Many of the affinities with and divergences from Husserl's phenomenology are made quite clear even in Hartmann's Grundzüge. With Husserl he affrms that there are universal essences ("essentialities," Wesenheiten) and that they are transcendent, i.e., their way of being — which he terms "ideality" and contrasts with the way of being ("reality") of whatever exists individually and temporally — is not that of thought. His last writings affirm this position and its centrality to any adequate ontology and epistemology with no less emphasis than the 1921 book did. He is equally emphatic in asserting that there are species of intuition through which such essentialities are given so that — since universals are transcendent rather than immanent — acquaintance with any of them is acquired.

However, in line with other realistic phenomenologists and many interpretations — more likely misinterpretations — of Heidegger, he insisted that ways of being given belong only to objects [Gegenstände] whereas entities — whether real or ideal — as such are not essentially objects but are "transobjective." The limits to what can be made an object and to what can be known are "gnoseological" (cognitive) limits; they do not coincide with those of what there is. As such, a being of whatever kind is indifferent to whether it is or is not cognizable [erkennbar]. Beings as such are affected by these limits neither in their quiddity nor in their being. <Zur Grundlegung der Ontologie (1933) Chapter 10>

Hartmann believed that the phenomenology of Husserl and Heidegger misconceived these limits when it proposed as a basic thesis that every being must have some way of "showing itself." < Remarkably, Hartmann interprets readiness-to-hand, the noematic correlate to circumspecting as a way of being given. {Grundlegung… 79)> The noetic-noematic correlation that Husserl had asserted as an a priori principle becomes false when it is elevated to the status of an ontological principle rather than one having its legitimate place in gnoseology or epistemology. Hart- <289> mann's see determinism) necessitarian conception of real being made it impossible to conceive that a real entity, especially a material one, have inherent ways in which it might be given even when it is not actually given. The real entity that is known must remain indifferent to, "untouched by" being known. Even in the case of an evidently true judgment where the entity as judged about (the object, which is essentially relative to the judging) is itself given, this object cannot coincide with (be identical with) the entity in its transobjective status. Thus, Hartmann is led back from the innovative view of Husserl and Heidegger toward a variation on the traditional representational theory of knowledge with an accompanying conception of truth as correspondence.

The possibility remains open that this divergence arose through a terminological misunderstanding fairly common in the literature on Husserl. It is clear that Hartmann employs 'object' with a meaning closely akin to that with which it is used in a long tradition, extending back at least to IMMANUEL KANT. In this sense all objects are cognizable or knowable since they are essentially related to a knowing subject: they arise only in the synthesis of intuition and concept. This use of the term then carries over into post-Kantian idealism and into various schools of antiintellectualist thought: vitalistic (WILHELM DILTHEY, HENRI BERGSON); existential (Kierkegaard, KARL JASPERS); voluntaristic (Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, WILLIAM JAMES) thought. Hartmann tends to treat the theory of objects of Alexius Meinong separately from Husserl's phenomenology and may have overlooked the affinity between the two. Husserl uses the word in such a way that x is an object if there is anything at all that can be truly said of x. <Ideen I §22, Shorter Works 13> This use would imply that the statement, "Entities in their transobjective status are not objects," is nonsensical. The unity of all objects rather than that of all entities would then be the all-inclusive (absolute) unity.

