The Philosophy of Nicolai Hartmann 9783110254181, 9783110254174

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The Philosophy of Nicolai Hartmann

The Philosophy of Nicolai Hartmann

Edited by

Roberto Poli Carlo Scognamiglio Frederic Tremblay

De Gruyter

ISBN 978-3-11-025417-4 e-ISBN 978-3-11-025418-1 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Nicolai Hartmann Society. International Conference (1st : 2010 : Rome, Italy) The philosophy of Nicolai Hartmann / edited by Roberto Poli, Carlo Scognamiglio, Frederic Tremblay. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-3-11-025417-4 (hardcover : alk. paper) 1. Hartmann, Nicolai, 1882−1950 − Congresses. I. Poli, Roberto, 1955− II. Scognamiglio, Carlo, 1976. III. Tremblay, Frederic. IV. Title. B3279.H24N55 2010 193−dc23 2011027405

Bibliographic information published by the Deutsche Nationalbibliothek The Deutsche Nationalbibliothek lists this publication in the Deutsche Nationalbibliografie; detailed bibliographic data are available in the Internet at http://dnb.d-nb.de. © 2011 Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co. KG, Berlin/Boston Printing: Hubert & Co. GmbH & Co. KG, Göttingen ⬁ Printed on acid-free paper Printed in Germany www.degruyter.com

Foreword Nicolai Hartmann was one of the most prolific and original twentieth century German philosophers. Yet, he did not compromise clarity and rigor for proficiency and originality. Brought up as a neo-Kantian, he turned his back on neo-Kantianism to become one of the most important critics of German idealism and one of the most resolute proponents of ontological realism. He developed what he called the “New Ontology,” which lies at the core of a systematic opus branching out in all of the main areas of philosophy. He proposed innovative and promising solutions to old and new problems in the various areas of philosophy. Although he is little known today, his work had a major influence in philosophy as well as in several sciences, and he remains a key figure of the history of philosophy, especially for his central role in the overcoming of the idealistic phase of German philosophy. Hartmann worked in a systematic fashion, but he carefully avoided letting his philosophical analysis get trapped in the straightjacket of a closed system. He opposed the view that philosophical activity must terminate in a complete and closed system. Such a system would preclude further research. He rather embraced the open-ended approach of aporetical philosophy. Hartmann, who can be considered to have revived the then lost art of aporetics, also developed the aporetical method to new heights of completion and clarity. This aspect of Hartmann’s work is discussed in the present volume by A. Schlittmaier and N. Rescher. Schlittmaier looks at Hartmann’s conception of aporetics, the solutions he proposed to overcome some of the main aporias he was concerned with, and the place of Hartmannian aporetics within the history of philosophy. Rescher discusses further implications of Hartmannian-style aporetics. Hartmann’s philosophical talent was complemented with a solid and broad mastery of the history of philosophy. The papers of C. Luchetti, A. Pietras, and G. D’Anna explore the historical dimension of his work. Hartmann paid especial attention to Plato, from whom he learned to frame the ontological problem of ideal being. Luchetti examines Hartmann’s interpretation of Plato. As a neo-Kantian, his interpretation of Kant is also important. Pietras discusses Hartmann’s interpretation of Kant, and the difference between this interpretation and Heidegger’s reading of Kant. Hartmann conceived his “New Ontology” to be, in

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some respects, a rehabilitation of the Wolffian ontology. D’Anna’s paper deals with the relation of Hartmann’s work to that of Christian Wolff, with which Hartmann was acquainted through H. Pichler’s work, as well as the relation of Hartmann’s work to A. Meinong’s theory of objects. More than anything else, however, Hartmann was an ontologist when most philosophers thought that ontological problems were either meaningless or linguistic mistakes in need of clarification. Although he claimed to operate a return to classical ontology, he broke with many of the traditional ways of understanding ontology. He proposed a new division of the spheres of being (real and ideal) and modes of being, he worked out an extensive and refined theory of categories, and developed a theory of levels of reality. In the present volume, R. Poli presents aspects of Hartmann’s theories of categories. J. Dziadkowiec takes elements from Hartmann’s theory of levels of reality and combines them with elements of Whitehead’s process philosophy in the attempt to develop a basis for a processual theory of levels. And D. Jacquette discusses the issue of mathematical objects in Hartmann’s theory of ideal being. The pervasive influence of German idealism had been hindering the development of philosophies of nature in Germany for about a hundred and fifty years. But Hartmann’s realist ontology suddenly supplied a new metaphysical foundation for the philosophy of nature. Hartmann’s own philosophy of nature provides new solutions to traditional problems such as the problem of the definition of ‘species’, but also criticizes some of the recent developments in the natural sciences. This philosophy of nature influenced many German-speaking scientists of the time and is still relevant for the contemporary philosophy of science and philosophy of biology. Hartmann’s treatment of the concept of ‘species’ is analyzed in this volume by F. Tremblay. German idealism had also changed the way philosophers dealt with the problem of the mind and of psychical activity. Psychical activity had become the ultimate foundation of all phenomena. But this view had proven to be no more than an improbable hypothesis motivated by a desire for absolute freedom. As with the philosophy of nature, Hartmann was the first German philosopher after the neo-Kantian era to replace the study of the mind and psychical activities within metaphysics. Psychical categories now had to depend on organological categories. The papers of C. Scognamiglio and R. Zaborowski deal with this important portion of Hartmann’s work. Scognamiglio takes a look at Hartmann’s views on the psyche and psychic activity in the attempt to recon-

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struct his theory of the psyche. And Zaborowski tries to extract from Hartmann’s work some ideas that can be used to solve problems that clog the current debate in the theory of emotions. Hartmann also wrote extensively on the theory of values, moral phenomena, and ethics, articulating with his contemporary M. Scheler an innovative conception of objective values and their individual and social acceptations. Inspired by Plato’s theory of intelligible forms, Hartmann thought that values have an objective reality and exist in the realm of ideal being along with the laws of logic and mathematics. Besides developing one of the most sophisticated virtue-ethics ever conceived, Hartmann distinguished between the constancy (immutability) of values and the variability of the individual and social recognition of values. The papers by A. Kinneging and E. Kelly discuss Hartmann’s theory of values and ethics. Kinneging examines the similarities and divergences between the theories of values of Plato and Hartmann. And Kelly takes a look at Hartmann’s method of discovering and synthesizing values. In the nineteen-twenties, Cologne was the host of a new kind of philosophical anthropology emerging around M. Scheler, H. Plessner, and later E. Rothacker and A. Gehlen. Despite the fact that he did not write on this topic, Hartmann nevertheless had a major influence on that new movement. J. Fischer explains how Hartmann’s influence contributed to shaping the movement in two main respects: first, through his presence in Cologne from 1925, which allowed direct interaction with Scheler, Plessner, Rothacker and Gehlen; second, through his work, especially through his theory of levels of reality, which contributed to shape Scheler and Plessner’s theses. Most of the chapters in this volume have been selected from the papers presented at the First International Conference of the Nicolai Hartmann Society (Rome, 19 – 21 July 2010). Other papers, namely those of D. Jacquette, N. Rescher, and A. Schlittmaier, have been invited to address essential topics that were not covered at the conference in the hope that they would contribute to providing a more systematic presentation, discussion, and, on occasion, criticism of Hartmann’s work. Roberto Poli Carlo Scognamiglio Frederic Tremblay

Contents Roberto Poli Chapter 1: Hartmann’s Theory of Categories: Introductory Remarks . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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Anton Schlittmaier Chapter 2: Nicolai Hartmann’s Aporetics and Its Place in the History of Philosophy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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Nicholas Rescher Chapter 3: Aporetics in Nicolai Hartmann and Beyond . . . . .

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Joachim Fischer Chapter 4: Nicolai Hartmann: A Crucial Figure in German Philosophical Anthropology – Without Belonging to the Paradigm . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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Jakub Dziadkowiec Chapter 5: The Layered Structure of the World in N. Hartmann’s Ontology and a Processual View . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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Frederic Tremblay Chapter 6: Nicolai Hartmann’s Definition of Biological Species

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Carlo Scognamiglio Chapter 7: Nicolai Hartmann’s Theory of Psyche . . . . . . . . . .

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Robert Zaborowski Chapter 8: Nicolai Hartmann’s Approach to Affectivity and Its Relevance for the Current Debate Over Feelings . . . . . . . . . .

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Eugene Kelly Chapter 9: Hartmann on the Unity of Moral Value . . . . . . . .

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Andreas Kinneging Chapter 10: Hartmann’s Platonic Ethics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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Claudia Luchetti Chapter 11: Nicolai Hartmann’s Plato. A Tribute to the “Power of Dialectics” (Parmenides, 135c 2) . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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Alicja Pietras Chapter 12: Nicolai Hartmann as a Post-Neo-Kantian . . . . . .

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Giuseppe D’Anna Chapter 13: Between Ontology and the Theory of Objects: Nicolai Hartmann and Hans Pichler . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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Dale Jacquette Chapter 14: Hartmann’s Philosophy of Mathematics . . . . . . . .

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Chapter 1: Hartmann’s Theory of Categories: Introductory Remarks Roberto Poli 1.1 Introduction Aristotle’s theory of categories – and in particular the sub-theory of accidents – had an enormous influence for more than twenty centuries. After this long period of influence, during the past two centuries quite a few radically new theories of categories have been advanced. Following the two well-known transformations of the theory of categories brought about by Kant and Hegel, six further major reforms were proposed in a period that spanned hardly more than nine decades, notably by Brentano, Husserl, Ingarden, Hartmann, Peirce and Whitehead, who published their work approximately between 1860 and 1950. Apart from these main reforms, a large number of minor ones, occasionally able to furnish deep insights into the categorial nature of specific types of entities, were advanced as well. While the theories of Husserl, Peirce and Whitehead appear to be reasonably discussed, those of Brentano, Ingarden and Hartmann are much less discussed. In some of my previous papers I have already considered the categorial frameworks of Brentano (Poli, 2004) and, to a lesser extent, Ingarden (Poli 1998a and 2010a) and Hartmann (Poli, 1998a, 2001a and 2010b). In this paper, I shall present Hartmann’s theory of categories more systematically. My purpose here is eminently reconstructive, leaving comparison with other frameworks and critical evaluation to subsequent occasions. Even within these limitations, the present paper reconstructs only a fragment of the overall framework developed by Hartmann. Here I specifically deal with (some parts of) the third volume of Hartmann’s ontological quadrilogy, Der Aufbau der realen Welt. I can justify my choice not only by citing merely pragmatic reasons – Hartmann’s theory of categories is much too rich, complex and articulated to be compressed into a single paper – but also by referring to the

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method itself devised by Hartmann, and in particular to the distinction among phenomenology (the descriptive attitude), aporetics (analysis of the problems – often in the form of aporias – resulting from the previous descriptive phase), and theory (or the systematic coordination of the outcomes from the first two phases through as few as possible metaphysical assumptions) (Hartmann 1921, 1931). In applying Hartmann’s philosophical method to Hartmann’s thought itself, I start with a description of his theories (or parts of them). The identification and discussion of the tensions internal to his philosophy and comparison with other perspectives are for the most part left for other occasions. Only some explicit remarks are made on points of tension that cannot be entirely postponed. Hartmann exhibits a thorough mastery of the history of philosophy: Plato, Aristotle, Plotinus, Leibniz, Kant, Hegel are his workfellows. To keep this paper within acceptable limits, I avoid any reference to the rich and often brilliant and deeply enlightening discussions that Hartmann has with the great philosophers of the past.

1.2 The problem of knowledge from an ontological viewpoint Ontology is knowledge of being and knowledge is an epistemological problem. Epistemological categories – the categories of knowledge, be they perceptions, intuitions, experiences or even conceptualizations – are the medium through which real categories can be apprehended (Hartmann 1940, 201). However, in order to ground the ontological apprehension of being, it is mandatory to clarify the connection between the epistemological problem of categories and the ontological problem of categories, or the question – as Kant puts it – of the objective validity of the categories (Hartmann 1940, 6). This problem admits of an ontologically acceptable solution only if knowledge is correctly defined. The basic ontological assumption concerning knowledge is that it does not create or generate its objects. Ontologically speaking, knowledge grasps objects. If knowledge does not generate its objects, objects precede any effort to grasp them. This means that knowledge is not entirely internal to consciousness, but is grounded in emotional transcendent acts (analyzed in detail in Hartmann 1935). It is important to distinguish here between the natural and the reflected direction of knowledge. The natural direction of

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knowledge (intentio recta) goes toward its object, while the reflected direction of knowledge (intentio obliqua) is knowledge directed toward other knowledge, knowledge that reflects upon itself. The two cases can be systematically distinguished because the determinations of the objects are different from the determinations of knowledge. In particular through the vast array of emotional transcendent acts, we happen to know a variety of determinations before the beginning of any philosophical reflection. Put differently, while categories of knowledge are the initial conditions of knowledge, i. e., what makes knowledge possible, knowledge of the categories of knowledge are among the things we know last. Knowledge of categories is an enormously complex form of knowledge, because it goes backward from the totality of experience to its conditions (Hartmann 1940, 12). If knowledge is grounded on transcendent acts – as Hartmann claims – this implies that the connection between knowledge and propositions is secondary, in the sense that the connection is eventually supervenient over the originally epistemological character of perception and the intuitive apprehension of objects. Shortly, thinking is not identical with knowing because it does not need to refer to a transcendent entity (Hartmann 1940, 176). Properly understood, however, phenomena – if they are authentic phenomena – are the appearances of beings, of entities. A phenomenon without a being appearing in it is an empty appearance. This is not the correct understanding of phenomena. We cannot know phenomena without to some degree knowing their underlying beings, without implying that at least some determinations of a phenomenon are determinations of being (Hartmann 1940, 210). The relation of knowledge is not one of the fundamental ontic relations, however. It does not divide being into the world of the subject and the world of the object, which implies that the subject-object relation is an ontologically secondary relation. In fact, there is no need for an entity to become an object, i. e., the correlate of a transcendent act. Entities are super-objective. On the other hand, objects and subjects are both entities. Both the object and the subject have the same type of actuality: both are temporal, both are contingent and both are individual (Hartmann 1940, 172). Everything real changes. Change, however, is different from coming-into-being and passing-away. Change is the passage from one state to the next. This passage from state to state may follow rules, patterns or require something that remains constant in it (Hartmann 1940, 366). This is Hartmann’s way of reading the category of substance. Sub-

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stance for him is something that is within the real process and persists through it. Apart from that, there is no valid argument in support of an absolutely persisting something (Hartmann 1980, 291; Werkmeister 1990, 115). Objects are indifferent from their being known. Knowledge captures or explicates an object. While these activities are relevant for the knower, they are of absolutely no importance for the object itself. Knowledge improves, uncovers aspects, brings to light dimensions and properties of objects. The side of knowledge on which progress is possible is only made possible by distinguishing the transcendent from the immanent aspects of objects. The German language distinguishes between ‘Gegenstand’ – what stands against us, what resists us – and ‘Objekt’ – the object as known. English wavers in this regard. What is ‘Gegenstand’ in German, in English is the result of a referential act (or reference, for short), while what is ‘Objekt’ in German does not seem susceptible to a uniform translation in English. While sometimes ‘Objekt’ is understood as the result of a characterizing act, the closest approximations to the German ‘Objekt’ are ‘idea’ or ‘image’. Unfortunately, the latter terms are more epistemologically than ontologically oriented. Even more unfortunate is the eventual translation of the German ‘Objekt’ with the English ‘object’. Knowledge introduces a divide between that part of the object which has been captured by knowledge and that part which remains to be known. The former is usually typified and then represented by concepts. The divide between the full ontological object and the part that has been apprehended shifts as knowledge develops. However, Hartmann does not claim that the divide constantly shifts in only one direction. Knowledge may develop as new aspects of the object are captured, or it may decline when what was previously known is subsequently forgotten, or it may exhibit more complex patterns according to the possibilities embedded in different cognitive strategies. Hartmann’s theory of categories entirely breaks with Kant’s or Hegel’s theories of categories by explicitly denying that categories are concepts. If categories were concepts, they could be straightforwardly interpreted as fictions or forms of representation more or less suitable to the manipulation of things (Hartmann 1940, 6). While we need concepts in order to refer to categories, they never capture categories entirely. There is always a difference between categories and their concepts.

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Hartmann explicitly states that the philosophical problem of categories remains alive only if the following three conditions are fulfilled: 1. Categories can be represented by predicates; 2. Predicates are not identical with the categories they represent, and 3. Detailed analyses are needed for further specifying the relation between a given predicate and its category (Hartmann 1940, 41).

1.3 Hartmann’s ontological framework at a glance The overall architecture of Hartmann’s ontology was set out in four books (see the references for the corresponding German titles): Foundations of Ontology (1935), Possibility and Actuality (1938), The Structure of the Real World (1940), and Philosophy of Nature (1950). Hartmann dealt with specific aspects of the overall framework in a variety of other books. Plato’s Logic of Being (1909) paved the way for his understanding of the sphere of ideal being, while The Problem of Spiritual Being (1933), the three volumes of Ethics (1926) and the Aesthetics (1953) dug deeply into the many intricacies of the spiritual level of reality, an inquiry prepared for by systematic analysis of German Idealism (The Philosophy of German Idealism, 2 vols., 1923 and 1929). Hartmann addressed the problem of knowledge and the connections between epistemology and ontology in Metaphysics of Knowledge (1921). The first tasks of ontology are (1) the clarification of the problem of being qua being; (2) the distinction between the spheres of being (reality and ideality) and analysis of the relations between them; (3) the articulation of the theory of categories (Hartmann 1935; Hartmann 1940, 1; for a different way to read the expression ‘being qua being’ see Poli 1998b). The problem of being qua being results in the difference between Dasein and Sosein, which can only imperfectly be translated as existence and being-thus (or determination). Spheres of being, in contrast, are the spheres of real and ideal being. All entities – either real or ideal – have Dasein and Sosein, albeit in different ways. For instance, real existence (i. e., the existence of a real being) is a temporal determination, while ideal existence is compossibility. Furthermore, apart from the two principal spheres of real and ideal being, Hartmann discusses the two secondary ones of logical being and knowledge: the former is a

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type of ideal being, the latter a type of real being, and specifically a function pertaining to the level of spiritual being (Hartmann 1940, 209). The difference between Dasein and Sosein – and every other articulation that ontology is supposed to present – is characterized categorially. As a matter of fact, categories are the only tools available to an ontologist. Ontology, therefore, is a thoroughgoing theory of categories. Thus, the difference itself between the spheres of being – both the principal and the secondary spheres – must be articulated categorially, which is the task of the modal analyses (developed in detail in Hartmann 1938). The main thesis defended by Hartmann in the Foundations of Ontology is the claim that no ontological distinction makes a difference from the point of view of being. All the differences are articulations of being, not differences between being and non-being. Parts and wholes are both authentic aspects of being; independent and dependent entities are similarly being; physical, biological, psychological and spiritual types of being are all manifestations of being, without any of them being “more being” than any other. From the point of view of ontology, no part, aspect or moment of reality is “more being” than any other part, aspect or moment of it. The fact that, say, the existence of biological entities depends on that of physical entities does not imply that physics is “more ontologically real” than biology. Existentially dependent entities are as ontologically genuine as existentially independent ones. All entities, whatever their type, demand the same careful ontological scrutiny.

1.4 Ontological categories All ontological distinctions have the form of categories (Hartmann 1940, 1). The theory of categories shares with the sciences the fundamental ontological attitude of the intentio recta. Hartmann explicitly defends the idea that science is ontological in all its ramifications (Hartmann 1935, 235). This is rather at odds with the mainstream reading of science as an eminently epistemological affair. This is one of the issues on which Hartmann firmly departs from the Kantian – to be precise, the NeoKantian – legacy. From the claim that the main orientation of science is ontological, it immediately follows that scientific categories are further specifications and subdivisions of ontological categories. In other words, the contact with science is a characteristic feature of the theory of categories, and therefore of ontology (Hartmann 1940, 2). The philoso-

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pher’s task is to unfold the first and most general articulations of the theory of categories, while scientists deal with their subsequent further specifications. Categories articulate what is universal and necessary, what remains identical (Hartmann 1940, 25). Categories articulate in particular the Sosein of entities; they specify conformations, structures and contents, not forms of existence (Hartmann 1940, 15). Categories articulate the fundamental determinations of being, they are principles of being (on principles see Sections 6 and 8 below). As fundamental determinations of being, categories form the interior of entities. In this sense, categories are immanent to the world: they do not form a second world (Hartmann 1940, 160). The categorial interior of entities has a layered organization: the most fundamental categories structure the innermost core of entities, while other categories, such as scientific ones, add progressively more superficial layers. Ontological categories are the lowest layer of being. They form the network of internal, dynamic determinants and dependencies which articulate the furniture of the world. The solution of the many enigmas that plague categories is the condition for being able to delve deeper into the nature of things (Hartmann 1940, 3). One of the most interesting aspects of the theory of categories is that categories do not form a homogeneous continuum, but appear to be organized in groups (Hartmann 1940, 30; see below for details). Some categories belong to all the levels, to the entire real world. They are called fundamental categories; they form the unitary base of the world and they are the specific subjects of the general theory of categories (Hartmann 1940, 200). We come to know ontological categories through the objects that we come to know. Our knowledge of ontological categories is even more provisional than our knowledge of objects. While our knowledge of objects is grounded in the Gegenstand/Objekt divide, our knowledge of ontological categories follows a different pattern. We discover ontological categories through the objects that exemplify them. In other words, ontological categories are intrinsic to objects. The difference between knowing objects and knowing categories explains why ontological categories are often confused with concepts. The problem is that categories do not allow direct acquaintance as objects do. On the other hand, as far as ontological categories are concerned, the difference between the ontological and the cognitive sides of categories is even more important than it is in the case of objects. At best, concepts are names of ontological categories, which implies that con-

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cepts are partial, static, separate representations of something that in itself is both essentially dynamic and inseparable from other ontological categories. Furthermore, the names assigned to the various categories are only partially adequate. Historically speaking, categories have been given different meanings. The analysis of categories and their mutual relations must be done carefully to adhere to the contents that are explicitly given to them (Hartmann 1940, 231 – 232). Similarly to the knowledge of objects, the knowledge of ontological categories changes as well – when ontology develops, our understanding of ontological categories develops too toward a deeper and better grasping of their articulation and subtleties. Some categories present numberless variations, others only minor variations. There are many different types of unity and multiplicity, but only slight variations in the case of the paired categories of principle and concretum (see Section 8 below). The most general and schematic categories are those that present the most meager content and therefore those that change less (Hartmann 1940, 267). Categories are never knowable a priori, though. Only objects – or, better, some moments of real objects – are knowable a priori. The problem of a priori knowledge brings to light the presence of ideal categories within real entities. In fact, what can be known a priori relies on categories, precisely ideal categories. The a priori is given by the occurrence of ideal moments within real entities (Hartmann 1940, 119).

1.5 Categories and essences Are categories essences? Hartmann openly denounces the identification of categories with essences as a grievous error. While categories are close to essences, they do not coincide with them (Hartmann 1940, 52). As to the reasons for the similarity between categories and essences, it is sufficient to note that both categories and essences are the general and the identical in the multiplicity of cases (Hartmann 1940, 48), do not exist in time, and are independent from their real instances, although both are apprehensible only in them (Hartmann 1940, 43). The differences between categories and essences are partially summarized by the following reasons. Firstly, categories and ideal beings have different contents. While ideal beings exhaust their contents in forms, laws and relations, categories contain further moments of content which are entirely lacking from

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the sphere of ideal being, notably dimensional moments and moments with the character of substratum (see Section 9.3 below). That real categories are not limited to forms, laws and relations was already understood by the ancients, who had to add the category of matter. The problem is that forms alone are unable to completely determine real entities; for instance, forms are unable to determine Daseins. On the other hand, ideal entities do not need any kind of matter, because for them form is enough (Hartmann 1940, 50). Secondly, ideal being has its own special categories. Ideal being is a widely ramified realm whose categories do not work as principles (see Section 6 below). Furthermore, the specifications of ideal beings do not descend to the level of individuals. While ideal categories can inform real entities, they never exhaust the real. In this regard, Hartmann speaks of the ideal as an incomplete being (Hartmann 1935, 282; Hartmann 1940, 312 and elsewhere). Thirdly, real and ideal categories do not coincide perfectly, because they have partially different contents (Hartmann 1940, 59). Similarly, the categories of real and ideal knowledge (i. e., of knowledge of real and ideal entities) do not coincide perfectly. Both coincide only partially (Hartmann 1940, 49). Modal differences are also worth considering. Ideal necessity is the subordination of the specific to the general; real necessity, in contrast, is the necessity of the individual case with its unique actuality given by the total disposition of the present circumstances (Hartmann 1940, 60 – 61). Even more relevant is the difference between ideal actuality and real actuality. The former is given by sheer lack of contradiction, while the latter requires full interpenetration of real necessity and real possibility. Numberless ideal possibilities are in fact impossible in the real sphere (Hartmann 1938, Chapters 18 – 21, 24, 41 – 44).

1.6 Categories as principles The two most relevant aspects of categories are their generality and their character of determination. The latter is the feature that makes them principles. Principles exhaust themselves in this determining role. Principles are nothing in themselves. They only are for something else; they are something only with respect to the concretum they determine and are “in” it. Principles are nothing without their concretum, and the concretum

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cannot exist without its principles (Hartmann 1940, 42, 77 – 78, 160 and elsewhere). The moment of principle of the categories consists in some kind of determination of their concreta. It is apparent that principles do not determine their concreta as causes, reasons, or ends. Apart from denying these patently inadequate characterizations, it is difficult to specify any positive feature of the relation of determination, because it appears to be a sui generis relation. A positive unfolding of the moments characterizing the relation between principles and concreta is a task still to be accomplished (Hartmann 1940, 66). Categories as principles are independent from their concreta, not from other categories (Hartmann 1940, 122). We will see that principles imply one another and all the categories characterizing a level of reality work together (Hartmann 1940, 154 – 155; see section 11 below). Categories are far from being the only principles of entities. There are also highly particular principles structuring specific domains of being – such as natural laws or psychological laws – which are concreta with respect to general categories (Hartmann 1940, 254). There is a gradation of principles from the most general categories to specific real cases. Empirical laws are concreta with respect to general principles, and principles with respect to individual instances. Last but not least, the essence of every category is determined by the connections that a given category has with other categories (Hartmann 1940, 452). Laying bare the relations linking and determining categories one to another is a rich source of information on their nature.

1.7 Categorial groups There are three groups of categories: those that pervade all entities, those that (either primarily or exclusively) are present in the entities of one sphere of being only, and those that are present in specific families of entities. The first group of categories is analyzed in detail in Possibility and Actuality; as far as real being is concerned, the second group is analyzed in The Structure of the Real World, while the third group is analyzed in the Philosophy of Nature. The categories of the first group are termed ‘modal categories’, those of the second group are called ‘fundamental categories’, and those of the third group ‘special categories’ (See Table 1 below). Modal categories – because of the methodological difficulties of modal analysis – form a special philosophical sub-discipline.

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They articulate spheres of being and their relations. Modalities do not determine the effective structure of the real world (Hartmann 1940, 204). I will not discuss modal categories here. Fundamental categories comprise (1) categories organized in pairs of opposites, such as principle-concretum, mode-structure, form-matter, determination-dependence, and quality-quantity; (2) level categories, such as those that distinguish inanimate, living, psychological and spiritual beings; and (3) the categories of intercategorial connections, or the group of categorial laws, such as the laws of coherence, stratification, and dependence among categories (see Section 13 below). Each group of fundamental categories is internally stratified (Hartmann 1940, 203). Finally, categories such as space, time, causality, process, individuality, and substance primarily are characteristic of inanimate being. Table 1. Classification of the different families of categories. Categories that pertain to both the real and the ideal spheres of being •

Modal categories (e. g., necessity, possibility, actuality)

Categories that pertain to the real sphere of being only • • •

Paired Categories (e. g., principle-concretum, substratum-relation, elementcomplex) Level categories (those that distinguish the inanimate, living, psychological and spiritual levels of being) Categorial laws (e. g., laws of validity, coherence, stratification and dependence)

Categories characterizing inanimate being •

Special categories (space, time, causality, process, individuality, substance)

The two preeminent pairs are the principle-concretum and the modestructure pairs. Concretum for Hartmann is the entity in which categories are embedded as its determinations. The concretum is not limited to real entities, but includes ideal ones as well. Furthermore, the concretum for Hartmann is not to be understood as limited to the individual instances of a principle because there can be different levels of concreta. For instance, level categories are concreta with respect to general categories. Both the concretum and its principles are categories. Starting from concreta is the simplest way to distinguish the various groups of categories (Hartmann 1940, 60).

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Mode and structure are the connections between the modal articulation of a concretum (e. g., as a real as opposed to ideal entity) and the determinations that specify its attributes. Here, we find again the previous distinction between Dasein (mode) and Sosein (determination). This is a general categorial law: ontological categories are mutually connected and form a network of reciprocal dependencies.

1.8 The principle and its concretum Categorially speaking, the most general relation is one between principles and concreta. Concretum is what is determinate. For Hartmann, the concretum should not be understood as the opposite to the general, as the individual instance. The thesis that the relation between principle and concretum is a relation sui generis, different from any other relation (Hartmann 1940, 42), does not appear to be equivalent to the claim that principles and concreta are related in the same way in which the general is contained within the individual (Hartmann 1940, 162). The general-individual pair and the principle-concretum pair are two different kinds of pairs. Real categories contain all the universal determinations of their concreta; they contain what is needed for the structure of the concreta. A complete system of categories – not the incomplete one we can grasp – completely determines its concreta (Hartmann 1940, 60). As natural laws exist only in the real processes of nature and are nothing outside of them, real categories exist only as structural relations within the real world and are nothing in themselves (Hartmann 1940, 162 – 163). The principle-concretum determination is only one among a variety of types of determination and in no way the most relevant in the real world. In fact, each real level has its own specific types of determination, such as the specific linear nexus (causal, final, etc.) that unifies the phases of the processes that unfold within a concretum. The following three moments characterize the essence of principles, and three corresponding moments the essences of concreta: 1. The epistemological relation: The principle is that through which the concretum is grasped. 2. The first ontological relation: The principle is the arch of the concretum, the condition of its possibility or that on which the concretum rests.

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3. The second ontological relation: The principle has unconstrained validity for all the concreta that fall within its range (Hartmann 1940, 270). The relation between principle and concretum is extraordinarily stable. In fact, it presents only one main variation, localized within the highest level. The human ethos is the only case in which there are principles that do not determine their concreta: values are principles with the nature of requirements, exigencies; in no way do they determine the corresponding concreta, not least because in the real world there also are disvalues and most of the time values themselves are at best only partially realized (Hartmann 1940, 274).

1.9 Paired categories Paired categories are the most general structural moments of being. As structural moments they have content, and there are composite relations among them (Hartmann 1940, 219). Both the categories of a paired opposition are positive, which means that they are contrary, not contradictory categories. Most pairs exhibit transitions between their two opposed categories in which a series of intermediate grades extends between them (Hartmann 1940, 223). Hartmann organizes the various pairs into two groups of six pairs, without implying that the list of paired oppositions is definitive. Neither the two groups nor their internal order have the meaning of a hierarchical order because there is no intrinsic order among the pairs (Hartmann 1940, 230). The principle-concretum relation, discussed in the previous section, is one of the elementary oppositions. Many other paired structural elementary categories, such as unity-plurality, form-matter, quality-quantity, and continuity-discreteness, have been well known since antiquity. Elementary oppositions do not have common genera; the pairs are not like “warm” and “hot”, which are species of temperature. As a matter of fact, if common genera were available, they would be the proper fundamental categories, and the pairs of opposed categories would become secondary categories (Hartmann 1940, 244). Elementary oppositions cannot be divided into categorial elements. For this reason, we can only show their differences and the links that connect them; we can unfold them only through the relations they have with each other. These

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relations among the various oppositions determine the essences of the categories (Hartmann 1940, 241). Hartmann organizes the series of paired categories into the following two groups. • Group 1. Principle-concretum, structure-modus, form-matter, innerouter, determination-dependence, quality-quantity. • Group 2. Unity-manifoldness, harmony-conflict, opposition-dimension, discreteness-continuity, substratum-relation, elementcomplex. It is apparent that some of these are easier to grasp than others (Hartmann 1940, 219 – 220). For all of them, however, the history of philosophy has introduced many errors. The contentual moments of categories are due to their reciprocal relations. Categories are connected by a variety of relations, both within and among the pairs. A relevant case of the former is represented by transitions between the opposed categories. While some transitions are continuous, others – such as the principle-concretum and the structure-modus ones – do not include a continuous transition between the opposed categories (Hartmann 1940, 248 – 249). Apart from these two pairs, the remaining oppositions exhibit three different types of transition: 1. Alternation of the two opposed categories – Dasein and Sosein, matter and form, element-complex, unity and multiplicity, oppositiondimension, discreteness-continuity behave in this way. The form of a matter is the matter of some higher form, etc. 2. Unilateral transition toward a fixed point; one of the two opposites remains stable and the other gradually changes and comes closer and closer to the unchanging category – e. g., relation-substratum with substratum as the fixed point. 3. Bilateral transition without fixed points – harmony and conflict (Hartmann 1940, 248 – 255). As a side-remark, it is worth noting that bilateral transitions are structural moments of modal relations as well. Beyond the above simple implications, there is a huge variety of other relations among the members of the different pairs, too numerous to be described (Hartmann 1940, 451). To give a flavor of Hartmann’s analysis, I shall now shortly describe some of the pairs.

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1.9.1 Matter and form Forms have content; they determine the structure of entities and therefore constitute the Sosein of entities. In this sense, forms are some of the fundamental moments of the principles of being. Other constitutive moments of principles include substrata and the fact that the categories of a level work together (Hartmann 1940, 105). Matter and form respectively refer to what can acquire form and what can give form. The demise of the old doctrine of substantial forms and the beginning of modern science paved the way for a better understanding of the relation between matter and form (Hartmann 1940, 278). The relation between matter and form is called superforming. This relation breaks at the cut between life and mind and mind and spirit (Hartmann 1940, 287; see Section 12 below).

1.9.2 Modus and structure Modus determines intermodal relations and in particular the special form of Dasein; structure refers to the Sosein and all the moments of its determination. All the remaining twenty-two oppositions are articulations of structure. Like the most general relations, the relation between principle and concretum is a structural relation (Hartmann 1940, 232).

1.9.3 Substratum and relation All entities are determined by relations, both internal and external. This is why every isolation is secondary and exclusively due to acts of abstraction. Without relations, there is neither unity nor multiplicity; form and quality depend on relations (Hartmann 1940, 279 – 280). While relations can have other relations as their arguments, at some point the series of relations within relations within relations etc., must end. Sooner or later, there must be a non-relational substratum, a substratum that is not the result of a relational construction (Hartmann 1940, 251). A substratum, for Hartmann, is the argument of a possible relation (Hartmann 1940, 278). The term ‘substratum’ implies that what is at stake is the source or domain of an asymmetrical relation. Real categories are constituted by material moments. Moments with the character of substra-

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tum do not pertain to the mode of being of ideal entities (Hartmann 1940, 59). Hartmann distinguishes three main species of relation: fixed relations, those that constitute the constancy of a type; flexible relations, which change from case to case and constitute individual cases; and relations of encapsulation, which connects entities at different levels of reality. The latter can be either fixed or flexible (Hartmann 1940, 283 – 286; the term ‘encapsulation’ translates Dooyeweerd’s ‘enkapsis’, see Poli 2009a). Within the sphere of ideal being, fixed relations dominate. Knowledge, too, has a preference for fixed relations (Hartmann 1940, 284). Processual laws are a special class of relations. The dimension of possible determinations has the character of substratum (Hartmann 1940, 52). A dimension is a locus for elements and the laws of their ordering. The connection between substratum and dimension determines the relation between elements and continua (Hartmann 1940, 234). Categories have an irrational moment and this moment is particularly relevant for the category of substratum (Hartmann 1940, 281). Substrata evade our capacity to understand them, even if moments with the character of substrata can be detected. This is one of the reasons why categories include irrational moments (Hartmann 1940, 127ff, which discusses other irrational moments and the methodological consequences arising from them).

1.9.4 Quality and quantity The quality-quantity pair is one of those where the character of opposition between the two constituting categories is less apparent. Hartmann sees quantities as determinations of real being and qualities as (within limits) determinations of the secondary sphere of knowledge (Hartmann 1940, 391). Three pairs of opposition are included under quality, namely positive and negative, general and individual, and identity and difference. Three other pairs of opposition are included under quantity, namely one and many, part and whole, and finite and infinite.

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1.9.5 Element and complex Complexes are relational entities. (Hartmann 1980, 450) explains that he prefers the term ‘complex’ (Gefge) to the ‘consumed’ (verbrauchten) term ‘system’ (System). The elements of a complex are members, not substrata. Elements are determined by the complex of which they are members (Hartmann 1940, 247). Complexes have their own type of determination; but in each case, the determination extends across the complex’s elements and transforms them. A complex of elements is always a complex of relations and determinations. Elements are essentially determined by the positions they occupy within the complex’s total series of relations (Hartmann 1940, 330). This explains why elements have functions within the complex. Within a complex, what matters are not the elements, but the relations that they maintain among themselves and with the complex. The main difference between complex and class (Ganze; below I shall give different meanings to the terms ‘whole’ and ‘totality’) is that a complex has some autonomy vis--vis its members, while a class has no autonomy vis--vis its parts. Classes depend on their parts, while elements depend on their complex. The two dependence relations proceed in opposite directions. This is not entirely correct, however. To some extent, a complex depends on its elements as well. A better formulation of the difference between classes and complexes runs as follows: within limits, if a class loses one of its parts, the class becomes different but the lost part remains the same; if a complex loses one of its elements, the complex remains the same but the element becomes different (Hartmann 1940, 330). An irregularly shaped stone, a grain of sand, a puddle, a mountain are not independent complexes, but fragments and parts of much wider formations that come into existence before them and within which they exist as subordinate moments (Hartmann 1940, 334). It may turn out that a rigid complex is weak, while a flexible complex may be able to resist perturbations (Hartmann 1940, 332). All natural complexes are complexes of forces and processes. There is no reason to view elements as simple or as analogous to material particles. If we assume that inorganic parts are elements of an organism, this way of understanding an organism is radically different from the idea that an organism is a dynamic complex able to survive the continuous substitution of its elements (Hartmann 1940, 337). The former refers to a physical complex, while the latter refers to a biological complex,

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and the two are authentically different complexes. Both the individual organism and the biological species are complexes of processes. The inside of the complex of processes that constitutes an organism is the capacity of the complex to maintain its working conditions, what Hartmann calls the self-determination of the organism (Hartmann 1940, 346). 1.9.6 Inner and outer Not everything has an inside, and not everything is what results from its inner structure. Force does not need to be the exteriorization of anything else, and effects do not need to be the exteriorizations of causes. Only entities that have some ontic autonomy have an inside. Within nature, dynamic and organic complexes are the most well-known cases. Outer forces of nuclei are inner forces of atoms (Hartmann 1940, 345 – 346). Outer forces of lower-order entities are inner forces of higher-order entities. Determinations do not need to be internal to things (or constitute their interiors). Most real nexuses are external determinations. Causality is the most obvious case (Hartmann 1940, 239). For all complexes, the inside of the complex is constituted by the relations among its members, while the outside of the complex is constituted by the relations between the complex and other complexes. Every outside can become the inside of a higher-order complex (Hartmann 1940, 249). This serial organization characterizes the pairs matter-form, element-complex, and inner-outer. This organization is a fundamental law of the real world, valid for all the levels of reality. Furthermore it extends its validity to many other categories, starting from the fundamental opposition between Dasein and Sosein (see Section 9 above). Apart from the relations within each categorial pair, there are relations among the members of a pair and those of others (Hartmann 1940, 255). The collection of these external relations is also a constitutive element of the categories, on a par with the relations internal to the different pairs. Two cases are particularly relevant: the relation of the different paired categories to their common concretum, and the transversal relations among the contents of the different categories (Hartmann 1940, 256).

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1.10 On the variety of determining moments There are many real moments without corresponding ideal moments. The most obvious case is represented by causality. If causality were nothing more than a law, it would be entirely legitimate to view the law of causality as an essence and therefore as an ideal entity. According to Hartmann, however, causality is the nexus that connects the phases of a process, the dynamic series of the production of the stages one from the other within the unity and the irreversibility of the process. Whatever kinds of determination and dependence are valid for ideal entities, causality is not one of them (Hartmann 1940, 62). The real sphere contains two different types of determinations: the hierarchical type of determination – the genus-species structure – is shared with the ideal sphere, while the horizontal type of determination connects individuals with individuals and in particular the successive stages of real processes one to another. All the moments resulting from the hierarchical nature of categories – including their moments with the character of substratum and all the dimensional moments – will never exhaust the fullness of an individual being. A second series of moments is needed: the horizontal series articulating the totality of the actual reality (Hartmann 1940, 312). This implies that the principle-concretum type of determination is far from being the only determination shaping the whole of reality; a second type of determination – of a non categorial nature – should be included: a determination of the concretum-concretum type (Hartmann 1940, 430). The ideal sphere does not contain the latter type of determination. Among all the different kinds of real determination, only two are directly accessible to us: the causal nexus between inanimate entities and the final nexus between spiritual entities (Hartmann 1940, 314). The various causal chains do not unfold as isolated and mutually irrelevant processes. On the contrary, they influence each other in the totality of the transversal nexus that connects them. Things become remarkably more complex with the final nexus, because it includes values and their character of demand. Further levels of complexity arise with history and the life of collectivities. Substance is another case of a real determination without corresponding ideal moments. Hartmann views substance as what remains constant through changes, what in the flow of events resists their succession. It follows that only in the real world can there be substances. Even more importantly, the category of substance presupposes time and the

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dynamic flow of events. Again, ideal being does not contain any of this. In one sentence, temporality is what radically distinguishes real categories from ideal categories. The interplay of change and persistence, causing and being caused by, exists only within the flow of time (Hartmann 1940, 62). Apart from time, individuality is the second moment distinguishing real being from ideal being. Everything ideal is general, and everything real is individual. The latter must be assumed in the most rigorous sense: everything real is unique and it exists only once. There are things that we are unable to discern; we may not be able to distinguish one real entity from the next; but it would be a mistake to take the limitations of our perceptual and cognitive capacities as if they were universal laws of the sphere of real being. The general in reality is real only “in” individuals (Hartmann 1940, 65). While the general is a dominant category in the ideal sphere and a subordinate category in the sphere of the real, individuality is a category of the sphere of real being only. In the realm of essences there is no individual. There are real categories with the same generality of elemental oppositions that do not come as pairs. The most relevant are time, process, change and individual (Hartmann 1940, 206). The differences between this group of general categories and the general categories that come in pairs are not limited to their formal organization (singletons as opposed to pairs). Moreover, the former appear to be more special than paired categories. The most relevant difference between the two groups, however, is that paired categories range over both the real and the ideal spheres of being, while the singletons range over the real sphere of being only. They are precisely the general categories that mark the irreducible difference between real and ideal being. From a categorial point of view, one can say that temporality and related categories are less fundamental than elemental oppositions because they are only real categories. Hartmann devotes the whole fourth book of his quadrilogy to a detailed analysis of this rather special group of general categories. The last form of determination to be mentioned is categorial coherence, their mutual dependence and implication. The scheme of the series is one of the most relevant types of dependence within pairs (Hartmann 1940, 309; see Section 9 above on the types of transition between paired categories).

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1.11 Levels of reality The next group after that of general categories is the group of the categories of levels of reality. Like everything else, levels of reality are characterized (and therefore distinguished) by their categories. By definition, the categories characterizing levels of reality are not general, in the sense that they do not pertain to reality in its entirety, but only to specific families of real being. On the other hand, fundamental categories are the most general and simple categories, and for this reason they are contained in the special categories of levels of reality (Hartmann 1940, 202). Levels of reality are structural aspects of the world. While each of them has its own structures and its own forms of determination, their mode of real being remains constant (Hartmann 1940, 275, 311, 556). Levels are the true constructive framework of the real world, which has unity, but it is neither the unity of a principle nor a centre. The unity of the real world is the order of the levels of reality (Hartmann 1940, 472). Four main levels of reality are distinguished by Hartmann: the inanimate, the biological, the psychological and the spiritual. This last includes all historical realities (history, language, customs, law, art, etc). The underlining intuition is that, say, historical and other spiritual processes are in no way less real than natural processes. Their structure and their laws are different, however (Hartmann 1940, 189). The same intuition applies to the other levels as well: biological and psychological processes are as real as any other process, and they have their own specific groups of categories. One of the most intriguing aspects of Hartmann’s theory of levels of reality is the question of what kinds of relation connect the levels to each other. From a categorial point of view, however, the problem of what relations connect levels can be easily solved. Leaving general categories aside, two main categorial situations can be distinguished: (a) Being A and B are categorially different because the categories upon which the former is founded are partially different from the categories upon which the latter is founded, in the sense that the latter is founded on new categories (which implies that the latter includes at least a novum, a new category not present in the former); (b) Being A and B are categorially different because the categories upon which the former is founded and those upon which the latter is founded form two entirely different (disjointed) groups of categories. Following Hartmann, the two relations can be termed as respectively relations of super-formation (berformung) and super-position (berbauung) (Hartmann 1940, 489).

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Occasionally, Hartmann admits that there are never pure relations of super-position; all the relations between levels contain some moment of super-formation (Hartmann 1940, 564). Super-formation (the type (a) form of dependence) is weaker than super-position because it is partly grounded on already actualized categories, those of the level below. Suffice it to consider the super-formation between molecules and cells, i. e., between the physical and the biological levels of reality. In this regard, one can mention that even if organisms are unquestionably more complex than mechanisms, they nevertheless contain the laws of the mechanical (Hartmann 1940, 480 – 481). On the other hand, the psychological and spiritual levels are different, because they are characterized by an interruption in the categorial series and by the onset of new categorial series (relative respectively to the psychological and spiritual levels). The relations between the biological level and the psychological level, on the one hand, and the relation between the psychological level and the spiritual one, on the other, are both relations of super-position. By way of example, the group of categories embedded in psychological entities is different from the group of categories embedded in biological entities. Similarly, the group of categories embedded in spiritual entities is different from the group of categories embedded in psychological entities. The category of the spirit is divided into personal, objective and objectivated spirit. Personal spirit is the spirit of the individual, objective spirit is the living spirit of communities and objectivated spirit characterizes the products of spirit. The categorial moments of personal spirit are consciousness, will, foresight and teleological activity, liberty. None of them pass to objective spirit. There is no consciousness apart from individual consciousness, and the same is true of the other moments. There are laws that are valid for all the levels: higher levels rest on lower ones; the lower level is the conditioning one; the higher level is independent from the lower one as to its conformation and its own laws. This relation amounts to the authentic unity of the real world: the real sphere has the unity of a stratified complex (Hartmann 1940, 199). When the connecting relation is a relation of super-formation, some categories of the lower level return in the higher one. Returning categories interact with the categories of the higher level and are, so to speak, contaminated by them; some of their moments become different. Higher levels are never characterized by returning categories. Each level

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has its novum, the category or group of categories that distinguish the level from the lower ones. The novum does not derive either from the elements of the level or from their synthesis (Hartmann 1940, 503). Each of the four levels of the world contains other levels, organized according to a variety of patterns. The sublevels of the main levels may present their own types of gradation and may work one next to the other or one above the other as the case may be. As soon as we pass from the four levels to their internal divisions, things become even more obscure. The nexuses of determination working within the intermediate sub levels are even less well known than those working for the levels. From a categorial point of view, the differences among them may not be as rigorous and clear as the difference distinguishing the four main levels of being (Hartmann 1940, 199). Two aspects characterize super-position relations: firstly, the categories embedded in the entities of the connected levels are entirely different; secondly, a relation of existential dependence links the higher level to the lower one. This latter aspect organizes the order of the levels, so that the spiritual level is founded on the psychological level, which in its turn is founded on the biological one. Conversely, the biological level is the bearer of the psychological level and the latter is the bearer of the spiritual level. Not all the levels are equally well-known. Indeed, for most of the levels we know only some of their moments, possibly not the most important ones. In fact, we do not know the central categories of the biological level (Hartmann 1940, 442); the same applies to the psychological and the spiritual levels. This lack of knowledge has dramatic consequences on our capacity to correctly grasp the concreta of the higher levels. To see what this means, consider the case of physical concreta, those that we know better. The group that includes time, space, process, causality and substance, together with the effects that they mutually exert on each other, determines physical entities. A physical concretum can neither be temporal without being spatial, nor can it present any of the other determinations without being a process; and a process cannot exist without a substantial basis, and space and time are impossible without process; and again none of them can exist without being causally conditioned. All the determinations that pertain to a level work together, and together they constrain the concreta of the level (Hartmann 1940, 443). Nothing like this can be repeated for any of the other levels.

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The categories of higher levels have nothing to do with the concreta of lower levels; the categories of lower levels are not principles of the categories of higher levels (Hartmann 1940, 527). Lower levels are the bases of higher levels, but the categorial essence of the former does not consist in its being the basis of the latter (Hartmann 1940, 530). Lower levels are stronger, their laws cannot be modified by the laws of the higher levels (Hartmann 1940, 524). Higher levels have richer structure and contents. While higher concreta cannot modify the laws of lower ones, they can use them for their own purposes. Human beings are the most vulnerable entities, the most conditioned and dependent; but they have knowledge, they can consciously adapt and can use other entities for their own purposes (Hartmann 1940, 524, 529, 552 – 553). This means that causal processes can be modified, which in its turn implies that categorial structures can accept extra-causal determinations. We will say that categorial nexuses can be super-formed (Hartmann 1940, 562). Hartmann acknowledges that the distinction between the psychological and the spiritual levels is problematic. However, it appears that science provides some help here, especially with the distinction between the object of psychology and the objects of the sciences of the spirit (linguistics, law, social and historical sciences). If we look at present-day sciences, the situation appears even clearer than in Hartmann’s time. Hartmann’s position, however, in this case is far from being crystal-clear. Two obvious problems arise from his analyzes. Firstly, Hartmann accepts only psychological acts and does not consider the possibility of social acts. Furthermore, he maintains that contents as correlates of acts are always spiritual. “Psychological” contents form personal being, “social” contents form objective being. Hartmann vacillates as to the delimitations of what is properly psychological. Language, consciousness, foresight are alternatively assigned to the psychological level or to the personal level of the spirit. He even claims that the same acts of consciousness pertain to both the psychic and the spiritual being and that only an exact clarification of the phenomenon of acts may solve the aporia. Two developments never considered by Hartmann are (1) the distinction between individual and collective forms of intentionality, and (2) a principled distinction between the complexes that are individual human beings and the complexes that are collectivities. Apart from a few words in the conclusions below, I shall have to postpone a more thorough discussion of this issue to another occasion.

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1.12 Categorial laws Categorial relations assume the form of categorial laws. Structural laws organize the relations among categories and their order. Categorial laws are themselves categories. Given that they organize other categories, it is appropriate to attribute them the qualification of fundamental categories. What distinguishes categorial laws from other categories is that the latter cover concreta, while the former extend across general categories (Hartmann 1940, 413). As we arrive at categories starting from their concreta, we similarly arrive at categorial laws starting from the categories (Hartmann 1940, 414). In what follows, I shall schematically present the various groups of categorial laws discussed by Hartmann. First group of fundamental categorial laws: • Fundamental law of validity: categories are what they are as principles of a concretum; they are nothing without their concreta; similarly, concreta are nothing without their categories. • Fundamental law of coherence: categories exist together with the other categories of a level of reality. • Fundamental law of stratification: the categories of lower levels are amply contained within higher levels; the opposite is not true. • Fundamental law of dependence: the existence of higher categories depends on lower categories; this dependence is partial and leaves wide room for the autonomy of higher categories. In order to unfold the content of the four fundamental categorial laws, a variety of partial categorial laws are needed (Hartmann 1940, 416 – 419). The following is a first group of evident partial laws: • Law of the principle: the being of a category is its being a principle; a category has no other being than its being a principle for its concretum. • Law of validity of the level: the determination arising from a category is constrained or valid within limits, i. e. within the level to which it pertains. Within its limits of validity, the determination resulting from a category is unbreakable and does not admit exceptions (Hartmann 1940, 426 – 428). • Law of membership in a level: the full validity of a category exists only in the concretum of the level to which it pertains; outside the said level, it has only partial and modified kinds of validity. This law does not claim that the validity of a category is always restricted

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to one specific level only; it says that the full validity of the category is restricted. However, if its concretum is a stratified formation, the validity of the category applies, albeit in a modified way, also the other levels of the concretum (Hartmann 1940, 428 – 429). • Law of determination of the level: the categories of a level entirely determine all the principles of a concretum; concreta are categorially saturated and do not present other types of general determination. Apart from general determinations, there are always various special types of determination that are valid for the individuality of the singular case, such as the causal nexus (Hartmann 1940, 314). The latter determinations connect real entities among themselves – horizontally (Hartmann 1940, 429 – 431). The categories of a level work together and are connected to each other. To distinguish this kind of connection from other connections, it will be called ‘categorial coherence’. The laws of coherence are different from the laws of validity, in the sense that the latter articulate the connections between principles and concreta, while the former articulate the contentual connections among categories (Hartmann 1940, 432). The following is the group of the laws of coherence (Hartmann 1940, 433 – 434): • Law of mutuality: the laws of a level do not determine a concretum individually, one at a time, but collectively. • Law of unity: the categories of a level form an indissoluble unit; no category of the level is isolated from the other categories of the level. • Law of totality (Schichtenganzheit): the unity of a level’s categories is not the sum of its elements; the totality of a level precedes the level’s elements and has priority over them. This totality consists in the complex of relations constraining the categories of the level. • Law of implication: the totality of a level returns within each of its elements; every category implies all the other categories of the level. The law of totality suggests an interesting limit, namely that there is no totality of the entire collection of categories (Hartmann 1940, 444). The laws of coherence have a double implication: on the one hand, a category can be fully known only when all the remaining categories of a level are known; on the other hand, the knowledge of a category throws some light on the other categories of the level (Hartmann 1940, 599).

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The four laws of coherence shape a stratified structure articulated into the two different but parallel series of concreta and categorial structures (Hartmann 1940, 474). The following are the laws of stratification (Hartmann 1940, 416 – 419): • Law of return: some of the lower categories return into the higher levels as partial moments of higher categories. • Law of variation: some moments of returning categories change; they are transformed by the character of the higher level; what persists unchanged is always only a fundamental categorial aspect. • Law of the novum: The reappearance of lower categories never constitutes the character of the higher level; this always stems from the intervention of a categorial novelty which is independent of the lower categories and consists in the emergence of new categories. • Law of distance between levels: Return and variation do not change continuously, but in steps. The next group comprises the laws of dependence (Hartmann 1940, 518 – 522): • Law of force: Lower categories are the foundational bases of higher categories. This moment of lower categories will be called their force. • Law of indifference: The lower level is the base of the higher one, but does not exhaust itself in this role of being the basis of the higher level. • Law of matter: In the situations where return and super-formation occur, the lower categories are matter of higher categories; since lower elements are stronger, they can only be super-formed. Where the relation between levels is of the super-position type, lower categories are existential conditions for the higher ones, not their matter. • Law of freedom: Higher categories are conditioned by either matter or existential dependence, but are free with respect to their nova.

1.13 Conclusion This paper has only scratched the surface of Hartmann’s theory of categories. Even from such a preliminary and mainly reconstructive presentation of his theory, however, it is evident that his theory is one of the most composite and rich theories of categories ever developed,

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possibly on a par with Hegel’s. Differently from the latter’s theory, however, Hartmann’s is far from being speculative. By digging deeper into the theory and the rest of the Hartmannian corpus, some of the problems that I have only hinted at, such as the epistemology-ontology conundrum, may find a robust and acceptable solution. Other aspects, however, appear more problematic. I mention three of them: (1) the exact nature and delimitation of the psychological level, (2) the overall architecture of the theory of levels of reality, and (3) the problem of what Hartmann calls ‘complex formations’. The first problem raises doubts concerning the internal articulation of the psychological level, which within Hartmann’s framework appears to be sacrificed to the spiritual level. Since Scognamiglio (this volume) discusses this issue, I shall not go further and move to the second problem. The second problem principally concerns the relations among the biological, the psychological and spiritual levels, and its solution partly depends on the answer to the previous problem. Put briefly, if the psychological level ends up including what psychology and cognitive sciences acknowledge as psychological phenomena, the dividing line between the psychological and the spiritual levels should be located elsewhere, and what Hartmann calls personal spirit will become the higher layer of the psychological level. Three comments are in order: first, this way of addressing the issue is entirely concordant with Hartmann’s constant respect for what science can teach a philosopher; second, the reorganization of the boundary between the two levels does not raise major problems because all the relevant relations are of the super-position type; third, the suggested reorganization enables construction of an entirely different architecture of the three levels that moves from a strictly linear organization (one level after the other) to a non-linear architecture such as the one suggested by application of the one-many dichotomy: the (newly defined) psychological and spiritual levels superposition together from their underlying existential basis; furthermore, they super- position each other. This triangular architecture is a major departure from Hartmann’s original framework, not least because it obliges reconsideration and modification of the list of categorial laws presented in Section 12 above. The interested reader may consult some of my papers for the basics of this view (see the bibliography). The third problem concerns what appears to be the main difficulty with the Hartmannian framework. In fact, the last lines of Section 11 already hinted at it. While human beings, collectivities and history are asserted to be stratified formations (e. g., Hartmann 1940, 513), the na-

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ture of these complex formations is never discussed in detail. Indeed, the multidimensional, rich categorial framework discussed by Hartmann does not appear to have a proper place for the category of whole – what he calls ‘formation’. Complex wholes are complex (or stratified) formations. In this regard, Hartmann’s ontology is in need of further developments. On the one hand, he acknowledges that formations are the real furniture of the world and occasionally interprets levels through them. For instance, he does so when he claims that psychological life is not to be understood as the internal conscious and unconscious world together with its acts and their contents, but that it should rather be seen as a single complex together with, corporeal life and the physical conditions of life. The same is true for the spiritual level: the life of spirit is not only ethos, language, art, knowledge, etc.; it is also a single complex possessing the psychological life of acts, organic life and the physical conditions within the individuals that are its subjects. Hartmann also states that higher levels do not present themselves as soul and spirit, but as human being and collectivity, or as human being and history (Hartmann 1940, 496). To emphasize the importance of these passages, Hartmann adds that “This vision is absolutely necessary” (Hartmann 1940, 497). On the other hand, however, Hartmann is unclear about how complex formations should be categorized. On occasion, he denies that defining levels according to the complex formations in which they appear is the correct strategy, because the essences of levels are different from the essences of formations, and the limits of levels and formations would collide with each other (Hartmann 1940, 193 – 194). Hartmann also emphasizes that working with formations, rather than with categories, fails properly to articulate the differences among the levels of being (Hartmann 1940, 513). While these latter claims are entirely acceptable, the problem is that I do not see why formations should not have their own categorial moments. Furthermore, while the categorial study of levels is needed for analytical distinction of their moments and the relations among them, the categorial study of formation helps us understand how complex formations are synthetically constituted. The theory of category is, for Hartmann, restricted to the relations of stratification and to the levels of being as such. It does not deal with the gradation of the total formations of thing, living being, human being, and collectivity. Hartmann’s attitude oscillates between the hope that the problem of complex formations will be solved once the theory of categories has been completed, and the fear that the problem

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of how heterogeneous levels can be so tightly connected within a human being – or within a collectivity, a people, or history or works of art – is a major metaphysical problem that will forever escape ontology’s capacity to solve (Hartmann 1940, 497 – 498). As a matter of fact, he developed the first parts of a theory of complex formations in the final chapters of (Hartmann 1980) and came back again on the topic in his last book, left unfinished and published only posthumously (Hartmann 1953). From these analyses emerges that room should be created, within the categorial framework of a well-elaborated ontology, for the category of complex formations or wholes – as I prefer to call them – and that specification should be made of types of wholes and the forms of synthesis that work for them. In fact, Hartmann did some preliminary work in this direction with his category of complex. From the unfinished state of the theory of complexes it is difficult to see whether the category of complex formations shall be treated on a par with all the many other categories or assume a role as important as the one performed by the theory of levels of reality.

1.14 Acknowledgments I thank Nino Cocchiarella, Javier Cumpa, Eugene Kelly, Frederic Tremblay, David Weissman, and Robert Zaborowski for their comments to a previous version of this paper.

1.15 References Gnoli, Claudio / Roberto Poli (2004), “Levels of Reality and Levels of Representation,” in: Knowledge Organization 21(3), 151 – 160. Hartmann, Nicolai (1909), Platos Logik des Seins, Gießen: Töpelmann. Hartmann, Nicolai (1921), Grundzge einer Metaphysik der Erkenntnis, BerlinLeipzig: De Gruyter. Hartmann, Nicolai (1923 – 1929), Die Philosophie des deutschen Idealismus. I: Fichte, Schelling und die Romantik, II: Hegel, Berlin-Leipzig: De Gruyter. Hartmann, Nicolai (1926), Ethik, 3 vols., Berlin: De Gruyter; Eng. tr. Ethics, London: George Allen & Unwin, 1932; reprinted with new Introductions by A. A. Kinneging, Transaction Press, 2002 – 2004. Hartmann, Nicolai (1931), “Systematische Philosophie in eigener Darstellung,” in: Hermann Schwarz (ed.), Deutsche systematische Philosophie nach ihren Gestaltern – Band I, Berlin: Junker und Dünnhaupt, 1931, 283 – 340.

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Hartmann, Nicolai (1933), Das Problem des geistigen Seins. Untersuchungen zur Grundlegung der Geschichtsphilosophie und der Geisteswissenschaften, Berlin: De Gruyter. Hartmann, Nicolai (1935), Zur Grundlegung der Ontologie, Berlin: De Gruyter. Hartmann, Nicolai (1943), Neue Wege der Ontologie, in N. Hartmann, Systematische Philosophie, Stuttgart: Kohlhammer, 199 – 311; Eng. tr. New Ways of Ontology, Chicago: Enry Regnery Co, 1953; reprinted Westport: Greenwood Press 1975. Hartmann, Nicolai (1938), Mçglichkeit und Wircklichkeit, Berlin: De Gruyter. Hartmann, Nicolai (1940), Der Aufbau der realen Welt. Grundriss der allgemeinen Kategorienlehre, Berlin: De Gruyter. Hartmann, Nicolai (1980), Philosophie der Natur. Abriss der speziellen Kategorienlehre, Berlin: De Gruyter (1950). Hartmann, Nicolai (1953), sthetik, Berlin: De Gruyter. Poli, Roberto (1998a), “Levels,” in: Axiomathes 9(1 – 2), 197 – 211. Poli, Roberto (1998b), “Qua-Theories,” in: Liliana Albertazzi (ed.), Shapes of Forms, Dordrecht: Kluwer, 245 – 256. Poli, Roberto (2001a), “The Basic Problem of the Theory of Levels of Reality,” in: Axiomathes 12(3 – 4), 261 – 283. Poli, Roberto (2001b), “General Theses of the Theory of Objects,” in: Liliana Albertazzi / Dale Jacquette / Roberto Poli (eds.), The School of Alexius Meinong, Aldershot: Ashgate, 347 – 372. Poli, Roberto (2002a), “Glancing at the Problems of Contemporary Ontology,” in: Scire 8(1), 17 – 40. Poli, Roberto (2002b), “Ontological Methodology,” in: International Journal of Human-Computer Studies 56, 639 – 664. Poli, Roberto (2003), “Descriptive, Formal and Formalized Ontologies,” in: Denis Fisette (ed.), Husserl’s Logical Investigations Reconsidered, Dordrecht: Kluwer, 193 – 210. Poli, Roberto (2004), “Approaching Brentano’s Theory of Categories,” in: Arkadiusz Chrudzimski / Wolfgang Huemer (eds.), Phenomenology and Analysis. Essays in Central European Philosophy, Frankfurt, Ontos Verlag, 285 – 321. Poli, Roberto (2006a), “Levels of Reality and the Psychological Stratum,” in: Revue Internationale de Philosophie 61(2), 163 – 180. Poli, Roberto (2006b), “First Steps in Experimental Phenomenology,” in: Angelo Loula / Ricardo Gudwin / Joao Queiroz (eds.), Artificial Cognition Systems, Hershey, Pa.: Idea Group, 358 – 386. Poli, Roberto (2006c), “Steps Towards a Synthetic Methodology,” in: Continuity and Change: Perspectives on Science and Religion, June 2006, . Poli, Roberto (2006d), “The Ontology of What is Not There,” in: Jakec Malinowski / Andrzej Pietruszczak (eds.), Essays in Logic and Ontology. Dedicated to Jerzy Perzanowski (Poznan Studies in the Philosophy of the Science and the Humanities), Amsterdam: Rodopi, 73 – 80.

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Poli, Roberto (2006e), “The Theory of Levels of Reality and the Difference Between Simple and Tangled Hierarchies,” in: Gianfranco Minari / Eliano Pessa / Mario Abram (eds.), Systemics of Emergence. Research and Development, Berlin: Springer, 715 – 722. Poli, Roberto (2007), “Three Obstructions: Forms of Causation, Chronotopoids, and Levels of Reality,” in: Axiomathes 17(1), 1 – 18. Poli, Roberto (2009a), “Analysis-Synthesis,” in: The Global Spiral 10(5), . Poli, Roberto (2009b), “Two Theories of Levels of Reality. In Dialogue with Basarab Nicolescu,” in: Transdisciplinarity in Science and Religion 6, 135 – 150. Poli, Roberto (2010a), “Ontology: The Categorial Stance,” in: Roberto Poli / Johanna Seibt (eds.), TAO-Theory and Applications of Ontology. Vol. 1 Philosophical Perspectives, Berlin: Springer, 1 – 22. Poli, Roberto (2010b), “Spheres of Being and the Network of Ontological Dependences,” in: Polish Journal of philosophy 4, 171 – 182. Poli, Roberto (2010c), “Ontological Categories, Latents and the Irrational,” in: Javier Cumpa / Erwin Tegtmeier (eds.), Ontological Categories, Frankfurt: Ontos Verlag, 141 – 151. Scognamiglio, Carlo (2011), “Nicolai Hartmann’s Theory of the Psyche,” this volume. Werkmeister, William Henry (1990), Nicolai Hartmann’s New Ontology, Tallahassee: The Florida State University Press.

Chapter 2: Nicolai Hartmann’s Aporetics and Its Place in the History of Philosophy Anton Schlittmaier 2.1 Introduction The term ‘aporia’ had various uses throughout the history of philosophy. But is there a concept beyond the term? This question can only be examined by considering the history of philosophy, i. e., by analyzing different philosophical approaches and their uses of the terms ‘aporia’ and ‘aporetics’. I give a short and selective survey of the uses of the word ‘aporia’ in the history of philosophy, from past to contemporary authors. After this, I introduce a system that has been extracted from extensive research on the aporetics of Nicolai Hartmann and Gottfried Martin. On the basis of this system, I classify the different conceptions of aporia and aporetics, as presented in my survey of the history of philosophy. Next, I describe Hartmann’s aporetics in more depth. I present an example for each kind of aporias and show how Hartmann covers the spectrum of the various conceptions of aporias and aporetics. Hartmann thus appears to be the thinker who probably applied aporetics in the most comprehensive way. I then ask whether there is a genuine conception of aporias in Hartmann and show that for him the genuine conception of aporetics displays numerous parallels with the current conceptions of aporetics. A particularity of Hartmannian aporetics is the clarity of its exposition. The unknowable, the impasse that dooms us to failure, is expressed in brilliant clarity. The article ends with a summary and reflects on Hartmann’s place in the history of philosophy.

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2.2 Aporia and aporetics in the history of philosophy In Plato’s philosophy, the issue of aporia and aporetics is complex. Aporias are the outcome of numerous Platonic dialogues, and the initial point for further reflection (Martin 1973, 5ff). Aporias and aporetics can also be intermediate steps on the way to true knowledge, e. g., to Plato’s theory of intelligible forms. In this regard, aporetics is primarily a method. To improve theories or meta-theories or to expose the true theories, it is necessary to go through aporias. In the end, the aporias cease to exist. The conclusion is free from aporias. Furthermore, in Plato’s later works aporias and aporetics are essential elements of a conclusive theory (Martin 1973, 127ff). Aporias are not only accessory parts on the way to truth that have no relevance in the end, but they are part of the truth, which no more complies with the laws of logic. The range of possible ways to understand aporias and aporetics is already present in Plato’s work. The exclusive purpose of book Beta of Aristotle’s Metaphysics is to expose aporias. Here, aporias and aporetics have a heuristic meaning. They have no function in terms of philosophical systematics, in which the aporias are constitutive elements in dealing with conflicting theories (Beckmann 1993). With Kant, aporias appear in the form of antinomies and refer to the incorrectness of a theory. The application of the different forms of intuition and of the categories of understanding onto the thing in itself involves certain contradictions. These contradictions hint at the defectiveness of the theory’s basic theoretical assumptions. Kant’s theory includes aporias that go beyond Kant’s actual antinomies. These concern particularly the status of the thing in itself. These aporias indicate that the strict distinction Kant makes between appearance and noumenon, which is to provide a solution to his antinomies, is itself aporetic (Martin 1969). In Hegel, aporias seem to serve as transitional moments toward higher standpoints. The new theory is superior to the preceding one, as it overcomes its aporia. A theory free from aporias is only possible at the end of the process. Hegel’s view is contrary to all current developments, which seem to assume that there is no final theoretical solution to aporetic processes. In Negative Dialectic, Adorno (1975) includes criticism of each concept that is based on final knowledge, from which the aporetic moment has disappeared. The aporias of each position are relentlessly exposed; all

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unilateral claims of idealistic and materialistic provenance are rejected. What remains is a plurality of attitudes that cannot be freed from aporias (Schnädelbach 1999). Adorno’s criticism of the subject does not lead to an affirmation of the contrary. For instance, Adorno does not conclude to the ontological priority of the object. Instead of this, his conception of the subject is simply extended by considering its contrary – the object – as part of its own subjectivity (ein Mehr an Subjekt; Wiggershaus 1987, 44). But a final conclusion cannot be reached from this. The aporia undermines the thought’s claim to power. Everything definite reaches its limit and turns out to be one-sided. The whole refuses to acknowledge the intention of final knowledge. The only reachable thing lies in the intellectual reflection of this human condition – its aporetic condition. All further intentions are hubris and refused within the scope of a negative dialectic. Aporias are also a central issue in Camus’ work: “what is absurd is the confrontation of the irrational with the wild longing for clarity whose call echoes in the human heart” (Camus 1964, 21). Reason and mind have the deeply rooted desire for unity that the factual world is not able to satisfy. The claims of thinking characterized by truth, clarity, and logic fail due to the heterogeneity of the material. In this context, the aporia is conceived as a gap between desire and the missing satisfaction. Camus’ aporetics goes beyond philosophical reflection and merge into the existential. Human beings heroically suffer from the unsatisfiability of their desires – symbolized by the rock rolling downward again and again – and consider the aporetical situation of this existence as satisfaction. The aporia is unsolvable. Our mind wants more than it can obtain, and the world ridicules this expectation. Finally, human beings are bound to accept with joy the unsolvable and mysterious. Thus, Camus calls Sisyphus a happy man. All hope is only an obsolete desire. Derrida dedicated an essay to the issue of aporias (Derrida, 1993). He takes aporia and aporetics into consideration in a methodological discourse. One of his central priorities is the limit of the general in view of the individual: “The relation between justice and law is […] characterized as a difference that cannot be ‘logically ruled and mastered’” (Kimmerle 2000, 139). Law is created in a particular situation and cannot be logically deduced from justice. Vagueness and illogicality remain immanent to this issue. Knowledge reaches limits that cannot be removed. Determination and power are reference points necessary to find definitive positions in light of the boundaries of truth. The expo-

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sition of aporias is intended to show the limits of knowledge and, at the same time, to describe the possibility of freedom: “There is no determination, responsibility, ethics, or politics without aporias” (Kimmerle 2000, 137). Aporias must be accepted. This very fact opens a new space beyond knowledge, logic, and truth. Aporias lead to a positive evaluation and aporetics outline a basic attitude to the questions pertaining to man and the world. The latter is required to break the completed, the limited, and the defined, and to show the possibility of freedom in a transcendental way. According to Derrida, this applies to various kinds of issues: issues of ontology and epistemology, as well as practical philosophy. Zˇizˇek is interested in factual issues. Methodological reflections do not play an independent role in his work. Thus, the understanding of aporias and aporetics can only be extracted in connection with his handling of factual questions. The question of the subject takes an important position in this context. For example, Zˇizˇek deals, among other things, with Kant’s concept of “the subject” and shows its paradox (Kim 2009, 40). The limit of knowledge is a condition of reality and a condition of freedom: “Its status (the subject’s) is […] paradox: On the one hand, it is a part that is excluded from the whole, and on the other hand, it acts as a framework to constitute the whole itself. It does not constitute as counterpart to external powers, but inside the substance as its inner boundary” (Kim 2009, 40). The concept oscillates between the poles of realism and constructivism. Both poles are aporetic and require a completion through the counterpart. Without being able to lead to transparent and aporia-free solutions to the exposed factual problems, concepts are indicated by means of the exposition of aporias of the different positions, which constantly remain very vague (e. g., the subject is situated in this gap within the centre of the substance). The subject as the inner limit of the substance appears to be essentially aporetic, just as its limited ability to declare itself free of aporias is constitutive of its existence.

