## 1. Brief Chronology


* 1817, born 21 May at Bautzen, in Saxony
* 1819, family moves to Zittau, near Bohemia. While attending the
humanistic *Gymnasium* [secondary school] there, Lotze pens a
youthful Romantic novel, *Die Deutschen* [*The
Germans*]
* 1834, begins university studies in medicine and philosophy at
Leipzig and, while enrolled, makes the acquaintance of Fechner
* 1837, Lotze's philosophy teacher, C. H. Weisse
(1801-1866) gives an academic address calling for greater
attention to be paid to the philosophy of Kant
* 1838, achieves dual degrees in medicine and philosophy from
Leipzig
* 1839, first practices, then teaches medicine at Leipzig
* 1840, Lotze's *Habilitationsschrift* [second
dissertation], *De summis continuorum* (on infinite series),
accepted at Leipzig, and publication of his *Gedichte*
[*Poetry*]
* 1841, the first or "lesser" *Metaphysics*
published
* 1843, the first or "lesser" *Logic*
published
* 1844, becomes the successor to Herbart at Gottingen
* 1852, *Medical Psychology* published
* 1854, *Materialismusstreit* ["the materialism
controversy"] at Gottingen
* 1857, *Polemical Writings* published, including his reply
to the younger Fichte, and Lotze translates Sophocles'
*Antigone* into Latin
* 1868, *History of Aesthetics in Germany* published
* 1874, the second or "greater" *Logic*
published
* 1876, made Privy Counselor under Bismarck's
*Reich*
* 1879, the second or "greater" *Metaphysics*
published
* 1880, accepts offer, conveyed by Zeller, to move to university at
Berlin
* 1881, dies 1 July in Berlin and, later, buried beside his wife in
Gottingen
* 1882ff, *dictata* of his lectures on various subjects
published (the so-called "*Grundzuge*")
* 1885-91, an edition, in four volumes, of his *Kleine
Schriften* [*Lesser Writings*] appears


## 2. Preface: philosophy before modernism



After modernism, philosophy changed. But the change was slow in coming
and, well before the full impact of high modernism, Hermann Lotze
reigned as the single most influential philosopher in Germany, perhaps
even the world. Although almost completely unread today, his
substantial body of work exemplifies the new academic philosophy
("*Kathederphilosophie*") that flourished between
the demise of the post-Kantian idealisms and the rise of scientific
philosophy proper; he is usually credited with assisting "the
rejection of Hegel and Absolute Idealism within the bounds of academic
philosophy" (Schnadelbach, 1984, p. 169). Although the time
period under discussion is sometimes denominated by the phrase
"between idealism and positivism," it might be more
accurate to describe it as a transitory stage between the various
ideological groupings of the post-Enlightenment (romanticism,
materialism, *et al.*) and those diverging philosophical
movements that only emerged in modernism proper (logical analysis,
phenomenology, etc.). Thus, as a prominent figure within an
essentially transitional period, Lotze's long shadow was,
perhaps, predestined to gradually fade from the scene.



Were we unsympathetic, Lotze might be uncharitably (and falsely)
caricatured with the appellation "*Biedermeier*,"
especially if one took seriously the oft-repeated charge of
methodological eclecticism (implicit in the all-to-common adoption of
"ideal-realism" as an adequate descriptor of Lotze's
project). It is true that Lotze refused to give pride of place to any
particular method or theoretical approach. But this fact entails
neither that Lotze himself possesses no particular method nor that he
draws no determinate theoretical conclusions. Lotze's actual
technique involves, instead, a peculiar dialectic, one which while
attempting to give consideration to each side of a seeming antinomy,
resolves ultimately in favor for one side, albeit one which is
fundamentally transformed. Moreover, Lotze's
approach--which takes place against the backdrop of significant
political reaction and social revolution--exhibits a striking
modernity in his patient discussions of competing approaches to
various "problems," one that proceeds without regard to
their source in physiology, psychology or philosophy of mind. (We
would do well to recall that it was precisely to such figures that the
task of distinguishing amongst the heady mixture of early
nineteenth-century science and pseudo-science fell.) His seminal
interventions, according to one of his students, belong to "a
period of transition and uncertainty; much of the light which the
preceding age thought it possessed has vanished and the new light has
not yet dawned" (Merz, 1907-14, p. 493). Accordingly,
Lotze's work looks both forward and backward, anticipating both
the methods and the emphases of the new philosophical spirit while
clinging, nonetheless, to certain key assumptions of the very romantic
*Weltanschauung* (cf. Richards, 2002) that he helped
(ultimately) to undo.



It would be useful to further note something else that might appear,
at first glance, as purely trivial; this is the critical shift in tone
and temper, from the prior hostile and polemical one, to one much more
tentative and hesitant effected by Lotze:



> 
> In his reviews, criticisms, and polemical writings he is as dignified
> as Kant and Herbart had been; he is never impolite as Fichte and
> Schelling frequently were; nor does he fasten upon his opponents any
> stigma as Hegel frequently succeeded in doing; he is quite above that
> virulent and unmannerly invective by which Schopenhauer tries to
> crush, but never actually damages, the arguments of thinkers whom he
> chooses to regard as enemies. But the style of Lotze reflects one
> characteristic trait of modern thought. The confidence and
> self-assurance of Kant, Fichte, Hegel. Schopenhauer, and of the
> earlier Schelling have disappeared. (Merz, 1907-14, p. 493)
> 



The new model of the academic researcher demands the replacement of
prominent personalities--i.e., romantic
'geniuses'--by the new exemplar of the sober
scientist. Significant, as well, are the new material constraints on
the practice of philosophy: not just the rise of the university
professor--after Kant--as the most prominent representative
figure, but the correlative emergence of the professional journal as
the typical venue of presentation and publication. Of course, the
atmosphere of political repression, following the failed revolutions
of 1815 and 1848, surely played a crucial role in limiting the wider
ambitions of philosophers and reinforcing the need for a more neutral
tenor. Indeed, the same political pressures and bureaucratic demands
associated with the state professor's status as "civil
servant" began to figure prominently during the first half of
the nineteenth century, harkening back to the Fichte's
difficulties in the *Atheismusstreit* (1798/99) and leading up
to, among other things, the dismissal of the "Gottingen
Seven" (1837)--just to enumerate a few salient events from
the German situation alone.



The efficient causes of this portentous change were not limited to the
social-political sphere: in the numerous departments that came to make
up the philosophical, or lower, faculty of the university, other
important developments were also afoot. First, and foremost, there
must be numbered the emergence of new, separate disciplines--such
as geology, chemistry, biology and psychology--and the resulting
squabbles over relative positions, proper boundaries, and the
subsequent *agon* of "role purification" (see
Kusch, 1995). In addition, the rapid advances in the scientific
discovery had multiplied the previously manageable amounts of data
and, hence, suggested to some that the task of philosophy was now to
restrict itself to explaining "how the problems of speculation
still connect themselves with the ever increasing mass of special
knowledge that the labours of the new generation have
accumulated" (Adamson, 1885b, p. 573). In this context, the
cognate conceptions of philosophy as a synthesizing or supervisory
endeavor began to gather adherents. Indeed, the "rehabilitation
of philosophy" [*Rehabilitierung der Philosophie*] (see
Schnadelbach, 1984, pp. 103ff) is perhaps the central
foundational issue of the day and names "the attempt to allot to
philosophy, in a scientific age, a domain of problems that would be
independent of the special sciences" (*ibid*., p. 103).
Here, as elsewhere, Lotze emulates Fichte: while science can surely
explain what is, it can never elucidate the ultimate value or meaning
of the phenomena it reveals--that alone is the task of philosophy
(cf. *ibid*., p. 178).



Oddly--despite his one-time preeminence--Lotze founded
no enduring school. However, his teaching directly influenced such
prominent students as Windelband and Frege and his ideas were still
being considered and debated as late as the 1920s by a numerous
notables, including Heidegger and Carnap. Even in his own day,
Lotze's reputation soon spread beyond the continent. As a
result, he became a substantial force in the English-speaking world
affecting, among others, Green, Bradley, and Bosanquet, in Britain,
and Royce, James, and Santayana, in America. Indeed, it is principally
by this latter means that he came to hold some sway with both the
early Moore and the early Russell. Furthermore, because his influence
extended through both Anglo-America and the Continent, some have
postulated his unconscious but seminal presence in the emergence of
analytic philosophy (cf. Sluga, 1980, Gabriel, 2002, Milkov, 2000);
and, likewise, studies of Lotze by historians of phenomenology
(Rollinger, 2001, Hauser, 2003) have also begun to emerge.



Finally, in this same moment, when philosophy was only beginning its
(eventual and complete) confinement to the academy--and becoming
simultaneously more specialized and less provincial--Lotze was
(notably) the darling of numerous Protestant theologians and
preachers: both conservatives who sought to popularize him as a
fanatical opponent of mid-century materialism, and others, of a more
liberal character, who fastened on to his "personalism" as
the proper antidote to the dangerous heterodoxies of pantheism,
rationalism, agnosticism and atheism (cf. Hall, 1912, pp. 94n-96n).
While Lotze himself may not have endorsed these distortions, there
was, nonetheless, something about his work that permitted such misuse.
Santayana, a keen observer of this very phenomena, insisted on
inserting an important cautionary note: he remarked dryly that one
ought not to be misled by Lotze's continuous reference to
"souls" or "God" as "a certain
acceptance which Lotze has found in conservative circles is perhaps
due to insufficient considerations of his meaning":



> 
> Lotze is inclined to give old names to new things; he is fond of a
> metaphysical nomenclature, and his terms are generally more mysterious
> and old-fashioned than his ideas. Thus he speaks of the soul, of
> substance, of free will, of efficient causation, of a personal God;
> but these phrases stand in his system for comparatively modest and
> legitimate conceptions. The words may please us in themselves; but we
> shall be disappointed if we welcome the things for love of the names
> they bear. (Santayana, 1971, p. 153)
> 



If correct, this suggests that Lotze, once again, followed the lead of
Fichte in using traditional language to mask more deeply naturalistic
conceptions than the surface meaning of the ordinary wording might
initially suggest. (This peculiar feature of the expression of his
thought must be made continually present by the active reader.) In any
event, Lotze's continuing influence in the twentieth century
(ironically) came mostly through the theological curriculum of
classical liberal Protestantism, still in evidence until the
late-1960s (cf. Reardon, 1968).



