Abstract

Animal psychology at the beginning of the 20th century was in the state of a pre-paradigmatic science (Thomas Kuhn). As a result, the philosophical implications and guidelines of research were more clearly in the foreground of the research programme than in later phases of behavioural research. Using Helmuth Plessner’s philosophy of nature or biophilosophy as a case study, this article examines the influence of a phenomenologically oriented animal psychology. WithinPlessner’s oeuvre, the structure-forming relationships between the “Deutung des mimischen Ausdrucks” (1925) and the "Stufen des Organischen und der Mensch" (1928) build the core interest of this investigation.