Lotze, Rudolf Hermann (1817–1881)

German philosopher and physiologist. His great work was Mikrokosmos (1856–64), which expounds his views on nature and man, and shows him to be essentially the philosopher of the transition from the exaggerated Idealism of the first half of the century.

He was born in Bautzen. His first essay was ‘De Futurae Biologiae Principibus Philosophicis’, with which he gained his MD (1838). He laid the foundation of his philosophical system in Metaphysik (1841), and Logik (1843), but these books went unnoticed, and he first became known as a physiologist combating the then accepted doctrine of vitalism, his physiological works being Allgemeine Pathologie und Therapie als mechanische Naturwissenschaften (1842), Allgemeine Physiologie des korperlichen Lebens (1851), and Medizinische Psychologie oder Psychologie der Seele (1852). Other notable works are Geschichte der Aesthetik in Deutschland (1868), System der Philosophie (1874), Logik (1874), and Metaphysik (1879). Lotze was professor of philosophy at Leipzig in 1842, and from 1845 to 1880 held the chair of speculative philosophy at Göttingen.