Horizon. Studies in Phenomenology

17-32

Authors: JOACHIM FISCHER

Every semester from 1920 to 1950, Nicolai Hartmann organized at his different universities (Marburg, Köln, Berlin, Göttingen) disputations with selected students and doctoral candidates. This series of discussions covered a variety of different topics, questions, and disciplines. All these dialogues were carefully recorded (handwritten or typewritten) by selected participants of the discussions and collected by Hartmann. These so-called “Circle-Protocols” (Cirkel-Protokolle) are an important finding in German history of philosophy because Hartmann (as well as a group of young intellectuals working under his guidance) followed a dialogical principle from the twenties (the Weimar republic) throughout the thirties and forties (the Third Reich) up to 1950 (the postwar era). He stuck to this principle when dealing with topics in epistemology, ethics, philosophy of nature, philosophy of history, social philosophy, aesthetics, metaphysics etc. This paper examines these debates. Though Hartmann’s discussions are already mentioned here and there in the memories of some participants (always remembering their importance for Hartmann himself), this collection as a whole was discovered only when German Hartmann researchers convinced the Hartmann family to entrust the unpublished papers of Hartmann to the German Literature Archive at Marbach. According to Frieda Hartmann, Hartmann’s deep interest in such discussions and the experience with such formats of knowledge stem already from his academic life when he studied philosophy and classical philology at Saint Petersburg Imperial University. It has been decided that these unique (from the viewpoint of the history of German philosophy) papers documenting those discussions would be published in an open access edition and separately as a selected book-edition in order to present Hartmann’s discussions to the scientific public. The German Research Foundation (DFG) has acknowledged the disputation-corpus as an important finding of modern intellectual history and supported the edition. This testimony of an ongoing philosophical debate seems to be a treasure in the philosophical history of the first half of 20th century. The reasons for this are four-fold: a) since the papers cover an enormous range of philosophical topics and disciplines: from epistemology to ethics, from philosophy of language to philosophy of religion, from philosophical anthropology to social philosophy; b) due to the principle of dialogue put in practice in the first half of the twentieth century; c) because they are relevant for writing the history of philosophy; there seems to be no other such document of German history of philosophy of this epoch; d) owing to the inspiring role of these discussions for Hartman’s later works (Metaphysik der Erkenntnis, Ethik, Der Aufbau der realen Welt, Probleme des geistigen Seins, Philosophie der Natur, and Ästhetik).

52-66

Authors: SERGUEÏ GACHKOV

The article aims to show some particularities of the reception of Nicolai Hartmann’s philosophy in post-war France. In my viewpoint, one of the recurrent problems in Hartmann’s philosophy is the status of ‘real being’ on all its levels (Gegebenheit, trans-objectivity, historical, natural being, etc.). According to Hartmann, ontology does not deal with a particular being, but rather with the transcendence of the real toward trans-objectivity. With that in mind, Hartmann seems to give solutions to many philosophical problems and difficulties engendered by the interaction of realism and spiritualism, phenomenology and criticism, by showing the multiplicity of forms of the real under the conditions of subject-object relation. It is shown in the article that Hartmann’s new ontology of the real does not completely go outside of the framework of the classical metaphysical and anthropological conception of the world. As such, our approach is not purely historical, but also hypothetical and theoretical. The article presents the following conclusions as regards Hartmann’s ontology: 1) the question about the real was considered as one of the most important questions in Hartmann’s ontology by its French interpreters, 2) these interpreters connected the question of the real with that of the irrational (Vuillemin), the multi-level structure of Being (Breton) or the intentional flow of phenomena (Gurvich), 3) the question about inter-objectivity was not discussed by Hartmann, nor by his French interpreters.

