Karl Robert Eduard von Hartmann (February 23, 1842 –
June 5, 1906), was a German
philosopher.
Biography
He was born in Berlin, and educated with the intention of a military career. He entered the
artillery of the Guards as an officer in 1860, but was forced to leave in 1865 because of a knee problem. After some hesitation between music and philosophy,
he decided to make the latter his profession, and in 1867 obtained a Ph. D. from the University of Rostock. He subsequently returned to Berlin, and died at Grosslichterfelde.
Philosophy
His reputation as a philosopher was established by his first book, The Philosophy of the Unconscious (1869). This
success was largely due to the originality of its title, the diversity of its contents (Von Hartmann professing to obtain his
speculative results by the methods of inductive science, and making plentiful use of concrete illustrations), the fashionableness
of its pessimism and the vigour and lucidity of its style. The conception of the Unconscious, by which Von Hartmann describes his ultimate metaphysical principle, is not at bottom as paradoxical as it sounds, being merely a new and mysterious
designation for the Absolute of German metaphysicians.
The Unconscious appears as a combination of the metaphysics of Georg
Hegel with that of Arthur Schopenhauer. The Unconscious is both
Will and Reason and the absolute all-embracing ground
of all existence. Von Hartmann thus combines pantheism with panlogism in a manner adumbrated by Schelling in
his positive philosophy. Nevertheless Will and not Reason is the primary aspect of the Unconscious, whose melancholy career is
determined by the primacy of the Will and the subservience of the Reason. Precosmically the Will is potential and the Reason
latent, and the Will is void of reason when it passes from potentiality to actual willing. This latter is absolute misery, and to
cure it the Unconscious evokes its Reason and with its aid creates the best of all
possible worlds, which contains the promise of its redemption from actual existence by the emancipation of the Reason from
its subjugation to the Will in the conscious reason of the enlightened pessimist. When the greater part of the Will in existence
is so far enlightened by reason as to perceive the inevitable misery of existence, a collective effort to will non-existence will
be made, and the world will relapse into nothingness, the Unconscious into quiescence.
Von Hartmann is a pessimist, but not an unmitigated one. The individual's happiness is
indeed unattainable either here and now or hereafter and in the future, but he does not despair of ultimately releasing the
Unconscious from its sufferings. He differs from Schopenhauer in making salvation by the negation of the Will-to-live depend on a collective social effort and not on individualistic asceticism. The conception of a redemption of the Unconscious also supplies the ultimate basis of Von
Hartmann's ethics. We must provisionally affirm life and devote ourselves to social evolution,
instead of striving after a happiness which is impossible; in so doing we shall find that morality renders life less unhappy than
it would otherwise be. Suicide, and all other forms of selfishness, are highly reprehensible.
Epistemologically Von Hartmann is a transcendental
realist, who ably defends his views and acutely criticizes those of his opponents. His realism enables him to maintain the
reality of Time, and so of the process of the world's
redemption.
Works
Von Hartmann's numerous works extend to more than 12,000 pages. They may be classified into:
Systematical, including Grand probleme:
- Die Erkenninistheorie; Kategorienlehre; Das sittliche Bewusstsein; Die Philosophie des Schönen; Die Religion des Geistes;
Die Philosophie des Unbewussten (3 vols., which now include his, originally anonymous, self-criticism, Das Unbewusste vom
Standpunkte der Physiologie und Descendenztheorie, and its refutation, Eng. trs. by W. C.
Coupland, 1884)
- System der Philosophie im Grundriss, L
- Grundriss der Erkenntnislehre
Historical and critical:
- Das religiöse Bewusstsein der Menschheit
- Geschichte der Metaphysik (2 vols.)
- Kants Erkenntnistheorie
- Kritische Grundlegung des transcendentalen Realismus
- Uber die dialektische Methode
- studies of Schelling, Lotze,
von Kirchmann
- Zur Geschichte des Pessimismus
- Neukantianismus, Schopenhauerismus, Hegelianismus
- Geschichte der deutschen Ästhetik und Kant
- Die Krisis des Christentums in der modernen Theologie
- Philosophische Fragen der Gegenwart
- Ethische Studien
- Moderne Psychologie
- Das Christentum des neuen Testaments
- Die Weltanschauung der modernen Physik
Popular:
- Soziale Kernfragen
- Moderne Probleme
- Tagesfragen
- Zwei Jahrzehnte deutscher Politik
- Das Judentum in Gegenwart und Zukunft
- Die Selbstzersetzung des Christentums
- Gesammelte Studien
- Der Spiritismus and Die Geisterhypothese des Spiritismus
- Zur Zeitgeschichle
His select works were published in 10 volumes.
See Also
This article incorporates text from the Encyclopædia
Britannica Eleventh Edition, a publication now in the public
domain.
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