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Philosopher
Baltic German philosopher — the new ontology of strata and a realist theory of knowledge
University of Marburg; University of Cologne; University of Berlin; University of Göttingen · Germany · d. 20 February 1882 — 9 October 1950
A Baltic German philosopher trained in the Marburg school under Cohen and Natorp, whose Grundzüge einer Metaphysik der Erkenntnis (1921) broke with neo-Kantianism for a realism in which being is independent of knowing. His four-volume ontology (1935–1950) described the real world as four strata, inorganic, organic, psychical and spiritual, each resting on the lower and adding its own novelty. His Ethik (1926) defended an objective but historically discovered realm of values.
Jacques Derrida died in Paris on 9 October 2004; Nicolai Hartmann died in Göttingen on 9 October 1950. One spent a career showing that presence never quite arrives, the other rebuilt an ontology of levels in which being does not depend on anyone's knowing it. The date puts the two reflexes of twentieth-century philosophy side by side.
Jacques Derrida, Nicolai Hartmann
