Hermann Lotze
Hermann Lotze | |
---|---|
Born | |
Died | 1 July 1881 | (aged 64)
Alma mater | Leipzig University |
Era | 19th-century philosophy |
Region | Western philosophy |
School | German idealism[1] Neo-Kantianism[2] |
Institutions | Leipzig University University of Göttingen |
Theses | |
Academic advisors | cosmology, and phenomenology |
Rudolf Hermann Lotze (
Biography
Lotze was born in
He attended the
Lotze's first work was his dissertation De futurae biologiae principibus philosophicis, with which he gained in July 1838 the degree of
His two early books remained unnoticed by the reading public. He first became known to a larger circle through a series of works which aimed at establishing the study of both the physical and mental phenomena of the human organism. He applied the same general principles which had been adopted in the investigation of inorganic phenomena. These later works considered the human organism in its normal and diseased states. They included his Allgemeine Pathologie und Therapie als mechanische Naturwissenschaften (1842, 2nd ed., 1848), the articles "Lebenskraft" (1843) and "Seele und Seelenleben" (1846) in Rudolf Wagner's Handwörterbuch der Physiologie, his Allgemeine Physiologie des Körperlichen Lebens (1851), and his Medizinische Psychologie oder Physiologie der Seele (1852).
When Lotze published these works, medical science was still under the influence of Schelling's
These doctrines of Lotze, though pronounced with the distinct and reiterated reservation that they did not contain a solution of the philosophical question regarding the nature of mechanism, were nevertheless by many considered to be the last word of the philosopher, a decisive rejection of the reveries of Schelling and the idealistic theories of Hegel. Published as they were during the years when the modern school of
The misinterpretations which he had suffered induced Lotze to publish a small polemical pamphlet (Streitschriften, 1857), in which he corrected two mistakes. His opposition to Hegel's formalism had induced some to associate him with the materialistic school, others to count him among the followers of
Philosophical work
This article is written like a personal reflection, personal essay, or argumentative essay that states a Wikipedia editor's personal feelings or presents an original argument about a topic. (November 2022) |
Lotze worked in a post-revolutionary time of transition between the idealistic and rationalist legacies of
He believed that everywhere in the wide realm of observation we find three distinct regions: the region of facts, the region of laws and the region of standards of value. These three regions are separate only in our thoughts, not in reality. Full understanding comes through conviction that the world of facts is the field in which those higher standards of moral and aesthetic value are being realized through the medium of laws. Such a union is, for him, only intelligible through the idea of a personal Deity, who in the creation and preservation of a world has voluntarily chosen certain forms and laws, through the natural operation of which the ends of His work are gained.
Lotze proposed a view called teleological idealism, whose central principle is the principle of teleomechanism, the idea that, in logic, metaphysics and science, mechanism is compatible with teleology.[3]
Lotze's lectures ranged over a wide field: he delivered annually lectures on
. In these lectures he expounded his peculiar views in a stricter form, and during the last decade of his life he embodied the substance of those courses in his System der Philosophie, of which only two volumes have appeared (vol. I Logik, 1st ed., 1874, 2nd ed., 1880; vol. II Metaphysik, 1879). The third and concluding volume, which was to treat in a more condensed form the principal problems of practical philosophy, of philosophy of art and religion, was not completed before his death.A problem of a purely formal character for him was to try to bring unity and harmony into the scattered thoughts of our general culture. He wanted especially to investigate those conceptions which form the initial assumptions and conditions of the several sciences, and to fix the limits of their applicability.
The investigations will then naturally divide themselves into three parts, the first of which deals with
- those to our mind inevitable forms, or laws, in which we are obliged to think about things, if we think at all (metaphysics), the second being devoted to
- the great region of facts, trying to apply the results of metaphysics to these, specially the two great regions of external and mental phenomena (cosmology and psychology), the third dealing with
- those standards of value from which we pronounce our aesthetic or ethical approval or disapproval.
His goal was to form some general idea how laws, facts and standards of value may be combined in one comprehensive view.
The world of many things surrounds us; our notions, by which we manage correctly or incorrectly to describe it, are also ready made. What remains to be done is, not to explain how such a world manages to be what it is, nor how we came to form these notions, but to eliminate those abstract notions which are inconsistent and jarring, or to remodel and define them so that they may constitute a consistent and harmonious view.
The course of things and their connexion is only thinkable by the assumption of a plurality of existences, the reality of which (as distinguished from our knowledge of them) can be conceived only as a multitude of relations. This quality of standing in relation to other things is that which gives to a thing its reality. And the nature of this reality again can neither be consistently represented as a fixed and hard substance nor as an unalterable something, but only as a fixed order of recurrence of continually changing events or impressions. The things themselves which exist and their changing phases must stand in some internal connexion; they themselves must be active or passive, capable of doing or suffering.