Although it is tempting to regard the Post-Enlightenment period as a
confused interregnum, serving only as a prelude to the revolutionary
breakthroughs of philosophical modernism - that is, those
movements that organized and flourished after the Great War -
the fact is that Lotze (and in particular the *Logik*) was
still a relevant and wholly viable topic for philosophical seminars
well into the 1920s. As a result, there is a related trend that augurs
for treating Lotze as if he were a contemporary and thus subjecting
him to our own expectations and standards. On those terms, however,
Lotze presents mostly an unappealing and enigmatic tangle.



The only viable way to proceed is to see him as consciously continuing
to practice some of the sly deception and willful obfuscation of those
Enlightenment thinkers still subject to vigorous state repression and
social persecution. For this tack there are, of course, a grab bag of
techniques, on display in a wide variety of modern thought, that all
result in the same, highly desired end: plausible deniability. Without
cultivating our own sensitivity to the highly provocative nature of
controversies that to our minds may be considered settled, we cannot
see how Lotze attempts to subtly open up the minds of his readers to
any number of heterodox possibilities.



The name naturally associated with this sort of inquiry is, of course,
that of Leo Strauss. Yet the work of his students invariably comes to
an end with post-Enlightenment thinkers, terminating typically at the
end of the Enlightenment, with "Rousseau, Lessing, and
Kant" (Strauss, 1988, p. 33). But if we consider that a further
line of repression runs from Fichte up to the widespread institutional
successes of the neo-Kantians, on the continent, and the British
Idealists, elsewhere, then Lotze is situated squarely in this
interregnum. It thus seems natural to wonder if the state actions of
the sort noted above, when combined with the obvious sensitivities of
the university appointment process, may not have suggested to Lotze
that a certain circumspection and discretion might still provide the
outlines of the best course of action. In a period of political
reaction and repression, civil servants needed to proceed cautiously
(compare Beiser, 2014, pp. 178ff).



To this purpose, the structure of the entry now takes the following
form: first, an investigation of three controversies, addressed by
Lotze (that are, quite naturally, not controversies for us); second,
an exposition of three contributions Lotze made to the academic
discipline of philosophy, which are incorporated, sometimes as wholes,
sometimes in parts, usually unacknowledged, by the modernist movements
that displaced him; and, finally, a discussion, naturally somewhat
speculative and incomplete, as to the ways that, *faute de
mieux*, Lotze still exerts an underground influence on issues of
some undisputed currency. These I deem his "legacies."



Now that our own new century is well underway, [u]nderstanding and
incorporating the insights and achievements of the twentieth century
return us, perforce, to their roots in the prior century. But so long
as the nineteenth century remains "still the most obscure of all
the centuries of the modern age up to now" (Heidegger, 1977, pp.
139-140), even the true significance of our present endeavors
may remain yet unknown and unknowable to us. The only alternative is
blank incomprehension, the sort already possible within about fifty
years of his death; for when Wittgenstein's student Drury
complained about the inclusion of Lotze as a special author in the
second part of his Tripos, Wittgenstein could only reply:
"Probably a man who shouldn't have been allowed to write
philosophy" (Rhees, 1981, p. 121).


## 3. Three Controversies


### 3.1 Polygenesis



A good example of the twists and turns intrinsic to Lotze's
dialectic may be illustrated by a brief excursus on his treatment of
the "problem" of "race." (On this topic, the
first question that might occur to contemporary readers concerns the
proper domain and ultimate provenance of this "problem":
is it biological, anthropological, sociological or political? does it
name a theoretical or a practical difficulty?) Although often
torturous, these passages provide a sometimes unique insight into the
monogenesis-polygenesis debate in the post-Enlightenment. Lotze begins
his discussion quite skeptically, averring that the "much
discussed problem of the specific unity or diversity of the whole
human race cannot as yet be definitely solved" and he heartily
commends this attitude as "the impression of unprejudiced
people" (*Micro*, I, p. 506). He immediately follows this
admonition, however, with a lengthy list of cogent reasons for
monogenesis, noting that "in the varieties of the human race
... the differences are not so excessive as to render impossible
a historical derivation from a single source":



> 
> It is true that no race of men possesses any physiologically important
> organ denied to another race; in none is the normal number of multiple
> parts, such as teeth or fingers, different from what it is in another;
> no single joint of the skeleton, no muscular layer, is formed or
> situated on different plans in different races; all are formed erect,
> all capable of speech; to all physiological processes are assigned on
> a common plan; in the duration of life, of pregnancy, in the
> attainment of puberty, along with numerous fluctuations to which, as
> regards each of these points, the human race is liable, there are no
> constant differences of time distinguishing one race from another. The
> actual differences are varieties in the proportion of size of the
> parts of the body, and more especially in the form and colour of the
> external coverings. Assuredly, if Nature had not made the Negro black,
> the Indian red, the rest of the organisation of these races (whatever
> might have been the case with the analysis-loving naturalist) would
> never have suggested to the imagination of men in general any reason
> for treating them as distinct species, and excluding them from an
> origin common to all ... Finally, let us add that the different
> races can be propagated by crossing, and as the result of all, it will
> appear that these varieties of the human race are connected together
> by the closest analogy of physical formation (*Micro*, I, pp.
> 508-509).
> 



Lotze next goes on to consider but reject the very old idea that these
superficial changes (size and color) have been effected by variations
in such environmental factors as habitat or climate. In this
supposition, Lotze believes that the central difficulty for all such
investigations in this area is an inevitable but nonetheless unsavory
dependence upon "uncertain causes of which we can form no
conception" (*Micro*, I, p. 514). Consequently,
"the hypothesis of the original unity of the human race cannot
be absolutely disproved" (ibid.). The choice between monogenesis
and polygenesis remains squarely at the level of scientific conjecture
and no one can determine *a priori* which hypothesis to rule
out. What we would prefer is a reliance upon "the actual facts
for which we have the evidence of the senses" (*Micro*,
I, p. 524). But even a brief consideration of this data forces upon us
the realization that we have, at our disposal, a very small collection
indeed.



Lotze's seeming indifference and impartiality regarding these
competing hypotheses masks his real and over-arching interests, namely
establishing that: (1) much of this debate is actually rooted in
logical errors and linguistic difficulties, and (2) value-theoretic
conclusions are simply not derivable from either scientific theory or
fact. First, errors arise in the logic of the very process of
classification (*Micro*, I, p. 507) and, then, the very choices
of terminology--kind, variety, species, genus, etc.--are
open to logical or linguistic manipulation completely unconnected from
the question at hand, namely "whether they can all have actually
sprung from one and the same primitive stock by generation and
climactic influences" (*Micro*, I, p. 522). Second, such
mere manipulations are not facts and, furthermore, even were strong
empirical evidence available, it would not provide the upshot its
proponents suppose. To show this, Lotze constructs the following
gruesome and impossibly racist scenario:



> 
> Supposing it could be proved by irrefragable evidence that the
> ancestors of the Negroes were really true undoubted apes, but at the
> same time the fact remained that the present Negroes walk erect,
> speak, think, and in general possess the degree of intelligence (be it
> great or small) which we know from experience they do--what moral
> excuse could there be for the cruelty of accommodating the treatment
> of them not to what they are, but to what their ancestors were,
> or--to speak logically--to the kind or species to which by
> their descent they belong? (*Micro*, I, p. 524).
> 



When we recall that racism was often clothed in the respectability of
being scientific and "up to date," we can discern
Lotze's canny move in blocking *any* ethical conclusion
being derived from seemingly scientific evidence. (And when we recall
the subtitle of the *Microcosmus* - "attempt at an
anthropology [*Versuch einer Anthropologie*]" -
Lotze's actual motives begin to shine through.)



Ultimately, this is part and parcel of Lotze's overarching
strategy of driving a wedge between scientific fact, on the one hand,
and human significance, meaning and value, on the other: science, to
which falls the task of describing *what is*, can never provide
us with *the ultimate meaning of* or *reason behind*
what is. Lotze remained convinced that no value theory could be
derived from science and that, yet, the teleological impulse was
intrinsic to and irreplaceable in human existence. On more than one
occasion, he avers to the following line of reasoning:



> 
> ... the contemplation of the whole series of graded periods
> during which formless matter may have been undergoing processes of
> formation would but add to the splendour and variety of the scenes in
> whose outward pomp our admiring phantasy might revel, but it would not
> explain the wondrous drama as a whole more adequately than the modest
> belief which sees nothing but the immediate creative will of God from
> which the races of living beings can have been derived
> (*Micro*, I, p. 527).
> 



The varieties of human beings--should we choose to cast that in
the terminology of race or not--appears to be the expression of
some formative principle [*Bildungstrieb*], one whose meaning
and purpose can never be exhausted by the technical complexity of the
story we may adduce about the process of that formation. (For another
discussion along similar lines see Appiah, 2014, pp. 94-98).


### 3.2 Panpsychism



Panpsychism is widely taken to provide a possible answer to the
mind-body problem and the by now (merely repetitive) reiteration of
Lotze's commitment to panpsychism is easy to document. The fact that
Lotze said praiseworthy things about his former teacher, Fechner,
after the latter's mental breakdown, is usually highlighted and we
are informed that "Lotze's main criticism of Fechner is that
he is not bold enough ... there were deeper metaphysical reasons
for thinking that all reality is alive" (Beiser, 2013, p. 235).
But this approach forces us to take Lotze's equivocal statements at
face value when there are numerous clear indications that we should
not.