Hartmann, however, maintains that from contact with the entity about which knowledge is gathered there arises a new immanent formation (Gebilde), one belonging to the realm of mental entities, the "idea" of traditional epistemology, which he also termed the "image." The basic error of idealism is to identify this mental structure with the entity itself. Such immanent mental structures intend or represent entities through a phenomenon, the entity as intended. To think that this phenomenon might ever be the represented entity itself is an error, he thinks, no less serious than that of idealism. It appears to be the error of those whom he calls "the phenomenologists." <Hartmann, 1935, Chapter 10 and 1921> Rejecting the "correlativistic prejudice" leads Hartmann to his view that "being in itself" is not a strictly ontological concept. This appears to be the conclusion which led to his decisive break with neo-Kantianism, and he found it to be greatly facilitated by the account of categorial form in Husserl's phenomenology. A person p's knowing an entity x is a relationship in which being-an-object-for-p belongs to the object of cognition, x as cognized, not to x in its transobjective status, which is presupposed by the knowledge relationship. "Being in itself" is the categorial form of the phenomena through which x as it is "announces itself" in the knowledge-relation. Epistemology (gnoseology, phenomenology), not ontology, needs the form "being in itself" to differentiate objects of knowledge from mere objects of belief. Being as such, however, is not given primarily through doxic or cognitive acts but pre-objectively (pre-categorially). That there are real entities which may correspond to phenomena is indicated but not convincingly established by what can be known about them. Cognition can explicate what has been given in a non-cognitive way, but the interpretation will never be immune to skepticism. Here, Hartmann adopts a position closely akin to FICHTE's way of differentiating between what can be known and what can be shown only by the feeling (necessarily obscure self-perception) inherent in volitions or deeds. This sort of feeling shows the ground for faith, as Fichte termed it, in the reality of the natural and moral world order that is presupposed by all volition. Voluntary strivings are the most prominent in the class of "emotionally transcendent acts," which includes: all intercourse with persons and dealings with things, striving, desires, suffering, action, willing, moods. All of these, not just the strivings emphasized by Fichte, involve the feeling of affecting or being affected by reality.

"Reality" is Hartmann's term for the way in which actual, i.e., temporal, individual things exist. It is the only perfect, full way of being. Idealities (essentialities), on the other hand, are non-temporal but non-self-sufficient; they exist only by being contained in real entities. Ideal beings are, however, no less "transobjective" than real entities are. Thus, despite the contrast be- <290> tween the way realities and essentialities are, Hartmann held, in accord with Aristotle and the idealism which he himself otherwise opposed emphatically, that real individuals have ideal essences as really inherent constituents. He seems to have been unaware that this position is contradictory to that of Husserl. Quite like Kant and very much in line with the mathematization of nature, the conception in Galilean science that material nature is mathematical in structure, Hartmann recognized only two kinds of ideal entities: mathematical structures on the one hand and values (Kant's principles of practical reason) on the other. This is one of the clearest indications that Hartmann conceived what he called "phenomenology" exclusively from within what Husserl termed the natural attitude as an objective science of the subjective and of subjectively relative phenomena.

Although it is apparently acknowledged that there is a difference in degree of being between essentialities and realities, there are no degrees of being within the sphere of reality. The concept of reality must encompass material and immaterial traits. The actual world has a single unitary mode of reality: it is an error to think that spirit or soul has a preeminent mode of being, and it would be equally mistaken to attribute such preeminence to the material realm. Spirit has the preeminence of the highest stratum of beings but not that of a higher mode of being. <Hartmann, 1933, 80 ff.> The single, unitary realm of real entities is stratified in the graduation of its forms of being, but its constituents are equally existent. The existence and reality of the spiritual stratum is not somehow paler or weaker than the mode of being of the lower strata. The basic modal law for the actual world is that the reality-character, as such, of actual entities neither diminishes nor increases as the highest stratum is approached. <That strata are formal, not material universals and so are not genera of beings is a point overlooked by Walter Cerf's account of Hartmann for Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Paul Edwards editor in chief, volume 3 (New York, The Macmillan Company, Inc. and The Free Press; London, Collier Macmillan Publishers: 1967, reprint edition, 1972) 424 ff. The point is easily overlooked, given the way Hartmann speaks of existence as being something "common to" entities of the various strata; see next paragraph below.> That the mental or spiritual traits of a person belong to a higher stratum than the person's organic traits means that the former traits presuppose, are founded upon and dependent upon the latter and that these limit the range of the mental traits the person can acquire. Higher traits are always "weaker" and lower ones "stronger" but only in that the higher are conditioned by, dependent on, lower ones while the reverse is not the case. This "law of strength" is the most basic law for all categories of real things.

