That human cognition is centered around the human being him- or herself, is self-evident and questionable at the same time; self-evident as we focus our attention on various matters and “man” appears as just another object of knowledge, questionable, however, because every selection implies a deselection and thus performs a statement that needs to be considered, especially when our self-understanding is concerned.

The project treats philosophical anthropology as a discipline in its own right, in which different conceptions of the human being are evolved and criticized but not without different interpretations interfering with each other. A diachronic perspective that leads until its current renaissance shows that philosophical anthropology constitutes a realm in which conflicts of interpretations that specify the notion of human being are argued out, for instance between neuroscience and philosophy.

Moreover, I will disclose the causes of these conflicts. The dissertation project will stress that every interpretation has apart from its positive (i.e. determining) a negative (i.e. unallocated) aspect. Negativity is to be understood as a descriptive term, thus not normative, as the absentee, without valuation. Based on this definition, it will serve as an anthropological parameter within a “negative anthropology”. The constitutive notion of “indetermination of man”, that is implied within and emerges out of the variety of interpretations, is specified therein.