First of all, almost all of the quotations typically drawn from the
*Mikrokosmus* in support of panpsychism are actually phrased in
the form of *questions* (and not assertions), *viz.*



> 
> If we cannot account for the appearance of a mental state
> [*geistigen Zustandes*] by those properties in virtue of which
> we call matter matter, what hinders us from supposing that besides
> those properties there is a store of inner life which usually escapes
> our attention, and finds no other opportunity of manifestation than in
> what we call mental life [*geistiges Lebens*]? (*Micro*,
> I, p. 150)
> 



> 
> Why, in opposition to matter as an ever dead substance, should all
> mental activity [*geistiges Regsamkeit*] be condensed into the
> special nature of a soul [*Seele*], destitute on its side of
> the properties by means of which the physical elements make themselves
> of account in Nature? (ibid.)
> 



> 
> Might not the visible substance have directly a double life, appearing
> outwardly as matter, and as such manifesting no property other than
> those mechanical ones with which we are familiar, - internally
> on the other hand moved mentally [*geistig bewegt*], aware of
> the changes in its states, and accompanying with efforts the activity,
> whose general subjection to law it is certainly not in its power
> arbitrarily to alter? (ibid.)
> 



> 
> Have things by their motions, while themselves destitute of enjoyment,
> only to minister to souls [*Seelen*] as mere stimuli to this
> mental life [*innerlichen Leben*]? (*Micro*, I, p. 353)
> 



> 
> Has the one half of creation, that which we comprise under the name of
> the material world, no function whatever save that of serving the
> other half, the realm of mind [*des Reiches des Geister*], and
> are we justified in longing to find the lustre of sense
> [*Sinnlichkeit*] in that also whence we seem always to derive
> it? (ibid.)
> 



In the *Mikrokosmus*, Lotze emphasizes that panpsychism is
strongly motivated from the impetus to counter, in some fashion, the
excesses of materialism. But this very "justification," he
comments, is simultaneously "the source of the barrenness of
this view" (*Micro*, I, p. 151): we don't like
materialism, so we appeal to panpsychism, adopting the
counter-hypothesis that simply "ascribes to matter a secret
mental life" (ibid.). But why in the world ought we do that?



At best, panpsychism, under this pretext, is merely an empty and vain
idea, "a conception ... that, [may be counted] among the
dreams of our imagination"; it names a belief about which the
most we may say is that it "may be one of those which do not
contradict actual facts" (*Micro*, I, p. 360). In a word, it
is possible, but scarcely probable and in no wise to be considered
actual. After all, were it quite literally to be true, then we would
have to adjust ourselves to the following curious state of affairs:
"Who could endure the thought that in the dust trodden by our
feet, in the prosaic texture of the cloth that forms our clothing, in
the materials shaped into all sorts of utensils ... there is
everywhere present the fulness of animated life ...?"
(*Micro*, I, p. 361). Who could truly inhabit such a ghastly
and ghostly realm?



Consequently, neither science nor philosophy has any need of such an
hypothesis, one that indeed bears an uncanny relation to mythological
thinking (remnants of which are still preserved in our culture,
through the influence of Greek art and thought). Nonetheless, whatever
its storied pedigree, "we ... must not introduce it into
science." From the sole requirements of knowledge alone,
"nothing remains for us but to gather from experience the laws
found valid in the ultimate ramifications of reality"
(*Micro*, I, p. 363). Among our philosophical inheritance from
German Romanticism, thus, cannot be counted "Schiller's
*Gotter Griechenlands*" (*Micro*, I, p. xiv) and
the like.



Nor can we, in any fashion, seek to derive this view from purely
self-interested metaphysical motives, viz.



> 
> The dislike to look on one part of the cosmos as but a blind and
> lifeless instrument for the ends of another, the desire to diffuse
> over all the joy of animation, and to vindicate a universe enjoying at
> every point throughout its own existence a more perfect than one in
> which a divided structure shows mentality [*des Geistigen*]
> above an unconscious basis - in this we have but one series of
> motives inviting us beneath the unruffled surface of matter behind the
> rigid and regular repetitions of its workings, to seek the warmth of
> mental activity [*geistigen Regsamkeit*] (*Micro*, I, p.
> 362).
> 



In a word, fear of nihilism is also no justification. Indeed, at long
last, the only rationale that can be offered for the panpsychist
"wager" is purely aesthetic in nature: "nothing but
the beauty of the living form is made to us more intelligible by this
hypothesis" (*Micro*, I, p. 366). Indeed, in the end, we
may only admit that our scientific work "neither wants nor needs
panpsychism - rather, it is needed to satisfy the human spirit,
to make the nature of soul comprehensible" (Skrbina, 2007, p.
128).



At first glance, however, this explanation superficially suggests that
Lotze may be nothing more than a beautiful soul. Panpsychism must, at
bottom, be shown to possess some truly special significance, far
outstripping the utterly false assistance it would pretend to offer to
the natural sciences. For assisting the science of psychology, even
the very possibility of panpsychism is "wholly immaterial"
(*Micro*, I, p. 365). Rather, Lotze asserts, to be painfully
repetitive, that "nothing but the beauty of the living form
[*die Schonheit der lebendigen Gestalt*] is made to us more
intelligible by this hypothesis" (*Micro*, I, p. 366).
But what, precisely, could this gnomic utterance be taken to mean?



It appears that Lotze's terminology cashes out directly as follows:
"The image which we now have to form of the living form [*die
lebendige Gestalt*] and its mental life is that of an association
of many beings" (*Micro*, I, p. 367). Lotze then extends
the figure by analogizing each human individual to our species
being:



> 
> All that we prize in life, and that is the source of nobler
> enjoyments, rests on this mode of combination in a manifold; the human
> race, embodies in countless individuals, leads the life of constant
> reciprocal action, of mutual fellow-feeling in love and hatred, of
> uninterrupted progress, that make all share in the gain of one part
> (*Micro*, I, p. 368).
> 



But this does not entail any submerging of the many into some one:
"The unity in which we long to be knit with another is always
completeness of intercourse, reciprocal enjoyment of what is without,
never the confused mingling in which all joy of union perishes"
(ibid.).



Consequently, as applied to each unique individual, we must admit that
ontogeny really does recapitulate phylogeny, by admitting that
"... its inner life never becomes ours and when the union
of different beings on which our living form [*unsere lebendige
Gestalt*] depends falls to pieces, while we shall all have gone
through something together, it will be as beings originally different
that after a passing contact again separate" (ibid.).



Panpsychism emerges hence as an aesthetic hypothesis that can be
called on to account for one thing and one thing only: the realization
forced earlier in the century by the French physiologists that life,
whatever it was, was a union of separate and quite heterogeneous
processes, held together in the most fragile of unions:



> 
> Bichat's physiological conclusions grew primarily out of his
> study of death, in which we identified death as a fragmented process,
> consisting of the extinction of different organs and processes: the
> death of locomotion, of respiration, of sense perceptions, of the
> brain. If death was thus a multiple, dispersed event, then so was
> organic life. According to Georges Canguilhem, "The genius of
> Bichat was to decentralize the notion of life, to incarnate it in the
> parts of organisms." With Bichat begins the progressive
> parcelization and division of the body into separate and specific
> systems and functions that would occur in the first half of the
> nineteenth century (Crary, 1992, pp. 78-79).
> 



Each of us is then, quite literally, composed of others, who, while
coming together for a time, to work upon a common purpose, ultimately
disperse, returning to a more basic (and decomposed) form of
existence. That is the ultimate and, indeed, the only point of the
panpsychist perspective: we may view our individual being on analogy
with the cooperative workings of multiple entities, as in a larger
society. Society is simultaneously an image of the self, and *vice
versa*.



Now Lotze did his best to sugar coat this physiological revelation but
not, it seems, in order to make it more palatable; instead he wanted
to show, simultaneously, how little we have gained and how little we
have lost in its acknowledgement. In reality, the best gloss of
Lotze's overarching strategy - as wrested from its original
point of reference - is that "... Lotze takes his
reader to the abyss only to pull him back and teach him a lesson. The
exercise in metaphysical brinkmanship is designed to show the reader
that the only salvation from nihilism, the only way forward in
metaphysics, lies in ethics ..." (Beiser, 2013, p.
155).



Science has given and science has taken away. But, in reality, nothing
has changed. What matters is how we look at it. The nihilistic
conclusions of the natural sciences can't change (or undermine
the truth of) human experience, no matter how deep our investigation
descends. Our situation is thus akin to that given admirable (if
somewhat dated meteorological) literary expression as follows:



> 
> A barometric low hung over the Atlantic. It moved eastward toward a
> high-pressure area over Russia without as yet showing any inclination
> to bypass this high in a northerly direction. The isotherms and
> isotheres were functioning as they should. The air temperature was
> appropriate relative to the annual mean temperature and to the
> aperiodic monthly fluctuations of the temperature. The rising and
> setting of the sun, the moon, the phases of the moon, of Venus, of the
> rings of Saturn, and many other significant phenomena were all in
> accordance with the forecasts in the astronomical yearbooks. The water
> vapor in the air was at its maximal state of tension, while the
> humidity was minimal. In a word that characterizes the facts fairly
> accurately, even if it is a bit old-fashioned: It was a fine day in
> August 1913 (Musil 1930-1945 [1965], p. 3).
> 



The poetic and the evaluative may appear resolutely old-fashioned in a
cold, utilitarian universe. But it names precisely an impulse of human
knowers that can never be replaced, supplanted or repressed.
Practically speaking, we are value-finding beings. We will continue to
utter such strange and human constructions as "the sun is coming
up" or "it was a very fine day," for our world is both poetry
and prose. And it can never be simply one or the other for human
existence.


### 3.3 Vitalism



As highlighted in the chronology, Lotze officially began as a student
of medicine and, after attaining the doctorate in philosophy, he
quickly followed with a degree in medicine, awarded for his
dissertation *De futurae biologiae principibus philosophicis*
(1838). There later commenced other medically-oriented works,
including his *Allgemeine Pathologie und Therapie als mechanische
Naturwissenschaften* (1st: 1842, 2nd: 1848), *Allgemeine
Physiologie des Korperlichen Lebens* (1851), and
*Medicinische Psychologie, oder Physiologie der Seele (1852)*.
Lotze's output--in and around the
*Vormarz*--betrays a continuing preoccupation with
both the theory and application of the biological sciences in
medicine, physiology and psychology. But it is within this same time
period that Lotze makes a fateful contribution, one later portrayed,
by Lange, as his "involuntary service to materialism." (Of
course, from similar premises, Lotze drew sharply different
conclusions than the materialistic thinkers he inadvertently
inspired.) This "service" was his trenchant attack on the
concept of "vital force" [*Lebenskraft*], widely
held, by a variety of thinkers of differing orientations, to have
struck the decisive blow (cf. Gregory, 1977, pp. 131f).



