Rudolf Hermann Lotze
Encyclopedia
Rudolf Hermann Lotze was a German
philosopher and logician. He also had a medical degree and was unusually well versed in biology. He argued that if the physical world is governed by mechanical laws, relations and developments in the universe could be explained as the functioning of a world mind. His medical studies were pioneering works in scientific psychology
.
, Saxony
, Germany
, the son of a physician. He was educated at the gymnasium of Zittau
; he had an enduring love of the classical authors, publishing a translation of Sophocles
' Antigone
into Latin
verse in his middle age.
He attended the University of Leipzig
as a student of philosophy and natural sciences, but entered officially as a student of medicine when he was seventeen. Lotze's early studies were mostly governed by two distinct interests: the first was scientific, based upon mathematical and physical studies under the guidance of E. H. Weber
, Alfred Wilhelm Volkmann and Gustav Fechner
. The other was his aesthetic and artistic interest, which was developed under the care of Christian Hermann Weisse
. He was attracted both by science and by the idealism of Johann Gottlieb Fichte
, Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph Schelling
and Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel
.
Lotze's first essay was his dissertation De futurae biologiae principibus philosophicis, with which he gained (1838) the degree of doctor of medicine, four months after obtaining the degree of doctor of philosophy. He laid the foundation of his philosophical system in his Metaphysik (Leipzig, 1841) (published in English as Metaphysic: In Three Books, Ontology, Cosmology, and Psychology) and his Logik (1843), (published in English as Logic: In Three Books, of Thought, of Investigation, and of Knowledge), short books published while still a junior lecturer at Leipzig
, from whence he moved to Göttingen, succeeding Johann Friedrich Herbart
in the chair of philosophy.
His two early books remained unnoticed by the reading public, and Lotze first became known to a larger circle through a series of works which aimed at establishing in the study of the physical and mental phenomena of the human organism in its normal and diseased states the same general principles which had been adopted in the investigation of inorganic phenomena. These works were 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 philosophy of nature. The mechanical laws, to which external things were subject, were conceived as being valid only in the inorganic world. Mechanism was the unalterable connexion of every phenomenon a with other phenomena b, c, d, either as following or preceding it; mechanism was the inexorable form into which the events of this world are cast, and by which they are connected. The object of those writings was to establish the all-pervading rule of mechanism. But the mechanical view of nature is not identical with the materialistic. In the last of the above-mentioned works the question is discussed at great length how we have to consider mind, and the relation between mind and body; the answer is we have to consider mind as an immaterial principle, its action, however, on the body and vice versa as purely mechanical, indicated by the fixed laws of a psycho-physical mechanism.
These doctrines of Lotze, though pronounced with the distinct and reiterated reserve 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, denouncing the reveries of Schelling or the idealistic theories of Hegel. Published as they were during the years when the modern school of German materialism
was at its height, these works of Lotze were counted among the opposition literature of Empirical philosophy
.
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 Herbart. Lotze denied that he belonged to the school of Herbart. He admitted, though, that historically the same doctrine which might be considered the forerunner of Herbart's teachings might lead to his own views, viz. the monadology
of Leibniz
.
, physiology
, and psychology
Lotze had distinctly stated that the method of research which he advocated there did not give an explanation of the phenomena of life and mind, but only the means of observing and connecting them together; we gain the necessary data for deciding what meaning attaches to the existence of this microcosm, or small world of human life, in the macrocosm of the universe.
The review extends over the wide field of anthropology
, beginning with the human frame, the soul, and their union in life, advancing to man his mind, and the course of the world, and concluding with history, progress, and the connexion of things. It ends with the same idea which was expressed in Lotze's Metaphysik. The view peculiar to him is reached in the end as the crowning conception towards which all separate channels of thought have tended, and in the light of which the life of man in nature and mind, in the individual and in society, had been surveyed. This view can be briefly stated as follows: Every where 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. To comprehend the real position we are forced to the conviction that the world of facts is the field in which, and that laws are the means by which, those higher standards of moral and aesthetic value are being realized; and such a union can again only become intelligible through he 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. Whilst Lotze had thus in his published works closed the circle of his thought, beginning with a conception metaphysically gained, proceeding to an exhaustive contemplation of things in the light it afforded, and ending with the stronger conviction of its truth which observation, experience, and life could afford, he had all the time been lecturing on the various branches of philosophy according to the scheme of academical instruction transmitted from his predecessors. Nor can it be considered anything but a gain that he was thus induced to expound his views with regard to those topics, and in connexion with those problems, which were the traditional forms of philosophical utterance. His lectures ranged over a wide field: he delivered annually lectures on psychology and on logic (the latter including a survey of the entirety of philosophical research under the title Encyclopädie der Philosophie), then at longer intervals lectures on metaphysics, philosophy of nature, philosophy of art, philosophy of religion
, rarely on history of philosophy and ethics. 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, never appeared. A small pamphlet on psychology, containing the last form in which he had begun to treat the subject in his lectures (abruptly terminated through his death) during the summer session of 1881, has been published by his son.
