Rudolf Hermann Lotze
(21 May, 1817 – 1 July, 1881), was a German
philosopher and logician. He also had a medical degree and
was unusually well versed in biology. He argued that if the
physical world is governed by mechanical laws, relations and
developments in the universe could be explained as the functioning
of a world mind. His medical studies were pioneering works in
scientific
psychology.
Biography
Lotze was
born in Bautzen
, Saxony
, Germany, the son of
a physician. He was educated at the gymnasium of Zittau
; he had an
enduring love of the classical authors, publishing a translation of
Sophocles' Antigone into Latin verse in his middle age.
He
attended the University of Leipzig
as a student of philosophy and natural sciences,
but entered officially as a student of medicine when he was
seventeen. Lotze's early studies were mostly governed by two
distinct interests: the first was scientific, based upon
mathematical and physical studies under the guidance of
E. H. Weber,
Wilhelm Volkmann and
Gustav Fechner. The other was his aesthetic
and artistic interest, which was developed under the care of
Christian Hermann Weisse.
He was attracted both by science and by the idealism of
Johann Gottlieb Fichte,
Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph
Schelling and
Georg
Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel.
Lotze's first essay was his dissertation
De futurae biologiae
principibus philosophicis, with which he gained (1838) the
degree of doctor of medicine, four months after obtaining the
degree of doctor of philosophy.
He laid the foundation of his philosophical
system in his Metaphysik (Leipzig, 1841) (published in
English as Metaphysic: In Three Books, Ontology, Cosmology, and
Psychology) and his Logik (1843), (published in
English as Logic: In Three Books, of Thought, of Investigation,
and of Knowledge), short books published while still a junior
lecturer at Leipzig
, from whence
he moved to Göttingen
, succeeding Johann Friedrich Herbart in the
chair of philosophy.
His two early books remained unnoticed by the reading public, and
Lotze first became known to a larger circle through a series of
works which aimed at establishing in the study of the physical and
mental phenomena of the human organism in its normal and diseased
states the same general principles which had been adopted in the
investigation of inorganic phenomena. These works were his
Allgemeine Pathologie und Therapie als mechanische
Naturwissenschaften (1842, 2nd ed., 1848), the articles
"
Lebenskraft" (1843) and "Seele und Seelenleben" (1846) in
Rudolf Wagner's
Handwörterbuch der Physiologie, his
Allgemeine Physiologie des Körperlichen Lebens (1851), and
his
Medizinische Psychologie oder Physiologie der Seele
(1852).
When Lotze published these works, medical science was still under
the influence of Schelling's
philosophy of nature. The mechanical
laws, to which external things were subject, were conceived as
being valid only in the inorganic world. Mechanism was the
unalterable connexion of every phenomenon
a with other
phenomena
b,
c,
d, either as following
or preceding it; mechanism was the inexorable form into which the
events of this world are cast, and by which they are connected. The
object of those writings was to establish the all-pervading rule of
mechanism. But the mechanical view of nature is not identical with
the materialistic. In the last of the above-mentioned works the
question is discussed at great length how we have to consider mind,
and the relation between mind and body; the answer is we have to
consider mind as an immaterial principle, its action, however, on
the body and vice versa as purely mechanical, indicated by the
fixed laws of a psycho-physical mechanism.
These doctrines of Lotze, though pronounced with the distinct and
reiterated reserve that they did not contain a solution of the
philosophical question regarding the nature of mechanism, were
nevertheless by many considered to be the last word of the
philosopher, denouncing the reveries of Schelling or the idealistic
theories of Hegel. Published as they were during the years when the
modern school of German
materialism was
at its height, these works of Lotze were counted among the
opposition literature of
Empirical
philosophy.
The misinterpretations which he had suffered induced Lotze to
publish a small polemical pamphlet (
Streitschriften,
1857), in which he corrected two mistakes. His opposition to
Hegel's formalism had induced some to associate him with the
materialistic school, others to count him among the followers of
Herbart. Lotze denied that he belonged to
the school of Herbart. He admitted, though, that historically the
same doctrine which might be considered the forerunner of Herbart's
teachings might lead to his own views, viz. the
monadology of
Leibniz.
