Title: Robert S. Hartman Papers

Date/Date Range :   1971

Extent: 0.1 linear feet

Abstract:

The bulk of this collection consists of an incomplete, undated 151-page typescript, "The Axiological Revolution in Mexico," by Robert S. Hartman. Also enclosed is a letter to Hartman from a graduate student, Raymond Pruitt, with questions on Hartman's "Four Axiological Proofs of the Infinite Value of Men," dated July 2, 1971 and Hartman's reply of July 16, 1971.

Call number: MS-2534

Repository: University of Tennessee Special Collections Library, Knoxville, TN

Aquisition Information:

This collection was donated to Special Collections.

Access Restrictions:

Collection is open for research.

Copyright:

The copyright interests in this collection remain with the creator. For more information, contact the Special Collections Library.

Preferred Citation:

[Identification of Item], Robert S. Hartman Papers, MS-2534. University of Tennessee, Knoxville, Special Collections Library.

Collection consists of a single folder.

Dr. Robert S. Hartman was born in Berlin. For a brief period, be taught at Berlin University and served as an assistant district court judge. Because of his opposition to the Nazi party, be was forced to leave Germany to escape imprisonment. He and his wife and son moved first to Mexico and in 1941 to the United States, where they later became citizens. His first teaching position was at Lake Forest Academy in Illinois. While there he enrolled at Northwestern University (Ph.D., 1946). He later taught at the College of Wooster in Ohio (1945-48) and at Ohio State University (1948-56). He was a visiting professor at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (1955-56), and at Yale (1966). He was Smith-Mundt State Department Research Fellow and Exchange Professor at the National University of Mexico (1956-57). He held more than fifty lectureships in the United States, Canada, Latin America, and Europe. He was a research professor of philosophy at the National University of Mexico since 1952, and at the University of Tennessee from 1968 until his death in 1973.

His life-long quest was to answer the question "What is good?" and to answer the question in such a way that good could be organized to help preserve and enhance the value of human life. He believed he had found the answer in the axiom upon which he based his science of Axiology, "A thing is good when it fulfills its definition." His formal axiology, as the ordering logic for the value sciences receives its most complete expression in his major work, The Structure of Value, Foundations of Scientific Axiology (1967), which one reviewer described as "one of the most constructive and revolutionary undertakings suggested in modern times." He applied his value method to economics in The Profit Sharing Manual (1948), Die Partnerschaft von Kapital und Arbeit: Theorie und Praxis eines neuen Wirtschaftssystems (1953), and La participacion de utilidades en Mexico (1963).

In the field of psychology, he applied his axiology in The Hartman Value Profile, a value test, widely used in Mexico and by some psychiatrists in the United States, which measures with exactness the character of an individual. This test exists in English, Spanish, German, Swedish, Japanese, and Hebrew. Many of the largest corporations in this country have used the Hartman value concepts in developing the sensitivity of their executives to the human value aspects of managerial decisions.

As the author of more than 10 books and over 100 articles, and translator of 6 books, he acquired a world-wide reputation. While an extremely industrious and productive scholar, he yet found time to carry on a very intensive correspondence with many persons throughout the world who had become acquainted with his work. His international reputation and the esteem in which he is held by scholars throughout the world are reflected in Value and Valuation: Axiological Studies in Honor of Robert S. Hartman (University of Tennessee Press, 1972).

The bulk of this collection consists of an incomplete, undated 151-page typescript, "The Axiological Revolution in Mexico, " by Robert S. Hartman. The typescript is edited by hand throughout.

Also enclosed is a letter to Hartman from a graduate student, Raymond Pruitt, with questions on Hartman's "Four Axiological Proofs of the Infinite Value of Men," dated July 2, 1971 and Hartman's reply of July 16, 1971. A copy of Pruitt's thesis, A Critique of Robert S. Hartman's Four Axiological Proofs of the Infinite Value of Man, is housed at Special Collections.

For other information on Hartman and his works, see MS 1015, MS 1129, MS 2031 and MS 2332.

• Hartman, Robert S., 1910-1973.
• Value.