"The natural, the scientific, and the ontological relation are one and the same thing" (Nicolai Hartmann).
"Insofar as there is a priori knowledge of real objects, at least a part of the categories of being must coincide with the categories of knowledge" (Nicolai Hartmann).
The Philosophy of Nicolai Hartmann
Nicolai Hartmann, a German of Lithuanian origin, was considered in his lifetime as one of the great German philosophers, but after his death (1950) he was forgotten, hardly mentioned. Nevertheless, his ideas deserve to be rescued because Hartmann was an original and universalist philosopher. He was original because he unbiasedly and critically rethought the basic philosophical problems, i.e., he focused on the philosophy of problems and not on philosophy as a system. And it was universalist for two reasons: 1) because it addressed all aspects of philosophy (in the manner of Hegel): ontology, theory of knowledge, philosophy of nature, ethics, aesthetics, etc.; 2) because it created a new ontology of a synthetic and universalist type.
Hartmann was mainly inspired by Husserl's phenomenology, which he considered a primordial finding, because with it a radical reform of philosophy could be approached. The result was the creation of a new ontology, a unifying ontology, in which he integrates the external world and the internal world (of knowledge and consciousness), considering them as objective realities, searching in both worlds for objective facts. In this way, Hartmann's ontology is of a scientific type, since it uses the same methods of science, where the real and the truth is objectivity, but in a generalized sense, considering both the visible and the invisible. Hartmann was a pioneer in discovering the links between the positive sciences and philosophy.
The salient points of Hartmann's ontology are:
Following the Aristotelian tradition, he centers ontology on the study of "being as being," without considering any metaphysical or transcendental a priori principles, only considering the most general characteristics of being.
Traditional ontology always refers to metaphysics. For Hartmann, on the other hand, metaphysics is not a point of departure, but a point of arrival. That is, the metaphysical question develops as one travels along the path of ontological analysis.
Difference between "being" and "entity". Being is plural, but being is one and identical in all entities. The essential is the universal of being, that which is present in all particular entities.
Ontology (like philosophy) seeks principles, the general, the universal. The only method of ontological investigation is the inductive method. Induction is the foundation of knowledge, both in science and in philosophy. It is the path that leads from being to being, from the particular to the general, to the universal, to principles. Hartmann sought the most universal and fundamental categories that underlie all entities. This categorial analysis makes the structure of reality intelligible, but demands a high level of abstraction to achieve universality.
The true aim of philosophy is to arrive at the generalization of the various results of the positive sciences as a set of universal principles or laws of being, the laws underlying appearances.
Positive sciences and philosophy (or natural sciences and sciences of the spirit) coincide in that both are objective and both seek the generic and universal from the particular. Science elaborates theories (general laws) from particular facts. Philosophy leads us to the knowledge of being from the knowledge of particular entities.
In his work "The Structure of the Real World" (1942), Hartmann expounds his theory that the structure of reality consists of 4 layers (or strata) and 12 pairs of opposite categories.
Reality has a quaternary structure. The 4 layers or strata of being are: 1) inanimate things, studied by physics; 2) living beings, studied by biology; 3) beings with mind, studied by psychology; 4) spiritual beings, with self-awareness, studied by philosophy. Consciousness belongs to the higher stratum of reality.
There are unisthriatic (mineral kingdom), bisthriatic (plant kingdom), tristhriatic (animal kingdom) and quatriesthriatic (the kingdom of human beings) beings.
Each stratum has its own special (or modal) categories and its own categorical structure. But there is a set of basic, general or fundamental categories that are common to all levels, spheres and realms of being. They are 12 pairs of opposite categories, which provide the rational character to reality, which make reality intelligible.
Nº
Category
Opposite
1
Principle
Concrete
2
Structure
Mode
3
Form
Matter
4
Internal
External
5
Dependence
Determination
6
Quantity
Quality
7
Unity
Multiplicity
8
Harmony
Conflict
9
Opposition
Dimension
10
Discontinuity
Continuity
11
Substrate
Relation
12
Element
Complex
Categories constitute the structure of reality that the human mind merely discovers and recognizes. They are not structures of the cognizing subject (as Kant claimed). The subject does not construct the object, but apprehends it according to the identity existing between the categories of the subject and those of the object.
Every categorial system must be open, and not closed (as in the case of Aristotle or Kant), for philosophy must be linked to the positive sciences, which evolve, develop and perfect themselves.
