Karl Robert Eduard von Hartmann

Karl Robert Eduard von Hartmann ( born February 23, 1842 in Berlin, † June 5, 1906 in Berlin) was a German philosopher.

Life

Hartmann was born as the son of General Robert Hartmann, came in 1858 in the Guard Artillery Regiment and attended the artillery school, taking, forced by a knee ailment, in 1865 as a First Lieutenant in his resignation, received his doctorate in 1867 in Rostock and then lived as a private citizen in Berlin. He is buried in a grave of honor in the city of Berlin in the cemetery Columbiadamm.

He was in his first marriage with Agnes, born Taubert, married after the death of Alma, born Lorenz.

Work

After realizing the age of 22 the " thoughts as his profession ," he began towards the end of 1864 " without a plan " a work to write down what today is considered the major philosophical work of Hartmann. In this rapidly sensational Philosophy of the Unconscious (Berlin 1869; 9th Edition 1882, 2 vols ), he attempted a synthesis of aspects of the philosophies of Arthur Schopenhauer, Leibniz, Schelling and Hegel.

Hartmann referred to in its position as the extremes of the logical idea ( Hegel ) and the blind will ( Schopenhauer ) in the unity of the unconscious - the will and idea is - canceling monism. The unconscious mind is about the same for his system, which for Spinoza the substance for spruce up the absolute I, for Hegel, is the idea.

Hegel's biggest error was, the illogical, the equal contrast of the logical, to be considered as inner part of the logical; one of Schopenhauer, however, the notion as a mere " brain product" and the will, the nature of the world, to be regarded as destitute of any idea. The unconscious is both, will and imagination, real and ideal, illogical and logical at the same time. The " world process " was the result of the ideological opposition of these two attributes defined by the logical ( the idea ) would end with the defeat of the illogical ( the will ). This abolition of the will by presenting successes universal, not (as in Schopenhauer ) individually; not as a redemption of the individual (such as suicide), but to the whole world of phenomena from the agony of existence.

The pessimistic view of the " misery " has ( the excess of pain over pleasure ) in the world, therefore, in Hartmann not quietism, the " cowardly personal renunciation and withdrawal ", the " negation of the world " (as in Schopenhauer ), but rather " full dedication of the personality to the world process to its objective of general redemption of the world 's sake ", that is the positive " affirmation of the will to life," instead of " divisiveness " the "reconciliation" with the life of consequence. In this emphatic rejection of tranquil inaction is a clear demarcation to Schopenhauer. In the rejection of its pessimism Hartmann found in his first wife an advocate when she published The 1873 pessimism and his opponent under her birth name Agnes Taubert.

On Schelling's positive philosophy Hartmann pointed out in a separate document. He understood as a synthesis of the teachings of Hegel and Schopenhauer. As in this his first major work his metaphysics, as Hartmann in his second, the phenomenology of moral consciousness ( Berlin 1878, 2nd edition 1886), his moral philosophy, presented in a third his philosophy of religion, in a first, the historical-critical part: the religious consciousness of humanity in the transitional stages of its development (Berlin 1882), in a second, systematic part: the Religion of the Spirit ( Berlin, 1882 ), ie the religious consciousness at the level of concrete monism and his immanence.

A fourth important work deals with the aesthetics, in the first part of the German aesthetics since Kant (Berlin 1886), in the second part of the philosophy of beauty (Berlin 1887).

Confrontation with Nietzsche

Friedrich Nietzsche attacked in his essay On the Use and Abuse of History for Life ( 1874) Hartmann's philosophy of the unconscious mind sharp. In other writings, Nietzsche put explicitly or implicitly deal with the views of Hartmann's, he was mostly naive. Hartmann as a successful author ( for Nietzsche a " Modephilosöphchen " ) did not address the criticism of the still little-known Nietzsche. Only after Nietzsche had fallen into insanity and amazing little later came quickly to fame, Hartmann spoke up. Nietzsche's "new morality" was essentially a plagiarism of Max Stirner's ideas and was also pointed out far more clearly from this. Nietzsche, who mention Stirner in any of his writings must have known this because he had criticized in his Second Untimely observation of 1874 precisely those passages of his ( Hartmann's ) book, which explicitly " Stirner's position and its importance in the philosophy of the unconscious " were received. While Hartmann his own philosophy regarded as the overcoming of Stirner's " exclusive egoism " ( " where you have to have once all belonged to feel the size of Progress" ), he saw this in Nietzsche not given - Nietzsche had fallen back to " Stirner's point of view". Following Hartmann suspected other a direct influence by Nietzsche, Stirner. The question is controversial and still unclear.

Writings

• About the dialectical method (Berlin 1868)
• Philosophy of the Unconscious (Berlin 1869; 9th Edition 1882, 2 volumes)
• The thing in itself and its texture (Berlin 1871, 2nd edition in 1875 under the title Critical foundation of transcendental realism, 3rd edition 1885)
• Notes to the metaphysics of the unconscious (Berlin 1874, 2nd edition in 1878 under the title: Neo-Kantianism, Hegelianism and Schopenhauerianismus )
• The spontaneous decomposition of Christianity and the religion of the future (2nd edition Berlin 1874)
• Truth and error in Darwinism (Berlin 1875)
• Kirchmann's epistemological realism (Berlin 1875)
• Reform of higher education (Berlin 1875)
• Collected Studies and Essays (Berlin 1876), in addition to an autobiography, among other things: Schelling's positive philosophy of Hegel and Schopenhauer as a unit (1869 )
• Aphorisms about the Drama (1870 )
• Collected philosophical Abhandlangen the Philosophy of the Unconscious (1872 )
• About Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet (1874 )

• Volume 1: The German aesthetics since Kant (Berlin 1886)
• Volume 2: The Philosophy of the Beautiful (Berlin 1887).

Under the name of Charles Robert Hartmann, he published:

• Dramatic Seals: Tristan and Isolde; David and Bathsheba. Berlin, 1871.