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HENDRIK VANMASSENHOVE
necessary to generate values, but the world of values is detached from those
feelings. Ihis perceived ambiguity let to a double interpretation, one that went
in the direction of the feelings, another of the a priori forms.
But why did he disappear from the foreground? Different reasons can be put
forward. Because his ideas became so common, they also became detached
from their mastermind. His ideas were cited without being related to him,
because authors no longer realised they were Lotzes idea. Also, after the First
World War, anti-German feelings emerged and a regrettable devaluation of
German cultural achievements took place. Moreover Lotze did not found a
school, and his pupils displayed a critical independence, so Lotzean thought
developed independently of his name. Connected to that, Lotze was often mis¬
interpreted, which was not advantageous for his name.
As to the content of his thinking, Realism repressed Idealism. Especially sci¬
entific practice was responsible for the rejection of Idealistic speculations; and
with the rise of Positivism anti-metaphysic premises left no room for Lotze’s
speculations. In Continental philosophy the purported scientific objective of
Phenomenology, an offspring of Lotzean thinking, undermined Neo-Kantian¬
ism. With the separation of theology and philosophy in the academic world,
Lotze’s idea of the Absolute moved to theology, where it was absorbed, without
being attributed to him.
Finally the history of philosophy was neglected in the period after Lotze and
when such studies revived, Lotze’s name was not taken up.
LOTZE AND THE NINETEENTH CENTURY
In the field of philosophy of science, the mechanical worldview, originating
from the seventeenth century, the period known as that of the “Scientific
Revolution”, dominated in matters of the inorganic world. It was anti-animis¬
tic, but on the whole it retained the providential intervention of God. For Isaac
Newton (1643-1727) God’s intervention was necessary to be able to understand
the world.
The non-natural sciences were designated by the term Geisteswissenschaften
in German, and by the term “humanities” in English. The two terms do not
denote exactly the same however. In the nineteenth century, science was identi¬
fied with natural science, which appropriates a social-intellectual legitimation
5 See SHAPIN, Steven, Science, in T. Bennet — L. Grossberg — M. Morris (eds.), New Keywords.
A Vocabulary of Culture and Society, Oxford, Blackwell, 2005, 314-317.
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