Lotze's medical dissertation was, under one description, his
opening salvo in this attack, for in it he advocated the abandonment
of key concepts of *Naturphilosophie* including, *inter
alia*, "polarity" and "vital oscillation"
(cf. Woodward & Pester, 1994, p. 167 and Pester, 1997, p. 58). But
his targets also included the diagnostic terminology favored by the
medical nosology of the day--most prominently,
"asthenia" (and its cognate notions) and, as already
mentioned, "vital force." While the former was a
contribution of the Brunonian theory, further elaborated in Germany by
numerous (and peculiar) enthusiasts, the latter was a more widespread
assumption of biological thought generally speaking. Yet despite such
important differences, both might be pegged with the same fundamental
flaw: both could be characterized as empty "abstractions"
that falsely paraded as causally "explanatory" notions.
Put in Kantian terms, they were both treated (wrongly) as though they
were truly "constitutive" principles of human
cognition.



Teleology, and teleological notions generally, while licit for certain
heuristic purposes, *pace* Kant, cannot be raised to the level
of cognitive principle. Hence, while enquiries into the biological
realm may safely assume purposive function, as a necessary theoretical
posit, such assumptions may serve only as regulative--not
constitutive--principles in biological thought. Teleological
notions, such as 'order' and 'purpose', are,
as necessary presuppositions of our theorization generally,
ineliminable. But such notions cannot be used explanatorily or, more
precisely, in a way that effectively precludes further investigation
into the actual causes of organic phenomena. In other words, from the
perspective of scientific explanation itself, vital force has no role
to play. Furthermore, philosophy itself always outstrips science and
indicates "the need to go beyond what is already known and given
in the direction of something as yet unknown and not given"
(Schnadelbach, 1984, p. 172).



The basic Kantian insight was further ramified by Lotze: mechanism and
teleology are coexisting, compatible modes of explanation, each with
their own proper sphere, and not contradictory opposites:
"[b]oth ... are limited, and both imply one another.
Mechanism is therefore no power controlling reality, but rather the
way in which a purposeful reality realizes itself" (Robins,
1900, p. 11). A lazy reliance on hypothetical posits, Lotze suspected,
merely betrays our unwillingness to engage in the difficult work of
real scientific discovery. Furthermore by "mechanism"
Lotze meant not a blind naturalistic or reductionist technique;
rather, he used this word to signify a hypothetical-deductive method
of explanation of phenomena (cf. Woodward & Pester, 1994, p. 165).
This has important ramifications for the emerging biological sciences:
if the essence of science lies in the employ of the
hypothetical-deductive method of explanation--and not
mathematization, as Kant had insisted--then biology and medicine,
for instance, both might admit of a rigorous treatment worthy of the
name 'science'. Teleology does not replace explanation: it
supplements it (cf. Lenoir, 1982, pp. 168ff).



However, materialists such as Czolbe were inspired by the elimination
of vital force to continue metaphysical "house-cleaning"
into the remaining parts of the super-sensual. But Lotze saw no
connection between the rightful rejection of empty, and hence,
un-scientific notions, on the one hand, and respectable, metaphysical
concepts proper, on the other. And so, he believed it possible to be a
physiologist, investigating the brain and the nervous system, and a
metaphysician, of the soul, simultaneously. There is only one clear
and consistent view in natural science: that of hypothetical-deductive
physical science. Within this framework, the notion of vital force is,
as already noted, dispensable, replaceable by physico-chemical
explanations. This substitution had no effect, however, on the
metaphysical concepts of necessity, finality and purpose, which must
both be part of and govern any (proper) investigation. Materialism was
thus forestalled, from Lotze's perspective, by his overriding
commitment to a value-theoretic teleology.



With this proviso firmly in mind, one would have to admit that a
properly scientific account could never rule out the existence of such
thing as a "soul." And yet traditional philosophical
explanations, rooted in the spontaneity of thought, in practical
reason, or in the freedom of the will, argued Lotze, cannot suffice to
establish this "universal prejudice." Nor may we rest
content with the obvious fact that deductive explanations seem
irrelevant when it comes to understanding mental life generally. There
is, nonetheless, a "decisive fact of experience" which may
serve to legitimate this posit: the unity of consciousness
(*Micro*, I, p. 152). But it is not our perception of unity
(consciousness) that underwrites this ulterior unity (the soul).
Rather, "our belief in the soul's unity rests not on our
appearing to ourselves as a unity, but in our being able to appear to
ourselves at all" (*Micro*, I, p. 157). As Lotze further
details his (transcendental) argument: "We did not conclude that
the soul is one, because we appear to ourselves as a unity; but
... by the fact that anything can appear to us"
(*Micro*, I, p. 163). This, teleology is further supplemented
by Kantian-style arguments which may further rebuff positivist
impulses to construe philosophical investigations as superfluous.
Perhaps, for this reason, Lotze's views are sometimes
categorized under the very title that he, on occasion, used:
"teleological idealism" (cf. Wagner, 1987, p. 75 &
Schnadelbach, 1984, p. 177). Further, because Lotze comes to see
nature itself as comprehensible as the life of a cosmic
individual--or God--the unity of consciousness is part and
parcel of the ultimate unity of the very cosmos itself (cf. Santayana,
1971, pp. 211ff).


## 4. Three Contributions


### 4.1 Intuition



The Lotzean soul functions as "a genuine stable point"
(*Micro*, I, p. 143); thus, as a substantial and
self-determining principle of unity in consciousness, it is the
functional equivalent of Kant's "transcendental unity of
apperception." The soul is, further, "the abiding source
of sensation [i.e., cognition], of feeling [i.e., of emotion], of
effort [i.e., volition]" (*Micro*, I, p. 184). But it is
also, Lotze emphasized in contradistinction to Kant, always a
particular, embodied consciousness, living entwined in concrete and
manifold relatedness. And, even more importantly, it is equally
characterized by its innate capacities for emotion and volition, and
not just cognition: the soul encompasses all of the capacities of
human consciousness and is not restricted to merely intellectual
functions. Further, the soul is insofar as it lives (cf.
*OutMet*, pp. 43-44). (Indeed, one interpreter goes as
far as to suggest that Lotze embraced a
"phenomenological"--rather than a traditional
"metaphysical"--notion of the soul, citing the
striking utterance: "*Insofern ist der Name der Seele ein
phaenomologischer Ausdruck*" (cf. Sachs-Hombach, 1993, p.
256).) But that there is such a soul is an undeniable conviction
inspired by the only credible apprehension of human selfhood and
agency.



The Lotzean standpoint was created both to appeal to certain
Herbartian emphases and to contrast sharply with others, for Herbart
had modeled the soul (in part) on a Leibnizian monad: for him, it was
a single, simple, independent, unchanging, indestructible substance.
As such, it is utterly analogous to the one thing that, qua substance,
underlies the many, shifting properties, which it bears. Such
"reals," which are absolutely simple, can, nonetheless,
enter into causal relationships with other "reals" (be
they souls or not). Hence, complex mental processes and psychological
properties are constructed on the basis of the properties and
relations of those "reals" we may identify as souls. (As
shall soon become apparent, this conception is utterly abhorrent to
Lotze, who embraces in its place, something that, at first glance,
appears to be a form of phenomenalism, i.e., that to be a substance is
nothing more than to appear as a substance.)



A strong commitment to the concept of soul--or mind or
consciousness as distinct from brain activity--leads to a
metaphysical question about the very possibility of exact spatial
locality qua immaterial being. This, in turn, moves naturally to the
prior epistemological issue of how the very perception of space is
possible in the first place, given the essentially non-spatial
character of mental representations. As Lotze begins with the
assumption that these representations are non-spatial, he must account
for how the soul can take the manifold of sensation and, subsequently,
re-create the relative location of its elements in space. For if the
brain and the soul are indeed distinct, then no spatial configuration
in the brain could account for our mental apprehension of spatiality.
Indeed, an even more basic problem is to account for the way in which
"the fixed situation of the variously stimulated nerve
extremities" becomes an object of consciousness at all
(*Micro*, I, p. 307, cf. pp. 308-309).



Since spatial relations cannot proceed directly to consciousness,
spatial localization is possible only if the non-spatial
representations are accompanied by "a qualitative property of
some kind which the impression acquires ... in virtue of the
peculiar nature of the place at which it comes into contact with the
body" (*Micro*, I, p. 309). Consciousness takes up this
accompanying qualitative information, such that "they act as
marks or as local signs, under whose guidance it proceeds in spreading
out the impressions into an image occupying space"
(*ibid*.). As one contemporary commentator observes: Lotze
theorized "a close connection between the muscle sensation
associated with a sense organ and the local signs that accompany the
sensations produced through stimulation of the sensory nerves of that
organ" conceived of as a "an innate anatomical
mechanism" (Hatfield, 1990, p. 160). This localization, Lotze
believed, resulted from the "coloration" produced not by
any innate characteristics of the stimulated nerve but by the
associated motor impulses that will accompany stimulation of the nerve
(cf. *ibid*.). It is only in such a way, Lotze contended, that
non-spatial perceptions can be reconstructed, in our intuition, into a
spatial dimension (cf. *Micro*, II, p. 605). It is a matter of
further discussion whether Lotze's theory of
*Lokalzeichen* accords best with contemporary (and competing)
empiricist or nativist accounts (cf. Woodward, 1978).



In typical Lotzean fashion, the preceding discussion is held to be
strictly irrelevant in assessing the epistemic nature of spatial
representation. This stems, in part, as shall be discussed in the next
section, from the fact that Lotze insisted that mere stimuli--and
their concomitant relations of association--do not, by
themselves, attain to the level of judgmental validity: the mental
representations which compose judgments proper are an accomplishment
of the mind (consciousness, soul) alone. Hence, space is, as Kant had
maintained, epistemically ideal. In a rare, uncharacteristically
candid agreement, he admitted that "this kernel of Kant's
doctrine I accept unreservedly": "space and all spatial
connections are merely forms of our subjective intuition, not
applicable to those things and those relations of things which are the
efficient causes of all particular sensuous intuitions"
(*Micro*, II, pp. 603-604). But Lotze affirmed this
premises for reason quite different from Kant, for he believed that
Kant had rested his claim of "the ideality of space on the
argument that the spatial form of the intuition must be innate"
(Hatfield, 1990, p. 163). While Lotze agreed that "... it
is not we who are in space, but it is space which is in us"
(*OutRel*, p. 53), this statement engenders no commitments
about the ultimate justification of intuitive statements.



