Ferdinand Fellmann

In this article, we argue that there is an essential difference between social intelligence and creative intelligence, and that they have their foundation in human sexuality. For sex differences, we refer to the vast psychological, neurological, and cognitive science research where problem-solving, verbal skills, logical reasoning, and other topics are dealt with. Intelligence tests suggest that, on average, neither sex has more general intelligence than the other. Though people are equals in general intelligence, they are different in special forms of intelligence such as social intelligence and creative intelligence, the former dominant in women, the latter dominant in men. The dominance of creative intelligence in men needs to be explained. The focus of our research is on the strictly anthropological aspects, and consequently our explanation for this fact is based on the male-female polarity in the mating systems. Sexual dimorphism does not only regard bodily differences but implies different forms of sex life. Sex researchers distinguish between two levels of sexual intercourse: procreative sex and recreational sex, and to these we would add “creative sex.” On all three levels, there is a behavioral difference between men and women, including the subjective experience. These differences are as well attributed to culture as genetically founded in nature. Sexual reproduction is only possible if females cooperate. Their biological inheritance makes females play a decisive role in mate choice. Recreational sex for the purpose of pleasure rather than reproduction results from female extended sexual activity. Creative sex, on the contrary, is a specifically male performance of sexuality. We identify creative sex with eroticism. Eroticism evolved through the transformation of the sexual drive into a mental state of expectation and fantasizing. Hence, sex differences (that nowadays are covered up by cultural egalitarianism) continue to be the evolutionary origin of the difference between social and creative intelligence.

This paper proposes that the human mind in its creativity and emotional self-awareness is the result of the evolutionary transition from sexuality to eroticism. Eroticism is arrived at and defined by the high amount of energy displayed in animal sexuality. We propose that the unique human emotional intelligence is due to this “overflow” of mating energy. What from the survival viewpoint looks like an enormous waste of time and energy reveals itself to be an unexpected psychological benefit. The diversion of sexual energy from procreation — a process that results in erotic fantasies — turns intimacy into a source of human self -consciousness. This places different emphasis on the meaning of eroticism and provides a coherent scenario of mental development beyond mere cognitive capacities. Arguments are presented on how erotic imagination, or sexual excitation as an end in itself, promotes the human propensity for explorative curiosity; data from ethology, psychology, sociology, and neuroscience are presented to support these arguments. As philosophical anthropologists, we do not provide new empirical data, but the available results of comparative behavioral research confirm our hypothesis.

This article addresses the emergence of human personality in evolution. The mechanisms of natural and sexual selection developed by Darwin are not sufficient to explain the sense of self. Therefore we attempt to trace the evolutionary process back to a form of selection termed “emotional selection.” This involves reconstructing selection out of subjective qualities and showing how emotions enable human forms of life that are relevant for the cultural level of cooperation that marks our species. We see a paradigm shift in the concept of emotional selection that binds emotion and evolution closer together, thus closing the explanatory gap between classical ethology and modern evolutionary psychology.

In this paper I claim that the metaphysical concept of culture has come to an end. Among the European authors Georg Simmel is the foremost who has deconstructed the myth of culture as a substantial totality beyond relations or prior to them. Two tenets of research have prepared the end of all-inclusive culture: First, Simmel's formal access that considers society as the modality of interactions and relations between individuals, thus overcoming the social evolutionism of Auguste Comte; second, his critical exegesis of idealistic philosophy of history, thus leaving behind the Hegelian tradition. Although Simmel adheres in some statements to the outdated idea of morphological unity, his sociological and epistemological thinking paved the way for the concept of social identity as a network of series connected loosely by contiguity. This type of connection is confirmed by the present feeling of life as individual self-invention according to changing situations

The pair-bond model of human origin proposed by Lovejoy in his “Reexamining Human Origins in Light of Ardipithecus ramidus” combines fossil records with the unique sexual behavior of modern humans. This construct, however, seems to lack an emotionally important element. By connecting ovulatory crypsis with frontal copulation and face-to-face contact, the transition to the complexity and subtlety of human emotional life becomes more evident. Reproductive success and emotional representation are considered as two interacting levels in the phylogenetic scale. Thus, the behavioral frame of sociobiology is extended to psychobiological phenomena and a bridge is built between natural sciences and philosophy. Light from both sides will be thrown on the origin of man, including his unique cultural history

This article is about Eroticism as a key-concept in the psychological understanding of the human mind. The meaning of the term can be defined as follows: Eroticism is the way humans experience sexuality as a self-sufficient mental activity. Sexuality underlies different social rules in varying cultural contexts and may lead to different ways of thinking, but there is no evidence that cultural diversity actually leads to fundamentally different ways of feeling. The constant disposition for recreational rather than procreational sex makes eroticism a medium of human creativity. In this sense, eroticism is considered a central factor in the process of hominisation. The crucial cognitive competence which makes for the uniqueness of our species is due to the transformation of sexuality into eroticism and its disposition for social learning. In the animal kingdom, sex contributes to the welfare of the horde, while in human society eroticism contributes to individual self-recognition and paves the way to moral awareness. Methodologically, I plead for a cooperation of psychological and anthropological research, each utilizing and combining the complementary aspects of both approaches.

In contrast to the hermeneutics of Hans-Georg Gadamer, which maintains the interpretation of classical texts, I emphasize the role of images in our everyday understanding. I see the added value of images in the fact that they show the latent background, from which the manifest messages draw their actual significance. Before Thomas Mitchell’s “pictorial turn”, I referred to the iconic turn as “imagic turn” in order to emphasize the originary connection between images and magic rituals. The magical component of the hermeneutic image is to the human ability to make something absent present.

Die neuzeitliche Ethik hat den teleologischen Naturbegriff der Antike durch den Begriff der praktischen Vernunft ersetzt, deren Normen alle Menschen unterworfen sind. Dieses von Immanuel Kant entwickelte Modell hat den Vorteil, Ethik als deduktive Disziplin zu behandeln, es hat aber den Nachteil, dass der Ausgangspunkt eine abstrakte Konstruktion ist. Konstruiert wird als Kern des Menschen eine rein logische Instanz, die sich selbst nach dem Prinzip des Widerspruchs Gesetze des Handelns gibt. Davon getrennt bleibt die empirische Wirklichkeit, in der die Menschen nach dem Prinzip der Selbsterhaltung agieren. Damit hat Kant die antike Tugendethik, die zugleich als Lebenskunst auftrat, gespalten in Moralphilosophie und Anthropologie.

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 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.

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.