2.3 Systematics of aporia and aporetics Aporias can be classified, according to the function they have, into the following kinds: The theory-eliminating function: In this context, the aporia is considered to be an indication of the defectiveness of a certain thesis. The function of this kind of aporia is to eliminate incorrect theories. The

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thesis on which the aporia is based is rejected not only partially, but as a whole. After a thesis leading to an aporia has been excluded, a new thesis may be adopted by means of which the problem in question (e. g., the problem of knowledge, the problem of freedom, the problem of “being a principle”) is solved. The skeptical function: In this context, the aporia is considered to be an indication of the vainness of all efforts to attain knowledge. The discovery of an aporia is considered to be an indication that all theses are equal and that, as a result, we should abandon our attempt to develop a theory. As Diogenes Laertius reports in the Lives and Opinions of Eminent Philosophers, for the skeptics “Every saying has its corresponding opposite,” and “the contradictory statements have exactly the same weight” (Diogenes Laertio 1995, IX, 75 – 76). The theory-generating or heuristic function: In this context, the aporia has the function of partially modifying the thesis in such a way that an adequate theory of an area can be achieved. However, the theses are rejected neither as a whole nor on essential points. They are only modified in sub-domains. This means that the theory developed by means of the aporia is consistent with the initial point with regard to its main features (pre-theoretical illustration). One can see an evident difference compared to the theory-eliminating function. Whereas the latter rejects the theses as a whole, the theory-generating function partially maintains them. The function of marking theory boundaries: In this context, the aporia marks the boundary of possible knowledge or the boundary of theories. Contrary to the skeptical function, here aporias are the beginning of research. In fact, they do not appear until the aporia in its theory-eliminating and theory-generating function has been taken into account. Furthermore, the aporias are not considered to be indications for the equality of different theses. One certain thesis is considered to be correct; only by reason of the human boundaries of knowledge it is impossible to develop this thesis in a way that all facts and circumstances of a certain area of knowledge can be explained. Such a theory is possible only if we assume a correspondence between the categories of being and the categories of knowledge. The philosophy-constituting or systematic function: In this context, aporias are considered to be indications that true propositions about facts of reality can only be made on the basis of a multiplicity of theories. They neither lead to the elimination nor to the generation of theories. Nor do they lead to the skeptically motivated judgment that all effort to attain

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knowledge is vain. Knowledge is conceived as possible. However, it cannot be attained through a theory, but only through a plurality of theories interconnected in an aporetic-dialectic way. Whereas theory-boundaries-marking aporias are considered to be indications of a boundary of knowledge preventing human beings from extensively developing the one theory, philosophy-constituting aporias are considered to be indications that true propositions may be made only through the means of a multiplicity of theories in which aporias are connections between different perspectives.

2.4 Classification of some positions in the history of philosophy Looking back at the history of philosophy, we see that the kinds of aporia and aporetics that occurred up to now can be subsumed under the above-mentioned kinds. Theory-generating aporias have already played a role in the Socratic dialogues,1 although they have not yet appeared in their purest form, because for Socrates, aporias had not only a methodical meaning, but also a spatial and existential one. In Aristotle’s aporetics, however, the theory-generating function comes to light in its purest form. Aristotle considers the “equality of contrary arguments”2 as the reason for an increased search for a positive result. In his aporetics, the emotional components are eliminated to a large extent; aporias do not form a mere basic attitude, such as Socrates’ attitude of “knowing that we don’t know,” but they are the necessary stepping-stones toward the solution of philosophical questions.3 The late Plato gives the aporias of the Parmenides dialogue a philosophy-constituting function. They must be evaluated as a final result of philosophical efforts. Ancient skeptics such as Pyrrho and Sextus Empiricus consider aporias to have a certain kind of end in themselves. For them, the only purpose of aporias is the equalizing of reasons. Under the requirements im1 2

3

Cf. among others, Krings, Baumgartner, Wild 1973, 111. Also see the dictionary entries on ‘aporia,’ ‘elenchos,’ and ‘anamnesis’ in Waldenfels 1971. Cf. Waldenfels 1971: “According to ARISTOTLE, the aporia results from the ‘equality of contrary arguments’ […], which is consciously brought about in the APOREMA, the ‘dialectical conclusion to the contrary of a statement’. Aristotle methodically places aporias at the beginning of his research: The problem is sharpened and the solution prepared by evaluating contrary attitudes.” Cf. Aristotle 1984.

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posed by the skeptics, a use of aporias different than their own formulation is impossible. Aporias are an indication for the vainness of any effort to attain knowledge (Sextus Empiricus 1933). Aporias and aporetics were of no decisive importance in the philosophy of the Middle Ages and in the modern times. However, they reappeared in the eighteenth century with Kant, for whom the role of aporetics primarily has a theory-eliminating function, and in the twentieth century in the work of Nicolai Hartmann and Gottfried Martin. Three of the kinds described above can be found in Hartmann’s work: aporias with theory-eliminating function, aporias with theorygenerating function, and aporias with the function of marking theory boundaries. In Hartmann’s work, the aporias with theory-eliminating function correspond to those aporias that are considered by him to be artificial. Such aporias are based on false theses. Their primary purpose is to show the falsity of these theses (Hartmann 1955, 8ff). The aporias with theory-generating function correspond to those aporias that are considered by Hartmann to be genuine (echt) and workable at the same time. They are triggered by phenomena. Because their origin is external to the subject, Hartmann speaks of them as ‘natural aporias’ (natrlichen Aporien). They are intended to further the development of adequate philosophical theories. Hartmann uses theory-boundaries-marking aporias as punch lines of his works; after intensive research has already been done, it sometimes turns out to be impossible to further develop the theory. Man reaches insurmountable limits to the development of theories as a consequence of the divergence between the categories of knowledge and the categories of being. Hartmann considers aporias resulting from this divergence to be genuine aporias. In contrast to the latter kind, however, they are not amenable to further revision (Hartmann 1965, 325). The philosophy-constituting or systematic kind can be found in Martin’s work. In view of the aporia’s inability to give definite answers to philosophical questions, it is intended for the reflecting communication of a multiplicity of approaches (Martin 1995; Beckmann 1993, 849 – 850). Here, aporetics become a constituting moment of all philosophizing activities. For later approaches such as Adorno’s, Camus’, Derrida’s, and Zˇizˇek’s, the central function of aporias is to mark theory boundaries.

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2.5 Examples of aporias in Hartmann’s works 2.5.1 The aporia of the thing in itself – an aporia with theory-eliminating function The thing in itself triggers a problem of particular metaphysical importance (Hartmann 1965, 325ff). Idealistic theories deny the existence of the thing in itself. They try to reduce it to an activity of the subject. By doing so, they contradict the phenomenology of natural consciousness. In fact, the thesis of the thing in itself belongs to natural consciousness. Multiple aporias result from the phenomenology of natural consciousness. Speculative theories that deny the existence of a thing in itself have been developed to avoid these aporias, but all attempts to reject the existence of the thing in itself “have to suffer from the resurfacing of the problem somewhere else” (Hartmann 1965, 228). In chapter 30 of Grundzge einer Metaphysik der Erkenntnis, Hartmann shows exemplarily the consequences resulting from denying the existence of the thing in itself. He shows that the denial of the existence of the thing in itself implies a denial of the subject. If the subject has being in itself (Ansichsein) just like the object, and if we can only apprehend the contents of our consciousness, then the same reasoning that leads to the denial of the thing in itself should also lead to the denial of the subject. Idealism is left only with the representation. The bearer of the representation, which has to be more than a content of consciousness, can no longer be accounted for. But if we dispense with such a bearer, “we fall into pure illusionism; we hold that representations are not the representations of an existing subject, but of a merely represented subject. What is the thing that does the representing behind the represented subject? The question remains unasked” (Hartmann 1965, 230). For Hartmann such a position is unacceptable, because the representation implies a representing thing that has to have being in itself. If this is not the case, then “the representation is not a representation at all” (Hartmann 1965, 230). Thus, the idealistic position, by which the being in itself is removed, is unsustainable. But how has idealism developed its thesis? In the same chapter, Hartmann analyzes in more detail the aporia that leads idealism to its position. Idealism states that the existence of the thing in itself is impossible. How does it arrive at this conclusion? One of the arguments that Hartmann considers is that as soon as the thing in itself is thought, it loses its being in itself, as if it were already a thought. The expression

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‘thing in itself’ is thus contradictory: “Thought destroys the thing in itself as it posits it” (Hartmann 1965, 231). In consequence, the thing in itself cannot be thought a priori at all. Considering the above-mentioned conclusions of idealism, as well as its opposition to the phenomenon of natural and scientific consciousness, it is obvious to Hartmann that this thesis of idealism is false. To support the thesis of the existence of the thing in itself, Hartmann must first show that the premises on which idealism is based are false. His procedure for proving this is as follows: the aporia of idealism is based on certain premises, and if one accepts these premises, there is no other option but to draw the idealistic conclusions. How does Hartmann refute the premises of the idealists? First, by making sure that the premises are well understood. For the idealist, thinking the thing in itself implies the removal of the thing in itself. However, this follows only in concert with the premise that thinking can affect being in itself. Is this the case? For Hartmann, it isn’t. “It is not because the object is thought that it becomes a thought” (Hartmann 1965, 232). The thing thought is not itself the thinking, but the being in itself that is the object of the thinking. When it becomes the object of the act of thinking, the being in itself does not crossover into consciousness, but remains external to it. The act of thinking is always immanent. The same applies to the thought of the thinking. But this thought can refer to something else, something that is a non-thought; it can represent it. Hartmann shows that the fundamental aporia of idealism is spurious, because it is based on false assumptions. Thinking of a being in itself does not turn the being in itself into a thought. The being in itself of the object is distinct from the thought and is unaffected by whether we think of it or not.

2.5.2 The general aporia of knowledge – an aporia with theory-generating function The general aporia of knowledge results from the phenomenon of knowledge (Hülsmann 1959, 87). The phenomenon of knowledge contains the following essential elements (Hartmann 1965, 44): • The subject and the object stand in a relation of knowledge; the subject apprehends the object.

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•

The object does not become immanent, it does not become included in the subject, but the object’s determinations are reproduced in the structure of knowledge. • The knowledge of the distinction between the object and the object’s image develops with our errors and deceptions; the subject distinguishes the image from the object, as what may apply or not to the object. • “We come to understand this distinction when the content of a new apprehension is opposed to the content of a prior apprehension.” (Hartmann 1965, 46) • The subject recognizes the being in itself of the object; it considers the object as something different from the object’s representation. The aporia of knowledge arises from the following theses: from the subject’s point of view, knowledge is the grasping of a transcendent object.4 In this act of grasping, consciousness must go beyond its sphere; it must come out of its immanence to be able to represent the determinations of the object. This thesis conflicts with the thesis according to which “[i]t is an essential feature of consciousness […] that it never apprehends something different from its own contents and can never step outside its sphere” (Hartmann 1965, 61). Hartmann describes the latter thesis as the “principle of consciousness” (Satz des Bewusstseins), which expresses the fact that consciousness is eternally caught in itself and solely depends on its representation. The question then is how can a consciousness that is caught in itself, i. e., that cannot go beyond the sphere of its own immanence, be a cognitive consciousness? How could such an isolated consciousness know anything about a transcendent object? Considering its isolation, it should not be able to step beyond its boundary.5 Hartmann presents the general aporia of knowledge in the form of two antinomies: first as antinomy of consciousness, and second as antinomy of the object. The antinomical form makes contradictions very obvious. To frame an aporia in the antinomical form is to clarify it to the fullest. The antinomy of consciousness: The thesis is that the consciousness must come out of itself to be a cognitive consciousness. The antithesis is 4 5

For Hartmann’s concept of phenomenon, cf. Morgenstern 1992, 21 ff. As I. Heidemann comments, “The ‘aporetics of knowledge,’ the ‘science of problems’ works on problems, which occur as a consequence of the separation between subject and object” (Heidemann 1968, 200).

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that, insofar as it can only apprehend its immanent contents, consciousness is not able to come out of itself. The antinomy of the object: From the object’s point of view “the properties of the object must somehow be apprehended by the subject for there to be knowledge, and the properties of the image in the subject must apply to the object. For this, the object must somehow communicate its properties” (Hartmann 1965, 62). How could the properties of the object crossover to the subject? If the object fails to make its way into the relation of knowledge, but has an independent being in itself that is not transferred to the subject, then how could the subject reproduce its properties in an image? The thesis is that the properties of the object must somehow be transferred to the subject. Only in this way is it possible for the image in the subject to be a representation of something objective. The antithesis is that, given that the object remains transcendent, the object’s properties are not reproduced in the image of the object. If the thesis is true, the object has no transcendent character. This cannot be the case, however, because in the phenomenon of knowledge, the object is experienced as being transcendent. Hartmann states that “[t]he contradiction here is between the being of knowledge and the being of its object” (Hartmann 1965, 63). The nature of knowledge is such that it is necessary that the being in itself produces the recurrence of its properties in an image. If this were not the case, then knowledge would be impossible. But at least some knowledge is possible. Therefore, it must be the case that the being in itself produces the recurrence of its properties in an image. On the other hand, however, it seems like the being in itself cannot be transferred to the subject and its properties cannot become properties of the image. Let us summarize: On the basis of the phenomenology of knowledge, Hartmann develops two versions of the general aporia of knowledge. Both versions are given in the form of antinomies, a logical form that exposes the contradiction in the clearest way. When developing the antinomy of the object, Hartmann assumes the ontological point of view. He believes that an ontological relation connects subject and object. Both are embedded in a wider context, the context of existence. “They face each other as entities that do not come-into-being in the relation of knowledge, but that are rooted in other relations of being” (Hartmann 1965, 320). This ontological point of view forms the starting point of Hartmann’s solution. Subject and object are not only the terms of a relation of knowledge that have no independent existence, but they are also independent entities. As

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such, they stand in various relations of existence. The relation of knowledge is only one relation among many others.6 The “subject and object as entities are embedded in the same sphere of being, in which a multiplicity of relations are completely enclosed, supported, and determined” (Hartmann 1965, 321). To what extent can this ontological point of view be the starting point of the solution? If subject and object are considered to be terms of a relation of being, the relation between them loses its antinomical character. That the terms of a relation of being stand in relation with each other is not mysterious. The contrary would be mysterious: “Where everything is in relation and everything is conditioned and determined by each other, it would be incomprehensible if the subject would not be part of the network of such relations and would not be determined by other entities” (Hartmann 1965, 322 – 323). The antinomy has thus proven to be solvable. From the ontological point of view, the thesis that the object has an impact on the subject is not problematic.7 However, the aporia has not been completely solved by this. In fact, we do know that there is a relation between subject and object and that we can understand this relation if we base our reasoning on an ontological assumption, but we do not know how this relation works. “The nature of the dependence, the structure of the nexus (i. e., of the causal link), remains irrational” (Hartmann 1965, 323). The discussion of the antinomy of the object is followed by the examination of the antinomy of consciousness. This antinomy opposes two contradictory theses. The first is that consciousness must come out of itself to be able to cognize anything. This is opposed by the antithesis, which states that consciousness cannot come out of itself, for, according to the “principle of consciousness,” it always deals only with its own contents. “This principle (the principle of consciousness) is in manifest antinomy with the phenomenon of knowledge, as far as the latter is given as the apprehension of a transcendent reality” (Hartmann 1965, 327). How can this antinomy be resolved? In this context, Hartmann once again makes ontological assumptions. The antinomy only arises on the basis of this phenomenon. The solution of the antin6 7

Cf. Hartmann 1955, 150: “One can easily see […] that knowledge […] is in fact an ontological relation between an ontological subject and an ontological object.” Cf. Hülsmann 1959, 83: “thus, the entire process of knowledge is a fundamental ontological relation.”

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omy is thus to be found in the very assumptions that caused the antinomy. The principle of consciousness is an essential law of consciousness. It says that everything that is apprehended by consciousness is a content of consciousness. In this form, it is a tautological principle. To advance toward the solution of the antinomy, we need to examine this principle in more detail. What is the apprehension an apprehending of ? Not a content of consciousness, but a transcendent object. This transcendent object, however, does not cross over into consciousness; it remains transcendent. Consciousness always deals only with the image of the object. But this image is not apprehended; it is only “possessed.” The immanent content of consciousness represents the transcendent object. “The content (of consciousness) can represent something that is exterior to consciousness. Whereas the representation has to be immanent to consciousness, the represented can be transcendent” (Hartmann 1965, 327). This means that the apprehending of the transcendent object is indirect. In contrast, the content of consciousness is grasped directly. “[I]nsofar as this content is the representation of a transcendent object, the subject apprehends the transcendent object indirectly. And it is obvious that this indirect apprehension constitutes, from the gnoseological point of view, the apprehension in the proper sense” (Hartmann 1965, 328). Now, what does this imply with regard to the antinomy of consciousness? From the contradiction follows that consciousness must come out of itself to be able to apprehend something external to itself, but is not able to do so due to the principle of consciousness. According to Hartmann, the antinomy can be solved by realizing the equivocation of the term ‘apprehension’ (Erfassen).8 “By defining knowledge as an apprehension of the transcendent object, we mean to speak – from the ontological point of view – of this indirect apprehension we have of the represented. But when we say, about the principle of consciousness, that consciousness can only apprehend its own contents, we mean to speak of the direct apprehension of the immanent image, i. e., the representation” (Hartmann 1965, 329). The thesis of the antinomy thus referred to indirect apprehension, whereas the antithesis refers to direct apprehension. Simply considering this difference solves the antinomy. 8

Cf. Morgenstern 1992, 43. In this context, Morgenstern speaks of a logical language-related misunderstanding. The term ‘apprehending’ (Erfassen) has different meanings in the thesis and in the antithesis.

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Let us recapitulate the argument. The antinomy arose from the phenomenon of knowledge and was solved by the theory of representation and the disambiguation of the term ‘apprehension’. According to Hartmann, the antinomy could only be solved assuming certain ontological assumptions. But these assumptions are already given in the phenomenon of knowledge.

2.5.3 The remaining unsolvable problem of the theory of knowledge – an aporia with the function of marking theory boundaries By a phenomenological analysis of knowledge, Hartmann obtains the following definition of knowledge: “Knowledge is […] the determination of the subject by another entity, the object” (Hartmann 1965, 323). Various aporias arise from this definition. Each individual aporia arising from this definition form a part of the overall problem of knowledge. These problem-parts can be solved in multiple ways. Additionally, they are connected to further aporias. A large portion of these interconnected aporias also turn out to be solvable. This is not the case for all aporias, however. Behind the solvable aporias lie some unsolvable ones. They form the background of the solvable aporias. The remaining unsolvable aporia of knowledge is that the how of the relation between the transcendental object and the psychical structure remains irrational to us. “Actually, this how is deeply irrational and constitutes a remaining unsolvable problem, which must remain essentially unscrutinized” (Hartmann 1965, 323). Hartmann says that it is illegitimate to apply the category of physical causality to the relation between subject and object. Physical causality applies only to spatiotemporal entities, whereas consciousness is extended only in time. So we cannot predicate physical causality of the relation between subject and object. But, “[a]n entity can determine another through a mode of determination other than the causal one” (Hartmann 1965, 324). Hartmann designates the mode of determination in question with the expression ‘transcausal determination’. Despite this unsolvable remaining problem, the theory of knowledge does not need to give up: “There is no need for the theory of knowledge to formulate hypotheses to explain the structure and detailed working of this mode of determination” (Hartmann 1965, 325). It is nonetheless possible to work out the conditions of knowledge without exactly knowing the how of the determination. And that is exactly what

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Hartmann did when working on the aporias of the first part of the metaphysics of knowledge. It has never been his aim to clarify once and for all the essence of the relation between subject and object. The task is only to outline the existence of such a relation purely negatively. Of course, since the how of the relation remains irrational, this solution is not completely satisfying. But the hypothetical positing of these relations is sufficient to resolve the aporias of knowledge. At the same time, this irrationality constitutes the background of all solvable aporias. In this regard, the solvable aporias can be said to be both solvable and unsolvable. They are solvable, insofar as we consider them in isolation from the overall problem. Then, a particular solution can be found for each individual problem taken in isolation. But they are unsolvable insofar as we conceive of them as irrevocably bound to the overall problem, which includes the unsolvable issue of the how of the fundamental psychophysical relation.

2.5.4 The aporia from the existential dependence of principles – another aporia with the function marking theory boundaries In his theory of categories, Hartmann discusses the mode of being of principles. The law of principle is a categorial law. This principle states: “the being of a category lies in its ‘being a principle’ (Prinzipseins). That something is a principle for another means nothing else than that it determines certain aspects of it and, respectively, that the thing is essential to it. The category has no other being than that of being a principle ‘for’ the concretum” (Hartmann 1964, 382). This means that a principle does not have any independent being, but rather that its being is to exist for something else. The principle is a “dependent entity, even though it is the determining entity of an independent entity” (Hartmann 1964, 384). We can already see what the antinomy is. Hartmann formulates it as follows: “the principle is independent from the concretum because the concretum is dependent on it; but at the same time the principle depends on the concretum because it exists only relatively to it” (Hartmann 1964, 385). This aporia – in this context, an antinomy – is rooted in the phenomenon. Only the existence of the concretum is dependent; it depends on that of the principle. But the existence of categories is dependent, too, for it exclusively consists of its being related. The principle is the structuring and essential aspect of the concretum. On the one hand,

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the principle is independent in the same way that Platonic intelligible forms are. On the other hand, however, principles can only exist “in” and “through” concrete entities, which implies that they cannot exist independently. The two conflicting theses constitute the antinomical aporia. Hartmann considers this to be a “fundamental antinomy” (Hartmann 1964, 385). This is synonymous with “genuine antinomy.” This kind of antinomy is to be contrasted with antinomies entailed by certain points of view. The latter, which plays the most important role in Der Aufbau der realen Welt, results from prejudices or incorrect theories. Correcting the prejudices can solve them. Genuine antinomies, in contrast, are rooted in the boundaries of human knowledge. We are not able, for instance, to continuously apprehend something’s principiality. In this context, the antinomy is a sign, a hint, or indication that certain correlations cannot be seamlessly apprehended by means of the concept of “principiality” that we have developed in our dealings with things. If we submit this concept to the concepts of “ontological dependence” and “ontological independence” for the purpose of description and explanation, we keep bouncing on boundaries of human knowledge. The antinomy of the dependence of principles shows that the relationship between principle and concretum cannot be grasped by applying the traditional model of a relation between two separate entities. How should one understand in the context of the traditional model that the existence of a principle is dependent? And how should we make sense of the fact that this dependent entity is at the same time the determining one? Hartmann answers that “[i]n all kinds of determination (e. g., causality) something remains irrational. This irrational residue always has something to do with the developing, the effecting, or the determining itself” (Hartmann 1964, 386). The aporia, which Hartmann presents in an antinomical form, forces us to look for a new model that could help us grasp the relationship between principle and concretum more adequately than would be possible with a representation-oriented conception. Hartmann attempts to explain the relation between principle and concretum by means of an analogy: “We come closest to understanding this state of affairs if we draw an analogy between the way the principle and concretum and the way the general and the individual are related” (Hartmann 1964, 387). The general does not exist anywhere on its own, but only “in” the real cases. It is what they have in common. The general thus exists regardless of the individual case, but not regardless of real individual cases at all. “Some-

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thing similar applies to the principle; principles, too, are always the general in the manifold concretum. The principle is not independent from the concretum insofar as it only consists of the always-recurring determinations that characterize it. It is independent, however, inasmuch as the concretum is bound to these determinations and cannot escape from its hold. In turn, the concretum in its manifoldness only depends on the principle insofar as it is bound in the above-mentioned way. It is independent, however, insofar as it contains the principles within itself” (Hartmann 1964, 387). Thus, the aporia of the existential dependence of principles includes theory-generating moments. Hartmann sought a way to explain the relation between principle and concretum using an analogy with the relation between general and individual. This is the new, improved model. But the new model is still unable to free the correlations from aporias. This aporia is therefore unsolvable, in Hartmann’s sense. The impossibility to comprehensively understand the relation between principle and concretum is an indication that it is a limit to theory development.

2.6 A critique of Hartmann’s conception of aporias and aporetics Hartmann’s conception emphasizes the theory-generating function of aporias and aporetics. A theory is developed and improved through the problems it encounters. The goal of the theory is to reflect reality as adequately as possible. The basic relations of reality such as the relation between body and mind or the relation between subject and object, are the objects of their own theories (in these cases, dualism and epistemology). Such theory allows capturing reality step by step more adequately through the exposition of aporias and the improvement of theories by overcoming aporias. According to Hartmann, however, there is a limit to this sort of improvement, namely the unsolvable aporias. The method of exposing aporias is no longer helpful beyond this limit. Here, we hit a wall. It is a hard limit that blocks any cognitive effort toward further knowledge. Hartmann acknowledges that the theory-generating aporias are surrounded by unsolvable aporias. Each solvable aporia is only a small

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piece in a bigger puzzle, which includes aporias that are and must remain unsolvable. How do we know which kind an aporia belongs to? How do we know whether it is intended for the elimination of a theory, or for its development, or whether it indicates a boundary of possible knowledge? In this respect, Hartmann is rather optimistic and considers the problem of the distinction between the different kinds of aporias to be, in theory, solvable. According to Hartmann, the issue of the distinction between kinds of aporias is itself free from aporias. In Zur Methodik und Systematik von Aporien: Untersuchungen zur Aporetik bei Nicolai Hartmann und Gottfried Martin, I have shown that Hartmann distinguishes between kinds of aporias on the basis of whether or not they are based on phenomena. If an aporia is based on phenomena, it is not an aporia of the theory-eliminating kind. Aporias of this kind simply arise due to false assumptions. They are not genuine, but bogus aporias. The situation is different with the aporias that have a theory-generating function. In this case, the theories are already partially correct, and are improved through the use of aporetics. To decide whether a theory is to be wholly rejected or improved, we must differentiate between phenomenon and false assumption. Hartmann thinks that this is possible, but in view of the current discussion, I am doubtful of the idea that such a differentiation is possible. Every apprehended phenomenon is already cognitively pre-structured and is thus already inextricably interwoven with theoretical assumptions. It thus remains unclear why certain aporias are considered to be absolutely unsolvable. In fact, Hartmann’s idea that each solvable aporia is embedded in a background of unsolvable aporias casts doubt on whether a real distinction is possible. The boundary between solvable and unsolvable becomes fuzzy and the threat of unsolvability spreads through the entire system. On the one hand, knowledge always meets with aporias that are in principle solvable. But on the other hand, with the solution of each aporia, we penetrate further into an infinite aporetical horizon that is in principle unsolvable. Therefore, we could claim that the central kind of aporia (the theory-generating kind, according to Hartmann’s conception) has itself an aporetic character. For this reason, I conclude that the boundary between the different kinds of aporias is problematic and that Hartmann’s distinctions are somewhat arbitrary. It can never be decided to which kind an aporia belongs. A line between the different kinds of aporias cannot be drawn.

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Consequently, the way of handling an aporia cannot be determined, but needs to be decided arbitrarily. Hartmann takes a variant of the aporia to its extreme and tries to immunize it against criticism. To do so, however, is impossible. The attempt to achieve a methodically secured progress in knowledge through a specific kind of aporia fails. Hartmann takes the kind of aporia through which a progress in knowledge can be achieved to a new peak. However, it is evident that this kind itself contains aporias. This points to the fact that the central kind of aporia today is the one that marks theory boundaries. With Hartmann, solving aporias ultimately bring us to unsolvable aporias, which form the central kind of aporias. Hartmann is thus comparable, in this respect, to this group of contemporary thinkers who consider unsolvable aporias to be at the center stage of aporetics.

2.7 Conclusion At the beginning, I presented the role aporias play in the theories of Adorno, Camus, Derrida, and Zˇizˇek. According to these thinkers, the unsolvability of aporias is final. For them, aporias appear almost entirely to be constituents of our nature, a constituent that makes our being-inthe-world understandable. The possibility of freedom, for instance, is explainable only on the premise that aporias are essential to our nature. If all aporias were rationally solvable, the subject would lose its very essence. Can this conception of aporias, which turns unsolvable aporias into constitutive ones, apply to Hartmann? According to Hartmann, the portion of unsolvable aporias is much smaller than the portion of solvable ones. However, as I have shown, the thesis of the marginality of unsolvable aporias is indefensible. The criteria for distinguishing the different kinds of aporias are not available to us in the way Hartmann supposed them to be. This leads to a revaluation of the unsolvable aporias. There is something fishy in the way they acquired a central part in Hartmann’s philosophy. But this makes Hartmann in line with contemporary thinkers who consider the unsolvable aporias as essential to the human condition and its situation in the world.

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2.8 References Adorno, Theodor W. (1990), Negative Dialectics, trans. by E. B. Ashton, Routledge. Aristotle (1984), Metaphysics, in The Complete Works of Aristotle. The Revised Oxford Translation, J. Barnes (ed.), vol. 2, Princeton: Princeton University Press. Beckmann, Jan P. (1993), “Aporie/Aporetik,” in Lexikon fr Theologie und Kirche, vol. 1, B. Caspar (ed.), Freiburg: Herder-Verlag. Camus, Albert (1964), The Myth of Sisyphus and Other Essays, transl. by J. O’Brien, New York: Alfred A. Knopf. Derrida, Jacques (1993), Aporias, trans. by T. Dutoit, Stanford University Press. Diogenes Laertius (1995), Lives and Opinions of Eminent Philosophers, transl. by R. D. Hicks, vol. 2, Cambridge (Massachusetts): Harvard University Press. Hartmann, Nicolai (1955), “Systematische Selbstdarstellung,” in Kleinere Schriften, vol. 1, Berlin: Walter De Gruyter. Hartmann, Nicolai (1964), Der Aufbau der realen Welt. Grundriss einer allgemeinen Kategorienlehre, 3rd edition, Berlin: Walter De Gruyter. Hartmann, Nicolai (1965), Grundzge einer Metaphysik der Erkenntnis, 5th edition, Berlin: Walter De Gruyter. Heidemann, Ingeborg (1968), “Die Philosophie Nicolai Hartmanns im Aspekt der Probleme,” in N. Hartmann, Der philosophische Gedanke und seine Geschichte. – Zeitlichkeit und Substanzialitt. – Seinsgebung und Seinserfllung, Stuttgart: Reclam. Hülsmann, Heinz (1959), Die Methode der Philosophie Nicolai Hartmanns, Düsseldorf: L. Schwann. ˇ izˇek, Paderborn. Kim, H. K. (2009), Slavoj Z Kimmerle, H. (2000), Jacques Derrida zur Einfhrung, Hamburg: Junius. Krings, Hermann, Baumgartner, Hans M., Wild, Christoph (1973), Handbuch philosophischer Grundbegriffe, vol. 1, Munich: Kösel. Martin, Gottfried. (1965), Allgemeine Metaphysik. Ihre Probleme und ihre Methode, Berlin: Walter De Gruyter. Martin, Gottfried (1969), Immanuel Kant. Ontologie und Wissenschaftstheorie, 4th edition, Berlin: Walter De Gruyter. Martin, Gottfried (1973), Platons Ideenlehre, Berlin/New York: Walter de Gruyter. Morgenstern, Martin (1992), Nicolai Hartmann. Grundlinien einer wissenschaftlich orientierten Philosophie, Tübingen/Basel: Francke Verlag. Schlittmaier, Anton (1999), Zur Methodik und Systematik von Aporien: Untersuchungen zur Aporetik bei Nicolai Hartmann und Gottfried Martin, Würzburg: Königshausen & Neumann. Schnädelbach, Herbert (1999), Hegel zur Einfhrung, Hamburg: Junius. Sextus Empiricus (1933), Outlines of Pyrrhonism, transl. by R. G. Bury, Cambridge (Massachusetts): Harvard University Press. Waldenfels, Bernhard (1971), “Aporie,” Ritter, J. (ed.), Historisches Wçrterbuch der Philosophie, vol. 1, Basel/Stuttgart: Schwabe. Wiggershaus, Rolf (1987), Theodor W. Adorno, Munich: Beck.

Chapter 3: Aporetics in Nicolai Hartmann and Beyond Nicholas Rescher 3.1 Introduction Nicolai Hartmann’s concern for philosophical aporetics gives a characteristic cast to his metaphilosophical views. Aporetics puts questions and problems into the foreground rather than doctrine. Our philosophical questions admit of different resolutions – and this serves to create a bond among conflicting doctrines. However, the study of philosophy is no substitute for philosophizing. This is a phenomenon that pervades the entire philosophical scene, present and past alike. The aporetical nature of philosophy indicates that only cogent philosophizing must be systematic. The aporetical nature of the subject does not prevent but rather supports systematicity. To practice rather than merely study philosophy requires evaluative commitment and it is to Hartmann’s credit that he transcended the tradition in which he was schooled to recognize the unavoidable need for doctrinal commitments in philosophy. The perhaps unavoidable shortcomings of Hartmann’s philosophizing lies in its abstractness – the high level generality on which his exposition proceeds.

3.2 Hartmann and philosophical aporetic Leaning on Aristotle and Hegel, Nicolai Hartman brought the investigation process of aporetics to the fore in philosophical methodology. At the heart of this project are two basic contentions: • That the primary and most fundamental task of philosophizing is not to defend theses and substantive doctrines but to identify problems and formulate questions. And further,

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That the next fundamental order of business is to survey the range of possible and promising alternative available answers to these questions and to verify whether they solve these problems. The idea is that the clarification of issues is the first and most fundamental order of business, because there is little and ultimately no profit in propounding answers and solutions until after one has first settled just exactly what the question is. The present discussion is not, however, a study in Hartmann exegesis. It is less concerned with the textual detail of deliberations regarding aporetics, and more with considering the overall project whose lineaments he projected and for whose development and application he envisioned a large and important rule in philosophical studies. Consider a philosophical question on the order of the Cartesian “Is it there anything that we can know for certain?” And, proceeding under the guidance of the history of philosophy, let us survey the answers that seem to be available: 1. No: there is nothing that we can know for certain. (Radical skepticism) 2. Yes: we can know for certain the deliverances of our own senses: the testimony of our own eyes, for example. (Empiricism) 3. Yes: we can know for certain the fruits of our (immediate) intelligent insight: that “four” is a count-noun, for example, or that “red” is a color. (Intuitionism) 4. Yes: we can know for certain the fruits of our reasoning: that five plus seven is twelve, for example, or that if Socrates and Plato are (distinct) men, then the world contains at least several men. (Rationalism) Any such survey of alternative possibilities leads to a proliferation of clusters of individually plausible but collectively inconsistent propositions. We have, for example: • In the end, we can know nothing. (Skepticism.) • To maintain a proposition we humans must state it in a language and thereby use its words. • A proposition cannot be successfully propounded in language by someone who does not purport to know the meaning of the words being used. And obviously, knowing the meaning of words is to know something.

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Such propositional complexes – groups of individually plausible but collectively inconsistent propositions – constitute apories, and, in particular, the preceding triad presents an apory of skepticism. Since different and distinct answers inevitably surface where the controversial issues of philosophy are concerned, they all engender apories. Because different individuals and schools offer different and discordant answers, when we put together assertions that issue from different directions of the philosophical compass we shall confront aporetics assertion-clusters. From this standpoint, apories are causes of divergences within philosophy. And so, Hartmann sees it, the proper task of the discipline of history of philosophy is not doxographic – not a matter of elaborating a proliferation of diverse doctrines and opinions, but a matter of problemhistory (Problemgeschichte), i. e., of surveying the problems of the field and describing how the virtually collaborative efforts of different philosophers address these shared problems in a communally coordinated effort at their resolution. As Hartmann himself memorably puts it: “It lies in the nature of things that no thinker writes anything but his own characteristically personal material. But the fact remains that none thinks other than along the lines of the problem-manifold which the ambient culture produces through and beyond him” (Hartmann 1958, 4).

3.3 Apories serve to connect issues Just here, for example, lay the basic methodological insight of Plato’s Socrates. His almost invariable procedure was a process of “Socratic questioning” to elicit a pre-systematic apory that sets the stage for philosophical reflection. Thus in the Republic, Thrasymachus was drawn into acknowledging the aporetic triad: 1. What men call justice is simply what is decreed by the authorities as being in their own interest. 2. It is right and proper (obligatory, in fact) that men should do what is just. 3. Men have no obligation to do what is in the interest of the authorities particularly since those authorities may well themselves be mistaken about what these interests really are. After all, the problem context of philosophical issues standardly arises from a clash among individually tempting but collectively incompatible overcommitments. Philosophical issues that standardly center about a

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family of plausible theses that is assertorically overdeterminative in claiming so much as to lead into inconsistency. Again consider the following philosophical apory about freedom of action: 1. People are free agents: they can and sometimes do act from free choice. 2. If an action issues from free choice, then it is causally unconstrained. 3. All occurrences – human actions included – are caused, i. e., causally construed by antecedent occurrences. Now since rejecting a thesis is tantamount to endorsing its negation and the negation of a philosophically relevant contention is itself philosophical in its bearing it follows that the pursuit of mere logical consistency involves one in endorsing a philosophical position. Consider the just-stated apory from this angle. The fact that an inconsistent triad is at issue means that one must adopt at least one of the following positions: 1. Rejection: This represents a determinism that denies free choice. 2. Rejection: The acknowledgment that free actions can be caused leads straightaway to a theory of agent causation (Kantian “causality of freedom”) as contrasted to nature-causation (Kantian “causality of nature”). The resulting position is that of a compatibilism of freedom and causality. 3. Rejection: This involucrates a doctrine of occurrence surdity to the effect that some events are uncaused. The result is causal exceptionalism that sees some events as positioned outside the causal order. In such cases of collective inconsistency, something obviously has to go. Whatever favorable disposition there may be toward these plausible theses, they cannot be maintained in the aggregate. We are confronted by a (many-sided) cognitive dilemma and must find one way out or another. It is clear in these aporetic cases that something has gone amiss, though it may well be quite unclear just where the source of difficulty lies. The resolution of such an aporetic situation obviously calls for abandoning one (or more) of the theses that generate the contradiction. Unexceptionable as these theses may seem, one or another of them has to be jettisoned in the interests of consistency. And the problem is that there are always alternative ways of doing this. After all, the root cause of such a situation lies in cognitive overcommitment. Too many jostling contentions strive for our approbation and acceptance. And this state of affairs is standard in philosophy and represents the most common and pervasive impetus to philosophical reflection.

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Even if I unhesitatingly accept and endorse the abstract principle that one must try to be helpful to others in situations of need, I am clearly in moral difficulty if I operate on too stringent a standard of evidence in relevant contexts – if, for example, I allow skeptical concerns about other minds to paralyze me from ever recognizing another creature as a human person. For then I will be far reachingly precluded from doing things that, morally considered, I ought to do. William James rightly noted this connection between epistemology and morality, in insisting that the skeptic rudely treads morality underfoot: “If I refuse to stop a murder because I am in (some) doubt whether it is not justifiable homicide, I am virtually abetting the crime. If I refuse to bale out a boat because I am in doubt whether my effort will keep her afloat, I am really helping to sink her. […] Skepticism in moral matters is an active ally of immorality” ( James 1897, 109). To operate in life with epistemological principles so stringent as to impede the discharge of one’s standard moral obligations is to invite justified reproach. Where the interests of others are at risk, we cannot, with moral appropriateness, deploy evidential standards of acceptability of a higher, more demanding sort than those that are normally operative in the community in the ordinary run of cases. At this point, epistemology has moral ramifications. For morality as we know it requires a commonsense, down-to-earth epistemology for its appropriate implementation. In such a case, then, the stance we take in the one domain (epistemology) has significant repercussions for the way we can proceed in the other (ethics). The issues arising in these seemingly remote areas stand in systematic interlinkage. Now insofar as such a perspective is right, it emerges that the range of relevant consequences cannot be confined to the local area of the immediate thematic environs of the contention, but will have to involve its more remote reverberations as well. If an otherwise appealing contention in semantics wreaks havoc in metaphysics or in the philosophy of mathematics, that too will have to be weighed when the question of its tenability arises. The absolute idealist for whom time is unreal cannot appropriately just write off the ethicist’s interest in future eventuations (as regards, for example, the situation that will obtain when the time to make a good promise arrives) – or the political philosopher’s concern for the well-being of future generations. The materialist cannot simply dismiss the boundary-line issues involved in the moral question of why to pointlessly damage one’s own computer is simply foolish, but to pointlessly injure a developed animal is actually wicked.

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The systematic nature of philosophy-as-a-whole has far-reaching implications for the proper cultivation of the discipline. In particular, it means that we should not – nay cannot – rest satisfied with isolated piecework, with single pieces of doctrine whose merits do not extend beyond immediate adequacy in a local problem area. For in philosophizing, as in economic matters, externalities may come into play. A seemingly elegant solution to the difficulties posed by one problem may carry in its wake hopeless difficulties for the satisfactory resolution of some other problem. Its ramifications in another, seemingly remote, area may require one to pay an unacceptable price for the neat resolution of a problem in a given domain. One may, as we have seen, be forced into accepting an epistemology that one does not much like for itself in the interests of possibilizing an ethical position that one deems essential. Philosophizing is, in this regard, akin to cognitive engineering. For the sensible philosopher, like the sensible engineer, must proceed holistically with a view to the overall implications of his particular ventures in problem solving. An engineer who allows one particular desideratum (cost, safety, fuel economy, repair infrequency, or the like) to dominate his thinking, to the exclusion of all else, would not produce a viable product, but an absurdity. We would certainly laugh at someone who offered to build us a supersafe car – but one that would go only two miles per hour. Surely a similar derision is deserved by the skeptic who offers to build us a supersafe, error-excluding epistemology that would not, however, allow us to maintain a line of distinction between science and pseudoscience. In philosophy as in economics, engineering, and medicine we cannot avoid concern for externalities and have to come to grips with incidental interactions and side-effects. In chess, we cannot play rooks independently of what we do with bishops; in medicine, we cannot treat one organ independently of the implications for others; in political economy, we cannot design policies for one sector without concerning ourselves with their impact upon the rest. In most any problem-solving contexts we do well keep all our commitments in reasonable coordination overall. Why should philosophy be any different?

3.4 The study of philosophy vs. actual philosophizing Confronted by the “anarchy of systems,” philosophers often yearn for the law and order of scientific inquiry. We are urged to avert the inconveniences of disagreement in philosophizing itself by escaping into the

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study of philosophy (even as some theologians would have us withdraw from religion into the study of religions). It was in just this light that Wilhelm Dilthey saw the comparative history of philosophy as a latter-day surrogate for philosophy.1 He proposed to implement Hegel’s grand dream of a “scientific” systematization of worldviews in the light of world history. Accordingly, Dilthey sought to fuse the history of philosophy to a psychologically informed study of the human condition in an endeavor to devise a Mendeleeff-reminiscent periodic table to coordinate all possible philosophical positions into a systematic rational framework that would allocate each metaphysical position a place in the grand scheme of things. Such an endeavor to provide a systematic typology of world views holds forth the promise of finding an implicit rational order amidst the confusing phenomena.2 The promise of a meta-metaphysical substitute for metaphysics is held up before us, a theory able to explain the strife of systems in terms of a “philosophy of life” that allows us to view philosophical differences as arising from different approaches to the complexities of human life. In the German-language orbit especially, this line of thought fell on fertile ground. Dilthey’s ideas were carried forward by his pupil Max Frischeisen-Koehler in an important 1907 essay.3 He tells us: Each philosophical epoch seems to be filled with an illusion, each great philosopher believes himself to be the one who has succeeded in solving the final riddle, but each epoch is succeeded by another, which recognizes anew how little permanent the achievements of the preceding one are; each philosopher finds his successor and opponent, who refutes him, at the same time; each philosophy carries the seed of its own death. The history of philosophical thought shows no connection, no continuity, no progress, but is all the more a chaos of opinions, an anarchy of viewpoints 1

2 3

“The same surgical knife of historical relativism, which has dissected all metaphysics and all religion alike, must also be used for healing. But the key is thoroughness. We must make philosophy itself, the object of philosophizing. What is needed is an inquiry which takes philosophical systems themselves as its objects through the comparative analysis of their historical development. This inquiry would stand to the history of philosophy as comparative philology stands to the history of languages – and if someone wants to transcend the separation of the two, I shall be the last to object” (Dilthey 1931, 234 – 235). Dilthey’s project was put into execution by his pupil Heinrich Gomperz in his monumental Weltanschauungslehre, vol. I (1905). An important later contribution to the same project is Rothacker 1926. Frischeisen-Koehler 1907, 66 – 136. Born in 1878, this prolific author was a pupil of Dilthey’s and Professor of Philosophy in the University of Halle.

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and of theories, of which none can be proved, and yet each of which makes the same claim to general validity (Frischeisen-Koehler 1907, 66 – 67).

And so Frischeisen-Koehler too proposes to replace philosophizing of the traditional sort by a new mode of higher-level inquiry along Diltheyan lines. Franz Kröner was an especially important link in the chain, and his 1929 book titled The Anarchy of Philosophical Systems treats many of the themes that have occupied us here.4 He proposed to replace philosophy by systematology, a metaphilosophical examination of philosophical systems conducted descriptively, from the outside, as it were. In this way, he believed, it would become possible “to create a cosmos out of chaos” (Kröner 1929, 8, and also 42, 287). By focusing upon the fundamental theses of philosophical systems, we can discern the nature of their problems and their interrelationships. Moreover, we can analyze the alternatives to each system by altering its fundamental theses in various combinations and permutations. The task of systematology is to provide a descriptive analysis of philosophical systems, conducted in the spirit of the geometer who studies alternative systems by varying the usual axioms. To be sure, unlike mathematical systems, philosophical systems are “imperfect” – their concepts are never fully exact and their theses develop dialectically so that no definitive axiomatization is possible. The prospect of variation makes pluralism inevitable. The aim of systematology is a typology of philosophical systems (reminiscent of Dilthey’s theory of types of world views), based on differences rooted in theoretical possibilities rather than psychological inclinations. Kröner’s own solution to the problem of the strife of systems leaves something to be desired. Instead of simply accepting the phenomenon of conflict and moving on from there, he tries to dismiss it as itself a pseudoproblem rooted in imperfect understanding.5 However, while his diagnosis is deficient, his remedy – to forget about this strife and get on with the work of addressing concrete philosophical problems – 4

5

Franz Kröner (1889 – 1958) was born in Vienna and taught in universities in Graz and in Zurich. His principle work is Die Anarchie der Philosophischen Systeme (1929). For a presentation of his ideas, see the “Symposium on Systematology” in Metaphilosophy 1982, 240 – 266. Kröner was influenced by Dilthey and, as the introduction to his book makes clear, by Frischeisen-Koehler as well. “Das Phaenomen der Anarchie der Systeme [ist] als oberflaechlich und einseitig aufgefasstes schlechthin zum Verschwinden zu bringen” (Kröner 1929, 320).

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is altogether right-minded.6 Kröner himself ultimately became disillusioned with his systematology because he came to recognize that the study of philosophy cannot provide a substitute for philosophizing.7 His own theory ran into the following apory: 1. There is no absolute philosophical system, and so there are no unconditionally acceptable philosophical propositions. 2. Theses about the nature of philosophy are themselves philosophical. 3. Thesis (1) itself is unconditionally acceptable. Kröner tried to extricate himself from this aporetic conflict by dropping (2): “The proposition that there can be no philosophical system is in the strict sense not a ‘philosophical’ proposition; that is, it cannot stand in such a system and does not belong to the context of such a system, just as the proposition that it is not the only possible geometry does not belong to the contents of Euclidean geometry” (Kröner 1929, 278). He thus stood committed to the doctrine that systematological theses stand outside philosophy – (2) itself included. This forced him to acknowledge that systematology cannot commit itself to any philosophical issues as such and so is precluded from resolving any philosophical questions. It succeeds in replacing strife by order only by abandoning the subject. As our deliberations have made all too plain, if systematology is a matter of systematizing the materials made available by the history of philosophy, it becomes a study in alternative possibilities and never manages to arrive at a determinate study of the issues. Kröner’s theory came to shipwreck in the course of its search for an Archimedean pou sto¯. The methodological commitments of a purely descriptive metaphilosophy (which Kröner saw as necessary to avert chaos) also preclude the enterprise from becoming properly philosophical, and this defeats its deep aspirations. A further link in this chain was the German philosopher Eberhard Rogge, who, still in his thirties, was killed in 1941 while fighting on the Russian front. His posthumous book, The Axiomatic of All Possible Philosophy, was an attempt to identify the fundamental theses of the different modes of philosophical system building (Rogge 1950, 48). The basic idea, as with Dilthey and Kröner, is to proceed on a factual basis, on analogy with the work of bibliography. In this vein Rogge em6 7

“Die einzige und beste Antwort […] ist also der Uebergang zur konkreten Arbeit an den konkreten Problemen” (Kröner 1929, 323). Cf. Georg Janoska’s contribution to the “Symposium on Systematology,” p. 253 (see n. 4 above).

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barked on the project of metaphilosophy in the spirit of bibliographic taxonomy, an approach that has the same defects as its predecessors. By examining philosophy more bibliothecario we are to learn not merely what philosophy has been but also what it should be. The idea sounds promising, but it does not work. Descriptive metaphilosophy cannot venture into prescriptive methaphilosophy; it cannot inform us about what is significant or adequate. It runs up against the cardinal difficulty of this whole Diltheyan tradition; that is, that the study of philosophy is not a satisfactory surrogate for philosophy itself.8 The study of philosophy, however valuable, cannot of itself provide us with a determinate philosophical position.9 Hegel dreamt the grand dream of sublimating the whole history of philosophizing into the ahistorical contemporaneity of the absolute spirit. He dreamt of rising above the limitations of historically conditioned doctrines to a higher plane where all doctrines were absorbed into one grand ahistorical superdoctrine. It has been the great, ambitious dream of German philosophers since Hegel to tell a story about the whole history of philosophy that makes it clear how everything within it has contributed usefully to the constituting of one grand synoptic view of the nature of things. In principle, there is no reason why this cannot be done. But also, alas, there is no reason to think that it cannot be done in many different ways – and in favor of many different positions. Hartmann’s extensive knowledge of contemporary philosophizing positioned him centrally within the speculative metaphilosophy of his day. But unlike many of his contemporaries he had a firm confidence in the prospects of rational inquiry and did not view the prospect of rationality in a defeated spirit. For him the ground of hope for order amidst the environing chaos lay in the fact that the knowing subject 8

9

This difficulty also pervades the analysis of Pepper’s World Hypotheses, which is an American cousin to these German efforts. Cf. Williamson 1983. Williamson rightly notes the internal conflicts of a theory that distinguishes between “historical” and “speculative” typologies while engaging in practice in an effort that hopelessly conflates the two, seeking to avoid metaphysical doctrines while yet providing a metaphysics. To be sure, there is history and history. The standard mode is a merely descriptive history which presents the development of what people generally call “philosophy.” But there is also normative history: the account of good philosophy with special reference to those of its features that mark it as such. This enterprise is of course philosophical to the very core. But the fact that it substantively engages sets it apart from the mode of “scientific” history which seeks to be purely descriptive and “value-free.”

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and the aspiring object of his efforts are both postulated as integuments within a shared world. And the crucial instrumentality whose workings afford the prospect of success is the idea of system.

3.5 Authentic philosophizing must be systematic All rationally organized philosophizing must be systematic. And here coherence and consistency become prime requisites. A metaphysical determinism that negates free will runs afoul of a traditionalistic ethical theory that presupposes it. A philosophical anthropology that takes human life to originate at conception clashes with a social philosophy that sees abortion as morally unproblematic. A theory of rights that locates all responsibility in the contractual reciprocity of freely consenting parties creates problems for a morality of concern for animals. And the list goes on and on. The basic reason why philosophical issues are interrelated across different subject-matter domains lies in their aporetic nature – their invariable linkage to the situation where we confront groups of propositions that may seem individually plausible but are collectively inconsistent. For as was indicated above, the data of philosophy – the manifold of nontrivially evidentiated considerations with which it must come to terms – is always such that internal tensions and inconsistencies arise within it. The range of contentions which there is some reason to accept here outrun the range of what can be maintained in the light of consistency considerations. And the diversity of participants in such a conflict of overextension is almost always such as to outrun the boundaries of the thematic and disciplinary units that we generally entertain. These considerations convey a clear lesson. We all too easily risk losing sight of this interconnectedness when we zoom too narrowly on the details of a limited subdomain. In actuality, the stance we take on questions in one domain will generally have substantial implications and ramification for very different issues in other seemingly distant domains. And exactly this is why systematization is so important in philosophy – because the way we do answer some questions will have limiting repercussions for the way we can answer others. We cannot emplace our philosophical convictions into conveniently separated compartments in the comfortable expectation that what we maintain in one area of the field will have no unwelcome implications for what we are inclined to maintain in others.

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The long and short of it is that the realm of truth is unified and its components are interlinked. Change your mind about one fact and you cannot leave all the rest unaffected. To qualify as adequate, one’s account of things must be a systematic whole whose components are interrelated by relation of systematic interaction or feedback. In the final analysis, philosophy is a system because it is concerned to indicate, or at least to estimate, the truth about things, and “the truth about reality” is a system.10 Its various sectors and components are bound to dovetail smoothly with one another. For even if one is reluctant to claim that reality as such must be systematic, the fact remains that an adequate account of it must surely be so. Even as we must take a sober view of inebriation so we must aim at a coherent account of even an incoherent world. Philosophy’s commitment to the project of rational inquiry, to the task of making coherent and comprehensive sense of things, means that an adequate philosophy must be holistic, accommodating and coordinating all aspects of its concerns in a single unified and coherent whole, with the result that any viable philosophical doctrine will and can be no more than a particular component piece fitting smoothly into the wider puzzle. Moreover, in philosophy, there are no secure axioms – no starter-set of absolutely certain “givens” whose implications we can follow through without question to the bitter end. In general, we cannot assess the acceptability of our contentions solely in terms of the security of their antecedents, but must reassess their acceptability in the light of their consequences and not only locally but globally. The implicit interconnectedness of philosophical issues means that the price philosophers must pay for overly narrow specialization – for confining attention narrowly to one particular set of issues – is compromising the tenability of their position. The long and short of it is that philosophical issues are organically interconnected. Positions that maximize local advantages may fail to be optimal from a global point of view. In the final analysis, only positions that are holistically adequate can be deemed to be really satisfactory. From Greek antiquity to the nineteenth century, a conviction prevailed that the branches of philosophy could be arranged in a neat hierarchy of sequential dependence and fundamentality, somewhat along the lines of: logic, epistemology, metaphysics, ethics (axiology) and po10 Further aspects of the systematic nature of truth are explored in the author’s 1973.

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litico-social philosophy. In fact, however, the various sub-domains of philosophy are interlinked by a complex crisscross network of reciprocal interrelationships. (For example, one needs epistemology to validate principles of logic, and yet one must use logic for reasoning in epistemology.) Justificatory argumentation in philosophy admits of no neat Aristotelian order of prior/posterior in its involvement with the subject’s components. The inherent interrelationships of the issues is such that we have no alternative but to see the sectors of philosophy as interconnected in interlocking cycles that bind the subject’s various branches into one systematic whole. Because its issues are interrelated, philosophical argumentation must look not just to antecedents but to consequences as well. Virtually nothing of philosophical relevancy is beyond question and altogether immune to criticism and possible rejection. Pretty much everything is potentially at risk. All of the datum of philosophy is defeasible – anything might in the final analysis have to be abandoned, whatever its source: science, common sense, common knowledge. One recent theorist writes: “No philosophical, or any other, theory can provide a view which violates common sense and remain logically consistent. For the truth of common sense is assumed by all theories. […] This necessity to conform to common sense establishes a constraint upon the interpretations philosophical theories can offer” (Kekes 1980, 196). But this overstates the case. The philosophical landscape is littered with theories that tread common sense underfoot. As philosophy goes about its work of rendering our beliefs coherent, something to which we are deeply attached often has to give somewhere along the line, and we can never say at the outset where the blow will or will not fall. Systematic considerations may well in the end lead our most solid-seeming suppositions into insuperable difficulty – even as can happen in the context of natural science. And the only cure for failures of systematization in philosophy lies in the construction of better systems. A philosopher who achieves his or her proximate, localized ends at the cost of off-loading difficulties onto other sectors of the wider domain is simply not doing an adequate job. With rationally cogent philosophizing, it is not local minimalism but global optimalism that is required. To be acceptable, a philosophical problem-solution must form an integral part of a wider doctrine that makes acceptably good sense overall. Here only systematic, holistically attuned positions can yield truly satisfactory solutions – solutions that do not involve undue externalities for the larger scheme of things. For better or for worse, viable

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philosophizing has to be a matter of holistic systematization. A tenable philosophy must be a systematically dovetailed whole. For in the end the range of our philosophical concern is a network where everything is systematically interconnected with everything else.11

3.6 Apory resolution supports systematicity Confronted by an aporetic antinomy, we recognize that something must give way. We ought, perhaps, prefer to take the easy way out and ignore the difficulties, concealing them in a comfortable ambiguity rendered harmless by benign fact. But the urge to understand does not allow us to rest satisfied in convenient ignorance. In all such cases, we are driven to make choices. We cannot maintain everything as it stands. The chain of inconsistencies must be broken, and the best place to break it is at its weakest link. And the strength and weakness at issue here, is determined through the effort at optimal systematization – of preserving as much as one possibly can of the overall informative substance of one’s cognitive commitments. Realizing that something has to give and that certain otherwise plausible conclusions must be jettisoned, we seek to adopt those resolutions that cause the least seismic disturbance across the landscape of our commitments. And this calls for a deliberative process that invokes weighing the comparative costs and benefits of a series of mutually exclusive alternatives in the endeavor to identify that (or this) which offers the best balance of benefits over costs. Accordingly, the overall process that is called for here is a matter of cost-benefit optimization on the basis of thinking through the overall consequences of competing alternatives. This sort of thing is clearly a matter of thought experimentation. That is, we contemplate accepting – one by one – each of the available prospects in the overall speculation of possibilities and weigh out the resulting assets and liabilities on a comparative basis to determine the optimal resolution. Empiricists thus find themselves boxed into difficulty by the following quartet: 1. All knowledge is grounded in observation (the key thesis of empiricism). 11 On the issues of this section see the present author’s 2001.

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2. We can only observe matters of empirical fact. 3. From empirical facts we cannot infer values; ergo, value claims cannot be grounded in observation (the fact/value divide). 4. Knowledge about values is possible (value cognitivism). There are four ways out of the bind of this cycle of inconsistency: 1. Rejection: There is also nonobservational, namely, intuitive or instinctive, mode of apprehension of matters of value (intuitionism; moral-sense theories). 2. Rejection: Observation is not only sensory but also affective (sympathetic, empathetic). It thus can yield not only factual information but value information as well (value sensibility theories). 3. Rejection: While we cannot deduce values from empirical facts, we can certainly infer them from the facts, by various sorts of plausible reasoning, such as “inference to the best explanation” (values-asfact theories). 4. Rejection: Knowledge about values is impossible (positivism, value skepticism). Committed to (1), empiricist thinkers thus see themselves driven to choose between the three last alternatives in developing their positions in the theory of value. We can thus subject philosophical issues to the standard process of aporetic analysis. For the contradiction that arises from over-commitment may be resolved by abandoning any of several contentions, so that alternative ways of averting inconsistency can always be found. A necessity for choice is forced by the logic of the situation, but no one particular outcome is rationally constrained for us by any considerations of abstract rationality. There are forced choices but no forced resolutions. An aporetic cluster is thus an invitation to conflict and its resolution will admit of only one of a coordinated group of mutually discordant doctrines (positions, teachings, doxa). Every such controversial question will, by its very controversial nature, admit of a variety of seemingly plausible answers. And these answers stand in conflict – they are variegated exactly because they represent rival and competing issue resolutions. The cluster accordingly sets the stage for divergent “schools of thought” and provides the bone of contention for an ongoing controversy among them. In philosophy, any family of inconsistent theses spans a “doctrinal spectrum” that encompasses a variety of interrelated albeit incompatible positions.

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3.7 Hartmann’s merit in insisting on the need for commitment Aporetics in the first instance is a matter of mapping out the range of alternative solutions to philosophical problems. Up to that point it is a matter of surveying the manifold of possibilities, moving along Christian Wolff’s idea that science studies the manifold of actuality and philosophy that of possibility. However, Hartmann is – very right-mindedly – reluctant to allow matters to rest there. He is not content with mere possibility immerging. His goal is objectivity: finding definite and determinate answers to meaningfully posed questions. But how are such answers to be arrived at? Certainly neither by arbitrary postulation nor by baseless conjecture, but rather by a careful synthesis of the possibilities arrived at by a critical scrutiny of the fundamental conception involved. In the end it is a matter of a synthetic compromise crafted by conceptual analysis. After all, since we, humans, inquiring beings that we are, are ourselves part of the world, those positions alone can ultimately enlist our cognitive confidence which activities have ontological authenticity vis-a-vis the reality in which we function.12 And looming over the entire landscape of philosophy Hartmann saw the large cloud of the apory of philosophizing itself. For, given the pervasive omnipresence of apories in the philosophical domain, can one confidently take the line of providing cogently tenable answers to its questions? (Hartmann 1949, 75) How, given the epistemological problematic of the field, can we reasonably aspire to represent ontologically authentic facts within it? Early in his career, Hartmann was dedicated to Kant and neo-Kantianism. And so from the start he was drawn to the view that aporetic inconsistency (antinomies and paralogisms) pervade the philosophical landscape. Drawing on Kant’s antinomies and paralogisms, Hartmann embarked on a post neo-Kantian critical realism that saw apories as essential to philosophizing. But he rejected with ever-increasing emphasis, that this circumstance refuted the prospect of metaphysics along the traditional lines. Nor did he want to take refuge in the historicist syncretism that became increasingly prominent among German philosophers of the generations preceding and following World War I. His realism led him to insist upon one doctrinal stance toward conflicting metaphysical doctrines – neither a positivistic none nor a syncretistic all being acceptable. 12 On this issue see Hülsmann 1959, 86 – 87.

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On the one hand are the epistemic apories such as those of cognitive (Hartmann 1949, 62 – 63), of that of criteriology (Hartmann 1949, 67 – 68), and those of problematics (Hartmann 1949, 70 – 72). In each case there is a triadic inconsistency as per the following illustration: • There are instances of knowing. • All of these are enmeshed in subjectivity: whatever is known is known by someone in a certain manner. • Subjectivity cannot characterize knowledge: only what is truly and objectively the case is something that can be known. But in confronting such aporetical inconsistencies, Hartmann exhibited an unflinching confidence by inquiring reason. He has an unqualified assurance that reason has the capacity to work its way through the conceptual image of distinctions, qualifications, and deliberations needed to resolve the apories of philosophy. It is (or should be) clear that the aporetic exposition of alternative philosophical positions does not and cannot of itself constitute a philosophical position or afford an answer to a philosophical question. There is no lesson we can draw for the appropriate content of our own substantive position from the fact that different positions are available to others who see the issues differently. And we must, in particular, avoid any temptation to project aporetic pluralism into a ground-level, substantive doctrine about the nature of reality – a support for a doctrine of many-faceted reality. The individual philosopher must do the best he can to elaborate and substantiate his solution to a philosophical issue, i. e., to work out his own position and defend it against all comers. And one must do so even though, when one “steps back” and detaches himself from one’s commitments through a provisional suspension belief, one must recognize that one’s own position is merely one alternative among others (a very privileged alternative, to be sure, in being – as he himself sees it – the correct one). And this situation means that philosophical work is not a matter of scholarship, of mastering a particular body of objectively validated doctrines, but of philosophizing, of discerning how to navigate one’s way among the rocks and reefs of rival possibilities. As Kant rightly emphasized, philosophy is, in the final analysis, not a matter of learning but of thinking. And here the work of the individual philosopher is not one of conjecture but one of choice – albeit reasoned choice. The task is to identify and substantiate that specific position for which the strongest possible case can be devised in the cognitive circumstances at hand. Philosophiz-

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ing is predicated on a commitment to reason – to rationality, discussion, disputation. It urges a willingness to listen, to commune, to respond, to learn, to keep open lines of communication, to see the doctrines of others as serious though wrong-headed attempts to deal with the issues in ways worthwhile taking account of and responding to. It is, in sum, a matter of procedure rather than substance – of the way in which one builds one’s case and marshals the complex evidential indications. Philosophers accordingly have a great stake in rationality. Their concern is not only for answers but for defensible answers to philosophical problems. And this line of thought yields an immediate reply to the question of why I should be what you call reasonable and rational. For only in this way can I commune (discuss, debate, deliberate) with you. The commitment to rationality is the salient precondition for managing a cogent discussion and a constructive course of interpersonal deliberation. And so Hartmann, embarked on in a Kant-reminiscent regulative presupposition that makes possible the conduct of philosophy. His position is then that of a firm confidence that philosophical analysis – or what he calls projective concept formation (Hartmann 1949, 267) – will in the end resolve and reconcile these aporetical inconsistencies in a unified rational resolution. Hartmann’s stance is accordingly one of a cognitivistic optimism that converges all skeptical pessimism to a foreordained futility. There is then much in Hartmann’s position that is reminiscent of the shape of another Kant-inspired theoretician, C. S. Peirce, who saw it as a paramount injunction of philosophizing never to bar the path of inquiry. Granted, in the substantive, factual, “constitutive” mode of cognitive development, our efforts at philosophical systematization can never be instantiated. With Kant, we can never stake claims of the form “philosophy demonstrates that – – –.” Philosophy is never a fait accompli. All we can do is to philosophize. But in our cultivation of the enterprise there always stands before us the vision and aspiration (the “regulative ideal”) of a system in which all aporetical inconsistency has been resolved. As the engineer can never create a perfect engine from which all has been extruded, so the philosopher cannot devise a perfected and problem-free system. Neither in philosophy nor in engineering can we create a frictionless perpetuum mobile.13 Accordingly, Hartmann’s aporetics was a quest for the best achievable recourse in the light of available information – from science, history, cultural studies and all available source of positive information. 13 Compare the discussion in Hülsmann 1959, 91.

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It is to his great credit that in an era of dogmatic simplicities and vicious syncretism he both insisted in pursuing the truth in philosophy by rational means and in his own work exemplified how this process can be conducted.

3.8 Postscript The problem with Hartmann is (to be quite blunt about it) that he thinks and writes at a very high level of abstraction. The fine-grained detail needed to make those abstractions clear and cogent in often “left as an exercise to the reader,” and those not so well informed as Hartmann himself may well be unable to connect the dots in a way that the resulting picture becomes meaningful and convincing. In specific, the aporetics he has in view is never explained by him in the detailed way that would render really convincing the dialectical process – at once historical and systematic – through which, in Hartmann’s view, the philosophical work of wider culture achieves its structure and coherence. He is not the first – and surely not the last – thinker whose oeuvre (large though it may be) fails to deliver the substantiation of a grand vision in persuasive detail. The students and expositors of his philosophy accordingly have their work cut out for them. And in the end this is not really such a bad thing.

3.9 References Dilthey, Wilhelm 1931, Gesammelte Schriften, Vol. VIII, Abhandlungen zur Philosophie der Philosophie, Leipzig, Berlin: B. G. Teubner. Frischeisen-Koehler, Max 1907, “Die historische Anarchie der philosophischen Systeme und das Problem der Philosophie als Wissenschaft,” in: Zeitschrift fr Philosophie und philosophische Kritik 131, 66 – 136. Gomperz, Heinrich 1905, Weltanschauungslehre, Jena: Diederichs. Hartmann, Nicolai 1958, “Zur Methode der Phiosophiegeschichte,” in: Kleinere Schriften, Berlin: De Gruyter. Hartmann, Nicolai 1949, Grundzge einer Metaphysik der Erkenntnis, Berlin: De Gruyter (1st ed. 1921). Hülsmann, Heinz 1959, Die Methode in der Philosophie Nicolai Hartmanns, Düsseldorf: L. Schwann. James, William 1897, “The Sentiment of Rationality,” in: The Will to Believe and Other Essays in Popular Philosophy, New York: Longmans, Green, and Co.

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Janoska, Georg 1982, “On Systematology,” in: Metaphilosophy 13(3 – 4), 249 – 262. Kröner, Franz 1929, Die Anarchie der Philosophischen Systeme, Leipzig: Meiner. Pepper, Stephen 1942, World Hypotheses: A Study in Evidence. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press. Rescher, Nicholas 2001, Philosophical Reasoning, Oxford: Blackwell. Rescher, Nicholas 2009, Aporetics, Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press. Rogge, Eberhard 1950, Axiomatik alles mçglichen Philosophierens, Meisenheim/ Glan: Westkulturverl. Rothacker, Erich 1936, Logik und Systematik der Geisteswissenschaften, Munich: R. Oldenbourg. Williamson, Mark 1983, “Stephen Pepper’s World Hypotheses and Metaphilosophical Evaluation,” in: Transactions of the Charles S. Peirce Society 19, 255 – 271.

Chapter 4: Nicolai Hartmann: A Crucial Figure in German Philosophical Anthropology – Without Belonging to the Paradigm Joachim Fischer 4.1 Introduction The purpose of this paper is to demonstrate the crucial role of Nicolai Hartmann in German philosophy especially with respect to German Philosophical Anthropology. I will develop the proposal in three stages by: (1) outlining the modern tradition of German Philosophical Anthropology as developed by Max Scheler, Helmuth Plessner, and Arnold Gehlen; (2) introducing Nicolai Hartmann as a third figure or party, both within, and subsequent to, that of the Cologne Circle (the nexus of Max Scheler, Helmuth Plessner, and their contemporaries); (3) demonstrating the key role Hartmann’s concepts played, and analyzing how he supported the construction of the Philosophical-Anthropological paradigm without himself belonging to it. Though already famous since the midst of the twentieth century (Habermas 1958; Pappé 1967), this paradigm, and its originators – after a long period of marginalization since the eighties – have been re-discovered over the last ten years in German philosophy and especially in the social sciences (Fischer 2008; Rehberg 2009; Borsari 2009). The surprising discovery, brought to light in the study of Philosophical Anthropology, is that Hartmann has left a great legacy for contemporary philosophy: the connection with modern Philosophical Anthropology reveals Hartmann’s work in a new light; and Hartmann’s New Ontology and the German Philosophical Anthropologists can be seen as being of mutual benefit to each other, and their synthesis seems to be of great relevance to modern philosophy – a perspective which is outlined in the paper.

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4.2 German philosophical anthropology Let us first consider the beginnings of philosophical anthropology and its foundational texts: works bearing the title ‘philosophical anthropology’ published from the 1920s onward. The historically significant texts are usually considered to be Max Scheler’s Die Stellung des Menschen im Kosmos (1928), Helmuth Plessner’s Die Stufen des Organischen und der Mensch (1928) and, later, Arnold Gehlen’s Der Mensch: Seine Natur und seine Stellung in der Welt (1940). At first sight this corpus defines the phenomenon of German philosophical anthropology. But it is important at the outset to make a distinction between two senses of the expression ‘philosophical anthropology’. The distinction lies in the difference between philosophical anthropology as a discipline and as a paradigm (Fischer 2009, 14, 483). There is a philosophical-anthropological discipline, a sub-discipline of philosophy, which emerged in the 1920s, but there is also a theory identifiable in certain texts of Scheler, Plessner, and Gehlen, which we call ‘the paradigm of Philosophical Anthropology’. The distinction is not easy to see because both (the discipline and the theory), if they exist at all, arose during the same period. They are nevertheless different. I refer to the discipline by the uncapitalized expression ‘philosophical anthropology’ and to the paradigm by the capitalized expression ‘Philosophical Anthropology’. The Philosophical anthropology (uncapitalized) came to prominence at the end of the 1920s because at that time anthropological topics moved out of the realm of those disciplines where it had historically been at home, and into the centre stage of the philosophical world. The new discipline first appeared in Bernhard Groethuysen’s Philosophische Anthropologie (1931 (1928)). Groethuysen, who had been a student of Dilthey, was the first to attempt to construct a history of different ideas about man and mankind in the European philosophical tradition. The Philosophical anthropology became a new discipline within philosophy, alongside the established sub-disciplines of epistemology, ethics, metaphysics, aesthetics, and (later) philosophy of language. As different directions of thought and theories met, the established canon of the works of Scheler, Plessner, and Gehlen expanded to include the existential philosophy of Heidegger, Jaspers, and (later) Sartre and Hannah Arendt, the cultural philosophy of Cassirer, the phenomenology of body of Merleau-Ponty, and the pragmatism of Dewey and Mead. For such a discipline ‘philosophical anthropology’ (Landmann 1979; Thies 2004; Hartung 2008) it is necessary to read classics from the per-

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spective of philosophical anthropology, so that a history of this discipline can be built through reconstruction of anthropological reflection within the works of Aristotle to Feuerbach. Becoming autonomous as a subdiscipline, philosophical anthropology proved to be very fruitful in its own right, because it seemed to make possible the establishment of the foundations of philosophy, of the humanities, and of the social sciences. Cassirer’s anthropological philosophy of symbolic forms is an example. From the discipline of philosophical anthropology, which has its own evolving philosophical life, one has to distinguish a particular approach, or theory, which goes by the same name: Philosophical Anthropology as a paradigm. And in this context Hartmann plays an important role. Only with this distinction, between philosophical anthropology as discipline and Philosophical Anthropology as an approach, is one able to categorize the approach now as one among many, as a contender among rival paradigms. The question then is: is there within the relevant writings of (late) Scheler, Plessner, and Gehlen an identifiable theory, distinguishable from other twentieth century approaches? The ideas of Hartmann can help us identify such an approach because he got involved in the emergence of the paradigm and in its continuation in difficult times. If we can delineate Philosophical Anthropology clearly and distinctly as a paradigm, we can then distinguish it from Neo-Kantianism, phenomenology, the paradigms of naturalism and evolutionary theory, philosophy of existence, analytical philosophy, philosophical hermeneutics, structuralism, post-structuralism, critical theory, systems theory, and other paradigms of the twentieth century.

