HARTMANN, Eduard von. - Philosopher, b. in Berlin on 23 Feb. 1842, d. on 5 June 1906 in the suburb of Gross-Lichterfelde, where he lived in meditation and solitude.
The fundamental lines of his philosophy are already all to be found in his first work, *Philosophie des Unbewussten* (Berlin 1869; 2nd ed., Sachsa 1904). The derivation from Schopenhauer, rethought through Schellingian and even Hegelian motifs, is evident. HARTMANN’s thought cannot be fully understood without also taking into account the scientific theories (especially that of evolution) and the materialism of the sciences to which he reacted.
In the Absolute Principle or Unconscious, will and intellect are present together and opposed, yet unconscious of themselves. Here, drawing on Schelling, HARTMANN diverges from Schopenhauer, who instead derives representation from will. HARTMANN argues that a will without an idea of its end is impossible; hence intellect, like will, is an original datum. But is it not contradictory to admit that will has an idea of its end and at the same time to regard it as a blind force? Indeed, HARTMANN builds his system on an antithesis: from derived will comes the irrational existence of the world, evil, and the unhappiness of finite beings; from intellect, however, comes finality and real unity in its development. The ultimate aim of evolution and the historical process, through the struggle of these two original elements, is the dissolution of the existence of finite beings, the will-to-live. Liberation from irrational existence (and with it from evil and suffering) is achieved through consciousness and the development of civilization in four stages: a) the ethical, as the overcoming of individual ends in universal ones; b) the aesthetic, as the revelation of the harmony of the real beyond its irrationality; c) the religious, as the aspiration of consciousness to free itself from the finite; d) the philosophical, as the universal freedom of consciousness from all the deceptions produced by the will-to-live. In short, the supreme finality of economic development, through the drama of finite existences, is the anonymity of rational will and the affirmation of intellect alone. This redemptive process is the process of self-redemption of the Absolute itself, which, through evolution, frees itself from the irrational element that constitutes it and realizes itself as pure and full intellect.
HARTMANN’s philosophy shows little originality, and the point at which he departs from Schopenhauer involves contradiction: if the Unconscious is constituted by will and intellect, its development as a process of annihilation of the irrational is a process of annihilation of a part of itself. Moreover, liberation from the irrational is liberation from the world, which is the effect of the irrational, through the world itself: finite existences are instruments and victims of the Absolute, which, to realize itself as pure intellect, must sacrifice and destroy the world. HARTMANN’s pantheism is acosmism.
Principal works, besides the already cited *Ph. d. U.*: *Phänomenologie des sittlichen Bewusstseins* (Berlin 1879; 2nd ed., ibid. 1886); *Religionsphilosophie* (ibid. 1882, 3rd ed., ibid. 1906–1907); *Ästhetik* (ibid. 1886–87); *Das Grundproblem der Erkenntnistheorie* (ibid. 1889); *Geschichte der Metaphysik* (ibid. 1899–1900); *System der Philos. im Grundriss* (8 vols., Sachsa 1906–1909).