Eduard von Hartmann Thoughts
Hartmann’s (1842–1906) philosophy is based in particular on Schopenhauer and Hegel, furthermore on elements of Schelling’s philosophy (for example the concept of the unconscious) and Leibniz’s as well as on the then modern natural science.With his three-volume main work Philosophy of the Unconscious he became relatively well-known.
According to the title of his main work, the unconscious is the central concept of Hartmann’s monistic philosophy. He understands it as a comprehensive principle, it is non-spatial, since it first “sets” space and is the cause of all events (especially of mind and nature); the unconscious is thereby active and productive. The connection between will and world is similar to Schopenhauer’s: “The world is only a steady series of sums of peculiarly combinated acts of will of the unconscious, for it is only as long as it is steadily set; the unconscious ceases to will the world, and this play of intersecting activities of the unconscious ceases to be. “That which we call reality exists only in the “mutually given resistance of the individually distributed acts of will of the All-One,” that is, of the unconscious. The unconscious is only one, while the multiplicity of consciousness is the multiplicity of the appearance of the one unconscious.
But since Hartmann’s unconscious can neither err nor doubt-Hartmann speaks of omniscience and omniscience-this world is the best of all worlds: “so we may well justly indulge in the confidence that the world will be arranged and directed as wisely and excellently as is at all possible, that if in the omniscient unconscious, among all possible conceptions, had lain that of a better world, this better one would certainly have come to pass instead of the one now existing.” But that it is “perfect,” that is, “the best possible of its kind,” does not yet say “the least about its goodness.”Also for Hartmann, as for Schopenhauer, misery is central: Thus he speaks of a “thoroughly miserable world” and emphasizes that “unpleasantness not only prevails to a great extent in the world in general, but also prevails to a great extent in every single individual, even the one standing under the most favorable conditions imaginable.” Therefore Hartmann concludes “that the existence of the world owes its origin to an unreasonable act.” Hartmann’s conclusion is that “the world owes its existence to an unreasonable act”.
Finally, Hartmann assumes that the world ‘has’ a final purpose. More precisely: “On the way of the development of consciousness […] the goal of the world-process must be sought, and consciousness is undoubtedly the next purpose of nature, of the world”, because a “steady[r] progress, a gradual increase” is “solely the case with the development of consciousness, of conscious intelligence”. However, it is not about a final purpose: The highest degree of consciousness will then result in the extinction of the world (see below). Therefore one would have to surrender to this world process or to drive it forward. Hartmann therefore rejects the individual negation of will or life both in the form of suicide and asceticism.Rather, the world process is to be advanced to the best of one’s ability: Hartmann demands “the full devotion of the personality to the world-process for the sake of its goal, the general world-solution.”That is, in particular, he proclaims “ the affirmation of the will to life as the only thing that is right for the time being; for only in full devotion to life and its pains, not in cowardly personal renunciation and withdrawal, is anything to be accomplished for the world-process.”This affirmation, however, is only ‘provisionally’ considered the right thing to do, namely until the world is ‘ripe’ for “universal negation of the will.”This world-process, consisting in a steady progress, an increase of consciousness, has the consequence, moreover, that the “misery and [the] unhappiness […] grows,” for as intelligence increases, illusions are more and more undermined and “thus the state of the world would become more and more unhappy.”
Hartmann describes the progress in stages of illusion: in the first, happiness is thought of as “attainable by the present individual in earthly life.” In the second, it is thought of “as attainable by the individual in a transcendent life after death.” In the third stage, finally, happiness is thought of “as lying in the future of the world process. These stages correspond to despair of the present existence, of the hereafter, and finally resignation to positive happiness. As a (however not so called) fourth stage then follows the full devotion to the world process with the goal of the general world redemption.
Finally, the highest level of consciousness shall lead to the extinction of the world: how this end of the world process, the dissolution of all willing into absolute non-wanting […. We cannot know, due to our imperfect knowledge, how this “end of the world process” is to be thought: “[T]he redemption, the transformation of willing into non-wanting, [is] also only to be thought as an all-one act, not as an individual, but only as a cosmic-universal opinion of will, as the act that forms the end of the process, as the youngest moment, after which there will be no willing, no activity, ‘no more time’.”
Hartmann speaks of the “victorious struggle of consciousness against the will, as it appears to us empirically as the result of the world process”; this is nothing accidental, rather it is “conceptually contained in consciousness, and set as necessary with the development of it.” (The unconscious created consciousness “in order to redeem the will from the unhappiness of its will, from which it cannot redeem itself.”)
Finally, the “ultimate purpose of the world-process” is to realize the “greatest possible attainable state of bliss, namely that of painlessness.”
Concerning suicide, Hartmann writes that it seems to be “the closest way out to escape the misery of existence”. What matters to him, however, is the “negation of universal will.” Asceticism and suicide as attempts of an individual negation are not only futile, but also an expression of egoism: With regard to the one who wants to commit suicide, it is said, “only so that the world may end for him and his person need no longer feel the suffering, so he may do it; — this brain, shattered by the pistol shot, will of course no longer learn to recognize that his effort was vain, and that consciousness, despite the change of brains, continues to hope and to suffer”. In fact, however, the suicidal person can say, after death “‘it is not I then who has to suffer!’” There is “nothing to be said against this”: rather, “egoism shows here its most sincere face, its most consequent form”.
This concerns, differently than with Schopenhauer, also the ascetic. “In the suicide and in the ascetic there is as little admirable self-denial as in the sick person who, in order to escape the prospect of an endless toothache, sensibly decides on the painful extraction of the tooth. In both cases there is only cleverly calculated egoism without any ethical value, rather egoism which is immoral in all such situations of life where it has not yet been cut off from every possibility of fulfilling its duties towards its relatives and society. “Asceticism and striving for individual negation of the will thus harbor dangers, namely that of stagnation of the world process, in the worst case even the extinction of the whole mankind threatens through abstinence; the unconscious would thus fall back into an early stage, the way to salvation would again become longer.
A (typical) sacrifice “for the sake of the whole and the process” therefore does not consist in a sacrifice of life, but in the omission of a suicide. For the rest, man, i.e. “the individual of appearance as such […] is sure of redemption from his duty of cooperation by the natural occurrence of death”.
How the universal redemption could look like, Hartmann, as said, leaves unclear. He defends himself against “the recurring accusation […] that I teach a ‘mass suicide of mankind’”: “An end of the world process can only be conceived as a supernatural act”.
Hartmann also formulates his ideas in a religious way: “Real existence is the incarnation of the Godhead, the world process is the passion history of God incarnate, and at the same time the way to the redemption of God crucified in the flesh; morality, however, is the cooperation in the shortening of this path of suffering and redemption. Hartmann speaks of “the all-suffering of the absolute,” of “compassion with God,” and finally “I [man] can redeem [help] God,” even more,”only through me can god be redeemed”.
