Philosophy

Nicolai Hartmann was one of the most prolific and original, yet sober, clear and rigorous, twentieth century German philosophers. Hartmann was brought up as a Neo-Kantian, but soon turned his back on Kantianism to become one of the most important proponents of ontological realism. He developed what he calls the "new ontology," on which relies a systematic opus dealing with all the main areas of philosophy. His work had major influences both in philosophy and in various scientific disciplines. The contributions collected in this volume from an international group of Hartmann scholars and philosophers explore subjects such as Hartmann's philosophical development from Neo-Kantianism to ontological realism, the difference between the way he and Heidegger overcame Neo-Kantianism, his Platonism concerning eternal objects and his interpretation of Plato, his Aristotelianism, his theoretical relation to Wolff's ontology and Meinong's theory of objects, his treatment and use of the aporematic method, his metaphysics, his ethics and theory of values, his philosophy of mind, his philosophy of mathematics, as well as the influence he had on twentieth century philosophical anthropology and biology.

When developing phylogenetic systematics, the entomologist Willi Hennig adopted elements from Nicolai Hartmann's ontology. In this historical essay I take on the task of documenting this adoption. I argue that in order to build a metaphysical foundation for phylogenetic systematics, Hennig adopted from Hartmann four main metaphysical theses. These are (1) that what is real is what is temporal; (2) that the criterion of individuality is to have duration; (3) that species are supra-individuals; and (4) that there are levels of reality, each of which may be subject to different kinds of law. Reliance on Hartmann's metaphysics allowed Hennig to ground some of the main theoretical principles of phylogenetic systematics, namely that the biological categories—from the semaphoront to the highest rank—have reality and individuality despite not being universals, and that they form a hierarchy of levels, each of which may require different kinds of explanation. Hartmann's metaphysics thereby provided a philosophical justification for Hennig's phylogenetic systematics, both as a theory and as a method of classification.

It has usually been thought that Hartmann began his career as a neo-Kantian, and that, after coming into contact with phenomenology, mainly through Max Scheler, he turned away from neo-Kantianism to develop his new ontology. His philosophy has thus customarily been assumed to emerge from interaction with German philosophy. The Russian connection has generally been neglected. But Hartmann began his philosophical studies in St. Petersburg, where he studied with the prolific Russian philosopher Nikolai Lossky. In this paper I examine some of the most salient parallels between Hartmann and Lossky. The two philosophers share a gnoseology that admits of an ontological relation of coordination between the subject and the (mind-independent) object, which allows them to move beyond neo-Kantianism, idealism, and phenomenology, to operate the "return to the things themselves" that they thought phenomenology had failed to complete, and to develop a new, critical ontology; they both divide—in a neo-Platonic fashion—being into spheres (real being, ideal being, and metalogical or irrational being); they defend the same kind of account of universals, of substance and relation, and so on. Examining the Russian roots of Hartmann's thought reveals a Hartmann who was plausibly never a genuine neo-Kantian or phenomenologist, but always an ontological realist.

Francis Ellingwood Abbot was a nineteenth century American philosopher and a friend of C. S. Peirce. He is to a great extent forgotten, but he was nevertheless highly original and sketched an innovative theory of universals, which he called 'relational realism' and which he claimed to be the 'American theory of universals'. According to relational realism, universals are objective relations of resemblance. Abbot believed that the success of the sciences, which he thought assume the objectivity of relations, and the fact that we apprehend some relations both testify in favor of the thesis of the objectivity of relations. Universals as relations, or what he also called universalia inter res, inhere in things and particular properties. Relational realism is significant in that it fills the gap between the classical realism of universals and resemblance nominalism. In this paper, I present and discuss the main theses of Abbot's theory of universals.

Nikolai Lossky is key to the history of the Husserl-Rezeption in Russia. He was the first to publish a review of the Russian translation of Husserl’s first volume of the Logische Untersuchungen that appeared in 1909. He also published a presentation and criticism of Husserl’s transcendental idealism in 1939. An English translation of both of Lossky’s publications is offered in this volume for the first time. The present paper, which is intended as an introduction to these documents, situates Lossky within the Rezeptionsgeschichte of Husserl in Russia and explains why he is central to it. It also explains what Lossky principally found in Husserl: he saw in the latter’s critique of psychologism support for his own ontology, epistemology, and axiology. Lossky characterizes his ontology as an ideal-realism. According to ideal-realism, both the realm of ideal beings (in Plato’s sense) and the realm of real beings (i.e., the world of becoming) are mind-independent. Per his epistemology, which he calls “intuitivism,” real beings are intuited by sensual intuition and ideal beings by intellectual intuition. The realm of ideal beings includes the subrealm of values, which is intuited by axiological intuition. This thoroughly realist conception contrasted sharply with the subjectivist tendencies of the time. So, when Lossky took cognizance of Husserl’s critique of psychologism, he thereupon found an ally in his battle against the various subjectivisms. But, when Husserl took the transcendental idealist turn, Lossky was at the forefront of the backlash against the new direction Husserl wanted to give to phenomenology.