HERTLING, Georg Friedrich von. - Philosopher and politician, b. 31 Aug. 1843 in Darmstadt, d. 4 Jan. 1919 in Ruhpolding (western Bavaria). He studied at the Universities of Münster, Berlin and Würzburg. He taught in Munich between 1882 and 1912. President of the Bavarian ministry in 1912, a count from 1914, he was Chancellor of the Reich in 1917-18.

A noble figure of a Catholic thinker, H. aimed with his writings and his many-sided political and social activity at the elaboration of a philosophy in accord with Christian thought, and at the triumph, in sincere collaboration between State and Church, of the Catholic ideal.

Fundamental points of his thought are the affirmation of an absolute moral law, with which human action must accord in the realization of God's design, and which transcends the State itself, against the Hegelian and materialistic conception. Positive law is therefore founded on natural law, and over against the power of the State stand the right and the conscience of the individual. Philosophy is in itself a valid aid to religion, and its fundamental task is to provide man with certainty of the existence of God. Within these general lines of Christian philosophy, inspired by the Aristotelian-Thomist tradition, H. discussed particular problems, in polemic against liberalism, socialism, state absolutism and against the conceptions of materialism and pantheism.

Principal works: Über die Grenzen der mechan. Naturerklärung (Bonn 1875); Aufsätze und Reden sozial-polit. Inhalts (Freiburg 1884); Naturrecht und Sozial-Politik (Cologne 1893); Kleine Schriften zur Zeitgesch. und Politik (Freiburg 1897); Das Prinzip des Katholizismus und die Wissenschaften (ibid. 1899); Recht, Staat und Gesellschaft (Kempten 1906); Erinnerungen aus meinem Leben (2 vols., ibid. 1919); furthermore monographs on Albertus Magnus (1880), Locke and the Cambridge school (1892), Augustine (1902) and a large collaboration on the first 4 vols. of the Staatslexikon. Among the posthumous works, the principal one: Vorlesungen über Metaph., ed. C. M. Maier (Kempten 1922).

Bibliography2 works

BIBL.: Cl. Baeumker, H. als Philosoph, in Deutsch. Lit. Zeitung, 1918, pp. 3-7, 35-40; id., H. als Staatsphilosoph, in Der Wächter, 1918, p. 44 ff. Further indications in H. Lerchenfeld, s. v. in Staatslexikon, II, coll. 1168-75 and in A. Dyroff, s. v. in LThK, IV, coll. 1007-1009.

Ugo Viglino

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Hertling, Georg Friedrich von

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