Rudolf Hermann Lotze

Hermann Lotze
Born	(1817-05-21)21 May 1817 Bautzen, Saxony
Died	1 July 1881(1881-07-01) (aged 64) Berlin, Prussia
Alma mater	Leipzig University
Era	19th-century philosophy
Region	Western Philosophy
School	German idealism Neo-Kantianism
Institutions	Leipzig University University of Göttingen
Main interests	Philosophical logic, metaphysics
Notable ideas	Teleological idealism Teleomechanism Metaphysics has for its parts ontology, cosmology, and phenomenology
Influences Johann Gottlieb Fichte, F. W. J. Schelling, G. W. F. Hegel, Johann Friedrich Herbart, Jakob Friedrich Fries,Gustav Theodor Fechner, Christian Hermann Weisse,E. H. Weber, Alfred Wilhelm Volkmann
Influenced Bertrand Russell, T. H. Green, Josiah Royce, William James, George Trumbull Ladd, Borden Parker Bowne, Georg Elias Müller, Carl Stumpf, Wilhelm Windelband, James Ward,Gottlob Frege,Edmund Husserl

Rudolf Hermann Lotze (German: [ˈlɔtsə]; 21 May 1817 – 1 July 1881) was a German philosopher and logician. He also had a medical degree and was unusually well versed in biology. He argued that if the physical world is governed by mechanical laws, relations and developments in the universe could be explained as the functioning of a world mind. His medical studies were pioneering works in scientific psychology.

Lotze was born in Bautzen (Budziszyn), Saxony, Germany, the son of a physician. He was educated at the grammar school of Zittau; he had an enduring love of the classical authors, publishing a translation of Sophocles' Antigone into Latin verse in his middle age.

He attended the University of Leipzig as a student of philosophy and natural sciences, but entered officially as a student of medicine when he was seventeen. Lotze's early studies were mostly governed by two distinct interests: the first was scientific, based upon mathematical and physical studies under the guidance of E. H. Weber, Alfred Wilhelm Volkmann and Gustav Fechner. The other was his aesthetic and artistic interest, which was developed under the care of Christian Hermann Weisse. He was attracted both by science and by the idealism of Johann Gottlieb Fichte, Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph Schelling and Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel.