Nicolai Hartmann facts for kids

Paul Nicolai Hartmann (born February 20, 1882 – died October 9, 1950) was a Baltic German philosopher. He is known for his ideas on critical realism. He is also considered one of the most important thinkers in metaphysics during the 20th century. Metaphysics is a branch of philosophy that explores the basic nature of reality.

Biography of Nicolai Hartmann

Nicolai Hartmann was born in Riga on February 20, 1882. At that time, Riga was part of the Russian Empire. Today, Riga is the capital of Latvia. His father, Carl August Hartmann, was an engineer.

Early Life and Education

From 1897, Hartmann went to a German-language high school in Saint Petersburg. He first studied Medicine at the University of Yuryev (now Tartu) from 1902 to 1903. Later, from 1903 to 1905, he studied classical languages and philosophy at the Saint Petersburg Imperial University.

In 1905, he moved to the University of Marburg in Germany. There, he studied with famous philosophers Hermann Cohen and Paul Natorp. These thinkers belonged to a group called Neo-Kantians. They were inspired by the ideas of Immanuel Kant.

In 1907, Hartmann earned his doctorate degree. His thesis was about "The Problem of Being in Greek Philosophy Before Plato." Two years later, in 1909, he published a book called "The Logic of Being in Plato." He also completed his habilitation, which allowed him to teach as a professor.

Career and Major Works

In 1911, Hartmann married Alice Stepanitz. They had a daughter named Dagmar in 1912. In 1912, he published "The Philosophical Foundations of Biology." From 1914 to 1918, he served in the military during World War I. He worked as an interpreter and intelligence officer.

After the war, in 1919, he became a Privatdozent (a private lecturer) in Marburg. He met another important philosopher, Martin Heidegger, around this time. In 1920, he became an associate professor. In 1921, he published "Foundation of a Metaphysics of Knowledge." This book helped him become known as an independent philosophical thinker.

In 1922, he became a full professor, taking over the position previously held by Paul Natorp. In 1925, he moved to Cologne and met Max Scheler, another influential philosopher. In 1926, Hartmann published his second major work, "Ethik" (Ethics). In this book, he developed a system of ethics based on values.

Later Life and Contributions

In 1929, Hartmann married Frida Rosenfeld. They had a son, Olaf (born 1930), and a daughter, Lise (born 1932). In 1931, he became a professor of theoretical philosophy in Berlin. He held this position until 1945. During this time, he wrote many books about his ideas on ontology. Ontology is the study of what exists and the nature of being.

Some of his important books on ontology include:

• "The Problem of Spiritual Being" (1933)
• "On the Foundation of Ontology" (1935)
• "Possibility and Actuality" (1938)
• "The Structure of the Real World" (1940)

In 1942, Hartmann edited a book called "Systematic Philosophy." He wrote an essay in it called "New Ways of Ontology," which summarized his work.

From 1945 to 1950, Hartmann taught in Göttingen. He passed away in 1950 from a stroke. Some of his works, like "Philosophy of Nature" (1950), "Teleological Thinking" (1951), and "Aesthetics" (1953), were published after his death.

Hartmann is known for discovering the idea of "categorial novum," which is similar to the concept of emergence. This idea suggests that new qualities can appear at higher levels of reality that weren't present at lower levels. Even though his work was very famous during his lifetime, it is less known today. However, his early ideas on the philosophy of biology are still discussed in modern science, especially in topics like genomics and cloning.

Hartmann's Ontology: The Study of Being

Nicolai Hartmann believed that ontology is the study of "being qua being." This means studying the most general features of everything that exists. These features are often called categories. Hartmann identified three main types of categories:

• Moments of being: These are existence (Dasein) and essence (Sosein).
• Modes of being: These are reality and ideality.
• Modalities of being: These include possibility, actuality, and necessity.

Existence and Essence

The existence of something means that it is real and present. For example, a tree exists. The essence of something describes what it is like, its qualities and characteristics. For example, the essence of a tree includes its leaves, bark, and roots.

Hartmann explained that existence and essence are connected. The existence of a leaf is part of the essence of a tree. The existence of a tree is part of the essence of a forest.

Reality and Ideality

Hartmann said that everything is either real or ideal.

• Ideal entities are things like mathematical objects (numbers, shapes) or values (like justice). They are universal, always exist, and can be found in many places.
• Real entities are individual things, like a specific tree or a person. They are unique and can be destroyed. Reality is made up of events that happen over time. We often experience reality as something that resists us, unlike ideal concepts.

Modalities of Being

The modalities of being describe how things exist.

• Actuality means something is real and happening now.
• Possibility means something could happen or exist.
• Necessity means something must happen or exist.

Hartmann explained that something becomes actual if all the conditions needed for it to exist are met. If all these conditions are there, then it is necessary for that thing to exist. If even one condition is missing, it cannot become actual, making it impossible.

Levels of Reality

Hartmann's theory also describes different levels of reality. He identified four main levels:

1. The inorganic level: This includes non-living things, like rocks and chemicals.
2. The organic level: This includes living things, like plants and animals.
3. The psychical/emotional level: This involves feelings and consciousness.
4. The intellectual/cultural level: This includes human thought, culture, and history.

