HERTLING, GEORG FRIEDRICH von. – Philosopher and statesman, b. 31 Aug. 1843 at Darmstadt, d. 4 Jan. 1919 at 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, count from 1914, he served as Reich chancellor in 1917–18.
A noble figure of Catholic thought, H. sought through his writings and manifold political-social activity to elaborate a philosophy in harmony with Christian thought and to secure, through sincere cooperation between State and Church, the triumph of the Catholic ideal.
Fundamental points of his thought are the affirmation of an absolute moral law, to which human action must conform in carrying out God’s design, and which transcends the State itself, in opposition to Hegelian and materialist conceptions. Positive law is therefore grounded in natural law, and before the power of the State stand both the rights and the conscience of the individual. Philosophy is in itself a valid aid to religion, its primary task being to furnish man with the certainty of God’s existence. Within these broad lines of Christian philosophy, inspired by the Aristotelian-Thomist tradition, H. discussed particular problems in controversy with liberalism, socialism, state absolutism and against materialist and pantheist conceptions.
Principal works: Über die Grenzen der mechan. Naturerklärung (Bonn 1875); Aufsätze und Reden sozialpolitik. Inhalts (Freiburg 1884); Naturrecht und Sozialpolitik (Cologne 1893); Kleine Schriften zur Zeitgesch. und Politik (Freiburg 1897); Das Prinzip des Katholizismus und die Wissenschaften (4th ed. 1899); Recht, Staat und Gesellschaft (Kempten 1906); Erinnerungen aus meinem Leben (2 vols., 4th ed. 1919); also monographs on Albert the Great (1880), Locke and the Cambridge school (1892), Augustine (1902) and extensive collaboration in the first four volumes of the Staatslexikon. Among posthumous works, principal: Vorlesungen über Metaph., ed. C. M. Maier (Kempten 1922).