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HERMANN LOTZE — SCIENCE, BELIEF AND THE LATE NINETEENTH CENTURY ——o— HENDRIK VANMASSENHOVE INTRODUCTION Hermann Lotze (1817-1881) was a philosopher and physician. Lotze’s anthropology 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 problematic 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 developing 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 immaterial 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 everything 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. * 229 +