Hartmann proposed four laws that explain how these levels relate to each other:

• The law of recurrence: Simpler categories from lower levels appear again in higher levels, but they are part of more complex categories.
• The law of modification: These simpler categories change slightly when they appear in higher levels, influenced by the higher level's features.
• The law of the novum: A higher level is made of many simpler parts, but it also has something completely new (a novum) that isn't found in the lower levels.
• The law of distance between levels: The different levels don't blend smoothly. Instead, they appear in distinct jumps, making them clearly separate.

Hartmann's Ethical Theory: Understanding Values

Hartmann's ideas about ethics focus on the concept of a value. In his 1926 book, "Ethik," he explained that we gain moral knowledge by exploring our experiences of values. He believed that moral events are experiences of a special realm of being, separate from physical things. This realm is where values exist.

Values, according to Hartmann, are unchanging and exist beyond time and history. However, how humans understand and focus on these values can change over time. He saw values as the conditions that make things in the world "good." Our understanding of whether a situation is good or bad comes from our emotional experiences. These experiences are possible because we have a natural ability to appreciate value.

For Hartmann, knowing the value of something doesn't come from just thinking or reasoning. Instead, it comes from a feeling, which he called "valuational consciousness." So, if ethics is about what we should do or what good situations we should create, Hartmann believed we must pay close attention to our emotions. Our emotions help us figure out what is valuable in the world. This idea is different from philosophers like Immanuel Kant, who thought ethical knowledge came only from rational principles.

A Famous Quote

Nicolai Hartmann once said: "The tragedy of man is that of somebody who is starving and sitting at a richly laden table but does not reach out with his hand, because he cannot see what is right in front of him. For the real world has inexhaustible splendour, the real life is full of meaning and abundance, where we grasp it, it is full of miracles and glory."

Works by Nicolai Hartmann

Books in German

• 1909, Des Proklus Diadochus philosophische Anfangsgründe der Mathematik
• 1909, Platos Logik des Seins
• 1912, Philosophische Grundfragen der Biologie (Philosophical Foundations of Biology)
• 1921, Grundzüge einer Metaphysik der Erkenntnis (Foundation of a Metaphysics of Knowledge)
• 1923, Die Philosophie des deutschen Idealismus 1: Fichte, Schelling und die Romantik
• 1926, Ethik (Ethics)
• 1929, Die Philosophie des deutschen Idealismus 2: Hegel
• 1931, Zum Problem der Realitätsgegebenheit
• 1933, Das Problem des geistigen Seins. Untersuchungen zur Grundlegung der Geschichtsphilosophie und der Geisteswissenschaften (The Problem of Spiritual Being)
• 1935, Ontologie, (4 Volumes) I: Zur Grundlegung der Ontologie (On the Foundation of Ontology)
• 1938, II: Möglichkeit und Wirklichkeit (Possibility and Actuality)
• 1940, III: Der Aufbau der realen Welt: Grundriß d. allg. Kategorienlehre (The Structure of the Real World)
• 1942, Systematische Philosophie
• 1943, Neue Wege der Ontologie (New Ways of Ontology)
• 1949, Einführung in die Philosophie (Introduction to Philosophy)
• 1950, IV: Philosophie der Natur : Abriss der speziellen Kategorienlehre (Philosophy of Nature)
• 1951, Teleologisches Denken (Teleological Thinking)
• 1953, Asthetik (Aesthetics)
• 1954, Philosophische Gespräche
• 1955, Der philosophische Gedanke und seine Geschichte, Zeitlichkeit und Substantialität, Sinngebung und Sinnerfüllung
• 1955, Kleinere Schriften ; *Bd. 1* Abhandlungen zur systematischen Philosophie
• 1957, Kleinere Schriften ; *Bd. 2* Abhandlungen zur Philosophie-Geschichte
• 1958, Kleinere Schriften ; *Bd. 3* Vom Neukantianismus zur Ontologie

Translations in English

• Nicolai Hartmann, Ethics, London: George Allen & Unwin 1932.
• Nicolai Hartmann, "German Philosophy in the Last Ten Years", translated by John Ladd, Mind: A Quarterly Review of Psychology and Philosophy, vol. 58, no. 232, 1949, pp. 413–433.
• Nicolai Hartmann, New Ways of Ontology, Westport: Greenwood Press, 1952.
• Nicolai Hartmann, "How Is Critical Ontology Possible? Toward the Foundation of the General Theory of the Categories, Part One", translated from "Wie ist kritische Ontologie überhaupt möglich?" (1924) by Keith R. Peterson, Axiomathes, vol. 22, 2012, pp. 315-354.
• Nicolai Hartmann, Possibility and Actuality. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 2013.
• Nicolai Hartmann, Aesthetics. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 2014.
• Nicolai Hartmann, "The Megarian and the Aristotelian Concept of Possibility: A Contribution to the History of the Ontological Problem of Modality". Axiomathes, 2017.
• Nicolai Hartmann, "Max Scheler", translated by Frederic Tremblay, in Nicolai Hartmanns Neue Ontologie und die Philosophische Anthropologie: Menschliches Leben in Natur und Geist, edited by Moritz Kalckreuth, Gregor Schmieg, Friedrich Hausen, Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 2019, pp. 263-272.
• Nicolai Hartmann, Ontology: Laying the Foundations, Translation and Introduction by Keith R. Peterson, Berlin: De Gruyter, 2019.

See also

In Spanish: Nicolai Hartmann para niños

• Supervenience