Nicolai Hartmann’s Philosophy of Objective Spirit as seen through his Colleagues’ Reviews

Abstract

This essay traces the reception of Nicolai Hartmann’s philosophy of objective spirit based on his colleagues’ reviews of his works. By examining this reception, important aspects of Hartmann’s work can be elucidated, for example, in the context of phenomenology (Martin Heidegger) and philosophical anthropology (Helmuth Plessner, Arnold Gehlen). In addition, any new ideas in the philosophy of the objective spirit will be likely to face objections analogous to those Hartmann’s theory encountered, which is why this analysis can probably have a systematic significance. In this connection, the article describes and analyzes some contemporary reviews and highlights principle arguments pro et contra Hartmann’s philosophy. It aims to show which authors criticized Hartmann with which frameworks to point out the position of his theory in the philosophy of the early 20th century. Furthermore, striking features and missing topics within the reviews are discussed. The conclusion of the article is that the reviewers praise Hartmann’s work for its phenomenological-empirical approach with rich, insightful descriptions and emphasize its ontologically founded middle position between Hegel and Marx, but at the same time characterize the book as theoretically weak and ambiguous. This finding can help to understand the work’s marginal reception and at the same time provides hints in which way it seems to be still up-to-date and relevant.