Ferdinand Fellmann

In times of social upheaval, self-understanding has become shaky. Against this background, Fellmann asks the anthropological question anew: He does not inquire into human essence, but, in reference to Thomas Nagel’s question, “What is it like to be a bat?”, into subjective experience. The key concept that Fellmann rediscovers and focuses on is “life feelings”. He connects both sides of life experience, the subjective and the objective. In nine concise chapters, life feeling is viewed from diverse perspectives: from basic instincts and moral sensibility to postmodern attitudes in the global and digital world.

The Love-Code is a continuation of The Couple to the family, whose image has changed dramatically. Sexual promiscuity, the social equality of male and female, the individual planning of biographies, all make traditional gender roles appear outdated. Whether these changes will make the living together of the sexes easier is doubtful. This book addresses the question, how can love even in the conditions of neo-liberalism keep its mysterious binding force: through the recognition of sexual identity as a way to knowing the self and the other.

This work represents the turn in philosophical anthropology to intersubjectivity. In our day, when society threatens to disintegrate into elementary particles, the question becomes acute, What holds individuals together? Fellmann’s answer: the couple as anthropological radical liberates individual humans from isolation. Even outside of marriage and family institutions, erotic love is the communicative medium that cannot be replaced with discourse alone. Thus, the human finds justification through love: a way of living in no way inferior to Christian justification through belief.

This work has proved to be the secret classic of pedagogy. Fellmann argues for the transition from the strict Kantian ethics to the utilitarian-based art of living. This is presented in five steps: The class asks the instructor unexpected questions; how the instructor can address the fascination with evil and utility; the desire for morality and the metamorphoses of hedonism; even in morality, nothing is as successful as success; a field trip experiences a shipwreck, the social foundations of morality.

The ›zoological turn‹ currently proclaimed by animal ethicians suggests a complete reversal of our view on animal life. As welcome as the overcoming of an anthropocentric outlook may be, one cannot ignore the ideological bias of animal ethics. What looks like a modest surrender of our customary arrogance turns out to be a subtle way of reinforcing human supremacy. In order to debunk this kind of self-deception, the article reconstructs how ethics and biology consistently came together in the 19th century. Accordingly, the question arises which kind of ethics best suits current anthropology. My answer is: a concrete ethics of the art of living that takes into account the ambivalent nature of the relationship between humans and animals.