To understand this series of Lotze's writings, it is necessary to begin with his definition of philosophy. This is given after his exposition of logic has established two points, viz. the existence in our mind of certain laws and forms according to which we connect the material supplied to us by our senses, and, secondly, the fact that logical thought cannot be usefully employed without the assumption of a further set of connexions, not logically necessary, but assumed to exist between the data of experience and observation. These connexions of a real not formal character are handed to us by the separate sciences and by the usage and culture of everyday life. Language has crystallized them into certain definite notions and expressions, without which we cannot proceed a single step, but which we have accepted without knowing their exact meaning, much less their origin. In consequence the special sciences and the wisdom of common life entangle themselves easily and frequently in contradictions. A problem of a purely formal character thus presents itself, viz. this to try to bring unity and harmony into the scattered thoughts of our general culture, to trace them to their primary assumptions and follow them into their ultimate consequences, to connect them all together, to remodel, curtail or amplify them, so as to remove their apparent contradictions, and to combine them in the unity of an harmonious view of things, and especially to investigate those conceptions which form the initial assumptions of the several sciences, and to fix the limits of their applicability. This is the formal definition of philosophy. Whether an harmonious conception thus gained will represent more than an agreement among our thoughts, whether it will represent the real connexion of things and thus possess objective not merely subjective value, cannot be decided at the outset. It is also unwarranted to start with the expectation that everything in the world should be explained by one principle, and it is a needless restriction of our means to expect unity of method. Nor are we able to start our philosophical investigations by an inquiry into the nature of human thought and its capacity to attain an objective knowledge, as in this case we would be actually using that instrument the usefulness of which we were trying to determine. The main proof of the objective value of the view we may gain will rather lie in the degree in which it succeeds in assigning to every element of culture its due position, or in which it is able to appreciate and combine different and apparently opposite tendencies and interests, in the sort of justice with which it weighs our manifold desires and aspirations, balancing them in due proportions, refusing to sacrifice to a one-sided principle any truth or conviction which experience has proven to be useful and necessary. The investigations will then naturally divide themselves into three parts, the first of which deals with those to our mind inevitable forms 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. In each department we shall have to aim first of all at views clear and consistent within themselves, but, secondly, we shall in the end wish to form some general idea or to risk an opinion how laws, facts and standards of value may be combined in one comprehensive view. Considerations of this latter kind will naturally present themselves in the two great departments of cosmology and psychology, or they may be delegated to an independent research under the name of religious philosophy. We have already mentioned the final conception in which Lotze's speculation culminates, that of a personal Deity, Himself the essence of all that merits existence for its own sake, who in the creation and government of a world has voluntarily chosen certain laws and forms through which His ends are to be realized. We may add that according to this view nothing is real but the living spirit of God and the world of living spirits which He has created; the things of this world have only reality insofar as they are the appearance of spiritual substance, which underlies everything. It is natural that Lotze, having this great and final conception always before him, works under its influence from the very beginning of his speculations, permitting us, as we progress, to gain every now and then a glimpse of that interpretation of things which to him contains the solution of our difficulties.
