title: Following Ernst Haeckel: The “Monistic Ethics” of Heinrich Schmidt
metadata.name: dc.contributor.author
metadata.value: Hossfeld, Uwe
metadata.lang: -
metadata.name: dc.contributor.author
metadata.value: Levit, Georgy S.
metadata.lang: -
metadata.name: dc.date.accessioned
metadata.value: 2023-10-06T12:51:18Z
metadata.lang: -
metadata.name: dc.date.available
metadata.value: 2023-10-06T12:51:18Z
metadata.lang: -
metadata.name: dc.date.issued
metadata.value: 2022
metadata.lang: -
metadata.name: dc.identifier.citation
metadata.value: Hossfeld U., Levit G. S. Following Ernst Haeckel: The “Monistic Ethics” of Heinrich Schmidt. Philosophy of the History of Philosophy, 2022, vol. 3, рр. 261– 274. https://doi.org/10.21638/spbu34.2022.117 (In Russian)
metadata.lang: en_GB
metadata.name: dc.identifier.other
metadata.value: https://doi.org/10.21638/spbu34.2022.117
metadata.lang: -
metadata.name: dc.identifier.uri
metadata.value: http://hdl.handle.net/11701/44125
metadata.lang: -
metadata.name: dc.description.abstract
metadata.value: The article scrutinizes the ethical conception of Heinrich Schmidt (1874–1935),
  a student of “German Darwin” Ernst Haeckel. Haeckel was not only an eminent
  champion of Darwinism, but also a philosopher who created a universal evolutionism,
  or “monism”. Haeckel’s doctrine is founded on the concept of evolution as a
  universal phenomenon, including everything from inorganic matter to the human
  beings. He believed in the unity of body and soul, as well as in the unity of spirit
  and matter. The acceptance of substantial monism as a scientific metamethodology
  and the basis of a new Weltanschauung was accomplished by Haeckel’s philosophical
  achievement. Haeckel united matter, energy and psychoma (i. e. world soul) into the
  trinity of substance, thus covering all the basic physical and mental properties within
  the framework of one doctrine. All three elements correspond with the certain laws
  of conservation: the conservation of matter, energy, and psychoma or Empfindung
  (i. e. perception). To Haeckel, his monistic perspective reconciles the “old” disputes
  between materialism, energy and panpsychism. Schmidt, Haeckel’s immediate student,
  tried to further develop Haeckel’s philosophy and proposed an integral monistic
  doctrine. Schmidt proceeded from Haeckel’s principle of substance, leading to
  the idea of material evolution towards ever greater perfection and, consequently, the
  emergence of the human mind and associated with it infinitely self-improving science
  and culture. Accordingly, the moral (the good) is what leads to the preservation
  and improvement of existence. The evolution of human society follows the direction of “the good”, understood as harmony, while “evil” is the absence of harmony. He
  expressed this idea in his main ethical work The Search for Harmony in Monistic Ethics.
  In his later writings, Schmidt made efforts to adapt monist ethics to the ideology
  of National-Socialism. The failure of those attempts is a historical and philosophical
  argument in favor of the concept of the fundamental incompatibility of Haeckeliantype
  monism and Nazism.
metadata.lang: en_GB
metadata.name: dc.language.iso
metadata.value: ru
metadata.lang: en_GB
metadata.name: dc.publisher
metadata.value: St Petersburg State University
metadata.lang: en_GB
metadata.name: dc.relation.ispartofseries
metadata.value: Philosophy of the History of Philosophy;Volume 3
metadata.lang: -
metadata.name: dc.subject
metadata.value: monism
metadata.lang: en_GB
metadata.name: dc.subject
metadata.value: monistic ethics
metadata.lang: en_GB
metadata.name: dc.subject
metadata.value: theory of evolution
metadata.lang: en_GB
metadata.name: dc.subject
metadata.value: Ernst Haeckel
metadata.lang: en_GB
metadata.name: dc.subject
metadata.value: Heinrich Schmidt
metadata.lang: en_GB
metadata.name: dc.title
metadata.value: Following Ernst Haeckel: The “Monistic Ethics” of Heinrich Schmidt
metadata.lang: en_GB
metadata.name: dc.type
metadata.value: Article
metadata.lang: en_GB
resources.filename: 261-274.pdf
resources.url: https://dspace.spbu.ru/bitstream/11701/44125/1/261-274.pdf
resources.format: Adobe PDF
resources.size: 1,07 MB