Oldal 231 [231]
HERMANN LOTZE
— SCIENCE, BELIEF AND
THE LATE NINETEENTH CENTURY
——o—
HENDRIK VANMASSENHOVE
INTRODUCTION
Hermann Lotze (1817-1881) was a philosopher and physician. Lotze’s an¬
thropology is first characterized by its Cartesian dualism. He took over from
Descartes the distinction and separation between mind and body. This would
hinder Lotze in his defence of the scientific approach of reality, because he
could not deny the influence of the mind on the body, which, however, is prob¬
lematic if they are considered as separated. From Immanuel Kant (1724-1804)
he took over the unknowability of the things outside, Kant’s “Dinge-an-sich”;
but as with almost all neo-Kantian thinkers, Lotze does not refrain from devel¬
oping a theory about what the outside really is, and even an all-encompassing
theory, which plays a fundamental role in his worldview. !
Therefore, to save the reality of scientific results, Lotze postulated an im¬
material world behind observation, which can be known by a reasoning. The
monads of Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz (1646-1716) are not retained, because
separated things can not interact, but the elements of a whole can. Loetze’s
system provoked William James (1842-1910) to say that he did not solve the
problem, but merely transposes-it into another domain.
The term theism means here that God is the ultimate reality, on which eve¬
rything depends. Lotze, as a pious Protestant was certain that what is, is what
ought to be. In other words ethics defines existence. It is Leibniz’s best of all
possible worlds, but ontologically applied. This is the teleological aspect of
Lotze’s thinking: in what is good, lies the ultimate nature of being.
Thus the conclusion can be reached that man is situated in a significant
whole, which means that he has a personal relation to God, and that his duty
1 VANMASSENHOVE, Hendrik, The Anthropology of Hermann Lotze (1817-1881): A Comparative
Approach, Ghent, Ghent University, 2011.
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