The Default of the Human: Some Reflections on Negative Anthropology

This lecture reintroduces a notion that has for the most part been in the background of a great deal of modern and contemporary social thought, that of negative anthropology. Central to the concept is the understanding of human being as a Mängelwesen, to use Arnold Gehlen’s term, the first full articulation of which he attributed to Herder. The thought here is that human beings are marked by a lack that makes them existentially dependent on tools, extended periods of socialization and education, complex forms of cooperation, the social division of labor, in a word, that ensemble of prosthetic technologies, practices, and media we call culture. The talk will, however, focus on a different though related understanding of negative anthropology, one modelled on the tradition of negative theology, of apophatic discourse with respect to—we might add, out of respect for—God.

Eric L. Santner is the Philip and Ida Romberg Distinguished Service Professor in Modern Germanic Studies at the University of Chicago. He works at the intersection of literature, philosophy, psychoanalysis, political theory, and religious thought. His most recent book is Untying Things Together: Philosophy, Literature, and a Life in Theory.