Philosophical anthropology investigates what makes us human, but it has produced accounts that exclude some members of our species. It relies often on non-naturalistic “philosophies of consciousness” that locate humanity in the cognitive capacity to objectively represent things, to reason teleologically and use tools, to use symbols and language, or to be self-conscious and question existence. This work pursues an alternative, thoroughly naturalistic philosophical anthropology by combining Arnold Gehlen’s theory of our behaviorally-detached and institutionally-structured impulses with Maurice Merleau-Ponty’s views on intersubjectivity, affect, sexuality, and social institutions. It locates the human within the unique structure of our capacity for feeling, which produces an inclusive account of “the human as the other” or Homo alter. Humans are deeply and thoroughly dependent on affective, bodily, communicative bonds, in which other humans appear as sources of pleasure, communicative
