Assessing Ernst Tugendhat's philosophical anthropology as a theoretical template for an empirical anthropology of the individual

As a result of focusing on other themes, anthropology hasn't developed sophisticated theoretical tools to analyse individuals. The philosopher Ernst Tugendhat has proposed a theory of the individual. In this article, the author tries to fathom in how far Tugendhat provides a useful template for an anthropology of the individual. In view of this aim, the author tests Tugendhat's theory with empirical anthropological studies, in which individuals play a major role, and with Albert Piette's writings on the individual. By confronting Tugendhat with these anthropological writers, he shows that Tugendhat's theory covers a significant part of how anthropologists perceive the individual, but he also identifies those points in Tugendhat's theory that might need to be elaborated further. Finally, the author tries to show that explicit reflection on the nature of individuals improves anthropologists' accounts of individuals.