The key to Lotze's theoretical philosophy lies in his metaphysics
, to the exposition of which important subject the first and last of his larger publications have been devoted. To understand Lotze's philosophy, a careful and repeated perusal of these works is absolutely necessary. The object of his metaphysics is so to remodel the current notions regarding the existence of things and their connections with which the usage of language supplies us as to make them consistent and thinkable. The further assumption, that the modified notions thus gained have an objective meaning, and that they somehow correspond to the real order of the existing world which of course they can never actually describe, depends upon a general confidence which we must have in our reasoning powers, and in the significance of a world in which we ourselves with all the necessary courses of our thoughts have a due place assigned. The principle therefore of these investigations is opposed to two attempts frequently repeated in the history of philosophy, viz.: (1) the attempt to establish general laws or forms, which the development of things must have obeyed, or which a Creator must have followed in the creation of a world (Hegel); and (2) the attempt to trace the genesis of our notions and decide as to their meaning and value (modern theories of knowledge). Neither of these attempts is practicable. 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 merely this—to expel from the circle and totality of our conceptions those abstract notions which are inconsistent and jarring, or to remodel and define them so that they may constitute a consistent and harmonious view.
In this endeavor Lotze discards as useless and untenable many favorite conceptions of the school, many crude notions of everyday life. 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. But, further, every attempt to think clearly what those relations are, what we really mean, if we talk of a fixed order of events, forces upon us the necessity of thinking also that the different things which stand in relations to the different phases which follow each other cannot be merely externally strung together or moved about by some indefinable external power, in the form of some predestination or inexorable fate 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. This would lead to the view of Leibniz, that the world consists of monads, self-sufficient beings leading an inner life. But this idea involves the further conception of Leibniz, that of a pre-established harmony, by which the Creator has taken care to arrange the life of each monad, so that it agree with that of all others. This conception, according to Lotze, is neither necessary nor thoroughly intelligible. 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.
A final reflection then teaches us that the nature of this universal and all-pervading substance can only be imagined by us as something analogous to our own mental life, where alone we experience the unity of a substance (which we call self) preserved in the multitude of its (mental) states. It also becomes clear that only where such mental life really appears need we assign an independent existence, but that the purposes of everyday 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.
The universal substance, which we may call the absolute, is at this stage of our investigations not endowed with the attributes of a personal Deity, and it will remain to be seen by further analysis in how far we are able—without contradiction—to identify it with the object of religious veneration, in how far that which to metaphysics is merely a postulate can be gradually brought nearer to us and become a living power. Much in this direction is said by Lotze in various passages of his writings; anything complete, however, on the subject is wanting. Nor would it seem as if it could be the intention of the author to do much more than point out the lines on which the further treatment of the subject should advance. The actual result of his personal inquiries, the great idea which lies at the foundation of his philosophy, we know. It may be safely stated that Lotze would allow much latitude to individual convictions, as indeed it is evident that the empty notion of an absolute can only become living and significant to us in the same degree as experience and thought have taught us to realize the seriousness of life, the significance of creation, the value of the beautiful and the good, and the supreme worth of personal holiness. To endow the universal substance with moral attributes, to maintain that it is more than the metaphysical ground of everything, to say it is the perfect realization of the holy, the beautiful and the good, can only have a meaning for him who feels within himself what real not imaginary values are clothed in those expressions.
Aesthetics formed a principal and favorite study of Lotze's, and that he has treated this subject also in the light of the leading ideas of his philosophy.
Lotze's historical position is of much interest. Though he disclaims being a follower of Herbart, his formal definition of philosophy and his conception of the object of metaphysics are similar to those of Herbart, who defines philosophy as an attempt to remodel the notions given by experience. In this endeavor he forms with Herbart an opposition to the philosophies of Johann Gottlieb Fichte
, Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph Schelling
and Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel
, which aimed at objective and absolute knowledge, and also to the criticism of Kant, which aimed at determining the validity of all human knowledge. But this formal agreement includes material differences, and the spirit which breathes in Lotze's writings is more akin to the objects and aspirations of the idealistic school than to the cold formalism of Herbart. What, however, with the idealists was an object of thought alone, the absolute, is to Lotze only inadequately definable 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, has enabled 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 esoteric and exoteric—the former the philosophy of the school, cultivated principally at the universities, trying to systematize everything and reduce all our knowledge to an intelligible principle, losing in this attempt the deeper meaning of Leibniz's philosophy; the latter the unsystematized philosophy of general culture which we find in the work of the great writers of the classical period, Lessing
, Winckelmann
, Goethe
, Schiller
and Herder, all of whom expressed in some degree their indebtedness to Leibniz. Lotze can be said to have brought philosophy out of the lecture-room into the market-place of life. By understanding and combining what was great and valuable in those divided and scattered endeavors, he became the true successor of Leibniz.
