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Hermann Lotze

1817–1881

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Lotze held that the validity of a thought is distinct from the mental events in which it occurs, and that the world rests on the good, a value that materialism cannot derive from facts about nature.

Placement

German Idealism & Its Heirs · Western Europe · Metaphysics, Logic, Epistemology

Göttingen philosopher and physician who separated the validity of thoughts from their psychological origin and set a teleological idealism of values against materialism; his Logik (1874) was read by Frege and Husserl.

Key ideas

  • Validity (Geltung) distinguished from psychological occurrence
  • Teleological idealism with the good as the ground of the world

Students: Gottlob Frege, Wilhelm Windelband

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Influence

Influenced 4

  • Gottlob Frege taught

    taught

    Frege heard Lotze’s lectures on the philosophy of religion at Göttingen, the only philosophy course he took there, though Potter finds no philosophical teacher of central importance in Frege’s education. M. Potter, “Introduction”, in Potter and Ricketts (eds.), The Cambridge Companion to Frege (2010), p. 1; SEP “Hermann Lotze” (D. Sullivan) names Frege a direct student

    Evidence: AI draft

    influenced

    Frege’s early set of key sentences about logic is a response to Lotze’s Logic of 1874, taking up the separation of thoughts from ideas but grounding it in the objectivity of truth rather than in value. M. Potter, “Introduction”, Cambridge Companion to Frege (2010), pp. 2–3, after M. Dummett, Frege and Other Philosophers (1991) and F. Hovens, History and Philosophy of Logic 18 (1997)

    Evidence: AI draft

    Gottlob Frege › 1848–1925

  • Wilhelm Windelband taught

    taught

    Windelband studied with Lotze in Göttingen and wrote his 1870 dissertation under Lotze’s supervision. SEP “Wilhelm Windelband” (K. Kinzel), §1; SEP “Hermann Lotze” (D. Sullivan)

    Evidence: AI draft

    Wilhelm Windelband › 1848–1915

  • Edmund Husserl

    influenced

    Husserl took up Lotze’s early opposition to psychologism and his separation of validity from mental acts. SEP “Hermann Lotze” (D. Sullivan), §§4.2–4.3

    Evidence: AI draft

    Edmund Husserl › 1859–1938

  • Bertrand Russell

    influenced

    Early Russell, like early Moore, was shaped by British idealists who had taken over Lotze’s logic and metaphysics. SEP “Hermann Lotze” (D. Sullivan), §2

    Evidence: AI draft

    Bertrand Russell › 1872–1970

Works

  • 1856Microcosmus

    Lotze’s three-volume anthropology (1856–64) on nature and the history of humanity: he places the human being in nature, from body and soul to history, and defends against materialism an idealism in which the good is the ground of the world.

  • 1874Logic

    The larger Logic, first part of Lotze’s System of Philosophy: thoughts are valid whatever the mental events in which we think them, and validity (Geltung) is a way of being of its own; read by Frege and Husserl.

Position

Lotze is on the map as the philosopher who separated the validity of thoughts from their psychological origin and thereby prepared both neo-Kantianism and the critique of psychologism. In the Logic of 1874 thoughts hold whatever the mental events in which they occur, and validity (Geltung) is a way of being of its own; his students Windelband and Frege took up this thought, and Husserl and Heidegger engaged with it. Lotze opposed materialism and the notion of a vital force, treated teleology in biology as a regulative principle, and argued that value cannot be derived from scientific fact. His own metaphysics is an ethical, objective idealism in which the good is the ground of the world; its popular statement is the three-volume Microcosmus (1856–64). Through British idealists his logic and metaphysics shaped the early Russell and Moore, and his influence reached James and Royce. Frege’s early notes on logic respond to the Logic, and Lask credited Lotze with a version of the two-world dualism that he himself wanted to overcome.

Life & context

Hermann Lotze was born on 21 May 1817 in Bautzen. He studied medicine and philosophy in Leipzig, where he met Gustav Theodor Fechner, and took degrees in both subjects in 1838. He practised and taught medicine in Leipzig and in 1844 succeeded Johann Friedrich Herbart in Göttingen, where he taught for 36 years and was made a privy councillor in 1876. In 1880 he accepted a call to Berlin and died there on 1 July 1881. He was buried in Göttingen.

Further main works

  • Medical Psychology (Medicinische Psychologie, 1852)
  • Metaphysics (Metaphysik, 1879)

Sources: Wikipedia · Wikidata

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