87-102

Authors: BIANKA BOROS

This paper deals with Nicolai Hartmann’s realism in light of its contemporary critics and recent concepts of realism. The main topic of the article is the so-called Copernican counter-revolution, which is the decisive factor both in Hartmann’s ontology and in the recent realist projects. In Hartmann’s text the Copernican counter-revolution means the rehabilitation of ontology, which is realized through the critique of the one-sided epistemological interest of logical idealism. We enter on the same path following the program of new realism, which arises against constructivism. While Maurizio Ferraris emphasizes the distinction between epistemological and ontological perspective and wants to identify those application fields, the point of Graham Harman’s object-oriented ontology is the coequality of beings. He achieves an anti-Copernican perspective, which means that the human-world relation loses its priority. He also invents a litmus test of realist theories: A true realism should treat all relations between beings equally. Initially I’m examining Hartmann’s realism, also called realism ‘without ism,’ in its contemporary context, followed by the analysis of the acts that can provide the givenness of reality. These examinations will highlight the similarities between Ferraris’ and Hartmann’s realism, especially the ontologically motivated conception of the act of cognition, correspondingly the concept of resistance. In the subsequent analysis of experience of resistance, Max Scheler’s concept is highly relevant. Scheler’s ideas are based on the critique of Wilhelm Dithey’s and Martin Heidegger’s definition of resistance. The last chapter submits Hartmann’s realism to Harman’s litmus test, whereby Hartmann’s realism proves itself to be a sustainable, modern theory.

123-139

Authors: MARTIN HÄHNEL

The following paper presents the three most powerful approaches to the metaphysical phenomena of generation and corruption stemming from Aristotle, Alfred North Whitehead and Nicolai Hartmann. After starting with a general overview of the historical developments of philosophical concepts on the issue of generation and corruption, the article sheds light on different criticisms evaluating the classical Aristotelian account of substance. Thereafter, I refer to the work of Nicolai Hartmann whose aim is to ontologize the fundamental processes of coming-into-being and passing away while his contemporary A. N. Whitehead sets up a certain process philosophy conceptually refraining from an Aristotelian conception of substance. In my view, both approaches require an overall re-examination of Aristotelian metaphysics. In his rediscovered and attention-getting work De generatione et corruptione Aristotle gives an impressive account on how to understand substance out of the processes of coming-into-being and passing-away. Against this backdrop, I finally argue that Aristotle’s conception of becoming is closer to Whitehead’s process philosophy than to Hartmann’s positivistic ontology because in De generatione et corruptione the self-standing character of substance emerges as a subsequent moment of an encompassing processuality (described as a teleological alternation of generation and corruption). In contrast, Hartmann claims that the process itself has to be taken as a self-standing substance.

160-181

Authors: STEFFEN KLUCK

This essay traces the reception of Nicolai Hartmann’s philosophy of objective spirit based on his colleagues’ reviews of his works. By examining this reception, important aspects of Hartmann’s work can be elucidated, for example, in the context of phenomenology (Martin Heidegger) and philosophical anthropology (Helmuth Plessner, Arnold Gehlen). In addition, any new ideas in the philosophy of the objective spirit will be likely to face objections analogous to those Hartmann’s theory encountered, which is why this analysis can probably have a systematic significance. In this connection, the article describes and analyzes some contemporary reviews and highlights principle arguments pro et contra Hartmann’s philosophy. It aims to show which authors criticized Hartmann with which frameworks to point out the position of his theory in the philosophy of the early 20th century. Furthermore, striking features and missing topics within the reviews are discussed. The conclusion of the article is that the reviewers praise Hartmann’s work for its phenomenological-empirical approach with rich, insightful descriptions and emphasize its ontologically founded middle position between Hegel and Marx, but at the same time characterize the book as theoretically weak and ambiguous. This finding can help to understand the work’s marginal reception and at the same time provides hints in which way it seems to be still up-to-date and relevant.

211-229

Authors: MORITZ VON KALCKREUTH

The aim of this paper is to discuss Nicolai Hartmann’s conception of personhood as developed in his philosophy of spiritual being. Many contemporary accounts of personhood are systematically focused on rational phenomena as self-consciousness or practical reasoning, which are understood as ‘conditions of personhood’. Apart from having some technical problems, those accounts limit our self-understanding as persons on distinct rational properties and often fail to consider the sociocultural aspects of the personal situation. Nicolai Hartmann—although respecting the role of reason—understands personhood particularly as participation in a shared spiritual sphere called Objektiver Geist (objective spirit), which includes various intersubjective phenomena as languages, religion, moral, arts, and the sciences. Being part of this sphere seems to be more fundamental than having distinct rational properties, which requests a spiritual frame to be exerted. Further it is shown that Hartmann’s ontology of person also includes a notion of being affected by the existential weight of situations and other person’s actions—an idea often maintained by phenomenological positions. By regarding rational, intersubjective and affective aspects, Hartmann’s philosophy of person succeeds in offering a broad articulation of our self-understanding and may also be seen as providing a background to understand certain phenomena that are part of the personal situation.