4.3 The Cologne circle (the Scheler-Plessner nexus) and Nicolai Hartmann It is useful to consider the development of the Cologne Circle in the 1920s, because there we find both the conditions which led to the breakthrough of Philosophical Anthropology as a paradigm and the reasons why this paradigm did not enter into the academic world as successfully as other paradigms of the twentieth century – reasons which have led to the necessity of reconstructing it afterward. When we mention the Cologne Circle, the first thing that springs to mind – in our context – is Hartmann in Cologne in 1925. The Cologne Circle is,

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we would claim, as important to Philosophical Anthropology as the Frankfurt Circle is to critical theory or the Vienna Circle to analytical philosophy – and all these paradigms emerged simultaneously in the philosophically fruitful days of the 1920s in central Europe. We may date the formation of the Circle from 1919 – seven years before the breakthrough of Philosophical Anthropology – when Scheler, recently established as a full professor of philosophy and sociology at the new University of Cologne invited the young Helmuth Plessner to join his faculty (on this and the history of the Cologne Circle, see Fischer 2008, 23 ff.). Scheler was attracted to Plessner because the latter was trained both as a biologist and also acquainted, by dissertation, with the worlds of Neo-Kantianism and phenomenology. Each philosopher discovered in their mutual partnership a further avenue for the development of their work in a kind of “rescue project”: a rescue of the central claims of Idealism (Kant and Fichte) after those claims had been radically challenged by the “naturalist turn” in the nineteenth century. The scientific turn, through the channel of Darwinism, offers an analysis of man as a mere product of evolutionary nature, with all its distinctive characteristics (the idealistic topics like reason, language, religion, etc) reducible to natural adaptations. Within the triangle of biology, sociology, and philosophy, both Plessner and Scheler were searching for a concept of man that would place him in nature without neglecting his special place in nature, his Sonderstellung. They both wished to reconstruct a defense of the existence of man’s idealistic qualities, but from a philosophical foundation within nature itself – in order to mount a defense against reductionism. In 1924 in his Soziologie des Wissens (Scheler 1924, 7) Scheler announced such a project under the title “Philosophical Anthropology,” and in the same year Plessner in his Limits of Community (1999 (1924), 43) announced his project of a work entitled Pflanze, Tier, Mensch – Elemente einer Kosmologie der lebendigen Form. A year earlier, Plessner had published his first substantial work Die Einheit der Sinne, in which he studied the connections between the senses and the intellect. As we know from letters by Plessner to his philosopher friend Josef König, there was much inspiring dialogue between the Professor Scheler and the Privatdozent Plessner in those early days of the Cologne Circle. This direct communication was supplemented by indirect communication through third parties with whom they both were acquainted – especially Frederic Buytendijk, a Dutch zoologist and psychologist, who was invited by Scheler to Cologne and in collaboration with whom

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Plessner wrote an article. Scheler and Plessner organized a network of scholars of different disciplines to discuss their theoretical ideas and to find philosophical links between different specialized scientists and their areas of research. Two philosophers belonged to this network: Martin Heidegger in Marburg, whom Plessner not only invited to contribute to his new founded Philosophischer Anzeiger, but whom Scheler also invited twice to Cologne during the 1920s to give lectures. Heidegger, with his new approach combining the traditions of Kierkegaard and Dilthey – which was then identified as ‘existential philosophy’ – was taken on by them as a challenge, but between Heidegger and Hartmann, the latter was the one to hold key resources for their project. Thus, Hartmann was a key figure in the Scheler-Plessner network. He joined them as a philosopher at the Cologne University and became important not only to Scheler but also to Plessner with his new ontology of the stratification of being in inorganic matter, organic nature, the mental and the spiritual dimensions. This doctrine attempted to sidestep both Darwinian naturalist reductionism and the over-ambitious claims of Idealism. Hartmann soon became the third voice in the chorus, and in the long run probably the most important figure in the development of Philosophical Anthropology. But how did Hartmann come to play so vital a role? Plessner became acquainted with him in 1923 on the same day that he met Heidegger at Marburg, when he – Plessner – was visiting a range of German philosophers in order to select a scientific board for his already mentioned new journal Philosophischer Anzeiger (Plessner 1925/26 – 1930). Though Plessner was impressed by Heidegger, he was the more taken by Hartmann, who seemed to him to be a real philosopher, concerned with Sachfragen like an ancient philosopher.1 Plessner shared his impression with Scheler, and Scheler welcomed Hartmann being appointed to 1

The first deep impression Plessner had of Hartman is worth citing (translation by Frederic Tremblay): “I had a formidable impression of Hartmann. The calm of this man, his absorption and his absolute sincerity completely pulled me under his spell. He lives is a lonely, modest little house leaned on a slope, and from a small window in his study we can have a view of the castle. The room is rather sparsely furnished, contains only a few books and is almost completely filled by an enormous white telescope. […] My feeling was that we understood each other perfectly. The whole evening I had the feeling, which has remained unweakened even today, that an ancient philosopher, perhaps also an Hegelian Geist, was sitting in front of me.” Plessner an Josef König 11. November 1924, in: König / Plessner 1994, 58.

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the second chair of Philosophy at Cologne in 1925. Scheler was impressed by Hartmann, too. He was especially impressed by Hartmann’s Ethics (1926), in which Hartmann treated the realm of values, a program that Max Scheler had designed in open campaign against Kantian formalism in ethics (Formalismus und materiale Wertethik 1916), but whose serious realization was achieved in Hartmann’s book. As is clear from Plessner’s correspondence with König, he really expected the presence of Hartmann in Cologne to help advance his own philosophical work – an expectation that turned out to be fulfilled. The years 1925 to 1927 were an intensive phase of discussion in Cologne. It was also the formative epoch of Philosophical Anthropology, developed as much by Scheler as by Plessner. Hartmann published his first paper on his New Ontology in Plessner’s newly founded journal Philosophischer Anzeiger in 1926 under the title “Kategoriale Gesetze. Ein Kapitel zur Grundlegung der allgemeinen Kategorienlehre” (Hartmann 1925/26). And one has to keep in mind that Hartmann designed his Philosophie der Natur, published much later in 1950, already in 1927 at Cologne, at the center of a circle in which Scheler and Plessner were deeply concerned with the design of a philosophical biology which could serve them as a takeoff board for the intended Philosophical Anthropology. Hartmann had an effect on both thinkers, perhaps even more on the younger Plessner. He was a medium, a catalyst of the idea of Philosophical Anthropology, not himself belonging to the project, but observing with satisfaction the relevance and the use of his thought in its growth. Many circumstances surrounding Scheler and Plessner at that time in Cologne supported and accelerated their ideas and gave birth to Philosophical Anthropology. These circumstances included both the affinity and the rivalry of the two philosophers, an issue which has recently given rise to new research developments (Fischer 2008, 61 f.). To begin with, there was the professional rivalry known in all universities between the full professor, already acknowledged in his field, and the younger not-yet-established privatdozent. Complicating matters further, there was an official internal evaluation of Plessner by Scheler for university purposes. In this evaluation Scheler accorded Plessner great respect in relation to his double qualification (in biology and philosophy), his great intelligence, his grasp of diverse perspectives of thinking, and his immense flexibility and versatility in developing ideas. But he was in doubt concerning what he called ‘genuine originality’. Plessner happened to see this document by chance. Thus, there developed at Cologne a double rivalry. Scheler, who at that time was strongly moved

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to present his systematic philosophy formally and definitively, felt challenged by the younger and gifted Plessner; and Plessner felt challenged by the professional evaluation of Scheler, who did not respect him as an original thinker. In 1927 and 1928 appeared the two texts of Scheler and Plessner marking a conceptual breakthrough in what has since been identified as a modern Philosophical Anthropology. The two texts, Die Stellung des Menschen im Kosmos and Die Stufen des Organischen und der Mensch, were presented to an audience or in private circulation in 1927 and became accessible as written versions to the public in 1928. As is well known, Scheler mounts his reconstruction of the human being on a philosophical reconstruction of life as a whole, analyzing levels of the organic to find an adequate analysis for man in this natural background. He characterizes the phenomenon of life (for example, that of plants) as that which seeks to go beyond its boundary, and which has an impulse to respond to its environment (“Umwelt”). He then looks at various stages of the organic in order to come to a view, under this analysis, of the phenomenon of animal life (life regulated by instincts, by associative memory, and by practical intelligence). After he has achieved a sound analysis of the mental dimension of life (already describing the primates, especially the chimpanzees), he introduces the principle of spirit over and above the principle of life in general: the spirit emerges as a turn in the phenomenon of life (the principle of negation or alternatives: Neinsagenkçnnen). The spirit depends, in his view, on the organic. It needs the organic to function. Its basis is in that lower level. So the position of the human being in the cosmos he calls ‘world-openness’ (Weltoffenheit): it relates to the environment by the impulses of life (shared by all living things), but it is opened through the environment to the world by the spirit (Scheler 1961 (1928)). Similarly, in his Stufen des Organischen und der Mensch, finally completed in 1927 and published at the beginning of 1928, Plessner developed his Philosophical Anthropology within his philosophical biology. His reconstruction begins there also with the distinction between the inorganic and the organic, the latter defined by its boundary with respect to the environment, a phenomenon he calls “positionality” in nature. He then looks at stages or levels of “positionality,” especially between the levels leading from plants to animals, and reaches the area of mental phenomena where he uses the term “centric positionality;” a positionality he ascribes to some animals including the subhuman primates. For the human being Plessner coined the term “excentric posi-

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tionality.” This is meant to denote that man is a living being capable of detachment from his own life within his centric positionality and therefore needs to regulate his life in the mode of “natural artificiality” (natrliche Knstlichkeit), of “meditated immediation” (vermittelte Unmittelbarkeit); he is a phenomenon in the cosmos, which lives in a “utopian standpoint” (utopischer Standort) in the place of his natural body (Plessner 1975 (1928)). These two texts were a breakthrough in setting up Philosophical Anthropology as a new paradigm, and, with it, the opportunity of establishing a new school of thought. But the rivalry between the two philosophers prevented the two philosophers to work on the establishment of the paradigm together. At the end of 1927, Scheler was very much affected by the publication of Plessner’s great work. He was hurt – as we know from his letters to Märrit Furtwängler and from Plessner’s letters to Josef König (König/Plessner 1994). Although the noble Hartmann, who was respected by both, attempted to reconcile them at Cologne, no reconciliation was possible. Scheler was hurt and tried to damage Plessner’s career by attacking him from within the academic world in two ways: he accused Plessner of plagiarism before the academic world, suggesting this to many colleagues and publishers in 1927/ 1928, and announced a great work of his own on Philosophical Anthropology, which was about to be published. Already appointed at Frankfurt, in the spring of 1928, Scheler died. Hartmann gave the funeral oration for Scheler at Frankfurt in 1928 (Hartmann 1958). The rumor of plagiarism stuck to Plessner and hindered his academic career as a representative of the new Philosophical Anthropology in Germany up to 1933. The rumor of the ready-to-publish book on Philosophical Anthropology by Scheler was kept current by the Scheler community for almost sixty years up to 1987, two years after Plessner’s death, when it was revealed that there were only fragments and no completed work (Scheler 1987). The rumor of Scheler’s text and its unpublished status hindered his effect on modern philosophy. Both rumors, the plagiarism and the unpublished work, belong to the tales of the Cologne. The rumors threw great shadows over the development of this paradigm throughout the twentieth century, and they were the reasons why the paradigm did not emerge institutionally and as common school of thought as did other paradigms in the twentieth century. But in spite of all obstacles the paradigm survived and had a considerable effect upon German philosophy, sociology and psychology up to the 1970s. Hartmann comes into play again in this later life of the para-

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digm. He not only played an important part in the formative phase of the paradigm in Cologne in the 1920s, but also in its survival phase.2 Though he mediated between Scheler and Plessner, he could not solve the conflict. He was able to protect Plessner in some ways against the fury of Scheler by opening for him opportunities in the academic scene. In turn, Plessner wrote a subtle review of Hartmann’s new book Das Problem des geistigen Seins (1933), a book in which Hartmann presents his philosophy of culture, society and history, and the development of which Plessner had observed and supported as a member of Hartmann’s discussion group in Cologne (Plessner 1979 (1933)). Plessner also participated in the great German debate at Halle 1931 about Hartmann’s paper Die Probleme der Realittsgegebenheit. In this debate organized by the Kant-Society, twenty-three German philosophers discussed Hartman’s thesis, which postulated – with reference to Scheler – the “emotional acts” as basis of cognitive contact with reality.3 But even more important than these connections in the twenties was Hartmann’s role in Philosophical Anthropology during the 1930s when the two protagonists were absent: Scheler was dead; Plessner had to leave Germany in 1933 due his father’s Semitic background and went into exile in the Netherlands, where his absence from Germany badly affected his career in the German philosophical world. In 1940 the younger Arnold Gehlen, who had had a successful philosophical career in Nazi Germany without, however, himself being a Nazi philosopher, published his book Man: His Nature and Place in the World (Gehlen 1988). It contained only one short casual remark about Scheler and did not mention the achievement of Plessner’s Stufen des Organischen published ten years earlier, in order to appear more original. It was the sensational review of Hartmann in 1941, now one of the most respected German philosophers in Berlin, that led to the recognition of Gehlen’s work (Hartmann 1941/42). Hartmann defended Geh2 3

The correlations between Hartmann and the thinkers of the Philosophical Anthropology are already mentioned in Fischer 1982; Morgenstern 1997, 166; Harich 2004, 38. Hartmann’s paper, the statements of the other philosophers (among them besides Plessner Moritz Geiger, Arthur Liebert, Heinz Heimsoeth, Theodor Litt, Julius Kraft, Leo Polak, Helmut Kuhn), and Hartmann’s answer are documented in Hartmann 1931. If the relevance of the new ontology and the Philosophical Anthropology in the late twenties in Germany could be restored, one should compare the Halle-debate of 1931 focusing on Hartmann with the Davos-debate 1929 of Cassirer and Heidegger.

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len’s book against the critiques from idealism, which declared Gehlen’s work to be naturalistic, using his own theory of levels of reality to explain the core idea of the work. Gehlen expressed his thanks to Hartmann in a remarkably deep letter, acknowledging his gratitude that Hartmann had brought his authority to bear in order to support his achievement (Rehberg 1993). Without referring to Scheler or to Plessner directly, but merely to the Cologne Circle (as if that were some kind of mandate from Scheler and Plessner), Hartmann took care to continue the undergoing work on Philosophical Anthropology by including Gehlen into the paradigm. With Gehlen’s clarity of writing and with Hartmann’s support, Gehlen’s Der Mensch became the most influential text on Philosophical Anthropology in postwar Germany. Hartmann’s support of the paradigm continued even further. From 1945, Hartmann worked together with Schöffler (an English philologist who was Dean of the University of Göttingen, and a former Cologne colleague and friend of Plessner) to investigate possibilities of Plessner’s return to Germany, in particular to Göttingen with the prospect of becoming the successor to Hartmann’s in his academic chair upon Hartmann’s expected retirement in 1950 (Fischer 2008, 209) Hartmann also coerced Gehlen to mention the forgotten Plessner and his 1928 publication for the first time in the second edition of Der Mensch in 1950. To complete this catalogue of Hartmann’s activities in the nurturing of Philosophical Anthropology,4 one has to mention that after Hartmann’s death in 1950 his student and assistant Hermann Wein, who had become well acquainted with Plessner, and was, in the 1950s, one of the advocates of ‘German Philosophical Anthropology’ (as it had then become known), which he connected with Scheler, Plessner, Gehlen, and Erich Rothacker, and whose roots he traced back to the Cologne Circle of the 1920s – including Hartmann (Wein 1957).5 Both Plessner and Gehlen were also invited by the editors to 4

5

There is a subplot concerning Hartmann and Gehlen that was arranged by the young Marxist Wolfgang Harich, who played an intellectual role in the early years of the former GDR. Harich, who had studied with Hartmann in Berlin, became an admirer of the “bourgeois” thinker Gehlen and his book Man. He was fascinated by both Hartmann and Gehlen and started on this basis a longrunning correspondence with Gehlen. See Rehberg 2000; on Harich as a Hartmann-researcher see Harich 2004. Hartmann 1942, in which he arranged texts of Gehlen, Rothacker, Wein, Bollnow, Heimsoeth and one of himself toward a representation of contemporary German philosophy.

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contribute to the commemorative publication after Hartmann’s death.6 Philosophical Anthropology as a modern paradigm was represented by a lecture of Erich Rothacker at Bonn (near Cologne) in the fifties and by a sensible Lexicon-Article by the young Jürgen Habermas (1958), who has studied with Rothacker.7 Philosophical Anthropology got a remarkable impact in post-war German intellectual and scientific life. This impact was important in philosophy, but even more in German sociology due to the move of the protagonists Plessner and Gehlen from philosophical to sociological chairs. One can for instance follow the influence in the theories of Habermas and Luhmann and their debate in the seventies (Fischer 2006).

4.4 The operation called Philosophical Anthropology, and the importance of Hartmann’s philosophy The rivalry between Scheler and Plessner at Cologne and its dramatic epilogue are signs that both thinkers recognized their affinity – otherwise they would not have competed so hard. Though the accusation of plagiarism was false (because Plessner created original concepts of his own, such as ‘excentric positionality’) they were not mistaken in noting the affinity of their projects and writings. To reveal the affinity of Scheler and Plessner in spite of their obvious rivalry one needs to use the theoretical background supplied by Hartmann, because they both make use of two important theories of Hartmann’s, an epistemological and an ontological one. In a remarkable turn in his own thinking, Hartmann performed at the beginning of the twenties a revolution against the great German tradition of idealism, especially the Neo-Kantian paradigm of the Marburg School Hartmann originally came from. Of course he was supported in this representative turn by Husserl’s phenomenology, but shifted that approach to a realistic position of a philosophy being in contact with scientific experiences. 6 7

About the circumstances that prevented the inclusion of Gehlen’s paper into the commemorative publication see Rehberg 2008. One has to keep in mind that Jürgen Habermas, before joining Horkheimer and Adorno at Frankfurt in the midst of the fifties and becoming a member of the Frankfurt School, had studied at Göttingen with Hartmann and had written his dissertation with Rothacker. This was the basis of his famous article on “Philosophical Anthropology” (1973 (1958)). So, he was – and still is – well informed about the theorems of Philosophical Anthropology (Fischer 2008).

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In his turn against transcendental idealism Hartmann developed ideas and philosophical tools that stimulated both Scheler and Plessner in their own work toward a new Philosophical Anthropology. Hartmann’s epistemological theory stems from his Metaphysik der Erkenntnis (1921), the ontological one from the aforemetioned “Kategoriale Gesetze” (1925). Both Scheler and Plessner shared with Hartmann the desire to escape Neo-Kantianism – to leave the inner circle of consciousness and self-reflection as a theoretical basis for philosophy. Respecting the immanence of consciousness, from the standpoint of his realist epistemology Hartmann revealed to them that the epistemological relation between subject and object is also a real correlation within the world. The relation between the perceiving and knowing subject and the perceived and known object can be observed from nowhere. With respect to cognition the world is an object, but cognition between subject and object itself is a being sui generis. Plessner sumarizes that for “Hartmann […]the subject-object relation is capable of being observed sideways” (Plessner 1979 (1933)). This fundamental theory allowed both Scheler and Plessner to begin their philosophico-anthropological project not with the rational modes of our thinking (with the self-reflecting consciousness of man), but rather with the analysis of living beings in their relationships to the world, in the world, in order to achieve, step by step, an analysis of the human being and its cognition through the roundabout way of a natural fact. And it is this structure upon which Scheler and Plessner first focused in the development of their Philosophical Anthropology. This was Hartmann’s innovation, this view from the cosmos to the position of man as a living and thinking thing within the cosmos: Hartmann’s “astronomical” view from afar to the living being. The story of Hartmann’s telescope in his studio is well known,8 and was detailed by Plessner after his first visit to Marburg (König/Plessner 1994, 58). It was a fundamental belief of Scheler and Plessner, as well as of Hartmann, that philosophy “comes after” science: that it requires contact with sciences such as biology, psychology, sociology, the cultural sciences, but that only philosophy can develop categories to link the specialized (and therefore separate) disciplines, or to connect the different strata the different disciplines refer to (a task that the disciplines cannot develop on their own due to their specialization). Therefore, Scheler and Plessner named their 8

See footnote 1.

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project ‘Philosophical Anthropology,’ by which they meant a philosophical operation or technique.9 The other Hartmannian theory, the new ontology, was deeply connected with his epistemology. If the epistemic relation between knower and known is really an ontic relation given between one being and another, then epistemology is based on ontology and not the other way round. This aspect of Hartmann’s theories, the ontological theory of levels of reality, plays an important and strategic role in Scheler’s and Plessner’s approach to Philosophical Anthropology. In order to arrive at man’s special position in nature (his Sonderstellung) they use Hartmann’s theory of emergence of levels, a non-teleological emergence of levels with categorial nova, which Hartmann developed in the aforementioned paper of 1925 as a first sketch, an anticipation of his later Der Aufbau der realen Welt. He described reality as a multitude of strata of being, especially the inorganic nature, the organic nature, consciousness and superindividual culture (Geist). The strata are not reducible to each other; each has its own categorial features or laws. But there is a certain hierarchy of the strata, in which one stratum depends on the existence of another, but has in turn a relative independence from the other categories. This relative independence is what differentiates the higher levels from the lower ones that nevertheless preserve their basic strength. Hartmann’s theory of the stratification of being of the specific order of strata, and of the interrelation of strata, allow Scheler and Plessner to respond to the challenge of Darwinism within their project without relinquishing the claims of Idealism (the autonomy of the ‘I’), and without working on a reductionist model either. Scheler and Plessner are not directly interested in an ontology that might clarify what exists and what does not, or that might clarify the relation between the possible and the actual, but are both basically interested (and this is where they differ from Hartmann) in an anthropology arrived at by means of the ontology of the inorganic and organic thing, because they understand man to be the most ontologically complex being and because they take man as the decisive being, the key being, from which the ontology of beings in general can be analyzed. Analysis which uses the concept of the emergence of strata with categorial nova must identify important distinctions 9

The subtitle of the aforementioned philosophical journal Philosophischer Anzeiger, which Plessner originally would have liked to call Zeitschrift fr philosophische Forschung, was Journal for the Cooperation of Philosophy with the Sciences (Plessner 1925/26 – 1930) – a programmatic title that suits Hartmann’s endeavors.

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in order to avoid reductionism. The first distinction is between lifeless matter and living organic nature, the second is that between different kinds of living things (especially between plants and animals), and the third cuts between apes (especially between the great apes and man). The higher stratum always rests upon, and is conditioned by, the lower stratum, but the higher stratum has its own mode of being and its own set of laws. We can now see the affinity of Scheler’s and Plessner’s approaches through Hartmann’s eyes. One could say that both Scheler and Plessner, in their separate endeavors, planned the founding of a new discipline under the title ‘philosophical anthropology,’ but, in the parallel manner in which they constructed their concepts, they actually constructed the new paradigm of Philosophical Anthropology. It is not so important that the same topic of man was in common between them (the question of philosophical anthropology as a discipline). What is really striking is that through all the different concepts they used, all the different themes they treated, the different ductus, and perhaps the different conclusions they reached, they developed in their parallel actions an affine procedure to deal with the question of man – an affine operation, which should be called “Philosophical Anthropology.” Characteristic of both thinkers is the combination of philosophical biology and philosophical anthropology, or rather, the construction of Philosophical Anthropology by means of a philosophical biology. They both worked in philosophical biology as a regional ontology in order to grasp the categorial features of life, of living things.10 The starting point of the approach is therefore, for both, not the pole of the thinking “I,” the subject-pole, but rather the object-pole of the living thing, the material creature. They each approach “from below,” from nature, moving through the stages of organic life, in order to reach an understanding, in a non-reductionist manner, of the monopolies (or unique characteristics) of man, and his special position in nature. One can see this in Scheler’s construction of man with reference to the stages of the biophysical emergence of living beings and their complex forms. Geist, or spirit, as a categorial novum rests upon the next 10 For the importance of philosophical biology for a construction of Philosophical Anthropology in order to compete with the naturalistic approach of evolutionism or Darwinism see the work of Marjorie Greene, who introduced these continental thinkers (especially Plessner) into the American philosophy of nature (Greene 1965; 1974).

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lower stratum (practical intelligence) and on all other levels (associative behavior or memory, instinctual behavior, vital impulse or drive), but Geist as Geist has its own principles, especially the operation of “negation.” One can see Hartmann’s influence even more clearly in Plessner’s crucial term ‘excentric positionality,’ which is his key concept in the analysis of the human being. One can claim that the concept ‘excentric positionality’ is derived from Hartmann’s ideas without being coined by him. It includes the strata of the inorganic, different organic strata (including the soul and consciousness), and then the turning point in the term ‘excentricity’. Thus, the one complex term ‘excentric positionality’ involves the relations of both foundation and construction, of basic levels and that which is built upon them. Hartman himself (who otherwise used references to other authors sparingly) made explicitly use of Plessner’s terms of philosophical biology and Philosophical Anthropology in the foundation of Geistiges Sein as well as in the latter Philosophie der Natur. 11 Comparing the operation called Philosophical Anthropology with naturalism, with naturalistic approaches such as Darwinism, one can claim that whereas those naturalistic theories belong to a theory-type of vertical reductionism (reducing all human monopolies to products of the body or the genes), Philosophical Anthropology belongs to the theory-type of vertical emergence; that the special place of human beings is explained from within nature, not from beyond it, but in terms that allow us to preserve the uniqueness of this being (his Sonderstellung). Of course Scheler and Plessner developed different terms to express the special place of man in the cosmos, but there is more affinity between their key terms than seems to be the case at first glance. Scheler uses two common terms, ‘urge’ and ‘spirit’ (Drang und Geist), to characterize the human condition, but these two principles are mutually entangled in man so that there is no dualism postulated. Plessner invented one new expression for the human condition, ‘excentric positionality,’ but this expression is constructed from a combination of two ideas: the principle of positionality, or life, and the principle of excentricity, or spirit. The characteristic approach of all relevant authors working within the paradigm of Philosophical Anthropology begins with the view of the creature-in-its-environment, and moves on to achieve, via the categories of the living things (plants, animals), an analysis of mind – without postulating a teleology of life which aims at the creation of mind (as 11 Hartmann 1933, 95 and Hartmann 1950, 525.

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does German Idealism) and without reducing the phenomena of the mind to part and place within an evolutionary continuity of life (as does the evolutionary-biological paradigm of Darwinism). By this operation they can develop special philosophico-anthropological terms for the human sphere, especially for culture and society – terms that keep contact with the body of man. The key term of Philosophical Anthropology for that was “institution” which was coined by Gehlen (1950, 2nd edition). Institution as a category for the strata of superindividual culture is related to the lack of instincts in the human being, it works as a new spiritual stabilization of the living being instead of instincts – but it has to be incorporated in the vital and material body (by imitation, habitus, etc.) in order to work. Gehlen’s concept of institution was probably influenced by Hartmann’s non-Hegelian, nontheological, and non-teleological theory of the objective spirit (Das Problem des geistiges Seins 1933). Hartmann was already thinking about superindividual powers like rituals, languages, legal systems, by which the individual life (subjective spirit) is stabilized in its fragile nature and enabled to conduct oneself. Plessner on the other hand focused on his famous contribution Laughter and Crying (1970 (1941)) the limits of institutions for human conduct: both bodily reactions are specifically human, only possible for excentric positioned living beings who get by the sudden break off of the order of institutions or by its unbalanced entanglements into impossible situations, into crises which are coped by natural procedures, by crying or laughter.

4.5 Final remarks The history of Philosophical Anthropology is a drama the principal actor of which is Hartmann. Its importance becomes apparent when we compare the paradigm with the other approaches of German-language philosophy simultaneously emerging in the twentieth century, complete with their successful circles of originators: the Marburg Circle (Heidegger and Bultmann) with its existential philosophy (productively developed as an approach, despite differences between Heidegger and Jaspers (Olson 1994), through, for example, Hannah Arendt); the Frankfurt Circle of Critical Theory (Horkheimer, Adorno, Marcuse, Benjamin etc.) (Wiggershaus 1994); and the Vienna Circle with Carnap, Neurath, and Wittgenstein (Kraft 1953), who developed Logical Positivism and Analytical Philosophy, which then continued its life in

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American exile. One could perhaps claim that the 1920s Cologne Circle, out of which emerged Philosophical Anthropology, was one of the most productive philosophical circles of that era, bearing in mind that besides the ambitious young Plessner, belonged to it two other philosophers, Scheler and Hartmann, both of acknowledged great philosophical powers. Further research is needed to bring to light the extraordinary energy at work in the Cologne Circle and to justify the ranking of its achievements in paradigm-formation with those of the Marburg or Frankfurt or Vienna Circles. Such research could also identify the uniqueness of the authors herein discussed. The diagnostic strength of Philosophical Anthropology has not yet been demonstrated here: a thoroughgoing critique has not yet been performed. We only hope to have shown that Philosophical Anthropology is a theoretical program, a paradigm among other paradigms in the twentieth century – and that Hartmann plays a significant role in the development of this theoretical program. But this is a considerable result, because each of the authors we claim were involved in this theoretical program (Scheler, Plessner, Gehlen – and in a special way: Hartmann) were important figures in German philosophical history in the twentieth century. Perhaps Philosophical Anthropology will remain an important resource in the ongoing arguments between evolutionism and culturalism, between Darwinism and Foucaultism (Fischer 2011).12 Let us return to the relationship between Hartmann and Philosophical Anthropology. Hartmann was recognized as a great and serious philosopher during his lifetime, but is today almost forgotten. In some ways Hartmann and Philosophical Anthropology share this same destiny. But perhaps the relationship (here proposed) between them can change that. Hartmann’s ideas provide the medium in which the core identity of Philosophical Anthropology is formed: in his concepts of levels of reality, or levels of complexity, and in his realist epistemology, one can identify the operation called Philosophical Anthropology made by other authors (in rivalry). Hartmann has thus left a legacy within this paradigm. And this legacy is also an explanation of why he himself did not write a book on man’s place in the world.13 Our answer is 12 For another new reception of Philosophical Anthropology see Peterson 2010. Also Krüger 1998 – concentrating on Plessner. 13 Hartmann’s own remarks on topics of philosophical anthropology one can find for instance in “Naturphilosophie und Anthropologie” (1944) and in his wide-

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that he thought that this task had already been accomplished by Scheler, Plessner and Gehlen. We may say that, in a certain way, he delegated the task. One can also look at the relationship the other way round. If one can show the elegance and strength of the paradigm (as understood by Scheler, Plessner and Gehlen) as a paradigm at least as fruitful as evolutionary biology or Darwinism, phenomenology, hermeneutics, analytical philosophy, critical theory or post-structuralism, then one can justly celebrate the work of Nicolai Hartmann, the achievement of his ontology and epistemology. This is not the only way in which Hartmann can be brought back from philosophical oblivion, but it is one way for his insights to be restored and appreciated. There is a deep connection between the New Ontology and the modern Philosophical Anthropology because both share the breakthrough to a reflexive modernity of thought: not to stick to mere modern idealism or transcendental theory, which Kantianism is continued in modern constructionism, and not – the other way round – to surrender to the modern naturalistic turn in the nineteenth century as it was performed, for instance, by Marx, Darwin, Nietzsche and then Freud – but to rescue the truth of idealism or modern constructionism within the truth of naturalism or evolutionary theory. All in all, Nicolai Hartmann is perhaps the most important German philosopher between 1920 and 1950 – the real avant-garde philosopher from the system-philosophy to a systematic philosophy. Hartmann was well respected and honored for the thoroughness and lucidity of his philosophy, keeping “away from philosophical extravaganza” or “from appreciating radically revolutionary questions of either the existential or the new empiricist” (Cerf 1967, 422) or the new Marxist kind. Seen from a cultural point of view his texts starting with Metaphysik der Erkenntnis (1921) to Das Problem des geistigen Seins (1933) and to the Aufbau der realen Welt (1940) share the brightness of the German Neue Sachlichkeit, the most important esthetical and architectonic trend in the midst of the German twenties – different from the philosophy of existence, for instance, given by Heidegger, which stuck to the expressionism of the earlier period. Things went wrong when later Heidegger, Jaspers, the Carnap School and the Horkheimer Circle overshadowed the once radiant brilliance of Nicolai Hartmann on the German Philosophy spread Göttingen lecture Einfhrung in die Philosophie (1949) with the chapter “Die Stellung des Menschen in der Welt” (107 – 120).

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since the twenties. But things went just wrong in Germany – in spite of Hartmann.

4.6 References Borsari, Andrea (2009), “Notes on ‘Philosophical Anthropology’ and Contemporary German Thought,” in: Iris. European Journal of Philosophy and Public Debate 1, 113 – 130. Cerf, Walter (1967), “Nicolai Hartmann,” in: Paul Edwards (ed.), The Encyclopedia of Philosophy, vol. 3, New York / London: Collier-Macmillan, 421 – 426. Fischer, Joachim (2000), “Exzentrische Positionalität. Plessners Grundkategorie der Philosophischen Anthropologie,” in: Deutsche Zeitschrift fr Philosophie 48 (2), 265 – 288. Fischer, Joachim (2008), Philosophische Anthropologie. Eine Denkrichtung des 20. Jahrhunderts, (Studienausgabe 2009), Freiburg / München: Alber. Fischer, Joachim (2009), “Exploring the Core Identity of Philosophical Anthropology through the Works of Max Scheler, Helmuth Plessner, and Arnold Gehlen,” in: Iris. European Journal of Philosophy and Public Debate 1 (1), 153 – 170. Fischer, Joachim (2011), “Philosophical Anthropology between Darwinism and Foucaultism,” in: Jos de Mul (ed.), Artificial Life. Philosophy of Life and the Life Sciences and Helmuth Plessners Philosophical Anthropology. The proceedings of the. IVth International Plessner Conference, ErasmusUniversity, Rotterdam (forthcoming). Fischer, Ralph P. (1982), Um Leib und Leben. Die anthropologische Wende in der deutschen Philosophie der Zwischenkriegszeit (1920 – 1940), Diss. München. Gehlen, Arnold (1988), Man: His Nature and Place in the World. With an introduction by Karl-Siegbert Rehberg, New York: Columbia University Press. Greene, Marjorie (1965), Approaches to a Philosophical Biology, New York / London: Basic Books. Greene, Marjorie (1974), The Understanding of Nature. Essays in the Philosophy of Biolology, Dordrecht; Boston: Reidel Pub. Co. Groethuysen, Bernhard (1931), Philosophische Anthropologie, München: Oldenbourg (1928). Habermas, Jürgen (1973), “Philosophische Anthropologie. (Ein Lexikonartikel),” in Kultur und Kritik. Verstreute Aufstze, Frankfurt a.M.: Suhrkamp, 89 – 111 (1st ed. 1958). Harich, Wolfgang (2004), Nicolai Hartmann. Grçße und Grenzen. Versuch einer marxistischen Selbstverstndigung, ed. by Martin Morgenstern, Würzburg: Königshausen & Neumann. Hartmann, Nicolai (1925 / 1926), “Kategoriale Gesetze, “ in: Philosophischer Anzeiger II, issue edited by Helmuth Plessner, Bonn: Friedrich Cohen, 201 – 266.

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Hartmann, Nicolai (1931), Zum Problem der Realittsgegebenheit (includes Q&A with twenty-three participants), Berlin: Philosophische Vorträge, veröffentlicht von der Kant-Gesellschaft. Hartmann, Nicolai (1933), Das Problem des geistigen Seins. Untersuchungen zur Grundlegung der Geschichtsphilosophie und der Geisteswissenschaften, Berlin: De Gruyter. Hartmann, Nicolai (1935), Zur Grundlegung der Ontologie, Berlin: De Gruyter. Hartmann, Nicolai (1940), Der Aufbau der realen Welt. Grundriss der allgemeinen Kategorienlehre, Berlin: De Gruyter. Hartmann, Nicolai (1941 / 1942), “Neue Anthropologie in Deutschland. Betrachtungen zu Arnold Gehlens Werk ‘Der Mensch’,” in: Bltter fr Deutsche Philosophie 15, 159 – 177 (also in: Kleinere Schriften III, Berlin: de Gruyter, 378 – 392. Hartmann, Nicolai (ed.) (1942), Systematische Philosophie, Stuttgart: Kohlhammer. Hartmann, Nicolai (1943), Neue Wege der Ontologie, in Nicolai Hartmann (ed.), Systematische Philosophie, Stuttgart: Kohlhammer, 199 – 311. Eng. tr. New Ways of Ontology, Chicago: Enry Regnery Co, 1953; reprinted Greenwood Press: Westport, 1975. Hartmann, Nicolai (1949), Grundzge einer Metaphysik der Erkenntnis, BerlinLeipzig, De Gruyter (1st ed. 1921). Hartmann, Nicolai (1949), Ethik, Berlin: De Gruyter (1st ed. 1925) Hartmann, Nicolai (1949), Einfhrung in die Philosophie (revised by the author; approved transcript of the lecture in the summer semester 1949 in Göttingen; no publisher and year). Hartmann, Nicolai (1955), “Naturphilosophie und Anthropologie,” in: Kleinere Schriften III, Berlin: De Gruyter, 214 – 244 (1st ed. 1944). Hartmann, Nicolai (1958), “Max Scheler,” in Kleinere Schriften III, Berlin: De Gruyter, 350 – 356 (1st ed. 1928). Hartmann, Nicolai (1959), Philosophie der Natur. Abriss der speziellen Kategorienlehre, Berlin: De Gruyter. Hartung, Gerald (2008), Philosophische Anthropologie, Stuttgart: Reclam. Heimsoeth, Heinz / Heiß, Robert (eds.) (1952), Nicolai Hartmann. Der Denker und sein Werk, Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht. König, Josef / Plessner, Helmuth (1994), Briefwechsel, ed. by von Hans-Ulrich Lessing (with a paper on Helmuth Plessner’s “Die Einheit der Sinne” von Josef König), Freiburg: Alber. Kraft, Victor (1953), The Vienna Circle: The Origin of Neo-positivism, a Chapter in the History of Recent Philosophy, New York: Greenwood Press. Krüger, Hans Peter (1998), “The Second Nature of Human Beings. An Invitation for John McDowell to discuss Helmuth Plessner’s Philosophical Anthropology,” in: Philosophical Explorations. An International Journal for the Philosophy of Mind and Action 1 (2), 107 – 119 (with a Comment on Hans-Peter Krüger’s paper by John McDowell, 120 – 125). Landmann, Michael (1974), Philosophical Anthropology, Philadelphia: Westminster Press.

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Morgenstern, Martin (1997), Nicolai Hartmann zur Einfhrung, Junius: Hamburg. Olson, Alan M. (ed.) (1994), Heidegger & Jaspers, Philadelphia: Temple University Press. Pappé, H. O. (1967), “Philosophical Anthropology,” in: Paul Edwards (ed.), The Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Vol. 6, New York / London: Collier-Macmillan, 159 – 166. Peterson, Keith R. (2010), “All that we are. Philosophical Anthropology and Ecophilosophy,” in: Cosmos and History. The Journal of Natural and Social Philosophy 6 (1), 1 – 19. Plessner, Helmuth (1999), The Limits of Community. A Critique of Social Radicalism, New York: Humanity Books (1924). Plessner, Helmuth (ed.) (1925 – 26 / 1930), Philosophischer Anzeiger. Zeitschrift fr die Zusammenarbeit von Philosophie und Einzelwissenschaft, Jahrgang 1 – 4, Bonn: Friedrich Cohen. Plessner, Helmuth (1975), Die Stufen des Organischen und der Mensch. Einleitung in die philosophische Anthropologie, Berlin: De Gruyter (1st ed. 1928). Plessner, Helmuth (1979), “Geistiges Sein. Über ein Buch Nicolai Hartmanns, “ in: Zwischen Philosophie und Gesellschaft. Ausgewhlte Abhandlungen und Vortrge, Frankfurt a.M.: Suhrkamp, 67 – 87 (1st ed. 1933). Plessner, Helmuth (1970), Laughing and Crying. A Study of the Limits of Human Behaviour, Evanston: Northwestern University Press. Plessner, Helmuth (1969), “A Newton of a Blade of Grass?” (and Discussion), in: Psychological Issues 6 (2), 135 – 176. Plessner, Helmuth (1987), “On Human Expression,” in: Joseph Kockelmans (ed.), Phenomenological Psychology. The Dutch School, Dordrecht: Nijhoff, 47 – 54 (1964). Rehberg, Karl-Siegbert (1993), “Nachwort des Herausgebers,” in: Arnold Gehlen Gesamtausgabe: Der Mensch. Seine Natur und seine Stellung in der Welt, vol. 3.2, Frankfurt a.M.: Klostermann, 751 – 786. Rehberg, Karl-Siegbert (2000), “Kommunistische und konservative Bejahung der Institutionen. Eine Brief-Freundschaft,” in: Wolfgang Harich zum Gedchtnis. Eine Gedenkschrift in zwei Bänden, ed. by Stefan Dornuf / Reinhard Pitsch, vol. II, München: Müller & Nerding, 438 – 486. Rehberg, Karl-Siegbert (2009), “Philosophical Anthropology from the End of World War I to the 1940 s and in a Current Perspective,” in: Iris. European Journal of Philosophy and Public Debate1 (1), 131 – 152. Rehberg, Karl-Siegbert (2008), “Nicolai Hartmann und Arnold Gehlen. Anmerkungen über eine Zusammenarbeit aus der Distanz,” in: Internationales Jahrbuch fr Philosophische Anthropologie. Bd. 1: Expressivitt und Stil. Helmuth Plessners Sinnes- und Ausdrucksphilosophie, ed. by Bruno Accarino / Matthias Schloßberger, Berlin: Akademie Verlag, 273 – 276. Scheler, Max (1924), “Probleme einer Soziologie des Wissens,” in: Max Scheler (ed.), Versuche zu einer Soziologie des Wissens, München / Leipzig: Duncker & Humblot, 1 – 150. Scheler, Max (1961), Man’s Place in Nature, translated, and with an introduction, by Hans Meyerhoff, New York: Farrar, Straus and Cudahy.

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Scheler, Max (1987), Schriften aus dem Nachlass. Bd. III: Philosophische Anthropologie, ed. by Manfred Frings, Bonn: Bouvier-Verlag. Thies, Christian (2004), Einfhrung in die philosophische Anthropologie, Darmstadt: Wissenschaftl. Buchgesellschaft. Wein, Hermann (1957), “Trends in Philosophical Anthropology and Cultural Anthropology in post-war Germany,” in. Philosophy of Science 24, 46 – 56. Werkmeister, William Henry (1990), Nicolai Hartmann’s New Ontology, Tallahassee: The Florida State University Press. Wiggershaus, Rolf (1994), The Frankfurt School. Its History, Theories and Political Significance, Cambridge, Mass.: Polity Press.

Chapter 5: The Layered Structure of the World in N. Hartmann’s Ontology and a Processual View Jakub Dziadkowiec 5.1 Introduction According to H. Wein (1957, ix), the philosophy of N. Hartmann belongs to the “new metaphysics” movement that emerged between the two World Wars, alongside the work of S. Alexander (1920) and A.N. Whitehead (1926). Hartmann preferred the expression ‘new ontology,’ where ‘ontology’ is understood as a theory of categories (Kategorienlehre). The new ontology is purified of irrational and dogmatic elements, whereas metaphysics is not. For Hartmann, the “old metaphysics” was – using the words of J. Bochen´ski (1957, 215) – “a tissue of questions to which there are no answers.” The new ontology, as developed e. g. in Der Aufbau der realen Welt (1940), was to include the totality of possible experience, and to explore all three areas of being: the moments of being (Seinsmomente), the types of being (Seinsweisen), and the modes of being (Seinsmodi).1 In the next step it leads to the very subjectmatter of Hartmann’s ontology, which is the comprehensive study of the structure of the real world. The following paper deals with just one aspect of this tremendous task, namely with the concept of world stratification. The theory of ontological levels is rather rarely discussed in philosophical literature.2 Our 1 2

Compare: Cicovacki 2001, 162. This opinion is shared by Poli 2001, 281, who claims: “Contemporary theories of the levels of reality suffer from a marked lack of conceptualization. Dealing with this problem requires knowledge of what is at stake: adopting a theory of levels entails modification of the metaphysics implicit in a large part of contemporary science and philosophy.” Nevertheless, Kim 2008, 139, maintains that the problem of levels is widely discussed in the scientific perspective: “In fact, talk of “levels” – as in “level of description,” “level of explanation,” “level of organization,” “level of complexity,” “level of analysis,” and the

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point of view is not restricted to Hartmann’s position only, but also includes several Whitehead’s ideas and some elements of the theory of emergence.3 The comparison of two thinkers, Hartmann and Whitehead, is not an obvious thing to do. One may say that their philosophies are completely different. In fact, both thinkers derive from diverse traditions: Hartmann’s background was the neo-Kantian school of Marburg and the phenomenological movement, while Whitehead’s background was the British empiricism of Locke and Hume, and Cambridge mathematics and logic. Moreover, as Wein maintains, they were not mutually influenced at all, and at first glance “Hartmann’s Realontologie is seen to be obviously incompatible with Whitehead’s “Philosophy of Organism”” (Wein 1957, x-xi). Fortunately, the difference between Hartmann and Whitehead is superficial, as there are many common tendencies that bring these seemingly distant philosophies together. In his wide-ranging comparative study, J.N. Mohanty (1957) identifies a number of analogies between the two philosophers: starting from their admiration for classical metaphysics (Aristotle and Plato), through the ontologization of every possible experience and the comprehensive elaboration of so-called “philosophical cosmology,”4 and ending with the status of ideal being. Mohanty writes: “On many occasions both Whitehead and Hartmann reflect tendencies in common which may be taken as pointing to a new philosophical cosmology. The most striking is the treatment of the categories ‘dimension’, ‘structure’, ‘relatedness’, ‘process’ and ‘society’” (Mohanty 1957, 148). The following paper provides a number of analyses concerning some of these categories.

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like – has thoroughly penetrated not only writings about science, including of course philosophy of science, but also the primary scientific literature of many fields.” Elements of the contemporary theory of levels can be found in studies of Bunge 1979, Blitz 1990, Poli 2001, Morowitz 2002 or Ellis 2002. The classic theory of emergence was developed mainly by Alexander 1920, Morgan 1923, and Broad 1925; for an introduction see: McLaughlin 2008. There is a vast amount of contemporary works on that subject; for comprehensive studies see e. g.: Clayton, Davies 2006, Kistler 2006, Bedau, Humphreys 2008. Mohanty discusses both systems and emphasizes their comprehensiveness and completeness. See his 1957, xxxviii: “Nicolai Hartmann and A.N. Whitehead both have thought out comprehensive systems of philosophy. Nicolai Hartmann’s Aufbau der realen Welt and Philosophie der Natur are comprehensive studies in the categories of the real world. A.N. Whitehead’s Process and Reality is a comprehensive cosmology.”

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Nevertheless, for now it is important to introduce just one category, elaborated by both thinkers, that would constitute a starting point for our further investigations. It is the category of real possibility (Realmçglichkeit), which, as we suppose, constitutes a key concept for the understanding of the world’s layered structure.5 Hartmann defines “real possibility” as “the totality of conditions present at a given time within the real context” (1975, 27). Whitehead in turn writes about real potentiality, introducing it as a conditioned indetermination of a real concrescence within a correlated world, and identifies it with the physical pole of each actual entity (1926, 23 and 80). Hartmann and Whitehead both underline the twofold aspect of the category in question – on the one hand, it provides the conditions that determine a real situation, but on the other, it leaves an element of indetermination and an opportunity for choice. However, there are obviously some minor differences between both concepts. Mohanty (1957, 144) says that “while for Hartmann the actual entity A is itself “real”-possible, for Whitehead A determines a range of “real” possibility relative to itself!”6 Nevertheless, both Hartmann and Whitehead would agree that real possibility sets up the series of conditions for each concrete being, letting it “decide” which one to follow and which one not. We believe the elaboration of such a series of conditions, which eventually make a concrete real, is the fundamental task in explaining the layered structure of the world. Therefore, let us accept the working definition of the ontological study of the real world as the categorial analysis of real possibility, or equivalently – following Hartmann – analysis of the theory of categories. The concept of world-stratification can be expressed by a statement: the real world is built out of consecutive ontological layers that stay in mutual relation and include concrete beings. Hartmann’s ontology contains many significant details on this issue. We present them in the first 5 6

Such opinion is shared by Galewicz 1987, 60: “The central role in the Hartmann’s analysis of modal categories of the real being is performed by a revised traditional concept of real possibility.” [translation – J.D.] In his studies over the Whitehead’s concept of real potentiality, Mohanty 1957, 143, distinguishes two meanings of that category: the first, “which consists in (or, more appropriately, is provided by) the “extensive continuum” or the order or the system of the world within which all future actual entities shall emerge,” and, second, “the various “real” possibilities which are relative to the various actual entities in course of process.” The author adds that the “latter meaning of “real” possiblility comes nearest to Hartmann’s usage of the term.”

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part of this article. The second part includes some basic distinctions within the process philosophy of Whitehead, referring directly to the theory of ontological levels. The third and main part of the paper is divided into three sections. We consequently elaborate there – on the ground of both Hartmann’s and Whitehead’s systems – the concept of concrete, the concept of layer, and the concept of hierarchy. The successive results of our investigations are expressed in seven theses that together compose the set of the most fundamental statements of stratalism – the philosophical position defined in the fourth and last part of the work.

5.2 Elements of Hartmann’s ontology One of the basic premises of Hartmann’s ontology is that categories are principles (Prinzipien) of being. He also uses the expression ‘fundamental determinations’ (Grundbestimmungen). Thereby, Hartmann breaks with a traditional understanding of categories as predicates, basic concepts, or ideal entities. Categories are neither merely linguistic creations describing real objects, nor idealities participating in reality. Their ontological status establishes them as principles, constituting the real world, and independent of any external determinations.7 The co-relative of the category of principle is that of concrete (Konkretum).8 “Principle” and “concrete”are the first of twelve mutually associated pairs of the most general categories distinguished by Hartmann. At the same time, the first of several categorial laws, on which he established his architectural ontology,9 concerns the interpretation of categories as principles: 1.1. Law of principle (Gesetz des Prinzips): “to be a category is to be a principle.” (Hartmann 1964, 383) The statement helps to avoid the so-called fallacy of “chorism” (Gr. chorismon – 7

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One can explain the status of so-understood categories by the analogy with the status of principles present in the physical world. For example, the principle of relativity “is present” in every admissible frame of reference, likewise e. g. the category of causality “is present” in mutually influenced spatial beings. For the discussion of the relation between concrete and category within the Hartmann’s ontology, see Mohanty 1957, 9 – 11, 31. One of the author’s conclusions is significant for our problem of ontological levels (1957, 31): “We have seen that Hartmann makes a sharp distinction between the two, between ideal being and category. The problem of inter-sphere relation is not then a problem of determination.” The expression ‘architectural ontology’ comes from Albertazzi 2001, 299.

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abstract, derived) that consists in tearing categories away from concretes, in depriving the unity that takes place between a principle and an object determined by it (Hartmann 1964, 69 – 78). In Hartmann’s approach categories stay in a strict connection with concretes – they define specified aspects of things and are obligatory for them. The relation between categories and concrete beings, as introduced above, implies a novel solution to a traditional problem. According to Plato’s position, the occurring relation is the immanency of things within the sphere of principles. The invariable and eternal reality of ideal entities is primordial in reference to the changeable and imperfect world of shadows. Therefore, an ontological foundation of temporal beings is entrenched in a transcendent sphere of eternal entities. The relation is explained inversely within Aristotle’s position, which defends the immanency of principles in things. There (i. e., in Aristotle), the concrete being constitutes the primordial reality, in which one may find principles only secondarily (compounds of substantial forms and beings). Hartmann states that such distinctions are based on the false assumption of a relevant divisibility of principles and things. At the same time, he does not reject any tradition in question, concluding they are not contradictory but complementary to each other. If one cannot separate concretes from their categories, then one cannot decide if the former exists within the latter, or vice versa. Hence, it is reasonable to argue for their mutual dependence, and to ascribe a symmetry-feature to the relation of primordiality: in reference to a certain aspect of research it is to say that things exist within principles. The complementarity of these two traditions leads us to conclude that categories are nothing without their concretes, and concretes nothing without their categories. Having such a concept of categories and its relation to concretes described above, it is now easy to define “ontology.” Hartmann refers explicitly to the Aristotelian definition – the science of being qua being. Agreeing to this general formulation of its subject-matter, he goes further and claims (1975, 13): “All ontology has to do with fundamental assertions about being as such. Assertions of this sort are precisely what we call categories of being.” Therefore, the ontological investigations are named the theory of categories (Kategorienlehre).10 The analysis of the categories of being is at the same time the analysis of the basic principles that determine the successive aspects of things. Hence, ontol10 Compare Mordka 2008, 31: “Hartmann’s ontology is often called the theory of categories.” [translation – J.D.]

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ogy reaches to the primordial and principal features of being – it is the philosophia prima. Simultaneously, however, it is not independent from the phenomena described by the natural sciences. Benefiting from their results, ontology takes them into account and criticizes them, only to provide strictly ontological theses at the very end of the inquiry – it is the philosophia ultima. This twofold status of ontology allows it to maintain a permanent reference to a variable scientific knowledge about the empirical world, and to defend, at once, its own subject-matter, which reaches beyond a merely superficial analysis of what appears.11 The basic distinction within Hartmann’s theory of categories, which is essential for the problem of stratification, is the dichotomy between fundamental and special categories. While the former concern all types and layers of being, the latter are present only within one layer. The fundamental categories include the modal categories, such as real possibility, and the twelve pairs of the most general determinations, e. g., structure-modus, form-matter, substratum-relation.12 The purpose of this kind of categories is the extraction of the basic determinations of being, of the minimal content unifying not only the various layers, but also the various types of existence.13 The special categories, in turn, find their application exclusively within a certain ontological layer, determining its essential features. Therefore, their purpose consists in the diversification of layers, in searching for what the ontological difference between them constitutes. According to Hartmann (1975, 64), there are four main ontological layers and their corresponding sets of special categories that must be distinguished: 11 Two statements from Galewicz 1987, 33 – 34 picture the duality of Hartmann’s ontology well: “[Hartmann] maintained that ontological investigations should be an extension and a broadening of empirical research. Ontology asks for fundamental determinations of being, it reaches to what is principal and primordial,” and: “Aspiring to the foundations of general being, ontology needs to start from particular phenomena. Because of this, it also needs to assume the totality of results achieved so far by natural science.” [translation – J.D.] 12 The full list can be found in Hartmann 1964, 211 – 212. 13 However, it is not clear whether fundamental categories are the basis of the real type of being only, and, hence, possess an inter-layered character (as e. g., Galewicz 1987, 81 proposes), or they constitute the basis of all the types of real, ideal and unreal beings, and thus possess a trans-boundary character. Mordka 2008, 38 – 40, claims that Hartmann’s distinctions need to be further specified, and proposes the term ‘fundamental categories’ for the former, and the term ‘elementary categories’ for the latter.

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inorganic being (anorganisches Sein) – e. g., space, substantiality, (mechanical) causality; • organic being (organisches Sein) – e. g., finality, organic system, metabolism, homeostasis; • psychical being (seeliges Sein) – e. g., act and content, consciousness and unconsciousness, pleasure and distress; • spiritual being (geistiges Sein) – e. g., thought, cognition, desire, freedom, valuation, personality. Hartmann maintains there are two possible relations occurring between consecutive layers14 of the real world. He names them super-formation (berformung) and super-position (berbauung).15 If we consider just the four levels in question, then the former relation is present solely between inorganic and organic levels, while the latter occurs in the next two places: between the organic and the psychical, and between the psychical and the spiritual levels. The super-formation relation, as it occurs in the natural (material) world, leads to the series that is “a continuous superimposition of forms, which each form serving as matter for another form superimposed (= superformed, J.D.) upon it” (1975, 68). Hence, such forms of dependence are expressed by the matterform relation, and this relation seems to be weaker than the super-position relation, whose form of dependence is based on the bearer-borne relation. Here, the new categories are not just re-formed versions of the categories on the lower layer, but they are qualitatively new principles governing all higher than organic levels of being. “The “inner world” […] is an ontological region “above” organic structure, but it only rests “upon” it as on its ontological basis. It does not consist “of it” as of its material” (1975, 78 – 79). Psychical categories emerge from organic categories, and spiritual ones from psychical categories. That is to say, 14 We will use the term ‘layer’ [Schicht] in reference to any grade of the world’s complexity possessing its own, specified set of categories, and the term ‘level’ [Stufe] to indicate the main realms of being that may include many minor layers. The Latin term ‘stratum’ will be used as the general term for the whole conception, which we call stratalism. For different terminological choices compare Poli 1998, 203, Peruzzi 2001, 239, footnote 22. 15 The English translation of Hartmann’s terms is taken from Werkmeister 1990 and Poli 1998, 203; 2001, 276. However, the second author proposes now a new translation (Poli 2011, 11): super-formation for berformung and super-position for berbauung. Johansson 2001, 195 and Kuhn 1975 use superinformation for berformung and superimposition for berbauung.

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there are at least two interruptions in a continuous series of things and the categories determining them. One final issue arising from Hartmann’s ontology that is important for our investigations is the set of categorial laws. They express in detail the connections taking place between successive layers and within them. The categorial laws are, in fact, the very core of Hartmann’s special ontology, leading to the stratified viewpoint. There is no need to discuss in details all of these laws, explaining them one by one, since we will use just some of them later. The following table exhibits all of Hartmann’s categorial laws divided into four groups: Table 5.1 Hartmann’s Categorial Laws16 1. Laws of categorial validity

3. Laws of stratification

relation of categories to concretes and vertical relation among categories and layers layers 1.1. 1.2. 1.3. 1.4.

law law law law

of of of of

principle layer validity layer affiliation layer determination

3.1. 3.2. 3.3. 3.4.

law law law law

of of of of

recurrence modification categorial novum layer distance

2. Laws of categorial coherence

4. Laws of categorial dependence

horizontal relation among categories within a layer

existential dependence of layers

2.1. 2.2. 2.3. 2.4.

4.1. 4.2. 4.3. 4.4.

law law law law

of of of of

connectivity layer unity layer wholeness implication

law law law law

of of of of

strength indifference matter freedom

The first group of laws explains how categories are preset in concretes and layers. The main law here is the one already mentioned – 1.1. Law of principle – stating that there are no categories outside their concretes. The second group emphasizes a peculiar bond that connects categories within the same layer – the categorial coherence, which is a multi-aspectual relation that governs categories horizontally. It guarantees that categories, when taken together, will possess a special type of 16 Hartmann dedicates a large part of his Der Aufbau der realen Welt (1964, chapters 43 – 60) to a detailed elaboration of these laws. A short formulation of the various laws can be found at thr following pages: 1st group: 382 – 383, 2nd group: 394, 3rd group: 432, 4th group: 471 – 472.

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unity, and that they will constitute a whole (a layer), which is more than the sum of its components. The next, third group of categorial laws, concerns vertical relations among categories within different layers and an entire hierarchy. The main thesis here is that the lower level categories are included, in large part, in the higher-level categories, but not conversely. The final group deals with an existential dependence of layers, in which they manifest their mutual relations in abstraction from the content or from the form of any particular layer.

5.3 Some notes on process philosophy There are several arguments against the possibility of building the concept of stratification on the ground of process philosophy.17 Let us consider some of them: • The world is a flowing stream of actual entities – the metaphor expresses one of the basic processual thesis that each being is equal to the others, and there is no gradation among them. • No true categorical novelty comes to be – all categories are already present at the fundamental level of actual entities.18 • An actual entity is dipolar (e. g., Whitehead 1926, 45, 108, 239) – a physical pole and a mental (conceptual) pole together constitute an inseparable structure of each being; mental categories are present at the lowest level – as in a weak panpsychism.19 • Constant rhythm: one-many (e. g., 1926, 21, 154, 341) – all ontological levels are included within (reduced to) the creative process of constituting one from many and many from one. 17 In the paper, we use the term ‘process philosophy’ in its narrow sense that refers only to A.N. Whitehead’s metaphysics. On the contrary, any philosophical position that emphasizes process as a fundamental type of being would fall under a wider understanding of the term. For an accessible introduction to Whitehead’s philosophy see Sherburne 1966 or Cobb 2008. 18 In reference to Hartmann’s ontology, Mohanty 1957, 126 says: “Whitehead’s cosmology is a unitary picture. […] Thus categories culled from all levels are put together to describe the actual entities. This violates the very fundamentals of the Hartmannian ontology.” 19 Whitehead presents a peculiar form of panpsychism (also called panexperientalist) conveyed f.i. by the statement: “Conceptual feelings [that constitute the mental pole of an actual entity – J.D.] do not necessarily involve consciousness.” (1926, 165). See also Griffin 1998.

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Ontological continuity – there are no sudden changes at the macroscopic level that could create gaps, thus producing distinct and separate layers. If we want to establish a processual theory of levels, then we need to deal with these issues. At first glance, the above-mentioned theses seem to make our task impossible, because they seem to contradict the vision of hierarchically structured world. It is not necessarily so. In fact, almost all of the enumerated problems are off the mark – their significance depend on the interpretation of Whitehead’s technical terms within his metaphysics. After attaining a proper understanding of the concepts hidden in these enigmatic sentences, the issues they raise may support our attempt to establish the ontological stratification. Nevertheless, in comparison with Hartmann’s ontology, the last thesis (of ontological continuity) is genuinely Whiteheadian and will force us to modify some ideas. Now, instead of indicating difficulties, let us search for some conceptual tools that would help to explore our subject-matter. Whitehead introduces a broad set of categories.20 Some of them may help our purposes. The Creativity One-Many (also called ‘The Category of the Ultimate’) holds a distinct place in the system. It is responsible for the most fundamental one-many rhythm, which is creative. Being creative means that in reality there is no room for repetition, there is no one eternal pattern that is reproduced by incoming generations of entities. Each actual entity, each concrete, acquires its own pattern, which comes from different sources of its “conditioned indetermination.” Because of that, Whitehead also calls this category ‘the principle of novelty’. The next categories that are useful for us belong to the group named ‘the Categories of Existence’. The first is actual entity. Whitehead calls it by many other names, such as ‘actual occasion,’ ‘event,’ ‘Final Reality,’ or ‘Descartes’ Res Verae’. The actual entities are fundamental, for they 20 Namely forty five (!) categories: eight Categories of Existence, twenty seven Categories of Explanation, nine Categoreal Obligations, and the Category of the Ultimate; see: 1926, 20 – 28. It is important to emphasize that the Whiteheadian sense of the term ‘category’ is different from the Hartmannian one. The former understands categories in a descriptive sense, bringing them closer to Hartmann’s types of being of various sub-kinds (existential, explanatory, categoreal). The latter interprets categories in a generative sense as principles of being. For this reason, Mohanty 1957, 146, writes that, “Process and Reality is not an ontology of the real world in the same sense in which Hartmann’s Aufbau and Philosophie der Natur claim to be so.”

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are the most “real” forms of being; they “are the final real things of which the world is made up” (1926, 18). They oppose the eternal objects, which are “Pure Potentialities” or “Forms of Definiteness.”21 Whitehead calls the process of their instant constitution concrescence (lat. concrescere – to grow together, be formed), and he distinguishes four grades (species) of actual entities. Without going into details, let us enumerate them: • “actual occasions in so-called “empty space” – the lowest grade; • “actual occasions which are moments in the life-histories of enduring non-living objects” – electrons or other primitive organisms; • “actual occasions which are moments in the life-histories of enduring living objects;” • “actual occasions which are moments in the life-histories of enduring objects with conscious knowledge” (1926, 177 – 178). A cursory analysis of the concept of actual entity provides a space to establish some sort of processual stratification. For now, let us just agree to call Whitehead’s actual entities concretes.22 The other two categories that need to be introduced are nexus (plural – nexu¯s) and contrast (1926, 22). The latter is a principle or a mode of synthesis of actual entities. It creates so-called ‘Patterned Entities’. The former expresses the fact that two or more entities are tied together. Whitehead calls it a “particular fact of togetherness among actual entities,” or a “public matter of fact” (1926, 20 – 22). Although similar, both categories fulfill separate tasks.23 A nexus provides a ground for the appearance of societies, which constitute a gradation within the natural

21 Whitehead 1926, 22, writes: “Among these eight categories of existence, actual entities and eternal objects stand out with a certain extreme finality.” Perhaps the categories that are closest to the Hartmannian understanding of categories are Whitehead’s eternal objects. Mohanty 1957, 172 – 174, explicitly asks and discusses the question of their identity. 22 Discussing the concept of actual entity, Cobb 2008, 16, states: “Whitehead believed that deciding what sorts of entities are truly concrete or actual is a fundamental task for philosophy and one that is quite relevant for physics as well.” 23 A passage can be found in Whitehead 1926, 228, that may suggest a complete synonymy of the two terms. Whitehead, however, refuses such an possibility: “In another sense, a “nexus” falls under the meaning of the term “contrast”; though we shall avoid this application of the term.”

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world, whereas a contrast leads to the notion of relation.24 Consequently, the more important category for us is that of nexus. Now the concept of “nexus” will eventually broaden our notion of “concrete.” In this regard, the following comment of Cobb needs to be considered: “What many others call ‘actual entities’, Whitehead calls ‘nexu¯s’. This is most obvious in relation to philosophies that stay close to ordinary language and treat the objects of everyday experience as actual entities” (Cobb 2008, 27). Whitehead does not do that. His actual entity is the object neither of common sense, nor of scientific knowledge. Only ontology reaches actual entities – any other experience or science deals with nexu¯s. Following that, we shall use the term ‘concrete’ to refer to both: an actual entity and a nexus. At the ontological ground Whitehead’s category of actual entity shall be equivalent to our concept of concrete. However, if we are also to include a scientific and an everyday experience, then the concept of “concrete” must embrace Whitehead’s ideas of tables, trees, planets, and empty spaces as the nexu¯s of actual entities. Finally, one last category is of great interest for us – society. Even if it is not included amongst the categories of existence, it seems to occupy a significant place in establishing the processual concept of stratification. The reason for that is based on an extension of the category of nexus. Whitehead claims that a society is “a nexus of actual entities which are “ordered” among themselves,” adding that it is “more than a set of entities to which the same class-name applies” (1926, 89). Hence, by the addition of an element of order, the concept of “society” takes the investigations at a level higher than the level of actual entities. By ordering a set of actual entities (a nexus), a new creation appears, which is not a mere sum of its components, and which possesses completely new qualities. Cobb states (2008, 28): “Societies endure through time, whereas actual occasions only occur and fade into the past. Accordingly, societies can change location, as individual actual occasions cannot.” Roughly speaking, the concept of society, as a higher-level entity that organizes (socializes) sets of actual entities, is contained in our notion of “layer.” The actual world – Whitehead says – is “a real incoming of forms into real potentiality, […] incoming of a type of order establishing a cos24 “A relation can be found in many contrasts; and when it is so found, it is said to relate the things contrasted. […] A relation is a genus of contrasts” (1926, 228 – 229).

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mic epoch” (Timaeus), “incoming of a certain type of social order” (1926, 96). The process of novel creation is a constant incoming of forms (categories) through the real potentiality into actual entities, which are later ordered into societies. Then, a whole hierarchy of societies appears. The following layers are discussed in Section IV of Chapter III: The Order of Nature (1926, 96): • a society of pure extension; • a geometrical society; • an electromagnetic society; • a wave ! an electron ! a proton ! a molecule; • an inorganic body; • a living cell; • a vegetable ! an animal body ! … We see that such a series is more or less equivalent to the layers of nature distinguished by the natural sciences. Obviously, the series does not end with the layer of animal body, but it extends to every higher layers. Except for the hierarchy of societies, there are also many types of societies, which additionally diversify a quantity of possible ontological layers and involve the assignment of a role to environmental agents. Noting that society “is, for each of its members, an environment with some element of order in it” (1926, 90), Whitehead then provides a following classification of societies: • structured society – “includes subordinate societies and nexu¯s with a definite pattern of structural inter-relations” (1926, 99); • stabilized society – “it can persist through an environment whose relevant parts exhibit that sort of change” (1926, 100); • specialized society – complexity + stability, “a complex society which is stable provided that the environment exhibits certain features,” “deficient in survival value” (1926, 100 – 101); • protected nexus – “‘entirely living’ nexu¯s do require such protection, if they are to survive” (1926, 103), the theory of the animal body.25 An order is a social creation. It appears within nexu¯s of actual entities that realize a specified pattern (the category of contrast), and which entities possess a certain reference to their environment. If a society is suf25 Here, Whitehead discusses his idea that “an “entirely living” nexus is not a “society”’ (1926, 103). However, it appears that this claim contradicts his previous statement that the hierarchy of societies is composed by “living” societies.

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ficiently structured, then the order within it may convert into the hierarchy. Whitehead maintains that the process of becoming is “a creative advance into novelty” (1926, 28). Such an advance is being achieved by each momentary concrescence, which is “the synthesis of all ingredients with data derived from a complex universe” (1926, 115). Therefore, the synthesis itself becomes creative. It means that actual entities, within each society, do not realize their pattern passively, but creatively. By being more than a set of actual entities, every society is a possible source of novelty. Here we see that the creative synthesis (concrescence) and the novelty it provides, may take place at three different levels: • actual entity (nexus) ! concrete; • society ! layer; • order ! hierarchy. Let us now discuss them successively.

5.4 Three issues within the concept of the layered world 5.4.1 What is a concrete and what is its relation to categories? Considering concretes, we have already established one source of their determination that comes from the categories constituting them. According to Hartmann, who combines the Platonic and Aristotelian traditions, the concrete can be seen only in reference to its principles, and vice versa (law 1.1). On the ground of Whitehead’s philosophy, the equivalent for Hartmann’s categories may be understood in two ways: as eternal objects or as a mental poles of actual entities. It is a discussion similar to the one pursued by Hartmann – that seeks to determine whether categories are found in the ideal world, or are present solely within concrete reality. This is, in fact, the question of Whitehead’s Platonism (Mohanty 1957, ch. 2). In short, the conclusion is that there are no principles outside the concrete. Eternal objects determine actual entities via prehensions, and are incorporated (as feelings) in the very structure of each entity. The process of concrescence has phases, which relate directly to the eternal entities,26 and hence, “ideal” forms become the 26 Especially, the phases of conceptual and reverted feelings; see: Cobb 2008, 60 – 62.

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essential components of concrete beings. However, such a relation between an actual entity and its principles is obtained individually and creatively for each occasion – it does not repeat one universal pattern, and it leaves a place for novelty. Hartmann’s ontology seems to correspond with these intuitive principles. The 2.1. law of connectivity (Gesetz der Verbundenheit) states: categories do not determine the concrete in isolation, each by itself, but only in a mutual connection. The categorial determination is not a mere sum of consecutive categorial contributions, but it is a non-additive result of their mutual determinations. The result of such a connection remains indeterminate and unpredictable – it respects novelty, it is creative. A new concrete being, although its structure is based on the reference to categories, cannot be reduced to them. “Emergence would result as self-selection of Potentialities,” as Peruzzi claims (2001, 254). Therefore, we formulate our first thesis: Thesis 1: A concrete is a horizontally emergent entity.27 Now, following Whitehead, we discover another source of concrete determination, which cannot be found on the ground of Hartmann’s ontology. The process of concrescence includes not only the correlation with eternal objects, but primarily, in its first phase, it consists of socalled physical feelings, which are prehensions of other, past actual entities, of other concretes. Thus, process philosophy emphasizes that concretes are nothing without (prehensions of) other concretes. 28 The totality of physical feelings is the actual world of a given actual entity, incorporated as its physical pole. Such a type of determination is based on the cate-

27 The concept of emergence includes three conditions: a) supervenience, b) irreducibility, and c) downward causation. To be horizontal is to occur within one ontological layer, whereas to be vertical is to take place between two ontological layers. In the case described in Thesis 1 a concrete horizontally emerges from categories that determine it. See Peruzzi 2001, Kim 2006, Dziadkowiec 2010. 28 The reference of a concrete being to other concretes constitutes its very essence. As Mohanty 1957, 88, writes: “”Concrete” means “together”; “abstract” means “isolated”, taken out of this togetherness in isolation.” Therefore, there is no concrete in isolation, and its basic determination comes from the influence of other concretes.

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gory of real potentiality.29 Let us call it the ‘interior environment’ of the concrete. Finally, a third source of concrete determination is discovered – it comes from the analysis of the category of structured society. Possessing several subordinate societies and nexu¯s, which follow their individual aims, a structured society provides the pattern that is to be realized by its members. That pattern is constituted out of structural inter-relations and it does not affect the aims of any member as long as members do not violate the structure of a whole. The actual entities within each society constitute the foundation for the concept of layers of social order. The influence of a structured society on its members is an example of downward causation. It is a type of causality that comes from the higher layer (Ln) to the concrete at the lower layer (Ln-1). Thus, we call that type of concrete determination the ‘exterior environment’. The difference between interior and exterior environments rests upon a level of ontological analysis. While the former concerns the relations amongst concretes within the same layer, the latter describes the downward influence of a higher layer. Both of them complement each other in revealing the material (physical or contentual) side of concrete determination. The categorial determination that exposes the formal (principal) side is the opposite of both. Summing up all of the sources of concrete determination, we obtain the following diagram and a second thesis: Diagram 5.1: Threefold determination of the concrete

29 The doctrine of real potentiality is intrinsically connected with Whitehead’s ontological principle (e. g., 1926, 19, 32, 43) and with the statement that in a constituted actual entity, which falls under our idea of concrete, “there is no element of hypothesis;” see: Mohanty 1957, 140.

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Thesis 2: A concrete has a threefold determination: a categorial determination (principles) and a conditioned indetermination of a real concrescence (real potentiality): interior and exterior environments.

5.4.2 What is a layer and what is its relation to concretes? According to Hartmann, a layer is a separate type of being that can be distinguished from concretes. The adequate statement is found in 2.3. the Law of layer wholeness (Gesetz der Schichtenganzheit): a layer of categories is not a loose multiplicity or a sum, but it is a wholeness, having a sort of priority over its elements. As we already know, the categories and the environment together determine concretes within a given layer. Since the environment is responsible solely for the contents of the concrete, all fundamental characteristics ascribed to these concretes come from the categorial determination. Thus, the set of categories within a certain layer indicates a potential framework for each possible or actual concrete. As Hartmann notices, such a framework is not a mere sum of all categories, but it constitutes a whole. A peculiar bond that conjoins categories, is named by Hartmann ‘categorial coherence’. The relation between them is so strong that a whole layer obtains a priority over its elements. Let us now ask: what does the priority of layer to concretes consist in? Here we return to Whitehead’s concept of “structured societies.” The creative synthesis of many concretes leads to the emergence of society. If this is a structured society, then it has a pattern and influences its members – concretes and subordinate societies (also called ‘patterned entities’). We notice that a new pattern, introducing structural inter-relations, does not bring any new categories. Therefore, there is no categorial novum within a specified layer. The novelties here are the social order, the hierarchical structure, and its inter-relations that organize many concretes. To answer our question, we conclude that a layer has no categorial or content priority, but a structural one to its concretes. Having established the general concept of layer and its structural priority over concretes, we are now able to consider the relation between them. Following an analogy with Thesis 1, one may ask whether or not the connection between a layer and its concretes is the emergence relation. There are three conditions to fulfill (see note 28). Firstly, with reference to the issue of the exterior environment, it was stated that the influence of a society upon its members might be considered as a down-

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ward causation. The structural priority of a layer expressed by its function in providing a pattern to ordered concretes is a type of horizontal downward causation. Secondly, it is obvious that if there were no concretes, then a layer could never exist. Hence, a layer is existentially dependent on concretes. Moreover, any change within the set of concretes results in an immediate change within a layer.30 In terms of the emergence-relation it is fair to say that a layer supervenes on concretes. Thirdly, considering a pattern provided by a social order of layer, there is no possibility of deriving it from, or explain it by, a mere set of concretes.31 A pattern possessed by a layer constitutes its structural novelty, and establishes its irreducibility to concretes. Having all three conditions fulfilled, and remembering that a layer and its concretes occupy the same grade of hierarchical order, we propose the following statement: Thesis 3: A layer is a horizontally emergent society of concretes, introducing a new pattern on them. In Thesis 2 the three sources of concrete determination were proposed. Let us now find out, how such a determination looks in the case of the layers. In fact, the issue is quite simple, since the whole variety of determinations is already present on the level of the concrete. Hartmann’s corresponding law is the 1.4. Law of layer determination (Gesetze der Schichtendetermination): the categories of a certain ontological layer are sufficient for it – all fundamental moments that are present in each concrete item of that layer are fully determined by categories of this layer. Therefore, a layer takes a totality of its determinations from concretes belonging to it. Such a conclusion includes a statement that there is no direct influence of one layer upon another, or at least that the direct influence stays insignificant and cannot determine the properties of any higher or lower layer. If one layer significantly influences the other, then this is always done through the concretes of the latter and its exterior environment. The conclusion constitutes our next thesis: 30 We refer to the definition of supervenience given by Kim 2006, 548: “Property M supervenes on properties N1, …, Nn iff whenever anything possesses N1, …, Nn, it necessarily possesses M.” 31 Here again, we refer to the corresponding definition of irreducibility as a constitutive part of the emergence relation (Kim 2006, 548): “Property M is not reducible to properties N1, …, Nn iff M is not explainable in terms of, predictable on the basis of, or derivable from N1, …, Nn.”

