Eduard von Hartmann, a prominent public philosopher of his era, used Buddhism as a primary but imperfect exemplar for his vision of a 'religion of the future' centered on self-redemption (autosoterism). His philosophy reconciled pessimism and a panpneumatic (all-spiritual) impersonal unconscious with rationality and individual responsibility. Hartmann interpreted Buddhism through an ethical and symbolic lens based on the unconscious, which brought him into both proximity and conflict with esoteric spiritist discourses. He advocated a resigned yet heroic embrace of suffering life, rejecting what he saw as ascetic and quietist acquiescence. His hermeneutics reveal a modernizing vision of Buddhism as a model for the future, suitably reformed to accentuate a heroic response to suffering and karma.
Dissatisfaction with Hegel's prioritization of spirit over nature led nineteenth-century materialists (Karl Marx) and panpsychists (Gustav Fechner, Eduard von Hartmann) to develop alternative accounts of human-nature relations. Marx analyzed the political-economic and metabolic entanglement of humans and nature, while German panpsychists elucidated the bio-psychological interconnectedness of human and natural life. Both approaches express forms of relation that remain inadequately addressed in recognition theory and contemporary critical social theory. Hegelian thinkers such as Axel Honneth continue to overly prioritize social second nature and reciprocal human recognition, marginalizing asymmetrical relations crucial to humans living within animal, environmental, and material life.