Helmut Plessner, was, with Max Scheler, the founder of modern philosophical anthropology. Born in Wiesbaden, Germany, he studied medicine, and then zoology and philosophy, at the universities of Freiburg, Heidelberg, and Berlin. He received a doctorate in philosophy from Erlangen in 1916 and his Habilitation in philosophy with Scheler and Hans Driesch at Cologne in 1920. His academic career in Germany was terminated by the National Socialist regime, and in 1934 he went to Groningen, the Netherlands, first as a guest of the Physiological Institute (where he was associated with F. J. J. Buytendijk), then as Rockefeller fellow, and from 1929 to 1942 as professor of sociology. Again dismissed by the Nazis, he was reinstated at Groningen by the Dutch in 1945 and occupied the chair of philosophy from 1946 to 1951. In 1951 he accepted the chair of sociology at the University of Göttingen in Germany. He became professor emeritus in...