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Thesis 4: A layer possesses a type of determination that comes from the concretes belonging to it. One last remark, considering the structure of layer, needs to be made. Each part of a layer stays in a special connection with the whole. Sharing the pattern of a whole society, every concrete being somehow reflects its structure. Whitehead states that each actual entity reflects the wholeness of the prehended world, it reflects the universe: “The concrescence is an individualization of the whole universe” (1926, 165). Such an individualization is obtained within the process of concrescence, which is a creative synthesis of all possible data from the actual world. “An actual entity is concrete because it is such a particular concrescence of the universe.” (1926, 51) The reflection of the universe in each concrete indicates a feature that we call the ‘holographic (or fractal) structure of a layer’. A similar relation is introduced by Hartmann in his 2.4. Law of implication (Gesetz der Implikation): each consecutive category contains every other category from the same layer; hence, the wholeness of the layer of categories is repeated in each of its parts. The whole set of categories of a certain layer is given to a concrete through categorial determination. Therefore, all essential moments typical for a particular level of ontological complexity are already present in every concrete belonging on that level. The conclusion, emphasizing the holographic (or fractal) structure of layer, leads to the Thesis 5 that finishes our analysis over the concept of layer: Thesis 5: Each concrete includes the reflection of the whole layer, to which it belongs.

5.4.3 What is a hierarchy and how does it organize layers? In our perspective the hierarchy problem is the problem of inter-layer relations and their order.32 It is a question about a vertical relationship between different levels of the world’s ontological structure. If there 32 It is important to clearly distinguish an order from a hierarchy. The former would be any aggregation of inter-related entities, while the latter would be any aggregation of entities with a vertical form of dependence between them. Therefore, a hierarchy is just an example of an order.

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are well-defined relations between the layers, we would speak about their mutual ordering, about a hierarchy. Thus, the definition of hierarchy includes two components: a set of layers and relations between them.33 There are at least two separate types of hierarchies that manifest unique and characteristic features. Let us call them the ‘linear hierarchy’ and the ‘tangled hierarchy’.34 The first type of hierarchy has one source of determination at any grade of hierarchical advancement – it possesses no other paths for the system’s evolution. The entities within this type of hierarchy are linear in both senses: they are vertical (between different levels) and horizontal (within one level). They are defined by one separate factor that comes from their categorial determination. The categorial factor becomes the demarcation criterion for the constitution of consecutive ontological levels – whenever one discovers a set of new categories (a categorial novum), then one finds a new layer of the hierarchy. Having established a sharp demarcation criterion, the linear hierarchy acquires the feature of discontinuity – the presence of several ontological gaps within the entire structure of the hierarchy. It is an antithesis of being ontologically continuous. At first glance, such a type of hierarchy corresponds to the one proposed by Hartmann.35 The second type of hierarchy has a tangled structure. This means that every entity within the hierarchy in question has more than one source of determination in both its vertical and horizontal aspects. Hence, the categorial determination does not solely determine the concrete – environmental agents are required. They provide alternative paths of the system’s evolution, which causes the whole hierarchy to become non-linear. At the same time, the hierarchy acquires the feature of continuity, as there is no sharp distinction between one level and the next. Instead of a categorial novum, the intensity of specific categories together with the structure of the whole layer constitutes a demarcation criterion. The multiplicity of possible inter-layer connections leads to 33 However, on the ground of Whitehead’s philosophy, there is another meaning of the term ‘hierarchy’, which refers to eternal objects. For the discussion see Mohanty 1957, 65 – 74, where the author maintains that “The realm of “eternal objects” can be arranged in a graded hierarchy in so far as relevance to a [an actual “event” – J.D.] is concerned” (1957, 74). 34 The distinction is introduced after Poli 2006, 718. 35 An interesting, semi-axiomatic formulation of Hartmann’s hierarchy is elaborated by Peruzzi 2001, 239 – 243. The author calls a resulting theory the H-stratification; compare: the concept of stratalism in section 4 below.

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the question of whether or not a tangled structure is still a hierarchy or already a system. Even if the set of relations present in this structure is richer than the one in a linear hierarchy, we may still observe a clear hierarchical order. Hence, we call it a ‘hierarchy with a tangled structure’. Our assumption, that will be verified later, is that this type of hierarchy corresponds to Whitehead’s scheme. The following table contains the comparison between the two types of hierarchy: Table 5.2: Linear and tangled hierarchies Linear hierarchy

Tangled hierarchy

Vertical and horizontal linearity

Vertically and horizontally tangled

One source of determination

Many sources of determination

No environmental agents

Environmental agents

Linearity & discontinuity

Non-linearity & continuity

Demarcation criterion: categorial novum

Demarcation criterion: intensity and structure

Hartmann’s hierarchy

Whitehead’s hierarchy

Now, having characterized the two types of hierarchies, let us consider some of the possible inter-layer relations that occur within them. The question is: how does the lower layer influence the higher one? The short answer, if we are to follow consistently Thesis 4, would be: there is no direct influence at all. Thus, the only possibility for explaining the indirect inter-level relations consists in the reference to concretes. In fact, there is no other influence of one layer upon another than through concretes. It was previously emphasized that a layer imposes a structural pattern upon concretes, a social order that has a priority over its elements. Hence, a layer is a society of structured concretes. Consequently, if such a society is to be a base for a higher-level entity, then it needs to follow some other structural pattern that would organize it within a higher structure. A higher layer is not just a collective or distributive set of lower layer concretes, so their relation cannot be purely mereological. The set of possible inter-layer relations is as follows: • super-formation (berformung); • super-position (berbauung);

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• supervenience (S) – existential dependency; • irreducibility (IR) – structural novum; • downward causation (DC) – environmental agents; • vertical emergence: S + IR + DC. According to Hartmann, as we already know, both the first and the second relations are the ones that apply to the real world. The difference between them lies in the level of the hierarchical order to which they relate. The super-formation relation can be found in all phenomena from elementary particles to living organisms, while the super-position relation is present in everything within and above the level of mentality. Such a perspective, although preserving the variety of phenomena, brings an inconsistency to the hierarchy and causes its discontinuity (the appearance of ontological gaps). One strategy that Hartmann follows is to agree that “the type of unity embodied in the world is not that simple” (1975, 79) and to maintain there are two irreducible inter-layer relations that simultaneously govern the whole hierarchy. The other strategy, which we are proposing here, is to look for another relation that would include both Hartmann’s conditions: existential dependency (super-formation) and material (content) independency (super-position) of one level to another. The relation of vertical emergence is the best candidate for combining both Hartmannian relations. First of all, it includes the supervenience condition, which expresses the idea of existential dependency. Each change at the lower level brings a change at the higher level. In other words, nothing new appears in the higher level entity, if it does not appear also in the lower level entities. Second, vertical emergence underlines the irreducibility of the higher to the lower. It expresses the concept that the new contents, turning up within the higher structure, are not to be predicted or explained in terms of lower level entities. It satisfies the requirement of material independency. Therefore, both intuitions included in Hartmann’s relations are already present in the components of the vertical relation of emergence. Finally, the last condition – downward causation – finds no match within Hartmann’s ontology.36 In our viewpoint top-down causation comes with the concept of “ex36 Peruzzi 2001, 244 – 245, points out the lack of environmental agents within the Hartmann’s concept of stratification. Unlike our proposition that refers to a processual explanations, he refers to Ludwig von Bertalanffy’s general system theory, calling it “more than a mathematical formulation of H-stratification” (2001, 244).

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terior environment,” which is one of the three components of concrete determination (Thesis 2). Determining the concrete, it also determines the whole layer to which it belongs. Hence, downward causation is the indirect type of inter-layer relation that also influences the structure of the whole hierarchy. This is summarized in the second diagram and the sixth thesis: Diagram 5.2: Components of vertical emergence and Hartmann’s relations

Thesis 6: The hierarchy orders the layers through the relation of vertical emergence. One may argue against such a proposal, claiming that neither supervenience nor irreducibility is equivalent to Hartmann’s inter-layer relations. Agreeing with that objection, it needs to be emphasized that finding other conceptual tools to re-establish a similarity with Hartmannian relations is not an issue here. The aim is to explore, following some of Hartmann’s intuitions, whether or not the relation of vertical emergence may be appropriate for the idea of hierarchy as introduced above. Moreover, the relation in question helps us to decide which type of hierarchy we should deal with. The presence of environmental agents and, hence, of various sources of indirect layer determination, indicates that the adequate type of hierarchy is the tangled one. However, if we are to establish the key elements of each ontological level, then the categorial demarcation criterion – typical for the linear type – will still be in

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force. The tangled criteria, intensity and structure, may be considered as complementary to the categorial criterion and be used when we need to conduct a more detailed analysis of a given layer. That leads to an approval of hierarchical continuity where there is no room for ontological gaps. Still, the set of categories is specified for each layer, and there is no continual passage between those belonging to separate levels. What stays continuous is the intensity of their appearance – each category can be more or less present in a certain concrete being. Such a conclusion follows Whitehead’s statement: “It is obvious that a structured society may have more or less ‘life,’ and that there is no absolute gap between ‘living’ and ‘non-living’ societies” (1926, 102). Vertical emergence occurs where the intensity of a specified set of lower level categories reaches its maximum and, thus, establishes foundations for higher level categories. The last issue that needs to be dealt with is that of Hartmann’s categorial laws concerning the hierarchical structure of layers. There are two pairs of laws that shed more light on the nature of hierarchical order. The first pair includes the 3.1. Law of recurrence (Gesetz der Wiederkehr) and the 3.3. Law of categorial novum (Gesetz des Novums). The former states that lower categories “return” in higher ones as their component moments. The law of recurrence connects the categories of different layers, and so it connects the layers themselves. The latter states that each higher category includes a new moment – a categorial novum, which cannot be derived from lower categories. The law of categorial novum expresses the idea of irreducibility that takes place between consecutive layers and, therefore, disconnects the layers. According to Hartmann, the hierarchical structure is unified and divided at the same time. Both of these aspects are included in the structure of the real world, and the new ontology consequently needs to deal with them: “It is precisely the concern of the new ontology to arrive, uninfluenced by any kind of prejudice, at a well-balanced and carefully defined idea of the relationship of homogeneity and heterogeneity in the multiplicity of ontological strata” (Hartmann 1975, 79). The second pair of laws includes the 4.1. Law of strength (Gesetz der Strke) and the 4.4. Law of freedom (Gesetz der Freiheit), which are again complementary to each other.37 The former emphasizes that the higher

37 Hartmann 1975, 88, claims: “Of these laws of dependence, the first and fourth – the law of strength and the law of freedom – stand in a mutual relationship

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ontological layers are based on lower ones – lower categories are always stronger than higher ones. With respect to the strength, the lower layer is always stronger than the higher one. On the contrary, the latter law (4.4) underlies that the higher layer always possesses more freedom than the lower one. The law of freedom calls categorial freedom an ‘autonomy in dependence,’ and states that it is possessed by every higher ontological form in reference to ones lower than it. Here again, Hartmann points out there are no better or worse, no “more perfect” or “less perfect” layers. Every ontological level holds its own place in the hierarchy, and is equally needed in respect to the whole. The hierarchy, unifying various simultaneously connected and separate layers, needs to stay bipolar. The bipolarity of hierarchy expresses its twofold constitution, which is caused by a mutual coupling of categorial characteristics such as freedom, strength, dependence and irreducibility. Both features, the bipolarity and the tangled structure of hierarchy, are included in our final, seventh thesis: Thesis 7: The hierarchy of layers possesses a bipolar and tangled structure, and a continuous character.

5.5 Summary – what is stratalism? The diagram below sums up all the results obtained in the paper. It is a scheme of the tangled hierarchy with its multiple relations. As every scheme it is just a simplification of a possible real situation – the proposed numbers of categories (2) constituting a concrete, of concretes (2) constituting a layer, and the number of layers (4) constituting a hierarchy, are all arbitrary and are not intended to describe any real phenomena. Here, we just find an ontological view that highlights some relations between types of entities at different grades of complexity: from a single category through concretes to the whole hierarchy of layers:

similar to the relationship obtaining among the laws of stratification, the law of recurrence and that of novelty.”

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Diagram 5.3: Tangled hierarchy38

The diagram represents a very general concept of “the layered structure of the world.” The concept is borrowed from Hartmann’s ontology and from some elements of Whitehead’s process philosophy. We believe that it constitutes the foundation for a new philosophical position, which is sometimes called the theory of ontological levels. Following the Latin etymology, let us call our theory ‘stratalism’. Stratalism is a philosophical position according to which the real world manifests a layered structure, contains separate ontological levels, relations between 38 Explanation of lines and arrows: horizontal lines – a horizontal emergence within the same level; category ! category – a categorial dependence expressed by the 3.1. Law of recurrence and the 3.2. Law of modification; concrete ! concrete – an interior environment of a concrete, a conditioned indetermination of a real concrescence (real potentiality); layer ! concrete (downward) – exterior environment of a concrete, a downward causation of a concrete by a layer; layer ! concrete (upwards) – a supervenience, upward causation of a concrete by a layer.

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them, and concretes that include separate layers and their categories. The set of essential statements for such a viewpoint was proposed in the paper in the form of seven theses: Thesis 1: A concrete is a horizontally emergent entity. Thesis 2: A concrete possesses a threefold determination: a categorial determination (principles) and a conditioned indetermination of a real concrescence (the real potentiality): interior and exterior environments. Thesis 3: A layer is a horizontally emergent society of concretes, introducing a new pattern on them. Thesis 4: A layer possesses a type of determination that comes from the concretes belonging to it. Thesis 5: Each concrete includes the ‘reflection’ of the whole layer to which it belongs. Thesis 6: The hierarchy orders the layers through the relation of vertical emergence. Thesis 7: The hierarchy of layers possesses a bipolar and ‘tangled’ structure, and a continuous character. These statements are all open for a deeper elaboration and further development. They are not final conclusions, and may be freely changed after a critical comparison with, for example, the results of scientific research. Nevertheless, the stratalism and its set of theses, as introduced above, may find various, broader philosophical applications. Let us just enumerate some obvious examples: the mind-body problem,39 the problem of the world’s unity (e. g., between monism and pluralism), the problem of substance (e. g., the nature of the concrete), the problem of freedom and determinism (which is treated differently at each level), the ontology of nature (a categorial analysis of natural phenomena), and the elaboration of fundamental categories like process or time. All of these prob39 An attempt to solve the mind-body problem by conjoining the relation of supervenience and Hartmann’s ontology is made by Johansson 2001, 195.

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lems, and perhaps more, stay open for those willing to explore the ontology of the stratified world.

5.6 References Albertazzi, Liliana (2001), “The Roots of Ontics,” in: Axiomathes 12, 299 – 315. Alexander, Samuel (1920), Space, Time, and Deity. The Gifford Lectures at Glasgow 1916 – 1918, London: Macmillan and Co. Bedau, Mark A. / Humphreys, Paul (eds.) (2008), Emergence: Contemporary Readings in Philosophy and Science, Massachusetts: The MIT Press. Blitz, David (1990), “Emergent Evolution and the Level Structure of Reality”, in: Paul Weingartner / Georg J.W. Dorn (eds.), Studies on Mario Bunge’s Treatise, Amsterdam-Atlanta: Rodopi, 153 – 170. Bochen´ski, Józef (1957), Contemporary European Philosophy, Berkeley: University of California Press. Broad, Charlie D. (1925), The Mind and Its Place in Nature, London: Routledge and Kegan Paul. Bunge, Mario (1979), Treatise on Basic Philosophy, vol. 4, Ontology II: A World of Systems, Dordrecht: Reidel Publishing Company. Cicovacki, Predrag (2001), “New Ways of Ontology – The Ways of Interaction”, in: Axiomathes 12, 159 – 170. Clayton, Philip / Davies, Paul C.W. (eds.) (2006), The Re-Emergence of Emergence. The Emergentist Hypothesis from Science to Religion, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Cobb, John (2008), Whitehead Word Book. A Glossary with Alphabetic Index to Technical Terms in Process and Reality, Claremont: P&F Press. Dziadkowiec, Jakub (2010), “Perspectives of Processual Emergentism in Contemporary Philosophy of Nature”, forthcoming in: Studia Whiteheadiana IV. Ellis, George F.R. (2004), “True Complexity and its Associated Ontology”, in: John D. Barrow / Paul C.W. Davies / Charles L. Harper, Jr. (eds.), Science and Ultimate Reality. Quantum Theory, Cosmology and Complexity, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Galewicz, Włodzimierz (1987), N. Hartmann, Warszawa: Wiedza Powszechna. Griffin, David R. (1998), Unsnarling the World-Knot: Consciousness, Freedom, and the Mind-Body Problem, Berkeley: University of California Press. Hartmann, Nicolai (1964), Der Aufbau der Realen Welt, Berlin: Walter de Gruyter. Hartmann, Nicolai (1975) New Ways of Ontology, translated by Reinhard C. Kuhn, Connecticut: Greenwood Press. Johansson, Ingvar (2001), “Hartmann’s Nonreductive Materialism, Superimposition, and Supervenience”, in: Axiomathes 12, 195 – 215. Kim, Jaegwon (2006), “Emergence: Core ideas and issues”, in: Synthese 151, 547 – 559.

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Kistler, Max (ed.) (2006), Syntheses 151(3), August, New Perspectives on Reduction and Emergence in Physics, Biology and Psychology, Dordrecht: Springer. McLaughlin, Brian P. (2008), “The Rise and Fall of British Emergentism”, in: Mark A. Bedau / Paul Humphreys (eds.), Emergence: Contemporary Readings in Philosophy and Science, Massachusetts: The MIT Press, 19 – 59. Mohanty, Jitendra N. (1957), Nicolai Hartmann and Alfred North Whitehead. A Study in Recent Platonism, Calcutta: Progressive Publishers. Mordka, Artur (2008), Ontologiczne podstawy estetyki. Zarys koncepcji Nicolaia Hartmanna, Rzeszów: Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Rzeszowskiego. Morgan, Lloyd C. (1923), Emergent Evolution, London: Williams & Norgate. Morowitz, Harold J. (2002), The Emergence of Everything: How the World Became Complex, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Peruzzi, Alberto (2001), “Hartmann’s Stratified Reality”, in: Axiomathes 12, 227 – 260. Poli, Roberto (1998), “Levels”, in: Axiomathes 9, 197 – 211. Poli, Roberto (2001), “The Basic Problems of the Theory of Levels of Reality”, in: Axiomathes 12, 261 – 283. Poli, Roberto (2006), “The Theory of Levels of Reality and the Difference Between Simple and Tangled Hierarchies”, in: G Minati / E Pessa / M Abram (eds.), Systemics of Emergence: Research and Development, New York: Springer, 715 – 722. Poli, Roberto (2011), “Hartmann’s Theory of Categories: Introductory Remarks”, in: this volume. Sherburne, Donald W. (1966), A Key to Whitehead’s Process and Reality, New York: Macmillan. Wein, Hermann (1957), Preface to Nicolai Hartmann and Alfred North Whitehead. A Study in Recent Platonism, by Jitendra N. Mohanty, Calcutta: Progressive Publishers, viii-xii. Werkmeister, William H. (1990), Nicolai Hartmann’s New Ontology, Tallahassee: Florida State University Press. Whitehead, Alfred North (1974), Process and Reality. An Essay in Cosmology, New York: The Free Press (1st ed. 1926).

Chapter 6: Nicolai Hartmann’s Definition of Biological Species Frederic Tremblay 6.1 Introduction Before the Darwinian revolution, species were thought to be universals. Since then, numerous attempts have been made to propose new definitions. A widely held view is that species are individuals. Another is that they are populations or groups of populations. Others have proposed that species are lineages or temporal relations between speciation events. Others, including Darwin, have even suggested that the term ‘species’ is arbitrary and that we might have to give it up altogether. These are only a few examples. Nicolai Hartmann has defined ‘species’ as a unitary system of processes or a process of life of a higher-order. To give a clear understanding of Hartmann’s conception, I present his method of definition, his concept of “organism,” and his correlated concept of “species.” I end the paper by pointing out two possible systematic inconsistencies. Hartmann was already well acquainted with biology through the medical education he received prior to beginning his studies in philosophy. He elaborates his philosophy of biology in Philosophische Grundfragen der Biologie (1912a) and Philosophie der Natur (1950). Philosophische Grundfragen der Biologie belongs to the writings of the early period of his career, which do not represent Hartmann’s mature thought. In Philosophie der Natur he recuperates topics from the earlier treatise and improves their treatment by integrating them into a systematic framework. Since the section of Philosophie der Natur devoted to the organological categories represents Hartmann’s mature philosophy of biology (thirty-eight years have passed since the first text), I set aside the text of the early period to focus on Philosophie der Natur.

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6.2 Hartmann’s method of definition By ‘definition’ philosophers normally mean the Aristotelian kind of definition, nowadays known as the “analytical definition,” according to which we ought to provide the genus proximum of the definiendum and its differentia specifica. But Hartmann rejects the Aristotelian method of concept formation. He thinks that the genus-differentia kind of definition cannot alone account for the complexity of things. As he says in “Systematische Methode,” “we should not hope to discover a genus proximum” (Hartmann 1912b, 145).1 Instead, Hartmann espouses a view closer to Plato’s hypothesis of the koinonia of categories as exposed in The Sophist, according to which something is a combination of many categories (Hartmann 1912b, 143 & 158; 1940, 226). Hartmann developed a method of concept formation that he calls “dialectical concept formation” (dialektische Begriffsbildung), which accounts not only for the genus and differentia relations, but also for a variety of other kinds of intercategorial relations (Hartmann 1940, 601). This method produces a “relational-definition” (Beziehungsdefinition) (Hartmann 1912b, 145; 1940, 601). The Beziehungsdefinition takes account of a multiplicity of relations (Beziehungsmannigfaltigkeit) that the category stands into with other categories (Hartmann 1912b, 145; 1940, 601). This kind of definition should aim at capturing the system of the category’s characteristics (System seiner Merkmale) and the system of its determinations (System seiner Bestimmungen) (Hartmann 1940, 602). An ideal Beziehungsdefinition would capture the totality of the relations that the content of a concept stands in. The number of relations that this kind of definition could capture is so great that it would actually be impossible to produce such a concept, admits Hartmann. Our finite understanding cannot grasp the totality of relations. He thus acknowledges that the process of Begriffsbildung is a virtually incompletable task. Categorial concepts are never completed, but continually remain in a process of formation; they always remain approximate with regards to their contents and must continuously remain disposed to being altered (Hartmann 1912b, 145 – 146; 1940, 601). Most important are the relations that a category stands in with regards to the fundamental categories. For Hartmann, the fundamental categories come in pairs of oppositions. In Der Aufbau, Hartmann obtains a table containing twelve fundamental pairs of opposite categories: 1

Otherwise indicated, all translations are mine.

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principle-concretum, structure-mode, form-matter, inner-outer, determination-dependence, quality-quantity, unity-multiplicity, concorddiscord, contrariety-dimension, discretion-continuity, substratum-relation, and element-system (Hartmann 1940, 230 – 231). In addition to the fundamental categories, the special categories belonging to the sphere of reality include space-time, process-state, and causality-substance. So, whatever a species is, its categorial concept must account for the intercategorial relations that it bears with these more general categories. Furthermore, every stratum of reality has its own group of categories. The organic stratum contains the group of organological categories, among which are categories such as the organic system, the life of the species, ontogenesis, phylogenesis, speciation, variation, etc. (Hartmann 1964, 52). With Hartmann, the thesis that the categories of a same stratum must be coherent with each other becomes a principle of concept formation – the principle of Schichtenkohrenz (Hartmann 1940, 596). As R. Gamp comments, with Hartmann “categorial coherence is assigned the role of a methodological principle” (Gamp 1973, 256). The coherence of categorial concepts is essential, for “[c]oherence connects anything with everything within a stratum of categories” (Hartmann 1940, 595). Coherence is the trademark of systematic philosophy and, according to Hartmann, concept-formation and system-building have to be done in tandem. As he says, “[t]he development of a system and the definition of its basic concepts is one and the same” (Hartmann 1912b, 148). But here Hartmann’s methodology faces adversity, for already in his time there was a prevalent prejudice against the construction of systems. Systems evoke impressions, among other things, of life-less fixity, artificiality, and the absence of the possibility of progression (Hartmann 1912b, 121). Hartmann replies to this prejudicial tendency stating that although the system is a goal for philosophical knowledge, “[t]his goal is never actual, never achieved, for philosophical knowledge is never complete. The system is the ideal totality of this knowledge” (Hartmann 1912b, 122). Hartmann’s idea is not to build “an actual definite system, but only to tend toward the construction of an actual system” (Hartmann 1912b, 122). He insists that it is unhealthy for each special science to develop its own philosophy without connecting its results to a more general framework. This framework should be supplied, according to Hartmann, by the theory of categories (Hartmann 1950, vii).

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Let us now turn to Hartmann’s concept of “organism,” with which it is essential to be acquainted in order to understand his concept of “species.”

6.3 The organism Essential to Hartmann’s Beziehungsdefinition of organism is that it is a system (Gefge).2 A system is a stable processual structure of elements that can be an element for a higher-order system. Vice-versa, an element can be a system for a lower-order element. Like every pair from Hartmann’s table of categories, system and element are relative contrary termini; neither exists without the other. In Der Aufbau, Hartmann uses the example of electrons, protons, and neutrons, which are elements for a higher-order system: the atom. In turn, atoms are elements for a higher-order system: the molecule. He also gives the example of the earth, which is a system in itself, but is also an element for a higher-order sys2

The translation of the word Gefge is problematic. In his translation of Neue Wege der Ontologie, R. C. Kuhn has opted for ‘structure’ (Hartmann 1952). W. H. Werkmeister adopted Kuhn’s translation (Werkmeister 1990, 40). This translation, however, is double-crossing the table of oppositions given in Der Aufbau, where Hartmann has already opposed Gefge to Element and reserved the word Struktur for a different category paired with the category of Modus (see the table of oppositions in 1940, pp. 230 – 231). This alone is a sufficiently good reason for rejecting ‘structure’. The word ‘system’ appears to be a better option. In fact, in the early biological treatise Philosophische Grundfragen der Biologie, Hartmann uses the word System instead of Gefge. In Philosophie der Natur, however, Hartmann says that “[t]he expression Gefge replaces the worn-out term System. The latter too easily evokes something static; the word is used to mean nothing else than ”Zusammenstand.” The image evoked by ‘Gefges’ is plastic” (Hartmann 1950, 445). The reason he mentions his objection to the word System is because it is the word that is closest to Gefge with respect to meaning. The word ‘complex’ is another possible translation. But ‘complex’ already translates the German word Komplex, which Hartmann uses in many places in a sense that is not synonymous with Gefge. Hartmann also says of Gefge that they are processual (prozesshaft) (Hartmann 1950, 445) and dynamic (dynamisch) (Hartmann 1950, 445). And the English word ‘system’ is more susceptible to evoke a “processual” character than the English word ‘complex’. We use the English word ‘system’ to speak of processual structures such as in the expression ‘solar system’, whereas we typically use the English word ‘complex’ to speak of static structures, as in the expression ‘complex of buildings’. Therefore, I judge that ‘system’ is preferable to both ‘structure’ and ‘complex’.

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tem: the solar system. In contrast, water puddles and mountains are neither elements nor systems, but only bits and pieces of systems, for they have no stable processual structures of their own. They are somehow caught in between elements and systems. Hartmann distinguishes between “dynamic system” and “organic system.”3 A dynamic system is a system that is merely inorganic, for instance, the solar system. An organic system is a system that is alive, such as a cell, a plant, or an animal. Following this distinction, the inorganic stratum of being contains merely dynamic systems. The organic stratum is made up of organic systems, which in addition to “taking in” dynamic systems include the novelty of the process of life. Because organic systems “take in” dynamic systems as their elements, the maintenance of the existence of the former depends on that of the latter. But dynamic systems, on the other hand, remain absolutely independent of organic ones; the cell “takes in” molecules as its elements, but the existence of the molecule is independent from that of the cell (Hartmann 1940, Chap. 33). This being said, for Hartmann the organism is the unitary organic system of forms, functions, and processes. It is not identical with the matter from which the organism is constituted. This matter is only a substratum for the forms, functions, and processes. The matter from which the organism is constituted is, properly speaking, nothing else than what is already to be found at the inorganic stratum. It is constantly gained and lost, while what enjoys stability and is novel to the organic stratum is this system of forms, functions, and processes keeping together what would otherwise be inorganic matter. The organism is their unity and mutual interdependence (Hartmann 1950, 517). Another essential feature of the organism is that it has temporal boundaries; it has a beginning and an end, it comes to be and dies. Its coming-into-being is the coming-into-being of the auto-maintaining stable system of forms, functions, and processes, and its death is the collapse of this system. The coming-into-being of the auto-maintaining system of forms, functions, and processes coincides with the completion of the ontogenetic process. The ontogenesis of the embryo is directed toward a final form, and the process is not over until the complete form is at3

There are also different kinds of systems for the higher strata of being. For instance, nations and states are systems belonging to the stratum of the objective spirit (objektiven Geistes) which “take in” people as their elements.

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tained. If we look at such processes as the ontogenesis of multicellular organisms, we see that a formation process is directed toward a specific goal over a whole set of stages. This goal is an immanent end contained in the anlage system. An anlage system is an embryonic area capable of forming a structure: the germ or bud, i. e., the initial clustering of embryonic cells from which a part or an organ develops. The ontogenesis is the unfolding of the anlage system (Hartmann 1950, 626). Hartmann thus rejects preformationism, for the final form is present in the embryo only in potentiality, and the development of the living being is over when the form becomes actual. The embryo is not a preformed miniature animal, but an anlage system developing toward the form. Thus, there is gradual epigenesis of the final form.4 As to the passing away of the organism, Hartmann defines it as “the collapse of the system of interconnected functions, its disorganization, the cessation of the processes” (Hartmann 1950, 518). From the absence of any of the three categories involved ensues death, because “the form cannot be maintained without the process; the process is its permanent renovation. From the beginning it does not exist without the bearing function and without it, it must collapse” (Hartmann 1950, 518). The functions support the processes, and the processes the forms.

6.4 The species Organisms exist in space. We know this because they are concrete, and we know that they are concrete because they are tangible (Hartmann 1950, 562). In contrast, species are not spatial. We know this because they are not concrete, and we know that they are not concrete because they are not tangible. We now need to bring in another premise: for Hartmann, an entity extended in space must necessarily also be in time, whereas the contrary does not hold. In other words, time is more pervading than space (Hartmann 1950, 216 – 217). From the premise that no species are spatial, and the premise that some entities exist in time but not in space, Hartmann infers that the mode of exis-

4

This implies that the Hartmannian criterion for the coming-into-being of the organism is the completion of its form. This point is crucial for my exposition of the second systematic inconsistency in section 6.5.2.

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tence of species is only temporal. Species exist only on the temporal dimension.5 We have seen that Hartmann reduces the organism to the organic system of three kinds of entities (form, function, process). Forms require concrete substrata as their bearer, and because species are not concrete, they cannot have forms. Furthermore, functions exist for the sake of a goal. Whereas the organs of the organism have the functions of maintaining the life of the organism, and the organism has the function of perpetuating the life of the species, the species itself has no goal because it is not the element of a higher-order system for the sake of which it would fulfill a function. Thus, the species cannot have any functions of its own. So, a species has neither forms nor functions. It follows from this that a species has to be a process.6 More specifically, it is a process of life that encompasses all the individual processes of life of all the organisms of the same species. Hartmann uses the expression ‘species-life’ (Artleben), rather than ‘species’ alone to reflect the fact that the mode of being of species is processual only. Since the life of the species is a process that is a unity constituted of a multiplicity of process-elements, namely particular life-processes, and given the other premise that the existence of elements is correlative to that of systems, Hartmann infers that a species is also a system of processes. Thus, the organological category “life of the species” is a combination of the real category of “process” and of the fundamental categories of “system” and “unity.” He also describes it as a process of a higher-order of mag-

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A connoisseur of Hartmann’s philosophy could interpret this feature of the Hartmannian species-concept as inconsistent with the system. Indeed, one could object that since species belong to the organic stratum, and that space goes through the organic stratum, species must be extended in space. But this conclusion does not follow by necessity because although Hartmann says that space penetrates the organic stratum, he does not say that all entities of the organic stratum must be extended in space. He leaves open the possibility that some entities of the inorganic and organic strata are not extended in space. It might not be futile to specify that Hartmann uses the concept of “process” in its most abstract sense. A process is only the activity, the change or the motion, subtracted from the substance or substratum or matter undergoing the activity, change or motion. A process, properly speaking, occurs only in the temporal dimension and, although it is necessarily inherent in spatially extended substances, the process itself is extended only in time. It has no separate reality; it is real only insofar as it is inherent in individual organisms extended in space and time, but as such and in the strict sense it exists only in time.

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nitude and a process on a larger scale (larger than the scale to which the organism belongs). Textual evidence abounds: • The species is a “process of life on a greater scale (Lebensprozeß grçßeren Stils)” (Hartmann 1950, 560). • It is “a process of another order of magnitude (ein Prozeß anderer Grçßenordnung)” (Hartmann 1950, 560). • “It is only a life of another order of magnitude (Es ist nur ein Leben anderer Grçßenordnung)” (Hartmann 1950, 563). • It is “a system of a higher-order (ein Gefge hçherer Ordnung)” (Hartmann 1950, 565). • “It is […] a system of processes (Es ist […] ein Prozeßgefge)” (Hartmann 1950, 565). • “The life of the species is the living whole of a higher-order (Das Leben der Art ist das lebendige Ganze hçherer Ordnung)” (Hartmann 1950, 566). • “The life of the species proves to be in every respect a system of a higher-order (Das Leben der Art erweist sich in jeder Beziehung als Gefge hçherer Ordnung)” (Hartmann 1950, 567). The relation between organism and species is an element-system relation, rather than an individual-universal relation, as in pre-Darwinian definitions of ‘species’. Elements and systems are relative to each other, as we have seen, but in the case of the life of the species, the system enjoys a relative independence from its elements. It might seem that animals have a greater independence than the species because of their free mobility, but for Hartmann this is only an illusion. In fact, the species is more independent than the organism, for the organism is bound to the species by the conditions that the species imposes upon it, as well as by the functions that it has to fulfill throughout its life for sake of the life of the species, such as reproducing (Hartmann 1950, 566 – 567). As he says, “the life of the species […] determines a manifold of continuously superordinated lives of individuals. It encompasses the individual as its element, and disposes of it like if it were a replaceable part” (Hartmann 1950, 567). However close fitting the parallel between organism and species may appear, a species is not, for that matter, itself an organism (e. g., an invisible organism of a higher-order). Hartmann insists that the life of the species is not a life “over” or “beyond” that of the organisms, but that it can exist only “in” them. They are its bearers. Neither is it an occult living-substance, or a merely general entity – nominalistically

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understood – that has no reality. The life of the species runs only through the individuals. And, respectively, from the moment they come-into-being the lives of the organisms are process-parts of the life of the species (Hartmann 1950, 561). The organism “is born within this whole and its life takes part to it for a while; it belongs to it through the hereditary characters of the species, receives it from other individuals and gives it forward to others” (Hartmann 1950, 567). We have seen that for Hartmann, the organism has the function of maintaining the species, but that the species itself has no such function. To perpetuate the species, the ontogenesis of the organism is directed toward a definite form. The phylogenesis of the species, in contrast, has no definite end: “All the other processes of formation are merely reproductive. Only the phylogenetic process is pure production, productive morphogenesis; not a process of formation led by a form, but a process finding its own form for the first time” (Hartmann 1950, 615). Phylogenesis is productive of new forms, whereas ontogenesis is only reproductive of forms already shaped through phylogenesis. For this reason, phylogenesis is not exactly an ontogenesis on a larger scale, like Haeckel wanted to have it, but rather “a morphogenesis on a great scale (großen Stils)” (Hartmann 1950, 615).7 Like organisms, species have their own temporal origins (Entstehung) (Hartmann 1950, 613). This temporal emergence occurs through speciation (Abartung).8 In the same way that ontogenesis is the coming-intobeing of the organism, speciation is the coming-into-being or passing away of the species. Hartmann describes speciation as “the change of the type of species (Die Abartung […] ist Vernderung des Arttypus)” (Hartmann 1950, 613). Mutability and, in the case of sexually reproducing species, the capacity for selection constitute the potential basis for speciation. For Hartmann, speciation is analogical to the truncation of the branches of a tree: life clings to the trunk and the main branches, and those that are normally truncated are the highest and most sophisticated ones, as when dinosaurs disappeared, for instance, the surviving 7 8

E. Haeckel is famous for claiming in 1866 that “[o]ntogenesis is a brief and rapid recapitulation of phylogenesis” (“Die Ontogenesis ist die kurze und schnelle Recapitulation der Phylogenesis”) (Haeckel 1866, 300). I translate Abartung by ‘speciation’. R. C. Kuhn translated Abartung by ‘variation’ (Hartmann 1952, 64), but this is incorrect. Kuhn must have been unaware of the distinction Hartmann makes in Philosophie der Natur between Abartung and Variation (“Abartung ist nicht dasselbe wie Variation.” Hartmann 1950, 613).

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forms of life were the less highly organized and less complexly adapted species (Hartmann 1950, 613). Hartmann says that we distinguish speciation from variation simply from the fact that speciation is the production of a new kind of species, whereas variation is only a qualitative change within a species. Variation is only a qualitative “diversification” (Streuung) of the type of the species. This variability only expresses the lability of the species and does not yet constitute a change in the species. Mere alteration of superficial characteristics, like a modification of colors, is different from speciation, which is a more pervasive kind of modification (ist ein tiefer greifende Form der Umbildung) that affects the organization of the organism (Hartmann 1950, 614). It consists in the acquisition of new organic traits, not only the mere alteration of adhering properties. It is characterized by the increase in difference, formation, function, and disposition, throughout the organization. It is no longer only an alteration, but a new formation (Hartmann 1950, 614).

6.5 Systematic inconsistencies We have seen that, for Hartmann, the systematic coherence of the categories belonging to a same stratum is a principle of concept-formation. It is thus essential that the system of the organological categories (organism, species, ontogenesis, phylogenesis, speciation, variation, etc.) be internally consistent. Assuming that Hartmann’s analysis- and descriptionbased premises are true, and assuming that the dialectical arguments leading to the conclusion that species are processes or systems of processes are valid, i. e., assuming that the reasoning leading to the definition of ‘species’ as process is sound, I can see two potential inconsistencies within the system of organological categories. The inconsistencies are as follows. 6.5.1 No processes are the bearers of change The first inconsistency arises from the conflict between Hartmann’s thesis that species are processes and his thesis that the process of life cannot be a bearer of change. It is a widely accepted traditional philosophical tenet that processes cannot be the bearers of change, at least within the Aristotelian tradition broadly construed. Change occurs in substrata, but not in

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change. As Aristotle has shown, a process cannot be the subject of another process: “there cannot be motion of motion or becoming of becoming or in general change of change” (Physics V, 225b15). Only matter, substance, and perhaps form, quality, and quantity can be subjects of change. Accepting that processes can be bearers of processes would lead to an infinite regress, and is thus rejected by reductio ad absurdum. Hartmann expresses his agreement with this Aristotelian tenet, at least with regards to the “process of life,” in Chapter 62 of Philosophie der Natur, where he examines “Der Lebensprozeß.” Old theories, he says, have substantialized life. They made it, as it were, a substratum (Substrat), a bearer (Trger) of specific qualifications, forms, powers, and fates. Life was then understood as a higher-order matter, out of which was formed individual organisms. This philosophy spans from the old Milesian hylozoism to Bruno and Schelling (Hartmann 1950, 676). This speculative concept of “life,” says Hartmann, must first and foremost be dismantled, for “[r]eal lifeness (Lebendigkeit) does not have the categorial form of a substratum, but of a process” (Hartmann 1950, 676). Hartmann does not explicitly say that the process of life cannot itself be the bearer of processes, but we would be justified to expect that “specific qualifications” (besonderer Bestimmungen) include processes (Hartmann 1950, 676). We can present the aporia as follows: if it were the case that species are processes and that processes cannot be the bearers of change, then species would not be able to undergo change (such as speciation or evolution). But this is absurd, because it is known that species undergo change. The conjunction of the theses “that species are processes” and “that processes of life cannot be the bearers of change” is thus reduced to the absurd. Therefore, either “it is not the case that species are processes” or “it is not the case that processes cannot be the bearers of change.” It thus seems that the Hartmannian system contains an inconsistency. Objection. The solution could be proposed that it is the organisms constituting the species that are the bearers of the speciation and evolution processes; that it is the particular living beings that undergo mutations or that are selected in such a way that they, as a whole, become a group distinct from the one they originate from. Reply to the objection. To this proposed solution could be objected that the change is now predicated of the organisms and not of the species qua process. What underwent the changes in the proposed solution is not the process of life that runs through all of the individual organisms that bear it, but the organisms themselves. So, the change is no more predicated of

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the species, and the life of the species itself merely took a “new direction,” so to say, but even this is only a metaphor.

6.5.2 The speciation event is a vague temporal boundary The second inconsistency arises from Hartmann’s thesis that speciation is a “more pervasive kind of modification (tiefer greifende Form der Umbildung)” (Hartmann 1950, 614). If a kind of entity exists only on the temporal dimension, then its criterion of individuation can only be temporal. Temporal individuation can only be achieved through temporal boundaries. Since species, according to Hartmann, are temporally extended entities, we can only differentiate between them if they have clear temporal boundaries (i. e., events) because we cannot have recourse to any other criteria such as phenotype or geographical repartition.9 What seems to distinguish Hartmannian species, however, is only a difference in degrees of pervasiveness of alteration. But there is no neat boundary between the more and the less pervasive. So the event of speciation appears to be a fuzzy boundary. As a result, species appear to be fiat entities. The aporia gets clearer if we compare the events of coming-intobeing and passing away of the organism with those of the species. We have seen that for Hartmann the organism comes-into-being at the end of the ontogenetic process when its form is completed through an epigenetic process. In contrast, the process of the life of the species has no form of its own. Therefore, unlike the organism, it cannot come-into-being through the acquisition of a form. Objection 1. It could be objected that species can come-into-being through the emergence of new forms in the organisms that constitute them. For instance, a new species would come-into-being when a single embryo, the anlage system of which contains 140 new mutations, completes its form (some biologists believe that 140 mutations are sufficient to jump the species-barrier). First reply to objection 1. This objection could be replied to using a reductio ad absurdum based on a sorites argument.10 Let us assume that 140 mutations are sufficient to jump the species barrier. Proceeding by subtraction, if 140 mutations were sufficient to jump the species-bar9 Because we can predicate neither qualitative nor spatial attributes of processes. 10 By ‘sorites argument’ I mean the paradoxical form, not the multi-premise kind of syllogism.

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rier, so would be 139. If 139 mutations were sufficient, so would be 138. And so on, until only one mutation would be sufficient to jump the species-barrier. But this is absurd. So it seems like drawing a line on such a joint-less continuum could only be a mere decision and not a faithful representation of reality. Thus, there seems to be no objective way of determining how many mutations it should take to jump the species-barrier. Second reply to objection 1. It could also be replied that, logically speaking, the new form cannot be predicated of the species, because qua processes species do not have forms; only concrete substrata can bear forms.11 While it is obvious that the organism has a clear-cut beginning, it is not so obvious that the species does. The event of speciation will never be as clearly identifiable as the embryo’s attainment of its form. The newly attained form of the organism is not an element of the life of the species, it is only an element of the organism’s system. Objection 2. The defender of Hartmann’s conception could also object that in requiring that a definite event be identifiable to mark the temporal limits of species, Hartmann’s critic is committing the linedrawing fallacy, which consists in insisting that a line must be drawn at some precise point when in fact it is unnecessary that such a precise line be drawn. Reply to objection 2. To the line-drawing fallacy objection, it could be replied that there is a clear difference between the event marking the end of the ontogenetic process and the event of speciation and that the difference is such that if only one of them had to qualify as “coming-into-being,” then it would have to be the first. And if it were the case that there can be only one kind of coming-into-being, then the second would not, properly speaking, be a “coming-into-being.” We can see that the aporia is hard to overcome. A possible solution would be to drop the thesis that species come-into-being. We could then admit that Hartmann’s definition of ‘species’ as process is correct. If so, then his analysis of speciation would be incorrect and life on earth would be one more or less continuous stream of life process hardly divisible into different species-lives. This solution has been tagged ‘species nihilism’. Another solution would be to find a way to argue that there 11 As we have seen in the discussion of the first inconsistency, Hartmann thinks that the process of life cannot be the bearer of forms (Formen) (Hartmann, 1950, 676).

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are two kinds of coming-into-being, and that species indeed come-intobeing, however vague the speciation event may seem to us. The present paper is historical, so I leave these philosophical problems open-ended, my only aim here being to point out some aporetic moments surrounding Hartmann’s concept of “species.” However, the fact that Hartmann’s system of organological categories contains aporias should not be regarded as a flaw of the Hartmannian system. For, as we have seen, Hartmann thinks that, whereas the goal of ontology is to represent reality as faithfully as possible, we should not hope to complete the system of categories. What we should do is to continually tend toward the completion of the system. In this sense, we may conceive the inconsistencies exposed above as moments toward the completion of the system and as aporias that have a heuristic, theory-generating function.12

6.6 Acknowledgments Some of the research in preparation for this paper was carried out under the auspices of the Project “Forms of Life” sponsored by the Volkswagen Foundation. I would like to thank Giuseppe D’Anna, Ingvar Johansson, Barry Smith, and Neil Williams for valuable comments. I am also thankful to everyone who commented on earlier versions of this paper presented at the workshop on “Nicolai Hartmann, Biology, and Forms of Life,” Saarland University, Saarbrücken, December 13 – 14, 2007, and at the “Nicolai Hartmann International Conference,” La Sapienza University, Rome, July 19 – 21, 2010.

6.7 References Aristotle (1984), The Physics, in The Complete Works of Aristotle, ed. by J. Barnes, vol. 1, Princeton University Press. Gamp, Rainer (1973), Die interkategoriale Relation und die dialektische Methode in der Philosophie Nicolai Hartmanns, Bonn: Bouvier Verlag Herbert Grundmann. Hartmann, Nicolai (1912a), Philosophische Grundfragen der Biologie, Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht. Hartmann, Nicolai (1912b), “Systematische Methode,” Logos: Internationale Zeitschrift fr Philosophie der Kultur, Tübingen, vol. 3. n. 2, pp. 121 – 163. 12 On the various functions of aporias in N. Hartmann, see (Schlittmaier, 2011).

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Hartmann, Nicolai (1940), Der Aufbau der realen Welt: Grundriß der allgemeinen Kategorienlehre, Berlin: Walter de Gruyter. Hartmann, Nicolai (1950), Philosophie der Natur: Abriß der speziellen Kategorienlehre, Berlin: Walter de Gruyter. Hartmann, Nicolai (1952), New Ways of Ontology, trans. by R. C. Kuhn, Westport (Connecticut): Greenwood Press Publishers. Hartmann, Nicolai (1964), Neue Wege der Ontologie, Stuttgart: W. Kolhammer. Haeckel, Ernst (1866), Generelle Morphologie der Organismen: allgemeine Grundzge der organischen Formen-Wissenschaft, reformirte Descendenz-Theorie. Allgemeine Entwickelungsgeschichte der Organismen, vol. 2, Berlin: G. Reimer. Schlittmaier, Anton (2011), “Nicolai Hartmann’s Aporetics and Its Place in the History of Philosophy,” in R. Poli, S. Scognamiglio, F. Tremblay (eds.), The Philosophy of Nicolai Hartmann, Berlin: Walter de Gruyter. Werkmeister, William H. (1990), Nicolai Hartmann’s New Ontology, Tallahassee: Florida State University Press.

Chapter 7: Nicolai Hartmann’s Theory of Psyche Carlo Scognamiglio 7.1 The struggle against psychologism and the stratification of the real world The goal of this paper is to present Hartmann’s approach to the problem of the psyche, which for him constituted a stratum of reality. The paper also contrasts Hartmann’s theory of the psyche with the contemporary conception of the mind as covering both the elementary functions of consciousness and at least some of the more complex dimensions of personhood, such as anticipation, goal oriented activity and moral freedom. From Hartmann’s point of view, the above-mentioned higher-order properties belong to a different stratum of reality, and assigning them to the psychological stratum amounts to a category mistake. Hartmann acknowledges that the boundary between the psychic stratum and personality raises deep problems, which cannot however be addressed by conflating the psychic and spiritual strata. In this paper, I will first elucidate the idea of psyche1 in Hartmann’s work, paying close attention to the distinction between the lower layer of only-subjective-awareness and the beginning of personal-consciousness. The main problems here are whether the psychic stratum contains the category of subjectivity, and in which sense this category differs from the category of personhood. The discussion will show that Hartmann’s systematic theory of levels of reality induces to analyze the differences between the psychic and spiritual strata from the point of view of their categories. While teleology and historical processes are considered by Hartmann fundamental categories of the spiritual stratum, the endogenous factors that drive psy1

The term ‘psyche’ is here considered more appropriate than ‘mind’, because the latter includes acts that, according to Hartmann, pertain to the spiritual stratum of reality. The distinction will become clearer as the paper unfolds. All translations are mine.

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chic phenomena do not find in Hartmann’s view a complete and unambiguous exploration. In order to properly understand Hartmann’s theory of the psyche, it is important to start from his rejection of psychologism. Psychologism, for Hartmann was the result of an illegitimate extension of psychic categories to non-psychic realms. In his criticism of psychologism,2 Hartmann outlines his own conception of the “psyche.” The theory of the stratification of the real world that Hartmann elaborated during the thirties provides the general framework for understanding his theory of the psyche. Hartmann’s first important philosophical works (Hartmann 1921, 1923, 1962) aim at emancipating philosophy from the neo-Kantian legacy as much as from psychologism. The attempt to find a neutral ground against neo-Kantianism and psychologism shapes Hartmann’s first elaboration of the problem of the psyche. Hartmann fought the battle against psychologism along with phenomenologists especially against the idea that all moments of human activity, from logic to art, must be understood only as a psychic process.3 Hartmann, like many of his contemporaries, found Husserl’s Prolegomena to the Logische Untersuchungen (Husserl 1900 – 1901) decisive for a complete refutation of psychologism. Husserl’s early work provided an important stimulus for Hartmann to elaborate his theory of ideal being, too. In Grundzge einer Metaphysik der Erkenntnis (1921), Hartmann shows that psychologism does not characterize knowledge in a correct way. While psychologists are correct in giving the individual consciousness a decisive role in the process of acquiring knowledge, they were unable to develop a theory of the elements of transcendence in knowledge. For this reason, Hartmann counteracts the reduction of the contents of knowledge to consciousness only. The psychologists’ wrong theory of knowledge makes impossible to solve the problem of truth, 2 3

Hartmann criticizes psychologism in the second chapter of (Hartmann 1921, 17 – 21). “The relationships between phenomenology and psychology are complex, subtle and in some case even ambiguous; and the difficulty of throwing light upon them derives essentially from the contrast between logicism and psychologism that characterized the philosophical environment in which Husserl began his reflections. First and foremost, Husserl wanted to come to grips with the problem of the genesis of mathematics, the formation of numbers; the dilemma resided in the need for either analyzing purely ‘objective’ processes of logic as such or inquiring into their genesis, that is to say, the operations performed by subjects engaged in this discipline” (Ales Bello 2010, 135).

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incorrectly identified with an infra-psychic connection, in the sense of a combination of psychic acts.4 The same argument reappears when Hartmann characterizes personhood independently of the psyche. As a matter of fact, when psychologism deals with moral issues, it reduces all phenomena to psychic processes. In the same period, Husserl also began to draw ethical conclusions from his own research (Husserl 1988). Hartmann’s ethical theories were not influenced by Husserl, however, or by any of the other phenomenologists (except Max Scheler). He began to develop his ethical theory for the same reasons that compelled Kant to separate ethical problems from psychology when he was elaborating his theory of freedom. Kant needed a theory of freedom “purified” from psychic elements. Freedom should be solicited only by the force of moral experience, which appeared to him as defined by an a priori and universal structure, and for this reason unempirical and non-subjective. Defending the thesis that the psychic stratum is distinct from the other levels of reality, Hartmann writes: “It is only very recently, around the last turn of the century, that the dispute about the essential difference between psychic and spiritual being was fought out. The independence and autonomy of the regions of spiritual life and spiritual content from psychic acts and psychic processes first came to light in the debate against psychologism” (Hartmann 1940, 190). Psychologism is not a viable option for characterizing the ontological autonomy of the psychic stratum. Hartmann maintained this anti-psychologistic bias for his entire career. Unfortunately, Hartmann adopts an eminently negative description of psychic phenomena in the sense that he describes the psychic stratum by saying what it is not, rather than by describing its positive features, along with its specific categories. Hartmann wrote a Philosophie 4

In the German philosophical debate between 1890 and 1914 the relationship between logic and psychology was the object of important discussions. Husserl and Frege were two of the main protagonists of the so-called PsychologismusStreit, which arose out of a critical evaluation of John Stuart Mill’s logic. Hartmann didn’t play any special role in this debate. In his work, he discussed psychologism in general, questioning the idea of reducing logic (and ethic) to psychic acts. The psychologistic pretence to explain everything through a single paradigm reveals, for Hartmann, the presence of a reductionist premise. Hartmann wrote that the mistake of reductionism: “is in principle the same as that of biologism and materialism” (Hartmann 1940, 190). Evidently, Hartmann considered the battle against psychologism as part of a general critique of reductionism and dogmatic metaphysics (Hartmann says that this kind of battle represents a critique of every kind of ism).

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der Natur, describing the inorganic and organic strata, and wrote also Ethik, Das Problem des geistigen Seins, and the sthetik in order to describe the spiritual stratum, but he never wrote a book on the psychic stratum.5 Hartmann’s theory of the stratification of the real world leaves open many categorial problems. Hartmann opposes the view that philosophical activity must end into a complete and closed system, because a complete and closed system would preclude further research. Hartmann rather embraces an aporetic approach: philosophy tends toward a system, but always remains aporetic. Thanks to his robust knowledge of the contemporary literature on physics and biology, and maybe also thanks to his passion for astronomy, Hartmann was well aware of the current state of research pertaining to the lower strata of reality and was thus able to provide detailed and accurate descriptions of their categorial articulation. His analysis of the spiritual stratum is also rich and presents interesting aesthetic implications, even if many unsolved aporias remain about the connections among its internal categories. But the psychic stratum remains in the shadow. Hartmann devotes very few pages to the explanation of the categories peculiar to the psychic stratum and, to make things worse, his analysis of the psyche is very obscure. Hence, trying to give an account of his conception of the psychic stratum is a difficult task, but one that I will try to accomplish in what follows. The emergence of the psychic stratum from the underlying biological stratum is characterized by the loss of the property of spatiality. Furthermore, psychic phenomena require new categories, suitable to psychic phenomena. Inorganic and organic beings are extended in both space and time. Psychic processes, however, are extended in time only. Abiding by the categorial laws of strength and dependence, the psychic stratum is based on the organic stratum. Psychic phenomena require living beings as their bearers. Moreover, psychic dynamics are different from either the mechanical nexus typical of the inanimate stratum and from the life-functions characterizing the organic stratum. Finally, Hartmann sees the psychic stratum as an emergent stratum characterized by new categories such as subjectivity, psychic constancy, and psychic causality (Hartmann, 1940, 189 – 199).

5

Martin Morgenstern’s introduction to Hartmann includes a chapter on Hartmann’s philosophy of nature and three chapters on his philosophy of the spirit (ethics and aesthetics), but ignores Hartmann’s theory of the psychological stratum (Morgenstern 1997).

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Before discussing these issues further, it would be useful to consider the terminology adopted in Zur Grundlegung der Ontologie (1935), where Hartmann considers the metaphysical difficulties raised by psychology. In this work, Hartmann’s description of the psyche is based on the following four claims: 1. “There is certainly a real psychic life, independent of the degree of knowledge we have of it, and that kind of life is not identical with consciousness” (Hartmann 1935, 10). Psychic life is seen here almost as a simple “something more” added to instinctual life, to the elementary functions of consciousness, something like a “layer zero” of consciousness. 2. “[Psychic life] flows in the same real time, where physical events flow; a time in which a unique and irreversible succession changes and develops, and reveals itself through the same path of rising and vanishing” (Hartmann 1935, 10). Hartmann’s statement confirms the unity of real time (and therefore rejects any hypothesis of a psychic time different from “physical” time). Psychic processes are irreversible events. This is partially different for spiritual being, which can move itself ideally along the axis of temporality through “anticipation” and “recollection” (Scognamiglio 2010). 3. “[Psychic life] is mutually and variously conditioned by external events” (Hartmann 1935, 10). The physical and organic strata are at the basis of the psyche, and their changes determine – depending on a nexus that remains ‘opaque,’ unclear – modifications in the psyche. Obviously, every higher stratum, having greater autonomy in respect to lower strata, can influence them in return with its “action” on it. 4. “Only non-spatiality distinguishes it [sc. psychic life] from external events” (Hartmann 1935, 10). Here Hartmann explicates the novum, the emergence of the psychic stratum from the lowest two strata. This description of the psyche identifies neither the lower boundary between the biological and the psychological strata nor the higher boundary between the psychological and the spiritual strata. More precisely, the real problem for Hartmann is to distinguish the “psychic” from other types of phenomena. Before describing the categorial structure of psychic phenomena, the first difficulty is to determine which phenomena are psychic. It is apparent that finding suitable criteria is far from obvious. For instance, Edith Stein, in her approach to a phenom-

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enological foundation of psychology, begins from the analysis of very simple and immediate phenomena (Ales Bello 2010, 138), such as “I feel cold.” From Hartmann’s perspective, however, the “I” in “I feel cold” is not a psychic phenomenon. Indeed, for Hartmann the “I” is an essentially ethical category and its existence is possible only in relation to a second person (“you”). While in general terms we can assert that the psychological “I” is different from the ethical “I,” according to Hartmann, in fact, there is no psychic “I,” in the sense that the level of subjectivity of the “I” requires self-consciousness, and therefore it pertains to the spiritual stratum. The psyche presents only the simplest forms of subjectivity (that is, a subjectivity without personhood, because personhood is a category of the spiritual stratum of reality). The psyche, then, does not give us a full sense of what the “I” is. In Ethik, Hartmann claims that the opposition between “I” and “non-I” is a psychic opposition only indirectly; and that the attribution of the “I” to a subject is the result of a linguistic violence (Hartmann 1962, 233). According to Hartmann, psychic phenomena seem to depend on a bundle of tangled forces governed by some kind of unconscious energy. The reason for the residual role played by the psychic stratum in the ontology of Hartmann is possibly due to the strong influence exerted by the Hegelian theory of objective spirit. As Hartmann announces in the first pages of Das Problem des geistigen Seins, Hegel’s intuitions about the life of objective contents that dominate and determine the spiritual sphere were relevant for his own research. Thus, from one side, Hartmann defends the individual spirit from the reductions of objectivity with his theory of personhood. On the other side, he reduces the space for individuality, interposed between the biological and the spiritual stratum.

7.2 The idea of the psyche in Hartmann’s Ethik The volumes of the Ethik, together with Das Problem des geistigen Seins, abound of references to the problem of the psyche. However, whereas Hartmann opens up a rich and new perspective on this topic, his work suffers from a great confusion of proposals. One of the most important theories in Hartmann’s critical realism is the ontological description of the relationship between subject and object, brought together through “transcendent acts.” The classical example of a transcendent act is knowledge, construed as a real relation between a subject and an object.

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But knowledge always follows previous affective and emotional contacts with the objective world. Hartmann names the acts pertaining to this pre-gnoseological tendency “transcendent emotional acts.” Hartmann explains that these kinds of acts include axiological-reactions (Hartmann 1940). Only persons, in fact, can intend values (Hartmann 1962). This seems to elevate transcendent emotional acts to a stratum higher than that of the psyche. With emotional transcendent acts, as with knowledge, we are already at a spiritual level. However, it is counterintuitive to consider phenomena such as “experiencing,” “suffering” and “being affected” (Erleben, Erleiden, and Betroffen sein) as non-psychic events. In contrast to Brentano, Hartmann does not speak of psychic “acts,” because “acts” for Hartmann pertain to the structure of personal spirit: the first moment of personhood, according to him, is the emerging activity (Aktivitt) of the “I” (Hartmann 1962, 345). Influenced by Scheler, Hartmann describes emotional acts as instantiated by the sphere of feelings (which, according to Hartmann, are not a psychic activity, but an “axiological” activity). Axiological feelings indicate the reaction of man in the midst of situations such as social and physical events (all kind of circumstances, both social and material). Within this perspective, man takes a position (Stellung nehmen) through feelings, and is constituted by their axiological look. However, according to Hartmann, “taking a position” implies a feeling that is structured by a value. If feelings are already value-laden, they seem to be moral, and not psychic, phenomena. Indeed, Hartmann thinks that feelings can be taught, and education, like morality, is a cultural phenomenon. Psychic phenomena, however, do not seem to be susceptible to be taught. Morality and education, then, as well as knowledge, have neither a psychic origin nor a psychic structure. They reveal an over-personal inter-subjective nature. The relationship between ethics and psychology provides important insights about the nexus between feelings and the psychic stratum. Hartmann says that psychology can pave the way for a better understanding, from a categorial point of view, of the psychic (seelische) structure of feelings, intentions, passions and volitions. Psychology, however, as a science of facts, is unable to grasp the contents of ethical reality; and therefore the latter remains extraneous (fremd) to the possibilities of psychology (Hartmann 1962, 69). In this important passage, Hartmann holds that there is a relationship between the sphere of the psyche and those components of feelings that do not depend on values. In a way, this grounds moral phenomena in the psychic realm. Psychology

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therefore can tell us something about the origin of feelings, but does not have anything to say about the configuration induced by values.

7.3 The unconscious dimension of the psyche Hartmann thinks that psychic life is eminently unconscious. He distinguishes the unawareness of animals from the awareness of humans. The former is obscure in itself (in the sense that animal awareness is at the same time blind and for us difficult to see). The latter amounts to the beginning of a conscious life. Hartmann’s unconscious is thus different from the psychoanalytical model, which would be, in Hartmann’s schema, assigned to spiritual being. Hartmann admits a group of phenomena that can be considered “unconscious.” Unconscious phenomena constitute the lower boundary of the psychic stratum; they are the point of contact between the organism and psychic being. In his words: “The psychological unconscious bounds (grenzt) consciousness from a different direction than spirit, or, perhaps more precisely, it determines consciousness from a different direction” (Hartmann 1933, 50). Instinct is unconscious, but it is not the only form of unconscious life. It is something internal to the psychic stratum, but we must admit an unconsciousness in the spiritual life, too. Hartmann is reflecting on the way the objective spirit embodied in the form of historical tradition and cultural influence inscribes itself in the life of the personal being.6 According to Hartmann, if instinct is an unconscious subcategory of the psyche, then it is a functional side of subjectivity. This idea of the psyche would accommodate low-level cognitive operations that do not require any form of finalism or intentional action. For example, perception, spontaneous memory and attention, elementary emotions.

7.4 Psychic subjectivity Das Problem des geistigen Seins clearly expresses the view that the category of subjectivity should not be entirely assigned to the psychic stratum, where there is only “functional awareness” or “functional subjectivity.” 6

Probably, Hartmann observes, this kind of unconscious is the real object of psychoanalysis, and not instincts. So, Freud’s research is best understood as a theory of the spiritual being, rather than as a psychology (Hartmann 1933).

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Subjectivity should instead be ascribed to the spiritual stratum, where we find personal and teleological forms of subjectivity. Consciousness, in fact, exceeds the spirit, which explains why Hartmann admits both a non-spiritual consciousness and an ultra-conscious-spirit. Spiritual being with the inclusion of consciousness presents a moment of personal being. The part of consciousness that is of a non-spiritual nature is psychic subjectivity. As shown in Philosophie der Natur, the difference between these two layers of consciousness is provided by free determination, which is present only in the spiritual stratum of reality. Psychic subjectivity must then be considered heteronomous, as psychic functions share traits with biological functions, and are, significantly, found in the higher animal species, and therefore should be distinguished from mere tropisms. While this kind of simple consciousness (psychic subjectivity) – that Hartmann connects to the presence of sensorial structures – is determined by law-like regularities that manifest themselves in organisms, psychic functions produce a non-spatial type of movement, even if it is not self-determined. If we reduced the field of psychic functions to instincts only, the psyche could be assimilated to the biological stratum. Furthermore, the emergence of spiritual objectivity provides Hartmann the way for distinguishing human life from animal life. As I pointed out above, subjectivity is internally divided. Functional consciousness, common to humans and animals, is understood here as presenting qualities very different from awareness. In Ethik (1962) Hartmann, influenced by Helmuth Plessner, says that for animals the totality of the psychic life is unconscious, while in humans the psychic stratum is “enlightened” by the form of consciousness that emerges with spiritual life (Plessner 1928). According to Hartmann, only what enters in the light of awareness becomes spiritually available to man. Thinking the parts of the world as its objects, consciousness divides itself from them, and builds itself as subjectivity. In other words, the psyche is subjectivity, too, but in an unconscious way. Outside of the domain of psyche, spiritual being emerges as consciousness. This difference produces an important implication in the field of the Determination. Indeed, the spiritual being, as a form of subjectivity in the moment that it distinguishes itself from objects, is – as is the psyche – placed in a situation, in a context of circumstances, but its response to its conditioning is qualitatively different from following natural laws. The contrary stance is freedom, namely the teleological determination emerging as a fundamental category of spiritual being. Spiritual

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consciousness, with its capacity to look toward values (Hartmann 1962), creates, out of its freedom, personal being. Spiritual consciousness apparently constitutes a passage from animal to spiritual life that impinges on our analysis of the psyche, for the implication, here, is that humans share with inferior species the psychic categories, but not the spiritual (so that, in the end, we cannot say that animals are persons). In Neue Wege der Ontologie Hartmann writes that psychic life does not characterize human beings; eventually human beings present a more developed psyche (Hartmann 1947, 233). This is confirmed in Das Problem des geistigen Seins, where Hartmann describes animal psychology in terms of an adhesion to the world that makes the animal incapable of taking a distance from it. The double aspect of the animal psyche is exhibited by, on one side, a constant tension in the animal’s relationship to the world, and on the other, by its own instinct. The tension is defined in a constant oscillation between craving and fear, which is ultimately biological in origin, and so its consciousness adheres to the organism in an instrumental way. Through a series of experiments it is possible to show that some animals are able to learn by experience (e. g., Skinner’s box), and are able to come up with new solutions (see Köhler’s studies on insight). But, Hartmann writes, their “inventiveness remains limited, and their driving forces never exceed environmentalinstinctual solicitations” (Hartmann 1933, 109). This is an entrance point to the stratum of consciousness, the emergent spiritual one: “The spiritual consciousness, instead, emerges with the dissolution of that tension, with the progressive deliverance from impulses, the detachment from the thing. And certainly it is not limited to the life-interests of the individual” (Hartmann 1933, 109). Only through this difference can we understand how, for Hartmann, the non-spiritual consciousness “is not a real subject,” because it does not have real objects in the fullest sense, in which the object presents itself with its distance or its apartness from, the subject. Objectivity emerges together with spiritual subjectivity to rupture the instinctual tension. And to have an object in front, is not only exemplified in knowledge, but also in “reception, perception, experience, vision, intelligence, discovery” (Hartmann 1933, 156). These subjective acts are spiritual acts quite independent of psychic activity. This is where transcendent emotional acts fit in Hartmann’s scheme: they do not concern psychic life, but they are “the way in which the real world is given to the person” (Hartmann 1933, 180). Transcendent emotional acts contain not only emotions or feelings, but also acts of evaluation.

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7.5 Psychic constancy Time, for Hartmann, is the most pervading category of reality; it traverses all four strata. Time is more fundamental than space because not all the strata are spatial (Hartmann 1940, 62 – 64). Furthermore, time determines the distinction between real being and ideal being. Substances are spatiotemporally extended entities. But psychic and spiritual beings are only temporally extended. So, whereas physical and living beings qualify as substances, psychic and spiritual beings do not. Therefore, they require another criterion of identity. This criterion is found in the category of constancy, which is a temporally but not spatially qualified category. To understand this reasoning, it is necessary to examine Hartmann’s idea of the relationship between processes and objects. If reality is processual, how is it possible to distinguish one object from another within the universal becoming? Hartmann observes that everything that is real is in a process, but what we intend as an object presents itself to a subject with a stability that endures during the process. Subjective consciousness is in process, and its correlative objects are characterized by a degree of speed that constitutes the true essence of stability. This points to a weakness in Hartmann’s theory of categories, because it seems evident that process has swallowed up objectivity and made it an empty category (Hartmann 1933, 88 – 92). The danger here is to lose the category of substance. Yet constancy applies to spiritual being better, since personhood shows a sort of stability in time (obedience to norms, habits and routines). The same thing can be said of mentality, culture, and artworks. But in which sense can constancy be attributed to psychic being? This point seems problematic because, in Hartmann’s ethics, we learn that the “identity and originality of the self” (Persçnlichkeit) is a spiritual result (Hartmann 1949, 1962), not a psychic phenomenon.

7.6 Psychic causality At this point, an unsympathetic reading might attribute the weaknesses of Hartmann’s presentation of psychology to his lack of knowledge of the scientific research in psychology. However, it is useful to consider that, in spite of the development of Gestalt studies and psychoanalytical research, during the first half of the twentieth century psychology remained a heterogeneous field of warring schools. While psychology is

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now better institutionalized, it still embraces radically different approaches. For Hartmann, every stratum has it’s own kind of determination (Hartmann 1940, 313 – 316; Scognamiglio 2010), and determination is a relationship that describes a passage from conditions to conditioned, from causes to effects, from choosing an aim and realizing it; the category of determination implies the category of process: no determination without process, but also no process without its determinations. Hence the inorganic world has “mechanical” determinations, and the organic sphere has “vital” determinations, the psychic stratum has also its form of determination. Among the obscurities we have outlined above, endogenous determination is the most difficult to analyze. By listing some of the simplest phenomena of this stratum such as perception, memory, unconscious behavior, primitive emotions, a clear difference with the phenomena of the inorganic and organic strata can be observed. Despite this obvious phenomenological difference, it is unclear whether the underlying type of determination of the psychic stratum is different from that of the lower strata because we don’t have cognitive access to the type of determination at work in the psychic stratum. The various schools of psychology display a panoply of different explanations of the kind of determination active in psychic processes (which, we should remember, apply to the psyche not as Hartmann defines it, but to a generally broader notion of “psyche”). For example, analyzing cognitive models of memory, we recognize a tendency to evoke inorganic causal models of explanation. Algorithms often seem to represent a cause-effect dependence between mental states. In Gestalt theories of perception, some kind of holism undermines simple cause-effect explanations, while insight theory also puts forward an explanation that cannot be broken down into clear and additive sequences. Rogers’ and similar theories of human relationships present some systemic and self-contained aspects; while in Skinner’s box, with the introduction of the “goal,” we are really above the inorganic stratum, but not sufficiently above the organic one. However, behaviorist theories can help us distinguishing between organisms that are sensitive to reinforcement and those that are not. According to this approach, organisms that are sensitive to reinforcement present emerging properties. The psychoanalytic approach, on the other hand, describes the functioning of the unconscious, the preconscious and the conscious with a causal model in which causes can determine effects that may occur after a long period of latency. One may

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speculate from this difference among models of explanation that the psychic stratum has a kind of determination independent from the inorganic and organic, but also from the spiritual stratum. Moreover, the concept of “psychic determination” is not yet defined and needs further specification. In Ethik, Hartmann denounces the mistake of conflating psychic and physical becoming, concluding: the way in which we represent more exactly the course of psychic becoming is relatively “unimportant” (dabei relativ gleichgltig) (Hartmann 1962, 642). Why “unimportant”? I suppose that for Hartmann the emergence of the psychic stratum is self–evident. Unfortunately, however, he does not describe psychic causality in an exhaustive way. The lacuna in the description of the psychic stratum affects the whole theory of stratification as well. Hartmann often uses a mechanical relationship of cause-effect to explain this or that psychic process. As J. Forsche has emphasized, “Hartmann speaks of psychic causality, of a “consciousness’ determination,” of “motivational nexus,” and so on […] but in Hartmann’s thinking we can find a sort of basic prospective mistake, which no one saw completely” (Forsche 1965). According to Forsche, Hartmann reads psychic determination through a mechanical model. He thinks that Hartmann’s claim to establish an over-building relationship as one of the principles in determining the levels distorts the task of constructing a proper kind of determination that is endogenous to the psychic sphere. As psychophysical phenomena prove, the only possible relationship must be consistent with over-forming. So, in the psyche we find a type of determination that is analogous, but higher to the causal nexus. Analogous, because it is inspired by a mechanical model, higher because it is non-spatial.

