‘Anthropology and the Human Subject’

The German philosopher Immanuel Kant famously defined anthropology as the study of what it means to be a human being.  Following in his footsteps 'Anthropology and the Human Subject' provides a critical, comprehensive and wide-ranging investigation of conceptions of the human subject within the Western intellectual tradition, focusing specifically on the secular trends of the twentieth century.  Encyclopaedic in scope, lucidly and engagingly written, the book covers the main and varied currents of thought within this tradition.  Each chapter deals with a specific intellectual paradigm, ranging from Marx's historical materialism and Darwin's evolutionary naturalism, and their various off-shoots, through to those currents of thought that were prominent in the late twentieth century, such as, for example, existentialism, hermeneutics, phenomenology and post-structuralism.  With respect to each current of thought a focus is placed on their mass exemplars, outlining their biographical context, their mode of social analysis, and the 'ontology of the subject' that emerges from their key texts.  The book will appeal not only to anthropologists but to students and scholars within the human sciences and philosophy, as well as to any person interested in the question: What does it mean to be human?