The upshot of this approach is that not only does this remove
considerations of spatiality from the noumenal realm, but also to
accord a new epistemic status to intuition simpliciter: Lotze spoke as
though "it is simply given to us in intuition (by inspection)
that between any two points only one straight line can be drawn; he
referred the 'first principles'of geometry to the same
basis in intuition" (Hatfield, 1990, p. 163). Hence, Lotze
counted the axioms of geometry as "self-evident truths,"
their very self-evidence being grounded in their intuitive nature:
"he conceived the role of intuition as that of revealing the
self-evident" (*ibid.*). This picture is further enriched
with Lotze's distinction of justification (logical) from genesis
(psychological). On this view, psychological genesis (or the context
of discovery) was irrelevant to the question of logical justification
(or the context of justification). It is this approach that gives rise
to an axiomatics, where the axioms were to be numbered among those
things identified as the self-evident truths. (However,
"self-evident," for Lotze, was often times invoked for an
accomplishment of thought and, hence, not strictly identifiable with
the ordinary notion of the plainly "obvious.")


### 4.2 Thought



As the last section made clear, Lotze made important contributions to
the emerging project of neo-Kantian epistemology, including the new
concept of validity (as detached and detachable from questions of
psychological origin). Further, in his *Logic*, Lotze included
much that would normally be considered under the separate heading of
'epistemology'. Yet Lotze resolutely refused the mantle of
"the theory of knowledge" for a simple but compelling
reason: what went under that title in the 1850s and 1860s was a
psycho-physiological investigation, for some early figures in the
neo-Kantian revival (prominently, Helmholtz and Lange) construed the
Mullerian doctrine of "specific nerve energies" as
proof positive of the Kantian emphasis on the contributions of
transcendental subjectivity in our apprehension of objects. Lotze
continuously rebuffed such associations. If "theory of
knowledge" named a psychological investigation, then validity
would be subordinated to "the history of the psychological
development of our thought" (*Phil*, p. 467). But
psychology was to be counted "last" and not
"first" in epistemic priority and it "can never be
the foundation of our whole philosophy" (*ibid*., p.
468).



Accordingly, many subsequent philosophers both recognized and credited
Lotze with helping to make some of the earliest forays against the
looming spectre of psychologism (cf. Heidegger, 2000, p. 29ff). Most
critical here is, perhaps, Lotze's act-content distinction (cf.
*Micro*, II, 630), one which followed Herbart, but preceded
Brentano by decades. Furthermore, concept-formation is conceived to be
a logical process over and above the mere psychological course of our
ideas (further discussed below). Also, Lotze clearly opposed the
pan-logicist deduction of Absolute Idealism with something
approximating the regressive analysis favored by the subsequent
neo-Kantians: "the more urgent and the greater work of
philosophy must, I think, bear the shape of a regressive investigation
which seeks to discover and to fix securely what principle is to be
recognised and used as the living principle in the construction and
course of the world" (*Phil*, p. 452). Discovery of
truths of absolute and universal validity describes the *a
priori* project Lotze first adumbrated, later embraced in the
logicist program of his student Frege and in varieties of
transcendentalism espoused by various neo-Kantians.



As just mentioned, concept-formation is freed from the peculiarities
of the subjective psychological process by concentration on the
creation and refining of objective thought contents. This logical
process may proceed by reference to the "grammatical"
categories of substantive, adjective and verb that may be taken to
"mirror" the logical categories of object, concept and
relation, respectively. As it has been explained, this picture allows
for both an act-content distinction and the minimal structure required
to get our metaphysics off the ground:



> 
> The three logical forms thus indicate the minimum amount of structure
> we must presuppose in order to come to any deeper understanding of
> reality. That is, one must minimally posit: (i) things, which serve as
> "fixed points" which may support and to which we may
> append (ii) dependent properties, ... which may connect or relate
> to other such "fixed points" by means of (iii) relations
> ... [further] [b]y naming part of our sensory-manifold, we
> separate out that part and make it a content which can be grasped by
> others. (Sullivan, 1991, p. 260)
> 



In this way, Lotze made headway and yet, ironically, appeared
retrograde to those who came after, those who found little comfort in
the seeming correspondence of grammar and thought-contents.
Nevertheless Lotze's actual contributions to the emergence of
*Sprachphilosophie* are typically unappreciated, if not ignored
altogether. This is strange for although, by mid-century, many
different theoretic approaches to the study of language were
available, Lotze is undoubtedly the most important of the mainstream
academic philosophers to turn his attention to this topic. In his
*Microcosmus*, Lotze devoted numerous pages to the connection
he hoped to help establish, that between language and thought. A
number of his important consideration and conclusions will be
summarized and discussed in what follows. (For a further discussion of
some of these points, particularly in relation to Frege, see Sullivan,
1991.)



First, Lotze denies that language is primarily a phonemic enterprise,
insisting instead that there is a dual dependence between language and
thought: language cannot exist without there being meanings
[*Bedeutungen*] correlated to its words and yet thought also
relies directly upon the syntactic abilities of a given natural
language to provide the basic form by which apprehension may take
place. For this reason, language cannot be portrayed as emerging as a
species of "venting," designed only to communicate bodily
passions and excite animal sympathies. Language too is an inadequate
expression of our thought and in our actual speech we omit much,
relying on the abilities of our hearers to reconstruct that which is
not explicitly expressed in words. Likewise, for effective
communication, much is dependent upon such things as gestures,
emphases, and other modulations of voice. But Lotze remained immovable
on his central motif: "the peculiar nature of thought and the
very close connection between it and language" (*Micro*,
I, 619).



For Lotze, the merely accidental associations of ideas do
not--and cannot--constitute thought. The animal mind is
capable of linking associations but it can neither explain nor justify
these perceived connections (for instance, on the basis of an
objectively valid law). Thought is dependent in its architectonic on a
certain process of formation to occur so that "building"
can begin. As construction cannot begin with a mere "pile of
stones," there first must be a process of "cutting and
shaping" so that the basic elements of thought may be properly
"fitted together," forming interlocking pieces:
"Language exhibits this first operation of thought in the
distinction of its parts of speech" (*Micro*, I, p. 622)
and the three forms of substantive, adjective, and verb compose
"the minimum of organization and division of presented matter
with which thought can attempt to begin its operations"
(*Micro*, I, p. 623). Furthermore, this syntactic organization
is the very element that gives "significance" to our
words:



> 
> Now this is what we signified above as the peculiar function through
> which the significant sound really becomes a word; for it is not made
> such by its significance; on the contrary, the interjections which
> most purely and directly express psychic excitement form an
> unorganized residue of the material of language. *The sound becomes
> a word by means of the logical accessory thoughts displayed in the
> character of the parts of speech*; they serve as uniting surfaces
> and joints for the various contents, which thus become capable of
> syntactic combination in the service of thought (*ibid*., my
> emphases).
> 



Thus, to reiterate again, the three linguistic forms of substantive,
adjective, and verb are required to express thought's
apprehension of (independent) objects, (dependent) properties, and
relations (respectively). And for such formative purposes, syntax is
critical, not sound. This is because "thought cannot directly
make use of sensations, feelings, moods, simple or complex images, as
materials for its structure" (*Micro*, I, p. 622).



Nevertheless, and despite the multiple riches of linguistic
expression, grammatical syntax often falls short of logical structure
("may lag behind its logical articulation"
(*Micro*, I, p. 624)). Indeed, linguistic form is responsible
both for a certain superstition and a mythology being imported into
human thinking. The first (superstition) occurs because the very
process of naming seems to bestow a quality on reality that is, in
point of fact, quite possibly lacking:



> 
> The sound of the name seems to dispel ... obscurity, though it
> adds nothing to the content--does not even always bring the light
> implied in indicating the particular place belonging to the object in
> a series, or within the sphere of some wider notion. Young botanists
> delight in learning the Latin names of wayside flowers, and go
> contented on their way only to be presently disturbed by a mountain
> that, strange to say, has no name, and so has properly speaking no
> right to be there. Now, what do they miss in the one case? What did
> they gain in the other? I cannot look on this fancy as so
> insignificant as it appears--nay, I see in it a counterpart or
> continuation of the genuinely human mode of conception ... We are
> not satisfied with the perception of an object; its existence becomes
> legitimate only when it forms part of a regular system of things that
> has its own significance apart from our perception (*Micro*, I,
> p. 627).
> 



As a result, for Lotze, an arbitrarily given name is, in fact, no name
at all: a mere "name" is utterly insufficient. What is
required is for that name to provide "evidence of its having
been received into the world of the universally known and
recognised" (*Micro*, I, p. 628). While remaining
somewhat obscure, it should now be apparent, as in the earlier remarks
about "race," that the mere enumeration of terminology is
surely not sufficient for this larger requirement.



