The Human Image in Helmuth Plessner, Pierre Bourdieu, and Psychocentric Culture

Isaac E. Catt's book critiques naturalistic reductions of humans to animals, neuro substrates, and DNA, offering a new interpretation of Plessner and Bourdieu. It provides a basis for criticizing the failed mechanistic medical model in psychiatry, arguing for reconceptualizing psychiatry as a human science, and constructing a new ecological image of communicative being.

Format: Hardback
Length: 234 pages
Publication date: 15 February 2023
Publisher: Lexington Books

In his groundbreaking work "The Human Image in Helmuth Plessner,Pierre Bourdieu, and Psychocentric Culture," Isaac E. Catt takes a bold and critical stance against the reductionist approaches that seek to explain human behavior and cognition in terms of animalistic instincts, neurological substrates, or DNA. Catt delves into a fresh interpretation of Plessner and Bourdieu, unveiling the combinatory logic of semiotic phenomenology that underlies their theories and their shared challenge of communication. By merging philosophical anthropology and communicology, Catt offers a robust foundation for critiquing the failed mechanistic medical model in psychiatry, advocating for a reconceptualization of psychiatry as a human science, and proposing a new ecological image of communicative being.

Throughout the book, Catt exposes alternative attempts to transcend dualisms such as cybernetics, anti-anthropocentrism, and biosemiotics, which risk perpetuating the very objects of their analysis. This work will appeal to scholars of communication, semiotics, and psychology, as it provides a thought-provoking exploration of the complex interplay between human behavior, culture, and communication.

Weight: 454g
Dimension: 229 x 152 (mm)
ISBN-13: 9781666918557