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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 misinterpreted, which was not advantageous for his name. As to the content of his thinking, Realism repressed Idealism. Especially scientific 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-Kantianism. 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-animistic, 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 identified 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. * 232 +
