PHILOSOPHICAL ANTHROPOLOGY – A STUMBLING BLOCK FOR ANIMALISTIC PROSE FICTION?

Abstract

The current paper examines the attitudes of philosophical anthropology towards differentia specifica of the human and the animal, summarizing those according to three aspects – ratio and (self-)consciousness, language, and awareness of death. The purpose of this paper is therefore to investigate to what extent the radical difference between man and animal, imposed by philosophical anthropology, proves to have turned into a peculiar stumbling-stone for animalist prose fiction and its aesthetic grounds.