Eduard Hartmann

Philipp Mainländer dedicated an essay to the philosophy of Von Hartmann. He did not consider him to be a genuine philosopher, because he did not start his philosophy with an epistemological research, despite the warnings of Kant and Schopenhauer. The criticism has been described as an attack abounding in clean hits but marred by bitter sarcasm, such as "is the coitus a sacrifice the individual makes? You must be – I repeat it – a very strangely organized being", and for denying Schopenhauer's deduction that the will is thing in itself: "you also have the sad honor, to stand at the same level as those who have misunderstood Copernicus and still confidently believe that the sun turns around the earth."

British film-maker and author Edouard d'Araille provides a modern-day appraisal of the philosophy of von Hartmann in his introductory essay to the 2001 Edition (3 Volumes) of The Philosophy of the Unconscious. He evaluates von Hartmann as the vital link between the vitalism of Arthur Schopenhauer and the psychology of the Unconscious of Sigmund Freud.

Carl Jung wrote in his autobiography, Memories, Dreams, Reflections (1963), that he had read von Hartmann "assiduously".

He died at Gross-Lichterfelde in 1906 and is buried in an honorary grave in the Columbiadamm Cemetery in Berlin.

Rudolf Steiner, referring to Hartmann's Critical Establishment of Transcendental Realism (Kritische Grundlegung des transzendentalen Realismus, 2nd Edition Berlin, 1875) gave his opinion, in the preface to his own book Truth and Knowledge (1892), that Hartmann's world-view was "the most significant philosophical work of our time".

Hartmann married Agnes Taubert (1844–1877) on 3 July 1872 in Charlottenburg. After her death, he married Alma Lorenz (1854-1931) on 4 November 1878 in Bremen. The marriages produced six children.

His reputation as a philosopher was established by his first book, Philosophy of the Unconscious (1869; 10th ed. 1890). This success was largely due to the originality of its title, the diversity of its contents (von Hartmann professing to obtain his speculative results by the methods of inductive science, and making plentiful use of concrete illustrations), its fashionable pessimism and the vigour and lucidity of its style. The conception of the Unconscious, by which von Hartmann describes his ultimate metaphysical principle is, fundamentally, not as paradoxical as it sounds, being merely a new and mysterious designation for the Absolute of German metaphysicians.

Hartmann was born in Berlin, the son of Prussian Major General Robert von Hartmann and was educated with the intention of him pursuing a military career. In 1858 he entered the Guards Artillery Regiment of the Prussian Army and attended the United Artillery and Engineering School. He achieved the rank of first lieutenant but took leave from the army in 1865 due to a chronic knee problem. After some hesitation between pursuing music or philosophy, he decided to make the latter his profession, and in 1867 obtained a Ph.D. from the University of Rostock. In 1868 he formally resigned from the army. After the great success of his first work Philosophy of the Unconscious (1869)—the publication of which led to Hartmann being embroiled in the pessimism controversy in Germany—he rejected professorships offered to him by the universities of Leipzig, Göttingen and Berlin. He subsequently returned to Berlin. For many years, he lived a retired life of study as an independent scholar, doing most of his work in bed, while suffering great pain.

Karl Robert Eduard von Hartmann (23 February 1842 – 5 June 1906) was a German philosopher, author of Philosophy of the Unconscious (1869).