Hartmann elaborates an ontology of consciousness. Consciousness is part of reality, even if this reality is invisible, immaterial and aspatial. Reality should not be confused with the visible, material and spatial. The consciousness, which belongs to the higher stratum, shares the same basic categories as the lower strata.
Time is the most fundamental characteristic of reality, more than space and matter, because time exists in every entity or process, while space does not always exist. Every entity is a process. Everything that is real is necessarily temporal. Time is the unifying category.
He distinguishes between 3 levels of being, corresponding to the disciplines of ontology (which deals with categorial analysis), metaphysics (the realm of being) and ontics. The latter is situated between the two previous ones: it transcends ontology and connects with metaphysics.
Metaphysics, the realm of being, cannot be rationalized, for it is beyond categories, it is something unapproachable to consciousness and conceptually indefinable. Being is in an irrational dimension, beyond reason. In every entity one can know what is perceived by the consciousness, the objective, but being itself escapes all conceptualization. The being of the entity is not reduced to the being perceived by the consciousness. We can only approach being by seeking the universal in all particular entities, that is, through the fundamental categories.
From the theory of the categories, Hartmann elaborates a philosophy of nature (the external world), a philosophy of spirit (the internal world, knowledge and consciousness) and a metaphysics (the transcendent world).
The internal world is of a metaphysical type, but by centering it in the ontological sphere, it acquires its true profile: the ontology of the internal world, the ontology of knowledge and consciousness. Hartmann approaches the problem of the internal world from knowledge itself (principle of immanence). But immanence leads to transcendence, that is, to the metaphysical problem of knowledge and consciousness. The phenomenological analysis of the inner world leads to the transcendent union of subject and object, which is being, which is supraindividual and extra-empirical, outside of subjective consciousness and the limits of reason. Hartmann thus incorporates the irrational into philosophy, but without ascribing to it any more metaphysics than to the rational.
According to Hartmann, traditional metaphysics has considered two alternatives with respect to being:
Accept that complete knowledge of being is possible, i.e., that being can be rationally grasped. This leads to a closed system, which forgets the irrational aspects of being.
For Hegel, philosophical categories are complete: they govern for knowledge (epistemology) and for objects of knowledge (ontology). There is categorial identity in both aspects, but reduced to the limits of rationality.
Assume that it is impossible to achieve the cognoscibility of things in themselves, that is, their being. This leads to rejecting the possibility of objective knowledge of being.
This is Kant's position: the noumenon, the thing in itself, is unknowable; the categories of reality are internal, they refer only to the internal world, the mental world.
For Hartmann, there is a middle way: being can be partially cognizable and rational, the rest being irrational and unknowable. Not everything can be an object of knowledge. Being has an intelligible aspect, which is what falls in the domain of ontology, the doctrine of the categories. But it also has an irrational, unintelligible, unknowable aspect, which cannot be captured by the rational way, so it falls within the domain of metaphysics. In this sense, he agrees with Kant: metaphysics is impossible as scientific knowledge, since its object is irrational.
Hartmann thus arrives at his "principle of partial identity of categories": "Insofar as there is a priori knowledge of real objects, at least a part of the categories of being must coincide with the categories of knowledge."
Ontology is the foundation of all knowledge, a science that is different and deeper than phenomenology, for the latter is superficial, since it does not go beyond the appearances of the real. And metaphysics is not a science, but a set of questions without rational answers.
Hartmann does not claim that ontology is the science of being, because the analysis of being cannot be carried out scientifically, rationally.
There are two primary spheres or modes of being: the real and the ideal. For Hartmann, we apprehend not only particular (spatio-temporal) objects, but also ideal objects, essences, Platonic forms.
The real sphere consists of a chain of temporal events produced in the four strata (material, vital, psychic and spiritual). The real is the modality of knowledge, of the cognitive.
The sphere of the ideal consists of abstract entities, such as mathematical and logical entities. The ideal is the general, the logical, the modality of existence. The ideal is independent of consciousness. It is neither spatial nor temporal.
Hartmann formulates several categorical laws, among them the following 4 fundamental ones:
Law of validity. The categories are principles, but they are nothing without their manifestations (the categorial elements), and these are nothing without the principles.
Law of coherence. The categories do not exist loosely, but are united in each stratum.
Law of stratification or recurrence. The categories of the lower strata are contained in the upper ones, but not vice versa.
Law of dependence. The higher categorial elements depend on the lower ones, but the dependence is partial, since they possess their own space of freedom.
