 29. Jan. 1974. Edited by Ernst Forsthoff and Reinhard Hörstel. Frankfurt: Athenäum-Verlag, 1974.

Adornos Philosophie in Grundbegriffen: Auflösung einiger Deutungsprobleme. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1974.

Urmensch und Spätkultur: philosophische Ergebnisse und Aussagen. Frankfurt am Main: Athenaion, 1975.

Gesamtausgabe. Frankfurt am Main: Klostermann, 1978.

Die Frage nach der Technik bei Arnold Gehlen und Martin Heidegger. Aachen: Fotodruck J. Mainz, 1978.

Man in the Age of Technology. New York: Columbia University Press, 1980.

Zeit-Bilder: zur Soziologie und Ästhetik der modernen Malerei. 3rd ed. Frankfurt am Main: Klostermann, 1986.

Man, His Nature and Place in the World. New York: Columbia University Press, 1988.