The age in which Lotze lived and wrote in Germany was not one peculiarly fitted to 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.
Germany
Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...
philosopher and logician. He also had a medical degree and was unusually well versed in biology. He argued that if the physical world is governed by mechanical laws, relations and developments in the universe could be explained as the functioning of a world mind. His medical studies were pioneering works in scientific psychology
Psychology
Psychology is the study of the mind and behavior. Its immediate goal is to understand individuals and groups by both establishing general principles and researching specific cases. For many, the ultimate goal of psychology is to benefit society...
.
Biography
Lotze was born in BautzenBautzen
Bautzen is a hill-top town in eastern Saxony, Germany, and administrative centre of the eponymous district. It is located on the Spree River. As of 2008, its population is 41,161...
, Saxony
Saxony
The Free State of Saxony is a landlocked state of Germany, contingent with Brandenburg, Saxony Anhalt, Thuringia, Bavaria, the Czech Republic and Poland. It is the tenth-largest German state in area, with of Germany's sixteen states....
, Germany
Germany
Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...
, the son of a physician. He was educated at the gymnasium of Zittau
Zittau
Zittau is a city in the south east of the Free State of Saxony, Germany, close to the border tripoint of Germany, Poland, and the Czech Republic. , there are 28,638 people in the city. It is part of the Görlitz district....
; he had an enduring love of the classical authors, publishing a translation of Sophocles
Sophocles
Sophocles is one of three ancient Greek tragedians whose plays have survived. His first plays were written later than those of Aeschylus, and earlier than or contemporary with those of Euripides...
' Antigone
Antigone (Sophocles)
Antigone is a tragedy by Sophocles written in or before 442 BC. Chronologically, it is the third of the three Theban plays but was written first...
into Latin
Latin
Latin is an Italic language originally spoken in Latium and Ancient Rome. It, along with most European languages, is a descendant of the ancient Proto-Indo-European language. Although it is considered a dead language, a number of scholars and members of the Christian clergy speak it fluently, and...
verse in his middle age.
He attended the University of Leipzig
University of Leipzig
The University of Leipzig , located in Leipzig in the Free State of Saxony, Germany, is one of the oldest universities in the world and the second-oldest university in Germany...
as a student of philosophy and natural sciences, but entered officially as a student of medicine when he was seventeen. Lotze's early studies were mostly governed by two distinct interests: the first was scientific, based upon mathematical and physical studies under the guidance of E. H. Weber
Ernst Heinrich Weber
Ernst Heinrich Weber was a German physician who is considered one of the founders of experimental psychology.Weber studied medicine at Wittenberg University...
, Alfred Wilhelm Volkmann and Gustav Fechner
Gustav Fechner
Gustav Theodor Fechner , was a German experimental psychologist. An early pioneer in experimental psychology and founder of psychophysics, he inspired many 20th century scientists and philosophers...
. The other was his aesthetic and artistic interest, which was developed under the care of Christian Hermann Weisse
Christian Hermann Weisse
Christian Hermann Weisse , was a German Protestant religious philosopher.- Philosophy :He was born at Leipzig, and studied at the university there, at first adhering to the Hegelian school of philosophy. In the course of time, his ideas changed, and became close to those of Schelling in his later...
. He was attracted both by science and by the idealism of Johann Gottlieb Fichte
Johann Gottlieb Fichte
Johann Gottlieb Fichte was a German philosopher. He was one of the founding figures of the philosophical movement known as German idealism, a movement that developed from the theoretical and ethical writings of Immanuel Kant...
, Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph Schelling
Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph Schelling
Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph Schelling , later von Schelling, was a German philosopher. Standard histories of philosophy make him the midpoint in the development of German idealism, situating him between Fichte, his mentor prior to 1800, and Hegel, his former university roommate and erstwhile friend...
and Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel was a German philosopher, one of the creators of German Idealism. His historicist and idealist account of reality as a whole revolutionized European philosophy and was an important precursor to Continental philosophy and Marxism.Hegel developed a comprehensive...
.