We go well beyond mere superstition into a full blown mythology,
however, once we add in the fact that language has a history and,
thus, has accumulated, over time, a large reserve of possible
expressions including those made possible by what Lotze dubs
"the syntactic pliability of language" (*ibid*.).
Consequently, even utter nonsense can deceive us by means of the
surface correctness of its grammatical form. The prime candidates here
are those expressions which emerge by means of the nominalization of
predicates. For example,



> 
> ... we have almost ceased to speak of beautiful objects,
> *i.e.*, we forget that what we call *beautiful* is
> originally a mere adjective determination not existing apart from a
> subject; we speak now of *the Beautiful*, or at best of
> *Beauty*, and our aesthetic thinkers are quite convinced that
> what can exist only as an attribute is correctly apprehended only when
> it has unnaturally been apprehended as something substantive which is
> everywhere identical (*Micro*, I, p. 629).
> 



It thus appears that Lotze is among those figures who diagnosis
circumstances where logical form ought not to follow
("model") grammatical syntax, despite the undeniable work
that grammar makes possible for thought:



> 
> In all ... [such] cases language creates for us a mythology, from
> which, of course, in the use of language we can never wholly set
> ourselves free without becoming pedantically precise, but against the
> influence of which on the moulding of our thoughts we ought to be
> carefully on our guard. Logic does not always assist us in this
> direction, nay, sometimes in its methods makes pernicious concessions
> to this false tendency arising from the use of language
> (*Micro*, I, p. 630).
> 



Unlike Frege, however, Lotze sees little prospect for a logic freed
from the constraints of linguistic syntax. Further, because Lotze
figures mathematical logic as contiguous with the Leibnizian project
of a *lingua characteristica*, his doubts about the latter
extend to the former, which he dubs the "logical
calculus." This new symbolism--e.g., the Boolean expression
of universal affirmative judgements with "*y* =
*vx*"--is only "an ineffectual indication of
what we knew before" (*Log*, p. 276). In his eyes, the
Leibnizian project entailed the search for a logical language which
would provide "a universal mode of characterizing
conceptions" (*ibid*., p. 272). But Lotze's
epistemological holism focused on the judgement, and its ultimate
derivation from *a priori* principles, rather than the analysis
of conceptual content. Furthermore, as just mentioned, Lotze's
analysis of content may be easily exhausted in a quasi-grammatical
analysis and precludes, of course, a more complex construal involving,
say, quantification and other second-order functions. (It is important
to note, however, his introduction of a functional notation for the
analysis of the relation of part-concepts.)



Now despite his rejection of symbolic logic as an unfruitful and
unnecessary novelty, Lotze nonetheless held fast to the existence of
"necessary laws of thought" as the strongest bulwark
against relativistic skepticism. Indeed, the various kinds of
skepticism, whatever there other differences, share a fatal flaw: they
all must articulate a possible standard of truth and the very same
time that they deny or demur the actual existence of such truth.
Likewise, objections that such laws have only "subjective
validity" (i.e., are valid only for us) and, hence, inadequate
approximations of the external world presuppose some realist thesis
(about the nature and existence of the external world) that has not
yet been established (cf. Foster, 1882, pp. 43ff). Accordingly, Lotze
must refuse the charms of any correspondence theory of truth and
embrace, in their stead, a variant of the coherence theory. However,
although coherence is a relation that is descriptive of ideal
thought-contents, we must not expect that coherence entails the
possibility of a completely coherent world-picture being graspable by
any particular human knower. Hence, the laws of coherence are ideal
laws of thought and philosophy must disclaim all ambition of arriving
at a consummate and perfect system.


### 4.3 Existence



Once we abandon the project of further articulating relations between
world and idea, as adumbrated in the preceding section, however, we
might appear to be stymied by charges of vicious
"circularity" once we refuse to go outside the sphere of
our own presentations. Lotze acknowledges this "circle"
but deems it unavoidable:



> 
> The circle is inevitable, so we had better perpetrate it with out eyes
> open; the first thing we have to do is to endeavour to establish what
> meaning it is possible for us to attach to knowledge in its widest
> sense, and what sort of relation we can conceive to subsist between
> the subject which knows, and the object of its knowledge, consistently
> with those yet more general notions which determine the mode in which
> we have to conceive the operation of anything whatever upon anything
> else. What we have to do is to obtain the last-mentioned conception,
> which amounts to a metaphysical doctrine, and to treat the relation of
> subject and object as subordinate to it. (*Log.*, p. 451)
> 



What is needed, within logic, is to concern ourselves with the general
*a priori* structures of human cognition (for it is this
investigation that leads one ineluctably to the existence of certain
general yet necessary truths, which must frame our entire
epistemological enterprise). This transcendental project is, however,
subordinate to one constraint: a metaphysical system which can limit
and constrain the realm of the possible which might make up our circle
of ideas. Hence, we come ineluctably to the concept of being.



Any post-Kantian discussion of the relation of thought to being must
come to grips with Kant's rigid bifurcation between phenomenal
appearance and noumenal reality. Of course, without strict adherence
to this distinction, Kant's own position would collapse into
Berkleyan phenomenalism. Accordingly, post-Kantians such as Herbart,
who wanted to maintain a strong realism, had to rethink this central
feature of Kantian metaphysics. But while Herbart maintained the
possibility of some relation between noumena and phenomena, Lotze went
further in dissociating the two; hence, Lotze was led to oppose, as
well, the notion of a single unchangeable substance lying at the base
of the thing and constituting its essence. Accordingly, phenomenal
properties, which say nothing about the true nature of a thing, say
everything about our peculiar capacity of perception. Yet Lotze
assumed that changes at the phenomenal level must reflect changes at
the noumenal and he persisted in the belief that although appearance
is not like reality it does, nevertheless, provide knowledge of
reality. And so, he mustered adherence to Herbart's realist
standpoint while rejecting all correlative claims about the
immutability of substance (cf. Santayana, 1971, pp. 152ff). Our only
conclusion must be Santayana's: "... although he
retains the word substance he abandons the notion for which it
commonly stands" (Santayana, 1971, p. 153). Hence, we might be
tempted to see Lotze as inaugurating the reign of the
*Funktionsbegriff* over the *Substanzbegriff* (cf.,
Cassirer, 1923).



Additionally, the notion of being favored by Kant (and his realistic
disciple Herbart) rested in the belief that the meaning of existence
*simpliciter* could by captured in the formulation
"absolute position." As this standpoint has been
encapsulated:



> 
> The Herbartian view is indicated in the notion of 'pure
> being' as *Setzung*: that 'what we call the true
> Being should be found only in pure "position," void of
> relation'. In fact, on this view, it is only because pure being
> lacks relation that existing things are able to enter into relations
> at all. Herbart concludes that reality is composed of something
> plural, simple and indestructible: what he called 'the
> Reals'. Since reality is compounded of substances that can
> suffer no change, and are hence immutable, the relations (into which
> things 'enter in') must be utterly external and
> accidental. (Sullivan, 1998, p. 841)
> 



Lotze rejects this portrayal of reality composed of simple
unchangeable substances for, first, the concept of
'position' ascribed to them is meaningless *in
abstracto* and, second, utterly dependent upon the correlative
notion of 'relation'; conceptual relations are a creation
of our thought, which stipulates a connection between otherwise
divergent individual things. Subsequently it has no more claim to
reality than spatiality, for it too simply implicates a mere
*form* of perception. Also, the naive conception of
relations as metaphysically primitive gives rise to numerous problems
of infinite regress (cf. Robins, 1900, pp. 88-89). In its place,
Lotze substituted for this creation of pure thought a kind of
linguistic contextualism: instead of affirmation of a particular
concept, affirming, as an act, belongs to "nothing but a
proposition in which the content of the notion is brought into
relation with that of another" (*Micro*, II, p. 582).
Notably, the contrasting conceptual folly has a metaphysical analogue,
the insistence that "... things must be, before they can
stand in the relations in which indeed alone their reality can become
perceptible to us" (*Micro*, II, p. 583).


## 5 Three Legacies


### 5.1 Monism



It might be supposed--wrongly--that interest in Lotze cannot
be justified except on historical or antiquarian grounds. And, of
course, if combined with a Quinean attitude, enforcing a divergence
between the history of philosophy and philosophy proper, Lotze could
be dismissed without even a further thought. However, such objections
might be blunted if it can be shown that the work of Lotze continues
to influence contemporary thought, albeit in a disguised, even
underground fashion, through the thought of those thinkers who came
after him. Lotze's main (and enduring) contributions are
evidenced in the emergence of what others have dubbed "the
neo-Kantian paradigm". This philosophical approach (composed by
parts of orientation, attitude and technique) provides the shared
backdrop against which the analytic-continental split emerges.
Particularly important for both Frege and Husserl, Lotze's
influence extends, partly via the British Idealists (see Sullivan,
2008), to Russell, Moore, and Carnap, on the analytic side of the
equation, as already noted in the Preface.



Most of these continued influences remain unacknowledged, even
subterranean. And it is only possible to isolate a few of them here.
Beginning with the most obvious, Lotze, via the British Idealists,
enriched the concept of the Absolute in a number of interesting ways.
This can be shown if we further investigate two key aspects of
Lotze's metaphysics: how his functionalist approach entails
both, on the one hand, monism and, on the other, a sort of
instrumentalism.



Lotze seeks to finess the problem of causality--in its relation
to the phenomena/noumena distinction--by replacing it with the
notion of ground, or logical consequence. He is led to this conception
by, among other things, the difficulties associated with the notion of
metaphysical or *transeunt* causality. As he framed it, the
problem was: if there were many separate, independently existing
things, then there is no credible account forthcoming about how any
single given thing may causally interact with any other single given
thing. Further, Lotze's solution aims at, once again, making
sense of the process of our thinking and not explicating any supposed
relation of mind and world. Hence, he insists that the very
indispensability of cause and effect in human cognition entails a
necessary rejection of metaphysical pluralism: we must abandon
"our preconceived idea that they [i.e., things] are originally
many and self-existent, and ... [instead adopt] the view that
there is a truly existent being *m* ... [and that] this
*m* is the ground and basis of all individual beings
*a*, *b*, *c*, ..." (*OutRel*,
p. 39).



