AN ENQUIRY INTO NICOLAI HARTMANN'S APP' RECIATION OF NIETZSCHEtS AYJOtOGY I n w o THESIS: PRESENTED T e FOR THE DEGREE OF M.A~ (PHpILOSOPHY) a C OF THE UNIVERSITY OF CAPE· T 0 WN f o y t i s r e v i n U e h by T .!\DAM SMALL The ~opyright of this thesis is held by the University of C;;pe Town. Reproduction of 1:'1c whole or any part may be made for study purposes only, and not for publication. { n w The copyright of this thesis vests in tohe author. No T quotation from it or information derive d from it is to be e published without full acknowledgemp ent of the source. a The thesis is to be used for Cprivate study or non- commercial research purposes ofnly. o y t Published by the Universistiy of Cape Town (UCT) in terms r of the non-exclusive liceense granted to UCT by the author. v i n U e h T CONTENTS Abbreviations iii Introduction 1 FIRST CHAPTER : THE MAIN FEATURES OF PHILOSOPHY ml~TMANN'S Sumrna,r y of Co·ntents 10 1. Philosophy as Metaphysics 11 2. The Structure of Being: Hartmann's Theory of Categories 16 3o The Subject-Object. Relation: The Prima>.cy of the Irrational 24 SECOND CHAPTER g HliRTMliNN t S ETHICS Summary of Contents 36 1. The Person as Ethical Object 37 2. Moral Values, Goods-Values and Value-Feeling 44 3 o Freedom, God and Religion 51 THIRD CH[l.PTER. : NIETZSCHE'S SUPRA-MORAL PHILOSOPHY OF BE:COMING Summary of Conte!'llts 59 lo The Negation of Absolutes 60 2. Nietzsche's New Earth of Creation 67 3. The Origin of Values 81 FOURTH CHAPTER : HARTMANN'S APPRECIATION OF NIETZSCHE'S APPROACH Summary of Contents 88 1. Hartmann and Nietzsche: Ontology , Creation and Responsibility 89 2. Relativism: Hartmann's Historica~ Indictment of Nie,tzsche 99 3. Specific Values 104 CONCLUSION Summary of Contents 112 Hartmann, Nietzsche and the Future of Ethics 113 BIBLIOGRAPHY 122 -ii- ABBREVIATIONS in the order o:f thteir appearance 1 in the fo.llowing study E .... Hartmann• s Ethics transiated from the German by- Stanton Goit; the Roman numeral after E refers to the' relevant volume of the translat-ion, thus:· E I - Ethics, Volume' I (Moral Phenomena, 1950); E II- Ethics, Volume II (Moral Values~ 1932); E III - Ethics, Volume III (Moral Freeao,m, 1951). AW - Hartmann, ]Jar Aufbau der realen Welt, 1949. GO - Hartmann, Zur Gr!;undlegUruLder Ontologie, 1948. ME - Ik!t1tl~Jl~; .f!:~~r!zSg~ etr"or Mats.pilAJik cflet Erkenntnis ~ 1949 MW - Hartmann, Noglichkeit und Wirklichkei t, 1949. FEW - Max Scheler, Der Fo·rmal:ismus in der Ethik und die meteriale Wertethik 1954. 7 AZ - Nietzsche, Thus ·ake Zarathustra (Also sprach Zarathustra as CCDlntained in The PhilosophY: of Nietzsche (The· Modern Library), l9~i the Roman numeral after AZ refers to the spectlic Part of tpe book,_the other numerals.in their turn to the spec:u·ic paragraphs of the Parts. GB - Nietzsche , Be;rond Good and~ Evil ( J ensei ts vo;n Gut und Bose) as co,ntained in Th~ Philosophy- of Nietzsche (The Nodern Library-)! 1954; the numeral after Gf3 refers to the spe.cif c paragraph of the work. GM - Niet.zsche, The Genealogy: of Morals (Zur Genealogie der Moral) as contained in The Philoso·phy of Nietzsche (The Modern Library)! 1954; the numera1 everyt~me indicates the sp:eciflc paragraph of the specif~c section of the book. EH - Nietzsche, Ecce Homo as contained in The Philosopl}y Qf Nietzsche {The Modern Library), 1954; the numeral refers to speci.ffc paragrC\.ph of the releval')t part the~ of the book. GT - Nie,t.zsche, The Birth of Tragedy (Die Geburt der T:r:agodie as contained in The Philosophy of NietzschE? (The Mode,rn Library), 1954; the· numeral refe·rs to the relevant paragraph of the WCDlrk. G-D - Nietzsche.! OOtzandltmrnerung as contained in Nietzsches Werke,~and 8 (Alfred Kroner Verlaog l 1923); the numeral refers to too specific paragraph the relevant part of the book. OTHER ABBREVIATED REFERENCES: .Karl Jaspers, Nietzsche - Karl Jaspers:, Nietzsche :Einf'fihrung in das Verstt:tndnis seines Philosophie.rens, 1936 • •c . Brfiiton,. Nietzsche - C~ Brintem, Nietzsche, 19~1 • • Bertrand Russell , A History of. Western Philosophy - Bertrand Russell A History of Western PhilosophY 1947 • • Hans Yaihlnger, Nietzsche als Philoso·ph - Hans Vaihinger, Nietzsche als Philosoph, 1916. -iii- .Janko Lavrini Nietzsche - Janko Lavrin, Nietzsche:An Approach 948. . .Karl F. Leldeck&r, Nietzsche: Unpublished Letters - B!!tzS:qhtu Un¥t.tb11sbed Letters, 1960, translated and ed ted by Kar F. Leidecker~ .Prof. Dr. Ao Wenzl9 Nietzsche - Prof. Dr, A. Wenzl, Nietzsche~ Versuchung und Verh§ngnis 1948. . , .Winde.lband - Wilhelm Windel~and, A History of Philosophy, Autho;rised translation by James H. Tufts, 1956. -iv- 'And now, therefore,. after having been long on the way, we Argonauts of the ideal, our courage perhaps greater than.our prudence, often shipwrecked and bruised! but, as I say, healthier than people would 1 ke to admit 7 dangerously recovering health again healthy~ and again - it would seem as if our trouble we·re to be rewarded, as if we saw before us that undiscovered country, whose frontie.rs no-one has yet seen, a land lying beyond all other known lands and hiding-places of the ideal, a world so overflowing with beauty, strangeness, doubt, terror, and divinity, that both our curiosity and our lust for possession are wrought to a pitch of extreme excitement.' FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE (ECCE HOMO). 