HOME

TheInfoList



OR:

Rudolf Hermann Lotze (; ; 21 May 1817 – 1 July 1881) was a German
philosopher A philosopher is a person who practices or investigates philosophy. The term ''philosopher'' comes from the grc, φιλόσοφος, , translit=philosophos, meaning 'lover of wisdom'. The coining of the term has been attributed to the Greek th ...
and logician. He also had a medical degree and was well versed in
biology Biology is the scientific study of life. It is a natural science with a broad scope but has several unifying themes that tie it together as a single, coherent field. For instance, all organisms are made up of cells that process hereditary i ...
. He argued that if the physical world is governed by mechanical laws and relations, then developments in the universe could be explained as the functioning of a world mind. His medical studies were pioneering works in scientific
psychology Psychology is the scientific study of mind and behavior. Psychology includes the study of conscious and unconscious phenomena, including feelings and thoughts. It is an academic discipline of immense scope, crossing the boundaries betwe ...
.


Biography

Lotze was born in Bautzen,
Saxony Saxony (german: Sachsen ; Upper Saxon: ''Saggsn''; hsb, Sakska), officially the Free State of Saxony (german: Freistaat Sachsen, links=no ; Upper Saxon: ''Freischdaad Saggsn''; hsb, Swobodny stat Sakska, links=no), is a landlocked state of ...
,
Germany Germany,, officially the Federal Republic of Germany, is a country in Central Europe. It is the second most populous country in Europe after Russia, and the most populous member state of the European Union. Germany is situated betwe ...
, the son of a physician. He was educated at the grammar school of Zittau; he had an enduring love of the classical authors, publishing a translation of
Sophocles Sophocles (; grc, Σοφοκλῆς, , Sophoklễs; 497/6 – winter 406/5 BC)Sommerstein (2002), p. 41. is one of three ancient Greek tragedians, at least one of whose plays has survived in full. His first plays were written later than, or co ...
' ''
Antigone In Greek mythology, Antigone ( ; Ancient Greek: Ἀντιγόνη) is the daughter of Oedipus and either his mother Jocasta or, in another variation of the myth, Euryganeia. She is a sister of Polynices, Eteocles, and Ismene.Roman, L., & Roma ...
'' into
Latin Latin (, or , ) is a classical language belonging to the Italic branch of the Indo-European languages. Latin was originally a dialect spoken in the lower Tiber area (then known as Latium) around present-day Rome, but through the power of the ...
verse in his middle life. He attended the
University of Leipzig Leipzig University (german: Universität Leipzig), in Leipzig in Saxony, Germany, is one of the world's oldest universities and the second-oldest university (by consecutive years of existence) in Germany. The university was founded on 2 Decemb ...
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,Milkov, N. (n.d.). Rudolf Hermann Lotze (1817–1881). Retrieved from https://www.iep.utm.edu/lotze/
Alfred Wilhelm Volkmann Alfred Wilhelm Volkmann (1 July 1801, Leipzig – 21 April 1877, Halle an der Saale) was a German physiologist, anatomist, and philosopher. He specialized in the study of the nervous and optic systems. Biography Alfred Wilhelm Volkmann was bo ...
, and
Gustav Fechner Gustav Theodor Fechner (; ; 19 April 1801 – 18 November 1887) was a German physicist, philosopher, and experimental psychologist. A pioneer in experimental psychology and founder of psychophysics (techniques for measuring the mind), he inspired ...
. The other was his aesthetic and artistic interest, which was developed under the care of the
speculative theist The Right Hegelians (german: Rechtshegelianer), Old Hegelians (''Althegelianer''), or the Hegelian Right (''die Hegelsche Rechte''), were those followers of German philosopher Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel in the early 19th century who took his phi ...
Christian Hermann Weisse Christian Hermann Weisse (; ; Weiße in modern German; 10 August 1801 – 19 September 1866) was a German Protestant religious philosopher and professor of philosophy at the University of Leipzig. He was the son of theologian (1766–1832). Bi ...
. Weisse also influenced his later anti-psychologistic approachLotze 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 to the
historiography of philosophy The history of science covers the development of science from ancient history, ancient times to the present. It encompasses all three major branches of science: natural science, natural, social science, social, and formal science, formal. Sc ...
.Woodward 2015, p. 74–5. He was attracted both by science and by the
German idealism German idealism was a philosophical movement that emerged in Germany in the late 18th and early 19th centuries. It developed out of the work of Immanuel Kant in the 1780s and 1790s, and was closely linked both with Romanticism and the revolutionary ...
of
Johann Gottlieb Fichte Johann Gottlieb Fichte (; ; 19 May 1762 – 29 January 1814) was a German philosopher who became a founding figure of the philosophical movement known as German idealism, which developed from the theoretical and ethical writings of Immanuel Kan ...
,
Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph Schelling Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph Schelling (; 27 January 1775 – 20 August 1854), later (after 1812) von Schelling, was a German philosopher. Standard histories of philosophy make him the midpoint in the development of German idealism, situating him be ...
and
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (; ; 27 August 1770 – 14 November 1831) was a German philosopher. He is one of the most important figures in German idealism and one of the founding figures of modern Western philosophy. His influence extends ...
. Lotze's first work was his dissertation ''De futurae biologiae principibus philosophicis'', with which he gained in July 1838 the degree of
doctor of medicine Doctor of Medicine (abbreviated M.D., from the Latin language, Latin ''Medicinae Doctor'') is a medical degree, the meaning of which varies between different jurisdictions. In the United States, and some other countries, the M.D. denotes a profes ...
. In 1840 he gained the degree of
doctor of philosophy A Doctor of Philosophy (PhD, Ph.D., or DPhil; Latin: or ') is the most common Academic degree, degree at the highest academic level awarded following a course of study. PhDs are awarded for programs across the whole breadth of academic fields ...
with his dissertation ''De summis continuorum''. He laid the foundation of his philosophical system in his ''Metaphysik'' (Leipzig, 1841) and his ''Logik'' (1843), short books published while still a junior lecturer at Leipzig University, whence he moved to
Göttingen Göttingen (, , ; nds, Chöttingen) is a college town, university city in Lower Saxony, central Germany, the Capital (political), capital of Göttingen (district), the eponymous district. The River Leine runs through it. At the end of 2019, t ...
, succeeding Johann Friedrich Herbart in the chair of philosophy. 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 philosophy of nature. The mechanical laws, to which external things were subject, were conceived as being valid only in the inorganic world.
Mechanism Mechanism may refer to: *Mechanism (engineering), rigid bodies connected by joints in order to accomplish a desired force and/or motion transmission *Mechanism (biology), explaining how a feature is created *Mechanism (philosophy), a theory that a ...
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 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
German materialism Materialism is a form of philosophical monism which holds matter to be the fundamental substance in nature, and all things, including mental states and consciousness, are results of material interactions. According to philosophical materialism ...
was at its height, these works of Lotze were enrolled in the opposing camp 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 Johann Friedrich Herbart (; 4 May 1776 – 14 August 1841) was a German philosopher, psychologist and founder of pedagogy as an academic discipline. Herbart is now remembered amongst the post-Kantian philosophers mostly as making the greatest c ...
. Lotze denied that he belonged to the school of Herbart. However, he admitted that the monadology of
Leibniz Gottfried Wilhelm (von) Leibniz . ( – 14 November 1716) was a German polymath active as a mathematician, philosopher, scientist and diplomat. He is one of the most prominent figures in both the history of philosophy and the history of mathema ...
could be considered the forerunner of Herbart's teachings and also of his own views.


