About Andris Hiršs
Andris Hiršs received his Doctor of Philosophy degree in 2020 from the University of Latvia, defending the doctoral thesis “Jēkabs Osis and the Tartu School of Personalism.”
Since 2024, he has been a Leading Researcher at the Institute of Arts and Cultural Studies, Latvian Academy of Culture. His articles have been published in international peer-reviewed journals such as Studies in East European Thought, Problemos, Religious-Philosophical Articles, and Trames.
His doctoral dissertation, published as the monograph Person and Personalism: Enduring the Collapse of Idealism (University of Latvia Press, 2022), was awarded by the Latvian Academy of Sciences as one of the best achievements in the annual Science Achievements’ Competition.
Hiršs’s research focuses on the history of ideas, particularly the historiography of Latvian philosophy and personalism. He currently serves as an Associate Professor at the Latvian Academy of Culture, where he teaches courses on critical thinking, the genealogy of ideas, and the history of philosophy. He is also a visiting professor at the Latvian National Defence Academy and Riga Technical University.
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Thank you for this important and thought-provoking question.
First, it should be noted that personalism as a philosophical current is internally diverse and encompasses several distinct traditions. My focus is on the nineteenth-century Tartu School of Personalism.
Personalist thinkers within this tradition frequently polemicized against Darwinism and the natural sciences, particularly in discussions of the relationship between the body and consciousness. Their critique of materialism and dualistic models typically rests on two interconnected arguments.
a) The only reality directly given to us is consciousness.
b) The concept of “matter” is a metaphysical construct.
Whether we speak of the brain, the nervous system, or any physical organ, all such entities fall under the broader concept of the matter. But what is “matter”? According to Tartu personalists, it is not something immediately given; rather, it is a conceptual synthesis through which we designate multiple sensory perceptions. In other words, “matter” is an abstraction that is formed within consciousness.
The first Latvian philosopher, Jēkabs Osis, formulated this in his lecture notes:
"Speaking of matter, we think of sensations. The idea of matter is just an idea, and a metaphysical idea; based on the data that are within us, we judge what is outside us".
This raises a further question: what can unify diverse sensory perceptions and form abstract concepts? For the Tartu School, this is the substantial unity of the “I.” The substantial “I” serves as the foundation of personality and the ontological ground of reality. Because it is the condition for the formation of the concept of matter, it cannot itself be material or physical. The “I” produces the idea of matter within consciousness and subsequently projects or “transfers” it to external reality.
As a metaphysical form of personalism, the Tartu School emphasizes the ontological primacy of the substantial self. Without this substantial core, existence would be unintelligible. At the same time, personality characteristically externalizes the contents of its consciousness and may mistakenly assume that these objectified contents, such as “matter”, are ontologically more fundamental than the person. This gives rise to the impression that reality consists of matter.
Twentieth-century personalist movements, such as Emmanuel Mounier’s personalism, developed the tradition in a different direction. While retaining a focus on the dignity of the person, they emphasize existential and political dimensions and criticize attempts to define the individual primarily through collective identities such as class, nation, or state.