Paul Nicolai Hartmann (German: [ˈhaʁtman]; 20 February 1882 – 9 October 1950) was a German philosopher. He is regarded as a key representative of critical realism and as one of the most important twentieth-century metaphysicians. His early work in the philosophy of biology has been cited in modern discussions of genomics and cloning.
Biography Hartmann was born a Baltic German in Riga, which was then the capital of the Governorate of Livonia in the Russian Empire, and which is now in Latvia. He was the son of the engineer Carl August Hartmann and his wife Helene, born Hackmann. He attended from 1897 the German-language high school in Saint Petersburg. In the years 1902–03 he studied Medicine at the Imperial University of Yuryev (now Tartu), and 1903–05 classical philology and philosophy at the Saint Petersburg Imperial University with his friend Vasily Sesemann. In 1905 he went to the University of Marburg, where he studied with the neo-Kantians Hermann Cohen and Paul Natorp. In Marburg began a lifelong friendship with Heinz Heimsoeth. In 1907 he received his doctorate from Marburg with the thesis Das Seinsproblem in der griechischen Philosophie vor Plato (The Problem of Being in Greek Philosophy Before Plato). In 1909 he published the book Platos Logik des Seins (The Logic of Being in Plato). The same year he completed his habilitation on Proclus: Des Proklus Diadochus philosophische Anfangsgründe der Mathematik (Proclus Diadochus' Philosophical Elements of Mathematics). In 1911, Hartmann married Alice Stepanitz, with whom he had a daughter, Dagmar, in 1912. In 1912 he published Die philosophischen Grundfragen der Biologie (The Philosophical Foundations of Biology). From 1914 to 1918 he did military service as an interpreter, letter censor, and intelligence officer. In 1919, i.e., after the war, he received a position as Privatdozent in Marburg. Around this time he met Martin Heidegger. In 1920 he became Associate Professor (außerordentlicher Professor) and in 1921 appeared the work that established him as an independent philosophical thinker, Grundzüge einer Metaphysik der Erkenntnis (Foundation of a Metaphysics of Knowledge). The following year he became Full Professor (ordentlicher Professor) as successor of the Chair held by Natorp. In 1925, he moved to Cologne, where he came into contact with Max Scheler. In 1926 he published Ethik, his second major work, in which he develops a material value ethics akin to that of Scheler. The same year he divorced from his wife. In 1929, Hartmann married Frida Rosenfeld, with whom he had a son, Olaf (1930), and a daughter, Lise (1932). In 1931, he became Professor of Theoretical Philosophy I at the University of Berlin. He held the chair until 1945. During this time he successively published many pieces of his ontology: Das Problem des geistigen Seins (The Problem of Spiritual Being) (1933), Zur Grundlegung der Ontologie (On the Foundation of Ontology) (1935), Möglichkeit und Wirklichkeit (Possibility and Actuality) (1938) and Der Aufbau der realen Welt. Grundriß der allgemeinen Kategorienlehre (The Structure of the Real World. Outline of the General Theory of Categories) (1940). The unrest of the Nazi era seems to have left Hartmann relatively undisturbed in his task of developing a new ontology. In the "SD-Dossiers über Philosophie-Professoren" (i.e. SD-files concerning philosophy professors) that were set up by the SS Security Service (SD) Nicolai Hartmann was classified from an SS-point of view in the following way: "has always been a nationalist. Loyal to National Socialism, too, without political activity, but a social attitude has to be acknowledged. (Cf. donations to the NSV and hosting children during school vacations)". In 1942, Hartmann edited a volume entitled Systematische Philosophie, in which he contributed the essay Neue Wege der Ontologie (New Ways of Ontology), which summarizes his work in ontology. Between 1945 and 1950, Hartmann taught at the University of Göttingen. He died of a stroke in 1950. In the year of his death, there appeared his Philosophie der Natur (Philosophy of Nature). His works Teleologisches Denken (Teleological Thinking) (1951) and Ästhetik (Aesthetics) (1953) were published posthumously.
Legacy Nicolai Hartmann is regarded as an important representative of critical realism and as one of the major metaphysicians of the twentieth century. Reception of his philosophy has been impaired by a general anti-ontology trend in secular philosophy before and after WW2, as well as by the complexity of his philosophical terminology (intentio obliqua, cf. intentio secunda). Wolfgang Stegmüller's 1969 book Main Currents in Contemporary German, British, and American Philosophy has a chapter on Hartmann. Paul Feyerabend had presented Hartmann's philosophy of nature in Ratio (parallel editions in German and English, 1963). Hartmann had many students, however, among them Boris Pasternak, Hans-Georg Gadamer, Emil Cioran, Jakob Klein, Delfim Santos and Max Wehrli. He is the modern discoverer of emergence—originally called by him categorial novum. His encyclopedic work is somewhat forgotten today, although famous during his lifetime. His early work in the philosophy of biology has been cited in modern discussions of genomics and cloning, and his views on consciousness and free will are currently in vogue among contributors to the Journal of Consciousness Studies.
Ontology Nicolai Hartmann equates ontology with Aristotle's science of being qua being. This science involves studying the most general characteristics of entities, usually referred to as categories, and the relations between them. According to Hartmann, the most general categories are:
Moments of being (Seinsmomente): existence (Dasein) and essence (Sosein) Modes of being (Seinsweisen): reality and ideality Modalities of being (Seinsmodi): possibility, actuality and necessity
Existence and essence The existence of an entity constitutes the fact that this entity is there, that it exists. Essence, on the other hand, constitutes what this entity is like, what its characteristics are. Every entity has both of these modes of being. But, as Hartmann points out, there is no absolute difference between existence and essence. For example, the existence of a leaf belongs to the essence of the tree while the existence of the tree belongs to the essence of the forest.
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