Why not interpret at once and render intelligible the common conception originating in natural science, viz. that of a system of laws which governs the many things? But, in attempting to make this conception quite clear and thinkable, we are forced to represent the connexion of things as a universal substance, the essence of which we conceive as a system of laws which underlies everything and in its own self connects everything, but is imperceptible, and known to us merely through the impressions it produces on us, which we call things. Practical life as well as those of science are equally served if we deprive the material things outside of us of an independence, and assign to them merely a connected existence through the universal substance by the action of which alone they can appear to us. He traced material things through our scientific discovery of them, back to the culture which gave them reality through this science, and ultimately back to the values which established this culture. This method is known as "regressive analysis."[3]
Lotze's historical position is of much interest. Though he disclaims being a follower of
What, however, with the idealists was an object of thought alone, the absolute, for Lotze cannot be defined in rigorous philosophical language; the aspirations of the human heart, the contents of our feelings and desires, the aims of art and the tenets of religious faith must be grasped in order to fill the empty idea of the absolute with meaning. These manifestations of the divine spirit again cannot be traced and understood by reducing (as Hegel did) the growth of the human mind in the individual, in society and in history to the monotonous rhythm of a speculative schematism. The essence and worth which is in them reveals itself only to the student of detail, for reality is larger and wider than philosophy. The problem, "how the one can be many", is only solved for us in the numberless examples in life and experience which surround us, for which we must retain a lifelong interest and which constitute the true field of all useful human work.
This conviction of the emptiness of terms and abstract notions, and of the fullness of individual life, led Lotze to combine in his writings the two courses into which German philosophical thought had been moving since the death of its great founder, Leibniz. We may define these courses by the terms
The age in which Lotze lived and wrote in Germany did not appreciate the position he took up. Frequently misunderstood, yet rarely criticized, he was nevertheless greatly admired, listened to by devoted hearers and read by an increasing circle. But this circle never attained to the unity of a philosophical school.
Works
Works in Latin and German
- De futurae biologiae principiis philosophicis (1838). Reprinted in Kleine Schriften, 1885. Vol. 1, pp. 1–25
- De summis continuorum (1840).
- Gedichte (1840).
- Metaphysik (1841). Google (Oxford)
- Allgemeine Pathologie und Therapie als mechanische Naturwissenschaften (1842). 2nd ed., 1848. Google (Harvard)
- Logik (1843). Google (NYPL) 2nd ed., 1880.
- Ueber den Begriff der Schönheit (1845). Reprint, 1847. Google (Oxford)
- Allgemeine Physiologie des körperlichen Lebens (1851). Google (Harvard)
- Medicinische Psychologie oder Physiologie der Seele (1852). Google (Oxford) Google (UMich)
- Mikrokosmus: Ideen zur Naturgeschichte und Geschichte der Menschheit (1856–64). 2nd ed., 1868–72. 4th ed., 1884–88.
- Volume 1, 1856. Google (Oxford) Google (UMich)
- Volume 2, 1858. Google (Oxford) Google (UMich) Google (NYPL)
- Volume 3, 1864. Google (Oxford) Google (NYPL)
- Streitschriften (1857). Google (Harvard)
- Geschichte der Aesthetik in Deutschland (1868). Google (Oxford)
- System der Philosophie.
- Part 1. Logik: Drei Bücher (1874). Google (Oxford) Google (UMich) Google (UWisc). 2nd ed., 1880.
- Part 2. Metaphysik: Drei Bücher (1879). 2nd ed., 1884.
- Geschichte der deutschen Philosophie seit Kant (1882). 2nd ed., 1894. Google (UWisc)
- Grundzüge der Psychologie (1881). Google (Harvard) 2nd ed., 1882. Google (Oxford)
- Grundzüge der Naturphilosophie (1882). Google (Oxford)
- Grundzüge der praktischen Philosophie (1882). 2nd ed., 1884. Google (UCal)
- Grundzüge der Religionsphilosophie (1883). 2nd ed., 1884. Google (Oxford)
- Grundzüge der Logik und Encyclopädie der Philosophie (1883). 2nd ed., 1885. Google (UCal)
- Grundzüge der Metaphysik (1883). Google (Oxford)
- Grundzüge der Aesthetik (1884).
- Kleine Schriften (1885–91).
