Substantiality and Unity

Abstract Lotze described the soul as an indivisible substance, but he was also a critic of the traditional notion of substance as a simple property-bearer that ‘underlies’ qualitative change. How do these claims go together? This chapter will relate Lotze’s view of substance to earlier German critics of the traditional view of substance such as Platner and consider what Lotze added to this criticism. The chapter will be guided by Lotze’s slogan: It is not through a substance that things have being, but they have being when they are able to produce the appearance of a substance present in them. The chapter concludes by examining in which sense the soul is a substance.