Helmuth Plessner (1892 –1985) was a leading figure in the field of philosophical anthropology. He was the author of more than thirteen books, including The Limits of Community: A Critique of Social Radicalism, The Levels of the Organic and the Human, and Laughing and Crying: A Study of the Limits of Human Behavior. Heike Delitz is a Privatdozent in general sociology and social theory at the University of Bamberg. She is the author of Bergson-Effekte: Aversionen und Attraktionen im französischen soziologischen Denken (The Bergson Effect: Aversions and Attractions in French Sociological Thought). Joachim Fischer is an honorary professor of sociology at TU Dresden and president of the Helmuth Plessner Society. He is the author of Philosophische Anthropologie: Eine Denkrichtung des 20. Jahrhunderts (Philosophical Anthropology: A Current of Thought in the Twentieth Century) and Exzentrische Positionalität: Studien zu Helmuth Plessner (Eccentric Positionality: Studies on Helmuth Plessner). Robert Seyfert is an Akademischer Rat (senior researcher/lecturer) at the Institute of Sociology at the University of Duisburg-Essen, Germany. He is the author of Das Leben der Institutionen: Zu einer allgemeinen Theorie der Institutionen (The Life of Institutions: Toward a General Theory of Institutions). Nils F. Schott, the James M. Motley Postdoctoral Fellow in the Humanities at Johns Hopkins University, is a widely published translator of work in the humanities, including Vladimir Jankélévitch's Henri Bergson.