Lotze's first essay was his dissertation De futurae biologiae principibus philosophicis, with which he gained (1838) the degree of doctor of medicine, four months after obtaining the degree of doctor of philosophy. He laid the foundation of his philosophical system in his Metaphysik (Leipzig, 1841) (published in English as Metaphysic: In Three Books, Ontology, Cosmology, and Psychology) and his Logik (1843), (published in English as Logic: In Three Books, of Thought, of Investigation, and of Knowledge), short books published while still a junior lecturer at Leipzig
Leipzig
Leipzig Leipzig has always been a trade city, situated during the time of the Holy Roman Empire at the intersection of the Via Regia and Via Imperii, two important trade routes. At one time, Leipzig was one of the major European centres of learning and culture in fields such as music and publishing...
, from whence he moved to Göttingen, succeeding Johann Friedrich Herbart
Johann Friedrich Herbart
Johann Friedrich Herbart was a German philosopher, psychologist, and founder of pedagogy as an academic discipline....
in the chair of philosophy.
His two early books remained unnoticed by the reading public, and Lotze first became known to a larger circle through a series of works which aimed at establishing in the study of the physical and mental phenomena of the human organism in its normal and diseased states the same general principles which had been adopted in the investigation of inorganic phenomena. These works were 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 philosophy of nature. The mechanical laws, to which external things were subject, were conceived as being valid only in the inorganic world. Mechanism was the unalterable connexion of every phenomenon a with other phenomena b, c, d, either as following or preceding it; mechanism was the inexorable form into which the events of this world are cast, and by which they are connected. The object of those writings was to establish the all-pervading rule of mechanism. But the mechanical view of nature is not identical with the materialistic. In the last of the above-mentioned works the question is discussed at great length how we have to consider mind, and the relation between mind and body; the answer is we have to consider mind as an immaterial principle, its action, however, on the body and vice versa as purely mechanical, indicated by the fixed laws of a psycho-physical mechanism.
These doctrines of Lotze, though pronounced with the distinct and reiterated reserve 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, denouncing the reveries of Schelling or the idealistic theories of Hegel. Published as they were during the years when the modern school of German materialism
Materialism
In philosophy, the theory of materialism holds that the only thing that exists is matter; that all things are composed of material and all phenomena are the result of material interactions. In other words, matter is the only substance...
was at its height, these works of Lotze were counted among the opposition literature of Empirical philosophy
Empiricism
Empiricism is a theory of knowledge that asserts that knowledge comes only or primarily via sensory experience. One of several views of epistemology, the study of human knowledge, along with rationalism, idealism and historicism, empiricism emphasizes the role of experience and evidence,...
.
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 Herbart. Lotze denied that he belonged to the school of Herbart. He admitted, though, that historically the same doctrine which might be considered the forerunner of Herbart's teachings might lead to his own views, viz. the monadology
Monadology
The Monadology is one of Gottfried Leibniz’s best known works representing his later philosophy. It is a short text which sketches in some 90 paragraphs a metaphysics of simple substances, or monads.- Text :...
of Leibniz
Gottfried Leibniz
Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz was a German philosopher and mathematician. He wrote in different languages, primarily in Latin , French and German ....
.
Philosophy
When Lotze wrote these explanations, he had already published the first volume of his Mikrokosmus (vol. i. 1856, vol. ii. 1858, vol. iii. 1864). In many passages of his works on pathologyPathology
Pathology is the precise study and diagnosis of disease. The word pathology is from Ancient Greek , pathos, "feeling, suffering"; and , -logia, "the study of". Pathologization, to pathologize, refers to the process of defining a condition or behavior as pathological, e.g. pathological gambling....
, physiology
Physiology
Physiology is the science of the function of living systems. This includes how organisms, organ systems, organs, cells, and bio-molecules carry out the chemical or physical functions that exist in a living system. The highest honor awarded in physiology is the Nobel Prize in Physiology or...
, and psychology
Psychology
Psychology is the study of the mind and behavior. Its immediate goal is to understand individuals and groups by both establishing general principles and researching specific cases. For many, the ultimate goal of psychology is to benefit society...
Lotze had distinctly stated that the method of research which he advocated there did not give an explanation of the phenomena of life and mind, but only the means of observing and connecting them together; we gain the necessary data for deciding what meaning attaches to the existence of this microcosm, or small world of human life, in the macrocosm of the universe.
The review extends over the wide field of anthropology
Anthropology
Anthropology is the study of humanity. It has origins in the humanities, the natural sciences, and the social sciences. The term "anthropology" is from the Greek anthrōpos , "man", understood to mean mankind or humanity, and -logia , "discourse" or "study", and was first used in 1501 by German...