7.7 The emergence of the spiritual stratum The emergence of the psyche from the biological sphere results in the presence of a weak form of consciousness, simple awareness, whose fundamental character is a sort of individual imperviousness. In other words, as Hartmann observes, “the psychic being is private, exoteric, non-accessible: it is possible to have a contact with it, but not to penetrate in it” (Hartmann 1933, 92). We can empathize with someone else’s pain, but the result is simply a combination in the empathizing individual of two emotional states. Each one of us cannot escape from his or her own psychic sphere. Things are different in the case of the spirit.

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The sharing of a thought implies a total objectivity of the content, even if two or more persons reason about it. Where the psychic separates persons, the spirit connects: “If the fundamental characters of spiritual being were the ones of the personal spirit, it would be difficult to identify the difference between the sphere of the spirit and the sphere of psychic life” (Hartmann 1933, 71). This sentence explains the problem of the boundary between psyche and spirit. Hartmann’s criteria of privacy and commonality do seem to clearly assign the former to the psyche and the latter to spirit. Now, in making this distinction, Hartmann is struggling with the concept of person, which seems to include both the specificity of private psychic experience and the fundamental commonality of thought. However, Hartmann does see personhood as a new category that hovers, in its emergence, over the psychic life, at the cost of a certain incoherence in his thinking: the location of consciousness, which seems to be shared between the objective spirit and the private psyche. In Das Problem des geistigen Seins, Hartmann leaves the problem open: “How the non-spiritual consciousness passes into the spiritual, we cannot discuss here. But undoubtedly, thanks to this it starts something special, a novum that is not logically deducible from the series of layers; instead this novum adds itself to the series, analogously to the relationship between the organism and inorganic nature” (Hartmann 1933, 48). However, the dimension of this problem remains: the person on Hartmann’s account is pulled toward the spiritual domain, and in this process we find ourselves faced with the same problem, i. e., the problem of a determination that is endogenous to its strata. For the spiritual being qua person seems to be the product of at least two determinations from two different strata. Indeed, the person’s socio-historical determination appears to be very obscure. Sociologists and historians fail to pay sufficient attention to this problem. A group, a nation, or a population probably does not have the free determination endogenous to the spiritual domain because there is no comparable entity like the individual consciousness at play here, where the representation of the aim can become a causal factor. However that may be, tradition and social influences must perform a role in individual deliberative choices in the form of ideas, sensibility, habits, languages, and so on. Then, in a dialectical system, it is legitimate to argue that, in the human sphere, the determining factor in spiritual processes depends on individual acts, but that at the same time these acts determine choice-processes through external modification of the evaluative capacity that they help constitute. In the end, Hartmann

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writes to sanction his fundamental distinction: “the problem of spiritual being is outside of the competence of psychology: this is a certainty that, after some years, can be considered to be acquired” (Hartmann 1933, 48).

7.8 Lukács’ on Hartmann In his tentative sketch for the elaboration of an ontology of social being, György Lukács presents an objection to Hartmann’s stratification, especially to the relationship between the psyche and spiritual being (Lukács 1984). According to Lukács, psychic life can only be analyzed in connection with social life. We cannot consider the first without considering the latter. He interprets Hartmann’s analysis of the organic sphere as implying that, in reality, there is no separation between individuals and species (Lukács 1984; Hartmann 1950), but admits that abstractly, the psyche can be seen as independent from a collective context. In the end, Lukács keeps the distinction between psyche and sociality only as the result of an abstraction that has become possible after thousands of years of social life. According to Lukács, all the results of research in the fields of anthropology and ethnology confirm the hypothesis that humans can develop a psychic life only in a simultaneous interaction with society. However, Lukács has his own bias in identifying the psychic stratum with the individual mind, and the spiritual stratum as appertaining to a social collectivity, which is obviously a radical departure from Hartmann’s thesis. Hartmann attributes individuality both to psychic and spiritual beings. Universality pertains only to ideal being (and – to be precise – ideals have a kind of individuality as well).7 Real beings are individuals. Also, psychic being is not the equivalent of “mind.” In our larger sense of the psychic life, we do find a combination between mind and sociality, but in following Hartmann and restricting the psychic life to internal forces and elementary functions, we carve out a sphere that borders upon, but is not interchangeable with, social life. According to Hartmann, it is certainly a mistake to completely identify spiritual being and sociality. Spirit is considered by Hartmann to be articulated in a very complex system of dialectical relationships between 7

Hartmann admits this in some passages of Ethik (Hartmann 1962, 516) and in a more explicit way Das Ethos des Persçnlichkeit (Hartmann 1949).

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the three moments of personal spirit, objective spirit and objectified spirit. The moment that appears nearer to the notion of sociality is certainly the second one. But, reading with attention Hartmann’s pages, we cannot elude the fact that he intends that moment of spiritual life as nonsuperimposable on social phenomena. Hartmann explains this difference: “Social phenomena as such are still not spiritual phenomena, even if they are closely braided with them” (Hartmann 1933, 191). Objective spirit rests on the community, but it is not a collective. It has to be intended as a “common spiritual patrimony” (Hartmann 1933, 191), and not a community of individuals. So, between the notion of sociality, and the dimension of the objective spirit we find a communication and a likeness, but not an overlap or a conflation. The idea of dialectic between individual and collective, or between mind and sociality, is present in Hartmann’s description of spiritual being, translated into a dialectic between personal being (more similar to the idea of “mind” than to that of “psyche”), and objective spirit.

7.9 Conclusion Hartmann’s conception of the boundary between psychic and spiritual being provides space for elementary psychology, endogenously determined by lower and higher strata. Hartmann never succeeded in solving the problems that arose from these endogenous determinations. Hartmann’s theory of psyche is a useful perspective upon which to ground a non-reductionist approach to the human sciences, even if it still is a preliminary effort requiring further inquiries into the difficult problems posed by the psychic stratum of reality.

7.10 References Ales Bello, Angela (2010), “Causality and Motivation in Edith Stein,” in: Roberto Poli (ed.), Causality and Motivation, Frankfurt: Ontos Verlag, 135 – 150. Forsche, Joachim Bernhard (1965), Zur Philosophie Nicolai Hartmanns. Die Problematik von kategorialer Schichtung und Realdetermination, Meisenheim am Glan: Hain Hartmann, Nicolai (1921), Grundzge einer Metaphysik der Erkenntnis, BerlinLeipzig: De Gruyter. Hartmann, Nicolai (1923), Die Philosophie des deutschen Idealismus. I: Fichte, Schelling und die Romantik, Berlin-Leipzig: De Gruyter.

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Hartmann, Nicolai (1962), Ethik, Berlin: De Gruyter (1926). Hartmann, Nicolai (1933), Das Problem des geistigen Seins. Untersuchungen zur Grundlegung der Geschichtsphilosophie und der Geisteswissenschaften, Berlin: De Gruyter. Hartmann, Nicolai (1935), Zur Grundlegung der Ontologie, Berlin: De Gruyter. Hartmann, Nicolai (1938), Mçglichkeit und Wirklichkeit, Berlin: De Gruyter. Hartmann, Nicolai (1940), Der Aufbau der realen Welt. Grundriss der allgemeinen Kategorienlehre, Berlin, De Gruyter Hartmann, Nicolai (1947), Neue Wege der Ontologie, in: Nicolai Hartmann (ed.), Systematische Philosophie, Stuttgart: Kohlhammer (1943), 199 – 311. Hartmann, Nicolai (1949), Das Ethos der Persçnlichkeit, in Actas del Primer Congreso Nacional de Philosophia, Mendoza 1949, vol. I, Univ. Nacion. De Cuyo, 300 – 308. Hartmann, Nicolai (1950), Philosophie der Natur. Abriss der speziellen Kategorienlehre, Berlin: De Gruyter. Husserl, Edmund (1900 – 1901), Logische Untersuchungen, Halle: M. Niemeyer. Husserl, Edmund (1988), Vorlesungen ber der Ethik und Wertlehre 1908 – 1914, Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers. Lukács, György (1984), Nicolai Hartmanns Vorstoß zu einer echten Ontologie, in Id. Zur Ontologie des gesellschaftlichen Seins, vol.I, Darmstadt: Luchterhand, 421 – 467. Plessner, Helmuth (1928), Die Stufen des Organischen und der Mensch, Berlin: De Gruyter. Scognamiglio, Carlo (2010), “Anticipation and Future Vision in N. Hartmann’s Ontology,” in: Riel Miller and Roberto Poli (eds.), Understanding Anticipatory Systems, special issue of Foresight, 12, 50 – 58. Stein, Edith (1970), “Beiträge zur philosophischen Begründung der Psychologie und der Geisteswissenschaften,” in: Jahrbuch fr Philosophie und phnomenologische Forschung, vol. V, 1922, republished in Max Niemeyer Verlag.

Chapter 8: Nicolai Hartmann’s Approach to Affectivity and Its Relevance for the Current Debate Over Feelings1 Robert Zaborowski 8.1 Introduction Although Hartmann wrote no monograph devoted to affectivity, in several passages he puts forward remarks that can and should be taken into consideration where a discussion of philosophical standpoints on affectivity is engaged.2 When I say ‘should’ this is because, in my view, the patterns applied by others as solutions to problems that permeate the research on affectivity lead to aporias which standpoints as Hartmann’s might prevent from. 1

2

The paper was presented at the Nicolai Hartmann Society International Conference in Rome, July 19 – 21, 2010 and was completed during a visit to Cork and Dublin in Sept./Oct. 2010 sponsored by the Royal Irish Academy. I thank Frederic Tremblay for proofreading my English and for his remarks. All remaining imperfections are my own. For clarity, let me specify that I use the word ‘feeling’ as referring to a general category of all affective phenomena. This is a suitable rendering of the German Gefhl, e. g., in translations of Hartmann 1932, e. g., chap. 8d: “This priority of feeling has nothing to do with empiricism” (Mit Empirismus hat dieses Prioritt des Gefhls nichts zu tun.); chap. 49e: “In this eminently transcending act is accomplished the extension of one’s sphere of feeling and experience to another person” (In diesem eminent transzendenten Akt vollzieht sich die Ausdehnung der Gefhls- und Erlebnissphre auf die fremde Person.). But, in the same chapter, some lines earlier, Das Gefhl, die Gesinnung – und schließlich Wille und Tat is rendered by: “Emotion, disposition, ultimately will and deed.” More consistently, in translations of Scheler 1927. See also Jung: “German psychologists have already recommended the suppression of the word Empfindung for feeling, and propose that one should use the word Gefhl (feeling) for values, while the word Empfindung should be used for sensation” ( Jung 1977, 30). I use, in turn, ‘affectivity’ to encompass feelings in their horizontal variety (as modi, say, sorrow, love, joy, fear, anger, love) as well as in their vertical variety (as levels: pleasure, joy, happiness, bliss, or liking, sympathy, love, friendship, etc.).

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As it is, Hartmann is quite absent in the current discussion on feelings and it would be pointless to lay out a list of examples here. Suffice it to survey indexes and bibliographies in books and handbooks on emotions. In what follows, I attempt to shed light on two aspects that are crucial to the analysis of affectivity and yield proof of how integral approach to affectivity is fruitful. The first one is to treat affectivity as understood in hierarchical perspective. The second one, which to some extent is a corollary of the first, is his view on the passivity and activity of affectivity. Current research on affectivity is often limited to a reduced realm, i. e., to only one dimension of human reality. One of the prevailing contemporary tendencies is to analyze affective phenomena via the neurosciences and to treat them as bodily states. As it was aptly put forward by Vivian McGill, “obviously obstructive emotions, such as suffocating rage and paralyzing fear, are usually emphasized, whereas obviously wholesome and facilitating emotions, such as mother love and scientific curiosity, are mentioned, if at all, only parenthetically” (McGill 1954, ix). Another approach is to emphasize spiritual reality. In doing so poetical language or metaphors are often adopted. For this reason it hardly grasps affectivity in a way that is satisfactory for philosophy. Moreover, it neglects bodily phenomena. It is, therefore, in a complete disagreement with the former approach about the nature of affectivity. To this extent, we often meet insurmountable controversies between the two approaches, which, however, are as different as their scopes. Although conflicting, they are both partially correct, notably in application to the realms they investigate. Furthermore, being one-sided and exclusive, they are both partially incorrect. Hence, Thomas Dixon is right when observing that “[w]hile physicalist definitions reduced everything downwards (to animal passions and physiology), anti-physicalist ones reduced upwards (to mind and cognition)” (Dixon 2003, 195). It can be acknowledged that the awareness of “the multidimensionality of the phenomena” – G. E. R. Lloyd’s expression (Lloyd 2007, 84) is uncommon. But even if it turns out to be accepted, as in the case of Dixon or Lloyd, the supporters of the thesis of “the multidimensionality of the affectivity” are skeptical, if not pessimist, concerning the possibility of presenting a satisfying description of affectivity. They state, for instance, that “[a] corollary of this is that we need more than one theory, and more than one category, to do justice to the phenomena we are seeking to include in the category ‘emotions’” (Dixon 2003, 245) or go even so far as to assume that “there is

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no single discourse that should have precedence over all others” (Lloyd 2007, 84).3 I prefer to assert with James Hillman that “[t]he great variety of hypotheses has been necessary to shed light on the phenomenon from many sides,” to insist that “[t]hey do not annul or disprove each other” and to hope that by dint of the hierarchical approach we can evade “one-sidedness” and “simplification” (Hillman 1960, 243, 246).4 And this is where Hartmann’s approach proves to be of great help. The starting point can be Hartmann’s distinction between levels of reality: (1) inorganic level (anorganische Schicht), (2) organic level (organische Schicht), (3) psychic level (seelische Schicht) and (4) spiritual level (geistige Schicht). All of these levels are equally real and four types of sciences: physics, biology, psychology and humanities (Geisteswissenschaften) correspond with them. I must recognize there is no explicit reference to affectivity in this distinction. But this is the point where a graft of affectivity seems to me relevant.

8.2 A hierarchy of affectivity At first glance, one could suggest to speak about affectivity analyzed from four different standpoints: a physics of affectivity (analysis of affectivity in terms of forces, i. e. movement forward vs. movement backward), then a biology of affectivity (analysis of drives: impulse to vs. repulsion from), then its psychology (analysis of tendencies: preferring vs. avoiding), and, at the very end, the philosophy of affectivity (analysis of feelings: love vs. hatred). My intention, however, is different. I apply Hartmann’s distinction between levels of reality to affectivity because of their different objects: feelings directed to the realm of matter (the inanimate), of life, of psyche, and to the spiritual realm. Consequently I would distinguish four kinds of feelings according to four kinds of objects of affectivity. Complementarily, the model could be explicated in the following way: at the first level of affectivity objects appear to its subject as material, at the second as living, at the third as psychic, and 3 4

This is a reformulation of an older claim. See e. g., Cobb: “no person with only one point of view can explain the whole phenomenon of emotion” (Hillman 1960, 246). As he states it, “[t]he method must do more than combine: it must integrate” (Cobb 1950, 110).

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at the fourth as spiritual. This perspective fits in with a general theory of intentionality: in feeling x as material we deal with a different object, say x1, than when feeling it as psychic (x3).5 The usefulness of this graft is demonstrated immediately by the fact that the fourfold distinction of affectivity explains, among others things, a phenomenon of affective blindness or deafness. If a person does not feel this or that object appropriately, namely in accordance with what it actually is, but in a reduced form, this is because she is not sensitive to the level on which it actually is. In other words, although she feels this object, it appears to her only on the levels to which she is sensitive, for example a spiritual object happens to be felt as biological insofar as she is sensitive, let us say not necessarily structurally but just in this act, to the first and the second levels. As to complete blindness it can be asked whether it should not be marked off from a partial one. In fact, we deal not only, even if more often, with a reduction of what is higher to what is lower (a kind of, say, an affective myopia), but also with an over-interpretation of what is lower as what is higher. This is a case of a tendency to feel any object encountered as spiritual (this is, plainly, an inverse deformity, a kind of an affective hyperopia). This latter hyperopic tendency or disposition could be qualified as pan-spiritualist. Over-interpretation occurs, for instance, when someone who lacks sensual sensitivity and tends to upgrade – here we would say ‘up-level’ – anything he meets to higher level. He is inclined to interpret anything as spiritual, any fear, any unpleasure as the highest despair or, alternatively, do not experience them at all.6 Example of such blindness to anything except the highest, the most noble values and objects is provided by Th. Mann in his early novel Disillusionment (1896): Not a miscarriage in small, unimportant matters, but the great and general disappointment which everything, all of life, has in store? […] So this”, I thought, “is a fire. This is what it is like to have the house on fire. Is this all there is to it?” […] yet my greatest torture resided in the thought: “So this is the greatest pain we can suffer. Well, and what then – is this all?” […] So I dream and wait for death. Ah, how well I know it already, death, 5 6

Hartmann goes as far as saying that values are known by an organ that perceives values (Wertorgan), the function of which is to apprehend values directly in an emotional act (act of feeling: Gefhlakt), a feeling of value (Wertgefhl). This is not to be confused with a case when someone is mistaken about naming his own states: calling happiness pleasure, etc., indeed a very common phenomenon, which, however, says more about naming feeling than feeling as such.

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that last disappointment! At my last moment I shall be saying to myself: “So this is the great experience – well, and what of it? What is it after all? (transl. from German by H. T. Lowe-Porter).

The hyperopia-case can probably not be analyzed in accordance with Hartmann’s view, given that the spiritual is based on the material and does not exist without it. But if we refer to the realm of senses, we see that, for instance, just as the colorblindness is not an argument against the existence of colors,7 so the optical illusion of seeing a color is not an argument in its favor. And, in the same way, grasping a spiritual value is not an argument in its favor, if that grasping has been defective. Either myopic or hyperopic we deal with an epistemological distortion – either structural or only dispositional – of an ontological order. Now, the same – a complete blindness or simply a myopia on the one hand and hyperopia on the other – can occur while experiencing affective features and objects. In this sense such over-interpretation is formally a reduction to the same extent as is the opposed procedure of reducing the spiritual and psychic levels to material and biological levels: it reduces the whole to one level, regardless of the fact that on this occasion the level is higher or the highest one. Reduction, either downward or upward, is still reduction. Hence, it is right to say that an attempt to explain the whole of affectivity by a physicalist or anti-physicalist, spiritual or anti-spiritual approach is reductionist in the similar fashion as to experience affectively at only one level of reality where more levels of the reality occur. The same happens on a more general scale of all sciences: what physics states is not false but is only a part of the story and, on the same token, humanities, even if they are deployed on the highest level, neither describe the material world nor are supposed to do so. A paradigmatic personality would be, accordingly, one that is disposed to experience all levels of feelings: in case of joy not only pleasure, but also delight, happiness, and bliss, in case of sorrow no only unpleasure, but also sadness, unhappiness, despair and so forth for other groups of particular feelings. Such personality has the potentiality to ex7

See Hartmann: “Now values announce themselves as enlistments of emotion. […] But there are many authenticated delusions as to values […] Perhaps there is also an enlargement of the field of valuational vision. But the fact is that we always survey only a limited section of the realm of values, while we remain blind to the other sections. […] Values do not change, but our insight into them changes” (Hartmann 1932, chap. 16e).

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perience an affective plenum. By her affective life she could cover objects according to their unfolding on four levels of reality. If we agree that the structure of affectivity can be grafted on the structure of the world, then we must subscribe to the following view: either any particular feeling is of such and such character that it is aimed at only one level of affectivity or a given feeling as such penetrates a whole spectrum of affectivity from the lowest to the highest level.8

8.3 Laws of affective strata I now pass on to a more particular achievement made by Hartmann, notably to his laws of stratification,9 which to a large extent can be applied to the issue of affectivity.10 According to Hartmann they are helpful in apprehending “the immense multiplicity of variations […] oneness and unity of the whole and the heterogeneity of the different levels” (Hartmann 1953, 73). This is substantially what is needed in researches on affectivity, given that “no psychological phenomena are organized on such different levels of complexity as are affective reactions” (Elmgren 1950, 142).11 Although in Hartmann the law of distance between levels12 is specified as fourth of the third series of laws (laws of categorical levels: Gesetze der kategorialen Schichtung), in view of affectivity it seems logical to start with this law, because Hartmann says that “[t]his demarcation is the ‘distance of strata’ – a phenonemon characteristic of […] hierarchical order” (Hartmann 1953, 76). Logic is meant here in the sense of logic of affectivity because the difference of levels is its main feature and, in my opinion, as such lies at the origin of discussions and disagreement as to the nature and characteristic of the phenomenon of affectivity. The law of distance between levels points to the fact that “[t]he as8 I would advocate the former and suggest that the same is valid for any object – pleasure cannot be related to material as well as to spiritual object, happiness to psychic as well as to biologic one. 9 They are displayed in Hartmann 1940, III, I-IV, §§ 42 – 59. 10 Or the ontology of affectivity. 11 More recently Aaron Ben-Ze’ev observed that “[e]motions […] involve all types of mental entities and states that belong to various ontological levels [sic!]” (Ben-Ze’ev 2010, 41) However, he didn’t develop this claim and he didn’t make any references to Hartmann either. 12 Hartmann 1940, § 54: Gesetz der Schichtendistanz.

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cending series of ontological forms constitutes no continuum” and “are clearly marked off against each other” or, to put it another way, there is the “distance of strata”” (Hartmann 1953, 76). It means that different levels do not develop continuously, but in leaps. Retranslated into affectivity-related language and understood as the law of distance between affective levels, it would explains why we find such a variety of affective phenomena for which, as quoted above, “we need more than one theory, and more than one category” (Dixon 2003, 245). The law of distance applied to affective levels allows us to better grasp the complexity of affective phenomena, without reducing them to bodily or spiritual phenomena. For instance, the hierarchical kinds of fear in Homer can be reconstituted as follows: 1. Pre-fear: hesitation, anxiety, 2. Organic fear: physical fear, shiver, repugnance, tremble, panic, 3. Psychological fear: instantaneous fear, total fear, fear of astonishment, fear tout court, fright, 4. Empathetic fear: fear-consciousness; and the proposed hierarchy of courage is as follows: 1. Impulsive courage, 2. Courage-strength, 3. Partial courage: courage to begin, courage to end, resistance, 4. Integral courage: psychological courage, courage of distinction, courage-experience.13 Evidence for gaps is conveyed by the fact that you cannot obtain a higher form simply by increasing the lower one, say, by intensifying it. Similarly, happiness is not a greater joy, nor is joy a greater pleasure. They belong to three different levels, say, bodily, psychic and spiritual. Likewise, resentment is not anger, nor is disappointment amazement. Gaps between strata give rise to what Hartmann calls categorial novelties (Hartmann 1953, 74). Consequently, a higher feeling contains a novum that is absent at the lower level of feelings. The law of categorial novum 14 states that with every higher level something absolutely new, a categorial novelty, ap13 See Zaborowski 2002. I seek to refer to result of the research on fear and courage in Homeric epics. For obtaining support from Homer’s epic for Hartmann’s laws, it would be necessary to express them into the language of affectivity. 14 Listed as 3.3. See Hartmann 1940, § 53: (Gesetz der Abwandlung und) Gesetz des Novums.

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pears and exceeds the lower type (see Hartmann 1953, 74). Applied to the realm of affectivity, we may call it the law of the affective novum. This law posits that the higher affective category contains a specific affective novum, which is not included in the lower affective level(s). It is manifest that, for example, the act of loving has a novum in addition to liking and, in turn, friendship has its own novum, say, reciprocity, absent in loving. Likewise, a reciprocity of friendship is by no means an increase in the intensity of love; it is rather a duplication of the relation of love.15 Hartmann focuses on the “[a]ct and content of psychic life [which] are also a novelty in comparison to the organic processes. Again novelties in relation to these two types are the creations of the communal spiritual life, such as language, knowledge, law, and morality” (Hartmann 1953, 75).16 Using Homer’s description of fear as model it can be claimed that, for instance, fear of astonishment is not a greater form of physical fear but a subclass of fear, the former being purely bodily, the latter psychological. More generally, organic fear differs from pre-fear by degree of subject involvement (the latter is partial and the former is total), psychological fear from organic fear by part of subject involved (the former is mental and the latter is bodily), and hierarchical fear from psychological fear by fear-related relation (the latter is fear of something or someone because of oneself and the former is fear for something or someone because of something or someone).

15 E.g. Scheler 1973, 108: “[…] “spiritual sympathy” (which is the foundation of friendship […].” 16 A striking parallel of Hartmann’s law can be found in the empirical (psychiatric) work of Da˛browski, who formulated a thesis about the non-derivability of multilevel from unilevel structure. See Da˛browski 1996, 25 – 26. Consider the following: “These two structures appear to have nothing in common. […] unilevel and multilevel […] cannot be thought of as opposite poles of a continuum. This contradicts the expectations of some theoreticians that lower levels of organization logically imply the higher ones […] The point is that there is nothing in the unilevel structure that would suggest hierarchization because multilevelness, by definition, already is hierarchical and multilevel. Therefore, it follows logically that the potential for multilevel development must exist already in the original endowment, i. e. in the development potential. […] The very fact that man can overcome biological control and determination demonstrates that the power of the potential for multilevel development is greater than the combined power of primitive drives and needs.”

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According to another of Hartmann’s laws, the law of recurrence,17 “[i]n the superimposition of ontological strata, there are invariably present those categories of the lower stratum which recur in the higher. But never are there categories of a higher stratum which recur in the lower” (Hartmann 1953, 75). Applied to affectivity, it could be called the law of affective recurrence. According to this law, the affective categories of the lower stratum invariably recur in the higher affective categories. But the categories of a higher affective stratum never recur in the categories of a lower. Let us take an example from the Magna Moralia to find an exemplification of this law, limited to pleasure and happiness: “there is no happiness without pleasure” (Magna Moralia, 1204a). However, pleasure is possible without happiness. I end with the law of freedom18 positing that “[t]he recurrence of lower categories never determines the character of the higher stratum. […] a categorial novelty […] is independent of the recurrent categories and consists in the appearance of new categories” (Hartmann 1953, 76).19 In the specific case of affectivity this means that the higher feelings are independent from lower feelings. One example of the recurrence of affective categories is the ladder of ascending love in the Symposium: When a man has been thus far tutored in the lore of love, passing from view to view of beautiful things, in the right and regular ascent, suddenly he will have revealed to him, as he draws to the close of his dealings in love, a wondrous vision, beautiful in its nature; and this, Socrates, is the final object of all those previous toils. First of all, it is ever-existent and neither comes to be nor perishes, neither waxes nor wanes; next, it is not beautiful in part and in part ugly, nor is it such at such a time and other at another, nor in one respect beautiful and in another ugly, nor so affected by position as to seem beautiful to some and ugly to others. […] So when a man by the right method of boy-loving ascends from these particulars and begins to descry that beauty, he is almost able to lay hold of the final secret. (Symp. 210e-211b, transl. H. N. Fowler)

17 Listed as 3.1. See Hartmann 1940, § 51: Gesetz der Wiederkehr. 18 Listed as 4.4, it belongs to the fourth series (laws of categorial dependence: kategorialen Dependenz). See Hartmann 1940, § 59: Gesetz der Freiheit. 19 I mentioned only four of the laws. For a full account of the sixteen laws, see Dziadkowiec 2011. This is not to say that Hartmann’s remaining laws – esp. (3.2) the law of modification (Gesetz der Abwandlung) or (4.1) the law of strength (Gesetz der Strke) or (4.2) the law of indifference (Gesetz der Indifferenz) – are inapplicable to affectivity. To investigate their relevance to affectivity would constitute – as far as I can think – a promising work.

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Here’s another example from Plotinus concerning his account of the sage as victim: No doubt, despite all that has been said, it is idle to pretend that this is an agreeable lodging; but what cries in the Bull is the thing that feels the torture; in the Sage there is something else as well, The Self Gathered which, as long as it holds itself by main force within itself, can never be robbed of the vision of the All Good (Enn. I, 4, 13, transl. S. MacKenna).

A third example is provided by Max Scheler: A serene face remains serene, even while crying. The fact that there is no blending into one feeling, as is the case in feeling of such diverse levels of depth, points to the fact that feelings are not only of different qualities but also of different levels of depth (Scheler 1973, 331).

A similar example is given by Epicurus in a letter reported by Diogenes Laertius: On this blissful day, which is also the last of my life, I write to you. My continual sufferings from strangury and dysentery are so great that nothing could augment them; but over against them all I set gladness of mind at the remembrance of our past conversations (Epicurus, Letter to Idomeneus in: D.L. X, 22, transl. R. D. Hicks).

Nevertheless, imagine an inverse example of someone who, though in a good and pleasant physical condition, being neither hungry, nor thirsty or sleepy, and even relaxed, is far from being happy, such as the narrator of In Search of Lost Time, who is troubled about accomplishment of his work. These examples show that the categories of the higher affective levels have a certain autonomy with regards to the lower ones. At present I would suggest to draw a parallel between Hartmann’s idea of the stratified structure of the world and Scheler’s four-level stratification of emotional life. According to Scheler the stratification of affective life is based on depth of feeling.20 The criterion for distinguishing these levels is, however, expressed by a metaphorical term, the fact which Scheler himself must be aware of, given that he puts it (“depth”) once in italics, once in commas, sometimes both. What is Scheler’s explanation of the metaphor of depth is not easy to say, but he insists on a clear-cut difference between the concepts of depth and 20 See Scheler 1973, 332: “I find this phenomenal character of the ‘depth’ of feeling essentially connected with four well-delineated levels of feeling of our entire [sic!] human existence.”

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of intensity.21 In my view, depth can be defined as a degree of involvement of the subject in the act of feeling. Obviously, you cannot be affectively immersed in a material object as it were more than a material object, unless you produce a kind of illusion as adduced above. And if you are affectively immersed in a spiritual object only as it were, so to speak, a material object, it would be inadequate and your affective intuition would be superficial. Thereby, Scheler and Hartmann agree: an affective act is correct if, by its depth (Scheler) or level (Hartmann), it captures the essence of the object. Otherwise, the affective grasp is defective. This account faces problems that I cannot examine here. Let me just allude to, for instance, the problem of whether Hartmann’s laws as applied to affectivity are to be regarded as static or dynamic. Should we consider that a man’s affectivity is one-, two-, three- or fourfold forever, or whether it can be developed throughout his life? What is at issue is not only an ontogenetic perspective, but also the affective life as such of an adult man. Can we expect a man to develop, under specific conditions, his affective life, e. g., from the second to the third level? Or is it set for life? Isn’t there any prospect of development? If levels of affective categories are discrete, how can we bridge the levels? It is not easy to see how this could be conceived. It could be that there is an actual development from a lower level (already existing) to a higher one (which comes into being) or that all levels are innate, at least as dispositions. If the latter is the case, how can we explain the presence or absence of this or that level at any particular stage of life? Etc.22

8.4 Passive and active affectivity The second issue is the distinction between affective passivity and affective activity. Here, too, simplistic approaches are often resorted to. Some say that emotions are exclusively passive, while others sustain that they are exclusively active. In this regard, too, however, feelings

21 See Scheler 1973, 330. 22 For a kind of middle solution, see Da˛browski’s theory of positive disintegration: some structures are innate but a development to a limited extent is possible as well: the extent of the development depends on several dynamisms, one of them being what he calls “third factor.”

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are heterogeneous and a more nuanced point of view is required.23 As Cecil A. Mace said in his paper on emotions and the category of passivity: “My thesis is that they [psychologists and philosophers] have all (or most of them) been right in some important respect [in what they have written about emotion]. They have all, in various ways and degrees, contributed to our understanding” (Mace 1961 – 1962, 142). I would like to add that they are also all wrong insofar as they consider their claims as unique, exclusive or definitive. Both parties – supporters of passivity as well as of activity of affectivity – are partially right as well as partially wrong. Yet, Hartmann takes into account the complex nature of feelings and considers some of them as passive while others as active. As a matter of fact, Hartmann distinguished three kinds of emotional acts. Each kind is transcendent, which means that through emotional acts a subject encounters objects existing outside of himself.24 The first group, emotional and receptive acts,25 relates to the present moment: to experiencing what happens to us, what concerns us (e. g., hostility or respect), “to live through,” “to endure our fate” and “to endure the hard reality,” etc. The second group, emotional and prospective acts,26 pertains to the future: “to expect,” “to foresee,” “to forebode,” “to be anxious,” “to hope,” “to desire.” The last one, emotional and spontaneous acts,27 includes acts aimed at the future. In contrast to the two former groups, acts aimed at the future are rather active than passive and they are teleological (e. g., not to wait for the future, but to act and interfere in the future). The question is now whether this threefold distinction has something to do with Hartmann’s fourfold hierarchical perspective. Is the last group related or limited to spiritual affectivity or does it have something to do with lower levels as well? Are emotional-receptive acts purely or preponderantly passive and emotional-prospective acts passive-active or active-passive? I would be inclined, at least provisionally, 23 For a historical overview of the issue, see Zaborowski 2010. 24 See Hartmann 1931, 15, Hartmann 1965, 172. 25 See Hartmann 1931, 16: rezeptive Akte, Hartmann 1965, 163 f.: emotional-rezeptive Akte. 26 See Hartmann 1931, 20: emotional-antizipierenden Akte, Hartmann 1965, 173 f.: emotional-prospektiven Akte. 27 See Hartmann 1931, 22: Aktivitt oder Spontaneitt., Hartmann 1965, 182 f.: emotional-spontane Akte.

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to put forward a following parallel between three types of acts – experiencing, foreseeing and acting – and four levels of affectivity: • Material level = emotional-rezeptive Akte = purely passive affectivity, • Biological level = emotional-prospektiven Akte = passive & active affectivity, • Psychic level = emotional-prospektiven Akte = active & passive affectivity, • Spiritual level = emotional-spontane Akte = purely active affectivity. More particularly, I would like to suggest that emotional and receptive acts are involved in experiencing the material world, while emotional and spontaneous acts occur in experiencing the world at the spiritual level. If I am correct in understanding that for Hartmann activity means “transformation of being,” then, in the case of affectivity it would mean “transforming an object by a kind of affective act or affective power.” At the level of physics affectively man cannot be affected but from matter. In his relation with the physical world he can experience this world affectively but he cannot act upon it affectively. He can handle it by manipulating it physically, not affectively. For example, man is physically subjected to gravity. If he can, unlike a stone, oppose gravity and by some action avoid rolling down a hill as a stone must do, this is not by means of his affectivity. He can resist but his resistance, even if affective, has no affective impact on the world of matter. In other words, he can resist the gravitational pull but his resistance does not exert any affective influence on matter. In my relation with the world of matter I am affectively passive: if I like, desire, or fear an object that I experience as material, my act of liking, desiring, or fearing does not produce any affective effect on it. In biology, this influence is marginal. Man can interfere with animals, e. g., by taming them, and, we are told, cats and dogs are able to guess human moods or feelings. The realm where man can fully deploy his affectivity is spirituality. Here, not only is he acted upon, but he also acts upon. At this level, being affectively active or passive means having or failing to have an influence on the object of feeling. In the realm of spirituality, man is free and reaches his fullest degree of spontaneity. Hence: the higher the level of reality, the stronger the affective impact produced. At the highest level, man’s affectivity would be the most creative and independent. By the same token, man would be more capable of transforming his spiritual affectivity than his automatic or mechanical reaction to the physical world. For example, he can transform his own body, but to a limited extent only,

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more than matter but less than psyche. If he tries to go beyond or deny his physical condition completely, this will bring about his death. In this context let me refer to another, parallel interpretation. It goes as far back as ancient Greece. The Greek language contains six general terms referring to affectivity: thumos, phren, noos, aisthesis, pathos, logos.These words express the phenomenon of affectivity according to some of its different aspects or degrees of passivity and activity. These aspects are: • Aisthesis and pathos = epithumic (resp. pathic) affectivity  in Hartmann: emotional-Rezeptive Akte, receiving and experiencing, • Thumos and phren = thumic affectivity  in Hartmann: emotional-spontane Akte, moving toward, distinguishing and separating, • Noos (nous) and logos = logotic affectivity  in Hartmann: emotional-prospektiven Akte, intuition, integration and calculating.28 A further inquiry would show whether we deal here with a mere historical coincidence or whether by dint of such comparison we can advance the theory of feelings. Additionally, with a view to passivity and activity of affectivity, Hartmann’s threefold division of emotional acts could be compared with Edith Stein’s (1989) threefold model of the depth of feelings. Because of a passive character, Stein’s first level, i. e., the living body – all kinds of sensations or sensual feelings, e. g., pleasantness of a savory dish, the comfort of a soft garment – could correspond to Hartmann’s emotional and receptive acts. Her second level, representing the psycho-physical individual29 – would fit Hartmann’s emotional and prospective acts. Finally, Stein’s deepest level of feelings, in other terms the (purely) spiritual person, her sentiments of love and hate etc., might be closer to Hartmann’s emotional and spontaneous acts. Both descriptions relate to the most active of all emotional phenomena.30

28 See Zaborowski 2008. I argue that logos is to be taken as a kind of supreme synthesis of affectivity and rationality, i. e., feeling and thinking. 29 Exemplified by moods, as she calls them, “colorings” of giving acts, e. g. cheerfulness or melancholy. 30 I thank an anonymous referee and Roberto Poli for having drawn my attention to this point.

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8.5 Conclusion Hartmann’s general ontology is useful for the analysis of affectivity. As Hartmann observes on a more general scale, “[t]he laws of stratification involve the rejection of old and engrained prejudices. They put an end to the strife between the extreme view on the question of whether the world is ruled by spirit or by matter. The world can be ruled neither from above nor from below, because in every stratum it includes a categorial novelty” (Hartmann 1953, 84). This is true for the world of affectivity as well: higher feelings are reducible neither to lower feeling nor are the lower to be replaced by the higher. It turns out that the confusion of a higher feeling with a lower one should be avoided just as the confusion of a lower feeling with a higher one. Relations between several levels are to be investigated and Hartmann’s laws are one way to analyze them. In opposition to both upward as well as downward reductionism, Hartmann’s elaborated and refined approach permits a fuller explanation of the entirety of the phenomenon of affectivity. His view of the world as complex and stratified is suited for the intricacy and richness of this phenomenon. It is a pity that his model is too rarely, if at all, taken into consideration in the discussions over affectivity. This model could help to solve the controversy between an exclusively biological approach and an exclusively spiritual approach to the nature of emotions as well as between the approach that emphasizes passivity and the one that emphasizes activity.31 In Hartmann’s philosophy, the heterogeneity of affectivity is considered a fact and explained by means of a stratified approach. Being a source of tremendous insight and tools, his work opens new vistas for analyzing the realm of affectivity.

8.6 References Aristotle (1933), Magna Moralia, Cambridge MA – London: Harvard University Press – William Heinemann Ltd. Ben-Ze’ev, Aaron (2010), “The Thing Called Emotion,” in: P. Goldie (ed.), The Oxford Handbook of Philosophy of Emotion, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 41 – 62. 31 See McGill 1954, 23: “The theory of integrative levels holds that biological causation is basic and necessary to psychology and the social sciences, but not sufficient,” Hillman 1960, 243 f on integration.

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Cobb, Stanley (1950), Emotions and Clinical Medicine, New York: W. W. Norton & Company, Inc. Da˛browski, Kazimierz (1996), Multilevelness of Emotional and Instinctive Functions, Lublin: TN KUL. Dixon, Thomas (2003), From Passions to Emotions. The Creation of a Secular Psychological Category, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Dziadkowiec, Jakub (2011), “The Layered Structure of the World in N. Hartmann’s Ontology and a Processual View,” in: this volume. Elmgren, John (1950), “Emotions and Sentiments in Recent Psychology,” in: M. Reymert (ed.), Feelings and Emotions – The Mooseheart Symposium, New York: McGraw-Hill, 142 – 146. Epicurus (1925), Letter to Idomeneus in: Diogenes Laertius, Lives of Eminent Philosophers, transl. R. D. Hicks, Cambridge MA – London: Harvard University Press – William Heinemann Ltd. Hartmann, Nicolai (1931), Zum Problem der Realittsgegebenheit, Berlin: PanVerlagsgesellschaft M. B. H. Hartmann, Nicolai (1932), Ethics, transl. S. Coit, London: George Allen & Unwin Ltd. Hartmann, Nicolai (1940), Der Aufbau der realen Welt. Grundriss der allgemeinen Kategorienlehre, Berlin: Walter De Gruyter. Hartmann, Nicolai (1953), New Ways of Ontology, transl. R. C. Kuhn, Chicago: Henry Regnery Company. Hartmann, Nicolai (1965), Zur Grundlegung der Ontologie, Berlin: Walter de Gruyter & Co. (1st ed. 1935). Hillman, James (1960), Emotion. A Comprehensive Phenomenology of Theories and Their Meaning for Therapy, London: Routledge & Kegan Paul. Jung, Carl G. (1977), The Tavistock Lectures, in: C. G. Jung, Collected Works, vol. 18: The Symbolic Life. Miscellaneous Writings, transl. R. F. C. Hull, London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 5 – 35 (1st ed. 1935). Lloyd, Geoffrey E. R. (2007), Cognitive Variations: Reflections on the Unity and Diversity of the Human Mind, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Mace, Cecil A. (1961 – 1962), “Emotions and the Category of Passivity,” in: Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society 62, 135 – 142. McGill, Vivian J. (1954), Emotions and Reason, Springfield: Charles C. Thomas Publisher. Plato (1925), Symposium, transl. H. N. Fowler, Cambridge MA – London: Harvard University Press – William Heinemann Ltd. Plotinus (1957), The Enneads, transl. S. MacKenna, Cambridge MA – London: Harvard University Press – William Heinemann Ltd. Scheler, Max (1927), Der Formalismus in der Ethik und die Materiale Wertethik, Halle a. d. S.: Max Niemeyer. Scheler, Max (1973), Formalism in Ethics and Non-Formal Ethics of Values. A New Attempt toward the Foundation of an Ethical Personalism, transl. M. S. Frings, R. L. Funk, Evanston: Northwestern University Press. Stein, Edith (1989), On the Problem of Empathy, transl. W. Stein, Washington D. C.: ICS Publication.

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Zaborowski, Robert (2002), La crainte et le courage dans l’Iliade et l’Odyssée. Contribution lexicographique  la psychologie homrique des sentiments, Warszawa: STAKROOS. Zaborowski, Robert. (2008), Sur le sentiment chez les Prsocratiques. Contribution psychologique  la philosophie des sentiments, Warszawa: STAKROOS. Zaborowski, Robert (2010), “From Thumos to Emotion and Feeling. Some Observations on the Passivity and Activity of Affectivity,” in: History & Philosophy of Psychology 12, 1 – 25. Zaborowski, Robert (2011), “Max Scheler’s model of stratified affectivity and its relevance for research on emotions,” in: Appraisal 8, 3, 24 – 34.

Chapter 9: Hartmann on the Unity of Moral Value Eugene Kelly At the start of a previous work on the philosophy of Max Scheler (Kelly 1997), I quoted a brief passage from the autobiography of the American writer Henry Adams. It applies to the question that concerns me in this paper: What happened if one dropped the sounder into the abyss – let it go – frankly gave up Unity altogether? What was Unity? Why was one to be forced to affirm it? Here everybody flatly refused help […] (Adams) got out his Descartes again; dipped into his Hume and Berkeley; wrestled anew with his Kant; pondered solemnly over his Hegel and Schopenhauer and Hartmann; strayed gaily away with his Greeks – all merely to ask what Unity meant, and what happened when one denied it. Apparently one never denied it. Every philosopher, whether sane or insane, naturally affirmed it (Adams, 431 – 32).

For ethics the question of the unity of values is especially significant. For moral disunity is a form of moral confusion among humankind; yet it seems to be a fundamental fact to which everyone’s experience can testify. Think of Hunding’s brooding over his unknown guest in Wagner’s Die Walkre: “I know a wild race / What others deem noble is not holy to them.” Nicolai Hartmann pursues the theme in several places in his Ethics. He writes in Book I (1932), 74, “the unity of ethics is the fundamental demand which raises its voice categorically above the plurality of morals.” Yet if there is unity in ethics, it must lie deep beneath this diversity of human moral belief as its foundation.

9.1 Unity in the Protagoras But what might the nature of this unity be? What are the conditions for its discovery, if it exists? How would such unity affect our judgments of right and wrong? Why, finally, would the discovery of unity have importance? Why not, as Adams says, merely drop the idea into the sea,

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and enjoy without moral commitment the diversity of what men and women call good? The locus classicus for the study of the question of the unity of values is Plato’s Dialogues. The search for the interconnectedness and possible unity of the virtues is discussed in Charmides, in Laches, in Protagoras, and in Statesman. Protagoras contains the most sophisticated discussion of the matter. At 329 b-d, Socrates asks Protagoras (Plato 1961), “Is virtue a single whole, and are justice and temperance and holiness parts of it, or are these latter only names for one and the same thing?” Three possible ways of answering this question are considered. We may assert the substantial identity of the virtues (each is a different name for the same thing), their logical reciprocity (one implies the others essentially, and is implied by them), or the organic interwovenness of their functions (as parts to whole). Protagoras answers in the third sense: “Virtue is one, and the qualities you ask about are parts of it, as parts to whole,” that is, organically, as the features of the face to the whole face, each feature different from the others in function, but each contributing to the integrity of the whole. None of the virtues will conflict if they are properly ordered in a fully-functioning human being. Protagoras denies reciprocity, the second option, while Socrates appears at first to maintain a limited form of it: Socrates notes that wisdom requires temperance for its achievement, as justice requires wisdom. No one possessing wisdom would fail to act justly. Cases purported to the contrary would be thrown out a priori: either Andrew Jackson was not a truly brave man or it was not unjust to keep slaves. However, Protagoras’ idea of organic or functional identity does not imply reciprocity; perhaps a man can have one feature of virtue but not the others, as one can be sharp-sighted but still partly deaf, or may, as in Gogol’s short story, lack a nose entirely, and yet still have a face. Socrates attacks the analogy by reference to the fact that although a nose does not resemble an ear in either form or function, holiness significantly resembles justice. He arrives at this point (333 b, c) by noting that each thing can have only one contrary and, since it is agreed that wisdom and temperance are both contrary to folly, they must be the same, and he wins assent to this idea from Protagoras. Socrates eventually attempts to establish the unity of virtue in the first manner, by specifying the common content of all things, such as the virtues, whose common content is goodness. Hence they are substantially identical. But what is goodness, the common content of all things that are good? Socrates identifies it as their pleasantness. All striving after

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the good as the final end of action requires knowledge of the pleasant and the means to achieve it. Since life with one’s fellows is essential to one’s own happiness, a calculation of what is pleasant will be other-regarding as well as self-regarding. A reductionism similar to that of Socrates is found among naturalist philosophers of a pragmatic kind, who see the unity of values emerging from the common structure of the drives. All values are different names for what serves and satisfies the system of needs and urges that emerge from the evolutionary process.

9.2 Hartmann’s initiative Such a reduction of the good to a single phenomenon, that of the pleasant, or, later, to the “Greatest Happiness Principle” or to the Categorical Imperative brings good and evil to a point, as Nicolai Hartmann calls it, that is, to something simple and plainly comprehensible, and gives to moral striving a unity of purpose. This unity is a fundamental moral requirement, for without it little could be achieved. True, human purposes are many, and “all types of morality are necessarily exclusive and tyrannical” (Hartmann 1932, I, 79). Yet philosophical ethics must stand above exclusive and heterogeneous moral claims, and be their unity. A new standpoint upon which we can begin anew to assault the notion of unity in ethics was provided, according to Hartmann, by his older one-time colleague, Max Scheler, in the form of material value-ethics. The foundational phenomena to which the moral consciousness is directed are not norms or virtues, but the values themselves, awareness of which is necessarily prior to the cognition of norms or virtues. The term “a priori” has not only an epistemological function as an adjective referring to a kind of knowledge, but it is a noun designating cognitive contents, or “materials” that are prior to but present in acts of judgment upon the natural moral standpoint. Values are objective entities and cannot be created or destroyed by human volition; they are prior to and condition such judgments. Hartmann notes that we can choose to lie, but not to make lying good. He compares values to Platonic essences although unlike them they are metaphysically inert; they are realized not through themselves, but either accidentally (the beauty of a sunrise) or by human volition. Values can be explored phenomenologically, and our knowledge of values can grow through such inquiry.

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A phenomenology of values requires an eidetic act that is isomorphic with the Husserlian reduction, but it “brackets” not the existence of what is intuited, but the affirmation of the value given. This is no doubt difficult when we are exploring the values that are functional in our own culture or our own ethos, for we are already committed to affirm them. But only by bracketing these affirmative commitments can we achieve insight into the fullness of value that is necessary for a study of their systematic unity. For unlike the three proposals in Protagoras, the unity of the table of values that Scheler and Hartmann seek is not reciprocal, reductionist, or organic. Socratic reductionism was anathema to them, for it ignored the enormous fullness and diversity of the realm of value. It is not reciprocal, for material value-ethics is not looking primarily for the logical or empirical conditions of the application of a term. It is not organic, for that kind of unity is merely metaphorical, and values belong to a realm that is sui generis. The unity they seek is synthetic, and requires a balancing-out of oppositions arising from the diverse moral burdens, responsibilities and injunctions that values place upon us. Plato maintained, as Hartmann himself points out, that ideas are symploke, that is, interwoven; each extends its essence beyond itself, and becomes enmeshed in the entire system of ideas and values. The notion gives scope to dialectics, the process by which philosophers seek out this interconnectedness across apparent oppositions. Scheler’s account of material values has borne considerable fruit in this regard. It places the realm of values in an ideal space, in which discontinuous strata of different types of values are found. The strata are vertically arranged, that is, each stratum contains values that are higher or lower in worth to contiguous strata. Scheler identified five dual strata of pure ideal values and disvalues: Pleasure/pain, useful/worthless, vital/ sickly, beautiful, true, good/ugly, false, evil, and holy/profane. The strata are irreducible, that is, they cannot be derived from each other. Thus no synthesis among them is possible. A fundamental hiatus exists between goods- and situational values, which are carried by things and events, and moral values, which are carried by persons. The lower goods- and situation-values make the higher moral values possible, and the lower, in some cases, reappear in a transformed and novel way in the higher stratum. Hartmann rejected Scheler’s religious conviction that there is a universal order of the heart, which is the Deity’s noetic loving attunement to created things according to their relative worth. All values, according to Scheler, are unified in the mind of God. But to Hartmann, the idea of a universal Ordo amoris impedes ax-

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iological inquiry by requiring it to adhere to a pre-given criterion of the unity of values. But Hartmann agrees that material values function as an a priori in the ethos of persons and communities or in what Scheler calls the “subjective” Ordo amoris. They make possible and condition all their normative judgments. To Scheler’s vertical structure Hartmann adds a horizontal dimension containing the values present on the same vertical plane. Values equal in their relative worth can be in conflict with each other. In his doctoral dissertation, Scheler had noted that justice and brotherly love (agape), which belong among the spiritual values, are opposed. Justice requires the ignoring of what is personal about the one judged when a judgment is to be made. The judge measures the one judged for his actions as a citizen, and not as a person. He cannot love him as a brother, for that would impede the justice of his judgment. Here a formula for a releasing and redeeming synthesis of the two seems not to be possible. Hartmann holds out the hope that this appearance of opposition may be a consequence of our ignorance of elements of the realm of values which, once discovered, would permit of synthesis. The only hope for such synthesis is a thorough exploration of the realm of values. Do the values that have appeared at this early point in their phenomenology possess a discernable internal order of some kind, or do they contain a pattern in their “valuational space” that they “fill out” as it were? And, when we possess a fuller grasp of the entire tableau of values, will it enable us to see how justice and brotherly love might be reconciled, and might manifest themselves without opposition in human character? To use Scheler’s metaphor, what appears from a distance as a “palette daubed with paint” may appear as a ravishing structurally unified painting when we approach it with the right understanding.1 Hartmann proposes what we might call two shortcuts to value-discovery and synthesis. The first is the utilization of ontological categories as a heuristic device in the exploration of values. The realm of value appears to be in some ways isomorphic to the ontological categories, and it appears to be subject, as are the categories, to some kinds of laws that 1

“It may well be that this ‘palette daubed with paint,’ when seen from a correct distance and with proper understanding, will gradually assume the interconnection of sense of a grandiose painting, or at least of the fragments of one. And in this painting, one will be able to see mankind, mixed as it is, beginning to take possession, through love, feeling, and action, of a realm of objective values and their objective order, a realm that is independent of mankind as well as of its own manifestations” (Scheler 1973, 296 – 97).

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condition their content. The second explores the discoverable laws that condition the content of values. Here Hartmann extends the Aristotelian notion of the human virtues as a mean, that is, as conforming to a law of synthesis of their ontological and axiological elements. A few examples will suffice to give us an idea of Hartmann’s initiative regarding the oppositions among values and the means to a synthesis of them. I chose only those examples that are relevant to the larger point I propose at the end of this paper.

9.3 Categorical oppositions The first set of Hartmann’s categories of being that appears in axiology contain oppositions and give us what Hartmann calls the antinomic of values. He distinguishes three “antinomies” among values that structure, order, and condition the specifically moral values. They are modal, relational, and qualitative/quantitative oppositions. By “modal,” Hartmann refers to the ontological categories of necessity, reality, and possibility, each of which stands in a relationship to the others. For example, an existing or real actuality may contain its own possibility. In the sphere of ideal being, the functioning modal relationships are possibility and necessity alone, which are derived from the relationships obtaining among ideal objects, such as among some values, or among figures in Euclidean space. In the case of two of the most general moral values, freedom (possibility) and duty (moral necessity) obtain. Here the modal categories are themselves values, so far as both are the conditions of moral action: the freedom to choose among options, and the necessity of obligation. Kant was correct, Hartmann believes, in taking the perception of such moral necessity to be the essential characteristic of a rational being. Here is the antinomy: “It is precisely the essence of compulsion on the part of the Ought which is a value […] (Yet) actions to which moral values adhere are only made possible through the absence of power on the part of the unconditional necessity of the Ought” (Hartmann 1932, II, 82). For if there were no moral necessity, there could be no sense of guilt and just punishment for not having met one’s obligation, and if one were constrained to meet one’s obligations, one would not deserve one’s sense of self-worth and the consequent admiration of others. The antinomy is the point of suspense, where “is rooted the po-

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sition of the person, together with all the values of which the person thereby becomes the bearer” (Hartmann 1932, II, 83). The second modal antinomy is that of the real being and the non-being of values. This antinomy consists in the fact that the non-being of a positive value – surely a disvalue, insofar as positive values ought to be – paradoxically possesses a positive value, insofar as its existence may thus become a project for a human being. If Kant’s kingdom of ends existed, or Plato’s Idea of the Good were entirely realized, the possibility of the higher values, the moral values and the value of the person, would cease to be. This sad antinomy, Hartmann claims, “lies in the very nature of the metaphysical situation […] The paradox of this subtle antithesis is a fundamental feature of the ethical phenomenon” (Hartmann 1932, II, 84). From a normative point of view, he adds, the realization of values is self-contradictory, insofar as it involves a depreciation of the value that is being made real; it possessed a value as non-existent prior to its realization, which nullified the value of its non-existence. For this reason, there is a value belonging to the struggle to attain some valuable end, a value perceived in the peculiar glow cast by the unreality of its aims yet the sublime necessity of them.2 The imperfection of things and of human beings makes moral achievement possible. A case of relational opposition or antinomy is that between activity and inertia. These two are obviously in tension, and suggest the categorical opposition in ontology between movement and rest, dynamism and stasis, which, in themselves, however, imply no antinomy. In ethics, however, the opposition between the value of activity and that of inertia fall into dynamic, irreconcilable opposition. The values of activity, writes Hartmann, “is a value of preoccupation as such with something beyond oneself, of self-transcendence of the moral substance […] and, indeed so far as the transcendence is not instigated from without, but is an original self-movement, [it is] a first starting of something new” (Hartmann 1932, II, 89). Activity is self-movement towards the realization of some situational value or good, that is, in the creation of something new; by that effort, the agent is himself changed. However, a person 2

Scheler noted this peculiar moral phenomenon also: “An ethics which (like Kant’s), bases itself in the concept of the Ought, even more the Ought of duty, and in this ought finds the primordial ethical phenomenon, can never do justice to the factual moral realm of values, for according to it in the very measure that the mere content of an ought of duty becomes real, for example when an imperative, a command, a norm is realized by an action, the content no longer remains a ‘moral’ state of affairs” (Scheler 1973, 185 – 86).

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who is always engaged in activity, however valuable it may be, would in effect be abandoning himself as a moral being. There must therefore be in each acting person an element of counterpoise, a central weight of being, the ontological inertness of his ethical substance, however unbearable it is to the Faustian impulse to be satisfied with nothing. For only when there is inertia can the selfsame agent persist in his actions. Inertia is “the value of the ethical Being as compared with that of intention” (Hartmann 1932, II, 90). Both the striving and the moral substance of him who strives are valuable, but the values of striving and substance are relationally antinomical to each other.

9.4 Qualitative and quantitative conflicts The first opposition of this kind is between universality and singularity. The universal moral claim is that of justice, the moral requirement of equality before the law. All specific marks of the personhood and merit of individuals must cede to this requirement. With his Categorical Imperative, Hartmann notes, Kant gave expression to this idea of “the value of objective universality binding upon all” (Hartmann 1932, II, 99). Yet the value of individuality, while it does not abrogate universality, is nonetheless opposed to it. For the individuals properly equal before the law are in fact unequal as persons and as moral agents; to apply the requirement of the equality of all would be to ignore the value of human uniqueness, with its particular merits, duties and claims. These two values each claim supremacy within their domains, law and private life, and, although they are present in all the situations of life, they normally are not in conflict. Yet there is a “medial line, at which they touch and clash antinomically in their Ought-to-be. Here man is confronted with a conflict and he cannot avoid settling it” (Hartmann 1932, 100). Another parallel contrast and opposition exists between a collectivity and its individual members. This contrast concerns the respective values of the individual citizen and the state. A collectivity or a totality, he writes, has a specific value independent of the likeness or diversity of its members; so too has the individual a specific value as a member of the collectivity. The individual is valuable as such, and she is valuable as a member of a collectivity, which again is valuable. A value accrues to the individual person as such, apart from the degree to which he is individuated in the totality. Of course the totality can tend to absorb the individuality of its members in a cold uniformity, perhaps to its

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own detriment; but the individual person may always maintain his value within the collectivity, even when he submits its own will to it. The collectivity – the community or state – is the bearer of values on the grand scale. Those values appear in its system of law, education, and in the peculiar character of its cultural personality.

9.5 A priori laws conditioning moral values Hartmann borrows from ontology six categories, which he applies to the table of known values. This application has implications for further explorations of values. The first of these sets of laws concerns the stratification of values, the second the foundation or conditioning relation among values. The four laws of stratification, which parallel the concept of subsumption in logic, refer to the recurrence of a lower value in a higher. It functions in the most elementary strata of values, where there is concrete material.3 There are four: recurrence, transmutation, novelty and the distance between levels of value. The first asserts that the lower values levels recur in the higher, as partial factors, but may not be initially visible in them (Hartmann 1932, II, 395). With respect to one value-opposition, the values of communality and individuality, we note their recurrence among the higher moral values, most of which can be ordered as pertaining either primarily to the collective or to the individual, as, respectively, the virtue of justice functions in the values of community and the virtue of loving one’s neighbor functions in the idea of the human individual. Further, since some of the goods-values condition the higher moral values, we may expect to see a “shadow” of them when we intuit the higher values, as the value of power reappears in the virtue of leadership as a shadowy presence. Transmutation, similar to the Hegelian concept of sublation, appears in the virtue of nobility, which, on a higher level, reappears transformed in the love for another person. Goodness and purity of motive, typical of nobility, are visible in personal love. The phenomenon of transmutation enables us to discern the process, described by Diotima in Plato’s Symposium, that leads from the lower erotic love to the higher spiritual 3

To clarify this point consider that “life” is a value, the first of those that condition the content of moral values, but it is also an existential category; the axiological and the ontological elements are incommensurate, each possessing its own material and subject to essential laws of its own.

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love. The higher values that emerge, Scheler noted, cannot be reduced to the lower; they are discontinuous. The higher values possesses something new, an irrational surd as viewed from the lower, an Urphnomen. Only discerning affective states reveal them; they cannot be deduced or inferred dialectically from a preceding synthesis. In transmutation, the elements that recur in a transmuted form in the higher values vanish in the glare of the novelty that appears in them. Who notices the nobility of the young lover in his passion for and his pursuit of his beloved? In stratification, a goods-value conditions a virtue. For example, the goods-value of the alms one gives to a beggar – the amount of buying power it represents – does not reappear in the moral disposition of compassion for the poor that prompted the almsgiving. The compassion “hovers” above the alms or the good it produces, or as Scheler describes the matter, the action of giving “carries” the virtue that motivated it. A variety of interesting phenomena are noted by Hartmann in this context. In recurrence the lower moral value is actualized when the higher is, as the value of solidarity (a lower value) becomes actual when acts of brotherly love (a higher value) are realized. Yet this is not the case in a conditioning relation: the value of truth is the condition of the moral value of truth-telling, but the moral good carried by one’s efforts to tell the truth is not affected by the fact that the speaker is mistaken about the truth he reveals.

9.6 Value-synthesis The Aristotelian idea of the Mean offers another avenue to the eidetic intuition of values, in this case, the moral values. A virtue is said to be a mean between the two extremes of excess and deficiency. For the passions of fear and confidence, courage is a mean between the excess of foolhardiness and the deficiency of cowardice. The latter two are vices. But courage itself is not an extreme; otherwise paradoxically extreme courage (as opposed to foolhardiness) would have to be a vice, whereas of course it is not. It is never wrong or vicious to be too virtuous or too good. Aristotle was aware of the crucial distinction: “Virtue is a mean, considered ontologically, by reason, but it is an extreme considered from the point of view of the best and of the good generally” (Aristotle 1961, Nicomachean Ethics II, 6, 1107a, 5 – 8) that is, axiologically. ArÞte is not qualitatively or ontologically extreme; it is the axiologically highest point of virtue, from which there can be descent in

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Figure 9.1

either direction. Virtue, as appearing on human intentions and actions, has its foundation in something real, human passion and behavior, but as virtue, it partakes of the axiological or normative realm of values. In an unpublished doctoral dissertation of 1923, Maria Louise von Kohoutek, a student at Marburg, developed a genial technique for presenting Aristotle’s root idea, which Hartmann developed to make remarkable extensions to the theory and phenomenological technique of material value-ethics (von Kohoutek 1923). She employed a diagram that can be rendered as a hemisphere standing upon its horizontal diagonal, from which a perpendicular is dropped from the apex to the center of the diagonal (Figure 9.1). The horizontal represents the ontological dimension; they are the measures of the behaviors of an agent regarding his or her response to some affect, from the deficiency on the left to the excess on the right. The vertical line represents the axiological dimension, in which a human character or action and the emotion it prompts may be preferred or thought less of. The degrees of moral approval or disapproval are marked by the height of the points on the hemisphere that rises from the left of the diagonal to meet the perpendicular at the apex and falls to the diagonal at the right. Thus for Aristotle, the essences of each of the human excellences consist in their double position, one midway between the extremes on the ontological plane and the other at the axiological height. This is the Golden Mean; it is the form of conduct and character that bears high moral value. The degree of excessiveness or deficiency of an act may lie anywhere along the ontological plane and thereby determine its position upon the axiological arc. Perfect self-control, the “middle” between extremes of incontinence and indifference to pleasure, manifests itself axiologically as the apex of the hemisphere, the Golden Mean between the factual behavior of agents, that is, what they in fact do and what prompts them to do it, and the highest relative virtue of its kind axiologically.

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Figure 9.2

All values are opposed by their disvalues. This opposition is axiological and does not occur among the ontological categories. This dimension of value-disvalue may be added to the antinomical relations among some of the positive values. To illustrate these oppositions in terms of metaphorical “evaluative space,” Hartmann again turns to a diagram of such a space, one quite different from von Kohoutek’s diagram of Aristotelian ontological and axiological space. His example is indicated by Figure 9.2: A rectangle has opposed values A and B on the top left and right corners; the corresponding disvalues -A and -B at the bottom left and right corners. The antinomy between the two disvalues, as with Aristotle’s extreme-deficiency antinomy, lies in the horizontal dimension. But this opposition, where it exists, must, it would seem, recur in some way in the horizontal dimension separating the two corresponding values to which they are the disvalues. Hartmann asks whether a relation appears between the universal value-disvalue relation and the contingent antinomical relations among values and among disvalues. Because of the general value-disvalue symmetry, the oppositional relations disvalue-disvalue should be drawn into the oppositional relations of the corresponding value and value (Hartmann 1932, II, 411). Surprisingly, the antinomical relations among some of the positive values are not mirrored in their corresponding negative values nor vice versa. Is there an evident relation between the values lying across the diagonal, that is, between A and -B or -A and B? If so, this fact would point to an unsuspected systematic character in the realm of values. However, this again is not so. Let us see why this is. The positive material values of (A) justice and (B) brotherly love exclude each other, as we saw earlier. Yet it is possible (without inner conflict) to be both (-A) unjust and (-B) a misanthrope. The diagonally related value and disvalue similarly show no opposition: one can be (A) just while (-B) despising others, or unjust (-A) while loving others (B). The loveless just man is easily thinkable, however morally odd or crippled we may think him to be.

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Figure 9.3

The consequence that Hartmann draws from these analyses is that the symmetry between values and disvalues, although universal – every value has a corresponding disvalue – is not a perfect mirroring of each other by the two dimensions, for the antitheses and complementarities are not regularly related in the disvalues. Hence, there is a lack of system in the “inner dependencies” in the realm of values. “The antithetic of the values corresponds to no antithetic of the disvalues” (Hartmann 1932, II, 413). And, of course, the formal arrangement of the diagram applies only to cases of pairs of positive values, A and B, in which an antithesis appears. A new possibility for discovering essential or a priori relations among values appears by modifying the diagram. Hartmann asks whether in such cases of oppositions among moral disvalues or vices, such as injustice and lovelessness, of impurity and poverty of life, or in Aristotle, the deficiency of cowardice and the excess of foolhardiness, two antithetical positive moral values must correspond to the negative values. The moral value, the Golden mean, would then be a synthesis of all four in each case, and not two, as Aristotle taught.

9.7 An application If we take Aristotle’s schema, modeled by von Kohoutek, and place it within Hartmann’s rectangle of oppositions, we find two positive oppositional values at A and B corresponding to their negative values, with the Golden Mean at the center of the upper horizontal (the dimension of the antinomous positive values).

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With respect to cowardice and foolhardiness, the corresponding positive values would be prudence and boldness. Courage, then, would be not simply an axiologically higher mean between two vices, but also a synthesis of two positive values. To be courageous, one must be neither cowardly nor foolhardy, but one must also be bold (the coward is simply not a man who runs away, but one whose boldness fails him when it should not) and he must be prudent (the foolhardy man is not restrained by his knowledge of what is possible in the situation). The synthesis is a balance of four values. If one does not seek out the positive and negative moral contents of genuine virtues, one is liable to confuse imprudence with boldness, while cowardice resembles prudence. But boldness without prudence is worthless, for imprudent boldness is more likely to fail than succeed in its ends, and prudent cowardice is also worthless, for the timorous man, however prudent he may be in assessing his chances, will never initiate action. Consider a new case. In the antinomy of the collective and the individual, one thinks of Socrates, who was a participating citizen of Athens and an individual whose guiding values seem to emanate from an invisible community of ideas. During the latter half of his life, he lived in tension with these two claims upon his loyalty, yet he achieved a Golden Mean of moral presence and absence from his fellow citizens that has no name. We might describe the unnamed Socratic virtue regarding this opposition as one involving remedial or ameliorative social action in the cause of a yet unborn value (giving people what they need but do not yet know they need). But the opposition between political presence and absence from one’s fellows’ great undertakings in government is not as simple as that between the law of the state and the conscience of the individual, as Socrates’ moral dilemma is usually depicted. The vice of excessive participation in a community is to allow oneself to be absorbed in a cult or mass; this is a deficiency of individualism. The vice of excessive individualism is Aristotle’s “beast or god” who dares to live outside of all community: Zarathustra on his mountaintop, a lonely rebel, or a hermit, perhaps. But there are positive values that intensify the tension that Socrates must master as he negotiates his way about Athens. Above the vice of those who immerse themselves in the mass is the virtue of its great representatives: great citizen, the statesman, or Scheler’s “leading mind of civilization.” Socrates rejected the political life (Apology 31b-33c) but chose to work on the polis with that indirectness known as Socratic irony. Above the vice of those who live a socially sterile existence on

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a mountaintop is the isolated genius, the creator, the fashioner of valueobjects intended for but not yet comprehensible to his fellow-citizens. These two virtues have claims upon each of us; and yet the vices of abandoning the mainstream (“dropping out”) or of jumping mindlessly upon some political bandwagon surely tempt many of us. To balance such conflicting values, possibilities, and temptations that arise out of citizenship while giving to one’s life the stamp of its uniqueness even while living in fellowship with others, is to create a unique personal value-synthesis. To be a free citizen of a free society while living both in solidarian fellowship and friendly individualistic opposition with others is surely part of living the moral life. In Protagoras, Socrates and Protagoras seem to be seeking an external criterion to unite the virtues. As a phenomenologist in axiology, Hartmann does not abandon the search for objective synthesis of material values. But the moral life Hartmann proposes in contrast requires a personal criterion of unity: a synthetic unity that bears the imprint of personal moral struggle. Such a synthetic unity of one’s actions in terms of the person one is and has chosen to become is possible only through the great adventure into the world and the self. We give ourselves a synthetic unity by achieving our “intelligible personhood,” as Hartmann calls it, or by growing into the “image God has of a us,” as Scheler calls it, such that our personhood carries a synthesis of otherwise antinomical values. A person who lives in this tension between simplicity and complexity, innocence and understanding, inertia and activity, coldness and enthusiasm achieves a morally fecund life. The “immoralist” is the fanatic who knows no tension, the moral idiot who lacks any perception of values, the solipsist for whom other persons are illusions, or Camus’ stranger, for whom nothing really matters. This obligation of achieving unity in tension gives a new moral meaning to Henry Adams’ search for unity. It lies within; it is the balanced but tense personhood of the individual citizen. It is the Apollonian order and meaning of a human life, forged from Dionysian oppositions in what one loves and hates. Just because it is a personal synthesis that balances individuality and universality, it expresses a personal ethos that overlaps with that of one’s community, and cannot be a synthesis of all values. In that personal sense, no complete satisfaction of the desire for unity or wholeness is possible.

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9.8 Conclusion The aspiration to a synthetic vision in morals, which stresses the complexity of the virtues and the manifest antinomies among them has itself moral value. It reminds us of the dangers of one-sided adherence to single virtues. Philosophical ethics strives to be objective and universal, but the moral task for individuals requires self-limitation. “All valuational elements, taken in isolation, have in them a point beyond which they are dangerous, that they are tyrannical, and for the true fulfillment of their meaning in their real carrier, there is always a counterweight” (Hartmann 1932, II, 424). We run the risk that our desire to be courageous and our capacity for it may cause us to forget our vulnerability to pain and our lust for honor, which no overcoming of cowardice or foolhardiness can eliminate without rendering us inhuman. Our love of justice may overwhelm the requirement to love our brother, or our love of our brother may make us forget our obligation to be righteous. Instead of seeing in this impossibility of being perfectly good grounds for declaring the necessary failure of the human enterprise in the spirit of Sartre’s declaration, “man is a useless passion,” Hartmann sees in the tension of antinomical and co-impossible values the greatness of human possibility. Each of us may give personal shape to the otherwise disorderly realm of value and achieve a personal synthesis among the values that compete for our attention. The idea that morality is the requirement to adhere to rules that tell us what to do, or the requirement to embody standards of virtue, misreads the moral life. Ethics cannot tell us what to do or how to live. Its deepest function is the phenomenological description of values and the conditions of their realization by persons. It helps us see values more clearly, and to respond to what is valuable by creating value-goods efficiently. The condition of our moral freedom is precisely the nonexistence of the Holy Grail of moral theory, a principle of right and wrong, of character or action that is rational, intelligible to all, and able to justify our condemnation of the “evil man” who, like Thrasymachus, argues that wrong is right. Material value-ethics releases and saves us from the fetish that each of us is either good or evil, and unambiguously worthy of either Heaven or Hell. I applaud the humanity of Hartmann’s ethics.

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9.10 References Adams, Henry (1918), The Education of Henry Adams, Boston: Houghton Mifflin. Aristotle (1941), The Basic Works of Aristotle, ed. Richard McKeon, New York: Random House. Hartmann, Nicolai (1932), Ethics, translated by Stanton Coit, London: George Allen & Unwin Ltd. New editions of the Coit translation have been published under the general editorship of Andrea A. M. Kinneging, who provides each of the three volumes with excellent introductions and new titles: Volume 1, Moral Phenomena; Volume 2, Moral Values; Volume 3, Moral Freedom, Piscataway, NJ: Transaction Press, 2002 – 2004. Hartmann, Nicolai (1949), Ethik, Berlin: Walter de Gruyter & Co (1st ed. 1926). Kelly, Eugene (1997), Structure and Diversity, Dordrecht: Kluwer. von Kohoutek, Maria Louise (1923), Die Differenzierung des anthropos agathon: eine Studie zur Werttafel der Nikomachischen Ethik, Marburg. Plato (1961), The Collected Dialogues of Plato, ed. by E. Hamilton and H. Cairns, New York: Bollingen. Scheler, Max (1973), Formalism in Ethics and Non-Formal Ethics of Value. A New Attempt toward the Foundation of an Ethical Personalism. Translated by Manfred S. Frings and Roger L. Funk, Evanston: Northwestern University Press. Scheler, Max (2000), Der Formalismus in der Ethik und die materiale Wertethik. Neuer Versuch der Grundlegung eines ethischen Personalismu, ed, by Manfred S. Frings, Bonn: Bouvier.

