Nicolai Hartmann’s Ethics. Feeling and Cognition of Values: Between Emotionalism and Rationalism

The purpose of this article is to identify the most important elements of Hartmann’s understanding of “feeling of value” and to point out the ambiguities associated with this notion. The most important stages in the formation of this concept are delineated by the publications: Grundzüge einer Metaphysik der Erkenntnis, Ethik, Vom Wesen sittlicher Forderungen.[1] In all of these texts, Hartmann treats feeling of value as a proper way of knowing value, in relation to which philosophical cognition of value is only secondary and dependent. Hartmann’s understanding of feeling of value in ethics is, however, very broad, so that it somewhat loses the subtle divisions that were characteristic of the views of Max Scheler and Dietrich von Hildebrand. At the same time, however, Hartmann’s concept introduces several new elements that are important for the understanding of the nature of the feeling of value, such as, among others, the limited capacity of the axiological consciousness, the shifting horizon of values, or the relational reference of values to the person as the subject and addressee of an action and the reference to the situation in which a given action is taken. Moreover, to a greater extent than Scheler and von Hildebrand, Hartmann develops a field for the presence of rationalistic elements in the cognition of values.     The purpose of this article is to identify the most important emotional and nonemotional elements of Hartmann’s understanding of “feeling of value” and to point out the ambiguities associated with this notion. The most important stages in the formation of this concept are delineated by the publications: Grundzüge einer Metaphysik der Erkenntnis, Ethik, Vom Wesen sittlicher Forderungen, and (in part) Zur Grundlegug der Ontologie. In all of these texts, Hartmann treats feeling of value as a proper way of knowing value, in relation to which philosophical cognition of value is only secondary and dependent. Hartmann’s understanding of feeling of value in ethics is, however, very broad, so that, to some extent, it loses the subtle divisions that were characteristic of the views of Max Scheler and Dietrich von Hildebrand. At the same time, however, Hartmann’s concept introduces several new elements that are important for the understanding of the nature of the feeling of value, such as, among others, the limited capacity of the axiological consciousness, the shifting horizon of values, or the relational reference of values to the person as the subject and addressee of an action and the reference to the situation in which a given action is taken. Moreover, to a greater extent than Scheler and von Hildebrand, Hartmann seems to develop a field for the presence of rational elements in the cognition of values. It is also characteristic of Har tmann’s conception to treat feeling of value – in a precise understanding – as part of the broader and more primary structure of the emotional-transcendent acts that constitute human existence in the world