Philosophical work

Lotze worked in a post-revolutionary time of transition between the idealistic and rationalist legacies of
Leibniz Gottfried Wilhelm (von) Leibniz . ( – 14 November 1716) was a German polymath active as a mathematician, philosopher, scientist and diplomat. He is one of the most prominent figures in both the history of philosophy and the history of mathema ...
, Kant and
Hegel Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (; ; 27 August 1770 – 14 November 1831) was a German philosopher. He is one of the most important figures in German idealism and one of the founding figures of modern Western philosophy. His influence extends a ...
and the new
materialism Materialism is a form of philosophical monism which holds matter to be the fundamental substance in nature, and all things, including mental states and consciousness, are results of material interactions. According to philosophical materiali ...
and scientific interpretation of
reality Reality is the sum or aggregate of all that is real or existent within a system, as opposed to that which is only imaginary. The term is also used to refer to the ontological status of things, indicating their existence. In physical terms, r ...
. 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 Metaphysics is the branch of philosophy that studies the fundamental nature of reality, the first principles of being, identity and change, space and time, causality, necessity, and possibility. It includes questions about the nature of conscio ...
and science,
mechanism Mechanism may refer to: *Mechanism (engineering), rigid bodies connected by joints in order to accomplish a desired force and/or motion transmission *Mechanism (biology), explaining how a feature is created *Mechanism (philosophy), a theory that a ...
is compatible with
teleology Teleology (from and )Partridge, Eric. 1977''Origins: A Short Etymological Dictionary of Modern English'' London: Routledge, p. 4187. or finalityDubray, Charles. 2020 912Teleology" In ''The Catholic Encyclopedia'' 14. New York: Robert Appleton ...
. Lotze's lectures ranged over a wide field: he delivered annually lectures on
psychology Psychology is the scientific study of mind and behavior. Psychology includes the study of conscious and unconscious phenomena, including feelings and thoughts. It is an academic discipline of immense scope, crossing the boundaries betwe ...
and on
logic Logic is the study of correct reasoning. It includes both formal and informal logic. Formal logic is the science of deductively valid inferences or of logical truths. It is a formal science investigating how conclusions follow from premises ...
(the latter including a survey of the entirety of philosophical research, ''Encyclopädie der Philosophie''), then at longer intervals lectures on
metaphysics Metaphysics is the branch of philosophy that studies the fundamental nature of reality, the first principles of being, identity and change, space and time, causality, necessity, and possibility. It includes questions about the nature of conscio ...
, philosophy of
nature Nature, in the broadest sense, is the physics, physical world or universe. "Nature" can refer to the phenomenon, phenomena of the physical world, and also to life in general. The study of nature is a large, if not the only, part of science. ...
, philosophy of art,
philosophy of religion Philosophy of religion is "the philosophical examination of the central themes and concepts involved in religious traditions". Philosophical discussions on such topics date from ancient times, and appear in the earliest known texts concerning ph ...
, rarely on
history of philosophy Philosophy (from , ) is the systematized study of general and fundamental questions, such as those about existence, reason, knowledge, values, mind, and language. Such questions are often posed as problems to be studied or resolved. Some ...
and
ethics Ethics or moral philosophy is a branch of philosophy that "involves systematizing, defending, and recommending concepts of right and wrong behavior".''Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy'' The field of ethics, along with aesthetics, concerns m ...
. 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 Cosmology () is a branch of physics and metaphysics dealing with the nature of the universe. The term ''cosmology'' was first used in English in 1656 in Thomas Blount (lexicographer), Thomas Blount's ''Glossographia'', and in 1731 taken up in ...
and
psychology Psychology is the scientific study of mind and behavior. Psychology includes the study of conscious and unconscious phenomena, including feelings and thoughts. It is an academic discipline of immense scope, crossing the boundaries betwe ...
), 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." Lotze's historical position is of much interest. Though he disclaims being a follower of
