1982 is the hundredth anniversay of Nicolai Hartmann's birth in Riga, Latvia. It is therefore appropriate at this time to assess whatever permanent contributions he may have made to the history of ideas. I believe that by far the most important of these is found in his monumental three-volume Ethik. 1 The Ethics is as much a work in the general theory of value as it is in ethics; and it has been much more widely influential than most people, including philosophers, realize. The present paper seeks to show that this is partly because Hartmann's influence may be found embedded (in various disguises) in the theoretical assumptions of various recent and important social scientists -although this has gone unnoticed.
My contention that the writers to be discussed were in fact influenced by Hartmann's Ethics would be as difficult (if not impossible) to prove as historical influences usually are. The reader can only be asked to judge whether the argument that they were is plausible. In making that judgment it should be remembered that most of the social scientists to be discussed were widely read thinkers, people literate in the classics of philosophy and very probably conversant with the important philosophy of their day. It should further be remembered that Nicolai Hartmann, whose ontology is almost entirely overlooked today, and whose ethical theory is very generally neglected by the current generation of philosophers, was well known to readers of German in the 1930's, 40's, and 50's. After his Ethics became available to English readers in 1926 it attracted considerable attention on both sides of the waters for at least a quarter of a century. However unprovable Hartmann's actual historical influence on some important psychologists and others may be, my main contention is that certain original ideas put forward in the Ethics have great contemporary relevance. This relevance, especially to the present American social scene is something which, on the one hand has not yet been noticed, and on the other hand might profitably be explored.
Accordingly, I shall in this paper undertake three main things: First, outline what are from the present perspective, Hartmann's most important permanent contributions to axiology (theory of value). Next, indicate some significant relationships between Hartmann's germinal ideas in value theory and the work of various recent social scientists. While Hartmann's influence on the latter