From the point of view of fundamental ontology, existence is common to the material, the vital, the psychic, the spiritual. To deny this commonality of existence is to deny existence in a shared reality, individuality, and temporality. Though all real entities are equally real and equally individual, Hartmann differentiates the existence of any real entity from its reality. Only what is individual and singular and characterizes each real entity as individual is said to exist. Even the traits an individual has in common with other individuals are real, but only the individual as such, as distinct from all other individuals is said to exist. Existence of any real entity is higher in determinateness and way of being than is any of the "essences" it has in common with other entities. Existence depends on reality since an entity's existence is subject absolutely to whatever laws apply to all entities of the same kinds.

Nevertheless, every real entity is perfectly real, individual, and existent. Things are no less perfectly existent than persons are. Things and persons exist differently, but they do indeed exist together in one existing world, and existence itself is perfectly alike in each case. Thus, Hartmann appears to use 'to exist' and related terms in a way quite different from the usage of existential thinkers such as Kierkegaard, Jaspers, and Heidegger. Moreover, he seems quite willing to ignore whatever prohibition Heidegger's conception of "ontological difference" entails against saying of a world either that it is or that it exists.

The minds or spirits of vital, living individuals do indeed have essential traits, but a living spirit "is" not the set of such traits. Its individuality can neither be canceled nor "aufgehoben," however much it may be considered in abstraction, Thus, Hartmann rejects idealistic attempts to conceive the egos of vital persons as forms that have "in themselves" an ideal way of being, and he clearly attributes such a conception to Husserl. Although each vital person is "subject to" its essential traits, bound by whatever essential laws they entail, still, each is unique and individual in the strictest sense of that word. The individuality of every person is incomparably richer than that of other material and organic entities and occurrences.

Insofar as human persons have a historical and cultural being, they take part in an objective spirit as well as being vital spirits. Historio-cultural being is a higher being stratum than that of organic reality and involves personal beings of a higher order than organic personal being. Such a spirit Hartmann characterizes <291> rather inadequately as that which is common to all its members. Thus, objective spirit is constituted through the reality of its members (in contrast to their existence). Every objective spirit is, however, an individual in its own right, having its own existence distinct from but dependent on and conditioned by their reality. Hartmann agrees with holistic conceptions of community and society. Nevertheless, he emphatically rejected HEGEL's conception according to which higher order, collective persons are universal entities who generate their human members whose reality is, therefore, thought to depend on that of the objective spirit. An objective spirit is not exhausted by what is common to all its vital members. Its way of being is nevertheless not ideality but reality. Each has its time and is quite as singular and unique as each member is. The individuality of a structure is independent of the structure's order of magnitude. Moreover, one-sided dependence of vital spirits on objective, collective ones would be contrary to the categorial law of strength.

From the two ways of being, Hartmann differentiates modes of being [Seinsmodi]: possibility and actuality, necessity and contingency, impossibility and non-actuality [Unwirklichkeit]. The "incomparable richness" human existence vis-á-vis non-personal organisms and things has to do with the distinctive mode of being of vital persons and the freedom which this mode of being allows. Acknowledging that the will of persons is free is compatible with determinism, in the sense of WILLIAM JAMES, i.e., the acknowledgment does not require really possible alternatives to choose from. It does however require denial of determinism in Sir William Hamilton's sense of the word (naturalistic determinism). It requires that there be occurrences that Hartmann dubs incompletely real. Reality is the sphere of being to which belong entities whose real possibility coincides with their real necessity: their possibility to be excludes the possibility not to be. There can be no possibilities that have not and none that will not be actualized. Hartmann's necessitarian doctrine is more consistent than that of John Stuart Mill. Whereas Mill thought that his ontology might tolerate unactualized "possibilities of sensation," Hartmann will have none of them. There are, however, entities whose real being is not just natural, whose real being is not subject merely to natural necessity. The necessity of all real being does not imply uniform determinism for the world but rather allows for a layering of different forms of determination: the ought to be, art works, <self->actualization [Verwirklichung]. <Hartmann, 1933, 102 ff. and 1949, 456> This layering or stratification is what allows the distinctive sorts of autonomy prevailing in each stratum of real beings.