MENTAL vs.Hartmann's Ontology
Hartmann was a universalist who sought the supreme induction, the universal principles or categories that ground reality. In this sense, there are numerous points in common between the universalism of MENTAL and Hartmann's ontology:
The claim to ground totality by means of universal principles or categories.
The equivalence or identity between ontology and epistemology, between inner world and outer world, between subject and object. The primitives of MENTAL are philosophical categories. With MENTAL the great synthesis is achieved, the universal ontology and the universal epistemology, of the external world and the internal world.
Matter and psyche share the same categories, which are abstract in nature. But consciousness as such cannot express itself, for it belongs to the deep realm, and the deep as such cannot manifest itself, although we know its fundamental property: consciousness connects everything from a higher point of view, in particular it connects the opposites or duals. Only its manifestations can be expressed. Consciousness as such belongs to metaphysics, to the deep aspect of ontology. That is, the categories as such are inexpressible; only their manifestations are expressible.
The limits of rationality (of the expressible and the knowable) are the limits of the categories. What is beyond the categories belongs to the metaphysical (or "the mystical," as Wittgenstein puts it).
According to Hartmann, the most important underlying main category is time, for everything is a process. In MENTAL, the process is that of evaluation of the expressions (the manifestations of the categories). Time is not a category, it is a meta-category, since it affects all categories. Moreover, time and space are abstract and go together, they are two aspects of the same thing.
In Hartmann's ontology there are two connected worlds: the ideal and the real. MENTAL also connects both worlds. The ideal world is the abstract, intuitive and deep world: the world of categories. The real world is a manifestation of the ideal world, the rational world: that of the manifestations of the categories.
The categorial laws of Hartmann's ontology have their interpretation in MENTAL:
Law of validity. It corresponds to the duality between the superficial and the deep of the categories, that is, between the (abstract) categories and their manifestations (the concrete categorical elements).
Law of coherence. Corresponds to the bootstrapping of primitives: each primitive depends on and is supported by the others.
Law of layering or recurrence. Corresponds to the hierarchical structure of the manifestations of the categories, the fractal structure of reality, where the same categories apply at all levels.
Law of dependence. It corresponds to the structural and functional dependence of the manifestations of the categorical ones.
There are also differential aspects between MENTAL and Hartmann's ontology:
Although the number of pairs of fundamental opposite categories coincides (12), the categorial tables are different, although they have common elements. In both cases they correspond to the two modes of consciousness.
Hartmann's categories are generic and ambiguous, not formalized. MENTAL categories are generic, but they are also concrete, they can be manifested, expressed, formalized.
In addition to the pairs of opposites (or duals) of the categories of MENTAL, there are multiple pairs of opposites or duals, derived from the categories and configuring the unity of consciousness: semantics and syntax, the operative and the descriptive, the discrete and the continuous, the abstract and the concrete, the ideal and the real, the qualitative and the quantitative, the rational and the intuitive, ontology and epistemology, etc. The intuitive (and inexpressible) are the categories. The rational are the manifestations of the categories.
MENTAL transcends the real world: it is the language of possible worlds, the multiple possible manifestations of the ideal world. The possible worlds are all rational because they are expressible.
Hartmann's categories constitute an open system. Those of MENTAL constitute a complete, closed set.
In Hartmann's system, there are special categories in each stratum of reality. In MENTAL there are no special categories, but there are derived categories.
According to Hartmann, philosophy is the supreme generalization (or induction) of the results of the positive sciences. In MENTAL, philosophy is a priori (the philosophical categories), which are recognized a posteriori, in the objective world.
Hartmann's categorial laws are generic, not formalized, like the categories. In MENTAL, categorial laws relate categories to each other in a formalized way.
Hartmann's ontology does not constitute a language. MENTAL is a universal language, a language of consciousness, a language of the internal and external world, a formal philosophical and psychological language.
Bibliography
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Hartmann, Nicolai. Ontología I. Fundamentos. Fondo de Cultura Económica, México, 1954.
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Hartmann, Nicolai. New Ways of Ontology. Transaction Publishers, 2012.
Hartmann, Nicolai. Philosophie der Natur. Abriss der Speziellen Kategorienlehre (Filosofía de la Naturaleza. Demolición de la Teoría Especial de las Categorías). Walter de Gruyter, 1950. Disponible versión en español en Internet en Universia.
Hartmann, Nicolai. Introducción a la filosofía. Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México (UNAM), 1969. Disponible en Internet.
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Werkmeister, W.H. Nicolai Hartmann's New Ontology. Florida State University Press, 1990.
