Wolf Kettering Nicolai Hartmanns Metaphysik der Erkenntnis

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This work analyzes Hartmanns “Metaphysic of Gnosis”. The preface regarding the history of philosophy introduces the idea that the Copernican revolution that Kant brought into field had to be turned-about out of matter-of-factly reasons that Hartmann expatiated on. For Hartmanns philosophy provides the strongest reasons for a repeated turn of scientific philosophy towards metaphysics. Contrary to putative modern thoughts of scepticism, in terms of the philosophy of language or analytic philosophy, reasons for a scientific and critical realism can be brought into account by dint of Hartmann’s thoughts. This work stands up for exactly this exceptional position as a scientific and critical realism.

Through the methodological analysis of the “Gnosis of ideal being” the work outruns the thoughts of Hartmann, instead of merely explaining them. Gnosis is then grasped in a model that understands gnosis as an act which is performed in various mediums: Logic, Language, Notion, History, Nature and the transcendental structure of gnosis itself. In a word: Gnosis becomes an act inside the medium of reality.

The main result of the work is not the necessity of an ontological system in Hartmann’s terms, but a synthesis and legitimate coexistence of genuine ontological, anthropological and existential views that integrate the above mentioned mediums.

Present work closes a gap inside philosophical research because Hartmann’s Metaphysic of Gnosis is the most untried part of Hartmann’s philosophy. Or, to say it with the prevailing words of Helmuth Plessner: “The lesson of the appearance of the ideal being” is still a desideratum, as the “boldest and least researched chapter” of Hartmann´s philosophy.