Karl Robert Eduard von Hartmann (February 23, 1842 – June 5, 1906), was a German

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.

Biography

He was born in Berlin

Berlin

Berlin is the capital city of Germany and is one of the 16 states of Germany. With a population of 3.45 million people, Berlin is Germany's largest city. It is the second most populous city proper and the seventh most populous urban area in the European Union...

, and educated with the intention of a military career. He entered the artillery

Artillery

Originally applied to any group of infantry primarily armed with projectile weapons, artillery has over time become limited in meaning to refer only to those engines of war that operate by projection of munitions far beyond the range of effect of personal weapons...

 of the Guards as an officer in 1860, but was forced to leave in 1865 because of a knee problem. After some hesitation between music

Music

Music is an art form whose medium is sound and silence. Its common elements are pitch , rhythm , dynamics, and the sonic qualities of timbre and texture...

 and philosophy, he decided to make the latter his profession, and in 1867 obtained a Ph. D. from the University of Rostock

University of Rostock

The University of Rostock is the university of the city Rostock, in the German state of Mecklenburg-Vorpommern.Founded in 1419, it is the oldest and largest university in continental northern Europe and the Baltic Sea area...

. He subsequently returned to Berlin, and died at Gross-Lichterfelde

Lichterfelde

Lichterfelde may refer to:* Berlin Lichterfelde* Lichterfelde West elegant residential area in Berlin* the municipality of Lichterfelde, Saxony-Anhalt in the Stendhal District, Germany* VfB Lichterfelde...

.

Philosophy

His reputation as a philosopher was established by his first book, The Philosophy of the Unconscious (1869). This success was largely due to the originality of its title, the diversity of its contents (Von Hartmann professing to obtain his speculative results by the methods of inductive science, and making plentiful use of concrete illustrations), the fashionableness of its pessimism and the vigour and lucidity of its style. The conception of the Unconscious

Unconscious mind

The unconscious mind is a term coined by the 18th century German romantic philosopher Friedrich Schelling and later introduced into English by the poet and essayist Samuel Taylor Coleridge...

, by which Von Hartmann describes his ultimate metaphysical

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:...

 principle, is not at bottom as paradoxical as it sounds, being merely a new and mysterious designation for the Absolute of German metaphysicians.

The Unconscious appears as a combination of the metaphysics of Hegel with that of Arthur Schopenhauer

Arthur Schopenhauer

Arthur Schopenhauer was a German philosopher known for his pessimism and philosophical clarity. At age 25, he published his doctoral dissertation, On the Fourfold Root of the Principle of Sufficient Reason, which examined the four separate manifestations of reason in the phenomenal...

. The Unconscious is both Will

Will (philosophy)

Will, in philosophical discussions, consonant with a common English usage, refers to a property of the mind, and an attribute of acts intentionally performed. Actions made according to a person's will are called "willing" or "voluntary" and sometimes pejoratively "willful"...

 and Reason

Reason

Reason is a term that refers to the capacity human beings have to make sense of things, to establish and verify facts, and to change or justify practices, institutions, and beliefs. It is closely associated with such characteristically human activities as philosophy, science, language, ...

 and the absolute all-embracing ground of all existence. Von Hartmann thus combines pantheism

Pantheism

Pantheism is the view that the Universe and God are identical. Pantheists thus do not believe in a personal, anthropomorphic or creator god. The word derives from the Greek meaning "all" and the Greek meaning "God". As such, Pantheism denotes the idea that "God" is best seen as a process of...

 with panlogism

Panlogism

In philosophy, panlogism is a Hegelian doctrine that holds that the universe is the act or realization of Logos. According to the doctrine of panlogism, logic and ontology are the same study....

 in a manner adumbrated by Schelling in his positive philosophy. Nevertheless Will and not Reason is the primary aspect of the Unconscious, whose melancholy career is determined by the primacy of the Will and the subservience of the Reason. Precosmically the Will is potential and the Reason latent, and the Will is void of reason when it passes from potentiality to actual willing. This latter is absolute misery, and to cure it the Unconscious evokes its Reason and with its aid creates the best of all possible worlds

Best of all possible worlds

The phrase "the best of all possible worlds" was coined by the German polymath Gottfried Leibniz in his 1710 work Essais de Théodicée sur la bonté de Dieu, la liberté de l'homme et l'origine du mal...

, which contains the promise of its redemption from actual existence by the emancipation of the Reason from its subjugation to the Will in the conscious reason of the enlightened pessimist. When the greater part of the Will in existence is so far enlightened by reason as to perceive the inevitable misery of existence, a collective effort to will non-existence will be made, and the world will relapse into nothingness, the Unconscious into quiescence

Quiescence

Quiescence may refer to:*Quiescence search, in Game searching in artificial intelligence, a quiescent state is one in which a game is considered stable and unlikely to change drastically the next few plays...