247-260

Authors: SAULIUS GENIUSAS

I argue that Hartmann’s engagement in the question of the value of aesthetic experience (especially as addressed in Chapter 35 of his Aesthetics) is a specific reinterpretation of the standpoint that we come across in Nietzsche’s Birth of Tragedy. Hartmann completed his Aesthetics at the end of World War II and some of the central claims in his work echo Nietzsche’s standpoint, as presented in the early work on tragedy, which Nietzsche completed during the Franco-Prussian war. Both studies invite us to ask: what are we to expect from philosophy under such circumstances? Like Nietzsche, Hartmann holds the view that 1) our lives are intrinsically meaningless, that 2) the world is indifferent to meaning, and that 3) aesthetic experience has value insofar as it bestows meaning both on the world and on human existence. Despite the far-reaching thematic and stylistic differences between Hartmann and Nietzsche, both thinkers see aesthetics not as a form of apolitical escapism, but as a direct way of confronting the fundamental problem, which concerns “the sense and meaning of the world and of human life.” They both leave us with the paradoxical and provocative thesis that aesthetic experience is exactly what is needed at the times of political crises.

267-310

Authors: NICOLAI HARTMANN. Trans. by A. Fomin, A. Frolov, ed. by N. Artemenko, G. Chernavin

The article by Nicolai Hartmann is devoted to the problem of sense both in its history and its current state. Hartmann addresses the problem of sense in the 30’s, when the Zeitgeist itself contributed to such reflections, and it is no coincidence that at this time various existential interpretations of the sense of human life became popular. In his own turn, Hartmann develops a kind of metaphysics of sense. He reinterprets the constructions of classical metaphysics (starting with Plato) from a new point of view, correlating the category of sense with traditional metaphysical categories, such as ‘idea,’ ‘Nous,’ ‘The One,’ ‘God,’ ‘substance,’ ‘spirit,’ and ‘absolute.’ Furthermore, the German philosopher adds his own considerations and conclusions to the historical review. The article consists of six sections. Section I sets the problem; section II outlines the main features of Ancient (Plato, Aristotle, Stoa, neo-Platonism) and Medieval metaphysics of sense; in section III Hartmann focuses on the modern metaphysics of sense, with an emphasis on German classical philosophy (Kant, Fichte, Schelling and especially Hegel). Section IV examines the problem of sense in Hartmann’s philosophical context (in this regard, Hartmann is interested in Nietzsche and the philosophy of values), while at the same time aiming to strictly distinguish between the concepts of sense, values, and purposes. Section V draws conclusions from the historical review and the subsequent explication of the concepts; further, Hartmann offers his own solution to the problem of sense. Finally, in section VI, the problem of sense is interpreted from the perspective of the philosophy of history.the main theses and ideas of the translated work are presented in which Edith Stein tried to compare the seemingly uncompatible philosophies of Edmund Husserl and St.Thomas Aquinas.

318-327

Authors: NICOLAI HARTMANN. Trans. by V. Belov, ed. by M. Belousov

This publication provides a translation of Nikolai Hartmann’s review into an article by Vasily Sesemann, which is so voluminous that the reviewer mistakenly calls it a book. The publication provides Hartmann’s review of Sesemann’s study 1932 “Logical Laws and Being” („Die logischen Gesetze und das Sein“). Sesemann undertakes this research in order to accentuate the nature and essence of the logical, rational-reflexive sphere, on the one hand, its naturalness in the process of cognition, but, on the other,—derivativeness and limitations. In his review, Hartmann assesses this article not as logical, but as strictly ontological, although it would be more accurate to call it nevertheless ontological and epistemological, since not only the problems of being are the focus of attention of the Russian philosopher, but also the problems associated with the various possibilities of its comprehension.