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Helmuth Plessner Finally Translated



A famous German-language book on philosophy first published in 1929 has finally been translated into English. 

The work is Helmuth Plessner's LEVELS OF ORGANIC LIFE AND THE HUMAN.

For Plessner what is critical to grasp about life, the sine qua non of the living, is that every organism has a self-positioning boundary. There is the organism on the one hand, there is the environment on the other. Further, the organism itself is largely responsible for where that boundary is. Animals move about more than plants of course, but the difference is of degree rather than kind, and all organisms grow.

The outer boundary itself may be defined as that which is neither living nor non-living (the outer layer of our skin consists of dead cells), this making it a liminal zone. There is movement both outward and inward. The liminal zone moves outward as an organism grows, there is movement inward in the process of digestion.

In Plessner's words, "It is these two moments together that determine the essence of the boundary as that which leads to the other and at the same time closes it out. It is thus that the boundary induces boundedness without thereby eliminating the connection between that which is bounded and the other. The isolation achieved with the boundedness in fact signifies the integration of the bounded entity into the context."

What does this take on biology tell us about being human? Plessner's words again:

The human I takes "Its life out of its center [and] enters into a relationship to it; the reflexive character of the centrally represented body is given to itself. Although the living being on this level is also absorbed in the here/now, lives out of the center, it has become conscious of the centrality of its existence. It has itself; it knows of itself; it notices itself -- and this makes it an I. "

Deep stuff. Back in the 1990s Habermas said that this was the most important German-language work on philosophy never to have been translated into English. That wrong has now been righted. 
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