.

Von Hartmann is a pessimist, but not an unmitigated one. The individual's happiness is indeed unattainable either here and now or hereafter and in the future, but he does not despair of ultimately releasing the Unconscious from its sufferings. He differs from Schopenhauer in making salvation collective by the negation of the will to live

Will to live

The will to live is a psychological force to fight for survival, particularly when one's life is threatened by an injury or disease such as cancer. Some physicians believe that it plays an important role in one's chances of survival. There are significant correlations between the will to live and...

 depend on a collective social effort and not on individualistic asceticism

Asceticism

Asceticism describes a lifestyle characterized by abstinence from various sorts of worldly pleasures often with the aim of pursuing religious and spiritual goals...

. The conception of a redemption of the Unconscious also supplies the ultimate basis of Von Hartmann's ethics

Ethics

Ethics, also known as moral philosophy, is a branch of philosophy that addresses questions about morality—that is, concepts such as good and evil, right and wrong, virtue and vice, justice and crime, etc.Major branches of ethics include:...

. We must provisionally affirm life and devote ourselves to social evolution, instead of striving after a happiness which is impossible; in so doing we shall find that morality renders life less unhappy than it would otherwise be. Suicide

Suicide

Suicide is the act of intentionally causing one's own death. Suicide is often committed out of despair or attributed to some underlying mental disorder, such as depression, bipolar disorder, schizophrenia, alcoholism, or drug abuse...

, and all other forms of selfishness, are highly reprehensible. Epistemologically Von Hartmann is a transcendental realist

Transcendental Realism

Transcendental realism is a concept stemming from the philosophy of Immanuel Kant that implies individuals have a perfect understanding of the limitations of their own minds.-Kantian roots:...

, who ably defends his views and acutely criticizes those of his opponents. His realism enables him to maintain the reality of Time

Time

Time is a part of the measuring system used to sequence events, to compare the durations of events and the intervals between them, and to quantify rates of change such as the motions of objects....

, and so of the process of the world's redemption.

Reception

Carl Jung

Carl Jung

Carl Gustav Jung was a Swiss psychiatrist and the founder of Analytical Psychology. Jung is considered the first modern psychiatrist to view the human psyche as "by nature religious" and make it the focus of exploration. Jung is one of the best known researchers in the field of dream analysis and...

 wrote in his autobiography, Memories, Dreams, Reflections

Memories, Dreams, Reflections

Memories, Dreams, Reflections is a partially autobiographical book by Swiss psychologist Carl Jung and associate Aniela Jaffé...

(1963), that he read von Hartmann "assiduously" (p. 101) ISBN 0-679-72395-1.

Works

Von Hartmann's numerous works extend to more than 12,000 pages. They may be classified into:

Systematical, including Grand probleme:

• Die Erkenntnistheorie; Kategorienlehre; Das sittliche Bewusstsein; Die Philosophie des Schönen; Die Religion des Geistes; Die Philosophie des Unbewussten (3 vols., which now include his, originally anonymous, self-criticism, Das Unbewusste vom Standpunkte der Physiologie und Descendenztheorie, and its refutation, Eng. trs. by W. C. Coupland, 1884)
• System der Philosophie im Grundriss, L
• Grundriss der Erkenntnislehre

Historical and critical:

• Das religiöse Bewusstsein der Menschheit
• Geschichte der Metaphysik (2 vols.)
• Kants Erkenntnistheorie
• Kritische Grundlegung des transcendentalen Realismus
• Uber die dialektische Methode
• studies of 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...
  
  , Hermann Lotze, Julius von Kirchmann
  Julius von Kirchmann
  Julius von Kirchmann was a German jurist and philosopher.-Biography:...
  
  
• Zur Geschichte des Pessimismus
• Neukantianismus, Schopenhauerismus, Hegelianismus
• Geschichte der deutschen Ästhetik und Kant
• Die Krisis des Christentums in der modernen Theologie
• Philosophische Fragen der Gegenwart
• Ethische Studien
• Moderne Psychologie
• Das Christentum des neuen Testaments
• Die Weltanschauung der modernen Physik

Popular:

• Soziale Kernfragen
• Moderne Probleme
• Tagesfragen
• Zwei Jahrzehnte deutscher Politik
• Das Judentum in Gegenwart und Zukunft
• Die Selbstzersetzung des Christentums
• Gesammelte Studien
• Der Spiritismus and Die Geisterhypothese des Spiritismus
• Zur Zeitgeschichle

His select works were published in 10 volumes.