Prof. Dr. Erol Göka
Human as Symbol-Maker: Animal Symbolicum
With the rise of modernity, which gathered momentum with the Enlightenment—and particularly under the influence of evolutionary theory—the traditional anthropological understanding that sought to interpret the universe by placing the human being at its center gave way to a naturalistic view that attempted to explain the human being on the basis of the physical knowledge he had produced about the universe.
Politics and Morality
The idea that life itself is politics and that the struggle between good and evil is constantforms the foundation of Carl Schmitt’s political philosophy. On the other hand, the notion thatmorality precedes human existence, that the ‘other’ is an essential element in the constructionof the self, that it stands before us even before we establish our own identity, and that the‘other’ essentially signifies morality constitutes the core of Emanuel Levinas’ moral philosophy.
