Was den Menschen zum Menschen macht

Hans-Eduard Hengstenberg

3 Min. Lesezeit

🇩🇪 Deutsche Version: Hans Eduard Hengstenberg

Hans-Eduard Hengstenberg — philosopher of objectivity (Sachlichkeit) and of the fundamental personal acts — contributes to the book the insight that the human being is by essence a being called to love. Love is not something added to the person, but belongs to her deepest essence.

Key Contribution

Hengstenberg understands the human being as a being called to love. This calling is no external assignment, but is grounded in the nature of the person herself: because the person is a spiritual being, she is by essence open toward the other. Love — as the affirmation of the other for his own sake — is the highest enactment of the person, not an optional property (cf. Bexten 2017, pp. 207 ff.).

Central Ideas in the Book

Objectivity as Fundamental Attitude

By “objectivity” (Sachlichkeit) Hengstenberg means not sobriety or unfeelingness, but the fundamental attitude of the spirit that lets things count as they are. Objectivity is the cognitive correspondence to truth: it takes its measure from the thing itself (cf. Peter Wust). Applied to the person: objectivity toward the person means acknowledging her personhood and her dignity — seeing her as someone, not as something.

Love and Self-Transcendence

For Hengstenberg, love is the fundamental act of self-transcendence: in love, the person goes beyond herself and turns toward the other — not for her own sake, but for the sake of the other. This self-transcendence belongs to the Third Dimension of personhood. It presupposes the First Dimension (substantial being) and the Second Dimension (rational action) and brings them to completion.

Against Individualism

Hengstenberg shows: the person is no self-enclosed individual, but a being that is by essence ordered toward relations. The Personalistic Norm (Wojtyła) and Spaemann’s thesis that persons exist “only in the plural” are confirmed by Hengstenberg’s analysis: the person is wholly with herself (substance) and wholly with the other (love) — both at once.

Place in the Book

Hengstenberg is drawn upon above all in the chapter What Is Human Personhood? (German), in particular in the unfolding of the Third Dimension and of love as a fundamental personal act. His philosophy complements the substance-ontological tradition (Thomas, Boethius) with the dimension of personal enactments.

Sources: Bexten 2017, pp. 207 ff. (Hengstenberg’s determination of the human being as a being called to love and objectivity as fundamental attitude).

Further sources:

  • Philosophische Anthropologie (Philosophical Anthropology) (1957). Stuttgart: Kohlhammer (the human being as a being called to love, objectivity as the fundamental attitude of the spirit)

See also

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