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German Idealism And The Development Of Psychology In The Nineteenth Century, David E. Leary

Psychology Faculty Publications

THE BIRTH OF MODERN SCIENTIFIC PSYCHOLOGY is generally placed in Germany around 1850. This birth is credited by the standard historiography to the dual parentage of the empirical school of philosophy and the experimental study of sensory physiology. There is also a tradition of giving a nod toward Kant and Herbart as predecessors, for varying reasons, of the rise of scientific psychology.¹ Almost completely overlooked in the literature is the influence of post-Kantian German idealism upon the development of the concepts, subject matter, and methods of psychology. This is somewhat surprising since idealism was the dominant philosophical movement in …