Chapter 10: Hartmann’s Platonic Ethics Andreas Kinneging 10.1 Introduction I want to discuss the outlines of Hartmann’s ethics and Plato’s influence on his ethical thought. It seems to me that Hartmann was very much a Platonist, perhaps the purest Platonist philosopher of the twentieth century. But the claim I want to make in this contribution is not merely a historical one, regarding the intellectual influence of Plato on Hartmann. I also claim that Hartmann’s work constitutes an impressive defense of Plato against many of his philosophical detractors,1 and an equally impressive development of his ideas, thus ensuring that Platonism remains a real philosophical option in our day, instead of just an influential position in the history of philosophical thought. This is not to say that Hartmann’s thought was an exact copy of Plato’s thought. There are quite a few interesting and significant differences, too. Let me begin by mentioning one such difference. It is often hard to say what the principal interest of a philosopher is, especially when his work covers many areas of philosophy. But in the case of both Plato and Hartmann it does seem possible. Plato’s main interest, I believe, always remained the question of the good life. The question how we ought to live – p_r biyt´om (Plato, Gorgias, 492d, 500c; Politeia, 352d, 344d-e, 578c, 618c) – was central to his philosophical concerns. That was not the case with Hartmann. Even though he wrote a masterful work on ethics, and he frequently returned to ethics in other publications, there is no doubt that Hartmann was first and foremost an ontologist. He was primarily interested in the question of being. Plato, of course, also wrote about ontological questions, but his ontological in1

An exception has to be made for the detractors who focus on Plato’s political thought, such as Popper 1945, since throughout his life Hartmann kept a distance from political philosophy.

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terest followed from his ethical interest. He believed he needed to solve certain ontological puzzles, in order to ground his ethical views. With Hartmann, it is the other way round. He took an interest in ethics, because he saw ethical phenomena as a part of being. Understanding being as completely as possible meant that he also had to think through ethical phenomena. However that may be, it is clear that to both Plato and Hartmann ethics and ontology are closely linked: the phenomenon of morality is an element of being – t¹ em – and its study is thus part and parcel of the study of being. In one sense, of course, this last thesis is a truism. Everyone expressing an opinion on what moral phenomena are eo ipso links ethics to ontology. Expressing a view on what moral phenomena are, implies expressing a view on the nature of their being. Now, most contemporary philosophers – and non-philosophers too – would argue that morality, though it often has real effects – in human emotions or actions – in the end is not real, not part of being at all. The reason being that they consider morality to be essentially a product of the human imagination. It is not something that belongs to the furniture of the world. It is not given. It is made up by us, by human beings. It exists only in the mind and only as long as we take it seriously, exactly like a belief in ghosts. In reality, these people would say there is no given “ought” in the world. There are only brute facts, or entities, factually related to each other. The thesis put forward by both Plato and Hartmann on the ontological nature of morality, is the opposite of these ideas. Contrary to what most philosophers and non-philosophers would argue today, according to them morality is not a product of the human imagination. It belongs to the furniture of the world, as much as motorcars, churches, and women. It is given and not just made up by us, human beings. It is more than just a belief in ghosts. Morality is a fact, it is constituted by given entities, out there, and not by mere figments of the mind.

10.2 Moral subjectivism Plato and Hartmann are hence both moral objectivists or, if you want, moral realists. The opposite view is known under various names, but moral subjectivism would seem to be the most precise. For the sake of clarity, let me, before I continue with Plato and Hartmann, quickly set out the genus proximum and the differentiae specificae of the various

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types of moral subjectivism. As to the genus proximum: all types of moral subjectivism argue that morality is something ultimately grounded in the human subject i. e. person. It is thus indissolubly linked to humankind. Without humanity as the “producer” of morality, there is no such thing in the world as morality. As to the differentiae specificae: there are, as far as I can see, three different kinds of moral subjectivism. First, there is a kind that Husserl once called “specicism.” One finds this type of moral subjectivism in Kant, for instance, but also in those strands of natural law thinking that ground the natural law in human nature. This type of subjectivism is relativistic only in a very limited sense: morality is relative to the human species as a whole. No differentiation of morality is allowed for within the human species. To Kant the categorical imperative is imperative for every human being. To Finnis the seven basic goods are equally good and relevant for every human being. Not surprisingly, this type of moral subjectivism is often aligned to and confused with the moral objectivism or realism such as we encounter in Plato and Hartmann. But it remains a mistake. They are quite different. Second, there is a kind of moral subjectivism one might call “moral individualism.” It argues that morality is and must be something purely personal, something relative to the individual person, his own personal set of ideas of what is good and what is evil. Everyone has his own morality. Clearly, this type of moral subjectivism is extremely relativistic. On this view there are as many moralities as there are human beings. The ancient Greek philosopher Protagoras is an early example of someone holding such views (Plato, Theaetetus, 152a). Finally, there is a type of moral relativism that is somewhere in between the former two. It argues that morality is necessarily something social or cultural, i. e. a relative to specific human communities and cultures. This type of subjectivism, often called cultural relativism, seems to be the most common strand of moral thought in the world of today.

10.3 Plato’s ontology, epistemology, and ethics Plato and Hartmann both reject all types of subjectivism and present us with a very different view of morality, not grounded in human subjectivity. To explain it, and set out the agreement and the difference between them, there is no better place to start than Plato’s allegory of the cave (Plato, Politeia, 514a-521b), to be found at the beginning of

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book VII of the Politeia, which is a sort of reworking and summary of the ontological and epistemological ideas presented in the second half of book VI.2 Although the allegory is presented by Plato with much less precision than one would want it to be, the general idea is perfectly clear. It is on the one hand a picture of reality, of being, and secondly a picture of how one can get to know it. So it is both an ontological and an epistemological allegory. As to its ontological meaning, the following must be said. The allegory distinguishes two levels of being: there are on the one hand the statues of things and on the other the things themselves, of which the statues are images.3 The statues clearly correspond to what we would call empirical entities. These are all the things that “come into being and perish.” All the things whose being is permanent change. Whose nature is rather to become than to be. In other words, The statues encompass all the things that partake in the Heraclitean flux: p\mta wyqe? ja· oqd³m l´mei (Plato, Cratylus, 402a). Plato speaks of them as neither being nor not-being: they are in-between. The things themselves in the allegory correspond to the Platonic Forms or Ideas. These Ideas can be seen as the essence of the empirical entities. Plato calls them “paradigms” – paqade¸clata – of which the empirical entities are images – eUdyka. Ideas give empirical entities their identity. For several empirical entities there is one unique Idea. In so far as they “participate in” this one Idea, these several empirical entities are of one kind. This makes them essentially the same. Now the question is: what exactly is the ontological status of these Ideas? Plato says that they “are” in an unqualified, Parmenidian way: they do not come into being and perish, but are eternal, unchanging. Hence, they are more real than empirical entities. Whereas the latter are in-between being and not-being, the Ideas are emtyr em : truly being (Politeia, 597d). At this point we run into a problem of interpretation. “Truly being” obviously means being beyond time, not affected by time. That is after all what eternal and unchanging imply. Time does not affect the Ideas. Does that go for space too? Is “truly being” also being beyond space? Are the Ideas not only unaffected by time, but also not localizable in space? Plato doesn’t say anything about it, and remarkably, as far as I can see, there is no discussion of this issue in the commentaries on 2 3

As of 504 d. In addition to the level of the shadows that does not constitute real being.

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the theory of Ideas. Nevertheless, the question can be answered, and with relative ease. To answer it, we need to turn to Plato’s thoughts on mathematics. Plato believed, as do most philosophers of mathematics after him up till today, that mathematics ultimately is not something subjective, i. e. grounded in the human subject. He would disagree with the Kantian view that the world appears to us to obey mathematical laws, simply because we think mathematically. According to Plato the world is structured mathematically, in ways that are wholly independent of our cognitive apparatus. Hence, mathematical units and laws are part of the world, of being. (It is true that we can change the mathematical language we use, and shift, for instance, from a decimal system to a binary system, but that does not change the underlying units and laws one iota.) The objective existence of mathematical units and laws was Plato’s principle witness for the existence of Ideas and their influence on empirical entities. (That is why the guardians in the Politeia have to study mathematics for so long.) Mathematical units and laws proved that the Ideas exist, albeit in a way different from empirical entities. They cannot be localized in time or space. Their being is neither temporal nor spatial, as is the being of all empirical entities. They are unchanging, eternal, and they are – so to speak – everywhere, omnipresent. Think, for instance, of p. In Plato’s view, it has objective being, is part of the world, like motorcars and women. But unlike them it cannot be pinpointed in time or space. It ’s’ eternal and everywhere: 3,141592… Hence, generalizing this result, I think we are justified in drawing the conclusion that the Platonic Ideas are outside of time and space. Plato can become very exalted about the Ideas, and often speaks of them in poetic and religious language. In the Phaedrus for instance he situates them in “the region above heaven” – rpeqouq²mior tºpor (Phaedrus, 247c).4 There is no reason, however, to think that Plato situated the Ideas in a different world, apart from the empirical world. That too can be learned from the case of mathematical entities. Plato never suggests that these belong to a separate world. They are part of the same world as the empirical entities, but their mode of being is different. Why should that not be the case with all other Ideas too? 4

Cf. Plato, Symposium, 211e, where the Ideas are called “divine,” and Politeia, 517b, where the soul has to ascend to “the intelligible place” – eQr t¹m mogt¹m tºpom – to get to know the Ideas.

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There is one exception, of course: the Idea of the good (B id´a toO acahoO), symbolized in the allegory by the sun. This is “the highest that can be learned,” says Plato (Politeia, 504d-e). The Ideas exist and can be known because of it, although the Idea of the good itself has no being, and is beyond being – 1p´jeima t/r oqsiar – surpassing being in dignity and power (Politeia, 509b).5 What exactly Plato had in mind is uncertain and has been a source of speculation for many generations of philosophers, from antiquity to the present. But it is clear that, as the transcendent source of being and intelligibility, it closely resembles the ens realissimum of Christian theology: God. Thus, it is no mystery why Christian thinkers often consider Plato a precursor of their own faith, an “Attic Moses.” Let us now turn from the ontological to the epistemological meaning of the allegory of the cave. Lacking education, every man is like someone who has dwelled in a subterranean cave his whole life, and has no idea what the world outside looks like. He does not even know the empirical entities, let alone the Ideas. All he knows is the shades of the empirical entities. What do these shades stand for? They stand for what is being said of empirical entities, in gossip or in books, for instance. In short, the shades stand for our conceptions of empirical reality, as opposed to what it really is. As we all know from experience, there is more often than not a rift between these two. It is very hard to get to know the facts. We can only get to know them if we manage to turn away from the shades and turn to the things themselves. According to Plato the empirical things are revealed through sight, i. e. through the senses, while the Ideas are knowable merely by the intellect, by the mind’s eye, so to speak.6 Motorcars and women can be seen, felt, touched, heared, and smelled, whereas p can only be intellectually grasped. All of this is very straightforward, it seems to me, and much more down-to-earth than is often assumed. Education is in essence nothing but our exit from the cave, i. e. gradually acquiring an understanding of being. First of all, of the being that the senses reveal to us, and then of the Ideas, which are revealed to us by thought.

5 6

This illustrious passage, here somewhat shortened, is notoriously difficult to interpret, since it is not entirely clear what exactly the word oqs¸a, used three times, means here. The rendering above is standard. Politeia, 517b: exir versus moOr ; on the mind’s eye, 518a.

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Having outlined Plato’s thoughts on the Ideas, let us now ask ourselves why he took such interest in them and returned to them time and again in his work. The answer is evident from his work. In opposition to the prevailing moral subjectivism and relativism, he wanted to prove that morality is something real, something given, something beyond human choice and arbitrariness. The Ideas are central to that quest. The following quote from the Euthypro is representative: (6d-e) You remember then that I did not ask you to indicate to me one or two of the many pious things, but the very Idea (eWdor) itself by which all pious things are pious. For you said, I think, that it is by one Idea (Qd´a) that impious things are impious and pious pious. […] Teach me then what this Idea (Qd´a) is, so that, fixing my eyes on it and using it as a paradigm, I may call any action of yours or anybody else’s pious that is of the same sort, and deny the title to any action that is not.7

The purpose of the theory of Ideas is to give morality a secure grounding. Hence, Plato is ultimately interested not so much in the Ideas in general, but rather in moral Ideas, i. e. in Ideas such as holiness, wisdom, temperance, courage, and justice. He wants to demonstrate that these notions are not up for grabs for anyone to define as he likes, but that they are part and parcel of being, and thus have a fixed meaning, like p. We are not free to define notions like holiness, wisdom, temperance, courage, and justice as we like. We have to discover their content, just as it has been discovered that p equals 3,141592… These notions Plato calls virtues (!qeta¸). They are central concepts of his moral philosophy and hence of his whole philosophy. Especially the last four. Time and again Plato returns to them, in just about every dialogue. The reason is clear: He believes that the good life, individually and collectively, depends on these four virtues, more than on anything else. Yet, an elaborate phenomenology of virtue or the virtues, such as Aristotle gave us in the Nicomachean Ethics, Plato nowhere provides. What he has to say about their content is rather limited. He always turns to other questions: whether the virtues can be taught, how they should be taught, to whom, what their relationship is to the law, etc.

7

Guthrie’s translation, slightly modified. Cf. Guthrie 1975, 115. This quote also makes clear that to Plato eWdor and Qd´a are wholly synonymous.

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10.4 Hartmann’s Ontology At first glance Hartmann’s ethics appears to be quite different from Plato’s. Its core notion is Wert – value. The closest equivalent in Greek of that notion – B an¸a – plays only a minor role in Plato’s ethics. But appearances deceive. The language used might be different in many respects, but the ideas are often similar, if not identical. To begin with, like Plato’s ethics, Hartmann’s ethics can only be comprehended against the backdrop of his ontology. We therefore have to turn to his ontology first, as we did above, when we discussed Plato’s views. But before we can discuss Hartmann’s ontology, we have to say a few words about his epistemology. After Descartes, and Kant especially, epistemology became prima philosophia. It is impossible to speak about being, they argued, as long as it is not clear what we can know about being. Hence, epistemology comes first. As a post-Cartesian and postKantian philosopher, Hartmann was very conscious of this. Hence, the subject of his first great book, the Grundzge einer Metaphysik der Erkenntnis. Its aim is to overcome the epistemological subjectivism that has overtaken modern philosophy in the wake of Descartes and Kant, for which being is always being as it is “for us” (fr uns) and never as it is “in itself” (an sich). With this book Hartmann wants to clear the way to return to the study of reality as it is in itself. His argument in favor of realism is basically negative. It boils down to the following. Unless there are very good reasons to conclude that what we perceive is not real, realism has a prima facie claim to truth, since such realism corresponds with the phenomena, or, if you like, common sense, and practical experience. Idealism up till now has given us no such reasons. Thus, there is no good reason not to see knowledge as knowledge of being in itself. (Needless to say, Hartmann’s realism neither implies that we can know all of reality, nor that senseperception renders mental ‘pictures’ of reality on a one to one basis.) What can we say about being? That there are two different ways of being (Seinsweisen): real being (reales Sein) and ideal being (ideales Sein). This distinction is basic to Hartmann’s whole ontology. Though his language is more precise, this distinction is equivalent to Plato’s distinction between empirical entities and Ideas. Real being includes everything that is in or attached to the spatio-temporal world, including the incorporeal. It ‘exists’, in the technical sense that it has Dasein: one can say of it that it is ‘there’. In addition, every real being also has Sosein: an essence. It is something: ‘so’. All entities of this kind come into being

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and perish; they are impermanent, altering, and singular.8 Ideal being on the other hand is timeless and not spatial. Hence, ideal being does not ‘exist’: it has no Dasein. 9 One cannot say that it is ‘there’. It has merely Sosein i. e. essence. As the aim of this paper is to compare Plato’s and Hartmann’s ethics, and morality belongs to the sphere of Ideas i. e. ideal being, we need not go into real i. e. empirical being extensively. For our purpose it suffices to mention the distinction that lies at the basis of Hartmann’s philosophy of real being: that between four layers of real being (Seinsschichten), from the layer of inorganic being at the bottom, through the strata of organic being and mental being (seelisches Sein), to spiritual being (geistiges Sein) at the top.10 Comparing what the two authors have to say on the topic, only one conclusion is possible: Hartmann’s philosophy of real being is incomparably more elaborate and rich than Plato’s, who in fact has little to say on the nature of empirical reality.11 What about ideal being? This sphere consists of ideal entities, among which we find both mathematical units and laws, and values, just as in Plato.12 It is worthwhile to quote Hartmann at some length at this point. That there is another realm of being than that of existence, than that of “real” things and of consciousness which is not less “real,” is an ancient insight. Plato named it the realm of the Idea, Aristotle that of the eWdor, the scholastics called it the realm of essentia. After having been long misunderstood and deprived of its right in modern times through the prevailing subjectivism, this realm has again come into recognition with relative purity in that which phenomenology calls the realm of Wesenheiten. Wesenheit is a translation of essentia. It means the same thing, if we disregard the various metaphysical prejudices which have attached themselves to the idea of es8 Hence, there is no such thing as a timeless real substance in Hartmann. Cf. Hartmann 1955, esp. 200 ff. 9 Hartmann 1965b, 84, argues that “Existenz im weiten Sinne gibt es auch auberhalb des Realen” i. e. There is existence in the broad sense outside of the real. A page further, 85, he explains that that merely means that “(a)n allem Seienden gibet es ein Moment des Daseins. Darunter ist das nackte ‘dab überhaupt es ist’ zu verstehen” i.e all being has an aspect of being-there in the sense ‘that it is’. Stricto sensu, ideal beings have no Dasein. 10 In is 1957, Hartmann traces this idea back to the ancients. Similar conceptions can be found in contemporary philosophers such as Scheler 1998; Plebner 1965; Gehlen 1986. 11 Cf. especially Hartmann 1933; 1940; and 1950. 12 Like Plato, Hartmann also includes the laws of logic and the essence (Wesenheit) of empirical things, acts, and occurrences.

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sence. But on its part essentia is a translation, although a very faded one, of the Aristotelian phrase t¸ Gm eWmai, in which the past tense Gm, understood as timeless,13 points to the sum total of the structural elements that are presupposed, i. e. of that which in the concrete thing, act or occurrence constitutes the objective prius and on that account is always contained in it (Hartmann 2002, 183 – 184).

What is this prius? For Aristotle, of course, this ‘essence’ possessed a logical structure. It was thought of as the complete series of the determinant elements of a definition, or as a series of differentiae, which, proceeding from the most general, embrace the ever narrower, down to the ’last’, to the differentia specifica. The eidos, which thus arises, then counts as the formal substance, the complete structure. This logicism was conditioned by the identification of ‘essence’ with ‘concept’ (Begriff), or, more correctly, by the lack of any discrimination between them. It was this that also obscured the doctrine of ‘essence’ in the Middle Ages, and gave support to the audacious metaphysics of conceptual realism (Hartmann 2002, 184).

That is to say, it gave rise to the idea that ideal beings (universalia) were part of, existed in the real world, and only there. They were thought to be merely in rebus. Hartmann believes that this view is mistaken, because the specific nature of being of the essentia is lost (Hartmann 1965b, 253 – 254). From this (view) it has been necessary for the principle underlying Plato’s fundamental vision to free itself again. In Hegel’s doctrine of “essence” this deliverance has been accomplished. It signifies a harking back to the ancient notion of the “ground,” which belonged to the meaning of “essence” in Plato’s Idea. The kind of being peculiar to the “Idea”‘is that of an emtyr em, the kind of being of that “through which” everything participating in it, is just as it is. (Hartmann 2002, 184)

That is to say: ideal being manifests itself in real being, but it is not absorbed in it. Ideal being is an independent sphere of being (Hartmann 1965b, 253 – 254, 259 – 260, 288 – 289 and passim). For Hartmann, as for Plato, mathematics is a prime witness of the sphere of ideal being. In the units and laws of mathematics, he writes, man first discovered ideal being (Hartmann 1965b, 223 – 264 on mathematics). The Pythagoreans were the first to speak about the being of numbers, and Plato followed in their trail. Geometry, he wrote, is 1pist¶lg toO !e· emtor : knowledge of eternal being. Mathematical units 13 The Greek imperfect can be equivalent to a timeless present, as in: “We eat at six o’clock p.m.”

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and laws are eternal beings, their being is beyond time and space, beyond genesis and disintegration, which are typical of everything in the real world. What is the exact relation between these ideal mathematical beings and real being? Although mathematical being differs fundamentally from real being, it pervades the latter. As the Pythagoreans already knew, the principles of mathematics are the principles of reality (Aristotle, Metaphysics, 985b25ff). Many, if not all things, acts, and occurrences in the real world necessarily comply with the principles of mathematics. It is possible, by eliminating or adding one or more axioms, to develop a mathematics with has little or nothing to do with the real world, but it is not possible for the real world to escape from the grip of mathematical principles. The real contains and is molded by the ideal. The real world is suffused with mathematical principles. Hartmann’s indebtedness to Plato on these issues is obvious. In fact, what he has to say on them seems to me to be purely Platonic. But there is also real disagreement. More specifically, Hartmann disagrees with Plato on the status of the sphere of ideal being. As we have seen, on Plato’s view, the sphere of Ideas is the sphere of true being, and real i. e. empirical being is merely an imperfect reflection of it. Hartmann rejects this “nimbus of loftiness” surrounding Platonic ideas (Hartmann 1965b, 290 – 292). Ideal being “is a ‘thinner’, floating, insubstantial being, half-being so to speak, which still lacks the full weight of being” (Hartmann 1965b, 290 – 292). The Platonic nimbus of loftiness “is the expression of a false idealism, which will have to be paid for in life; because it results in a devaluation and disregard of the real” (Hartmann 1965b, 290 – 292). This is tragic, Hartmann believes, because the truly valuable things in life are to be found precisely there, in the transient world of real being (ibid.). Evidently, Hartmann’s inspiration here is not Plato but Nietzsche. It is the anti-Platonic pathos of the philosopher with the hammer, who thinks that all this talk about a transcendent world has led to a depreciation of life here and now, and who, because of that once called Plato the greatest misfortune of Europe: “das gröbte Malheur Europas” i. e. the greatest misfortune of Europe (Nietzsche, Letter to Overbeck d.d. 09. 01. 1888). Interestingly, Hartmann is somewhere in the middle: with Plato he argues that there is a sphere of Ideas, and that it is important, but with Nietzsche he argues that what is truly valuable can only be found in the sphere of real i. e. empirical being.

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10.5 Hartmann’s Ethics With this the groundwork has been laid. Let us now turn to Hartmann’s ethical views. As has already been said, its core notion is ‘value’. Not ‘duty’, or ‘right’, or ‘utility’, or anything else. The reason is simple. We can say very little of all these other notions, unless we have first determined what is valuable. The question of duty, right, utility, and so on are corollaries of the more fundamental question of value. Values are the moral principia. Given their importance, why did not older philosophers, such as Plato, speak of values? Did they overlook them? No, it is simply a matter of language. What some contemporary philosophers refer to as value(able) was formerly called ‘good’ (jakºm, acahºm, bonum). What is the ontological nature of values? Contrary to most modern philosophers, Hartmann argues that they are not subjective, in the manner discussed above: they are not something made up or invented by man.14 Values have objective being-in-themselves (Ansichsein) just like mathematical units. They have no Dasein, and in that technical sense they do not exist, but they have Sosein, and as such they do exist – in the broader sense of that verb – belonging to the realm of ideal being. Values are, however, subjective in another way. Values hold good only for man. They do so in the same way as geometrical laws hold good only for spatial figures, mechanical laws only for real bodies, and physiological laws only for organisms. These laws are relative to certain kinds of being, but this does not mean that they can be created or abolished by these kinds of being, or that they are the product of their specific cognitive apparatus. They are laws to which the being for which they hold good is subjected from the outside, so to speak. Values hold good only for man as a spiritual being. To animals, for instance, which have seelisches Sein, but not geistiges Sein, values have no meaning. Not all values are moral values. On the contrary, many are not. According to Hartmann there are many other types, such as elementary values, values intrinsic to the object (Gterwerte), values intrinsic to the subject (dem Subjekt anhaftenden Wertfundamente), and aesthetic val14 It is often concluded that values are subjective and relative because they differ at various times and places. Hartmann argues that this conclusion is a non sequitur. The historical fact that different men have different views of values might just as well be the result of the fact that most men at most times are blind to at least a part of the values. Cf. further below, the paragraph entitled “Knowledge of values.”

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ues. (A complete list cannot be given, because, just as we do not have a complete knowledge of mathematics or of the real world, we do not yet have a complete knowledge of the realm of values, and we might never attain it.) And not all values are equal. On the contrary. The stratification we encounter in real being reappears in the realm of values. There are lower and higher values. The highest values are the moral values, Hartmann argues. But within the group of moral values there is also a hierarchy. And there is conflict, between values in the broad sense, as well as between moral values.

10.5.1. Moral Values Let us focus on the moral values. They are divided in four groups. First, there is a group of fundamental moral values, encompassing the good (das Gute), the noble (das Edle), purity (die Reinheit), and richness of experience (die Flle). Then there are three groups of what Hartmann calls special moral values. These he idiosyncratically names “virtue-values” (Tugendwerte). The first of these groups of virtues comprises the virtues discovered by the ancients, the second group roughly those discovered by Christianity, and the third group those discovered by the moderns. It is not-crystal clear how the fundamental moral values are related to each other and to the special moral values. But it is certain that the fundamental moral values are not to be interpreted as hierarchically lower than the special moral values. They may be fundamental in the sense that they encompass all special moral values, but that too isn’t clear. The moral values Hartmann seems to have in mind when speaking of the good are what he considers the lower moral values, such as justice and trustworthiness, since he argues that “the good is a sort of fundamental moral demand, expected of anyone. The ought-to-be in it is absolutely universal. Heroism and moral greatness cannot be demanded from everybody, but what can be demanded is that one is […] ‘a good man’” (Hartmann 2003, 190). The fundamental moral value of the noble is very different from the good. The opposite of the noble is the common. This is far from identical with evil. It is not in the same sense abject; it is merely the inferior and as such contemptible at most. […] Noble on the other hand is the spirit that is directed towards the high, the ideal, turned away from everything small and

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lowly. It is that which language designates as generous, magnanimous, high-minded (Hartmann 2003, 192).

The noble is not everyone’s concern, like the good. Its claims always appeal only to the sense of value of the few, the aristoi. The exceptional is of the essence of the noble. Thus, if the good is concerned with the lower values, those that apply to all, the noble seems to be concerned exclusively with the higher values. The noble does not, in general, negate the good, but from among good men it picks out those who from its point of view are the best, and makes extra demands on them. However, to some extent the noble and the good clash. The good can be trite, and the evil can, within limits, be noble. There is such a thing as banausic, narrow-minded virtue, ignoble contentment and righteousness. Conversely, who would deny that there is such a thing as noble wrath, noble hatred, noble disdain, indeed noble revenge? 15 (Hartmann 2003, 192 – 193) In purity (Reinheit), the third fundamental moral value, another aspect of moral value comes to the fore. He is pure who desires no wrong, who is not tempted to sin. He has no awareness of disvalues. He is innocent of evil, unspoilt. It is peculiar to purity that it can neither be striven for, nor realized. One can lose one’s purity, but one cannot regain it once it has been lost. Purity is not the result of fighting and conquering evil, it is an original state before all guilt, it is a sancta simplicitas. It is the virtue of a child, not earned, but of the highest moral value. Ignorance, simplemindedness, gullibility are values, from this perspective. One who is pure has nothing to hide; concealment, secretiveness is alien to him. He willingly lets others see himself, he lacks the shame of the guilty. He needs no covering, no mask, his nudity is not nakedness. The same goes for his directness in conduct. He takes hold of something without reflection, he makes straight for the matter at hand. He lacks both the occasion and the worldly wisdom for tricks. He has no need of deception (Hartmann 2003, 213).

The fourth fundamental moral value, richness of experience (die Flle) is virtually the opposite of purity. From this point of view, what counts is the breadth of the sense of value, the understanding of and participation in all values, the moral richness of the person, his moral span, so to speak. The corresponding disvalue is moral narrowness, the blind sim15 Nietzsche’s influence is evident.

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plification of moral life, inner moral shriveling and one-sidedness. What counts above all in this ethos is the inner attitude of openness toward, participation in, and appreciation of everything. It is in this respect opposite not only to purity, but also to the ethos of the noble and even of the good: it not only does not bar out the lower values, but within certain limits not even what is contrary to value, because there is no other way to moral maturity and width than through the experience of evil. Hence, from this point of view, everything in moral life is valuable, even failure, deficiency, wrongdoing, guilt, and sin. The three groups of virtue-values that Hartmann distinguishes, in addition to the four fundamental moral values. should perhaps be seen as concrete species of these four genera. As has been said, the first group encompasses the virtues discovered by the ancients, the second roughly those discovered by the Christians, and the third those discovered by the moderns. Of the ancient virtues, the four Platonic virtues are discussed, as well as some of the aspects of the Aristotelean virtues, as discussed in the Nicomachean Ethics. “The Platonic system of virtues culminated in justice (dijaios¼mg). It was a sort of crown to self-control, courage and wisdom” (Hartmann 2003, 228). However, “among the virtues justice is not the highest, but rather the lowest value. That finds expression in the fact that that ought-to-be in justice articulates not a maximum, but evidently a minimum of moral demand” (Hartmann 2003, 231). Hence, to Hartmann’s mind, justice is the minimum of morality that precedes all the other specific moral values. In the second – Christian – group brotherly love is singled out for a lengthy discussion. Brotherly or neighborly love is primarily directed towards whoever is nearest, towards the other person, and it is a positive, affirmative bent, the transference of interest from the I to the Thou. The word ‘love’ is therefore misleading, in so far as it stresses the emotional side too much, while the essence of the matter lies in one’s disposition, intention, and […] conduct. […] The modern, admittedly often misused, concept of altruism exactly expresses this fundamental meaning of it, as opposite to all egoism (Hartmann 2003, 268).

Like justice, brotherly love consists of an attitude towards others. But justice is only concerned with justified claims, the rights of others, not with their personal being. In fact, justice implies that decisions are made without respect of persons. The eyes of Lady Justice are bandaged. Brotherly love, on the contrary, takes interest in the person himself, for the sake of him- or herself, without regard to rights, merits, and worth.

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It is a mysterious participation of the I in the spiritual and moral being of the other, reaching its hidden core, and recognizing from the slightest signs the most complex of inner conditions. The third and last group of special moral values does not really constitute a group at all, Hartmann admits. Of the four values that are included in it, each has to be conceived of as itself constituting a group of moral values, for each lies in a separate valuational region. Hartmann names them love of the remotest (Fernstenliebe), bestowing virtue (schenkende Tugend), personality (Persçnlichkeit), and personal love (persçnliche Liebe). Love of the remotest is the moral value that comes to the fore in the idealism of creative man, that is directed towards a humankind more perfect, more encompassing, and spiritually richer than at present. Schenkende Tugend, the virtue that bestows, refers to the giving away, the sharing of spiritual goods, and it is also a form of love. It is not brotherly love, however. Brotherly love bestows upon the weak, the needy, the unfortunate; schenkende Tugend bestows upon everyone who knows how to take, upon the appreciative, the open-minded. That is why the Schenkende loves, not the just, the truthful, the faithful, but those who are capable of learning. Personality is concerned with the ideal ethos of the individual person. Empirical man inevitably falls short of his ideal, just as much as he falls short of the ought that inheres in the more general specific moral values. In fact, it happens that a person deviates further and further from his personality, either because he imitates someone else, or because he is subject to the host of lower forces within him, that cause him to fail his higher ethos, or again because the tyrannical dominance of one or some general moral values represses his personality. Hartmann maintains that everyone has such a specific ideal ethos, though not all have one equally distinctive. The ethos of most men is rather common; they have “little personality.” Whoever really has a marked personality, carries his standards unequivocally within himself, and in following them he is faithful to himself. Personal love is the love of one personality for another. It is the consciousness of and devotion to the value of that personality. Personal love perceives the ideal ethos of an individual person in his empirical persona. Looking back from the ideal upon the imperfect carrier, it loves the empirical individual for the sake of his personality, and helps him to become who he ideally is. Personal love is the most positive of all human feelings. Using the word ‘happiness’ to describe it is misleading.

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Happiness is secondary in love. In truth, it always includes both suffering and joy. The peculiar eudaemonological phenomenon in it is rather that beyond a certain depth of feeling pain and pleasure become indifferent to it, they become literally indistinguishable. The suffering of the lover can still be happy, his happiness can be painful. The specific emotional value of [personal, A.K.] love is beyond happiness and unhappiness (Hartmann 2003, 376).

Unknown to antiquity and to medieval Christianity, these last four virtues were discovered by the moderns. Nietzsche is referred to by Hartmann as a pioneer in articulating the first two virtues. The last two are clearly the upshot of the general modern responsiveness to individuality. To Hartmann’s mind, they represent summits in the sphere of moral value. How Platonic is this whole jºslor mogtºr of values? It is clear that Hartmann’s catalogue of values is more elaborate and much richer than Plato’s. Wisdom, courage, temperance, and justice, to Plato the alpha and omega of moral virtues, occupy only a small corner in Hartmann’s realm of values. It is also clear that Hartmann, in building his catalogue, in a Hegelian spirit took from the history of though whatever he believed was important and true, and incorporated it. But all that doesn’t mean that Hartmann’s catalogue is eo ipso somehow against the spirit of Plato’s thinking. Just as the list of virtues discussed by Aristotle in the Nicomachean Ethics is not against that spirit. It seems to me that Hartmann can best be read as a latter-day Aristotle in this respect, building upon and further enriching the moral philosophy of Plato.

10.5.2. Unity of the Virtues? What about the relation between the moral values? The general picture that emerges is one of multiplicity, not unity. The fundamental moral values clash with each other in many ways. Evidently so in the case of the good versus the noble, and in the case of purity versus richness of experience, but purity also clashes with the noble, and richness of experience with the good. Antinomies abound. The special moral values, too, often clash. There is clearly an antinomy between justice and brotherly love. Love of the remotest easily clashes with brotherly love. And personality and personal love can clash with just about every other virtue possible. Hence, on this fundamental issue Hartmann seems to part ways with Plato, for whom the virtues form a unity. Of

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course, to many if not most modern writers this ‘unitarian’ idea is abhorrent, because it doesn’t leave room for something that seems self-evident to them: moral conflict. Does this mean then that, in this respect at least, Hartmann is a modern anti-Platonic moral philosopher, and not a Platonist? I don’t think so. Conflicts between values present a grave problem both to our understanding and to our lives, at least whenever the values involved seem to be equally valuable, Hartmann argues. From a practical point of view, we cannot live with such antinomies. Whenever we act, we are compelled to ’solve’ them, simply because human action is by definition unitary. We cannot split ourselves in two halves. From a theoretical point of view, Hartmann argues, moral antinomies are also objectionable, because the universal synthesis of moral value, “the unity of virtue” as the ancients had it, is inherent in the Idea of moral value or of the Good. Thus, the problem of the conflict of values leads him on to the question of the possibilities of value-synthesis. It is in this context that Hartmann discusses Aristotle’s doctrine of the mean, in order to demonstrate that behind the Aristotelian virtues lie two conflicting virtues, and that consequently these former virtues are not so much means (les|tgter) between two vices, as syntheses of value. In juxtaposition to syvqos¼mg (temperance) stand !jokas¸a (profligacy) and !maishgs¸a (insensibility); only in contrast to the former is it properly temperance; in contrast to the latter it is the fully developed aptitude of reacting emotionally, of the affective life. In contrast to deik¸a (cowardice), courage is spirited endurance, in contrast to hqas}tgr (rashness) it is deliberate circumspection, cool presence of mind. Seen against aqcik|tgr (irascibility), pqaºtgr is mildness, but seen against !oqcgs¸a (lack of spirit) it is the capacity of righteous indignation (Hartmann 2003, 414 – 415).

Etc. Hence, !qet^ (virtue) is a synthesis of two one-sided moral values. Hartmann believes, though he acknowledges that it cannot be proved, that the principle of value-synthesis is a general, fundamental law (allgemeines Grundgesetz) of the sphere of moral value. The fact that we often do not perceive the synthesis between two conflicting moral values does not prove that there is no synthesis. It merely proves that we cannot see it. We may once be able to see them, or they may be out of reach of human cognizance forever, but our uneasiness in the face of antinomies, and our permanent search for syntheses, shows the truth of what Aristotle so strongly felt, without being able to express it, namely that all moral values, taken in isolation, are barbed, that they are tyr-

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annical, and that to be truly realized in man they need a counterweight. The ultimate moral ideal is the combination of justice and brotherly love, brotherly love and love of the remotest, purity and richness of experience, and so on. Hence, a unity of the virtues after all.

10.6 Knowledge of Values How do we get to know values? Since values are ideal beings, like mathematical units and laws, and the latter to both Plato and Hartmann are the paradigm of ideal being, let us first ask ourselves how we get to know mathematical units and laws. These obviously cannot be observed empirically (Hartmann 1965a, 336 – 344). But neither are they the product of inductive inference from empirical observation. The validity of mathematical principles is universal and stringent, whereas induction can only render probable results. Therefore, Hartmann argues, knowledge of mathematical principles is the product of a different kind of observation that is not empirical and can claim absolute validity. Plato called it an inner perception, a perception with the mind’s eye. Kant’s synthetic judgment apriori also stands for this kind of knowledge (Hartmann 1965a, 345 – 353). Hartmann follows Kant in speaking of apriori knowledge, but he rejects Kant’s claim that a priori knowledge is transcendental, i. e. a precondition of experience that lies within the subject. Instead he conceives of it as transcendent, i. e. as pointing out a basic structure of the real world by “an inner grasping of a state of affairs that has immediate certainty, and can claim generality and necessity” (Hartmann 1965a, 340 – 342). Clearly, Hartmann is referring to what Husserl had called “eidetic intuition” (Wesensschau) as opposed to “empirical intuition.” Whereas empirical intuition focuses on Dasein, on what something is hic et nunc, eidetic intuition focuses on Sosein, on what something is in essence. A focus on Dasein invokes questions related to existence and non-existence, to coming into being and passing away, in short, on understanding (and manipulating) change. A focus on Sosein on the other hand ‘brackets’ i. e. abstracts from existence – Husserl’s eidetic reduction – and concentrates on identity and difference. It is not relevant how something came about or what it brings about, but merely what it essentially is, what its eWdor is, and in what way it is related to – posited vis à vis – other eWdg in the order of being, i. e. its essential relations (Wesenszusammenhnge) (Husserl 1992, 13 – 16).

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Again, all of this seems to me to be exactly what Plato had in mind when he spoke of mathematics. The language is much more technical – due to centuries of reflection on Plato’s Ideas! – but the conception is the same. With one difference of course: Plato’s theory of !m²lmgsir, as set out in the Meno, where it is argued that man is capable of knowing the Ideas, because his soul is immortal, has lived many lives before, and has thus seen all things, both those in the empirical world and those in the world of Ideas. Hartmann will have none of this. Man is with body and soul part of the empirical world i. e. of real being, which implies that he comes into being and perishes. An immortal soul is a poetic fiction, at best. Let’s us now turn from mathematics to values, and ask again: how do we perceive values, how do we come to know them? (Hartmann 1965b, 281 – 282; Hartmann 2002, 232 – 244). It is impossible to observe values empirically. Only acts, things, and events are perceived empirically. To know the value of what is observed empirically is possible only if one has already grasped the relevant value in abstracto of what is observed, and can use that knowledge as a standard to assess what has been realized. Knowledge of values is a priori knowledge, like knowledge of mathematical being. So far so good. At this point, however, a difficulty arises. For values are not entirely on a par with mathematics. The latter has a categorical hold over the real world. Real being is wholly conditioned by it. All real entities conform to them inexorably. That is not the case with values. Real being can, but need not be in agreement with the values. It can be valuable or not. Real being can be without value or even contrary to value (Wertwidrig). This independence of real being and values visà-vis each other is an epistemological problem. Due to the indissoluble bond between the real and mathematics, it is possible to direct our thinking to the ideal through the real by bracketing the ephemeral (Hartmann 1965b, 282 – 283). Hence, by Husserl’s eidetic reduction. In the case of values, this is impossible. So what does ‘grasping’ mean, when we speak of grasping a value? Grasping a value is sensing it, or more precisely, being gripped by it (Erfabtsein von ihm), writes Hartmann (Hartmann 1965b, 283 – 284). The specific ’organ’ with which man perceives values is his sense of value (Wertgefhl). This sense of value is neither a cognitive, nor a conative, but an affective, an emotional capacity. Of course, one would now like to hear a few things about how this emotional capacity works, but Hartmann is largely silent about

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that.16 We thus shall never know what exactly he meant by it. What we do know, however, is that Plato certainly would not have agreed with this theory. First, because in his anthropology emotions hardly have a place at all. It is the desires he focuses on. And secondly, because grasping to Plato was a thoroughly intellectual act: a thing of the kocistijºm and nothing else. What Hartmann does say about coming to know values is more sociological than epistemological. With all of which, Plato would probably have agreed, although he says nothing about it. Not everyone has the same capacity to sense values, and not everyone’s capacity is equally well developed, Hartmann argues. “There are such things as education and lack of education of the sense of values, talent and lack of talent for the discernment of them” (Hartmann 2002, 228). “It is here just as it is with mathematical insight. Not everyone is capable of it; not everyone has the eye, the ethical maturity, the spiritual level, for seeing the situation as it is” (Hartmann 2002, 225 – 226). In fact, value blindness is quite a common phenomenon. In extreme cases it brings about a complete loss of meaning of life and the world. He who stolidly passes by men and their fates, he whom the staggering does not stagger nor the exalted exalt, for him life is in vain, he has no part of it. The world must be meaningless and life senseless to one who has no capacity to perceive the sense of life’s relationships, the inexhaustible significance of persons and situations, or correlations and events. The outward emptiness and monotony of his life are the reflection of his inner emptiness and his moral blindness. The real world in which he exists, the stream of human life which bears him up and carries him along, is not without manifold wealth of content. His poverty amidst abundance is due to his own failure to appreciate life (Hartmann 2002, 35).

The sense of values can be narrow and broad, not only in the individual but also in collectivities. But even when it is broad, it seems to be a fact that we, individually and collectively, always appreciate only a limited section of the realm of values, while we remain blind to other sections (Hartmann 1965b, 284 – 286; Hartmann 2002, 228 – 229). It is simply impossible to be gripped by all values at the same time. On the contrary, each and every value tends to claim absolute allegiance. Such is the gripping power of values. Hence, there is a real danger that one or a few 16 Max Scheler has much more to say about our sensing of values, not only in Formalismus in der Ethik, but also in much of his other work. Cf. for instance the essays: “Ordo Amoris” and “Liebe und Erkenntnis,” in Frings 1991. Cf. also the works of D. von Hildebrand, for instance Hildebrand 1982.

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values become tyrannically dominant in a man, driving out his sense of other values, and turning him into a one-sided fanatic. And the same can happen to a group of men or a whole society. The broadening of the sense of values, on the other hand, while ruling out fanaticism, can easily effect a decrease in intensity and immediateness and result in a degree of sloth. The sense of values varies constantly. On Hartmann’s view, this is the reason why values seem so alterable and relative, both historically and geographically. In truth, “this shifting and variability do not constitute a ‘transvaluation of values’, but a revaluation and reorientation of human life. Values do not change, but our insight into them changes” (Hartmann 2002, 229). Actions, outlooks, and associations which yesterday passed as good, may today be held to be bad, due to the fact that some values have been unveiled and others have fallen into oblivion. This process of transformation of the sense of value is not always calm and orderly, Hartmann thinks. In certain epochs it leads to sharp crises, breaks forth violently, seizes hold of the emotions like a whirlpool and sweeps them along into historic action. The valuational discovery which gave its penetrative power to primitive Christianity was such a crisis – the discovery of the peculiar moral significance of love of one’s neighbor. One central value, or even a whole group of them, enters the ethical consciousness and radically transforms the view of the world and life. […] In criticism of the old, in opposition to things consecrated, the new vision springs up, ripens and waxes strong. It must destroy so as to achieve; it must do this even where it takes up the existing order into itself and builds upon it. It is born under the sign of conflict; and the conflict lasts until it triumphs or succumbs. […] Here the great ethical leaders appear, the heroes of the spirit, prophets, founders of religions, the champions of ideas. From them the movement proceeds; they revolutionize the crowd. It is natural enough to think that such leaders are ‘inventors’ of the new forms of value, that the birth of values themselves takes place in the thought of the champion of ideas. […] That is a great mistake. The champion himself invents nothing; he only discovers. Indeed, even his discovery is conditional. He can only discover what already lives darkly in the valuational sentiment of the crowd, and presses forward to expression. It is he who, as it were, reads in human hearts the values newly felt; there he gleans them, draws them into the light of consciousness, lifts them on to his shield and invests them with speech (Hartmann 2002, 89 – 91).

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10.7 Realization of Values The world contains two essentially different kinds of being in itself: one real and one ideal. Between the two kinds of being exists a fundamental relationship which is profoundly characteristic of the whole realm of being and of the knowledge of being: ideal being reappears in real being. There is not one real entity, in which the corresponding ideal entity does not recur as an essence. Except in the case of values. With values it is otherwise. They can of course be realized, but they can also be unrealized. Values are not inviolable determinants, like mathematical units and laws, to which real being is necessarily subordinate. This leads to the question what, if any, is the relation between values as ideal entities and the real world. The answer is: man. He and only he is capable of sensing values, and at the same time capable of acting upon them. He and only he can convert the ought-to-be inherent in values into reality. The rest of existence is dull and dead to the call of the ideal.Man is the guardian of values in the world of real being. This conversion is anything but mechanical, Hartmann argues. The mediation between the ideal and the real presupposes that man knows the value and that he subsequently takes action to realize it. Whether he really does so, is up to him. There is no law of nature compelling him to mediate between the ideal and the real, in the way a stone is ’compelled’ to obey the law of gravitation. Indeed, man very often betrays his duties as guardian of the ought-to-be, because he doesn’t comprehend it, or for some reason, such as weakness of will, he fails to act upon it. Hence, the determining force of values is in one sense weak. Values do not rule unconditionally. Without ’outside’ help by man they cannot be realized. And this ’outside’ help is frequently absent. At the same time, however, values have an unparalleled strength, according to Hartmann. Values “can transform not-being into being. The generatio ex nihilo, which is otherwise an impossibility in all realms of being, here is possible” (Hartmann 2002, 238). The laws of mathematics and all the other classes of ideal being rule within the real world. They do not add anything new to this world. Values on the other hand, if they are realized, bring in a new, “axiological” determination, on top of the ontological determination that is always there. Hence, if values are realized they literally change the world. And they depend on man to be realized. This demonstrates the uniqueness and greatness of man’s position in the world as a practical i. e. acting agent, and the awesome responsibility that

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is his. In his theoretical capacity, man merely mirrors the world, he is a mere consciousness of being (Frsichsein des Seins), his thoughts only represent the world’s structure. As a practical agent, on the other hand, he molds, transforms and builds up the world: he is a little God. Man as a practical agent is the restless point in the world, in which it loses its ontological equilibrium. How is this generatio ex nihilo possible, given the causal determination of the real world? It is due to man’s unique position between the two types of determination, which gives him freedom of the will. It is a dual position; he stands under a twofold determination. As a natural being, he is determined causally, even in his desires and aversions, a plaything of the timeless forces of nature, overpowering him and working irrespective of him and through him. But as a ‘person’, he is the carrier of another determination that comes from the ideal realm of values. In his sense of value he finds himself also determined by the ought-to-be (Sollensforderung) of the moral values. And it is this determination, which manifests itself in his purposive activity (Zweckttigkeit). He can only make his goals what he senses to be of value. But in making it his goal, he transforms it into reality. Thus, he positively creates what causal necessity could never bring forth, a world of moral reality within natural reality (Hartmann 2004, 80).

If one of the two determinant forces were absent, and man were wholly determined by only one of them, freedom of the will would be non-existent, and hence morality would be impossible. If the causal nexus in him controls the positing of goals (Zwecksetzung), mechanicism rules uninhibitedly, and man becomes, as Lamettrie had it, a ’machine’. But if the finalistic nexus controls the natural processes, allpowerful, controlling, macro-cosmic goals of the world (Weltzwecke) stand over against the weak, finite purposive activity of man, for whom he is no match. He is hamstrung, fettered, predestined even in the most secret movements of his heart, indeed, in his sense of value (Hartmann 2004, 84 – 85).

In both cases, man would possess no freedom of the will. “The laws governing real being (Seinsgesetzlichkeit) and the laws governing the ought (Sollensgesetzlichkeit), causal and teleological determination, must so to speak have the seat of their cosmic struggle in him. And only as long as this struggle continues, there is a free being” (Hartmann 2004, 84). What would Plato have said of all this? I guess that most of it would be beyond him. Both the problem of free will versus teleological determination, for instance by an omnipotent God, and the problem of free

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will versus causal determination come up long after his days. He was blissfully ignorant of them. But he would have agreed with Hartmann’s idea that man’s position in the cosmos is a special one, that he alone is the guardian of values, and that by realizing them he shows himself to be a little God.

10.8 Idea of the Good Finally, a few words about the big God, or Plato’s Idea of the Good. As will be remembered Plato believed that this Idea is “the highest that can be learned.” The Ideas exist and can be known because of it, although the Idea of the good itself has no being, and is beyond being – 1p´jeima t/s oqsiar – surpassing being in dignity and power. What exactly Plato had in mind no one knows, but from antiquity to the present this transcendent source of being and intelligibility has often been interpreted as the God of Christian theology. What were Hartmann’s views on this topic? He usually kept a deep silence. But not the silence of the agnostic. Rather the silence of the atheist who thinks that phrases like “beyond being” are hogwash. The Ethik ends with a chapter called “Ethics and Religious Freedom.” The title “Ethics or Religion” would have been more appropriate. At this point the student has definitely taken leave from his teacher.

10.9 Bibliography Aristotle (1924), Metaphysics, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Frings, Manfred (ed.) (1991), Von der Ganzheit des Menschen, Bonn: Bouvier Verlag. Gehlen, Arnold (1986), Der Mensch, seine Natur und seine Stellung in der Welt, Wiesbaden: AULA Verlag (1st ed. 1940). Guthrie, W. K. C. (1975), A History of Greek Philosophy, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, vol. IV. Hartmann, Nicolai (1933), Das Problem des geistigen Seins, Berlin: Walter de Gruyter. Hartmann, Nicolai (1940), Der Aufbau der realen Welt, Berlin: Walter de Gruyter. Hartmann, Nicolai (1950), Philosophie der Natur, Berlin: Walter de Gruyter. Hartmann, Nicolai (1955), “Zeitlichkeit und Substantialität”, in: Kleinere Schriften, vol. I, Berlin: Walter de Gruyter (1955), 180 – 214.

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Hartmann, Nicolai (1957), “Die Anfänge des Schichtungsgedankens in der alten Philosophie”, in: Kleinere Schriften, vol. II, Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 164 – 190. Hartmann, Nicolai (1965a), Grundzge einer Metaphysik der Erkenntnis, BerlinLeipzig: De Gruyter (1st ed. 1921). Hartmann, Nicolai (1965b), Zur Grundlegung der Ontologie, Berlin: Walter de Gruyter (1st ed. 1934). Hartmann, Nicolai (2002), Ethics, Vol. 1, Moral Phenomena, New Brunswick: Transaction Publishers. Hartmann, Nicolai (2003), Ethics, Vol. 2, Moral Values, New Brunswick: Transaction Publishers. Hartmann, Nicaolai (2004), Ethics, Vol. 3, Moral Freedom, New Brunswick: Transaction Publishers. Hildebrand, D. von (1982), Sittlichkeit und ethische Werterkenntnis, VallendarSchönstadt: Patris Verlag (1st ed. 1922). Husserl, Edmund (1992), Ideen zu einer reinen Phnomenologie und phnomenologischen Philosophie, Hamburg: Felix Meiner Verlag (1st ed. 1913). Plebner, Helmuth (1965), Die Stufen des Organischen und der Mensch, Berlin: Walter de Gruyter (1st ed. 1928). Popper Karl (1945), The Open Society and its Enemies, London: Routledge. Plato (1995), “Cratylus”, in: Opera, vol. I, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 383 – 440. Plato (1922), “Gorgias”, in: Opera, vol. III, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 447 – 527. Plato (1922), “Phaedrus”, in: Opera, vol. II, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 227 – 279. Plato (2003), Res Publica (Politeia), Oxford: Oxford University Press. Plato (1922), “Symposium”, in: Opera, vol. II, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 172 – 223. Plato (1995), “Theaetetus”, in: Opera, vol. I, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 142 – 210. Scheler, Max (1998), Die Stellung der Menschen im Kosmos, 14th ed. Bonn: Bouvier Verlag (1st ed. 1928).

Chapter 11: Nicolai Hartmann’s Plato. A Tribute to the “Power of Dialectics” (Parmenides, 135c 2) Claudia Luchetti 5done d¶ loi wq/mai eQr to»r kºcour jatavucºmta 1m 1je¸moir sjope?m t_m emtym tµm !k¶heiam.

(Plato, Phaed. 99e 4 – 6) 1 There is no drama whatsoever in Hartmann. The temper of his writings is cold, sober, analytic. They are void of both lyric and preaching. Any ascendency he has over the emotions of his readers is due to the breadth of his vision, the clean and far-flung lines of his distinctions and the sweeping vistas he opens [….] He maps out a field of investigation and then he starts his patient spadework, dividing and subdividing [….] and yet, through all his laborious plodding, never losing sight of the grand lineament which unites the logical minutiae into a comprehensive pattern. One may disagree with his principles, but it is hard not to admire his craftsmanship. (Kuhn 1951, 290)

In the historical reconstruction of Platonic hermeneutics, Nicolai Hartmann is often considered a faithful follower of Marburg School, and his interpretation is regarded as particularly close to Natorp’s. There is certainly a profound affinity between these two philosophers with regards to their understanding of Plato’s ontology. Hartmann is surely following Natorp, when in his wide-ranging work, Platos Logik des Seins he states 1

And I believed I must take refuge in the kºcoi, in order to investigate by means of them the truth of Beings truly existing.

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that the Platonic concept of “Being” is essentially a function of judgment: the oqs¸a is in fact the expression of that mutual relationship between the elements of thought in which the concept of “Being” consists, similar to the Platonic view of the interrelationship of the higher genera, as the dialogue The Sophist shows (Hartmann 1965, 116 – 117). Nevertheless, Natorp tended to identify the theory of Ideas with a strict methodological conception aimed at giving a foundation to science – a science that is supposed to explain and justify the existence of the world of becoming – yet he failed to appreciate the character of intuitive knowledge on which Plato’s theory of Ideas is based. Just to mention a single but very clarifying example of Natorp’s non-ontological and non-metaphysical reading of the Platonic theory of reality, I would like to recall his interpretation of a short passage from Plato’s Phaedo (99d-e): Socrates, due to his disappointment concerning the results of the naturalistic investigations carried out by PreSocratic philosophers (Anaxagoras in particular), explains the reason why he preferred to take refuge in the kºcoi. It was the only way “to find out the truth of the truly existing Beings” (sjope?m t_m emtym tµm !k¶heiam). In my opinion there is no doubt about the fact that Socrates’ aim was to emphasize the positive relationship existing between kºcor – that can be read as both definition, kºcor t/r oqs¸ar, and reasoningand its “object”: if we compare this passage of the Phaedo with the description of dialectics in the middle books of Plato’s Republic, particularly in Book VII, 534b, we can see that the true dialectician should explain and justify, both to himself and to others (kºcom didºmai), the contents of the ideal knowledge he acquires. From this point of view, we could say that Logos, as far as we understand it as the “power of reasoning,” is temporally prior to the intuition of the Ideas, from the human perspective of those who are ascending to the knowledge of eUdg, and allows us to organize the contents of this ideal vision within a definition. In the end kºcor t/r oqs¸ar will reflect and reproduce exactly the intimate dialectical order and structure of the intelligible world, of the jºslor mogtºr. Therefore, when Natorp in the previous passage of the Phaedo identified both the Logos with the Idea, and those emta, those “truly existing Beings,” with the objects of sense perception, concluding from these two assumptions that the main function of Plato’s theory of Ideas was to offer an explanatory key for the phenomenal world (Natorp 1921,

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126 f.), he seems to me to misunderstand the nature of the Platonic eWdor completely.2 Hartmann was also determined, as the anti-metaphysician he considered himself in some respects to be, to consider the Platonic philosophy from an exclusively logical point of view. This meant to understand that the Logos belongs to the nature of the Idea itself. He asserts as much at the start of his Platos Logik des Seins (V-VII). Yet he does not deny, in sharp contrast with Natorp, the deep metaphysical contents of the theory of Ideas. My paper aims at giving a general overview of some of the main features of Hartmann’s interpretation of the Platonic philosophy. Each of them deserves further development, which would be particularly helpful in determining whether Plato’s influence was crucial on Hartmann’s construction of his own ontology. From this angle, I like to see my contribution as a starting point to approach Hartmann’s confrontation with Plato’s thought, in other words, as a starting point to approach Hartmann’s peculiar Platonism. Among the various aspects of Plato’s speculation, heightened in Platos Logik des Seins, I would particularly like to emphasize: 1. Hartmann’s strict ontological understanding of the theory of Ideas; 2. Hartmann’s interpretation of the Platonic theory of Soul; 3. Hartmann’s vision of the inner dialectical nature of the Ideas; 4. Hartmann’s explanation of Plato’s conception of the relationship between time and eternity.

11.1 Hartmann’s ontological understanding of the theory of ideas Hartmann gives us a very good example of the close connection existing between the logical and ontological dimension of Ideas through his interpretation of dialectics (diakejtijµ 1pist¶lg) in Plato’s Sophist (PLS, 122 – 124).3 The general task of dialectics as a science is to establish 2 3

For the influence of Marburg School, particularly of Hermann Cohen, on Hartmann’s interpretation of Plato, see Klein 1952, 105 – 110, and Sirchia 1969, 23 – 38. From now on I will use the abbreviations PLS and ZEL for Platos Logik des Seins and for “Zur Lehre vom Eidos bei Platon und Aristoteles” (in this case after the first quotation).

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the laws that govern thought. The highest aim of dialectics is to reveal if there are some concepts (Begriffe, Denkelemente) (and there are some, for instance “being,” “identity” and “difference”) that can serve to link all the others. In those cases in which concepts seem not to be combinable, dialectics should show (within these “vowels of thought,” like Plato calls the highest genera, by making a comparison with grammar in Soph. 253a), which of them are responsible for conceptual separation. Therefore, dialectics investigates the nature of thinking with regards to its lawfulness (Gesetzmßigkeit). This law of thought is twofold and thus it has two procedures, as Plato says when he hints at the existence of different “ways” (bdo¸), of dialectics in the Book VII of the Republic (532d f.). The first, the sulpkoj¶, has the task of producing the connections within the elements of thought, while the second, the dia¸qesir, must determine their mutual limits within the totality of the intelligible realm, providing us with an explanation of the reason why the single members of the ideal world are different from each other. Therefore, from Hartmann’s point of view, the reason for the coincidence of the problem of Being and the problem of judgment (Urteil), is exactly the inner dialectical structure of the ideal reality: “Being” is the being of the elements of thought in their mutual relationships, and judgment is precisely the expression, in a verbal form, that faithfully reproduces the way in which Ideas “exist with each other,” their Freinandersein. Lastly, judgment is the result of the intellectual activity of a thinking subject, and we will see during the discussion of point 2) how Hartmann determines the relationship between the subjective and the objective dimensions within the Platonic conception of the process of knowledge. After focusing on the two main ways of dialectics, “collection” or “reunification” and “division,” Hartmann explains why logic and ontology should overlap. The capacity of dialectics to reveal the connections existing between the intelligible forms, so that Ideas can be described as realities which “link each other together,” sum´womta (Zusammenhaltende), depends on the fact that Ideas are principles of unity: the first operation of dialectics consists precisely in the passage from a multiplicity perceived through the senses to an intellectual unity. A typical example of this familiar procedure, the sumacyc¶, is given in Phaedo in the argument for the doctrine of recollection (72a f.), where Plato explains how the Soul, relying on the knowledge of Ideas acquired before embodiment, is able to remember the Idea of equality (aqt¹ t¹ Usom). Thanks to the comparison and the contrast with the multiplicity of those objects of sense perception, which seem to be simultaneously

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the same (equal), and not the same (unequal), the Soul is able to grasp the ontological difference between Ideas and appearances. In any case, the capacity of the eWdor to comprehend and include within itself a sensible multiplicity is only the “lowest level” of the unifying activity of the Idea. The following dialectical steps consist in showing the different ways in which single Ideas, the knowledge of which is acquired through the procedure of sumacyc¶, coexist and behave with respect to each other (Soph. 253d f.). From Hartmann’s point of view, to call the Ideas principles of unification means that each eWdor is able to produce unity on its own. This is particularly evident in relations between higher levels of Ideas and those levels subordinate to them, as, for example, a genus and the species that belongs to it. This inborn faculty of the Idea to generate the unity for the lower degrees of Being proves that the ideal world has a very well organized inner hierarchy. This further implies that every group of Ideal unities derives from another Ideal unity occupying a higher place within the same structure. From the moment that thought is in itself unity, the ascent from lower to higher eUdg is a process that cannot increase to infinity, which is to say, there must be a highest unity, a sort of Idea of all Ideas, upon which all the others with their mutual relationships depend. I would like to underline the perfect correspondence between Hartmann’s understanding of the internal logical and ontological frame of Plato’s ideal realm, and Plato’s own description of it in the Book VI of Republic 500b-c: the intelligible totality is regarded exactly as a set of objects ruled by an internal order, t²nir, establishing the way each Idea behaves with itself and the others; because Ideas are ordered entities (tetacl´ma %tta), they are also !e· jat± taqt± ja· ¢sa¼tyr 5womta, “always the same,” a phrase used by Plato to denote the Ideal eternity, in reality hinting at the self-identity of the Idea and at the unchangeable dialectical relations it creates, a hint that means stating the ideal character of the intelligible difference also. Even if Hartmann did not pay explicit attention to this passage, he was aware of the ultimate ground of the constitutive order of the intelligible world. In the article “Zur Lehre vom Eidos bei Platon und Aristoteles” (1941), he gives a very clear account of the logical and the ontological role played by the Idea of all Ideas: while interpreting the Phaedo, he associated the peak of the converging series of the hypotheses, the Rjamºm, something conceived as “sufficient,” no longer depending on high-

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er hypotheses (a concept introduced by Plato at 101d), with the nonhypothetical Principle (!mupºhetor !qw¶), described in the Simile of the Line in Republic VI 510b-511c. Then he deduced that both are identical with the !cahºm, the Idea of the Good. Using Hartmann’s own words, I quote, Here we are evidently dealing with an order of priority within Ideas, in which the more specific are the lowest, and the more universal the highest. (Namely, the last ones are endowed with the greatest certainty. And this seems again to depend upon the fact that they possess a greater ontological weight and a greater independence.) The evidence for this is given from the further development of this conception at the end of the Book 6 of Republic, where the ascent to the “Idea of Good” is carried out. The highest principle is an unconditional (“non-hypothetical”), and an absolute. […] Therefore, the lower degrees and layers of the Ideal realm are “hanging” on the higher, and all of them are hanging together on the non-hypothetical principle. This principle is at once the most universal and the most fundamental. Every more specific entity finds its ontic support in it (Hartmann 1941, 20).

Everything considered, Hartmann’s point of view concerning the true foundation of Platonic logic seems to be quite clear: the logical activity of dialectics depends, finally, on the concept of “unity” that finds in the Idea of Good its highest expression. This is why the dichotomical methodology, the dia¸qesir, can also be regarded as an instrument of logical and ontological analysis. Quoting again from ZEL, 22: A fundamental contrast [sc. between Plato and Aristotle] emerges at first, when one considers the order of precedence within genus and species – namely not as the logical priority existing between generic term and subconcept, but rather as the ontic graduation of the universal with regard to the determination of the essence of Being (Hartmann 1941, 22).

Therefore, even if in Hartmann’s opinion Plato’s ontology does not have an absolute priority over his logic, considering that it is always the original intuition of unity, regarded as a supreme action of intellectual synthesis, which enables both the dialectical activity and the construction of judgment, we can conclude that for Hartmann, exactly as for Plato, logic has deep ontological roots. Quoting another short passage in which Hartmann describes the intuitive nature of the intellectual approach to Ideas: The vision of the Idea is mainly the “unity of a vision,” l¸a tir Qd´a. This means, when one converts it into the realm of logic, the unity of an original performance. […] The contemplation of unity means the creation of unity (Hartmann 1965, 188).

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A significant consequence of Hartmann’s strict dialectical understanding of Plato’s ontology concerns the well known problem of participation or partaking, l´henir, of the objects of sense perception in Ideas. As we have seen, the inner structure of the ideal world depends on the existence of a non-hypothetical first principle, i. e., the Idea of Good, which assures the unity of subordinate Ideas within the series of species and genera. In Hartmann’s perspective this implies that the whole discussion about the possibility of participation is only an apparent problem, easily solved applying the “communion” (joimym¸a) of the highest genera, as Plato presented it in The Sophist. It would definitely be wrong to conceive an empirical object as something that exists independently from the Ideas, because each object perceived by the senses is simply the result of the connection of determinations truly existing only in the dimension of thought. Therefore, the mutual communion between Ideas automatically explains their community with “things,” because the objects of sense perception are nothing but the result of the Ideal connections on the lowest degree of Being (see in particular Hartmann 1965, 135 – 136). This is the genuine meaning of the word ‘participation’.

11.2 Hartmann’s interpretation of the Platonic theory of the soul As a direct consequence of his reading of Plato’s theory of Ideas, Hartmann points out the identity of thought and being, which had already been established long before by Parmenides. In this respect Hartmann reads Plato’s statement concerning a “truly existing Being,” oqs¸a emtyr owsa, in Phaedrus (247c 7) as a genuine expression of the self-activity of the Idea, and as a sign of the identity, in general, between the Soul, the subject, and the object of intellectual knowledge. First of all, this point of view profoundly influences Hartmann’s comprehension of dialectics as a science: dialectics becomes the point of conjunction between subjectivity, objectivity, and methodology, and the movement of intelligence represents its Soul. Here, Hartmann is following exactly Hegel’s introductory words in the “Vorrede zur ersten Ausgabe” (1821) to his Wissenschaft der Logik: This spiritual movement, which in its simplicity gives itself its own determinateness, and in this determinateness its equality with itself, a movement

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thus, which is the immanent development of the concept, is the absolute method of knowing and at once the immanent Soul of the content itself. – Only on this self-construing way, I argue, is philosophy enabled to be an objective and demonstrated science (5/17).

Secondarily, Hartmann’s belief in the existence of an intellectual movement inside the ideal world leads him to an extremely profound understanding of Plato’s psychology. The Soul, considered in her pure form, as moOr or intelligence, corresponds to the logical aspect of the self-activity of the Idea. Plato’s formula aqtº, which he often uses to indicate both the Idea, aqt¹ t¹ eWdor – either a specific one, aqt¹ t¹ jakºm, aqt¹ t¹ Usom, etc., or the ideal Being in general, aqtµ B oqs¸a –, and the Soul, aqtµ B xuw¶, is a clear sign for the existence of a common root of subjectivity and objectivity: the “same,” or the “self,” das Selbst, in the Idea is identical with the “same,” or the “self,” in the Soul. In the Theaetetus, 186a, Plato uses exactly the same formula for the Soul that he normally applies to ideal Beings, l¸a Qd´a, “one/a unique Idea.” Hartmann understands this statement as follows: the Soul is the Idea of consciousness, which must be regarded as identical with the Idea as such, and the reason for this identity is that we can only define consciousness through the inborn faculty possessed by the Soul to produce her own unity. The previous assumption that each Idea has in itself the power to generate unity, implies now that consciousness is essentially self-consciousness, and this is the deeper reason why the self of the Soul should be identical with the self of the Idea. Therefore, there is no point in conceiving the Platonic eWdor as coinciding only with one of the elements involved in the process of knowledge, i. e., with either the subjective or the objective side of it. From Hartmann’s point of view, the Platonic Idea is the true unity of subjectivity and objectivity. This “being the same,” the inner identity which constitutes the root of the Idea, suggests that subject and object are only two relative terms: with respect to the subject the self-activity of the ideal unity assumes the shape of consciousness, whereas with respect to the object this unity manifests itself simultaneously as the identity of the contents of thought. Using once more Hartmann’s words, I quote: With regard to the Idea subject and object are only the termini of a relation (Beziehungspunkte). […] And this becomes even more evident if we consider the Qde?m as the activity of creating unity. Yde?m is indeed both the self-activity in the Soul and the objective unity of things as they are grasped

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through this unique intellectual act. So, the self-active unity reveals itself to be at once the unity of consciousness from the perspective of the subject […], and, from the objective point of view, the identity of the content of thought. Identity is the innermost essence of the Idea (Hartmann 1965, 199 – 200).

I would like to emphasize the coherency of Hartmann’s interpretation of Plato’s psychology with Plato’s own conception of the relation existing between Soul and Ideas. I believe that Hartmann was completely aware of the deep ontological meaning of Plato’s statement in the Phaedrus (245c 5 f.) that the Soul is “principle of movement” (!qwµ t/r jim¶seyr). While describing the journey of the xuw¶ in the hyperphysical world (the rpeqouq²mior tºpor), Plato points out something of utmost importance in regard to one of the objects in which this spiritual vision consists: the Soul does not just acquire knowledge of “single” Ideas like beauty, justice, or prudence (Besonnenheit), but also of science itself, or science “as such” (1pist¶lg). This science is not the one that manifests itself in the world of becoming, but rather the one that “truly exists in that Being which truly is” (1m t` f 1stim cm emtyr 1pist¶lgm owsam, 247e 1 – 2). Even if he does not say it explicitly, Hartmann does not read this passage of the Phaedrus as most of Plato’s interpreters do, that is, as if the Soul simply acquires knowledge as a passive result of her vision of Ideas. I believe that what Plato is trying to explain is that we should ourselves conceive of a perfect coincidence between self-knowledge and knowledge of the Ideas, an identity which he already established in the conclusion of the third proof for the immortality of the Soul in the Phaedo, 79d: the xuw¶, considered in her pure form, moOr or vqºmgsir, that is, regarded as intelligence, reveals herself to be a reality which doesn’t just outwardly belong to the ideal world. If the Soul were able to purify herself, relying only on herself (aqtµ jah’ art¶m), and to renounce to the communion (joimym¸a) with the body, it would become as it actually was before her embodiment, !e· jat± taqt± ja· ¢sa¼tyr, that is, eternal or identical with herself. In other words, by acquiring knowledge of eUdg, the Soul becomes “what it really is,” i. e., an Idea. Therefore, the science we encounter in the description of the Intelligible that is given in the Phaedrus should rather be understood, as Hartmann understands it, as the inner intellectual movement of self-knowledge or self-consciousness of the Ideas, where the Soul expresses the subjective side of such a movement. From this point of view, Hart-

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mann’s conception of the ideal world evidently recalls Plato’s own vision of the pamtek_r em, the perfect or absolute Being, as a living reality, as he states in The Sophist, where he calls it 5lxuwom (249a 10), and in Timaeus, where he calls it pamtek³r f`om, a perfect or absolute living Being (31b 1). As far as I know, there is no recent interpretation of Plato (apart from an essay of Wilhelm Schwabe 1994) able to attain a comprehension as deep as that of Hartmann of the ideal nature of the Soul, in other words, of the identity existing between eternity and immortality, and of the coincidence occurring within the intelligible world between knowledge of Ideas and self-knowledge.

11.3 Hartmann’s vision of the inner dialectical nature of the ideas Hartmann understands, following Hegel’s interpretation of Plato’s ideal world exactly (see, for instance, his Vorlesungen ber Platon, 1825 – 1826), the separation between Ideas and objects perceived by the senses not as a naive expression of a two-worlds ontology, but rather as a sign for the absolute otherness of the Ideal. I examine two significant consequences of his assumption: a) The first concerns the problem of the separation (wyqislºr) between ideal entities and phenomena. In Hartmann’s opinion the essential otherness of the intelligible world with regard to sensible things is the conditio sine qua non for considering Ideas as the true causes of empirical becoming. It is because of their dissimilarity to the phenomena that Ideas can play the role of principles (!qwa¸, understood in the Pre-Socratic meaning of the word) and exercise their causal function “outside of themselves” (außer sich selbst, sich entußern). Quoting again from ZEL: Plato was the only one to grasp Ideas in such a way that, when compared to things, they really mean something completely new and they truly can function as principles of those things. This, then, is vitally important: a real principle of Being can only be something non-identical with things of which it is the principle. […] Nowhere among the Pre-Socratics do we find empty repetition; we see no tautology, no doubling of the world. […] And maybe Plato avoided it [sc. the risk of “doubling” the world] precisely because in his way of thinking the old Pre-Socratic concept of !qw¶ – that is to say of “principle” – was still alive (Hartmann 1941, 30).

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Furthermore, he explains the epistemological relevance of this concept of “dissimilarity” (Unhnlichkeit), between Being and becoming as follows: First when Ideas are dissimilar to things, being with regard to their content different from them – and here it is enough to remember that the highest genera are the main constituents of the ideal realm – they earn the character of true principles of Being (Hartmann 1941, 37).

Obviously it wasn’t a coincidence that Hartmann tended to regard both Plato’s metaphysics in general and in particular Plato’s understanding of the relationship between Ideas and things, as a form of absolute Idealism. His interpretation is, once again, the logical consequence of a dialectical assumption: acknowledging the otherness, the highest genus of the 2teqºtgr, as a constitutive element of the ideal realm. But Hartmann’s aim is also to defend Plato’s dialectical monism against the misleading interpretations of eUdg, like those which prompted Aristotle to raise his very well known objection of wyqislºr, that is, separation. Here’s another short passage from Hartmann’s ZEL where he seems to provide us with the best refutation of Aristotle’s argument: Plato […] seized at first upon the heterogeneity of the ways of Being; and it seems that also his mythical descriptions of the existence of Ideas in the beyond (locating them in a “hyperphysical world”), had no other aim than making the difference clear, which otherwise would not have been immediately understandable in its content. When one tries to put himself in his place and in the same philosophical and historical context – where there were no concepts “ready to use” […] it is evident that each attempt to explain the substantial difference between ways of Being necessarily had to create the impression of Chorismos (27).

b) The second consequence of reading the relation existing between Being and becoming as an expression of the otherness of the ideal world is the understanding of negativity as a fundamental element of the nature of the Ideal itself.4 Particularly impressive is Hartmann’s interpretation of Plato’s description of Beauty itself in the Symposium (209e f.). Far from generating a negative theology, Plato’s use of the genus of difference (t¹ 6teqom) allows the Soul to rise to the Intelligible and to acquire knowledge of the beautiful on one hand, while on the other hand it reveals the dialectical meaning of difference as a bestimmende Negation, showing that the 4

For the crucial function of Nichtsein within Hartmann’s reconstruction of the Plato’s ontology see also Gamp 1973, 202 – 210.