, beginning with the human frame, the soul, and their union in life, advancing to man his mind, and the course of the world, and concluding with history, progress, and the connexion of things. It ends with the same idea which was expressed in Lotze's Metaphysik. The view peculiar to him is reached in the end as the crowning conception towards which all separate channels of thought have tended, and in the light of which the life of man in nature and mind, in the individual and in society, had been surveyed. This view can be briefly stated as follows: Every where 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. To comprehend the real position we are forced to the conviction that the world of facts is the field in which, and that laws are the means by which, those higher standards of moral and aesthetic value are being realized; and such a union can again only become intelligible through he 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. Whilst Lotze had thus in his published works closed the circle of his thought, beginning with a conception metaphysically gained, proceeding to an exhaustive contemplation of things in the light it afforded, and ending with the stronger conviction of its truth which observation, experience, and life could afford, he had all the time been lecturing on the various branches of philosophy according to the scheme of academical instruction transmitted from his predecessors. Nor can it be considered anything but a gain that he was thus induced to expound his views with regard to those topics, and in connexion with those problems, which were the traditional forms of philosophical utterance. His lectures ranged over a wide field: he delivered annually lectures on psychology and on logic (the latter including a survey of the entirety of philosophical research under the title Encyclopädie der Philosophie), then at longer intervals lectures on metaphysics, philosophy of nature, philosophy of art, philosophy of religion
Philosophy of religion
Philosophy of religion is a branch of philosophy concerned with questions regarding religion, including the nature and existence of God, the examination of religious experience, analysis of religious language and texts, and the relationship of religion and science...
, rarely on history of philosophy and ethics. 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, never appeared. A small pamphlet on psychology, containing the last form in which he had begun to treat the subject in his lectures (abruptly terminated through his death) during the summer session of 1881, has been published by his son.
To understand this series of Lotze's writings, it is necessary to begin with his definition of philosophy. This is given after his exposition of logic has established two points, viz. the existence in our mind of certain laws and forms according to which we connect the material supplied to us by our senses, and, secondly, the fact that logical thought cannot be usefully employed without the assumption of a further set of connexions, not logically necessary, but assumed to exist between the data of experience and observation. These connexions of a real not formal character are handed to us by the separate sciences and by the usage and culture of everyday life. Language has crystallized them into certain definite notions and expressions, without which we cannot proceed a single step, but which we have accepted without knowing their exact meaning, much less their origin. In consequence the special sciences and the wisdom of common life entangle themselves easily and frequently in contradictions. A problem of a purely formal character thus presents itself, viz. this to try to bring unity and harmony into the scattered thoughts of our general culture, to trace them to their primary assumptions and follow them into their ultimate consequences, to connect them all together, to remodel, curtail or amplify them, so as to remove their apparent contradictions, and to combine them in the unity of an harmonious view of things, and especially to investigate those conceptions which form the initial assumptions of the several sciences, and to fix the limits of their applicability. This is the formal definition of philosophy. Whether an harmonious conception thus gained will represent more than an agreement among our thoughts, whether it will represent the real connexion of things and thus possess objective not merely subjective value, cannot be decided at the outset. It is also unwarranted to start with the expectation that everything in the world should be explained by one principle, and it is a needless restriction of our means to expect unity of method. Nor are we able to start our philosophical investigations by an inquiry into the nature of human thought and its capacity to attain an objective knowledge, as in this case we would be actually using that instrument the usefulness of which we were trying to determine. The main proof of the objective value of the view we may gain will rather lie in the degree in which it succeeds in assigning to every element of culture its due position, or in which it is able to appreciate and combine different and apparently opposite tendencies and interests, in the sort of justice with which it weighs our manifold desires and aspirations, balancing them in due proportions, refusing to sacrifice to a one-sided principle any truth or conviction which experience has proven to be useful and necessary. The investigations will then naturally divide themselves into three parts, the first of which deals with those to our mind inevitable forms 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
Cosmology
Cosmology is the discipline that deals with the nature of the Universe as a whole. Cosmologists seek to understand the origin, evolution, structure, and ultimate fate of the Universe at large, as well as the natural laws that keep it in order...
and psychology
Psychology
Psychology is the study of the mind and behavior. Its immediate goal is to understand individuals and groups by both establishing general principles and researching specific cases. For many, the ultimate goal of psychology is to benefit society...