Herbart Johann Friedrich Herbart (; 4 May 1776 – 14 August 1841) was a German philosopher, psychologist and founder of pedagogy as an academic discipline. Herbart is now remembered amongst the post-Kantian philosophers mostly as making the greatest c ...
, his formal
definition of philosophy Definitions of philosophy aim at determining what all forms of philosophy have in common and how to distinguish philosophy from other disciplines. Many different definitions have been proposed but there is very little agreement on which is the rig ...
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 (; ; 19 May 1762 – 29 January 1814) was a German philosopher who became a founding figure of the philosophical movement known as German idealism, which developed from the theoretical and ethical writings of Immanuel Kan ...
,
Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph Schelling Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph Schelling (; 27 January 1775 – 20 August 1854), later (after 1812) von Schelling, was a German philosopher. Standard histories of philosophy make him the midpoint in the development of German idealism, situating him be ...
, and
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (; ; 27 August 1770 – 14 November 1831) was a German philosopher. He is one of the most important figures in German idealism and one of the founding figures of modern Western philosophy. His influence extends ...
which aimed at objective and absolute knowledge, and also to the
criticism Criticism is the construction of a judgement about the negative qualities of someone or something. Criticism can range from impromptu comments to a written detailed response. , ''"the act of giving your opinion or judgment about the good or bad q ...
of Kant, which aimed at determining the validity of all human knowledge. 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
esoteric Western esotericism, also known as esotericism, esoterism, and sometimes the Western mystery tradition, is a term scholars use to categorise a wide range of loosely related ideas and movements that developed within Western society. These ideas a ...
and
exoteric Exoteric refers to knowledge that is outside and independent from a person's experience and can be ascertained by anyone (related to common sense). The word is derived from the comparative form of Greek ἔξω ''eksô'', "from, out of, outside". ...
. The former was the academic quest to systematize everything and reduce all our knowledge to an intelligible
principle A principle is a proposition or value that is a guide for behavior or evaluation. In law, it is a Legal rule, rule that has to be or usually is to be followed. It can be desirably followed, or it can be an inevitable consequence of something, suc ...
. This attempt missed the deeper meaning of Leibniz's philosophy. The latter was the unsystematized philosophy of general culture which we find in the work of the great writers of the classical period,
Lessing Lessing is a German surname of Slavic origin, originally ''Lesnik'' meaning "woodman". Lessing may refer to: A German family of writers, artists, musicians and politicians who can be traced back to a Michil Lessigk mentioned in 1518 as being a lin ...
,
Winckelmann Winckelmann may refer to: * George Winckelmann (1884–1962), a Finnish lawyer and a diplomat * Johann Joachim Winckelmann (1717–1768), a German art historian and archaeologist * Johann Just Winckelmann Johann Just Winckelmann (19 August 1620 ...
,
Goethe Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (28 August 1749 – 22 March 1832) was a German poet, playwright, novelist, scientist, statesman, theatre director, and critic. His works include plays, poetry, literature, and aesthetic criticism, as well as treat ...
,
Schiller Johann Christoph Friedrich von Schiller (, short: ; 10 November 17599 May 1805) was a German playwright, poet, and philosopher. During the last seventeen years of his life (1788–1805), Schiller developed a productive, if complicated, friendsh ...
and
Herder A herder is a pastoral worker responsible for the care and management of a herd or flock of domestic animals, usually on open pasture. It is particularly associated with nomadic or transhumant management of stock, or with common land grazing. ...
. All of these expressed in some degree their indebtedness to
Leibniz Gottfried Wilhelm (von) Leibniz . ( – 14 November 1716) was a German polymath active as a mathematician, philosopher, scientist and diplomat. He is one of the most prominent figures in both the history of philosophy and the history of mathema ...
. Lotze can be said to have brought philosophy out of the lecture-room into the market-place of life. By understanding and combining the strengths of each approach, he became the true successor of Leibniz. 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