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HENDRIK VANMASSENHOVE is religious. It does not mean however that he knows the development of history; because the past cannot be known in its full meaning and the future is not yet clear, but God is the guarantee that existence has sense. Because history is never fully known, Lotze criticized Georg Friedrich Hegel’s (1770-1831) worldview based solely on the idea of history. THE INFLUENCE OF LOTZE That Lotze had a huge influence is evident from the amount of secondary literature about his thought at the end of his life and soon after his death. Until the 1930s interest remained, but diminished considerably afterwards. From the 1970s on, however, there was renewed interest-in his philosophy. Looking more closely at publications in relation to Lotze the following can be stated. Apart from the earlier economic value theory, a lot of works on value appeared from the 1930s on. As Loetze was the initiator of value theory, it could be assigned to his influence. Before Lotze, works on ethics were always concerned with virtue; with the general adoption of value theory, a significant shift took place. Lotze decidedly developed an all-encompassing approach to value theory.” But, was it not Friedrich Nietzsche’s (1844-1900) “Umwertung aller Werte” which was responsible for this phenomenon? It cannot be denied that Nietzsche’s value theory was very influential, but the influence of Lotze must not be underestimated either, certainly not in the academic world. It was from Loetze, and not Nietzsche, that Wilhelm Windelband (1848-1915) learned the value theory that had such a central part in his thought, and from Windelband it passed to the science of history and to sociology. Moreover, Nietzsche himself knew about Lotze. Moreover, Nietzsche himself knew about Lotze, and names him as an influence in the development of his own Perspectivism. Two main concepts of Lotze were present in the Neo-Kantian school, namely the concepts of value and “gelten”, especially as to the cultural and historical approaches. Lotzean thought led for instance to the value debate afterwards. Whereas the Southwest German School emphasized the concepts of “holding” and of value, the Marburger school was focused on the logical unity of thinking. “Holding” in the social sciences became the counterpart of the natural sciences’ “fact”, and “valuation” served as the foundation of ethics. It was mainly Lotze’s 2 Of the recent literature with a overview of Lotze’s interpretation see WOODWARD, William, R., Hermann Lotze: An Intellectual Biography, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2015. + 230 +
