Kant claimed that the principal topics of philosophy all converge on one question: "Was ist der Mensch?" Starting with the main claim that conceptions of the human play a significant structuring role in theory construction, the contributors in this volume investigate the roles that conceptions of the human play both in philosophy and in other human and social sciences. Renowned scholars from various disciplines - philosophy, anthropology, psychology, literary studies - discuss not only the relations between philosophicy and empirical knowledge of the human being. In a rare dialogue between Anglo-Saxon and German humananities, the contributors refer to each other and take up questions of their co-contributors. Thus, controversial, cross-disciplinary debates develop, arise providing new arguments and insights to a question which is methodologically prior to that posed by Kant: How can conceptions of the human be justified?