- Volume 1, 1885. Google (Oxford) Google (Stanford) Google (UWisc)
- Volume 2, 1886. Google (Harvard)
- Volume 3, 1891. Google (UWisc)
Translations in English
- Lotze's Outlines of Philosophy
- Part 1. Outlines of Metaphysic (1884). IA (UCal) IA (UVictoria) 1886. Google (UMich)
- Part 2. Outlines of the Philosophy of Religion (1885). Google (UWisc)
- Reprint, 1886. IA (OISE) 1895. IA (St. Michael's) 1901. Google (UWisc)
- Part 3. Outlines of Practical Philosophy (1885). Google (UCal)
- Part 4. Outlines of Psychology (1886). Google (UMich) IA (UToronto)
- Part 5. Outlines of Aesthetics (1886). Google (UMich) IA (UToronto)
- Part 6. Outlines of Logic (1887). Google (UMich) IA (UToronto) 1892. Google (Harvard)
- Lotze's System of Philosophy
- Part 1. Logic: In Three Books (1884). Google (Oxford) IA (State Central) IA (UToronto).
- 2nd ed., 1888. Volume 1. IA (St. Basil's) IA (UIllinois) IA (Osmania) Google (Stanford)
- 2nd ed., 1888. Volume 2. IA (St. Basil's) IA (UIllinois).
- Part 2. Metaphysic: In Three Books (1884). Google (Oxford) IA (State Central) IA (UToronto)
- 2nd ed., 1887. Volume 1. IA (Osmania) Google (Harvard)
- 2nd ed., 1887. Volume 2. IA (Osmania)
- Part 1. Logic: In Three Books (1884). Google (Oxford) IA (State Central) IA (UToronto).
- Other works
- Microcosmus: An Essay Concerning Man and His Relation to the World (1885).
- Volume 1. IA (Union) 2nd ed., 1887. IA (UCal) IA (KCPL) 3rd ed., 1888. Google (Harvard) IA (St. Michael's)
- Volume 2. IA (Union) 2nd ed., 1887. IA (UCal) 3rd ed., 1888.Google (Harvard) IA (St. Michael's)
See also
Notes
- Frederick Beiser, Late German Idealism: Trendelenburg and Lotze, Oxford University Press, 2013, p. 127.
- ^ Sullivan, David. "Hermann Lotze". In Zalta, Edward N. (ed.). Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
- ^ a b c Milkov, Nikolay. "Rudolf Hermann Lotze (1817 -1881)". Internet Encyclopaedia of Philosophy. Retrieved 28 February 2017.
- ^ Woodward 2015, p. 83.
- ^ a b Woodward 2015, p. 74–5.
- ^ Hermann von Helmholtz entry at the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy by Lydia Patton
- ^ Basile, Pierfrancesco (25 July 2017). Zalta, Edward N. (ed.). James Ward. Metaphysics Research Lab, Stanford University – via Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
- Robert Boyce Brandom, "Frege's Technical Concepts", in Frege Synthesized: Essays on the Philosophical and Foundational Work of G. Frege, L. Haaparantaand J. Hintikka, Synthese Library, D. Reidel, 1986, pp. 253–295
- ^ Sullivan, Richard. "Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy". Hermann Lotze. Stanford University. Retrieved 30 July 2020.
- ^ a b c Milkov, N. (n.d.). Rudolf Hermann Lotze (1817–1881). Retrieved from https://www.iep.utm.edu/lotze/
- Frederick Beiser, Late German Idealism: Trendelenburg and Lotze, Oxford University Press, 2013, p. 202.
- ^ Lotze expressed these views in his 1880 article "Die Philosophie in den letzten 40 Jahren"/"Philosophy in the Last Forty Years" (Kleine Schriften, v. 3, ed. D. Peipers, Leipzig: S. Hirzel, 1885–9); see Sullivan, David. "Hermann Lotze". In Zalta, Edward N. (ed.). Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
References
- William R. Woodward, Hermann Lotze: An Intellectual Biography, Cambridge University Press, 2015.
- Michele Vagnetti, Hermann Lotze on the mind-body problem and the 19th century philosophy and psychology: with special attention to William James, Dissertation: Universität Paderborn, 2020.
- public domain: Chisholm, Hugh, ed. (1911). "Lotze, Rudolf Hermann". Encyclopædia Britannica (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press. This article incorporates text from a publication now in the
External links
- Works by or about Hermann Lotze at Wikisource
- Sullivan, David. "Hermann Lotze". In Zalta, Edward N. (ed.). Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
- Rudolf Hermann Lotze (1817–1881) entry by Nikolay Milkov in the Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy
- Carl von Prantl (1884), "Lotze, Rudolf Hermann", Allgemeine Deutsche Biographie (in German), vol. 19, Leipzig: Duncker & Humblot, pp. 288–290
- Richard Falckenberg (1906), "Lotze, Rudolf Hermann", Allgemeine Deutsche Biographie (in German), vol. 52, Leipzig: Duncker & Humblot, pp. 93–97