SOURCE: “Hartmann's Pessimism,” in The Philosophical Review, Vol. XXXVIII, No. 4, July, 1929, pp. 350-371.

In the following essay, Tasanoff places Hartmann's philosophy between those of G. W. F. Hegel and Arthur Schopenhauer, determining that Hartmann escapes major flaws Tasanoff finds evident in the work of the former two philosphers.

I.

Twenty-five years after the publication of The World as Will and Idea Schopenhauer literally had to beg his publisher Brockhaus to try out a second enlarged edition of his masterpiece. Hartmann's publisher Heymons brought out seven editions of The Philosophy of the Unconscious in six years, to be followed by five more in Hartmann's life-time. That this was merely a publisher's triumph Hartmann would have been the last one to admit. But in the preface to his seventh edition the thirty-two year old author speculated: Had Schopenhauer been fortunate enough to find a real publisher, had the thirty years...