Lotze’s concept of ‘Wirklichkeit’ in dialogue with Herbart’s realism

This paper focuses on Lotze’s concept of wirklich/Wirklichkeit, and its relation to Herbart’s realism, which is probably Lotze’s most pervasive influence. I will first present some of Herbart’s most important concepts (i.e. position, reality, and pure being), and I will then discuss Lotze’s criticism of Herbart’s purely abstract conception of reality. I will then move on to presenting Lotze’s threefold understanding of reality (things, relations, and events), which I deem more dynamic than the one endorsed by Herbart. Against such a backdrop, I will focus on Lotze’s concept of ‘true proposition’, understood as a fourth kind of ‘reality’ and directly related to the concept of ‘Geltung’, so as to also tackle the contrast between some ‘Platonic’ and ‘Aristotelian’ aspects of his thought. Finally, some passages will be recalled in order to highlight the contrast, within Lotze’s own philosophy, between a highly speculative form of pantheistic monism and his more scientific contributions.