Lotze therefore utilizes Humean-style arguments, without thereby
concurring with Humean conclusions (in particular Hume's radical
psychologism). If Hume dissolved causality into a mental
predisposition--a psychological expectation of
uniformity--then Lotze reduced it, instead, to the efficient
causality found in a regularly occurring sequence, which expresses a
rule or law. Hence, while it makes no sense to inquire into the deeper
bases of causality, there remains, nonetheless, plenty of work to do;
for while it is utterly "idle" to "look for the
reason of that causality" (Santayana, 1971, p.190) yet,
nonetheless,



> 
> ... [t]o note and describe sequences is all we can do in such a
> case; the ground for these sequences is simply the nature of the given
> thing, which is nothing but the law which those sequences exemplify
> and actualize. We have no business to ask for any further ground for
> these sequences; they are the nature of things. All we can do is
> reconcile our will and imagination to this given and unexplained
> order, by showing that it gives rise to aesthetic and moral values.
> (*ibid*.)
> 



This commitment to explaining the given by reference to ultimate
values has a number of important ramifications for the unfolding of
Lotze's metaphysics. First, as there cannot be a plurality of
mutually distinct, independently existing things, we must encourage a
monistic conception. Recall the aforementioned issue of how thing
*a* (if such existed) might causally interact with thing
*b* (ditto). James provides the most admirable gloss of
Lotze's manner of reply:



> 
> The multiple independent things cannot be real in that shape, but all
> of them, if reciprocal action is to be possible between them, must be
> regarded as parts of a single real being, *M*. The pluralism
> with which our view began has to give place to a monism; and the
> 'transeunt' interaction, being unintelligible as such, is
> to be understood as an immanent operation.
> 
> 
> The words 'immanent operation' seem here to mean that the
> single real being *M*, of which *a* and *b* are
> members, is the only thing that changes, and that when it changes, it
> changes inwardly and all over at once. When part *a* in it
> changes, consequently, part *b* must also change, but without
> the whole *M* changing this would not occur. (James, 1977, p.
> 31)
> 
> 
> 



Of course, James himself strongly repudiated this argument and its
conclusion, painting the former as verbal sophistry. But for Lotze
this conclusion was inevitable if the universe and its elements were
to be properly conceptualized as "a unity" or
*kosmos* (i.e., an aesthetic demand).



Second, things (and their posited but unproven existence) remain
nothing but "ideas indispensable for the intelligibility of the
changeable phenomenal world" (*Micro*, II, p. 584). The
subject of metaphysics is reality but reality only as it can be made
intelligible to human knowers. Also, there are limits and paradoxes
involved in our previous commitment to "this absolute existence
which we symbolise as m" (*OutRel*, p. 40). Beyond its
oneness and existence we cannot--from within
metaphysics--go. The 'absolute' thus functions as
"a limiting conception" (*ibid*., p. 41).
Furthermore, metaphysics has no intrinsic method for support and, in
particular, is not preceded by epistemology. In this way, among
others, Lotze's metaphysics attempted to chart a middle course,
one set somewhere between the absolute idealism of Hegel and his
followers, on the one hand, and the critical realism of Herbart and
his disciples, on the other. But, most importantly, it attempted to
carve out the requisite space for a conception that seemed
naturalistic in its assumptions but which was wedded to the idealist
notion of "unity" that was founded in self-consciousness
or personality, whether this be attained by the philosopher-scientist
alone or as supported by the continued consciousness of God.



As we have just seen, Lotze's monism--or his belief in the
substantial unity of everything that exists--stands opposed to
Herbart's earlier pluralistic atomism. His redescription of
causality likewise coheres with his prior conviction that there must
exist a human soul endowed with freedom of the will. Correlatively,
Lotze encourages us to think of the world as the product of the will
of God, of an infinite spirit: reality is, hence, that which
corresponds to (a) self-consciousness. But is this particular
self-consciousness or spirit--which we may identify with the
absolute--also personal in nature? Our first impulse yields a
negative response simply because personality normally is associated
with the notion of fixed limits (which would, of course, be
inappropriate in an infinite, unlimited being). And yet, Lotze
contends that we must conceive of God as the preeminent personality
and so, once again, God's own personality is "an immediate
certainty," grasped only as a necessity of the human mind. And,
hence, we come to the concept of personality.



The reduction of cognition, emotion and volition to values was to fit
hand-in-hand with other thinkers' preoccupation with the spectre
of relativism. So although Lotze himself took refuge in a
quasi-Platonic account, some neo-Kantians pushed farther in the
attempt to ground value in some account of the nature of consciousness
itself. Windleband, for example, developed the notion of a
"normal [i.e., *normative*] consciousness," which
is to say a consciousness that was itself productive of norms or
values. The further particulars here must await another occasion. But
Schnadelbach's observations of a fundamental shift from
Lotze's to Windelband's position--or, from a
"teleological value--relevance of reality ... as a
relation of transcendental constitution in which value stood to
valuation" to one which emphasized "the evaluating normal
consciousness ... [as] the basis of both axiology and
ontology" (cf. Schnadelbach, 1984, p. 182)--surely
calls out for a detailed investigation in the near future.


### 5.2 Persons



While the centrality of 'person' stands in most natural
affinity with the name of Kant, the idea undergoes a number of
critical developments in the various strands of post-Kantian idealism.
On the one hand, Kant had relied on personality in distinguishing
rational being from mere things, by reference to the former's
capacity for self-government or autonomy. Further, Kant had insisted
that persons have "worth" or "value" and that
this serves as a critical characteristic separating them from mere
things (which may be said to have only a "price"). On the
other, the scientific approach, when applied directly to human beings,
appear to have rendered the notion of personality incomprehensible and
superfluous. (Indeed, Lotze would probably not be at all surprised by
the threat posed to personal identity resulting from reflection on the
quantum theory!). Also, if Christianity is re-described as an ethical
religion--stressing the essential aspects of interior life and,
henceforth, abandoning all claims to metaphysical or cosmological
significance--then it cannot stand simply as a bulwark against
the materialist onslaught on inessential aspects of our
subjectivity.



Against these and similar considerations Lotze argued that our own
subjectivity is not founded in opposition to objectivity: the subject
(the 'I') is not opposed and formed in reaction to the
object (the 'not-I') but rather in its encounter with
another subject (a 'thou') (*OutRel*, pp. 65ff).
Consequently, personality is an ethical concept *par
excellance* and is, *qua* ethical, identifiable as the
"ultimate reality." Of course we cannot identify the world
with our own subjective consciousness without falling into either
solipsism or subjective idealism. Hence, we arrive, instead, at the
necessary conclusion of objective idealism. Lotze's view
Santayana aptly encapsulates as follows:



> 
> The seat of the value of the world is consciousness, but of course not
> exclusively human consciousness. These moments that contain the sense
> of things, the consciousness of the cosmic law,--those in fact
> that contain the personality of cosmic life--contain also its
> value, and the happiness to which it gives rise. To us the divine life
> is revealed in beauty, in our own seasons of happiness, and our faith
> in the deep roots that good has in nature. Our consciousness, however,
> constitutes but an echo of that consciousness in which the purpose of
> the world is realized; the goal of things is the happiness of
> God.... (Santayana, 1971, p. 223)
> 



Reality is purposive and its contents collectively form an ideal unity
and this conclusion is fostered by an awareness of the view of the
world comprised *sub specie aeternitatis* in the nature of
supreme consciousness.



Further, Lotze's peculiar investigations into morality provide
yet another case study in Lotzean dialectic. Moral rules cannot be
understood as merely prudential maxims or as essentially
self-regarding in nature: moral principles must possess an
"intrinsic worth." However, this fact should not
capitulate us into either a mystical or religious position, on the one
hand, or the "empty formalism" of Kantianism, on the
other. For both utilitarians and egoists are so far right when they
insist upon the necessary presence of pleasure and pain (as concrete
content) in moral deliberation. But to escape such subjective egoism
in morality is possible only if we shift our perspective by changing
"our conception of our personality and its position in the
world" (*OutRel*, p. 159). Characteristically, our
untutored convictions suggest the idea that moral laws express and
embody the will of God. To escape the subsequent
*Euthyphro*-style questions and difficulties, we must identify
God with the supreme Good:



> 
> God is nothing else than that will whose purport and mode of action
> can be conceived of in our reflection as that which is good in
> itself--as a will which can only be separated by abstraction from
> the living form in which it exists in the real God. (*ibid*.,
> p. 161)
> 



Likewise our will expresses its moral nature in the ability to freely
choose between competing values, without compulsion. But this choice
is always rooted in a *concrete* reality--*our
feeling*, for instance, that truth is rightfully to be pursued
*because it is good*.



As already noted, by means of his enduring presence in liberal
Protestant thought and literature, Lotze continued to be a topic of
interest even in post-war American theological schools and seminaries.
Indeed, through the impress of "personalism,"
Lotze's thought--handed down through Bowne and
Brightman--appears to have imposed upon Martin Luther King the
conception of a personal god and the metaphysical underpinnings for an
insistence upon the "dignity and worth" of all
"human personality." But this underscores the
unacknowledged fact that it is Lotze, and not Kant, that is the most
likely source of King's insistence on the dignity of the human
person (cf. Burrow, 1999, pp. 76ff).



Likewise, Lotze's contributions to the topic of polygenesis,
with its obvious consequences for projects of scientific racism, may
help explain Lotze's line of influence, extending through the
history of African American philosophy, beginning with Du Bois'
*The Souls of Black Folk* (1903). While "folk" has
obvious Herderian overtones, for "soul" Du Bois would have
drawn more naturally on Lotze, under the tutelage of McCosh and James
(cf. Rampersad, 1990, p. 74). In point of fact, it appears that it is
one of Lotze's leading ideas that provides a key impetus to Du
Bois cultural project.



Du Bois practices modernist collage, invariably beginning each chapter
of his work with an excerpt of lyric, drama or poetry, combined with
bars of musical notation from what he dubs "the Sorrow
Songs." Through this simple act of ostension, Du Bois directly
posits the cultural parity of European American and African American
culture, even as he is at pains to voice his revolutionary
assertion:



> 
> We the darker ones come even now not altogether empty-handed:...
> here is no true American music but the wild sweet melodies of the
> Negro slave; the American fairy tales and folk-lore are Indian and
> African;... Will America be poorer if she replace... her
> vulgar music with the soul of the Sorrow Songs? (Du Bois, 1903, pp.
> 11-12).
> 



> 
> Little of beauty has America given the world save the rude grandeur
> God himself stamped on her bosom; the human spirit in this new world
> has expressed itself in vigor and ingenuity rather than in beauty. And
> so by fateful chance the Negro folk-song--the rhythmic cry of the
> slave--stands to-day not simply as the sole American music, but
> as the most beautiful expression of human experience born this side
> the seas. It has been neglected, it has been, and is, half despised,
> and above all it has been persistently mistaken and misunderstood; but
> notwithstanding, it still remains as the singular spiritual heritage
> of the nation and the greatest gift of the Negro people (Ibid., p.
> 251).
> 



African Americans had contributed mightily in the realm of art but
little, to date, in thought or politics, for the obvious reasons. But
Lotze provided a metaphysical basis for equalizing and explaining such
contributions to human culture: as noted above, for Lotze, the human
soul (or human consciousness) is equally cognition, emotion, and
volition. Descartes was wrong: we are not just thinking things, but
also feeling and willing things.