'Nietzsche was the first to see the rich plenitude of the ethical cosmos ••• Here for the first time, with full consciousness, "beyond" and independently of everything which in the course of the ages had been accepted as such the question was raised concerning tho contenf of good and evil. This question is a hazardous undertaking, for it touches that which has been consecrated. And the hazardous undertaking avenged itself upon the daring doer .... His visiofl, only just freed fell upon the realm of values . · and in the firsl delirium of victory he though{ he comprehended the whole. The discoverer indeed, could not dream that what had opened itseif- before him was a field for intellectual work of a new kind, which could not as yet be completely surveyed ••• Seldom does a dis coverer know fully what be has discov.Jred. Nietzsche knew it as little as did Columbus. The successors inherit the fie14; to them falls tho task of acquiring what they have inherited, in orde·r to possess it.' _ ·. NICOLAI HARTNANN (ETHICS) • ' INTRODUCTION In a world and a time when man is with confront~d but o:ne ultimate choice: either a return to sel.f-respon~ibility' or the annihilation of life, in which, because of his now :proverbial technical ascendancy and its train of spiritual impoverishment, he can indeed ne,glect to relearn the· of abi~ity exercising a wilful choice only at the· risk of his sacrific~n,g being as such - in such a world' it is a fatal omission to neglect. any thinker whose object it is to reconstruct for us our sanse of responsibility. In the field of philosophy no contemporary thinker has do·ne more in this respect. than Nicolai Hartmann whp considers Friedrich Nietzsche to have been his immediate predecessor. Yet Hartmann is not well-known in the Eng;tish spoaking world. The following study represents an attempt to explain Hartmann's position in epistemology, ontology ~nd ethics, stressing the inter-dependence o·f these disciplines for the: philosopher; in the light of Hartmann's appreciation o-, Nietzsche, to review Nietzsche's critique of "Christo-European morals" or the spiritual decadence of the West; and to show why Hprtmann made so much of Nietzsche's supra-moral philosophy of J.3ecoming 7 the philosophy "beyond good and evil 11 • Since the Greeks, the case for· the responsibility of man as constituting tho essence of his existence, has not been stated more forcefully than in the philosophy of Nietzsche and Hartmann. Hartmann is extremely conscious of the need of' our time for a thoroughgoing appraisal of man's position in the cosmos. At the same time, he looks despondently to1..rards the future -1- -2- when he conside-rs that man has become the· plaything of pe,tty politics from which we cart expect little, if anythin9 at all. "The t,Y'pe of states:man, as we know him in our day, a~d as history repe·atedly shows him," seys Hartmann, "does not act from a sense of responsibility for the wider future of nation and State, but from the need and opportunity of the moment. He is not a cons·cious carrier of the great and far-re~ching responsibility which actually rests upon him. I:Ie works for immediate ends, as if.beyond them there were no wid~r and more important perspectives ••• To us it may sound Utopian if we are asked to consider the children of generations which ).rill be of ' anothe:r mind and another circumstance. Nevertheless it is true that those generations will be our heirs and will reap the frui'ts of our actions, and that we bear the responsibility for 1-rhat we load them with." But, Hartmann continues, 11politica~ life is only one example. Our responsibility is wider. It reaches to all the departments of Everywhere the same law of spiritual ~ife. inheritance holds good, the same historical (E II,p.316). continu~tyrr While Hartmann's philosophy is not by any stretch of the imagination a progra:r.mne for social or political reform, and while it also fights shy of an eschatological expectation, there is without a doubt inherent in it the hope for a better wo!'ld and a future in which man's spirit will approach what he calls "Ideal Personality" , the exercise of a supreme sense of self-responsibility as exemplified in the virtue of Love of the Remotest which Nietzsche, as he thought, had newly dis~covered: the capaci tyr and the will of present men to rise above