“Especially in the crisis of the Enlightenment, we cannot afford to lose heart.” So said Alexander Kluge in an interview with *Die Zeit* (13/2026) on the death of Jürgen Habermas. In it, he reflects aloud on the social challenges posed by authoritarian tendencies in society and a public sphere in crisis. This sentence conveys a sense of “nevertheless” or “despite all adversities.” For despondency—spreading fear—would amount to giving up on oneself. And so Alexander Kluge, who had been a companion to Jürgen Habermas for 70 years, clings to this impulse to “carry on” after his death. A few days later, Alexander Kluge also passed away.

In the summer semester of 2026, I will be offering the course “What Is Man? Psychoanalytic Inquiries into Philosophical Anthropology” at the University of Linz. The starting point will be the classic question of the nature of man. According to a well-known classification by Immanuel Kant, philosophy deals with the questions “What can I know?”, “What should I do?”, “What may I hope for?”, and “What is man?” The last question is supposed to arise from the answers to the first three. The ability to orient one’s life according to rational principles is a central aspect of this. This philosophical understanding of humanity is challenged by the basic assumptions of psychoanalysis. The lecture, which will take place on Fridays between April 17, 2026, and May 29, 2026, as a block course from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m., will explore these questions raised by psychoanalysis regarding philosophical anthropology.