Background fulfillment
Background fulfillment (occasionally also background fulfillment ) is a concept of modern anthropology and sociology that goes back to the sociologist Arnold Gehlen . It describes the permanent and stable fulfillment of important human needs, which can remain in the "background" in two ways: The person concerned does not have to be aware of it (in extreme cases he can even be mistaken that this fulfillment actually exists), and it does not have to be take place in individual acts or acts .
Based on a characterization of the human being as a deficiency and action-oriented being, Gehlen had developed a theory of institutions . Its elements and functions include internal stabilization, external stabilization, reciprocity and background fulfillment.
"The awareness that a need can be satisfied at any time [...] is what we call background fulfillment, whereby in borderline cases the presumed need no longer changes into actuality."
Based on Gehlen, the term has found wider distribution, especially in sociology, and in doing so has partly broken away from the conceptual framework of Gehlen's anthropology .
literature
- Arnold Gehlen: primitive man and late culture. Philosophical results and statements. Bonn 1956.