Philosophy
When Lotze wrote these explanations, he had already published the
first volume of his
Mikrokosmus (vol. i. 1856, vol. ii.
1858, vol. iii. 1864). In many passages of his works on
pathology,
physiology,
and
psychology Lotze had distinctly
stated that the method of research which he advocated there did not
give an explanation of the phenomena of life and mind, but only the
means of observing and connecting them together; we gain the
necessary data for deciding what meaning attaches to the existence
of this microcosm, or small world of human life, in the macrocosm
of the universe.
The review extends over the wide field of
anthropology, beginning with the human frame,
the soul, and their union in life, advancing to man his mind, and
the course of the world, and concluding with history, progress, and
the connexion of things. It ends with the same idea which was
expressed in Lotze's
Metaphysik. The view peculiar to him
is reached in the end as the crowning conception towards which all
separate channels of thought have tended, and in the light of which
the life of man in nature and mind, in the individual and in
society, had been surveyed. This view can be briefly stated as
follows: Every where in the wide realm of observation we find three
distinct regions: the region of facts, the region of laws and the
region of standards of value. These three regions are separate only
in our thoughts, not in reality. To comprehend the real position we
are forced to the conviction that the world of facts is the field
in which, and that laws are the means by which, those higher
standards of moral and aesthetic value are being realized; and such
a union can again only become intelligible through he idea of a
personal Deity, who in the creation and preservation of a world has
voluntarily chosen certain forms and laws, through the natural
operation of which the ends of His work are gained. Whilst Lotze
had thus in his published works closed the circle of his thought,
beginning with a conception metaphysically gained, proceeding to an
exhaustive contemplation of things in the light it afforded, and
ending with the stronger conviction of its truth which observation,
experience, and life could afford, he had all the time been
lecturing on the various branches of philosophy according to the
scheme of academical instruction transmitted from his predecessors.
Nor can it be considered anything but a gain that he was thus
induced to expound his views with regard to those topics, and in
connexion with those problems, which were the traditional forms of
philosophical utterance. His lectures ranged over a wide field: he
delivered annually lectures on psychology and on logic (the latter
including a survey of the entirety of philosophical research under
the title
Encyclopädie der Philosophie), then at longer
intervals lectures on metaphysics, philosophy of nature, philosophy
of art,
philosophy of
religion, rarely on history of philosophy and ethics. In these
lectures he expounded his peculiar views in a stricter form, and
during the last decade of his life he embodied the substance of
those courses in his
System der Philosophie, of which only
two volumes have appeared (vol. I
Logik, 1st ed., 1874,
2nd ed., 1880; vol. II
Metaphysik, 1879). The third and
concluding volume, which was to treat in a more condensed form the
principal problems of practical philosophy, of philosophy of art
and religion, never appeared. A small pamphlet on psychology,
containing the last form in which he had begun to treat the subject
in his lectures (abruptly terminated through his death) during the
summer session of 1881, has been published by his son.
