Martin Luther University of Halle
Facetten des Menschen. Zur Anthropologie Moses Mendelssohns“ – Facets of Humankind. On Moses Mendelssohn’s Anthropology
This study portrays Moses Mendelssohn’s oeuvre as a unique approach to the just emerging science of rational anthropology. The overarching concern of his ‘Science of Humankind’ is the explanation and justification of ‘the vocation of the human’: to make oneself and others more perfect. I argue that Mendelssohn’s version of it is one of the most elaborate attempts to reformulate humankind’s characteristic features as a cultural achievement. It therefore serves as an alternative to more naturalistically oriented theories as held by Ernst Platner or the “Philosophical Doctors” at Halle. At the same time, Mendelssohn seeks hereby to avoid the pitfalls of a more historical, or ethnological conception such as Herder’s.
Mendelssohn’s attempt to explain the human striving for perfection and the effects of this fundamental need were challenged throughout his life. He developed and modified his theory by engaging in philosophical debates with his contemporaries, be it in direct exchange, via letters and reviews, or by written reactions of book-length. This study reconstructs his battles to carve out the encompassing idea which unites his work. Thus, Mendelssohn is shown as a part of different intellectual constellations of the Enlightenment era, which continues to inspire modern philosophical thought.
Dr. Anne Pollok studied Philosophy, German Literature, and Law at Marburg University (M.A. 2004). She received her Dr. phil. from Halle University (summa cum laude, 2007). 2007/08 she joined the Department of Philosophy at the University of South Carolina as an Instructor. 2008/9 the Leo Baeck Postdoctoral Fellowship allowed her a year of research at Stanford University. She stayed in the Bay Area until 2013, working at Stanford as a Postdoctoral Fellow in the Introduction to the Humanities / Thinking Matters Program.
Anne Pollok’s dissertation on Moses Mendelssohn’s Anthropology is praised to become a “new classic” in the Mendelssohn literature. In 2012 it earned her the Moses Mendelssohn Prize, awarded by the Dessau Foundation for the Promotion of the Humanities. She is also an acclaimed editor of Mendelssohn’s works, published by Meiner, Hamburg.
Her current project centers on the emergence of rational anthropology in the 18th century as a richer and more humanistic alternative to naturalistic tendencies in philosophical inquiries into our rational and social human nature.For her research, Anne Pollok was awarded the Kristeller-Popkin Travel Fellowship by the Journal of the History of Philosophy in 2012; she won Residential Fellowships at the Marbach Institute of Literature (2011), and the Herzog August Library at Wolfenbuettel (2012/13).
Most recent publications:
“The Power of Rituals. Mendelssohn and Cassirer on the Religious Dimension of Bildung”, in: Religious Studies (forthcoming 2014).
“Kant’s defeated counterpart. Moses Mendelssohn on the beauty, mechanics, and death of the human soul”, in: Kant’s Philosophy of the Unconscious, ed. by Riccardo Pozzo and Marco Sgarbi. Berlin: De Gruyter, 2012, pp. 103-130.
“Schmiedet keine Hypothesen! Mendelssohn und Lessing diskutieren den Fortschritt”, in: Moses Mendelssohn. Special Edition of Text + Kritik. Ed. by Heinz-Ludwig Arnold. München: Edition Text + Kritik, 2011, pp. 64-75.
“Cassirer’s Kant: From the Animal Morale to the Animal Symbolicum”, with Konstantin Pollok, in: Yearbook for German Idealism 8 (2011), pp. 282-315.
Facetten des Menschen. Zu Moses Mendelssohns Anthropologie. Hamburg: Felix Meiner Verlag, 2010 (= Studien zum 18. Jahrhundert 32), pp. 630. (Review by Cord-Friedrich Berghahn, in: Arbitrium 29.2 (2011), pp. 184-86.)