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deepest nature of each Idea is a combined fusion of negative and positive, so that “the other is simultaneously the same.” Concluding on this topic with a last quotation from PLS: Nowadays we are used to approaching the Platonic Idea as if it was something done, given and demonstrated. With such an attitude we fail to grasp the long path of negations behind it through which the Idea first had to pass before achieving the positive qualities characterizing its Being. […] The peculiar position of the Idea, which may give the impression of a double nature – for there is no given being that could properly represent it, although the Idea truly “is,” and for the Idea, exactly by virtue of its Not-being, on the strength of its negation of each single existence, goes beyond all of these, and becomes at once a truly existing Being and the source of every particular existence – is never expressed so eloquently and penetratingly, nowhere else it comes to light in such a powerfully unspoiled quality, as it happens in Symposion through the high poetical words of Diotima, whose sober logical meaning peeps out unmistakably from behind the poetry. […] That which the negations of the Symposion are leading to, is more hinted at by means of two positive predicates than it is explicitly determined: the Idea of the Beautiful is aqt¹ jah’ artº and lomoeid³r !e· em. Both predicates comprise the whole positive content of the Idea accessible to the understanding. […] If we look out over this long way leading to the Idea, conceived as a totality, it follows that the various negations really guide us to the exact concept of “self,” in which they reach their conclusion and culmination. We have seen that what is being negated is just a sequence of limitations; indeed negations for the Idea mean widenings as well as liberations. But the conclusive and highest negation [sc. the negation of tir kºcor and tir 1pist¶lg in Symp. 211a7], which completely discloses the “resistance” of the “otherness,” includes the seed of the positive in itself. The negation is supposed to turn this strength upside down, for the power of the “other” is the “same” (Hartmann 1965, 195 – 198).

11.4 Hartmann’s explanation of Plato’s conception of the relationship between time and eternity I conclude by shortly summarizing Hartmann’s interpretation of Plato’s views on time and eternity. This topic is not only interesting as such, but also because it provides us with an outstanding explanation for the apparent contrast existing between the mutability of becoming and immutability of Being, and for the internal dynamic which governs the dialectical relations between Ideas.

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In Hartmann’s opinion, time implies the distribution of different conceptual determinations throughout separate moments. This distribution is an unacceptable limitation to thought that has to be overcome. This conquest is Plato’s achievement in the well-known “third hypothesis” of the dialogue Parmenides (155e 4 f.). Behind the notion of “instant” (1na¸vmgr), understood by Plato as a nature “that does not belong to time” (1m oqdem· wqºm\ owsa), Hartmann sees the activity of intelligence as being able to combine both conceptual differences and contradictions in a higher-level unity, achieving thereby a sort of coincidentia oppositorum within the only dimension that can seriously be defined as continuity. As a consequence of the first two hypotheses of the Parmenides the theory of instant proves the following: first of all, every ideal unity has to include both motion, for each eWdor creates a multiplicity of relations with all the other Ideas, that is to say, the other parts of Being conceived as a whole (fkom), and also rest, as every Idea has to be guaranteed in its self-identity. Secondly, the theory of instant demonstrates the possibility of a passage (bergang), between motion and rest, one that implies once again the living and thinking nature of the Intelligible (see Hartmann 1965, 352 – 359). Therefore, there is no contradiction in admitting the eternity of Ideas and simultaneously the inner combination of j¸mgsir and st²sir as an inalienable Mçglichkeitsbedingung of the activity of intelligence (see Soph. 248e6 ff.). Moreover, the coexistence of motion and rest in the eternal dimension of the ideal realm explains and justifies the possibility of a constant exchange of being into non-being and vice versa, i. e., an “appearance of movement” upon which the existence of time is essentially dependent. From this perspective, Hartmann has perfectly grasped the subtle connection between Plato’s conception of time and eternity in the Parmenides and in the Timaeus, where Plato first defined wqºmor as a “moving image of eternity”, eQj½ d’ 1pemºei jimgtºm tima aQ_mor poi/sai (37d 5), and aQ¾m as a reality which “remains in the unity,” l´momtor aQ_mor 1m 2m¸ (37d6). ***

This contribution is just the beginning of a wider range inquiry into Hartmann’s Platonism and is chiefly aimed at providing a concise over-

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view of Hartmann’s first hermeneutical approach to Plato. Hopefully, it is successful at least insofar as it shows how strongly Hartmann believed in the centrality of dialectics as the privileged way to understand Plato’s thought in general. As I already pointed out, a strictly dialectical interpretation of Plato’s theory of Ideas has several consequences of outstanding importance. First of all, granting to dialectics its role in the constitutive structuring of the Intelligible necessarily implies the acknowledgement of Plato’s ontology as an absolute Idealism. I would say that while Natorp seems to decide for the immanence of Ideas in the objects of sense perception, Hartmann conceived instead the phenomena as being immanent in the Ideas – and the foundation, according to Plato, of the existence of degrees of reality. It follows that Plato’s ontology can be read as a monism enriched with an inner dialectical disposition. Secondly, the acknowledgement of the pre-eminence of dialectics allows us to discover the inmost dynamic of the intelligible world: Ideas are capable of constructing a frame of mutual relations by virtue of the positive character of negation. In other words, the inborn ideal power to generate the synthetic unity of identity and difference, represents the driving force of dialectical creation. Finally, the understanding of the dialectical Aufbau of Being leads to a conception of the ideal realm as inwardly endowed with intelligence, so that the Soul reveals herself to be the subjective side of the self-knowledge of the Absolute. To conclude: the dialectical and living nature of Being is something Hartmann – agreeing with Plato – was completely aware of, something that in the recent interpretation of Platonic philosophy is often neglected or very seldom accepted and correctly comprehended.

11.5 References Hartmann, Nicolai (1965), Platos Logik des Seins, Berlin: Walter De Gruyter &. CO. (1st ed. 1909). Hartmann, Nicolai (1941), “Zur Lehre vom Eidos bei Platon und Aristoteles,” Abhandlungen der Preußischen Akademie der Wissenschaft, phil.-hist. Klasse, Berlin, 3 – 38. Hegel, Georg W. F. (1979), Vorlesungen ber Platon (1825 – 1826), edition, introduction, with footnotes by J.-L. Vieillard-Baron, Frankfurt am MainBerlin-Wien: Ullstein Verlag.

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Hegel, Georg W. F. (1986 – 1994), Wissenschaft der Logik (1831), Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, vol. 5. Natorp, Paul (1921), Platos Ideenlehre. Eine Einfhrung in den Idealismus, Hamburg: Felix Meiner Verlag (1st ed. 1903). Gamp, Rainer (1973), Die interkategoriale Relation und die dialektische Methode in der Philosophie Nicolai Hartmanns, Bonn: Bouvier Verlag Herbert Grundmann, 203 – 220. Klein, Joseph (1952), Nicolai Hartmann und die Marburger Schule, in: Heinz Heimsoeth und Robert Heiß (eds), Nicolai Hartmann. Der Denker und sein Werk, Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 105 – 130. Kuhn, Helmut (1951), “Nicolai Hartmann’s Ontology,” in: The Philosophical Quarterly, July, 289 – 318. Schwabe, Wilhelm (2001), Der Geistcharakter des “berhimmlischen Raumes” (1994), in: Thomas Alexander Szlezák and Karl-Heinz Stanzel (eds), Platonisches Philosophieren. Zehn Vortrge zu Ehren von Hans Joachim Krmer, Spudasmata 82, 181 – 326. Sirchia, Francesco (1969), Nicolai Hartmann dal Neokantismo all’Ontologia. La filosofia degli scritti giovanili (1909 – 1919), Milano: Vita e Pensiero.

Chapter 12: Nicolai Hartmann as a Post-Neo-Kantian Alicja Pietras 12.1 Introduction In this paper I propose an interpretation of Hartmann and Heidegger’s ontological projects as forms of what I call ‘Post-Neo-Kantianism’.1 I explore both Hartmann and Heidegger’s interpretations of Kant, their different approaches to Kantian issues such as the problem of the ambiguity of the notion of “thing in itself” and the problem of the distinction between being and irrationality, and compare the philosophical projects that ensue, namely Hartmann’s critical ontology and Heidegger’s fundamental ontology.

12.2 Hartmann and Heidegger: a metaphysical interpretation of Kant Hartmann, just as Heidegger, was strongly influenced by Neo-Kantianism.2 He was a student of the Marburgian Neo-Kantians Herman Cohen and Paul Natorp. As befits a student of a Neo-Kantian school, Hartmann makes Kantian philosophy one of the most important starting points of his own philosophical thinking. But just as Neo-Kantians wanted to go back to Kant from German Idealism, Hartmann wants to go back to Kant from Neo-Kantianism. At the time, there are two Neo-Kantian mainstreams – Marburgian Neo-Kantianism (Herman 1

2

The term ‘Post-Neo-Kantianism’ was coined by Andrzej J. Noras to name a group of contemporary thinkers including Nicolai Hartmann, Martin Heidegger, Karl Jaspers, Heinz Heimsoeth, and Richard Hönigswald, who developed a new interpretation of Kant’s philosophy, diverging from that of the Neo-Kantians. See: Noras 2005, Noras 2004, Pietras 2008. About Neo-Kantanism as a philosophical movement, see Makkreel and Luft 2010, 1 – 21; Ollig 1979.

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Cohen, Paul Natorp and Ernst Cassirer) and Badenaean or Southwestern Neo-Kantianism (Wilhelm Windelband, Heinrich Rickert and Emil Lask). Both schools interpreted Kant’s philosophy as a theory of cognition (Erkenntnistheorie). Moreover, Neo-Kantians claimed that Kant rejected metaphysics and wished to set up the theory of cognition as a new philosophia prima. In contrast, Hartmann and Heidegger, emphasize the metaphysical meaning of Kant’s philosophy. They both claim that there is no theory of cognition without ontology and metaphysics. Hartmann and Heidegger were not the first, however, to give a metaphysical interpretation of Kant’s thinking. In 1889 Friedrich Paulsen published Immanuel Kant. Sein Leben und seine Lehre where he claimed that Kant, at least in his personal conviction, was a real metaphysician. This book started a serious discussion between Paulsen and the Neo-Kantians, in particular Herman Cohen and Hans Vaihinger. The second important metaphysical interpretation of Kant’s philosophy can be found in the PhD Dissertation of Konstantin Oesterreich titled Kant und die Metaphysik (1906). But the real rise of the metaphysical interpretation of Kant’s thought occurs in the 1920s. The crucial year was 1924, which is known in the German literature as an Epochenjahr. It’s the year of the two hundredth anniversary of Kant’s birth. In this year were published several important books, stressing the metaphysical meaning of Kant’s philosophy: Kant und das Ding an sich by Erich Adickes, Diesseits von Idealismus und Realismus and Kant und die Philosophie unserer Tage by Nicolai Hartmann, Die metaphysische Motive in der Ausbildung des Kantischen Philosophie by Heinz Heimsoeth, Kantinterpretation und Kantkritik by Julius Ebbinghaus and last but not least Kant als Metaphysiker by Max Wundt. So, as we see, Hartmann’s and Heidegger’s metaphysical interpretations of Kant’s thought are not the first. But there is something that distinguishes Hartmann’s and Heidegger’s interpretations from all others: both are ontological. Christian Baertschi in his PhD dissertation Die deutsche metaphysische Kantinterpretation der 1920er Jahre (Baertschi 2004) divides all the “metaphysical” (in the wide sense of the term) interpretations of Kant into either “ontological” or “metaphysical” (in the narrow sense). Baertschi writes: In this work a distinction should be drawn between the “metaphysical” and “ontological” interpretations of Kant’s philosophy. A basis for this distinction is the traditional understanding of metaphysics, the kind Kant grew up with. ‘Metaphysical interpretation of Kant’ is an expression that, broadly understood, includes all efforts to interpret Kant’s philosophy as metaphys-

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ical, divided into metaphysica generalis (ontology as a determination for the most general predicates of being) and metaphysica specialis (cosmology, psychology, theology). The term “ontological interpretation of Kant” is reserved for such sub-group of Kant’s interpretations that looks at Kant in light of ontological inquiry. One can speak of “metaphysical interpretation of Kant” in a narrow sense about interpretations that address Kant’s positive statements about the World, Soul, and God (Baertschi 2004, 12).3

In the group of ontological interpretations, Beartschi includes only Hartmann’s and Heidegger’s, whereas he qualifies of “metaphysical in the narrow sense” all the other German metaphysical interpretations of Kant in the twenties (interpretations of Friedrich Paulsen, Konstantin Oesterreich, Max Wundt, Erich Adickes and Heinz Heimsoeth). This serves as a justification for comparing Hartmann’s and Heidegger’s interpretations of Kant’s thought. Both attempt to create a new ontological viewpoint. Both see in Kant’s philosophy a good basis for the realization of this task. In spite of that, their interpretations of Kant’s philosophy, their attitude to Neo-Kantianism and consequently their own perspectives on being are quite different. I claim that to find the reason for this difference, we must look at the Kantian notion of “thing in itself” with its variety of possible interpretations.

12.3 The ambiguity of the Kantian notion of “thing in itself” As has been pointed out in the contemporary Kantian literature the notion of “thing in itself” (Ding an sich) is more Kantian and Post-Kantian than Kant’s original notion. About this problem Gerold Prauss writes in

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“In dieser Arbeit soll zwischen ‘metaphysischer’ und ‘ontologischer’ Kantinterpretation ein Unterschied gemacht werden. Die Grundlage für diese Unterscheidung bildet jene traditionelle Auffassung von Metaphysik, mit der Kant aufgewachsen ist. Der Begriff der ‘metaphysischen Kantinterpretation,’ verstanden in einem weiten Sinne, umfasst demnach alle Bemühungen, Kant im Sinne der metaphysica, die sich in metaphysica generalis (Ontologie als Bestimmung der allgemeineren Prädikate des Seienden) und metaphysica specialis (Kosmologie, Psychologie, Theologie) teilte, zu interpretieren. Der Name der ‘ontologischen Kantinterpretation’ steht dann für die Untergruppe jener Auslegungen, die Kant speziell unter einer ontologischen Fragestellung lesen. Von einer ‘metaphysischen Kantinterpretation’ in engerem Sinne kann im Blick auf jene Interpretationen die Rede sein, die sich Kants positiven Aussagen zu Welt, Seele und Gott zuwenden.”

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his work Kant und das Problem der Dinge an sich (Prauss 1974), that the phrase Ding an sich is rather rare in Kant’s work. He writes: When we consider the expression Kant uses when he wants to speak about Ding an sich, we discover something extraordinary. Not only that Kant in place of Ding purposefully uses Gegenstand, Objekt and Sache, whereas authors of Kant-literature from the beginning almost unanimously replace this variety of terms with the term Ding. First of all we discover that Kant himself uses only a few times the phrase ‘an sich’, which Kant-literature replaces with ‘Ding an sich’. His standard phrases are rather ‘Ding an sich s e l b s t ’ , ‘Gegenstand an sich s e l b s t ’ , etc. That which was an exception in Kant’s works becomes a rule in Kantian-literature (Prauss 1974, 13).4

This is not the only problem. Some authors emphasize also that we can’t find in Kant’s works the notion of “Ding an sich” that we can only find the notion “Ding” and the adjective “an sich” or rather “an sich selbst” is added to this notion. Moreover, Kant never writes in the singular form “Ding an sich selbst” (“thing in itself”) but only in the plural form “Dinge an sich selbst” (“things in themselves”). But “Ding an sich” became a specially emphasized notion in the literature on Kant, in Kantian and Post-Kantian philosophy, where it was adopted and popularized. Futhermore, it played a crucial role in PostKantian philosophical discussions. We may recall F. H. Jacobi, who writes: “Without this supposition (of things in themselves – A.P.) I can’t fathom Kant’s system, but with it I can’t stay inside this system ( Jacobi 1787, 223).”5 Kantians (K. L. Reinhold, J. H. Schultz, G. E. Schulze, S. Maimon, J. G. Fichte) and Anti-Kantians ( J. G. Herder, J. G. Hamman, F. H. Jacobi) argued about this notion. But if we carefully review the matter we can see that it has at least two different under4

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“Sieht man einmal die Ausdrücke durch, die Kant verwendet, wenn er von Dingen an sich sprechen will, so entdeckt man etwas Merkwürdiges. Nicht nur, daß Kant zu diesem Zweck ganz unbedenklich neben ‘Ding’ auch noch ‘Gegenstand,’ ‘Object,’ ‘Sache’ benutzt, während man in der Kant-Literatur von Anfang an diese Bunte Mannigfaltigkeit ohne besondere Verabredung nahezu einhellig zugusten von ‘Ding’ bereinigt. Man endeckt vor allem, daß Kant selbst dabei von jener Bildungsweise durch ‘an sich,’ welche Kant-Literatur mit dem Ausdruck ‘Ding an sich’ zur Standardform erhebt, nur in verschwindend wenigen Fällen Gebrauch macht. Sein Standardausdruck lautet vielmehr ‘Dinge an sich s e l b s t ,’ ‘Gegenstand an sich s e l b s t ’ usw. Was bei Kant also seltene Ausnahme ist, wird in der Kant-Literatur die Regel.” “ich ohne jene Voraussetzung (Dingen an sich – A.P.) in das System nicht hineinkommen und mit jener Voraussetzung darin nicht bleiben konnte.”

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standings. The thinkers who reject the possibility of the existence of a thing in itself and those who claim that the existence of a thing in itself is undeniable talked about totally different things. We can mention Hegel, for instance, who in Encyclopedia of the Philosophical Sciences writes: “The Thing-in-itself (and under ‘thing’ is embraced even Mind and God) expresses the object when we leave out of sight all that consciousness makes of it, all its emotional aspects, and all specific thoughts of it. It is easy to see what is left – utter abstraction, total emptiness, only described still as an ‘other-world’ – the negative of every image, feeling, and definite thought” (Hegel 2005, 72). And we can compare this statement with Adickes’s, Paulsen’s or Hartmann’s statement about the thing in itself. Erich Adickes in his work Kant und das Ding an sich writes: “One and the same object is at the same time thing in itself and appearance, a thing in itself is in appearance, indeed unknown, but it is appearing exactly in appearance, it is manifest itself in it (Adickes 1920, 20).”6 Hartmann in Grundzge einer Metaphysik der Erkenntnis writes: “The theory of appearance is necessarily a theory of the appearing of a being in itself (Hartmann 1949, 234).”7 As we have just seen, Hartmann and Adickes understand the expression ‘thing in itself’ differently from Hegel. They understand something independent of our cognition which can also appear as an appearance, whereas Hegel means something which is not for us. Indeed, Hegel means “object when we leave out of sight all that consciousness makes of it” (Hegel 2005, 72). This ambiguity, which we find in the Kantian literature, has its origin in the ambiguity of Kant’s philosophy. Kant himself, when he speaks about things as they are in themselves, at one time means things independent of our cognition, and at another time means the non-cognizable side of things. Both Kant’s and Kantian terminology is ambiguous (Pietras 2008a, 20 – 24). Therefore, I propose to distinguish the epistemological and ontological meanings of this notion (Pietras 2008a, 24 – 39). The epistemological meaning of the notion of “thing in itself” is the thing that is not for us, which does not and cannot appear to us. This is the non-cognizable 6 7

“ein und derselbe Gegenstand zugleich Ding an sich und Erscheinung ist, das Ding an sich in ihm zwar unerkennbar, aber doch eben in ihm erscheinend, in ihm sich manifestierend.” “Eine Theorie der Erscheinung ist notwendig zugleich Theorie des erscheinenden Ansichseienden.”

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side of something. The ontological meaning of the notion of “thing in itself” is the being-in-itself; the self-existing being, independent of our knowledge. It is the existence of all (cognizable and non-cognizable) sides of something. For the ontological meaning of the notion of “thing in itself” Hartmann uses the term Ansichseiende (Ansichsein), which we may translate by “self-existing-being” or “being-in-itself.” We observe a huge difference between Hartmann and Heidegger’s interpretations of Kant’s notion of the “thing in itself.” Hartmann notices the ambiguity of the Kantian notion and uses it in his own philosophical research, whereas Heidegger rejects the ambiguity - an attitude that reflects his monistic tendency (Pietras 2008a, 67 – 71, 100 – 105, 118 – 124).

12.4 Hartmann’s interpretation of Kant’s philosophy8 Hartmann claims that the Kantian notion of “thing in itself” means: (1) irrationality (Irrationalitt) and (2) epistemically independent self-existing-being (Ansichsein). According to Hartmann, this ambiguity is the cause of all the misunderstandings that have been taking place in postKantian philosophy (e. g., Jacobi, Maimon). But is it simply Kant’s mistake? Hartmann claims, that this case is not so simple. The ambiguity of this notion in Kant’s works shows that Kant was a philosopher of problems not a philosopher of systems. Hartmann puts this ambiguity to use in his critical ontology. He writes: “In fact the thing in itself is a critical motif in “critical philosophy;” its rejection by Neo-Kantians and in Neo-Kantianism is a rejection of the critical position” (Hartmann 1949, 184).”9 Hartmann objects to the Neo-Kantian claim that the notion of the “thing in itself” is a non-critical element of Kant’s philosophy and that we must either reject it or understand it as a limiting concept. The Neo-Kantians completely ignore this notion’s ontological meaning and view it as useless. They identify “thing in itself” with another of Kant’s terms “transcen-

8 9

Hartmann 1949; Hartmann 1957; Hartmann 1958, 268 – 313. “Das Ding an sich ist das eigentlich kritische Motiv in der ‘kritischen Philosophie’; erst seine Preisgabe bei Nachkantianer und im Neukantianismus ist Preisgabe der kritischen Position.”

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dental object X” (Transzendental Gegenstand X) “which actually is always one and the same for all our knowledge = X” (Kant 1880, A 109).”10 According to Hartmann, the most important consequence of the Neo-Kantian rejection of the ontological meaning of “thing in itself” is to lose the critical consciousness of irrationality, which is the basis of critical philosophy. Hartmann claims that Kant’s thought about the unknowability of the thing in itself wakes our consciousness of irrationality. Ontologically, the notion of a “thing in itself” includes all sides of a thing regardless of whether (1) we know it, (2) don’t know it, but can know it or (3) cannot know it. Here, we have Hartmann’s doctrine about the two boundaries of cognition: the boundary of actual objectivation (objectivisation – but this term is unfortunate here, because Hartmann uses it in his philosophy of spirit in a completely different meaning) (what we actually know) and the boundary of gnoseological rationality (what we can know in general). Behind this boundary there are the non-cognizable sides of things, whose existence we should presuppose because we can observe some phenomena like the consciousness of a problem, i. e., the consciousness of knowing that we ignore something. Hartmann criticizes the Neo-Kantians’ tendency to create a philosophical system. Neo-Kantians reject the ontological meaning of “thing in itself” just because it cannot be included in their system of transcendental idealism. Moreover, they resented Kant for this notion, because, according to them, it makes his system incoherent. For the Neo-Kantians, the ontological aspect of the thing in itself is non-critical, because for them “non-critical” means “accepted without proof.” This meaning was in no way new. It was common, e. g., in positivism. Anyway, also today for many people “to be critical” means “not to accept anything without proof.” Hartmann shows us the other side of the coin. The same non-critical tendency, which we observe when somebody “accepts something without proof,” we observe also when somebody “rejects something without proof.” Where is the proof, asks Hartmann, that unknowable things do not exist? (To assume that something does not exist just because we cannot know it is to commit the fallacy of “argumentum ad ignorantiam”.) To be a real critical thinker according

10 Kant writes: “The pure concept of this Transcendental Gegenstand (which actually is always one and the same for all our knowledge = X) is that with, in all our empirical concepts, can generally bring about a relation to a Gegenstand, i.e, objective reality” (Kant 1880, A 109).

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to the German philosopher Josef Pieper means, “to take care not to omit anything.” According to Hartmann, Kant’s statement about the unknowability of the thing in itself has an important methodological meaning. We have to remember that beyond appearances there are things in themselves, which we never know in their totality. There are two reasons for that. The first reason is that our cognition is an endless process (endless fieri). This is the lesson that Hartmann learned from his Marburgian teachers. But there is also a second reason, which his teachers missed. There are some impassable limits of our knowledge. Thinking about the possibility of the existence of something that is non-cognizable or non-cognizable in all its qualities is necessary in order to be “critical.” Hartmann’s “metaphysics of cognition” arises from this point of view According to Hartmann, all philosophers who want to do epistemology without ontology - all philosophers who reject the ontological aspect of the thing in itself - cannot grasp the problem of cognition. As he writes: “There is no question about knowledge without a question about being. Because there is no knowledge that is not knowledge about being. Knowledge as a matter of fact is a relation between our consciousness and a self-existing-being” (Hartmann 1958, 269).”11 With the rejection of the ontological meaning of the notion of “thing in itself,” the transcendental idealism of the Marburgian school excludes from epistemology very important questions such as the questions about the possibility of grasping being, questions about the limits of knowledge, and questions about the identity between the categories of cognition and the categories of being (Pietras 2008b, 100 – 101, 108 – 109).

12.5 Heidegger interpretation of Kant’s philosophy12 On the contrary Heidegger, who also criticizes the Neo-Kantian interpretation of Kant’s philosophy because of its rejection of ontological problems ignores the ambiguity of the notion of “thing in itself.” As I have mentioned, the main reason for this is Heidegger’s tendency toward unity and monism. Like the Neo-Kantians, Heidegger is looking 11 “Es gibt keine Erkenntnisfrage ohne Seinsfrage. Denn es gibt keine Erkenntnis, deren ganzen Sinn nicht darin bestünde, Seinserkenntnis zu sein Erkenntnis ist eben ein Bezogensein des Bewußtseins auf ein Ansichseiendes.” 12 Heidegger 1991; Heidegger 1977; Heidegger 1976, Heidegger 1984.

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for unity in Kant’s thought. So, like the Neo-Kantians he goes to extremes, but to different extremes. For Heidegger, Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason is not epistemological. In fact, according to him, Kant is not concerned with the problem of cognition at all.13 The only problem Kant is concerned with in his Critique is that of metaphysics. For Heidegger, Kant’s Critic creates a basis for a new, fundamental ontology. The ontology is the ontology of Dasein, i. e., the ontology of temporal being, the ontology of “somewhere” and “somewhen” located appearances. Heidegger’s verbal form of the term ‘being’ which, according to him, should replace the noun ‘being’, stresses the temporal character of all being. Heidegger inverts the classical ontological order. In classical ontology the real being was eternal, unchanging. The temporal and changeable being was only a shadow of real being, a manifestation of it. In contrast, for Heidegger all being is temporal and changeable. In reality there is nothing unchanging, nothing eternal. Human beings create the concepts of an eternal and unchanging being because of their nostalgia for something constant that can give our lives a meaning. But all this is only an illusion, the sign of the Falling of Dasein. On this point Heidegger claims that Kant was the philosopher who gave him the basis for this step. If we compare Being and Time (1927) with Kant and the Problem of Metaphysics (1929) we see how Heidegger’s ontology is related to his ontological interpretation of Kant’s Critique. As I have said, Heidegger’s interpretation of Kant is opposite to the Neo-Kantian interpretation. But just for that reason his interpretation is characterized by the same one-sidedness. For example, the Neo-Kantians claim that Kant’s Critique is epistemological, Heidegger claims that it is ontological. The NeoKantians emphasize Kant’s transcendental logic and reduce Kant’s dualism of two sources of human cognition (sensibility and understanding) to understanding, they proclaim the priority of thinking, Heidegger emphasizes the transcendental aesthetics, reduces Kant’s dualism to sensibility and proclaims the priority of intuition. The Neo-Kantians reduce all human cognition to the spontaneity of the conceptions, Heidegger claims that Kant’s two sources of human cognition spring out of a common root – transcendental imagination. He claims that the most important thing in all of Kant’s Critique is the chapter Of the schematism of the 13 “Die Kritik der reinen Vernunft hat mit ‘Erkenntnistheorie’ nichts zu schaffen” (Heidegger 1991, 17).

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pure conceptions of the understanding, where Kant demonstrates the priority of transcendental schemas, which are sources for all our conceptions. The transcendental schema is the “transcendental determination of time.” So now we understand why Heidegger’s ontological time is the universal determination of all being. Heidegger interprets Kant ontologically, but it does not mean that he grasps the ontological meaning of the notion of “thing in itself” in the sense that I have presented. I claim that he does not grasp the ambiguity of this notion, so he confuses its ontological and epistemological meanings (Pietras 2008a, 91 – 124). He starts from the epistemological meaning of this notion. “Thing in itself,” which he identifies with “being” means the same as “nothing.” He quotes Hegel’s famous statement that “Pure being and pure nothing are, therefore, the same (Hegel 2005, § 134).” Being, which is a real thing in itself, is nothing, because it is nothing ready, it is nothing constant, is pure becoming, we cannot give any determination of being. Pure being like pure nothing is absence of all determination and content. When we think about pure being we think only about some pure, indeterminate “something” (Etwas berhaupt). Being is like Kant’s transcendental Object X. It cannot be grasped, because we can grasp only something that is determinate. But Heidegger gives this epistemological understanding of the notion of “thing in itself” an ontological sense. He gives “pure something” and “pure nothing” an ontological sense. Being is nothing for us, so being is nothing at all. His ontology has no place for something independent of our cognition, but only for our understanding of being. Josef Stallmach, who compares Hartmann’s and Heidegger’s projects, gives a better definition of Heidegger’s ontology. Heidegger’s ontology, he says, is an ontology of “Seinverstehen,” an ontology of the “understanding of being,” whereas Hartmann’s ontology is an ontology of “Ansichsein,” an ontology of the “self-existing-being” independent of our knowledge (Stallmach 1987). We can now ask which project is more Neo-Kantian. I claim that Hartmann is much more Post-Neo-Kantian than Heidegger, because he transcends the epistemological Neo-Kantian perspective, whereas Heidegger wants to create a new ontological viewpoint but remains captive of the epistemological perspective which reduces the notion of “thing in itself” to its epistemological meaning.

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12.6 The critical ontology of Hartmann vs. the fundamental ontology of Heidegger Hartmann and Heidegger both create new ontological viewpoints. But as we have seen, these two ontological projects are different. Hartmann’s new ontology is a critical analysis of categories. Categories are principles of being. The object of Hartmann’s ontology is the same as the object of classical ontology. His ontology is new, not in this sense that it has a new object, but only in the sense that it tries to avoid the mistakes of the old ontology. Hartmann identifies these mistakes in “Wie ist kritische Ontologie überhaupt möglich?” (Hartmann 1958, 268 – 313). The main reason for these mistakes is the tendency of human reason to generalize, to unify, i. e., the tendency toward monism. We discover a principle of some region of being, but then we unlawfully generalize and attribute this principle to the whole of being. Hartmann writes about the old uncritical ontology that it was a dogmatic and synthetic ontology, whereas the new ontology should be critical and analytic. The old, classical ontology starts with providing the most fundamental and undeniable principles of being and then extends from these principles to all varieties of beings. Classical ontology was monistic or alternatively dualistic. It was the biggest mistake of all ontological research. Therefore, according to Hartmann, the new, critical and analytic ontology should start as an analysis of the given phenomena. This element of Hartmann’s project causes his philosophy to be commonly included in phenomenology. But Hartmann proposes a notion of “givenness” different from that of Husserl, and this notion is a very important component of his project. It makes his ontology critical in the sense that I have mentioned earlier, according to which “to be critical” means “to take care not to omit anything.” Hartmann’s notion of “givenness” is the widest notion of “givenness” in all the history of philosophy. The new ontology should start from the analysis of all givenness, from all that we experience and Hartmann means not only scientific and philosophical experience but also life experience. Hartmann’s new ontology is pluralistic. We cannot reduce all varieties of beings to one or two principles. There is a plurality of principles. We can distinguish between the principles of cognition and the principles of being, between the principles of ideal being and the principles of real being, and between the principles of particular strata of real being,

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etc. There are always some fundamental categories. All this we must first very carefully test and not judge without examination. The new ontology should try to be systematic but not systemic. So Hartmann does not call ontology philosophia prima. He calls it philosophia ultima (Hartmann 1949, 227), which means that our knowledge of being and its categories are never absolute and unquestionable, because we can always find some new phenomena and when we face them we may have to change our earlier accepted convictions. In contrast, Heidegger’s new ontology, which he qualifies of “fundamental,” is rather monistic. Fundamental ontology is concerned with the fundamental determinations of being in general. He does not want to analyze particular regions of being. He claims that, before building any regional ontology, we must establish its ground through fundamental ontology. Questions about being in general should preface questions about the variety of beings. In this aspect Heidegger’s ontology is not new, because he wants to start from the same standpoint as classical ontology. But it is new for a different reason. Instead of beginning with an analysis of the object, like classical ontology, his ontology starts with an analysis of the subject. In this respect Hartmann’s ontology is more classical. Heidegger’s fundamental ontology arises from a transcendental position. If we want to know the “sense of being” (der Sinn von Sein) we should ask about the being of the subject, the being of the human being, which he calls Dasein, which means “being somewhere and somewhen.” It is an effect of transcendental thinking. The only sense of being is our understanding of being, so if we want to know the meaning of ‘being’ we must first know who we are and what is the meaning of our being. Heidegger’s fundamental ontology is transcendentalism. It is a continuation of the modern philosophy of the subject. After his analysis of Dasein, Heidegger provides the fundamental determinations of being. All being is temporal. In Being and Time he analyses the human being (Dasein) to uncover the most fundamental determination of being: time. All being is temporal and changeable. There is nothing eternal, timeless and unchanging. We can ask, why Heidegger’s philosophy is so popular, whereas Hartmann’s ontology, which in my opinion is much truer and scientifically more useful, is not. One of the possible answers is that (1) Heidegger’s position is much more extreme14 and (2) probably unfortunately 14 Frank-Peter Hansen (Hansen 2008, 12 – 15) explains that Heidegger’s fundamental ontology is much more popular than Hartmann’s critical ontology be-

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more extreme statements are more noticeable and popular. I say “unfortunately” because really critical thinkers like Hartmann know that reality is not so easy, monistic and extreme as described in these popular, extreme conceptions. To make this difference more evident we can summarize and confront some of Heidegger’s and Hartmann’s statements (Table 12.1). Table 12.1 Heidegger

Hartmann

There is only a temporal, changing being.

Being contains a temporal, processual real being, and an eternal, unchangeable ideal being.

There is only our understanding of being.

We should distinguish our understanding of being, which is something real and important and being in itself (Ansichsein), which is independent of our cognition, and exists even if we don’t know about it.

Real cognition is receptive. Any spontaneity of the conceptions misrepresents real being. Concepts only deform being.

Our cognition is and has to be at the same time receptive and spontaneous. Our category of cognition and the category of being are partially overlap.

Kant was an ontologist. The Critique Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason is a theory of cognition as well as an of Pure Reason is not a theory of ontology. His philosophy is not cognition, but an ontology. systemic, but systematic. Kant’s notion of “thing in itself” is ambiguous. The Neo-Kantian interpretation of Kant is completely wrong.

The Neo-Kantian interpretation of Kant is not wrong, but one-sided.

We can find much more examples of Heidegger’s and Hartmann’s statements that show us that Heidegger’s fundamental ontology is much more extreme and one-sided than Hartmann’s critical ontology. Paradoxically, Heidegger, whose desire to overcome the Neo-Kantian philosophical perspective is more intense than Hartmann, remains more cause Heidegger gave us more conclusive answers to fundamental human questions about the meaning of life. I agree with this point of view. Hartmann did not give us answers to this important question, because he wants to avoid all world views, which are always, according to him, “-isms.”

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Neo-Kantian than Hartmann. “The young” and “the early”15 Heidegger continues the transcendental project of philosophy. Hartmann, however, is aware of his intellectual roots, and that’s why he can take from his teachers the elements that he appreciates and reject those that he considers to be weak. His new ontology transcends transcendental philosophy, from which it takes only that which is the best.

12.7 References Adickes, Erich (1920), Kant und das Ding an sich, Berlin: Pan Verlag Rolf Heise. Baertschi, Christian (2004), Die deutsche metahysische Kantinterpretation der 1920er Jahre, Zürich: Universität Zürich. Ebbinghaus, Julius (1954), “Kant und das 20. Jahrhundert,” in: Studium Generale 9, 513 – 524. Hansen, Frank-Peter (2008), Nicolai Hartmann – erneut durchdacht, Würzburg: Verlag Königshausen & Neumann. Hartmann, Nicolai (1957), “Diesseits von Idealismus und Realismus. Ein Beitrag zur Scheidung des Geschichtlichen und Übergechichtlichen in der Kantischen Philosophie,”, in: Kleinere Schriften II: Abhandlungen zur Philosophiegeschichte, Berlin: Walter de Gruyter & Co. Hartmann, Nicolai (1949), Grundzge einer Metaphysik der Erkenntnis, Berlin: Walter de Gruyter & Co. Hartmann, Nicolai (1958), “Wie ist kritische Ontologie überhaupt möglich?” in: Kleinere Schriften III: Vom Neukantismus zur Ontologie, Berlin: Walter de Gruyter & Co, 268 – 313. Hartmann, Nicolai (1935), Zur Grundlegung der Ontologie, Berlin und Leipzig: Walter de Gruyter & Co. Heidegger, Martin (1984), Die Frage nach dem Ding. Zu Kants Lehre von den transzendentalen Grundstzen, in: Gesamtausgabe II, Vorlesungen 1923 – 1944, Vol. 41, Frankfurt am Main: Vittorio Klostermann. Heidegger, Martin (1991), Kant und das Problem der Metaphysik, in: Gesamtausgabe I, Verçffentlichte Schriften (1910 – 1976), Vol. 3, Frankfurt am Main: Vittorio Klostermann. Heidegger, Martin (1976), Kants These ber das Sein, in: Gesamtausgabe I, Verçffentlichte Schriften (1910 – 1976), Vol. 9, Frankfurt am Main: Vittorio Klostermann, 445 – 480. Heidegger, Martin (1977), Phnomenologische Interpretation von Kants Kritik der reinen Vernunft (Wintersemester 1927/28), in: Gesamtausgabe II, Vorlesungen 1923 – 1944, Vol. 25, Frankfurt am Main: Vittorio Klostermann. Heidegger, Martin (1967), Sein und Zeit, Tübingen: Max Niemeyer Verlag. 15 I use Theodore Kisiel’s periodization of Heidegger’s career: Up to 1919 – ‘the young Heidegger,’ 1919 – 29 – ‘the early Heidegger,’ the 1930s to 1950s – ‘the later Heidegger,’ late 1950s – ‘the old Heidegger’ (Kisiel 1995, xiii).

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Hegel, Georg W. F. (2005), Encyclopedia of the Philosophical Sciences, in: William Wallace (ed.) (2005), Hegel’s Logic. Being. Part One of the Encyclopaedia of the Philosophical Sciences (1830), Oxford: The Clarendon Press. Jacobi, Friedrich H. (1787), “Über den Transzendentalen Idealismus,” Supplement to David Hume ber den Glauben, Breslau: Gottl. Loewe. Kant, Immanuel (1880), Kritik der reinen Vernunft, Leibzig: Verlag von Leopold Voss. Kisiel, Theodore (1995), The Genesis of Heidegger’s Being and Time, Berkley, Los Angeles, London: University of California Press. Makkreel, Rudolf A. and Luft, Sebastian (eds.) (2010), Neo-Kantianism in Contemporary Philosophy, Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press. Noras, Andrzej J. (2005), Kant a neokantyzm baden´ski i marburski, Katowice: Uniwersytet S´la˛ski. Noras, Andrzej J. (2004), “Postneokantyzm wobec Kanta,” in: Idea – Studia nad struktura˛ i rozwojem poje˛´c filozoficznych 26, Białystok, 79 – 88. Ollig, Hans-Ludwig (1979), Der Neukantanismus, Stuttgart: Metzler. Pietras, Alicja (2007), “O dwóch poje˛ciach rzeczy samej w sobie,” in: Idea – Studia nad struktura i rozwojem poje˛´c filozoficznych 19, Białystok, 57 – 76. Pietras, Alicja (2008a), Postneokantowskie projekty filozofii. Nicolai Hartmann i Martin Heidegger, PhD Dissertation, Katowice. Pietras, Alicja (2008b), “Nicolaia Hartmann krytyka logicyzmu,” in: Andrzej Noras (ed.) (2008), Z problem w wsp łczesnej humanistyki 3, Katowice, WSZiJO, 95 – 111. Prauss, Gerold (1974), Kant und das Problem der Dinge an sich, Bonn: Bouvier Verlag Herbert Grundmann. Stallmach, Josef (1987), Ansichsein und Seinsverstehen. Neue Wege der Ontologie bei Nicolai Hartmann und Martin Heidegger, Bonn: Bouvier Verlag Herbert Grundmann. Wundt, Max (1924), Kant als Metaphysiker. Ein Beitrag zur Geschichte der Deutschen Philosophie im 18. Jahrhundert, Stuttgart: Verlag von Ferdinand Enke.

Chapter 13: Between Ontology and the Theory of Objects: Nicolai Hartmann and Hans Pichler Giuseppe D’Anna 13.1 Introduction It was Heinz Heimsoeth who induced Hartmann to read Hans Pichler, a pupil of Windelband fascinated by Meinong’s theory of the object. In a letter of 12 February 1912, he recommended to Hartmann a slim volume published by Pichler in 1909 entitled ber die Erkennbarkeit der Gegenstnde. In this letter, Heimsoeth writes to Hartmann that Aristotle, scholasticism and the logic of the object are set against epistemological and Kantian subjectivism (Hartmann-Heimsoeth 1978, 94). Hartmann liked the book so much that he wrote back to Heimsoeth: “You’re the one who recommended Pichler’s book to me. I ordered it in the summer, but have only just read it. I find it in some parts worth learning by heart” (Hartmann-Heimsoeth 1978, 129). There are two of Pichler’s works in particular that Hartmann took into consideration: the just mentioned ber die Erkennbarkeit der Gegenstnde of 1909 and ber Christian Wolffs Ontologie of 1910. In both of them, Pichler develops Meinong’s theory of objects in an original way. While in the first text the analysis aims to investigate to what extent the possibility of knowledge is conditioned by ontological factors, in the second an attempt is made to combine Meinong’s theory of objects with the ontology of Christian Wolff. On the other hand, ber die Erkennbarkeit der Gegenstnde already contains in the last chapter a theorization of the principle of sufficient reason formulated by Wolff. So it does not seem possible to compare Pichler’s position with that of Hartmann without bringing in Wolff’s ontology. To begin with, we need to try and understand why Pichler’s writings were of interest to Hartmann, who in Zur Grundlegung der Ontologie includes Pichler among the important theorists of contemporary ontology:

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A special place belongs however to Hans Pichler. He earned a prominent position with his small but important book ber die Erkennbarkeit der Gegenstnde (1909), which in spite of its title is more ontological than gnoseological in its approach and for this very reason has been undervalued. Of course, Pichler too is far from providing a perfect formulation, but he can be credited with being the only one to grasp the problem of being. His express reference to the doctrine of the ratio sufficiens and his later ber Christian Wolffs Ontologie (1910) in fact show his inclination for the historical source that acts as a standard (Hartmann 1965, VIII).

We need to focus on the fact that Hartmann did not so much maintain that the “new ontology” would have to be based on the principle of sufficient reason and on a return to Wolff as, rather, that in his studies Pichler started out from those two cornerstones: the principle of sufficient reason and Wolff. That they are the “historical sources” that “act as standards,” on the one hand encapsulates Hartmann’s idea of the history of philosophy as a metaphysics of its questions, as an area of never definitively resolvable aporeticity. On the other hand, it brings the discourse on ontology back to the centre of philosophy by referring to a time (precisely that of Wolff) when the centrality of the epistemological question had not yet routed those posed by ontology and confined them to the sidelines. To further understand Hartmann’s interest in Pichler, it should be pointed out that in the first two decades of the twentieth century Hartmann became dissatisfied with the formulation of the epistemological question and of the theory of knowledge as they had been understood by Cohen in his Logik der reinen Erkenntnis of 1902. In Cohen’s and Natorp’s epistemological formulation of the theory of knowledge, Hartmann saw the definitive end to the possibility of reinstating the question of a reality external to and independent of the knowing subject, a prospect against which he directed his forceful speculative capacity (Hartmann-Heimsoeth 1978, 65). He wrote his Grundzge einer Metaphysik der Erkenntnis of 1921 in an attempt to rehabilitate the idea of a reality in itself, independent from the schemes of transcendental subjectivity and this reformulation of the epistemological question would act as an essential premise for the construction of his ontological tetralogy written between 1935 and 1950 (Zur Grundlegung der Ontologie, Mçglichkeit und Wirklichkeit, Der Aufbau der realen Welt and Philosophie der Natur). In this perspective, Heimsoeth’s motive for advising Hartmann to read Pichler thus seems clear: he saw in ber die Erkennbarkeit der Gegenstnde the ontological counterweight (embodied in Aristotle, scholasticism and the

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logic of the object) to the hyper-subjectivism of the Marburg School, to which Hartmann was increasingly opposed. As to the principle of sufficient reason, Hartmann sees it, in the way it is understood by Pichler in both ber die Erkennbarkeit der Gegenstnde and ber Christian Wolffs Ontologie, as a fundamental theoretical core that can shift the focus in philosophical investigation from the question of knowing to that of being. Moreover, the very analysis that Pichler makes of the principle of sufficient reason in Wolff turns out to be in tune with Hartmann’s intention not to reduce the external world to the forms of knowledge of subjectivity. It is Pichler himself who reiterates with emphasis the ontological values of the principle of sufficient reason as formulated by Wolff. To reason along these lines, Pichler says, is to hold firm the fact that “all principles of knowledge depend on principles of being” (Pichler 1909, 90). Embedded in the principle of sufficient reason and in its ontological formulation is the possibility to set out an ontology which cannot be reduced to the subjective transcendental functions that allow the object itself to be constituted. Once again to make the ontological ratio primary vis-à-vis the epistemological ratio is to take up position against any transcendentalist logic that insists on a complete match between thought and being, which attributes to thought an absolute productive activity and empties the receptive-sensible side of the knowing subject of any significance. This is the path followed by Cohen’s Logik der reinen Erkenntnis, which adopts the interpretation of Kantian philosophy contained in his own Kants Theorie der Erfahrung. In other words, in his reinterpretation of Kant, Cohen carries out a theoretical operation in which he incorporates the transcendental “aesthetic” into the transcendental “analytic” undermining the idea of sensibility as the premise to the spontaneity of thought. In the eyes of Hartmann, who studied in the school of Cohen and Natorp, Pichler was therefore an important figure in the renaissance of ontology. For his part, Pichler makes explicit the ontological value of the principle of sufficient reason when he criticizes Schopenhauer’s interpretation of it in ber die vierfache Wurzel des Satzes vom zureichenden Grunde. Pichler maintains that Wolff certainly distinguished ratio from causa, but not in the way Schopenhauer thought he had. For in Wolff ratio understood as the foundation of knowledge is not set in opposition to causa; rather, causa is seen as a particular mode of ratio.

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The term ratio in the Ontologie does not mean foundation of knowledge but instead ontological foundation […]. It is Wolff’s belief that the foundations of knowledge rest entirely on ontological foundations and there is no more fundamental error than that of Schopenhauer, according to whom the principium rationis sufficiens is not part of ontology but of logic (Pichler 1909, 90).

What prompts Pichler to remove the principle of sufficient reason from the area of logic is a purely ontological concern. It is evident that including the principle of sufficient reason in logic paves the way for a further step: its transposition to formal regulation within a transcendental logic. That is, after all, what happens in Kant, but especially, as we will see below, in Cohen, too. Once absorbed inside transcendental subjectivity, the principle of sufficient reason loses all ontological value and becomes the form and ordering function of the knowing subject; that is, it becomes a law of thought. The ontological weakening of the principle of sufficient reason is made clear in Cohen’s Logik der reinen Erkenntnis where he says: “So, rather, thought, reason and a priori must be removed from all sensibility. The sufficiency of reason is at stake. The law of sufficient reason is that of pure thought, of pure knowledge” (Cohen 1997, 309). To reassign ontological importance to the principle of sufficient reason means therefore, in Hartmann’s opinion, on the one side to reformulate the question of knowledge by recuperating the natural priority of intentio recta over intentio obliqua. On the other, it means to reattribute weight and value to the idea of a reality external to the subject and independent of its categorizing forms. This is the reason why Hartmann viewed Pichler’s writings in such a favorable light.

13.2 Pichler’s theory of objects After taking up again Wolff’s definition of ontology, in ber Christian Wolffs Ontologie Pichler states: Unlike Aristotle’s metaphysics, ontology is not the science of the entity in general; it is more general. To put ens on a par with on and translate ens by ‘being’ (Sein) (das Seiende) is inexact. In Wolff – and earlier in the scholastics – instead, ens undoubtedly means “thing” (Ding) or “object” (Gegenstand). Hence, according to the Wolffian definition ontology is the science of objects in general without reference to their being or non-being. The translation of ens by ‘thing’ or ‘object’ is documented first of all in Wolff’s Deutsche Metaphysik, where ens is always translated simply by the word ‘thing’.

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The preference for the word ‘object’ (Gegenstand) over ‘thing’ (Ding) only starts from the Kritik der reinen Vernunft (Pichler 1910, 3).

He goes on to say: “Thus, ontology inasmuch as scientia entis in genere is not the science of being but rather the science of objects in general, and so also Kant defines ontology as ‘the system of all concepts and of all principles, which refer to objects in general’ (Kritik der reinen Vernunft 873)” (Pichler 1910, 3 – 4). Wolff’s Deutsche Metaphysik allows the concept “entity” to be identified with that of “thing” and, in Pichler’s view, the further assimilation of the latter into the concept of “object” (Gegenstand). Significant in this context is that Pichler rejects identification of the Latin term ens with the Greek t¹ ºm and points out that it is inexact to translate ens by Sein (“das Seiende”). We can discern Meinong’s theory of objects behind Pichler, and there is above all the concern that ontology, as a science of objects in general, should not be confined to the objects that exist. It is no accident that Pichler himself uses a distinction taken from Suarez: that between participial entity (“ens” as “Seiendes”) and nominal entity (ens as res) (Pichler 1910, 4). Bolstered by this distinction, Pichler’s position takes on the nominal meaning of the word ‘entity’; at the same time, it equates das Seiende with the expression ‘that which there is’, bringing being closer to the existent. In the passage quoted above, it is expressly stated that the translation of ens by Sein is imprecise. This allows for an ontological transcendence of the concept of “entity” (ens) compared to that of “be-being” (Sein-das Seiende), a transcendence that appeals to the greater ontological-conceptual extension of the nominal entity as against the participial entity. What I have just said is confirmed by Pichler’s own words when, having equated entity, object and thing and supported this with the scholastic “reification” of the nominal entity, he says: “The science of all objects in general cannot be the science of existence since not all objects exist; existence is not a property essential to all objects in general” (Pichler 1910, 4). In order to further our understanding of Pichler’s interpretation of Wolff, it is worth bringing into play in a summarized form Meinong’s theory of objects, based on a more widely extended field of objects than the metaphysical one. Incidentally, it should be recalled that Meinong’s theoretical efforts are directed at formulating a theory of objects that includes both non-existent and impossible objects. It is in this regard that Meinong makes the well-known distinction between Bestehen

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and Existieren. In this way Meinong distinguishes ideal from real objects. Ideal objects are also those Gegenstnde which, though subsisting, do not exist. Equality and difference are for example ideal objects. They subsist in a particular situation, but they don’t represent a “slice of reality” (Meinong 1904, 5). The reason for these brief remarks on Meinong’s thought is to show why and in what way he considers the field of the theory of objects to be wider than that of metaphysics. Indeed, metaphysics deals with the totality of only that which exists, has existed and will exist; a totality that Meinong says in ber Gegestandstheorie is “infinitely small compared to the totality of the objects of knowledge” (Meinong 1913, 486). In his reading of Wolff’s ontology, Pichler follows Meinong’s approach. It is certainly not by chance that when discussing Wolff’s ontology, Pichler totally neglects that seu philosophia prima which, nonetheless, is still a constitutive part of the title of Wolff’s work and recalls exactly the idea of metaphysics in its essential Aristotelian formulation. If Wolff’s ontology has to match the theory of objects and if, as Meinong holds, objects must be considered independently of their existence, then, given that metaphysics is concerned only with what exists, ontology has to transcend “by inclusion” the philosophia prima sive Metaphysica. In order to uphold the theory of the ens-Ding-Gegenstand match, Pichler refers to Wolff’s Deutsche Metaphysik, in which ens is actually translated by Ding and not by Gegenstand. The translation of ens by Gegenstand gives Wolff’s ontology, at least as Pichler sees it, a markedly Kantian bent. It is not at all easy to address the question of the Kantian distinction between Ding and Gegenstand. Nevertheless – and this at least would be the interpretation on which Hartmann’s ontology is played out – it is in general terms possible to assert that from a semantic point of view Ding is semantically further removed from a correlativist reading of the subject-object relation, which in contrast completely encompasses the term Gegenstand. The object-Gegenstand problem in Kant immediately entails also the question of the possibility of the object itself and, therefore, implicates the transcendental subject from the very outset. What I am maintaining at a theoretical level is borne out further by the last section in Pichler’s work on Wolff entitled “Ontologie und Transzendentale Logik,” in which Kantian transcendental logic is compared with Wolff’s ontology. This comparison is made possible by the fact that “the transcendental logic of the Critique of Pure Reason is itself nothing other than the outline of an ontology. In this way, transcendental logic is presented as a science containing the rules for the pure

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thought of an object” (Pichler 1910, 74). While the attempt to detect an outline of ontology in Kant’s transcendental logic is not then so outrageous, perhaps at first sight more doubtful is this assertion by Pichler: “Just as Kant’s transcendental logic is in a certain sense an ontology, so Wolff’s ontology is in a certain sense a transcendental philosophy” (Pichler 1910, 74). The parallelism between Kant and Wolff is, in short, made to rest on the fact that the focal point of transcendental logic can be found in the “System of principles of pure reason” and in its foundation as the condition for making experience possible. The most important of these principles is the second, according to which “experience is only possible through the representation of a necessary connection.” In Pichler’s view, what corresponds to the analogies of experience, the nub of transcendental philosophy, is in Wolff’s ontology the concept of veritas transcendentalis. This is characterized by the inseparabilitas (inseparability), regulated by the principle of sufficient reason, of all the determinations of an object, which Wolff also describes as ordo in varietate. The plurality of determinations of an object is translated into units of multiplicity when regularity, as order, subsists in it. Since regularity is the expression of order, in antithesis to multiplicity in which there is no order, Wolff is able to define regularly ordered ens as ens verum. 1 In this way, veritas transcendentalis can be understood as “real objectuality” (wahre Gegenstndlichkeit) where for Pichler objectuality, realitas and quidditas coincide. The correspondence with the transcendental philosophy of Kant is anchored on the Kantian definition according to which the relation to an object “does nothing other than to make necessary […] the connection of the representations and put them under a rule, since only through a determinate order in the temporal relations of our representations […] can these be given objective meaning” (Pichler 1910, 78). Subsumption of the multiplicity of representations under a criterion of ordering unity (after all, Pichler translates thus the principle of sufficient reason from a transcendental perspective) and objectuality understood as multiplicity brought back within a complex unity imposed by the ordo are the links that enable the connection to be made between Wolff’s ontology and that of Kant. To do this, Pichler drops the term Ding in favor of Gegenstand. Furthermore, through Wolff, Pichler’s analysis transposes the unifying action of transcendental subjectivity into the idea of an ordered complexity, the true individuation of the 1

Pichler refers here to sections 478 and 496 of Wolff’s Ontologie.

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“objectuality-quidditas” of the object itself. In this way, as Meinong had already done, Pichler himself drops the coincidence between the theory of the objects of knowledge and the theory of objects on one side and the theory of objects and epistemology on the other (Meinong 1904, § 6, § 8).

13.3 “Entity” as “possibility” If we now look at Hartmann’s “Systematische Methode” of 1912, we can follow up an interesting hypothesis for interpretation. In the same way Pichler uses Wolff to formulate the idea of the quidditas of the object as an orderly structured complexity, Hartmann uses the idea of the Platonic dialectic to identify the “relational definition” of categories and concepts. That is to say, in a dialectical definition the concept: is not defined by means of itself but rather by its position with respect to other concepts. It is not a “being for itself”’ or even a “being for other.” Instead, it forms together with other concepts a system of “being one for the other.” Although our finite knowledge never grasps this functional relation in its totality, aware of its own limited nature it nonetheless tends toward it […] The concept as vehicle of the dialectical method makes a decisive further step toward the pure nature of the a priori principles compared with the statically formed concept of logic (Hartmann 1912, 147).

In brief, we can draw a theoretical parallelism between the idea of object in Pichler, understood as an interwoven ordered complexity of notes, and the idea of concept-category in Hartmann, which finds its specific definition in the whole system of dialectical relations. Moreover, by stressing the coincidence of Ding and ens in Wolff 2 and including in this identity also the concept of Gegenstand, Pichler puts the latter among the transcendental concepts, raising it to the level of maximum generality (Pichler 1910, 19). It is precisely making Gegenstand a transcendental concept (in the sense of transcendentals as understood by scholasticism) that justifies raising the theory of the object to an “ontology”; an ontology of the existent and the non-existent, to which is well suited a concept of “entity” like that of Wolff, the key feature of which is the notion of possibility and not that of existence (Wolff 1936, § 134). Also, Pichler strongly emphasizes that Wolff does not opt for a negative determination of the concept of “entity” 2

At least semantically, though the difference is in the Latin, Wolff distinguishes the definitions in Ontologie (Wolff 1736, § 134 e § 243).

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(ens est quod nullam contradictionem involvit) but chooses an affirmative determination (ens est quod esistere potest), thereby making it clear that “being able to exist” is not only “being possible,” i. e., does not contain any contradiction, but also individuates existence “as possible predicate of that which is possible” (Pichler 1910, 22). In the definition of entity as possibility over and above the predication of existence, therefore, it is possible to justify and define the non-existent consistence of Meinongian ideal objects.

13.4 The question of the essence This is why, according to Pichler, Wolff’s ontology rightly becomes one of the essential elements in the history of the theory of the objects. If we also contemplate the identification of realitas-quidditas-Gegenstndlichkeit theorized by Pichler, we can obtain the conceptual transcendence of objectuality with respect to the property of existing and, at the same time, individuate the concept of “possibility” in its maximum affirmative extension; an extension that includes both the Meinongian Existieren and Bestehen. In this way, the theoretical horizon formed by the interlacing of possibility, reality, and essence embraces both the sphere of the existent and that of the non-existent. To conclude, in Pichler the terms ens and quidditas are converted into those of Gegenstand and Gegenstndlichkeit. The question of essence is on a par with that of the possibility of constituting classes of objects and is ontologically regulated by the principle of non-contradiction; in the dynamic of predication and in the constitution of classes of objects this principle is translated, in the Wolffian manner (Wolff 1736, § 143), into the horizon of possibility for the relations of essentialia that define the very essence of entity (Pichler 1909, 7 – 22). As, furthermore, in Deutsche Metaphysik the Wolffian essence is dereified through the concept of possibility (Wolff 1751, § 35), Pichler retrieves the concept of quidditas as co-possibility for the interweaving of the original predications that determine the belonging of an object to a class (Pichler 1909, II). So Pichler’s Gegenstndlichkeit, a translation of scholastic quidditas, becomes in the wake of Wolff’s definition of ‘essence’ the condition of logical-ontological possibility for the constitution of objects understood as essential networks of notes, regulated by the principle of non-contradiction, which at the same time is also constituted as the principle of the co-possibility of essentialia. What now

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presents a difficulty, perceived by Pichler, is the fact that Wolffian ontology does not consider impossible objects since for Wolff contradictory concepts are empty concepts (Pichler 1910, 21). In this difficulty lies the distance between Wolff’s ontology and Meinong’s theory of impossible objects and, consequently, the distance not only between Pichler and Wolff but also, as we will now see, between Pichler and Hartmann.

13.5 Nicolai Hartmann between ontology and the theory of objects This is exactly the point on which Hartmann diverges from Wolff and Pichler and so also from Meinong. The perspective of the Wolffian ontology is discussed, though briefly, in the first section of Zur Grundlegung der Ontologie where, in a note, Hartmann withdraws his support for Pichler’s proposal to combine Wolff’s ontology with Meinong’s theory of objects. “H. Pichler has drawn attention to this point in ber Christian Wolffs Ontologie, Leipzig 1910. I’m not prepared to say whether it’s entirely plausible to read Wolff in terms of Meinong’s theory of objects. There are in Wolff, however, aspects that point in this direction” (Hartmann 1965, 39, note 1). The fact that Hartmann does not take up a clear position as regards Pichler’s interpretation of Wolff is due to his different conception of ontology. On one side, it upholds the difference between being (esseSein) and entity (ens-das Seiende) and, on the other, it is formed within a theory of knowledge aiming to relocate external reality in a space independent from the knowing subject. In this sense Hartmann’s philosophical position is anti-correlativist. The concept of Gegenstand, at least as Hartmann interprets it, inserts into the theory of knowledge the correlation between subject and object. Although I have undertaken elsewhere to distinguish the concept of Gegenstand from that of Objekt (D’Anna 2009) in an attempt to point out its immanent and intrasubjective nature compared to the relation of transcendence that characterizes the subject-object relation in Gegen-Stehen, it must still be said that Hartmann frequently uses the two concepts as synonyms (Hartmann 1957, 70 – 71). In this sense, Pichler’s ontology turns out to be precisely a theory of objects (at bottom, for Hartmann a theory of objects is an ontology without the transcendency of esse over ens); it in fact entirely neglects being and turns to

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object-entity, to what – already semantically – nullifies the in-itselfness of being by means of subjective intentionality. It is clear that the entity as entity is not the entity inasmuch as posited, thought, represented: it is not the entity inasmuch as related to the subject. For being this means that it does not consist in being posed, thought or represented, nor does it arise in relation to the subject, and so does not consist in even being the object. Christian Wolff has taken up the Aristotelian determination literally. He defines philosophia prima as scientia entis in genere seu quatenus ens est. Further development shows that in reality he did not mean ens in the rigorous sense of entity: its meaning is cognate with the scholastic approach, with what we would call ‘object’ (Gegenstand). The rigorously ontological sense of the formula is thus lost. […] Therefore, we must hold on to the old rigorous sense of the Aristotelian formula (Hartmann 1965, 39).

To hold on to the rigorous sense of the formula defining philosophia prima, that it is directed at the “ens as ens,” means, in a Hartmannian vision, to renew the true sense of ontology against all philosophy that has solved the question of being within that of knowledge. This solution, especially after the Critique of Pure Reason, has frequently been reached from a correlativist epistemological angle, in which the object is constituted as such only for the subject (Hartmann 1965, 14). The question of the entity as such becomes in Hartmann that of reality in itself, of a direct reality independent of the knowing subject and it is possible to examine from a phenomenological standpoint the strata of this reality so as to bring out the categories that ultimately constitute it. As I have maintained at length elsewhere, the turn in Hartmann’s thinking toward the in-itselfness of the real does not start from the concept of “being” but from a theoretical reformulation of the question of knowledge, in which are fixed two main focal points: 1) rehabilitation of the intentio recta of knowing and 2) a priori grounding of the thesis of reality. As against the intentio obliqua, rehabilitation of the intentio recta 3 means acknowledgment of the true nature of the cognitive act, projected and directed toward an external object and, consequently, transcendent compared to the sphere of thought and consciousness. The philosophical tradition from Kant onwards has instead, according to Hartmann, unnaturally inverted the question of knowledge by immediately turning it back on itself in the search for its own conditions of possibility and, in the process, obliterating the ontological weight of the real (Hartmann 3

Hartmann characterizes the “new ontology” as the critical continuation of the intentio recta path (Hartmann 1965, 43).

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1982, 16). As to the a priori grounding of the thesis of reality (natural realism is founded on it), in open opposition to Husserl’s phenomenology Hartmann opts for the unsuppressible and uncircumventible nature of that natrliche Weltansicht in which the knowing subject perceives things, the real, as other than itself, as an independent complexity (Hartmann 1965, 49). Here is not the place to discuss in depth the two cardinal concepts mentioned; what is important instead is to point out that Hartmann uses them as instruments to demolish the correlativist theses so as to be able to reconstruct in an extra-subjective space the in-itselfness consisting ontologically of the real. With the question put in these terms, we can understand why Hartmann was critical of Pichler’s ontology. Indeed, the criticism that the concept of “entity” in Wolff is closer to the idea of Gegenstand than to the rigorous sense of entity is a criticism that applies not to Wolff but rather to Pichler. Neither in the definition of entity as formulated in Deutsche Metaphysik (section 16), nor in that expressed in the Ontologie (Wolff 1736, § 134) does Wolff appear to leave any room for the possibility of aligning the concept of “entity” with the correlativist nature of the Gegenstand. Not only does he not use the term Gegenstand in Deutsche Metaphysik, but it is only from Kant on that this term is introduced into a constellation of gnoseological questions that unfold against a backdrop of the dialectic between correlativism and anti-correlativism.

13.6 Wollf’s ontology between Pichler and Hartmann What’s more, we do not find in Wolff the synthetic-constitutive activity of a subjective functionality of a transcendental nature such as to permit the transcendental ens to be translated into the uncircumventible subject-object relation in which the Objekt is formed. On the other hand, when Pichler himself – as seen above – undertakes a comparison between Kantian transcendental logic and the concept of veritas transcendentalis in Wolff, he avoids altogether taking into consideration the idea of synthetic connection understood as active subjective spontaneity. In other words, in order to make the Kantian transcendental ontological he has to shelve the concept of “synthesis” as subjective-transcendental activity. In this regard, what Pichler himself says is not very convincing at all: “That Kant unlike Wolff starts not from the concept of ens but from that of experience is surely an interesting variation, but in no way subversive” (Pichler 1910, 81). In Kant, however, the concept of experi-

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ence is the result of the interweaving between the material nature of sensible impressions and the synthetic and ordering activity of the transcendental subject. And so we come to a first partial conclusion: the criticism that Hartmann directs at Wolffian ontology does not touch Wolff directly but, rather, the Wolff of Pichler and, by rebound, Meinong’s theory of objects, which nonetheless Hartmann does not criticize openly. More generally, according to Hartmann, by identifying being with entity and entity with object, one runs the risk of resolving the ontological within the gnoseological question as often happened in twentieth-century philosophy.4

13.7 Conclusion There is a further point on which Hartmann and Pichler are far apart. Not only does Hartmann’s ontology exclude the thesis that entity and object are identical, it also allows for the transcendency of being over entity. Being thus becomes the horizon of commonness beyond entity, to which ontological analysis must tend as critical-categorial examination of the real. Hartmann maintains that: being and entity are not in fact the same thing. They are distinguished as truth and what is true, actuality and what is actual, reality and what is real. There are many things that are true, but the being of truth in them is single and identical; to speak of “truths” in the plural is philosophically wrong and should be avoided. It is equally wrong to speak in the plural of actualities, realities, etc. There is a great variety of what is actual, but the actuality in it is just one, it is an identical mode of being. So it is also for entity and being. We must rid ourselves of the habit of mistaking the one for the other […]. The being of entity is one only, though entity may be quite varied. Each further differentiation of being only specifies the manner of being (Hartmann 1965, 37 – 38).

When Pichler, in contrast, identifies being (Das Sein-das Seiende) with the participial entity and ens with the nominal entity, it is the latter, namely the Gegenstand, that transcends being. Nevertheless, Pichler and Hartmann likewise share the same intention when they both reject any ontology based on a deductive and rationalist methodology. In this sense, as Hartmann sees it, Aristotle and Wolff belong to the “simplifiers” of the science of entity; they are 4

Cf. on this point Hartmann 1958, 268 – 269.

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among those who have claimed, starting from a few logical principles including above all that of non-contradiction, to resolve the entire complexity of being, to reduce the ungraspable nature of being to a logicalontological structure (Hartmann 1965, 32). Wolff’s derivation of the principle of sufficient reason from that of non-contradiction (Wolff 1736, § 55) signifies for Hartmann the obliteration of every form of irrationality, of excess-transcendence not only of being over entity, but, at bottom and above all, also of being over knowledge and, therefore, of the knowable over the known. Hartmann’s observation on the principle of non-contradiction is in line with what Pichler maintains, who in addition holds that not only “must the principle of non-contradiction be the sole axiom in the Wolffian ontology,” but also this presumed deduction itself is the specific defect, the true imperfection (Schçnheitsfehler) in ontology, which goes back much further than Wolff’s time (Pichler 1910, 7). Both Hartmann and Pichler, then, see making the principle of noncontradiction into an axiom as the main error in Wolff’s ontology, though their reasons for this criticism are not the same. For Hartmann it is a matter of obliterating the excess of being in respect of its ontic modes. In gnoseological terms, this ontological excess is translated by the concept of irrationality where by this is not meant the illogical but rather the alogical, understood as that which transcends the subjective Objektion of the Gegenstand (Hartmann 1965, 44). The irrational is the knowable, the phenomenologically observed actuality, to which ontological analysis (Hartmann-Heimsoeth 1978, 65) understood as an analytical tool for penetrating the categories of the real must address itself. It is precisely the dialectic between the known and the knowable – the dialectic that characterizes the inexhaustible dynamics of cognitive progress – that refers entirely naturally in Hartmann to a dimension of ontic ulteriority transcendent in respect of the categorizing forms of subjectivity, whose complexity and extension cannot be immediately reduced to the form of logical principles (Hartmann 1921, 188). To conclude: the transcendence of being over entity (phenomenologically observed within the same cognitive relation) is translated in Hartmann into a criticalrealist ontology that allows the greater extension of being compared to the object and the object of knowledge to subsist without claiming to reduce the real to the principles of thought. As to Pichler, on the other hand, it can be assumed that he discards making the principle of non-contradiction an absolute because it is binding as against Meinong’s theory of objects, which – as we have

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seen – also permits the concept of “impossible object” to subsist (Meinong 1913, § 4). In Pichler’s opinion, the possibility of the Bestehen of impossible objects is denied by Wolff due to the veto imposed by the principle of non-contradiction (Wolff 1740, § 10, 6). The intention is not to claim that Pichler concedes the legitimacy and correctness of a contradictory object; if that were the case, Pichler would be inconsistent on the question of Gegenstndlichkeit dealt with above. It is rather a matter of allowing impossible objects as simple subsistent actuality. Namely, in Meinong’s theory of objects the actuality of the object, whether real or ideal, ontologically precedes the logical possibility of its affirmation or negation, its existence or subsistence, its possibility or impossibility. As a final conclusion, despite their inevitable differences both Hartmann’s ontology and Pichler’s theory of objects do not shun, in their opposition to the old rationalist ontologies, exploring objectual and ontic actuality in all its facets: logical or alogical, ideal or real, possible or impossible. These are, moreover, the “new” paths of ontology.

13.8 References Cohen, Hermann (1997), Logik der reinen Erkenntnis, in: Werke, Vol. 6, Hildesheim: Olms. D’Anna, Giuseppe (2009), Nicolai Hartmann. Dal conoscere all’essere, Brescia: Morcelliana. Hartmann, Frida / Heimsoeth, Renate (Eds.) (1978), Nicolai Hartmann und Heinz Heimsoeth im Briefwechsel, Bonn: Bouvier Verlag. Hartmann, Nicolai (1921), Grundzge einer Metaphysik der Erkenntnis, Berlin; De Gruyter. Hartmann, Nicolai (1912), “Systematische Methode”, in Logos 3, 121 – 163. Hartmann, Nicolai (1954), Einfhrung in die Philosophie, Osnabrück: Luise Hanckel Verlag. Hartmann, Nicolai (1965), Zur Grundlegung der Ontologie, Berlin: De Gruyter. Hartmann, Nicolai (1982), Die Erkenntnis im Lichte der Ontologie, with an Introduction by Josef Stallmach, Hamburg: Meiner. Meinong, Alexius (1904), “Über Gegenstandstheorie”, in: Alexius Meinong’s Gesammelte Abhandlungen 2, Abhandlungen zur Erkenntnistheorie und Gegenstandstheorie, Leipzig: Barth, 483 – 535. Meinong, Alexius (1913), “Über Gegenstände höherer Ordnung und deren Verhältnis zur inneren Wahrnehmung”, in: Alexius Meinong’s Gesammelte Abhandlungen 2, Abhandlungen zur Erkenntnistheorie und Gegenstandstheorie, Leipzig: Barth, 379 – 480.

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Pichler, Hans (1909), ber die Erkennbarkeit der Gegenstnde, Wien und Leipzig: Wihlelm Braumüller K.u.K Höf und Universitäts-Buchhändler. Pichler, Hans (1910), ber Christian Wolffs Ontologie, Leipzig: Verlag der Dürr’schen Buchhandlung. Wolff, Christian (1736), Philosophia prima sive Ontologia, rep. Hildesheim: Olms. Wolff, Christian (1751), Vernnftige Gedanken von Gott, der Welt und der Seele des Menschen, auch allen Dingen berhaupt, rep. Hildesheim: Olms.

