ABSTRACT
It is quite common for opposing views to shape the evolution of a writer’s theoretical approach. However, one might argue that Jürgen Habermas delineated his stance towards other authors or traditions of thought with exceptional clarity. One of the most important confrontations he sought out was his engagement with philosophical anthropology. From the late fifties to the early seventies he was very critical of this tradition. His primary opponent was Arnold Gehlen, who focused on the human being as an agent and held that anthropology should be unequivocally empirical and free of metaphysics. These ideas were not too far away from Habermas’s own project of developing an anthropological underpinning for human socialization (and thus also for the development of morality and his theory of communicative action) by engaging with each individual branch of empirical science. Yet, the political implications Gehlen derived were directly opposed to Habermas’s aims. Gehlen suggested that due to the indeterminacy and malleability of human nature, human beings need the protection of strict institutions. His recourse to human nature thus served to substantiate a normative political theory.
