Hartmann, (Carl Robert) Eduard von
(18421906)
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.
