John McDowell – između platonističke i scijentističke antropologije

The author puts forward a critical evaluation of the philosophical anthropology of American philosopher John McDowell, as set forth in his book Mind and World (1994). The starting point of McDowell’s anthropology is the classical tenet that humans are rational animals. According to McDowell, humans are animals characterized by a nature and animality “permeated” by rationality, i.e. by spontaneity. Humans consist of two components. The first encompasses most of the diversity common to humans and animals, while the second, rationality, i.e. spontaneity, is connected with the first component up to a certain age, but it remains extrinsic. McDowell strives to conceive of rationality and spontaneity as natural traits, and he does so by suggesting an expansion of the natural-scientific concept of nature to include the concept of so-called “second nature”. While the first nature encompasses our biological foundations, the second nature of humans, according to McDowell, consists of the faculties and qualities which can be related with rationality and spontaneity: the faculties of conceptual or abstract representation, of deliberate action, and, in particular, of responsiveness to reasons. Humans acquire their second nature through “upbringing” and “education”. These processes do not add to our believes that he is able to embed rationality into nature (thereby expanding the second nature) with no negation of its character sui generis, and that he is not forced to conclude that its activity as such can be elucidated by the tools of natural sciences. McDowell’s line of thought is a theoretically challenging attempt to sidestep the boundaries and avoid the obstacles of Platonic and scientistic anthropology. The author shows that the attempt was unsuccessful after all, since it failed to establish a well-balanced relation between the first and second nature. He concludes that McDowell’s conception does not make it possible to reach beyond the Platonic, i.e. scientistic anthropology.