- Characteristics and object of study of modern anthropology
- Philosophical currents of modern anthropology
- References
The modern anthropology is part of the study of social sciences, and analyzes man as a rational being based on philosophical theories and integrating other disciplines.
Its objective is to analyze all aspects of man to understand his evolution and especially the important advances and changes of thought that arose between the seventeenth and nineteenth centuries.
Kant, Rousseau, Hegel, Comte and Marx were some of the philosophers who influenced this discipline.
They exalted human reason to the maximum and distanced themselves from religious beliefs with the fixed premise that knowledge, reason, freedom and creation were the ultimate goal of man.
Characteristics and object of study of modern anthropology
Anthropology, previously responsible only for the study of primitive men, begins to integrate philosophical theories and comparative methodologies to its research in order to analyze man from different positions.
This led to this science branching out, as each area of study would need its specialization but also each philosophical area would interpret the action of man with its own visions.
The areas of study that would be integrated into anthropology creating new disciplines would be cultural anthropology, linguistic anthropology, biological anthropology and archeology.
Then the structuralist anthropological visions, the Marxist or the functionalist, arose, and the first anthropological societies were created in Germany, England and France.
Philosophical currents of modern anthropology
Anthropology begins to be analyzed under rationalist philosophical premises. This current settled in Europe between the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries and later led to idealism.
Man will begin to study himself as an autonomous being. It is not the person that matters anymore but the reason. The man must be approached from the development of his ideas.
They believed that rationality would solve all the problems of humanity, it should be used and it would be the main objective of any study.
In England, on the other hand, they did not profess the same ideas. They clung to the fact that what was important was experience and facts, then the empiricism that was raised by Hobbes, Locke and Hume among others emerged.
Another current that coexisted between the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries was the mechanism promoted by Newton. They studied man as if he were a machine to be calculated.
In Germany, idealism followed in the 13th and 19th centuries. In this current rationalism would lead, since the search for idealism would try to harmonize with reason to achieve theorizing about the unknowns and human contradictions that realism had not been able to answer.
References
1- American Anthropological Association. (sf). Anthropology: Education for the 21st Century. American Anthropological Association. Recovered from americananthro.org.
2- Discover Anthropology. (sf). What is Anthropology? Discover Anthropology. Recovered from discoveranthropologu.org.uk.
3- Telles, A. (2007). Anthropological research. San Vicente (Alicante): Editorial Grupo Universitario, Recovered from: s3.amazonaws.com
4- Cienfuegos, C. (1993). Philosophical anthropology: the encounter and discovery of man for himself. Barcelona: Paidós.
5- Arribas, V., Boivin, M. and Rosato, A. (2004). Constructors of Otherness: An Introduction to Social and Cultural Anthropology. EA. Recovered from antroporecursos.com