This tripartite division was expressed by Lotze in numerous
ways--sometimes as concept, feeling, and sensation or, at others,
as ideas, emotions and aspirations [*Strebungen*]. While
attention has focused quite naturally on Du Bois famous "double
consciousness," he articulates this in the terminology of
Lotzean tripartition: "two souls [emotions], two thoughts
[cognition], two unreconciled strivings [volition]" (Ibid., p.
3). While "twoness" in African Americans was a pernicious
"waste" (Ibid., p. 55) of energies, they shared equally
with European Americans in the human experience of
"meaning... passion... and... struggle"
(Ibid., p. viii).



The very terminology (of *Streben*) points us to the centrality
of Fichte for Lotze, a *leitmotiv* only suggested in the
margins of this entry till now. Although sometimes pegged as either an
Hegelian or Herbartian, Lotze is quite clear that Fichte's
influence was the decisive one -- "The teaching of Fichte
had been different":



> 
> The problem of the spirit, he held, does not lie in the cognition of a
> blind 'Being' (the conception of which appeared to him as
> impossible as it appears to us), but in action. The aforesaid world
> external is not, but appears to us in order to serve as material of
> our duty, as inducement or object of our action (*OutMet*, p.
> 150).
> 



This is, of course, the well-known Fichtean subjugation of theoretical
to practical reason. But Lotze believes that *action* here is
merely a formal concept and so he seeks the following emendation:



> 
> For the aforesaid 'action' of Fichte we substitute the
> morally Good, for which the action is simply the indispensable form of
> actualization; we besides conceive of the 'beautiful,'
> too, and the 'happy' or 'blessedness,' as
> united with this Good into one complex of all that has Value
> (*OutMet*, p. 151).
> 



The 'morally good' [*das sittlich-Gute*] can only
be realized --be actualized-- through action *of
persons*. Although all of the words used to describe the purpose
of life--including happiness or blessedness--point us
towards a super-ordinate concept, that of the valuable, the focus
rests squarely on the human person.



But are we now not confined within a realm of pure subjectivity,
"since all the Value of what is valuable has existence only in
the spirit that enjoys it" (*OutMet*, p. 152)? Certainly
not.



> 
> The objectivity of our cognition consists, therefore, in this, that it
> is not a meaningless play of mere seeming; but it brings before us a
> World whose coherency is order in pursuance of the injunction of the
> Sole Reality in the world,--to wit, of the Good. Our cognition
> thus possesses more of truth than it copied exactly a world of objects
> that has no value in itself. Although it does not comprehend in what
> manner all that is phenomenon is presented to its view, still it
> understands what is the meaning of it all; and is like to a spectator
> who comprehends the aesthetic significance of that which takes place
> on the stage of a theatre, and would gain nothing essential if he were
> to see besides the machinery by means of which the changes are
> effected on that stage (ibid.).
> 



The metaphysical claim here is clear even if not to contemporary
tastes: the "objectivity of our cognition" lies in the
fact that it is not a meaningless game of mere appearance, but that it
presents to us a world whose nexus is ordered in accordance with the
commandments of the only Real [*Realen*] in the world, the Good
[*des Guten*]. And thus we come, inexorably, to value.


### 5.3 Value Theory



To recapitulate, briefly: First, we must abandon the mere prejudice
that the external world exists complete and independent of our minds,
and that our thinking is merely a "useless appendage"
which merely reproduces the contents of the world, as a fruitless
activity. Nor should we fall into the trap of absolute idealism, which
so reduces the world of things that they can easily be fitted into the
formal categories of our thinking (that is, reduce metaphysics to
logic). The right way was indicated by Fichte: our minds are not for
the mere cognitive reproduction of meaningless things, but rather a
"world" only appears to us in order to serve as a stage
inducing us to meaningful action. But action characterizes only the
subjective side of things: on the other side, we must identify the
moral good, and our action becomes, hence, merely a means of realizing
this end.



The terminology of "moral good" is thus shorthand for the
entire complex of values (and, hence, can be identified with what
earlier thinkers called the good, the beautiful, happiness, or
blessedness). But although this apprehension of the world is dependent
upon mind, it is not subjective. Instead, our cognition of the world
and its value is objective: a world can only be a system of the truly
real, that is to say, a system ordered according to the good. For this
purpose, we need not understand the mechanics of our cognition and,
indeed, we would gain little from this knowledge, for the central
thing is the apprehension of meaningfulness present to us in a world
of mere physical objects.



Finally, then we come to the subject of value and validity, which
describes an immense topic.The following restricts itself to but one
small part of the continental side, briefly discussing the case of
Heidegger. Heidegger's long engagement with the Lotzean
foundations of his neo-Kantian teachers has not yet received
widespread acknowledgement (see, however, Crowell, 2001). The early
Heidegger seemingly operated wholly within the neo-Kantian paradigm
and even the first emergence of the phenomenological impulse was
directed, at least in part, at a reconceptualization of neo-Kantian
topics and questions. Especially revealing is the lecture course of
Summer Semester 1919, which aimed at nothing less than "a
phenomenological critique of transcendental philosophy of value"
(Heidegger, 2000, p. 108). Thereby, Heidegger intended to utilize
Brentano, Dilthey and Husserl, among others, to combat and reconstruct
the insights of Windelband, Rickert and Lask, on the one hand, and
also the Marburgers (and even Simmel), on the other. And the common
root of these heterogeneous schools and thinkers had to begin with
Lotze's decisive contribution (cf. *ibid*., pp.
116-118).



According to Heidegger, in the midst of the nineteenth century two
global errors emerged, only to attain prominence in philosophical
practice of that day: naturalism and historicism. The only school that
avoided these two was "speculative theism" and it was
under their influence that Lotze's breakthrough emerged: the
decisive repudiation of naturalism without falling into mere
"history of philosophy." This was accomplished by
Lotze's revival of the non-sensory while avoiding "the
extravagant naturalistic supra-sensoriness of the old
metaphysics" (Heidegger, 2000, p. 117). In his articulation of a
philosophy of value, Lotze "killed two birds with one
stone": "a safeguarding of the continuity and connection
with German idealism, but simultaneously a critical deflection of
speculative idealism" (*ibid*., p. 118). (But this
assessment would not stand, for by the Nietzsche lectures (cf.
Heidegger, 1977, esp. pp. 70ff) of 1936-40, Heidegger has come
to believe that a reliance on the terminology of value and values was
simply the positivist version of the metaphysical (which was supposed
to have been thoroughly vanquished) (cf. Schnadelbach, 1984, pp.
190f).)



Further substantiation of Heidegger's deep and continuing
struggle with Lotze (and the neo-Kantian paradigm he helped engender)
is now available in English in the newly translated 1925/26 lecture
course on *Logic* (Heidegger, 2010). Here Heidegger makes
explicit the exact same thesis, later elaborated by Gillian Rose,
namely that Lotze is indeed the founder of the paradigm so excellently
developed and exploited by the neo-Kantians: "The
'neo-Kantian paradigm' refers to those who attempted a new
answer to the Kantian questions of validity within the framework of
validity and values first developed by Lotze" (Rose, 1981, p.
6). Coincident with this is a shift, by these later thinkers, to
philosophy as a kind of purified methodologism, a pure and general
(but not at all formal) logic, directed towards a vision of
*science* "as an ideal network of propositions"
(Heidegger, 2010, p. 50). By Heidegger's later lights, all of
neo-Kantianism and much of Husserl was sharply inflected by this
(unconscious) prejudice.



While a fuller discussion of this interesting topic is not possible
here, some light is nevertheless shed by a brief consideration of the
twentieth-century *reaction* to neo-Kantianism, as found in the
thought of (mostly) later thinkers (*inter alia*, Heidegger
himself):



> 
> Dilthey, Heidegger, Mannheim, Benjamin and Gadamer have this criticism
> in common: the neo-Kantian answers to the question of validity debase
> the question of being, reality, life or history ... [they] return
> to the Kantian question of validity, 'What are the preconditions
> of experience?', but judge that the Kantian reference to the
> categories and their application itself has a precondition:
> 'life' (Dilthey), 'social-situation'
> (Mannheim), '*Dasein*' (Heidegger),
> 'history' (Gadamer). These become the presupposition of
> the use of the categories or of meaning, the '*a
> priori*' of a new kind of ontology (Rose, 1981, pp.
> 22-23).
> 



(Note that from the analytic side, the emergence of concepts such as
'form of life' and 'ordinary language' may be
seen to play similar roles.) As a consequence, whether continental (or
analytic) philosophy deserve the appellation of neo-neo-Kantianism
remains an open question.



Heidegger's rejection of Lotze and neo-Kantianism by means of a
return to a more basic or primodial notion is quite explicit in the
*Logic* lectures:



> 
> Lotze uses the word "being" as equivalent to
> "out-there-ness," and therefore he uses
> "being" for sensible beings, material beings in the widest
> sense. I have already stressed that the currently common term
> "sensible entity" does not characterize being
> [*Sein*], but only determines the way of apprehending being
> ... I use "being" in the exact opposite sense, and in
> connection with the genuine tradition of Greek philosophy broadly
> speaking (Heidegger, 2010, p. 53).
> 



(A few pages later, Heidegger also makes clear where the necessary
return in philosophy lies--"The need to return to
Aristotle" (Heidegger, 2010, p. 90)--with, of course, the
important proviso that "[t]he Greeks had no suspicion of this
unfathomable problematic, which opens up before us once we have seen
this connection [between being and time]" (Heidegger, 2010, p.
163).)



Unfortunately, there are grounds for thinking that this turn to
*metacritique*--i.e., the application of neo-Kantian style
criticism to neo-Kantianism (and its unacknowledged
presuppositions)--nevertheless, "in spite of its radical
intentions, remains within the paradigm of *Geltung* and cannot
make the transition to a speculative position" (Rose, 1981, p.
24). Instead, almost all the lines of thought, dominant in the
twentieth century, ultimately converge and terminate at "a
neo-Fichtean station" (ibid.). And there, it appears, we
remain.