Psychologism
"Psychologism" is the term first used in Germany in the first half of the nineteenth century to designate the philosophical trend defended by Jakob Friedrich Fries (1773–1843) and by Friedrich Eduard Beneke (1798–1854) against the dominant Hegelianism. Fries and Beneke advocated a philosophical position based entirely on psychology. They held that the only instrument philosophical inquiry has at its disposal is self-observation (or introspection) and that there is no way to establish any truth other than by reducing it to the subjective elements of self-observation. Psychology becomes, from this point of view, the fundamental philosophical discipline. Logic, ethics, metaphysics, philosophy of law, philosophy of religion, and philosophy of education are all little more than psychology or applied psychology. Beneke wrote, "With all of the concepts of the philosophical disciplines, only what is formed in the human soul according to the laws of its development can be thought; if these laws are understood with certainty and clarity, then a certain and clear knowledge of those disciplines is likewise achieved" (Die Philosophie in ihrem Verhältnis zur Erfahrung, p. xv).
Fries and Beneke, who viewed Immanuel Kant as their predecessor inasmuch as he defended the "rights" of experience, held, nevertheless, that he was mistaken in wanting to institute an inquiry independent of experience which would arrive at knowledge of the a priori forms of intuition and of the categories and in seeking the transcendental ground of truth—the objective validity of human knowledge.
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