The German pessimistic philosopher Karl Robert Eduard von Hartmann was born in Berlin, the son of a Prussian artillery officer. Von Hartmann entered a school for artillery officers, but a knee injury in 1861 that aggravated older rheumatic ailments barred him from a military career and left him a lifelong semi-invalid. After two years devoted to musical composition and painting, he turned to an intensive study of philosophy. By 1867 von Hartmann had nearly finished his Die Philosophie des Unbewussten (Berlin, 1869; 9th ed. translated by W. C. Coupland as The Philosophy of the Unconscious, 3 vols., London, 1884). This work brought him prompt and widespread recognition, and the rest of his professional life was devoted to a long series of books that amplified and in some details modified its views, and applied them to various fields of philosophy and problems of contemporary culture. Before his death...