Chapter 14: Hartmann’s Philosophy of Mathematics Dale Jacquette 14.1 Critical realist ontology Nicolai Hartmann’s philosophy of mathematics is an integral part of his critical realist ontology. Hartmann’s later ontology is internally structured according to a hierarchical plan beginning with real physical things, taking into account all their dimensions, levels, divisions, and principles. As a consequence, Hartmann’s ontology itself embodies a kind of mathematical architectonic. Hartmann’s physical-reality-oriented ontology is presented as a tightly-woven system of philosophical theses articulated in several metaphysical treatises. Objects are admitted to the metaphysical domain of existent entities by virtue of what Hartmann calls a ‘categorial analysis’ (Kategorialanalyse) of existents and their properties. The ontology Hartmann develops includes but does not give privileged consideration, as we find in Plato, to ideal things, including the idealized mathematical properties of real and ideal entities (Realen and Idealen). Accordingly, we find Hartmann writing characteristically in his (1848) Ontologie I, Zur Grundlegung der Ontologie: If we hold fast to the proposition that the difference between the real and ideal things – always provided that the latter can be identified – not only is one of the ways of being, but rather a coexistence of whole rich realms or spheres of being; then it follows entirely from what has been said, without adding anything further, that essence and ideal being cannot correspond. And indeed, this is true not only because there is also ideal existence, but rather above all because essence by itself does not constitute a domain of being. Platonistic theories that have attempted to advocate such a selfexistence, have been impeded by the problem of the essence of the real world. But whoever wanted to justify an ontology that could not take into account the essential traits of real things? 1 1

Hartmann 1948, p. 91: “Halten wir fest, daß der Unterschied des Realen und Idealen – immer vorausgesetzt, daß sich das letztere ausweisen läßt – nicht nur

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Hartmann builds his ontology by taking phenomenal or perceptual presence as the real world basis of mathematical being and truth. He then asks, in somewhat the style of Kantian transcendental reasoning, what else must exist in order for these perceived entities to exist? The real is the supervenience base of ontic dependence on which the ideal depends, including but certainly not limited to all of mathematics. Hartmann’s ideal realm of mathematics includes applied and pure mathematics, typified in the first instance by mathematical physics in such laws of physics as F = ma, idealizing observations of the lawlike behavior of real empirical phenomena, and by elementary arithmetic, among other pure mathematical languages with their associated algorithms, typified by the arithmetical theorem, 1+1 = 2. In his four-volume masterwork, Ontologie, Hartmann offers a detailed categorial analysis of different ways in which things can exist or have being.2 These include, in his thorough survey, mathematical entities and their mathematical properties, together with an assortment of independently interesting related issues in philosophy of mathematics, especially surrounding the concept of infinity. Hartmann’s formal laws of the levels of the real world’s ontic complexity provide the necessary formal background for what his ontology proposes as real differences between the disjunctive categories of real things, including physical as well as psychical and spiritual things, and ideal, paradigmatically, mathematical, things and their real and ideal properties. The laws of recurrence, modification, novum or the emergence of novelty, in Hartmann’s ontology, and the qualitative real separation between levels of real and ideal things, are supposed to guarantee that the ontic structures revealed by Hartmann’s method of categorial analysis are themselves real, even when they concern the ideal, possessing being in the appropriate sense and at their appropriate level within the ontology. If we accept Hartmann’s ontology, we can say not only that it provides an in-

2

ein solcher der Seinsweisen ist, sondern auch ein Nebeneinander ganzer Reiche oder Sphären des Seienden; dann folgt aus dem Gesagten doch ohne weiteres, daß Wesenheit und ideales Sein sich nicht decken können. Und zwar nicht nur deswegen, weil es auch ideale Existenz gibt, sondern vor allem weil die Wesenheiten kein für sich bestehendes Reich des Seienden bilden. Platonischierende Theorien, die ein solches Für-sich-Bestehen zu versechten suchten, haben sich vor den Wesensproblemen der realen Welt halten können. Wie aber wollte eine Ontologie sich rechtfertigen, die den Wesenszügen des Realen nicht Rechnung tragen könnte?” (my translations throughout). Hartmann 1940; 1943; 1950; 1965, pp. 197 – 198.

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teresting way to think about metaphysical divisions and subdivisions, but that existence really is as Hartmann maintains. Assuming Hartmann’s categorial analysis to be correct, existence is ontically divided into distinctly inorganic, organic, emotional, and intellectual categories of being.3 We shall concentrate on the mathematical properties of real physical as opposed to real psychical or spiritual things in Hartmann’s ontology, and we shall accordingly speak of real physical things as one among several categories of real being, without meaning to imply that physical things are the only real things. Where, then, in all of Hartmann’s glorious hierarchical pluralistic ontic structure, are we to find ideal mathematical objects and their properties?

14.2 Hartmann’s concept of mathematics One of the most difficult problems, and one of the most revealing aspects of an ontology, is its account of the relation between pure and applied mathematics. It is one thing to think of mathematics as an ideal pure abstract realm of entities and their intrinsic properties and extrinsic relations to other pure mathematical entities, and another thing to understand how such pure mathematics can possibly relate to the dynamic spatiotemporal physical world. Hartmann’s philosophy of mathematics is developed especially in the three volumes of his Ontologie, titled, respectively, Zur Grundlegung der Ontologie (1935), Der Aufbau der realen Welt: Grundriß der allgemeinen Kategorienlehre (1940), and Philosophie der Natur: Abriß der speziellen Kategorienlehre (1950), and in his (1921) Grundzge einer Metaphysik der Erkenntnis (fünfte Auflage, 1965). The place of mathematics in Hartmann’s critical realist ontology is prefigured by his (1909) study, Des Proklus Diadochus: philosophische Anfangsgrnde der Mathematik nach den ersten zwei Bchern des Euklidkommentars. The latter essay is Hartmann’s Habilitationsschrift, published by his Universität Marburg mentors, Hermann Cohen and Paul Natorp, in the monograph series they co-edited for Alfred Töpelmann Verlag in Gießen. It represents Hartmann’s early and still neo-Platonist and heavily Hegel-influenced dialetical historical-philosophical study of a classical commentary on Euclid by one of the last great Neoplatonists, Proclus.4 It is principally on these sources 3 4

See Hartmann 1931; 1940. Also, Feucht 1992. Hartmann 1909.

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that our knowledge of Hartmann’s philosophy of mathematics depends.5 The present inquiry concentrates on two central elements of Hartmann’s ontology. Each bears directly on the question of how pure mathematics ostensibly committed to ideal mathematical objects and their properties can be understood to relate ontologically to real world mathematical applications. What Hartmann has to say about the nature, methods, and some of the content of mathematics, suggests answers to what we shall identify as among the central questions for a philosophy of mathematics: (1) What is the ontic status of pure and applied mathematical entities, and of their intrinsic properties and extrinsic relations to other pure and applied mathematical entities? (2) What is the ontic relation between pure mathematical entities and their intrinsic properties and extrinsic relations to other pure mathematical entities, on the one hand, as categorially answered by Hartmann in the reply to question (1), and their applications, involving applied mathematical entities and their intrinsic properties and extrinsic relations to other applied mathematical entities, on the other? The second question is inescapable in light of the first, because Hartmann regards pure and applied mathematical entities and their properties as equally ideal. Euclidean geometry is a favorite example of Hartmann’s. Even in his evidently most Kantian moments, Hartmann is generally more interested in geometry and the mathematics of space than of time.6 He nevertheless discusses time as a fundamental real category, holding that space is valid only for the lower strata of being, the real physical as opposed to psychical and spiritual objects of his metaphysics, in all four volumes of Ontologie. Euclid presents an abstract theory of infinitely many geometrical points constituting infinitely divisible geometrical figures occupying infinitely extended two- or three-dimensional space. The practical applications of pure Euclidean geometry, anthropologically speaking, predate idealizations of practical geometry in Euclid’s mathematical axiomatization. The question Hartmann raises is how ideal pure and applied Euclidean geometries are metaphysically related. If we begin 5 6

Indications of the transition in his thought are found in Hartmann 1939. The emphasis in Hartmann on space over time is indicated most clearly in his 1940. Hartmann shares his greater interest in space with other empiricallyminded philosophers of the previous century, such as Thomas Reid. It is part of Hartmann’s early Kantian heritage to give equal weight to space and time alike as pure forms of intention (reinen Formen der Anschauung) as the transcendental grounds, respectively, of geometry and arithmetic.

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with the ontic category to which pure and applied geometrical entities belong, we can then proceed on the basis of that categorization to explain how pure and applied geometrical entities are ontically interrelated. When we use pure mathematics in practical applications, as in surveying land or calculating the number of tiles we need to cover the surface of a floor, then, unlike pure Euclidean geometry, we are working with real physical things that are not physically divisible into infinitely many physical points, and for which measurement and calculation can only be approximative. The geometrical points of Euclid’s pure mathematics are ideal; they transcend space and time, and hence all of the physical world. If we cannot simply one-one map Euclidean points onto physical points in a practical application of pure Euclidean geometry, then we need to know how else and how otherwise pure mathematics is supposed to be related to its practical applications. Hartmann’s critical realist ontology explains the relation between pure and applied mathematics in what I shall present as a neo-Aristotelian approach to a mathematical ontology of ideal entities abstracted from the real properties of real physical entities at the foundations of Hartmann’s metaphysics. In Hartmann’s ontology, much of the work of metaphysical explanation is done merely by the categorization of things and their properties. Despite a conspicuous debt to Platonism in the real existence status of Hartmann’s ontic categories, Hartmann’s starting place and methodology are characteristically neo-Aristotelian. Nor should we forget the marked presence of Plato in Aristotle’s philosophy when we classify later ontologies as Aristotelian. The most important similarity is that, like Aristotle, Hartmann takes real physical things, Realen or Aristotelian primary substances, as the foundations of his ontology, which he considers in all their multiple dimensions in order to fill out the remaining parts of his metaphysics of the real and ideal. Hartmann includes in this survey the several kinds of properties and properties of properties of real physical and ideal mathematical entities, existing hierarchically at distinct strata in the ontology, as he discovers them by undertaking an appropriate categorial analysis of the real and ideal properties of real physical things. Hartmann believes that if we can arrive at the right system of ontic categories, and see exactly how they fit together, then, from such a standpoint, we will not only have mapped out our conceptual scheme as we understand it, but we will in fact have solved longstanding philosophical problems simply by finding everything an appropriate place in a branching hierarchical taxonomy of being. We answer pressing

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metaphysical questions by understanding what things are to be included in the ontology and how they are related. Hartmann’s metaphysical systematization of dependently or independently existing real physical and ideal mathematical things embodies an explanation of how they are all interconnected, explicitly displaying their linkages. The method is scientific in the classical sense Aristotle pioneered in biology, developing a taxonomy of living things in order to explain natural facts about types of animal or plant life by classifying them into subspecies, species, genera, and the like. Real physical things for Hartmann have ideal mathematical as well as real physical properties. Mathematics is abstracted from real world contingencies in two distinct stages, ascending from concrete practical applications of mathematics to a more highly idealized echelon of objects, properties and relations, principles and operations. Applied mathematics, as we find it, for example, in physics, can be construed in a Hartmannian philosophy of mathematics as a first abstraction from the instantiated ideal mathematical properties of real physical things. When we not only consider, but try to apply, the applied mathematical formula, F = ma, we can only obtain approximate values for such quantitative measurements as a moving object’s mass, m, and acceleration, a. The formula idealizes this requirement, as though we could in principle obtain exact information in calculating the value of force, F. We can only check on the degree of accuracy of the applied mathematical formula in this instance by trying independently to measure F and seeing if it is indeed precisely m times a. This, too, can at most provide only an approximation, no matter how exact our measuring instruments and techniques. As far our best practical efforts can determine, the applied mathematical formula F = ma remains an idealization of the correlation between the force, mass and acceleration of real physical things moving in real physical space and time. The applied mathematical formula describes how these factors are ideally related in the real world by interpolating missing values and smoothing out the wrinkles in our best data sets for these identifiable physical factors. Pure mathematics on this model is seen as a further idealization of applied mathematics, at a more distant remove from real things, purged of and abstracted from any reference whatsoever to types of physical objects, and of any of their physical, as opposed to formal properties, as we find paradigmatically in the elementary pure arithmetical theorem, 1+1 = 2. None of this by itself, however intuitively satisfying it may be as far as it goes, serves to fully answer either questions (1) or (2) above. For

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this, we must undertake a more detailed investigation of how Hartmann’s critical realist ontology hierarchically structures mathematical objects, properties, relations, principles, functions, and operations, into the distinct levels of his categorial analysis of the real and ideal being of real physical and ideal mathematical entities.

14.3 Hartmann’s Aristotelianism Hartmann’s ontology offers an abstract arrangement of the categories of being. His fundamental metaphysics and methodology are neo-Aristotelian in doctrine or spirit in at least three distinctive ways. First, Hartmann’s ontology takes as its absolute metaphysical ground the existence of the phenomenal world. With few exceptions acknowledged to exclude illusions and hallucinations, the state of the world is precisely as it is capable of being perceived. On such a conception, the real state of the actual world is objectively confirmed when and to the extent that shared descriptions of the content of perceptions by multiple perceiving subjects appear to agree. Hartmann proposes a return to naïve Aristotelian phenomenal realism at the foundations of metaphysics that takes the world of perceived objects philosophically at face value and without general skepticism. The world is there for us to perceive, and with noted exceptions exists as we perceive it. The world is nevertheless also ontically independent of our perceptions, and hence exists objectively at least with respect to all its intrinsic properties. This is solid Aristotelian metaphysics, and, like Aristotle’s philosophy more generally, it is empiricism-friendly to a substantial extent. The neo-Aristotelian interpretation of Hartmann’s philosophy of mathematics is supported by Andreas A.M. Kinneging, when he explains, in his ‘Transaction (sic.) Introduction’ to the English translation of Hartmann’s massive (1926) Ethik, volume one, on Moral Phenomena: What is the sphere of ideal being? Hartmann argues that there are two different ways of being (Seinsweisen): real being (reales Sein) and ideal being (ideales Sein). Real being includes everything that is in or attached to the spatio-temporal world, including the incorporeal. The entities that partake of this kind (of being) come into existence and perish; they are impermanent, altering, and singular…In contrast to real being, ideal being is timeless and not spatial. It consists of ideal entities, such as mathematical units and laws, the laws of logic, the essence (Wesen) of concrete existing things, acts, and occurrences […] The case of mathematical being is instructive. In the units and laws of mathematics man first discovered ideal being. Mathemat-

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ical units and laws are beyond time and space, beyond genesis and disintegration, which are typical of everything in the real world.7

Thus far, we have no particular reason to suppose that Kinneging interprets Hartmann as an Aristotelian in his philosophy of mathematics. However, the picture is complete provided that we understand Kinneging’s otherwise unexplained references to the pervasion and suffusion of the real world by mathematical principles in a traditional Aristotelian terminology as the inherence of mathematical principles, objects and their properties, in primary substances; or, as Hartmann prefers to speak of his metaphysical basis, the substrate, as characterizing specifically real entities, and the effects of process, time and individuality. Kinneging continues: But although mathematical being differs fundamentally from real being, it pervades the latter. The principles of mathematics are the principles of reality. Things, acts, and occurrences in the real world necessarily comply with the principles of mathematics. It is possible, by eliminating or adding one or more axioms, to develop a mathematics that has little to do with the real world, but it is not possible for the real world to escape from the grip of mathematical principles. The real contains and is molded by the ideal […] The real world is suffused with mathematical principles.8

In emphasizing Hartmann’s Aristotelianism, it should always be kept in mind that Hartmann’s philosophy is tempered in an ideologically more complex and comprehensive synthesis that, while it may exclude prominent aspects of Plato, self-consciously includes selected features of the later idealisms of Kant and Hegel. Some kind of Aristotelian Hartmann might be, and his neo-Aristotelianism might show itself especially in his philosophy of mathematics and his attitude toward the natural sciences, the empirical study of physical reality as revealed in its phenomena. Hartmann nevertheless is not simply a back-to-Aristotle-as-though-Immanuel-Kant-had-never-existed Aristotelian, as we see more severely in Franz Brentano’s neo-Aristotelianism. If we call attention to Hartmann’s neo-Aristotelianism in the philosophy of mathematics, it is meant only to be at the expense specifically of classical Platonism, and not of every aspect of Hartmann’s equally dedicated Kantian and Hegelian idealism. Like Kant and Hegel, and unlike Plato among his intellectual predecessors, Hartmann takes the perceivable world as in some sense real, even if not ultimate or exclusive. He concerns himself explic7 8

Kinneging 2002, ‘Transaction Introduction,’ xvi-xvii. Kinneging 2002, xvii-xix.

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itly at the foundations of his mathematical ontology primarily with the world of real physical phenomena, where the most fundamental ideal mathematical properties are to be found as qualifying the real objects of perception in the natural sciences. These properties are idealized already at the first level in the applied mathematical formulas of elementary kinematics, as in our overworked F = ma example, and most highly idealized in the most elementary theorems of arithmetic, represented by the equaiton 1+1 = 2. Second, in consequence of Hartmann’s more critical Aristotelian metaphysical realism, it follows for Hartmann as for Aristotle that the most basic, fundamental and independently real existents are what Hartmann calls the Realen, and which Aristotle referred to as first or primary substances, prot ousia. These real things exist essentially without possessing any particular choice of accidental properties. Properties, contrariwise, do not exist on their own for either Hartmann or Aristotle, except insofar as they inhere in, belong to, or are true of or instantiated by, an independently real existent primary substance. All other existents at higher levels of being supervene as real or ideal properties, aspects or dimensions, of the only independently existing real things, and exemplified by the very same things that Aristotle would call primary substances. In this sense also Hartmann’s ontology is distinctively Aristotelian, albeit with a curious Platonic twist. For Hartmann believes that there are two kinds of existent things, real physical and ideal entities, including although not limited to mathematical entities, with real physical and ideal mathematical properties, in a one-way supervenience relationship in which the being or existence of ideal mathematical objects and their properties is ultimately ontically dependent on the existence of real physical objects and their properties. Third, and finally, in what seems obviously to be modeled on both Aristotle’s and Kant’s system of categories, Hartmann offers a highly structured multi-level ontology with many different hierarchically organized real and ideal properties, aspects and dimensions of Realen. He thereby provides a structural taxonomic interpretation of the Aristotelian concept of the inherence of formal, as well as material, properties in real things or primary substances. Where Aristotle speaks of the inherence of prime matter directly in earth, air, fire, water, and æther, and transitively in any chosen primary substance, such as a piece of wood, along with its formal, especially mathematical, properties, Hartmann speaks to much the same purpose of the dimensions of real and ideal things at respective levels of being within his ontology, ontically dependent on their respective supervenience bases. The unidirectional ontic dependence relation, in Hartmann as in Aristotle, im-

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plies that properties generally, including the ideal mathematical properties of ideal mathematical objects in pure and applied mathematics, exist only insofar as they inhere in or are true of the ontically most basic primary substances, Hartmann’s real physical things. For these three reasons, and in these three senses, we shall feel entitled to speak of Hartmann’s later ontology as neo-Aristotelian, without thereby discounting that Hartmann’s philosophy is not a naïve but critical realism, an Aristotelianism counterbalanced in an interesting synthesis with an equally transformed and cherry-picked Kantianism and dialectical Hegelianism. Like Aristotle, Hartmann in his philosophy of mathematics is exercised by the question of infinity, of the concept of infinite sets and series, resolved by Aristotle in his distinction between actual and potential infinity, and denial of the intelligibility of actual infinity on the grounds of Zeno of Elea’s paradoxes. It may also be significant that in his mature period, in Der Aufbau der realen Welt and Philosophie der Natur, decades after the publication of Des Proklus Diadochus and his turn away from neo-Platonism toward Aristotelianism, Hartmann includes but does not specially emphasize his categorial analysis of mathematics. He sandwiches the discussion into his treatment of the basic concepts of the ultimate real existence of real physical things, in Aristotelian fashion, rather than as a stand-alone topic of metaphysical investigation, as one might naturally expect among Platonic realists exemplified by Proclus in the philosophy of mathematics.9

14.4 Hartmann’s stratified ontology and the levels of mathematical being In considering Hartmann’s later critical realist ontology as the framework for a Hartmannian philosophy of mathematics, it is tempting to dismiss his 1909 monograph, Des Proklus Diadochus, as an early work, a showpiece for the Habilitationsschrift at Universität Marburg.

9

Hartmann offers a detailed discussion of the conceptual problems of infinity in his 1909 and 1950; see his 1950, 404: “Die Wahrheit also ist, daß die eigentliche Unendlichkeit im potentiell Unendlichen vielmehr auch schon eine aktuale ist. Der progressus infinitus ist ja kein Realprozeß; er gerade spielt nur in Gedanken. Im Sein dagegen find die entsprechenden Reihen immer vollständig erfüllt; hier waltet ein Gesetz der Ganzheit, das vollkommen gleichgültig gegen die Unvollständigkeit des Denkens und der Berechnung dasteht.”

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The book, at a total of 57 pages, is a detailed scholarly and philosophical meta-commentary on the first two books of Proclus’s commentary on Euclid’s Elements. Proclus was a neo-Platonist, and, as Hartmann informs us, the first and the last of his classical school to comment on the philosophy of mathematics.10 This Proclus does, naturally enough, with a heavy dose of Platonism adapted to emphasize the role of fantasia in the transitionally humanly embodied transcendent soul’s presoteriological communion with eternal mathematical truths.11 Hartmann’s mature ontology, in contrast, even in this early inquiry, is more fundamentally Aristotelian in orientation and in many of the details of its metaphysical categories, sometimes appearing under a new Hartmannian descriptive nomenclature. Hartmann’s later critical realism is in some ways a departure from his early Cohen-Natorp neo-Kantianism, although elements of his early dialecticism remain throughout his work. There are revealing conceptual and ideological connections between Hartmann’s 1909 essay and his systematic allgemeine und spezielle Kategorienlehre, respectively, in the 1940 and 1950 treatises. The part of Hartmann’s later categorial analysis of being that is relevant to mathematics, like all of Hartmann’s ontology, as we have seen, although concerning ideal being, has at its foundation what Hartmann calls ‘real things’. Hartmann focuses in his ontology on the exact moment in the Hegelian dialectic at which an Aristotelian realism of primary substances and their properties constitutes a first element in an antithesis leading to a greater synthesis with a form of Kantian critical idealism, in which metaphysics is permitted to comprehend the physical furniture of the phenomenal spatiotemporal universe in all its components and combinations. All of these real physical entities or Aristotelian primary substances have properties, some of which are idealized mathematical properties both of real things and ideal mathematical objects. Properties, including ideal mathematical properties, do not have an in10 Hartmann 1909, 4: “In Proklus, dem letzten bedeutenden Philosophen der Schule – und zugleich des Altertums überhaupt – finden wir diesse Züge schon auf die äußerste Spitze getrieben. Hier sehen wir neben ernsten sittlich religiösen Bestrebungen kritiklosen Dogmatismus und kleinlichen Aberglauben, neben einzigartigen, wahrhaft polyhistorischen Wissen einen unerklärlichen Hang zu wertlosen Haarspalterein und Allegorien.” 11 Hartmann 1909, puts the point as succinctly as possible, explaining Proclus’s psychologism in philosophy of mathematics, p. 22: “Alles Mathematische ist ursprünglich in der Seele.” In contrast, see Hartmann 1948, 242 – 320; also Hartmann 1965, 144 – 172.

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dependent existence, according to Hartmann, but exist only insofar as they directly or transitively inhere ultimately in real physical things or the idealized mathematical objects with their properties that are abstracted from the number and measurable dimensions of real physical entities. The mathematical properties of real things are themselves ideal, despite supervening on the real things which they qualify, in which they inhere or to which they belong, by virtue of the comparative degree of their relatively formal abstraction or idealization in two stages, successively, in applied and pure mathematics. Among the upper reaches of the hierarchy, concerning the mathematical dimensions of real things, partially idealized applied mathematical entities and their properties are situated. Ideal mathematical objects and their properties are standardly formalized in an applied mathematical language and supplemented with a calculus more fully idealized and completely abstracted from physical factors in the realm of pure mathematics. Pure mathematics, we have emphasized, occupies a still higher supervenient level of idealization, representing a total abstraction from any reference to the physical or phenomenal properties of real things that are found in applied mathematics and among the partially idealized mathematical properties of real physical things. Hartmann offers this useful summary of his ontic hierarchy of mathematical entities in Der Aufbau der Realen Welt: The extent of the quantitative in the structure of the real world also corresponds for its part not with an abstraction from mathematical relations. The quantity of real things is only mathematical in the lowest real level (Realschicht), and only here is it precisely numerically comprehensible. Further up (in the ontology) it avoids all exact enumeration, besides, however, which does not prevent it from being a real quantity.12 12 See Hansen 2008, 67: “Alle Dimensionen der physischen Welt wie Dauer, Gewicht, Geschwindigkeit, Druck, etc. sind quantitativ bestimmt. Die Gegenstände der reinen Mathematik inklusive ihrer Gesetze habe zwar, wie erinnerlich, eine ideale Seinsweise, stimmen aber zumindest partiell mit der quantitativ strukturierten Ordnung der anorganischen Natur zusammen. Sie ist in weitem Ausmaß zahlenmäßig faßbar. Das hat laut Hartmann damit zu tun, daß die Naturvorgänge relativ einfach und durchsichtig sind, worin sie dem quantitativen Schema, dem sie unterstehen, gleichen; die Dinge im Raum fügen sich der mathematischen Gesetzlichkeit. Mathematik ist eine exakte Wissenschaft der einfachen Naturverhältnisse” (Hansen cites Hartmann, Der Aufbau der realen Welt, 392). Note also pp. 68 – 69 and 72, in Hansen’s especially useful fourth and fifth chapters, on “Die reine Mathematik und das ideale Sein” and “Ansätze zu einer Philosophie der Mathematik.”

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It is conceivable, although Hartmann with his particular interests does not encourage such a conclusion, that the further formal idealization and abstraction from even the content of pure mathematics itself, concerning numbers, sets, groups, rings, and so on, might then be found at a fourth and fifth level in this sector of Hartmann’s ontology for applied and finally pure logic. The hierarchy extended from real physical things to two levels of mathematical idealizations concerning the formal dimension of real things in Hartmann’s ontology can accordingly be understood as containing the three following successive levels, from the starting place at level (L0) to the top at (L2): Table 14.1. Hartmann’s Categorial Analysis of the Ontic Levels of the Ideal Mathematical Properties of Real Things (L2) Pure mathematics as a total idealization of (L1) abstracted from any reference to physical entities or their properties. (L1) Applied mathematics as a partial idealization of (L0) making reference to physical entities or their properties. (L0) Real physical things in real physical space (and time) together with their real supervenient mathematical properties.

Pure, in relation to applied, mathematics in Hartmann’s philosophy becomes more idealized at each successive ontic level of the ideal. As mathematics is further idealized from the formal dimensions of real world entities, their truths become proportionately more purely a matter of the internal syntactical interrelations within a properly constructed mathematical language and calculus, apparently ontically altogether detached from the logically contingent facts that collectively constitute the real world of physical things. It is worth mentioning that Hartmann in Ontologie II argues that ideal being is an ‘incomplete’ mode of being, and that the distinction between real and ideal being is accordingly articulated by means of a modal analysis. The supervenience of other categories of being on real physical (and psychical and spiritual) being in Hartmann’s ontology nevertheless presents no obstacle to the supervenience of ideal mathematical being. The same is true in Aristotle’s metaphysics of substance and accidents, where the definitions or secondary substances supervene on primary substances, and are always also incomplete, in the sense that they are abstracted from physical reality with gaps in their totality of property and property complement pairs. Triangularity, for Aristotle as for Hart-

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mann, is incomplete, in that the lines of any ideal triangle have no particular color, the ideal mathematical triangle is of no particular size, and so on. We should not suppose, in any case, that mathematics is ‘below’ physics for either Aristotle or Hartmann on the proposed interpretation. We leave it as an open question whether in Hartmann’s ontology psychical and spiritual real being and mathematical and other formal ideal being supervene on real physical being in parallel or branching or other arrangements. If real physical being is the ultimate supervenience base, on which supervene all of real psychical and spiritual being, then it remains possible that on all of this real being ideal mathematical being finally supervenes, and hence applies to all items below it in Hartmann’s hierarchical ontology. Alternatively, real psychical and spiritual being and ideal mathematical being might supervene directly in parallel fashion on real physical being. The necessity and epistemic certainty of pure mathematics in comparison both with the empirical sciences and applied mathematics is also explained in Hartmann’s ontology. Applied mathematics and the exact natural sciences are often indistinguishable. We find this conspicuously in Isaac Newton’s “System of the World,” in his (1687) Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica. The distinct modality and knowledge status of pure versus applied mathematics can be understood as owing precisely to their respective positions in Hartmann’s ontology, with pure mathematics occupying a higher level of being most distantly removed from logically contingent real world facts. They rely instead primarily on the internal syntactical relations of mathematical terms and propositions, and on the definitions of pure mathematical concepts as still more remote idealizations of the already ideal applied mathematical properties of real things. In Newton’s calculations, for example, pure geometrical theorems are applied analogically to formally describe and mathematically predict or retrodict the idealized movements of real physical things in real physical space and time, by reference to the most precise approximations to exact measurement of which we are capable. The same thing occurs to a less dramatic extent also in applied mathematics, where Newton’s first law of motion, for example, states that a moving particle unimpeded by impressed forces continues indefinitely in a straight line, and where in the real world of real physical things there are no moving particles unimpeded by impressed forces; primarily, if for no other reason, then because of Newton’s own doctrine of universal gravitation. It is only the transitivity of ontic dependence that connects the total idealizations of pure mathematics to the dynamic spatio-

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temporal real world in Hartmann’s philosophy of mathematics, through the intermediary of the partial idealizations of applied mathematics. With Hartmann, we peel away multiple levels of categories of existence, like the layers of an onion. The principal expositional task of ontology is to reveal by categorial analysis each level of being and how they are related. The resulting metaphysics of real and ideal objects in the applied and pure mathematics of number and space provides the philosophy of mathematics with different descriptions of the formal properties of real physical things in different kinds of languages, reflecting the partially and totally idealized mathematical properties of the real phenomenal world of the natural sciences. Thus, in geometry we discover an ideal mathematical description of the real or phenomenal properties of spatial objects, for which an axiomatization such as Euclid systematizes together with many of its interesting theorems, is an inessential afterthought, as far as Hartmann’s philosophy of mathematics is concerned. The practical mathematical knowledge we use for planning and engineering, mastering the movements of our bodies in space to accomplish specific purposes, measuring and fitting things into places, to name but a few applications, are formally expressed in applied mathematical languages that are ontologically committed to the existence of corresponding partially idealized mathematical entities and their partially idealized mathematical properties. The further idealization of applied mathematics results in the principles concerning the ideal objects and properties of pure mathematics. The mathematics Hartmann returns to philosophy as ontically situated, epistemically accessible, and conceptually circumspect, is whatever mathematics is needed to understand the arithmetical and geometrical properties of real physical things. Ideal mathematical objects and properties are stratified into specific levels, with each higher level being ontically dependent on all preceding levels, on whatever is immediately or transitively metaphysically more fundamental. Realen constitute the ground, and radiating out from them are all their properties and dimensions existing at a variety of ontic levels. The apposite description of these dependencies and independencies of different kinds of existents exactly as they stand one to another is the task of Hartmann’s ontology. The mathematical dimension of real physical things in particular ascends from perceivable phenomena in two tiers in the following order. First the lowest and closest to real physical things and their real physical properties are the idealizations of applied mathematics, while above them are found the greater abstractions and higher idealizations of pure mathe-

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matics. Hartmann believes that mathematical truths are logically necessary, contradictory to deny, but, like Kant, he holds that the theorems of mathematics are synthetic rather than analytic, and that mathematics by a special cognitive faculty is knowable a priori. All of mathematics in Hartmann’s ontology, applied and pure, ultimately owes its truth to the existence of ideal mathematical objects and their ideal properties in its logical domains, which are owed in turn to the existence and properties of real physical things.13

14.5 Metaphysics of pure and applied mathematics The ontology of real and ideal entities that Hartmann develops encourages the view that there is no deep logical, semantic, or metaphysical difference between pure and applied mathematics. They are alike successive idealizations of the ideal mathematical properties ultimately of real physical things, considered at two distinct, relatively higher or lower, grades of existence. We can accordingly think of pure mathematics in Hartmannian terms as totally idealized applied mathematics, supplemented by a logically consistent system of propositions concerning partially idealized real physical phenomena. If m is the totality of pure mathematics, then an applied mathematics, like Newton’s physics or principles of natural philosophy, his “System of the World,” can be understood in set theoretical terms, as involving a domain of propositions, populated by a (potentially improper) selection from the totality of pure mathematical theorems, together with a system of mathematically formulated propositions concerning physical phenomena, {s j s 2 l} [ a (where it is possible in principle that s = l). Applied mathematics, on such a conception, despite embodying propositions about the phenomenal world, considered logically, semantically, or metaphysically, is no different, not a categorically different kind of thing in Hartmann’s ontology, than pure mathematics. It is rather a part, s, of pure mathematics, m, plus mathematically 13 Hartmann 1940, 391: “Die Reichweite des Quantitativen im Aufbau der realen Welt deckt sich auch ihrerseits nicht mit einem Auschnitt der mathematischen Verhältnisse. Die Quantität des Realen ist nur in der niedersten Realschicht eine mathematische, und nur hier ist sie zahlenmäßig exakt faßbar. Weiter hinauf entzieht sie sich aller exakten Fassung, hört aber dabei nicht auf, echte Quantität zu sein.” See Hartmann 1965, 540 – 542.

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formulated principles describing logically contingent events and physical forces or kinds of objects, and their metric correlations, formulated as a set of physical laws, a. Applied mathematics on such a view is not an ontically different kind of thing than pure mathematics, although pure mathematics exists at a higher level of ideal being than applied mathematics in Hartmann’s total ontology. We can consequently think alternatively either of pure mathematics as resulting analytically by taking away propositions about the phenomenal world from the sum of applied mathematics, rooted in the ideal applied mathematical properties of real physical things, or we can think synthetically instead of applied mathematics as a choice of pure mathematics combined with an appropriate choice of mathematically formulated physical properties, such as the force, mass, and acceleration of ideal projectiles. In either case, we do not face the philosophical problem of somehow trying to link-up ontically distinct categories of things in relating pure and applied mathematics, as cannot be avoided in a Platonic realist ontology of mathematics. Often, what the mathematicized natural sciences require of pure mathematics is relatively minimal. It usually suffices to have available arithmetic, algebra and trigonometry, analytic geometry or topology, mathematical analysis or derivative and integral calculus, and maybe set theory, category theory, and theories of fields and rings. We can consider formal probability theories and inductive logics used especially in quantum physics and other scientific applications as themselves applied rather than pure mathematical formalisms that can be utilized for purposes of scientific explanation about statistical phenomena. In principle, s could contain whatever part of m is needed for whatever applied mathematical work a is expected to do. As we have seen, in the case of applied mathematical proposition, F = ma, in elementary physics, our modest pure mathematical needs include only a theory of elementary arithmetic in order to manage the multiplication of an ideal numerical mass value times an ideal numerical acceleration value in calculating an ideal degree of force. We make provision in this way for compendia of applied mathematical formulas. These are found in many practical applied mathematical handbooks in hydrodynamics, electromagnetic theory, and the like, consisting only of logically contingent physical correlations, largely obtained directly from experience in the partially idealized correlation of approximative measurements of the behavior of real physical phenomena. Such works of applied mathematics are the most useful general

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mathematical recipes for performing the calculations needed to explain and control the movement of physical objects, volumes of water, air, electricity and other dynamic phenomena, including the movement of projectiles through such fluids as the Earth’s atmosphere, by applied mathematical natural laws of physics. The formulas that grace these kinds of engineering cookbooks do not necessarily follow directly as applied mathematical theorems from the most abstract general applied mathematical principles of physics, with which they are nevertheless expected to be logically compatible. They are instead refinements made from repeated observation and measurement of physical world regularities, expressed in a mathematical language as a description of the partially idealized mathematical properties of real physical things. As a consequence of the fact that we can only judge essential mathematical values approximately, it follows that an applied mathematical proposition must always be at least somewhat idealized from the standpoint of our best practical efforts to determine the mathematical properties of real world objects and events, whereas the theorems of pure mathematics are totally idealized, maximally abstracted from any real phenomena. The philosophical problem of understanding how pure mathematics relates to applied mathematics accordingly does not arise for Hartmann. Once we have recognized that applied mathematics is not an altogether logically, semantically, or metaphysically different species of existent thing from pure mathematics, Hartmann’s ontology provides a general structure in which we can situate pure mathematics at a higher and more distant, but still transitively ontically dependent level of being ultimately grounded in real physical things, than that of applied mathematics. Pure mathematics in that case is nothing more mysterious than the further idealization of more highly abstracted principles from the first idealizations of applied mathematics. Pure mathematics exists for Hartmann at a higher level of idealization, in which all reference to physical factors is eliminated, leaving the rest of all the necessary mathematical apparatus intact. The application of pure mathematics in the real world is not something that is done to pure mathematics in order to change it constitutionally into its application, for Hartmann in contrast with Plato, but is simply the originating core of pure mathematics to which mathematically formulated principles abstracted from an idealized theory of the physical and mathematical properties of the real physical world are superadded. We make progress toward recognizing the neo-Aristotelian inherence of pure mathematical objects and properties in real physical things

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by proposing, for example, that in a real physical space through which a real projectile is made to pass, there exists a pure mathematical circle of a certain diameter, even if no real physical object is itself a pure mathematical circle, and even if real physical objects in real physical space are never truly exactly but at most only approximately circular. As Hartmann maintains, in his first published foray into philosophy of mathematics, the 1909 commentary on Proclus’s Des Proklus Diadochus, a circle, or at least the concept thereof, is as much a circle in the abstract idealized pure or applied mathematical level of being in the ontology as it is in the concrete physical world: The concept of the circle remains identical all the same, regardless of whether the circle is invoked in physics or geometry…If now geometry considers the circle, the diameter, the tangent or anything similar, its specifications are neither about the sensuous, nor about the one and only conceptual circle.14

Turning from geometry to arithmetic, if in the actual world such real physical things as coins are sufficiently stable for the theorems of pure arithmetic to apply, then we are justified in using elementary arithmetic with its pure mathematical component in making our purchases and counting out change at the market. Hartmann in this spirit further maintains of this highest mathematical idealization: ‘Number is empty, it alone is pure quantity, with spatial dimensionality already established, a relation of measure and size, even if only thin and as it were minimal, nevertheless is absolutely presupposed by its contentual determination.’15

14.6 References Feucht, Roland H. (1992), Die Neoontologie Nicolai Hartmanns im Licht der evolutionren Erkenntnistheorie, Regensburg: Roderer Verlag. 14 Hartmann 1909, pp. 30 – 31: “Der Begriff des Kreises bleibt identisch, einerlei ob er den Kreis in der Physik oder in der Geometrie bezeichnet…Wenn nun die Geometrie über den Kreis, den Diameter, die Tangente oder dem Ähnliches verhandelt, so macht sie ihre Aufstellungen weder über den sinnlichen, noch über den bloß begrifflichen Kreis.” 15 I am grateful to my institute librarian, Simone Hess, and my research assistant, Sebastian Elliker, for locating sources related to Hartmann’s ontology and philosophy of mathematics. Thanks are due to Frederic Tremblay for invaluable criticisms and directions toward relevant literature in revising an earlier version of this essay.

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Hansen, Frank-Peter (2008), Nicolai Hartmann erneut durchdacht, Verlag Königshausen & Neumann. Hartmann, Nicolai (1909), Des Proklus Diadochus: philosophische Anfangsgrnde der Mathematik nach den ersten zwei Bchern des Euklidkommentars, Gießen: Verlag von Alfred Töpelmann. Hartmann, Nicolai (1923), “Aristoteles und Hegel”, in: Beitrge zur Philosophie des deutschen Idealismus 3, 1 – 36. Hartmann, Nicolai (1931), Zum Problem der Realittsgegebenheit, Berlin: Philosophische Vorträge, Pan-Verlagsges. Hartmann, Nicolai (1935a), Ontologie I: Zur Grundlegung der Ontologie, BerlinLeipzig: Walter de Gruyter. Hartmann, Nicolai (1935b), Das Problem des Apriorismus in der platonischen Philosophie, Berlin: Walter de Gruyter. Hartmann, Nicolai (1938), Ontologie II: Mçglichkeit und Wahrscheinlichkeit, Berlin-Leipzig: Walter de Gruyter. Hartmann, Nicolai (1939), Aristoteles und das Problem des Begriffs, Abhandlungen der Preussischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, Berlin: Walter de Gruyter. Hartmann, Nicolai (1940), Der Aufbau der realen Welt: Grundriß der allgemeinen Kategorienlehre, Berlin-Leipzig: Walter de Gruyter. Hartmann, Nicolai (1943), Neue Wege der Ontologie, Stuttgart: Kohlhammer. Hartmann, Nicolai (1950), Philosophie der Natur: Abriß der speziellen Kategorienlehre, Berlin-Leipzig: Walter de Gruyter. Hartmann, Nicolai (2002), Ethics, 3 Vols, with a new introduction by Andreas A. M. Kinneging, New Brunswick and London: Transaction Publishers (1st English translation 1932 by Stanton Coit). Kinneging, Andreas A. M., “Translator’s Introduction”, to Hartmann (2002), Vol. 1, v-xxxvi.

Author Index Adams, Henry 177, 191 Adickes, Erich 238f., 241 Adorno, Theodor 34f., 39, 51, 83, 88 Albertazzi, Liliana 98 Ales Bello, Angela 142, 146 Alexander, Samuel 95f. Aristotle 1f., 34, 38, 53, 75, 96, 99, 135, 186–190, 201, 203–205, 211f., 226, 231, 253f., 256, 265, 273–278, 281f. Baertschi, Christian 238f. Baumgartner, Hans M. 38 Beckmann, Jan P. 34, 39 Bedau, Mark A. 96 Ben-Ze’ev, Aaron 164 Bertalanffy, Ludwig von 116 Blitz, David 96 Bochen´ski, Józef 95 Brentano, Franz 1, 147, 276 Broad, Charlie D. 1, 96, 104, 106, 121, 152, 203, 206f., 215 Bruno, Giordano 135 Bunge, Mario 96 Camus, Albert 35, 39, 51, 191 Cassirer, Ernst 74f., 81, 238 Cicovacki, Predrag 95 Clayton, Philip 96 Cobb, John 103, 105f., 108 Cobb, Stanley 161 Cohen, Herman 223, 237f., 254–256, 271, 279 Cumpa, Javier 30 Da˛browski, Kazimierz 166, 169 D’Anna, Giuseppe 1f., 138, 253, 262 Darwin, Charles 90, 125 Davies, Paul C. W. 96

Derrida, Jacques 35f., 39, 51 Diogenes Laertius 37, 168 Diotima 185, 232 Dixon, Thomas 160, 165 Dziadkowiec, Jakub 2, 95, 109, 167 Ebbinghaus, Julius 238 Ellis, George F. R. 96 Elmgren, John 164 Epicurus 168 Fichte, Johann G. 76, 240 Forsche, Joachim 153 Freud, Sigmund 90, 148 Frings, Manfred 215 Frischeisen-Koehler, Max 59f. Galewicz, Włodzimierz 97, 100 Gamp, Rainer 127, 231 Gehlen, Arnold 3, 73–75, 81–83, 88–90, 203 Gogol, Ivan 178 Gomperz, Heinrich 59 Griffin, David R. 103 Guthrie, William K. C. 201 Habermas, Jürgen 73, 83 Haeckel, Ernst 133 Hansen Frank-Peter 248, 280 Hartmann, Frida 253, 254, 266 Hegel, Georg W. F. 1f., 4, 28, 34, 53, 59, 62, 146, 177, 204, 227, 230, 241, 246, 271, 276 Heidegger, Martin 1, 74, 77, 81, 88, 90, 237–239, 242, 244–250 Heidemann, Ingeborg 42 Heimsoeth, Heinz 81f., 237–239, 253f., 266 Heimsoeth, Renate 253, 254, 266 Herder, Johann G. 240

290

Author Index

Hillman, James 161, 173 Homer 165f. Hönigswald, Richard 237 Hülsmann, Heinz 41, 44, 68, 70 Humphreys, Paul 96 Husserl, Edmund 1, 83, 142f., 197, 213f., 247, 264 Ingarden, Roman

Meinong, Alexius 2, 253, 257f., 260, 262, 265–267 Mohanty, Jitendra N. 96–98, 103–105, 108–110, 114 Mordka, Artur 99f. Morgan, Lloyd C. 96 Morgenstern, Martin 42, 45, 81, 144 Morowitz, Harold J. 96

1

Jackson, Andrew 178 Jacobi, Friedrich H. 240, 242 James, William 57 Janoska, Georg 61 Jaspers, Karl 74, 88, 90, 237 Johansson, Ingvar 101, 121, 138 Jung, Carl G. 159 Kant, Immanuel 1f., 4, 34, 36, 39, 68–70, 76, 81, 143, 177, 182–184, 197, 202, 213, 237–246, 249, 255–259, 263f., 276f., 284 Kelly, Eugene 3, 30, 177 Kim, Hyun K. 36 Kim, Jaegwon 95, 109, 112 Kimmerle, Heinz 35f. Kisiel, Theodore 250 Kistler, Max 96 Klein, Joseph 223 Köhler, Wolfgang 150 Kohoutek, Marie L. von 187–189 Krings, Hermann 38 Kröner, Franz 60f. Kuhn, Helmut 81, 221 Kuhn, Reinhard C. 101, 128, 133 Lask, Emil 238 Leibniz, Gottfried 2 Lloyd, Geoffrey E. R. Lukács, György 155

Natorp, Paul 221–223, 234, 237f., 254f., 271, 279 Nietzsche, Friedrich 90, 205, 208, 211 Noras, Andrzej J. 237 Oesterreich, Konstantin

238f.

Paulsen, Friedrich 238f., 241 Peirce, Charles S. 1, 70 Pepper, Stephen 62 Peruzzi, Alberto 101, 109, 114, 116 Pichler, Hans 2, 253–262, 264–267 Plato 1–3, 5, 34, 38, 54f., 96, 99, 126, 178, 180, 183, 185, 195–206, 211, 213–215, 218f., 221–234, 269, 273, 276, 286 Plessner, Helmuth 3, 73–90, 149 Plotinus 2, 168 Poli, Roberto 1–3, 5, 16, 95f., 101, 114, 172, 190 Prauss, Gerold 239f. Pyrrho 38 Reinhold, Karl L. Rickert, Henrich Rogers, Carl R. Rogge, Eberhard Rothacker, Erich

240 238 152 61 3, 59, 82f.

160f.

Mace, Cecil A. 170 Maimon, Salomon 240, 242 Mann, Thomas 69, 86, 162, 178, 206, 261, 265 Martin, Gottfried 33f., 39, 50 McGill, Vivian J. 160, 173 McLaughlin, Brian P. 96

Sartre, Jean-Paul 74, 192 Scheler, Max 3, 73–87, 89f., 143, 147, 159, 166, 168f., 177, 179–181, 183, 186, 190f., 203, 215 Schelling, Friedrich W. J. 135 Schlittmaier Anton 138 Schnädelbach, Herbert 35 Schopenhauer, Arthur 177, 255f.

291

Author Index

Schultz, Johannes H. 240 Schulze, Gottlob E. 240 Schwabe, Wilhelm 230 Scognamiglio, Carlo 2f., 28, 141, 145, 152 Sextus Empiricus 38f. Sherburne, Donald W. 103 Sirchia, Francesco 223 Sisyphus 35 Skinner, Burrhus F. 150, 152 Socrates 38, 54f., 167, 178f., 190f., 222 Stallmach, Josef 246 Stein, Edith 145, 172 Suarez, Francisco 257 Tremblay, Frederic 159, 287

2f., 30, 77, 125,

Vaihinger, Hans

238

Wagner, Richard 177 Waldenfels, Bernhard 38 Wein, Hermann 82, 95f. Weissman, David 30 Werkmeister, William H. 4, 101, 128 Whitehead, Alfred N. 1f., 95–98, 103–111, 113–115, 118, 120 Wild, Christoph 35, 38, 177 Williamson, Mark 62 Windelband, Wilhelm 238, 253 Wolff, Christian von 2, 68, 253–267 Wundt, Max 238f. Zaborowski, Robert 2f., 30, 159, 165, 170, 172 Zˇizˇek, Slavoj 36, 39, 51

Subject Index Accident 1, 257, 281 Act 3f., 15, 24, 29, 36, 41f., 56, 101, 141, 143, 146f., 150, 154, 159, 162, 166, 169–172, 178–180, 186f., 203–205, 212, 214f., 217, 229, 254, 263, 275f. Activity 22, 40, 131, 141f., 144, 147, 150, 160, 169–173, 183f., 191, 218, 224–228, 233, 255, 264f. Actual entity 97, 103–106, 108–110, 113 Actual occasion (see: ‘Actual entity’) 104–106 Affectivity 159–167, 169–173 – Affective hyperopia 162 – Affective myopia 162 – Affective strata 164 – Emotional acts, types of 81, 147, 150, 170, 172 – Emotional transcendent act 2f., 147 – Heterogeneity of affectivity 173 – Hierarchy of affectivity 161 – Integral approach to affectivity 160 – Law of affectivity 164 – Levels of affectivity 171 – Passivity of affectivity 160, 169f., 172f. – Stratification of emotional life 168 Alteration 134, 136 Ansichsein (see: ‘Being in itself’) 6, 10, 13, 40, 206 Anthropology 85, 155, 215 Antinomy (see: ‘Aporia’) 42, 44–48, 66, 182f., 188, 190, 211 Aporia 2, 24, 33–44, 46–51, 135–138, 144, 159 – Antinomy of the object 42–44 – Aporetic moments 138

– Aporia from the existential dependence of principles 47 – Aporia, functions of 138 – Aporia, kinds of 38, 50f. – Aporia, skeptical function of 37 – Aporias of the thing in itself 40, 41 – Natural aporias 39 Appearance (see also: ‘Phenomenon’) 3, 5, 8f., 34, 105, 116, 118, 167, 181, 202, 225, 233 Apprehension (Erfassen) 2f., 42, 44–46, 67 A priori 8, 41, 143, 178f., 181, 185, 189, 213f., 256, 260, 263f., 284 Arete (see: ‘Value’) Assumption 2, 34, 41, 44–46, 50, 99, 115, 222, 228, 230f. Bearer (Trger) (see also: ‘Substratum’) 23, 40, 101, 131f., 134f., 137, 144, 183, 185 Being 1–13, 15, 19–21, 23–25, 27–30, 35–39, 43f., 47, 51, 54f., 57, 68f., 73, 77, 79–81, 83–88, 95, 97–101, 103–105, 108f., 111, 113f., 118, 126, 129f., 133, 135–138, 144, 147–151, 153, 155f., 160, 166, 168f., 171, 173, 178, 182–184, 192, 195–206, 209f., 212–214, 217–219, 221f., 224–234, 254–257, 260–263, 265f., 269–273, 275–283, 286f. – Being in itself (Ansichsein) 5, 13, 40–43, 202, 217 – Being qua being 5, 99 – Mode of being 16, 47, 86, 95, 131, 199, 265, 281 Being-thus (see: ‘Determination’) Biology 6, 76, 78f., 84, 86f., 90, 125, 138, 144, 161, 171, 274

294

Subject Index

– Philosophy of biology 125 Bipolarity 119 Boundary 7, 28, 36–38, 42, 50, 57, 79, 100, 136, 141, 145, 148, 154, 156 Category 3, 5, 9f., 13f., 16, 19–23, 25f., 29f., 46f., 88, 97f., 104, 106f., 110, 113, 118–120, 126, 128, 131, 141, 146, 148f., 151f., 154, 159f., 165f., 170, 185, 260, 272f., 285 – Categorical Imperative 179, 184, 197 – Categories, fundamental 1–16, 18–27, 29f., 34, 37, 39, 47, 84f., 87, 95–109, 111–114, 118f., 121, 126f., 130, 134, 141–144, 150f., 167–169, 181f., 185, 188, 260, 263, 266, 270f., 273, 275, 279, 281, 283, 285 – Categories of knowledge 2f., 37, 39 – Categories, organological 125, 127, 134, 138 – Categories, special 9–11, 21, 100, 127 – Categories, table of 128 – Paired categories 8, 11, 13f., 18, 20 Causality 11, 18f., 23, 46, 48, 56, 98, 101, 110, 127, 144, 151, 153 Coherence 11, 20, 25–27, 63, 71, 102, 111, 127 Coming-into-being 3, 129f., 133, 136–138 Complex (Gefge) (see also: ‘System’) 1, 3f., 11, 14, 17–19, 22, 24, 26, 28–30, 34, 55, 65, 70, 85–87, 107f., 128, 141f., 155, 170, 173, 210, 259, 276 Compossibility 5 Concept 4, 6–9, 13, 33f., 36, 42, 48, 60, 73, 76, 83, 85–89, 95, 97–99, 103–106, 108–111, 113f., 116, 120, 125–128, 131, 134f., 138, 153f., 168, 183, 185, 201, 204, 209, 222, 224, 226, 228, 230–232,

257, 259–264, 266f., 270f., 277f., 282, 287 – Begriffsbildung 126 – Concept formation (Begriffsbildung) 70, 127 – Concept formation, dialectical (dialektische) 126 – Concept formation, method of 126 Concrescence 97, 105, 108f., 111, 113, 120f. Concretum (Konkretum) 8f., 11–15, 18f., 23, 25f., 47–49, 127 Consciousness 2, 22, 24, 40–45, 85, 101, 103, 141f., 145f., 148–150, 154, 179, 203, 216, 218, 228f., 241, 243 Cosmology 3, 96, 103 Courage (see: ‘Virtue’) Creativity 104 Dasein (see: ‘Existence’) 5f., 9, 12, 14f., 18, 202f., 206, 213 Death (see: ‘Passing away’) 59, 80, 82f., 129f., 162, 172 Definition 10, 21, 46, 97, 112, 114, 125–127, 160, 166, 204, 212, 222, 256, 259–261, 264, 281f. – Definition, analytical 126 – Definition, Aristotelian 99 – Definition, genus-difference 126, 196f., 226, 231 – Definition, method of 125f. – Definition of ‘organism’ 125, 128f. – Definition of ‘species’ 132, 134, 137 – Definition, relational (Beziehungsdefinition) 260 Dependence 11, 14, 17, 19f., 22, 25, 27, 44, 48, 64, 99, 101f., 113, 118–120, 127, 144, 152, 167, 270, 277, 282 Desire 13, 35, 84, 101, 170f., 191f., 208, 215, 218 – Determination, transcausal 46 Determination (also: ‘Being-thus’) 3, 5, 7, 9–12, 14–21, 23–26, 35f.,

Subject Index

42, 46, 48f., 98, 100, 102, 108–115, 117, 121, 126f., 149, 152–154, 156, 166, 217–219, 226f., 233, 259–261, 263, 287 Dialectical 38, 71, 134, 154f., 222, 224–227, 231f., 234, 260, 278 Dialectics 180, 221–224, 226f., 234 Disposition 9, 56, 134, 159, 162, 169, 186, 209, 234 Disvalue 13, 180, 183, 188f., 208 Downward causation 109f., 112, 116f., 120 Education 125, 147, 185, 200, 215 Eidetic intuition (Wesensschau) 186, 213 Element 6, 11, 13f., 16–18, 23, 26f., 34, 41, 76, 95–98, 106f., 110f., 115, 117, 120, 127–129, 131f., 137, 142f., 181f., 184–186, 192, 196, 204, 222, 224, 228, 231, 261, 272, 279 Embryo 129f., 136f. Emergence 27, 75, 85–87, 96, 109, 111f., 116–118, 120f., 136, 144f., 149, 153f., 270 Empiricism 54, 66, 96, 159, 275 End 10, 15, 28, 33f., 38, 54, 64–66, 68, 70f., 74, 80, 100, 107, 125, 129f., 133, 136f., 144, 150, 154f., 161, 165, 167, 173, 179, 182f., 190, 196, 219, 222, 226, 254 Entity 3, 11f., 19f., 46–48, 106, 108f., 114–116, 121, 130, 132, 136, 154, 217, 226, 256f., 260–266 Environment 79, 87, 107, 110–112, 117, 120f., 142 Epigenesis 130 Epistemology 5, 8, 28, 36, 49, 57f., 64f., 74, 84f., 89f., 197, 202, 260 – Boundaries of knowledge 37 – Relation of knowledge 3, 41, 43f. Equivocation 45 Essence (see also: ‘Being-thus’) 8, 10, 12, 14, 19f., 24, 29, 47, 51, 109, 151, 169, 179f., 182, 187,

295

198, 200, 202–204, 208f., 213, 217, 226, 229, 261, 269, 275 Ethics (see also: ‘Moral’) 5, 36, 57, 64, 74, 78, 144, 147, 151, 177, 179f., 183, 186f., 192, 195–197, 201–203, 206, 209, 211, 219 Etwas berhaupt 10 Event 19f., 56, 104, 114, 125, 136–138, 145, 147, 180, 214f., 285f. Evolution 114, 135 Existence 5–8, 17, 25, 35f., 40f., 43f., 47f., 75f., 85, 90, 100, 104–106, 129, 131, 146, 163, 168, 180, 183, 190, 199, 203, 213, 217, 222, 224, 227f., 231–234, 257f., 260f., 267, 269, 271, 273, 275, 277f., 280, 283f. Existential dependence (see: ‘Dependence’) 23, 27, 49, 102f. Experience (die Flle) 2f., 11, 83, 95f., 106, 143, 150, 154, 159, 162–165, 171, 177, 200, 202, 207–209, 211, 213, 259, 264f., 285 Fallacy, line-drawing 7, 98, 137 Fate 135, 170, 215 Feeling (see: ‘Affectivity’) 5, 77, 103, 108f., 147f., 150, 159–165, 167–173, 181, 210f. Form 1–15, 17f., 20–22, 24–26, 30, 34, 38, 42f., 45f., 48, 51, 65, 70, 75f., 82, 86, 99–101, 103–108, 110, 113, 118f., 121, 127, 129–131, 133–138, 146, 148f., 152–154, 160, 162, 164–166, 170, 177–179, 186f., 197f., 210–212, 216, 224, 228f., 231, 255–257, 260, 266, 272, 279 Formation (see: ‘Concept formation’) 17, 21f., 26–30, 76, 89, 101, 115f., 126f., 130, 133f., 142 Freedom 27, 36f., 51, 56, 101f., 118f., 121, 141, 143, 149f., 167, 182, 192, 218f. Function 6, 17, 34, 36–39, 47, 68, 79, 112, 129–134, 141, 144f., 149,

296

– – – – – –

Subject Index

155, 162, 178f., 181, 185, 192, 222, 230f., 255f., 275 Function of marking theory boundaries 37, 39, 46 Heuristic function 37 Philosophy-constituting or systematic function 37 Skeptical function 37 Theory-eliminating function 36f., 39f. Theory-generating function 37–39, 41, 49f., 138

Gegenstand (see: ‘Object’) 4f., 7, 256–266 Goal 49, 68, 127, 130f., 138, 141, 152, 218 God 3, 5, 180, 190f., 200, 218f. Golden Mean 187, 189f. Good, the (das Gute) 3, 57, 62, 65, 128, 168, 178–180, 183, 185f., 192, 195, 197, 201f., 206–212, 214, 216, 223, 226f. Greatest Happiness Principle 179 Heuristic 34, 138, 181 Hierarchy 64, 85, 98, 103, 107f., 113–117, 119–121, 165, 207, 225, 280f. History of philosophy 2, 11, 14, 33f., 38, 54f., 59, 61, 254 Hylozoism 135 Ideal being (ideales Sein) 5f., 8f., 11, 13, 16, 20, 96, 98, 142, 151, 155, 182, 202–206, 213, 217, 228, 269, 275, 279, 281f., 285 Idealism 1, 5, 7f., 40f., 76f., 82–85, 88, 90, 202, 205, 210, 231, 234, 276, 279 Idea (Plato) 4, 6, 17, 50, 54, 59–63, 68, 74f., 77f., 82, 84, 87, 89, 96, 104, 106f., 110, 116–118, 127, 141–143, 146, 148, 151, 154, 156, 168, 177f., 180, 182, 184–187, 190, 192, 195–205, 212, 214, 216, 219, 222–234, 254–256, 258–260, 264

Inconsistency 56, 67–70, 116, 130, 134–137 Independence 48, 85, 132, 143, 214, 226 Individuality 11, 20, 26, 146, 155, 184f., 191, 211, 276 Infinite regress 135 Instinct 79, 88, 148–150 Intentio 3, 6, 35, 161, 184, 209, 255f., 263, 265, 267, 272 Irrational 16, 35, 44, 46–48, 95, 186, 266 – Consciousness of irrationality 7 Irreducibility 109, 112, 116–119 Justice (see: ‘Virtue’) 35, 55, 160, 178, 181, 183f., 188, 192, 201, 207, 209, 211, 213, 229 Kingdom of ends (Kant) 183 Knowledge (see: ‘Epistemology’) 2–10, 12, 16, 23f., 26, 29, 34–39, 41–51, 62, 65–67, 69, 95, 100, 105f., 127, 142, 144–147, 150f., 166, 179, 190, 202, 204, 206f., 213f., 217, 222, 224f., 227–231, 234, 253–256, 258, 260, 262f., 266, 272, 282f. Koinonia 126 Law (Gesetz) 8–12, 16, 18–22, 24–28, 34f., 45, 47, 58, 85f., 98, 102f., 108f., 111–113, 118–120, 144, 149, 164–167, 169, 173, 181f., 184f., 190, 197, 199, 201, 203–206, 212f., 217f., 224, 256, 270, 275f., 282, 285f. Layer (Schicht) 7, 28, 97f., 100–104, 106–121, 141, 145, 149, 154, 203, 226, 283 Level, ontological (Stufe) (see: ‘Levels of reality’) 5–7, 9–13, 15, 19, 21–30, 53, 60, 69, 71, 79, 85, 87, 89, 95f., 98, 101, 103f., 106, 108, 110, 112–121, 146–148, 153, 159, 161–166, 168–173, 185, 198, 215, 225, 233, 258, 260, 269f., 275, 277f., 280–283, 285–287

Subject Index

Levels of reality 16, 18, 21f., 28, 30, 82, 85, 89, 95, 141, 143, 161, 164 – Inanimate 11, 19, 21, 144, 161 – Organic 18, 29, 77, 79, 85–87, 101, 127, 129, 131, 134, 144f., 152f., 155, 161, 165f., 178, 180, 203, 271 – Psychic 24, 141–156, 161–166, 171 – Spiritual 5f., 11, 19, 21–24, 28f., 77, 88, 101, 141, 143–151, 153–156, 160–166, 169–173, 181, 185, 210, 215, 227, 229, 270–272, 281f. Life 11, 13, 15, 19, 29, 57, 59, 63, 75, 79f., 83, 86–88, 105, 118, 127, 131–135, 137f., 143–146, 148–150, 154–156, 161f., 164, 166, 168f., 179, 184f., 189–192, 195, 200f., 205, 209, 212, 215f., 274 – Lifeness (Lebendigkeit) 135 – Life of the species 127, 131–133, 136f. – Life-process 131 Magnitude 132 Mathematics 57, 124, 142, 199, 204f., 207, 217, 269–273, 275f., 278, 280–287 Matter 9, 11, 13–15, 18, 27, 77, 86, 100–102, 127, 131, 135, 161, 171–173, 186, 277 Metaphysics 2, 5, 8f., 34, 47, 57, 59, 62, 64, 68, 74, 95f., 103f., 143, 204f., 231, 254, 256, 258, 272f., 275, 279, 281, 283f. Methodology 53, 127, 226f., 265, 273, 275 Modalities 11 Mode of existence (see: ‘Existence’) 131 Moral (see also: ‘Ethics’) 57, 67, 141, 143, 147, 177–180, 182–187, 189–192, 196f., 201, 206–213, 215f., 218, 275 – Moral conflict 212 – Moral relativism 197

297

– Moral subjectivism 196f., 201 Morphogenesis 133 Motion 131, 135, 164, 233, 282 Mutation 135–137 Neo-Kantianism 1–3, 6, 68, 75f., 84, 142, 279 New ontology (see: ‘Ontology’) 11f., 14, 73, 77f., 81, 85, 90, 95, 118, 254, 263 Nexus 12, 18f., 23f., 26, 44, 73, 75, 105–108, 144f., 147, 153, 218 Nobility (see: ‘Virtue’) Norm 151, 179, 183 Noumenon 34 Novelty 27, 103f., 108f., 112, 119, 129, 165–167, 173, 185f., 270 Object 2–8, 10–12, 24, 35, 40–47, 49, 59, 63, 84, 86, 98f., 105f., 108f., 114, 131, 137, 143, 146, 148–151, 161–164, 167, 169–171, 182, 191, 222, 224f., 227–230, 234, 253, 255–267, 269, 271f., 274–280, 283–287 Objectivation 7 Ontogenesis (see also: ‘Process, ontogenetic’) 127, 129f., 133f. Ontology 1–3, 5f., 8–13, 28–30, 36, 85f., 90, 95, 97–100, 102–104, 106, 109, 116, 120–122, 138, 146, 155, 164, 173, 183, 185, 196f., 202, 221, 223f., 226f., 230f., 234, 253–267, 269–275, 277–287 Opposition 13–16, 18, 20, 41, 126, 128, 146, 173, 180–185, 188–191, 201, 216, 255, 264, 267 Order 2, 4, 8f., 13, 18, 21, 23, 25, 28, 54, 56, 58f., 61f., 65, 76f., 79, 81f., 84–86, 88, 97, 106–108, 110–113, 115–118, 121, 125, 128, 131f., 135, 141f., 144, 163f., 180–182, 191, 196, 212f., 216, 221f., 225f., 257–259, 264, 270, 273f., 283, 285f. Ordo Amoris (Scheler) 180f., 215 Organ 58, 130f., 162, 214

298

Subject Index

Organism 17f., 22, 96, 105, 116, 125, 128–137, 148–150, 152, 154, 206 Ought (Sollen) 57, 66, 126, 182–184, 195f., 207, 209f., 217f. Panpsychism (panexperientalism) 103 Passing away 130, 133, 136, 213 Pattern 3f., 7, 23, 104, 107–113, 115, 121, 159, 181, 221 Personality (see also: ‘Personhood’) 101, 141, 163, 185, 210f. Personal love (persçnliche Liebe) 185, 210f. Personhood (see also: ‘Personality’) 141, 143, 146f., 151, 154, 184, 191 Phenomenology 2, 11, 40, 43, 74–76, 83, 90, 142, 180f., 201, 203, 264 Phenomenon 3, 24, 41–44, 46f., 50, 53, 60, 74, 79f., 146f., 151, 161f., 164, 172f., 179, 183, 185, 196, 211, 215 Phenotype 136 Philosophical anthropology (see: ‘Anthropology’) 63, 73–90 Phylogenesis (see also: ‘Process, phylogenetic’) 127, 133f. Platonic 34, 48, 108, 179, 195, 198f., 205, 209, 211f., 221–224, 226–228, 232, 234, 260, 277f., 285 – Allegory of the cave 197, 200 – Idea of the Good 183, 200, 219, 226 – Inner dialectical nature of the ideas 223, 230 – Interpretation of the Platonic theory of soul 223 – Ontological understanding of the theory of ideas 223 – Relationship between time and eternity 223, 232 Possibility (see: ‘Potentiality’) 5, 8–12, 24, 36, 51, 68, 97, 100, 103, 105, 112, 115, 127, 131, 160,

182f., 189, 192, 227, 233, 253–255, 258, 260f., 263f., 267 Potentiality (see: ‘Possibility’) 97, 106f., 110f., 120f., 130, 163 Power 35f., 88f., 135, 166, 171, 182, 185f., 200, 215f., 219, 221f., 228, 232, 234 Preformationism 130 Prehension 108f. Principle (Prinzip) 7–15, 19, 21, 24–26, 44f., 47–50, 57, 60, 62, 65, 79, 87, 98f., 101f., 104f., 108–111, 121, 127, 134, 143, 153, 192, 199, 204f., 212f., 221, 224–227, 229–231, 253–257, 259–261, 266f., 269, 274–276, 283–286 – Being a principle (Prinzipseins) 25, 37, 47 – Principle of consciousness (Satz des Bewusstseins) 42, 44f. – Principle of the coherence of the strata 11, 25–27, 102, 127 Problem (see also: ‘aporia’) 1–9, 21, 24, 28–30, 36–38, 40, 42, 46f., 49f., 53–56, 58, 60f., 63, 65, 68, 70f., 81, 88, 90, 95, 98–100, 104, 113, 121f., 138, 141–146, 148, 150, 154–156, 159, 169, 198, 212, 214, 218, 224, 227, 230, 254, 258, 269, 271, 273, 278, 285f. Process 4, 8, 11f., 17–21, 23f., 34, 44, 53, 55, 66f., 71, 96–98, 103–105, 107–109, 113, 120f., 126f., 129–137, 141–145, 151–154, 166, 179f., 185, 216, 218, 224f., 228, 263, 276 – Process-elements 131 – Process of life (Lebensprozeß) 125, 129, 131f., 134f., 137 – Process, ontogenetic (see also: ‘Ontogenesis’) 129, 136f. – Process-parts 133 – Process, phylogenetic (see also: ‘Phylogenesis’) 133 Property 112, 144, 257, 261, 281 Psyche 141–150, 152–156, 161, 172 Psychologism 141–143, 279

Subject Index

Psychology 3, 24, 28, 80, 84, 142f., 145–148, 150–152, 155f., 161, 173, 228f. Psychophysics 47, 153 Quality 11, 13–16, 127, 135, 232 Quantity 11, 13f., 16, 107, 127, 135, 280, 287 Real being (reales Sein) 5f., 9–11, 13, 16, 20f., 97, 151, 155, 183, 198, 202–205, 207, 214, 217f., 271, 275f., 282 Reality 5–7, 9f., 13, 19–21, 25, 36f., 44, 49, 64, 68f., 81, 85, 96, 98f., 104, 108, 127, 131, 133, 137f., 141, 144, 146f., 149, 151, 155f., 160, 163, 170f., 182, 196, 198, 200, 202f., 205, 217f., 222, 224f., 229f., 233f., 254, 256, 258, 261–265, 269, 276, 281 Reductio ad absurdum 135f. Reductionism 76f., 86f., 143, 179f. – Downward reductionism 173 – Upward reductionism 160, 163, 173 Relation 3, 5, 7–18, 21–23, 25–29, 35, 43f., 46–49, 64, 78, 84f., 87, 97–103, 106–117, 119–121, 125–127, 132, 146, 166, 171, 173, 185f., 188f., 205, 211, 213, 217, 225, 228f., 231–234, 258–264, 266, 271–275, 277, 280–282, 287 Representation 4, 8, 40, 42f., 45f., 48, 82, 137, 154, 259 Skepticism 54f., 57, 67, 275 Society 81, 88, 96, 106–108, 110–113, 115, 118, 121, 155, 159, 191, 216 Sorites argument 136 Space 11, 23, 36, 101, 105f., 127, 130f., 144, 146, 151, 156, 180–182, 188, 198f., 205, 262, 264, 272–274, 276, 281–283, 287 Speciation (Abartung) 125, 127, 133–138 Species (Art)

299

– Species-barrier 136f. – Species concept 171 – Species-life (Artleben) 131 – Species-nihilism 138 Species (Art) 13, 16, 18f., 105, 125, 127f., 130–138, 149f., 155, 197, 209, 225–227, 274, 286 Specisism 197 Spiritual being 5f., 11, 24, 143, 145, 148f., 151, 154–156, 203, 206, 282 Stability 107, 129, 151 Stratalism (see: ‘Levels of reality’) 98, 101, 114, 119–121 Stratification (see: ‘Levels of reality’) 11, 25, 27, 29, 77, 85, 95, 97, 100, 102–106, 114, 116, 119, 141f., 144, 153, 155, 164, 168, 173, 185f., 207 Stratum (see: ‘Levels of reality’) 85–87, 101, 127, 129, 131, 134, 141, 143–150, 152f., 155f., 167, 173, 180 Structure 5, 7, 10–12, 14f., 18f., 21, 24, 27, 42, 44, 46, 71, 84, 95–97, 100f., 103, 108–111, 113–121, 127–130, 143, 145, 147, 149, 164, 166, 168f., 179, 181f., 204, 213, 218, 222, 224f., 227, 266, 270f., 275, 280, 286 Subjectivity 35, 69, 141, 144, 146, 148–150, 197, 227f., 254–256, 259, 266 Subject / Object 3, 84, 258, 262, 264 Substance 3f., 11, 19, 23, 36, 66, 70, 121, 127, 131f., 135, 151, 183f., 203f., 273, 276–279, 281 Substratum (Substrat) (see also: ‘Bearer’) 9, 11, 14–16, 19, 100, 127, 129, 131, 135 Superformation (berformung) 21f., 27, 101, 115f. Super-position (berbauung) 21–23, 27f., 101, 115f. Supervenience 109, 112, 116f., 120f., 270, 277, 281f. System (System, Gefge) (See also: ‘Complex’) 4, 6f., 17, 33, 50,

300

– – – – – – – –

Subject Index

58–61, 63–65, 70, 75, 88, 90, 96–98, 104, 114–116, 126–132, 134–138, 144, 154f., 179f., 185, 189, 199, 209, 257, 259f., 269, 273, 282, 284 Systematic coherence 134 System-building 127 System, dynamic 129 System of categories 12, 138, 277 System of characteristics (System seiner Merkmale) 126 System of determinations (System seiner Bestimmungen) 126 System of processes (Prozeßgefge) 125, 131f., 134 System, organic 101, 127, 129, 131

Teleology 87, 141 Thing in itself (Ding an sich) 1, 3–8, 10, 13, 34, 40f. Time 1, 4f., 8–13, 19f., 23f., 26, 36, 39, 46–48, 57, 59, 74f., 78, 82, 97–99, 106, 114, 118, 121, 127, 130f., 133, 144f., 148, 151, 154, 167f., 179, 198–201, 203, 205f., 215, 217, 232f., 254, 257, 261, 266, 272–274, 276, 281f., 285 – Temporal boundaries 129, 136 – Temporal dimension 131, 136 – Temporal emergence 133 – Temporal individuation 136 – Temporal origin 133 Unity 8f., 13–15, 19, 21f., 26, 35, 99, 102f., 116, 121, 127, 129, 131, 145, 164, 177–181, 191, 211–213, 224–229, 233f., 259

Universal 7, 10, 12, 20, 109, 125, 132, 143, 151, 180, 184, 188f., 192, 207, 212f., 226, 282 Value 13, 19, 62, 67, 78, 107, 147f., 150, 159, 162f., 177–192, 202f., 206–219, 255f., 274f., 285f. – Aesthetic value 207 – Brotherly love 181, 186, 188, 209–211, 213 – Distance between levels of value 185 – Intrinsic to the object (Gterwert) 206 – Intrinsic to the subject (dem Subject anhaftenden 206 – Love of the remotest (Fernstenliebe) 210f., 213 – Value/Disvalue 13, 180, 183, 188f., 208 – Wertfundament) 206 Variation 8, 13, 27, 60, 127, 133f., 164, 264 Vice 99, 108, 128, 186, 188–191, 212, 233 – Cowardice, vice of 186, 189f., 192, 212 Virtue (See also: ‘Value’) 178f., 182, 185–187, 190–192, 201, 207–213, 232, 234, 269, 280 – Bestowing virtue (schenkende Tugend) 210 – Courage, virtue of 165 – Justice, virtue of 185 – Nobility, virtue of 185 – Purity, virtue of 185, 203, 207–209, 211, 213