the desire for short-lived glory and to take on themselves the burden of res:ponsibili ty for all the future; basically this means a return to the ethos of the Platonic Eros. Wherever there was Eros, however, there was an Ideal - indeed, Eros, as Hartmann himself points out, represented the unconditional passion of man for the Ideal. the difficulty o·f n philosophic definition of the Howeve~r,, "Idealtt is well-knovm; it is still most clearly illustrated by -3- .. of' the case Plato's Good; and after Kant's critique of speculative ' metaphysics, it was. natural that philosophers should become' suspicious about, and even antagonistic to any attempt at positing an Ideal. Still it is clear beyond a doubt that if there is to be any faith in regard to tho future, and any hope and love to sustain it, we cannot do without an Ideal. It is to impo~sible believe., hope and love Nothing. That philosophy· alone is inca.pable.of rendering the Ideal, we cannot doubt; it has e.Jlways been so and Kant's . philosophy has merely rope,ated a truth which has becnme· obscure. ' . There remains only one source from which be·lief ,, hope and love can acquire their sanction and uJl.tirnate significance - a,hd that is ' re.ligion, that undenia.bly vi tal force in man's life which, ho-wever~ we must not confuse with ·:the theologic finery of centurie:s, and which, after a thinker like S¢ren Kierkegaard, need no longer be a threat ·to inte·llectuai h0nesty. Therefore we have found it necessary in our Conclusion to give a brief appraisal of Hartmann' r..: view of the Ideal, and to suggest that despite :N1e~zsche1 s re,jection of religion and Hartmann's own separation 'of the spheres ' of ethics and religion, any future ethics which truE?ly und~rstands and wishes to oveTcome the! position of Nietzsche and Hartmann, wiJ.: have. to wrestle anew with the problem of its relatjon to religion. • It is here that Hartmann' s basis of ontology . does not satisfy us. He believe'S in an ideal self-existence of values, the everlasting Sosein o,f moral va:n..ue:s irrespective of man or tlme·. This is a gre·at step forward from subjectivistic ethics and affords us an idea for getting beyond ethical relat.ivism - and we believe with Hartmann that Nietzsche! broke the ground for this when he surmised that we have· never yet known what good and evil are-. Rationality, however, col!lp"'!ls us to discover an ultimate authority for values and everything pertaining to them. To stop short at ontology does not seem satisfactory. All through the history of thought we have! never really felt that "the worJLd is just so" is a sufficient. reply to· the wltx_ about existence; that. this attitude can lead to grave error and presumptuousness -4- has been .Proved over and over again in history - we have· no illusions about this; but then "it is not the fault of the attitude as such - we believe,, indeed, that thi.s attitude is as much a part of the ontological des.cription of the world as anythipg else •. This primacy of ethics in Hartmann's philosophy /does not obviate the fact that in studying his work must ~ attempt an understanding of his ontological works, more' a~ especially zur Grundlegung dar Ontologie and Der. Aufbau der realen Welt, as a prer~quisite. It will not be possible to qo justice to his epistemology unless we see it against the background of his ontological research. In any case; Hartmann himseif ultimately intends the· epistemology as part of a single labour 11diesseits von Ideallsmus und Realismus", that is as part of It is ontol~gy. precisely for this. reason that he prefers to speak qf Metaphzsics . of Knowledge ("Metaphysik dar Erkenntnis") instead qf'epistemology or theory of knowledge ("Erkenntnistheorie"). For all H~rtmann1 philosophy is ont-ology - but all ontology is metaphysics •. Naverthe:less we must realise thaT purely historically, Hartmann's epistemology preceded his The ~ntology. Grtmdzftge einer Metaph.ysik der Erkenntnis appeared for the first tim~ in 1921, followed by the Ethik four year'S late-r;, whereas Zur Grtmdlegung der Ontologie:, the first of the onto.logical ~ works, was on]y ready in 1934. The order in which woTks t~e: appeared is for Hartmann not merely a ma:tter of incidence. co~on In.fact, he considers it as an evidence which itself is met·apbysically founded. He says. that the ontology forms the background :fo·r the earlier work, and that the latte·r ess~tia:t are labours lying towards the: periphery of the central task. He also maintains that it is in the nature of the world and .its problems that the experience gained on these outskirts of philosophy - the phenomena of which are the first to force themselves on our consciousne·ss - , should precede a conspective view of the world {"DeJUl so ist der Mensch: was sich nicht· drastisch antdr!ngt, 1hn nicht erfasst, herumwirbelt, bedr!ngt i