Arnold Gehlen's seminal socio-anthropological study Urmensch und
Spatkultur, first published in 1956, is primarily a work on the
philosophy of institutions. In this edition, it is supplemented by
further essays on a theory of institutions. For Gehlen, the foundation
of institutions is closely connected with the objectification of magical
ideas and practices by means of communal, symbolically meaningful
actions. Gehlen detected the most elementary forms of such behavior in
the observation of early, scriptless societies. From this Gehlen
concluded that communal interactions enact a transcendence into this
world, i.e. the objectification of the otherwise invisible. For Gehlen,
institutions serve to secure the indirect relationship humans are forced
to establish with others as well as with themselves. In these social
regulations, Gehlen saw improbable and painstakingly achieved
stabilizations, the binding character and thus the impact of which had
increasingly dissolved since the Enlightenment, the great revolutions,
and at the latest since the 20th century. The progressive diminishing of
the validity of institutions in the age of what he called post-histoire
was regarded by Gehlen as fateful. What is called late culture in the
title of the present book signifies an increasing subjectivism as well
as a state in which the comfortably relieving automatisms of mass
production and corresponding mass supply fostered the widespread
conviction that the purpose of all action was the avoidance of
displeasure, aversion and pain in order to yield lustful sensations.
