Adolf Portmann, Filozof vedy o živom

Abstract

The article focuses on the work of a Swiss zoologist and professor of University of Basel Adolf Portmann (1897 – 1982) which became especially influential among Czech natural philosophers. Portmann was studying an aesthetical dimension of living creatures, which he conceived not as an epiphenomenon of physiological and biological processes, but as a very subject of knowledge. He postulated that “self-expression of inwardness” (Selbstdarstellung der Innerlichkeit) is the integral part of everything living and manifests itself through display (eigentliche Erscheinung). This article aims to present a more complex picture of the thinker and his significance in the Czech philosophical environment to a Slovak reader.