To understand this series of Lotze's writings, it is necessary to
begin with his definition of philosophy. This is given after his
exposition of logic has established two points, viz. the existence
in our mind of certain laws and forms according to which we connect
the material supplied to us by our senses, and, secondly, the fact
that logical thought cannot be usefully employed without the
assumption of a further set of connexions, not logically necessary,
but assumed to exist between the data of experience and
observation. These connexions of a real not formal character are
handed to us by the separate sciences and by the usage and culture
of everyday life. Language has crystallized them into certain
definite notions and expressions, without which we cannot proceed a
single step, but which we have accepted without knowing their exact
meaning, much less their origin. In consequence the special
sciences and the wisdom of common life entangle themselves easily
and frequently in contradictions. A problem of a purely formal
character thus presents itself, viz. this to try to bring unity and
harmony into the scattered thoughts of our general culture, to
trace them to their primary assumptions and follow them into their
ultimate consequences, to connect them all together, to remodel,
curtail or amplify them, so as to remove their apparent
contradictions, and to combine them in the unity of an harmonious
view of things, and especially to investigate those conceptions
which form the initial assumptions of the several sciences, and to
fix the limits of their applicability. This is the formal
definition of philosophy. Whether an harmonious conception thus
gained will represent more than an agreement among our thoughts,
whether it will represent the real connexion of things and thus
possess objective not merely subjective value, cannot be decided at
the outset. It is also unwarranted to start with the expectation
that everything in the world should be explained by one principle,
and it is a needless restriction of our means to expect unity of
method. Nor are we able to start our philosophical investigations
by an inquiry into the nature of human thought and its capacity to
attain an objective knowledge, as in this case we would be actually
using that instrument the usefulness of which we were trying to
determine. The main proof of the objective value of the view we may
gain will rather lie in the degree in which it succeeds in
assigning to every element of culture its due position, or in which
it is able to appreciate and combine different and apparently
opposite tendencies and interests, in the sort of justice with
which it weighs our manifold desires and aspirations, balancing
them in due proportions, refusing to sacrifice to a one-sided
principle any truth or conviction which experience has proven to be
useful and necessary. The investigations will then naturally divide
themselves into three parts, the first of which deals with those to
our mind inevitable forms in which we are obliged to think about
things, if we think at all (metaphysics), the second being devoted
to the great region of facts, trying to apply the results of
metaphysics to these, specially the two great regions of external
and mental phenomena (
cosmology and
psychology), the third dealing with those
standards of value from which we pronounce our aesthetic or ethical
approval or disapproval. In each department we shall have to aim
first of all at views clear and consistent within themselves, but,
secondly, we shall in the end wish to form some general idea or to
risk an opinion how laws, facts and standards of value may be
combined in one comprehensive view. Considerations of this latter
kind will naturally present themselves in the two great departments
of cosmology and psychology, or they may be delegated to an
independent research under the name of religious philosophy. We
have already mentioned the final conception in which Lotze's
speculation culminates, that of a personal Deity, Himself the
essence of all that merits existence for its own sake, who in the
creation and government of a world has voluntarily chosen certain
laws and forms through which His ends are to be realized. We may
add that according to this view nothing is real but the living
spirit of God and the world of living spirits which He has created;
the things of this world have only reality insofar as they are the
appearance of spiritual substance, which underlies everything. It
is natural that Lotze, having this great and final conception
always before him, works under its influence from the very
beginning of his speculations, permitting us, as we progress, to
gain every now and then a glimpse of that interpretation of things
which to him contains the solution of our difficulties.
The key to Lotze's theoretical philosophy lies in his
metaphysics, to the exposition of which
important subject the first and last of his larger publications
have been devoted. To understand Lotze's philosophy, a careful and
repeated perusal of these works is absolutely necessary. The object
of his metaphysics is so to remodel the current notions regarding
the existence of things and their connections with which the usage
of language supplies us as to make them consistent and thinkable.
The further assumption, that the modified notions thus gained have
an objective meaning, and that they somehow correspond to the real
order of the existing world which of course they can never actually
describe, depends upon a general confidence which we must have in
our reasoning powers, and in the significance of a world in which
we ourselves with all the necessary courses of our thoughts have a
due place assigned. The principle therefore of these investigations
is opposed to two attempts frequently repeated in the history of
philosophy, viz.: (1) the attempt to establish general laws or
forms, which the development of things must have obeyed, or which a
Creator must have followed in the creation of a world (Hegel); and
(2) the attempt to trace the genesis of our notions and decide as
to their meaning and value (modern theories of knowledge). Neither
of these attempts is practicable. The world of many things
surrounds us; our notions, by which we manage correctly or
incorrectly to describe it, are also ready made. What remains to be
done is, not to explain how such a world manages to be what it is,
nor how we came to form these notions, but merely this—to expel
from the circle and totality of our conceptions those abstract
notions which are inconsistent and jarring, or to remodel and
define them so that they may constitute a consistent and harmonious
view.
