A history of psychology / by Otto Klemm ; authorized translation with annotations by Emil Carl Wilm ; and Rudolf Pintner.

  • Otto Klemm
Date:
[1914], [©1914]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: A history of psychology / by Otto Klemm ; authorized translation with annotations by Emil Carl Wilm ; and Rudolf Pintner. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Francis A. Countway Library of Medicine, through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the Francis A. Countway Library of Medicine, Harvard Medical School.

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    The influence upon psychology of the religious mysticism of the Neo-Platonists after Plotinus becomes more pro- nounced as time goes on. The Neo-Platonic definition of the soul given by Porphyry, ovala afjLeye9r]<; av\o^ a(f>6apTo<; iv ^coy Trap* eavTrj<; e-)(ov(7r) to ^tjv /ceKTrj/ievT] to elvai^ is widely followed by the Greek Church Fathers. Prominent among the amalgamations of Christian and Neo-Platonic ideas are the teachings, based upon the system of Plato, of Gregory of Nyssa (331-394). He considers the soul as an incorporeal, independent substance which permeates the body. The lat- ter phrase, however, is not to be taken in a spatial sense; the relation between soul and body is much like that between light and air. More convincing proofs of the incorporeal nature of the soul are offered by Augustine (354-430). The idea that the knowledge of a thing implies an ontological affinity between the knower and the thing known, and that, consequently, that which knows the incorporeal must itself be incorporeal, is reminiscent of Plato. More important is the purely psy- chological argument that the soul, since it is the experiencing subject, cannot be itself an object of observation and cannot, therefore, have material properties. The soul has an imme- diate knowledge of itself in self-consciousness. The problem of the relation between soul and body Augustine seeks to make intelligible in a manner characteristic of his time. The reigning dogma of soul substance prevents him from advancing to a monistic position and leads him to assert that the combination in man of body and soul results in a third substance, the exact nature of the relation between these substances, however, remaining unfathomable. A clear expression of the tendencies of later Patristic psy- chology is found in the teachings of Nemesius, bishop of Emesa in Phoenicia, who wrote between 400 and 450. Tak- ing his stand against both materialism and the Aristotehan