Hermann Lotze
An Intellectual Biography

As a philosopher, psychologist, and physician, the German thinker Hermann Lotze (1817–81) defies classification. Working in the mid-nineteenth-century era of programmatic realism, he critically reviewed and rearranged theories and concepts in books on pathology, physiology, medical psychology, anthropology, history, aesthetics, metaphysics, logic, and religion. Leading anatomists and physiologists reworked his hypotheses about the central and autonomic nervous systems. Dozens of fin-de-siècle philosophical contemporaries emulated him, yet often without acknowledgment, precisely because he had made conjecture and refutation into a method. In spite of Lotze's status as a pivotal figure in nineteenth-century intellectual thought, no complete treatment of his work exists, and certainly no effort to take account of the feminist secondary literature. Hermann Lotze: An Intellectual Biography is the first full-length historical study of Lotze's intellectual origins, scientific community, institutional context, and worldwide reception.

Reviews & endorsements

'This is a work of the highest significance … it promises to be, first, the only contemporary study of a seminal but neglected thinker and, second, an important contribution to the still nascent, yet growing and much-needed, intellectual history of the academic nineteenth century. This marvelous book is a remarkable and groundbreaking accomplishment.' David Sullivan, Metropolitan State University of Denver

Customer reviews

Product details

• Date Published: June 2015
• format: Hardback
• isbn: 9780521418485
• length: 515 pages

• dimensions: 235 x 160 x 30 mm
• weight: 0.85kg
• contains: 30 b/w illus.
• availability: Available