This section contains 1,661 words (approx. 6 pages at 300 words per page) |
"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...
This section contains 1,661 words (approx. 6 pages at 300 words per page) |