Michele Vagnetti

This article investigates the impact of Rudolph Hermann Lotze’s philosophy on William James’s The Principles of Psychology (1890). It argues that several of James’s core concepts are deeply indebted to Lotze’s work. Both thinkers maintain that psychology is not a natural science and advance a sustained critique of scientific psychology and of the associationist account of the mind. Moreover, Lotze’s arguments inform James’s theories of ideomotor action, emotion, and local signs. Taken together, these parallels show that James draws extensively on Lotze’s philosophy in formulating many of the original and distinctive claims of The Principles of Psychology.

The chapters in this volume try to reveal the depth and coherence of Lotze’s philosophy. Lotze emerges as a systematic philosopher whose work addresses enduring philosophical problems: the relation between science and metaphysics, the nature of meaning, the structure of subjectivity, the foundations of logic, and the ethical demands of human life. His dialectical approach—balancing empirical rigor with metaphysical insight and logic with teleology—positions him as a key figure in the transition from classical German philosophy to contemporary thought. Lotze’s influence on a wide array of philosophical movements—from British idealism and American pragmatism to Neo-Kantianism, phenomenology, and early analytic philosophy—testifies the enduring relevance of his ideas. By revisiting Lotze’s work through both historical and systematic lenses, this volume aims not only to restore his rightful place in the philosophical canon but also to stimulate new conversations about the intersection of science, metaphysics, and human values.

Rudolph Hermann Lotze (1817‒1881) was a leading figure of late 19th-century German philosophy. This volume provides a comprehensive reassessment of Lotze's thought and analyzes the many different aspects of his logic, metaphysics, epistemology, and philosophy of mind. Lotze reconsidered the philosophy of German Idealism and initiated an objectivist turn that was instrumental in the development of leading philosophical movements of the 20th century, including analytic philosophy, phenomenology, and pragmatism. This volume seeks to demonstrate the importance of Lotze's thought to the history of philosophy. Part I addresses Lotze's influence on and relatedness to the thought of Franz Brentano, Thomas Hill Green, Francis Herbert Bradley, James Ward, Emily Elizabeth Constance Jones, William James, Edmund Husserl, Wilhelm Windelband, Gottlob Frege, and Ludwig Wittgenstein, and to two philosophers who brought Lotze to his turn in philosophy, Jakob Friedrich Fries and Johann Friedrich Herbart. Part II focuses on the connection between metaphysics and epistemology in the early Lotze, on the problem of value in Lotze's “greater” Logik, on his explorations on the foundations of mathematics, on the relationship between thought and language, on human sentience, on the method of hypotheses in science, and on Lotze's logic of existence and existence-entailing concepts. The Philosophy of Rudolph Hermann Lotze will appeal to scholars and graduate students interested in the history of philosophy, particularly 19th-century German philosophy and the history of analytic philosophy and phenomenology.

The purpose of this article is to investigate the impact of Rudolph Hermann Lotze’s ideas on William James. The article will show that several core concepts in James’s The Principles of Psychology (1890) have been inspired by Lotze’s work. Both authors notably agree that psychology is not a natural science. They express a sharp criticism of scientific psychology and of the associationist view of the mind. Lotze’s arguments also underpin James’s theories of ideomotor action, of emotions and of local signs. In short, James draws heavily on Lotze’s philosophy to formulate many of the original claims in The Principles of Psychology.