Abstract
This chapter compares Lotze’s, Lipps’, and Voigtländer’s notion of feelings of self-worth in order to carve out the specific and genuine aspects of Voigtländer’s understanding of self-feeling, as developed in her dissertation. Three lines of thinking important to her approach to the constitution of self-feeling are identified. While primarily sitting on an axis that stretches from the post-romantic Lotze via the descriptive psychologist Lipps to what is later understood as phenomenological philosophy, traces of two other major traditions can be discovered in her proposal: (a) romantic psychology of the unconscious as found, for instance, in C. G. Carus, and (b), Nietzsche’s genealogical psychology of value. Both these traditions would later inspire biologistic versions of German Lebensphilosophie. By relying on them, it is argued, Voigtländer’s notion of self-feeling shows affinities with those vitalist approaches that fueled racist and eugenic ideologies in National Socialism. Given this, her theory of self-feeling in her dissertation from 1910 turns out to be fairly compatible with her later engagement in the fields of eugenics and membership in the NSDAP. Although her account of self-feeling is unique and interesting, therefore, it is finally suggested that Voigtländer’s proposal should be read with due caution.
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Notes
- 1.
Vendrell Ferran (2020a), based on the dissertation by Sebastian Aeschbach (2017), translates “Selbstgefühl” to “feelings of self-worth”, given that, for Voigtländer, Selbstgefühl always consists in a value-consciousness. I follow Vendrell Ferran (2020a) in this and in her translations of the different subclasses of the feelings of self-worth.
- 2.
- 3.
The following translations of the German texts of Lotze, Lipps, and Voigtländer are my own if not stated otherwise.
- 4.
Vendrell Ferran (2020a, 2020b) suggests grouping the three subclasses according to whether feelings are pre-reflective or reflective, distinguishing between pre-reflective vital self-feelings and reflective conscious or mirror self-feelings. Voigtländer herself groups them according to whether the feelings of self-worth concern real (eigentlich) or inauthentic (uneigentlich) features of the person. On that view, vital and conscious self-feelings constitute one group, and mirror self-feelings another. In my view, very little hinges on how one groups the three subclasses. Therefore, for purposes of simplicity, I prefer to speak of three layers, whose interplay shapes a person’s overall feelings of self-worth. Given Voigtländer’s central thesis that all feelings of self-worth are preconditioned and shaped by vital self-feeling, I would propose to distinguish between ‘vital self-feeling’ and ‘vitally preconditioned self-feelings (conscious and mirror self-feelings)’.
- 5.
Although Lotze rejects the idea of a single force of life, he does recognize the significance of physiological features of the body in the genesis of different aspects of experience (1917/1844). Physiological features of the bodily organs, he admits, affect the temperaments of people (1917/1844: 28), cognitive styles in the different genders (1917/1844: 28) or differences in aesthetic taste across cultures and nations (1917/1844: 30). Comparable to Voigtländer, he maintains that physiological characteristics of the body shape and organize the feeling dimension (Gemütsstimmungen) out of which beliefs, decisions, and actions of an individual emanate (1917/1844: 27). However, he also emphasizes that these effects are “a far cry from determination” (1917/1844: 28) and that it would be “foolish” (1917/1844: 30) to draw any further conclusions from them.
- 6.
Notably, he also emphasizes that conscious life sediments in the unconscious, which may then shape consciousness again in the future (Carus, 1846: 171–225). In Voigtländer, we find Carus’ thesis that the unconscious shapes the conscious life. However, she does not thematize possible influences of the unconscious through consciousness.
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Acknowledgements
This work was funded by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG, German Research Foundation), Project-ID 446126658. I presented parts of this article on 9 Dec. 2020 at the Phänomenologisches Kolloquium at the University of Würzburg. I wish to thank all participants for their contributions to the discussion. I am particularly grateful to Martin Klein, Karl Mertens, Line Ryberg Ingerslev, and Michela Summa. Many thanks also to Sophie Loidolt and Íngrid Vendrell Ferran, who have commented extensively on the different versions of the manuscript.
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Schmidt, P. (2023). Value in Existence: Lotze, Lipps, and Voigtländer on Feelings of Self-Worth. In: Vendrell Ferran, Í. (eds) Else Voigtländer: Self, Emotion, and Sociality. Women in the History of Philosophy and Sciences, vol 17. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-18761-2_2
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