In this endeavor Lotze discards as useless and untenable many
favorite conceptions of the school, many crude notions of everyday
life. The course of things and their connexion is only thinkable by
the assumption of a plurality of existences, the reality of which
(as distinguished from our knowledge of them) can be conceived only
as a multitude of relations. This quality of standing in relation
to other things is that which gives to a thing its reality. And the
nature of this reality again can neither be consistently
represented as a fixed and hard substance nor as an unalterable
something, but only as a fixed order of recurrence of continually
changing events or impressions. But, further, every attempt to
think clearly what those relations are, what we really mean, if we
talk of a fixed order of events, forces upon us the necessity of
thinking also that the different things which stand in relations to
the different phases which follow each other cannot be merely
externally strung together or moved about by some indefinable
external power, in the form of some predestination or inexorable
fate The things themselves which exist and their changing phases
must stand in some internal connexion; they themselves must be
active or passive, capable of doing or suffering. This would lead
to the view of Leibniz, that the world consists of monads,
self-sufficient beings leading an inner life. But this idea
involves the further conception of Leibniz, that of a
pre-established harmony, by which the Creator has taken care to
arrange the life of each monad, so that it agree with that of all
others. This conception, according to Lotze, is neither necessary
nor thoroughly intelligible. Why not interpret at once and render
intelligible the common conception originating in natural science,
viz. that of a system of laws which governs the many things? But,
in attempting to make this conception quite clear and thinkable, we
are forced to represent the connexion of things as a universal
substance, the essence of which we conceive as a system of laws
which underlies everything and in its own self connects everything,
but is imperceptible, and known to us merely through the
impressions it produces on us, which we call things.
A final reflection then teaches us that the nature of this
universal and all-pervading substance can only be imagined by us as
something analogous to our own mental life, where alone we
experience the unity of a substance (which we call self) preserved
in the multitude of its (mental) states. It also becomes clear that
only where such mental life really appears need we assign an
independent existence, but that the purposes of everyday life as
well as those of science are equally served if we deprive the
material things outside of us of an independence, and assign to
them merely a connected existence through the universal substance
by the action of which alone they can appear to us.
The universal substance, which we may call the absolute, is at this
stage of our investigations not endowed with the attributes of a
personal Deity, and it will remain to be seen by further analysis
in how far we are able—without contradiction—to identify it with
the object of religious veneration, in how far that which to
metaphysics is merely a postulate can be gradually brought nearer
to us and become a living power. Much in this direction is said by
Lotze in various passages of his writings; anything complete,
however, on the subject is wanting. Nor would it seem as if it
could be the intention of the author to do much more than point out
the lines on which the further treatment of the subject should
advance. The actual result of his personal inquiries, the great
idea which lies at the foundation of his philosophy, we know. It
may be safely stated that Lotze would allow much latitude to
individual convictions, as indeed it is evident that the empty
notion of an absolute can only become living and significant to us
in the same degree as experience and thought have taught us to
realize the seriousness of life, the significance of creation, the
value of the beautiful and the good, and the supreme worth of
personal holiness. To endow the universal substance with moral
attributes, to maintain that it is more than the metaphysical
ground of everything, to say it is the perfect realization of the
holy, the beautiful and the good, can only have a meaning for him
who feels within himself what real not imaginary values are clothed
in those expressions.
Aesthetics formed a principal and favorite study of Lotze's, and
that he has treated this subject also in the light of the leading
ideas of his philosophy.
Lotze's historical position is of much interest. Though he
disclaims being a follower of Herbart, his formal definition of
philosophy and his conception of the object of metaphysics are
similar to those of Herbart, who defines philosophy as an attempt
to remodel the notions given by experience. In this endeavor he
forms with Herbart an opposition to the philosophies of
Fichte,
Schelling and
Hegel, which aimed at objective and absolute
knowledge, and also to the criticism of Kant, which aimed at
determining the validity of all human knowledge. But this formal
agreement includes material differences, and the spirit which
breathes in Lotze's writings is more akin to the objects and
aspirations of the idealistic school than to the cold formalism of
Herbart. What, however, with the idealists was an object of thought
alone, the absolute, is to Lotze only inadequately definable in
rigorous philosophical language; the aspirations of the human
heart, the contents of our feelings and desires, the aims of art
and the tenets of religious faith must be grasped in order to fill
the empty idea of the absolute with meaning. These manifestations
of the divine spirit again cannot be traced and understood by
reducing (as Hegel did) the growth of the human mind in the
individual, in society and in history to the monotonous rhythm of a
speculative schematism; the essence and worth which is in them
reveals itself only to the student of detail, for reality is larger
and wider than philosophy; the problem, "how the one can be many",
is only solved for us in the numberless examples in life and
experience which surround us, for which we must retain a lifelong
interest and which constitute the true field of all useful human
work. This conviction of the emptiness of terms and abstract
notions, and of the fullness of individual life, has enabled Lotze
to combine in his writings the two courses into which German
philosophical thought had been moving since the death of its great
founder, Leibniz. We may define these courses by the terms esoteric
and exoteric—the former the philosophy of the school, cultivated
principally at the universities, trying to systematize everything
and reduce all our knowledge to an intelligible principle, losing
in this attempt the deeper meaning of Leibniz's philosophy; the
latter the unsystematized philosophy of general culture which we
find in the work of the great writers of the classical period,
Lessing,
Winckelmann,
Goethe,
Schiller and
Herder, all of whom expressed in
some degree their indebtedness to Leibniz. Lotze can be said to
have brought philosophy out of the lecture-room into the
market-place of life. By understanding and combining what was great
and valuable in those divided and scattered endeavors, he became
the true successor of Leibniz.
The age in which Lotze lived and wrote in Germany was not one
peculiarly fitted to appreciate the position he took up. Frequently
misunderstood, yet rarely criticized, he was nevertheless greatly
admired, listened to by devoted hearers and read by an increasing
circle. But this circle never attained to the unity of a
philosophical school.
Works
- De futurae biologiae principiis philosophicis (1838).
Reprinted in Kleine Schriften, 1885.
Vol. 1, pp. 1-25
- Metaphysik (1841). Google (Oxford)
- Allgemeine Pathologie und Therapie als mechanische
Naturwissenschaften (1842). 2nd ed., 1848.
Google (Harvard)
- Logik (1843). Google (NYPL) 2nd ed., 1880.
- Ueber den Begriff der Schönheit (1845).
Reprint, 1847. Google (Oxford)
- Allgemeine Physiologie des koerperlichen Lebens
(1851). Google (Harvard)
- Medicinische Psychologie oder Physiologie der Seele
(1852). Google (Oxford) Google (UMich)
- Mikrokosmus: Ideen zur Naturgeschichte und Geschichte der
Menschheit (1856-64). 2nd ed., 1868-72.
4th ed., 1884-88.
- Streitschriften (1857). Google (Harvard)
- Geschichte der Aesthetik in Deutschland (1868).
Google (Oxford)
- System der Philosophie.
- Geschichte der deutschen Philosophie seit Kant (1882).
2nd ed., 1894. Google (UWisc)
- Grundzüge der Psychologie (1881). Google (Harvard) 2nd ed., 1882.
Google (Oxford)
- Grundzüge der Naturphilosophie (1882). Google (Oxford)
- Grundzüge der praktischen Philosophie (1882).
2nd ed., 1884. Google (UCal)
- Grundzüge der Religionsphilosophie (1883). 2nd
ed., 1884. Google (Oxford)
- Grundzüge der Logik und Encyclopädie der Philosophie
(1883). 2nd ed., 1885. Google (UCal)
- Grundzüge der Metaphysik (1883). Google (Oxford)
- Grundzüge der Aesthetik (1884).
- Kleine Schriften
(1885-91).
Works in English
- Lotze's Outlines of Philosophy.
- Lotze's System of Philosophy.
- Microcosmus: An Essay Concerning Man and His Relation to
the World (1885).
External links
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