Hartmann, Nicolai

(1882-1950)

   philosopher; among the few German thinkers to advance a nonidealistic metaphysics. Born in Riga, Latvia, where he lost his father at an early age, he attended a German Gymnasium in St. Petersburg before studying medicine, classical languages, and philosophy. He completed his doctorate in 1907; his Habilitation was published in 1909 as Platos Logik des Seins (Plato's logic of being). Immersed in the neo-Kantianism of Hermann Cohen and Paul Natorp (both at Marburg), his early thought reveals a commitment to German idealism. Appointed ausserordentlicher Professor at Marburg in 1920, he succeeded Natorp in 1922. With Max Scheler's* support, he moved to Cologne in 1925, the year his esteemed three-volume study, Ethik (Ethics), was published. Despite an aversion to large cities, he accepted appoint-ment at Berlin* in 1931 as successor to Ernst Troeltsch* (he spent the final years of his career, after 1945, in Gottingen). Meanwhile, his initial affinity for Kant and systematic metaphysics gradually dissipated, largely under the impact of Edmund Husserl's* phenomenology.

   An atheist, Hartmann deemed himself a servant of progress in a spirit of scientific objectivity. His method consisted of two parts: first, a phenomeno-logical presentation of the facts; second, a systematic analysis of their con-tradictions. By 1925 not only was his philosophical approach remarkably un-German," but his writings were lucid and thorough, a feature that also conflicted with German tradition. Next to Ethik, his major Weimar-era work was the two-volume Philosophie des Deutschen Idealismus (Philosophy of German idealism), published in 1923 and 1929.

   REFERENCES:Benz and Graml, Biographisches Lexikon; EP, vol. 3; NDB, vol. 8.