), the third dealing with those standards of value from which we pronounce our aesthetic or ethical approval or disapproval. In each department we shall have to aim first of all at views clear and consistent within themselves, but, secondly, we shall in the end wish to form some general idea or to risk an opinion how laws, facts and standards of value may be combined in one comprehensive view. Considerations of this latter kind will naturally present themselves in the two great departments of cosmology and psychology, or they may be delegated to an independent research under the name of religious philosophy. We have already mentioned the final conception in which Lotze's speculation culminates, that of a personal Deity, Himself the essence of all that merits existence for its own sake, who in the creation and government of a world has voluntarily chosen certain laws and forms through which His ends are to be realized. We may add that according to this view nothing is real but the living spirit of God and the world of living spirits which He has created; the things of this world have only reality insofar as they are the appearance of spiritual substance, which underlies everything. It is natural that Lotze, having this great and final conception always before him, works under its influence from the very beginning of his speculations, permitting us, as we progress, to gain every now and then a glimpse of that interpretation of things which to him contains the solution of our difficulties.
The key to Lotze's theoretical philosophy lies in his metaphysics
Metaphysics
Metaphysics is a branch of philosophy concerned with explaining the fundamental nature of being and the world, although the term is not easily defined. Traditionally, metaphysics attempts to answer two basic questions in the broadest possible terms:...
, to the exposition of which important subject the first and last of his larger publications have been devoted. To understand Lotze's philosophy, a careful and repeated perusal of these works is absolutely necessary. The object of his metaphysics is so to remodel the current notions regarding the existence of things and their connections with which the usage of language supplies us as to make them consistent and thinkable. The further assumption, that the modified notions thus gained have an objective meaning, and that they somehow correspond to the real order of the existing world which of course they can never actually describe, depends upon a general confidence which we must have in our reasoning powers, and in the significance of a world in which we ourselves with all the necessary courses of our thoughts have a due place assigned. The principle therefore of these investigations is opposed to two attempts frequently repeated in the history of philosophy, viz.: (1) the attempt to establish general laws or forms, which the development of things must have obeyed, or which a Creator must have followed in the creation of a world (Hegel); and (2) the attempt to trace the genesis of our notions and decide as to their meaning and value (modern theories of knowledge). Neither of these attempts is practicable. 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 merely this—to expel from the circle and totality of our conceptions those abstract notions which are inconsistent and jarring, or to remodel and define them so that they may constitute a consistent and harmonious view.
In this endeavor Lotze discards as useless and untenable many favorite conceptions of the school, many crude notions of everyday life. 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. But, further, every attempt to think clearly what those relations are, what we really mean, if we talk of a fixed order of events, forces upon us the necessity of thinking also that the different things which stand in relations to the different phases which follow each other cannot be merely externally strung together or moved about by some indefinable external power, in the form of some predestination or inexorable fate 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. This would lead to the view of Leibniz, that the world consists of monads, self-sufficient beings leading an inner life. But this idea involves the further conception of Leibniz, that of a pre-established harmony, by which the Creator has taken care to arrange the life of each monad, so that it agree with that of all others. This conception, according to Lotze, is neither necessary nor thoroughly intelligible. 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.
A final reflection then teaches us that the nature of this universal and all-pervading substance can only be imagined by us as something analogous to our own mental life, where alone we experience the unity of a substance (which we call self) preserved in the multitude of its (mental) states. It also becomes clear that only where such mental life really appears need we assign an independent existence, but that the purposes of everyday 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.
The universal substance, which we may call the absolute, is at this stage of our investigations not endowed with the attributes of a personal Deity, and it will remain to be seen by further analysis in how far we are able—without contradiction—to identify it with the object of religious veneration, in how far that which to metaphysics is merely a postulate can be gradually brought nearer to us and become a living power. Much in this direction is said by Lotze in various passages of his writings; anything complete, however, on the subject is wanting. Nor would it seem as if it could be the intention of the author to do much more than point out the lines on which the further treatment of the subject should advance. The actual result of his personal inquiries, the great idea which lies at the foundation of his philosophy, we know. It may be safely stated that Lotze would allow much latitude to individual convictions, as indeed it is evident that the empty notion of an absolute can only become living and significant to us in the same degree as experience and thought have taught us to realize the seriousness of life, the significance of creation, the value of the beautiful and the good, and the supreme worth of personal holiness. To endow the universal substance with moral attributes, to maintain that it is more than the metaphysical ground of everything, to say it is the perfect realization of the holy, the beautiful and the good, can only have a meaning for him who feels within himself what real not imaginary values are clothed in those expressions.
