Levels of Reality and the Values Hierarchy of Nicolai Hartmann
Discussion
From the Wikipedia:
Modalities of Being
"Nicolai Hartmann equates ontology with Aristotle's science of being qua being.[5][6] This science involves studying the most general characteristics of entities, usually referred to as categories, and the relations between them.[7] According to Hartmann, the most general categories are:
- Moments of being (Seinsmomente): existence (Dasein) and essence (Sosein)
- Modes of being (Seinsweisen): reality and ideality
- Modalities of being (Seinsmodi): possibility, actuality and necessity
The existence of an entity constitutes the fact that this entity is there, that it exists. Essence, on the other hand, constitutes what this entity is like, what its characteristics are. Every entity has both of these modes of being.[8] But, as Hartmann points out, there is no absolute difference between existence and essence. For example, the existence of a leaf belongs to the essence of the tree while the existence of the tree belongs to the essence of the forest.[9]
Reality and ideality are two disjunctive categories: every entity is either real or ideal. Ideal entities are universal, returnable and always existing while real entities are individual, unique and destructible.[10] Among the ideal entities are mathematical objects and values.[11] Reality is made up of a chain of temporal events. Reality is obtrusive, it is often experienced as a form of resistance in contrast to ideality.
The modalities of being are divided into the absolute modalities (actuality and non-actuality) and the relative modalities (possibility, impossibility and necessity). The relative modalities are relative in the sense that they depend on the absolute modalities: something is possible, impossible or necessary because something else is actual. Hartmann analyzes modality in the real sphere in terms of necessary conditions.[10] An entity becomes actual if all its necessary conditions obtain. If all these factors obtain, it is necessary that the entity exists. But as long as one of its factors is missing, it can't become actual, it is impossible. This has the consequence that all positive and all the negative modalities fall together: whatever is possible is both actual and necessary, whatever is not necessary is both non-actual and impossible.[9] This is true also in the ideal sphere, where possibility is given by being free from contradictions.
Levels of reality
In Hartmann's ontological theory, the levels of reality are:
(1) the inorganic level (German: anorganische Schicht),
(2) the organic level (organische Schicht),
(3) the psychical/emotional level (seelische Schicht) and
(4) the intellectual/cultural level (geistige Schicht).[12]
In The Structure of the Real World (Der Aufbau der realen Welt), Hartmann postulates four laws that apply to the levels of reality.
- The law of recurrence: Lower categories recur in the higher levels as a subaspect of higher categories, but never vice versa.
- The law of modification: The categorial elements modify in their recurrence in the higher levels (they are shaped by the characteristics of the higher levels).
- The law of the novum: The higher category is composed of a diversity of lower elements, but it is a specific novum that is not included in the lower levels.
- The law of distance between levels: Since the different levels do not develop continuously but in leaps, they can be clearly distinguished.
Ethical theory
The central concept of Hartmann's ethical theory is that of a value. Hartmann's 1926 book, Ethik, elaborates a material ethics of value according to which moral knowledge is achieved through phenomenological investigation into our experiences of values. Moral phenomena are understood by Hartmann to be experiences of a realm of being which is distinct from that of material things, namely, the realm of values. The values inhabiting this realm are unchanging, super-temporal, and super-historical, though human consciousness of them shifts in focus over time. Borrowing a style of phrase from Kant, Hartmann characterizes values as conditions of the possibility of goods; in other words, values are what make it possible for situations in the world to be good. Our knowledge of the goodness (or badness) of situations is derived from our emotional experiences of them, experiences which are made possible by an a priori capacity for the appreciation of value. For Hartmann, this means that our awareness of the value of a state of affairs is not arrived at through a process of reasoning, but rather, by way of an experience of feeling, which he calls valuational consciousness. If, then, ethics is the study of what one ought to do, or what states of affairs one ought to bring about, such studies, according to Hartmann, must be carried out by paying close attention to our emotional capacities to discern what is valuable in the world. As such, Hartmann's conception of proper moral philosophy contrasts with rationalist and formalist theories, such as Kant's, according to which ethical knowledge is derived from purely rational principles."