Why humans are naturally artificial beings trapped between open and closed intentionality

Ideas & Philosophy · Published 3 October 2026 Swipe more like this →

In short: Helmuth Plessner argued that humans are unique because we are both our physical borders and something that possesses them. This eccentric position allows us to alternate between open and closed intentionality, separating us from plants and animals while rooting our consciousness firmly in the material world of nature.

Helmuth Plessner, a central figure in philosophical anthropology, sought to move beyond the traditional mind-body dualism that dominated Western thought. In his 1928 masterwork, Levels of Organic Life and the Human, he proposed that humans are 'naturally artificial beings.' Unlike plants, which express themselves through simple environmental feedback, or animals, which are trapped by a closed form of intentionality, humans possess a unique 'eccentric' position. We do not merely exist within our borders; we are aware of them and can act upon them.

Plessner’s work suggests that our consciousness is not a product of a transcendental ego, but is instead grounded in the behavior of environmentally interactive organisms. By realizing these borders, we engage in self-positioning. This framework replaces Kant’s cognitive idealism—which viewed a priori categories as filters of the mind—with a 'material a priori.' According to Plessner, the formal qualities of our experience, such as time, space, and causality, are given to us through our physical nature and our interactions with the environments we inhabit.

The implications of this philosophy extend to how we understand human behavior, including expressions like laughing and crying, which Plessner analyzed as limits of human conduct. His life was as complex as his theories; forced to resign his professorship in Cologne in 1933 due to his Jewish ancestry, he spent years in exile and underground before returning to academia in Germany in 1951. Today, his legacy is honored by the city of Wiesbaden, which awards a prize in his name to intellectuals who continue his work on the nature of human existence.

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