Aesthetics formed a principal and favorite study of Lotze's, and that he has treated this subject also in the light of the leading ideas of his philosophy.
Lotze's historical position is of much interest. Though he disclaims being a follower of Herbart, his formal definition of philosophy and his conception of the object of metaphysics are similar to those of Herbart, who defines philosophy as an attempt to remodel the notions given by experience. In this endeavor he forms with Herbart an opposition to the philosophies of Johann Gottlieb Fichte
Johann Gottlieb Fichte
Johann Gottlieb Fichte was a German philosopher. He was one of the founding figures of the philosophical movement known as German idealism, a movement that developed from the theoretical and ethical writings of Immanuel Kant...
, Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph Schelling
Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph Schelling
Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph Schelling , later von Schelling, was a German philosopher. Standard histories of philosophy make him the midpoint in the development of German idealism, situating him between Fichte, his mentor prior to 1800, and Hegel, his former university roommate and erstwhile friend...
and Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel was a German philosopher, one of the creators of German Idealism. His historicist and idealist account of reality as a whole revolutionized European philosophy and was an important precursor to Continental philosophy and Marxism.Hegel developed a comprehensive...
, which aimed at objective and absolute knowledge, and also to the criticism of Kant, which aimed at determining the validity of all human knowledge. But this formal agreement includes material differences, and the spirit which breathes in Lotze's writings is more akin to the objects and aspirations of the idealistic school than to the cold formalism of Herbart. What, however, with the idealists was an object of thought alone, the absolute, is to Lotze only inadequately definable 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, has enabled 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 esoteric and exoteric—the former the philosophy of the school, cultivated principally at the universities, trying to systematize everything and reduce all our knowledge to an intelligible principle, losing in this attempt the deeper meaning of Leibniz's philosophy; the latter the unsystematized philosophy of general culture which we find in the work of the great writers of the classical period, Lessing
Gotthold Ephraim Lessing
Gotthold Ephraim Lessing was a German writer, philosopher, dramatist, publicist, and art critic, and one of the most outstanding representatives of the Enlightenment era. His plays and theoretical writings substantially influenced the development of German literature...
, Winckelmann
Johann Joachim Winckelmann
Johann Joachim Winckelmann was a German art historian and archaeologist. He was a pioneering Hellenist who first articulated the difference between Greek, Greco-Roman and Roman art...
, Goethe
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe was a German writer, pictorial artist, biologist, theoretical physicist, and polymath. He is considered the supreme genius of modern German literature. His works span the fields of poetry, drama, prose, philosophy, and science. His Faust has been called the greatest long...
, Schiller
Friedrich Schiller
Johann Christoph Friedrich von Schiller was a German poet, philosopher, historian, and playwright. During the last seventeen years of his life , Schiller struck up a productive, if complicated, friendship with already famous and influential Johann Wolfgang von Goethe...
and Herder, all of whom expressed in some degree their indebtedness to Leibniz. Lotze can be said to have brought philosophy out of the lecture-room into the market-place of life. By understanding and combining what was great and valuable in those divided and scattered endeavors, he became the true successor of Leibniz.
The age in which Lotze lived and wrote in Germany was not one peculiarly fitted to 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
- De futurae biologiae principiis philosophicis (1838). Reprinted in Kleine Schriften, 1885. Vol. 1, pp. 1-25
- 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 koerperlichen 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 SchriftenKleine Schriftenis a German phrase often used as a title for a collection of articles and essays written by a single scholar over the course of a career. "Collected Papers" is an English equivalent. These shorter works were usually published previously in various periodicals or in collections of papers written...
(1885–91).- Volume 1, 1885. Google (Oxford) Google (Stanford) Google (UWisc)
- Volume 2, 1886. Google (Harvard)
- Volume 3, 1891. Google (UWisc)
Works 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).
- 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)