Hartmann, (Carl Robert) Eduard von(1842-1906)
Hartmann, (Carl Robert) Eduard von(1842-1906)
German philosopher and author of The Philosophy of the Unconscious, which laid the groundwork of both modern psychoanalysis and of phenomenology. Born February 23, 1842, in Berlin, Hartmann was originally educated for an army career but later turned to philosophy and was awarded his doctorate by the University of Rostock in 1867.
He was among the first to investigate Spiritualism in Germany. He tried to give a definite place to both physical and mental phenomena in his philosophy. In his book Der Spiritismus (1885), he offers the following analysis of Spirtualistic phenomena:
"A nervous force producing outside the limits of the human body mechanical and plastic effects. Duplicate hallucinations of this same nervous force and producing also physical and plastic effects. A latent, somnambulistic consciousness, capable (the subject being in his normal state) of reading in the intellectual background of another man, his present and his past, and being able to divine the future."
Hartmann died at Grosslichterfelde on June 5, 1906.
Sources:
Hartmann, Eduard von. Der Spiritismus. Translated by C. C. Massey as Spiritism. London: Psychological Press, 1885.