Empirical and Rational Psychology

Abstract

AbstractThis chapter examines the conceptions of rational and empirical psychology developed in the writings of Kant’s predecessors and in his own pre-critical writings. The views of the following figures are examined in detail: Wolff, Gottsched, Baumgarten, Meier, and the Kant of the ‘L1’ metaphysics lectures. Once this background has been surveyed, the chapter goes on to explore: Kant’s conception of a distinctively pure rational psychology; his science of self-consciousness; and his two contrasting understandings of how rational psychology might be pursued. The chapter argues that Kant’s target in the Paralogisms chapter is an idealized ‘pure’ rational psychology, an aspiring a priori ‘science’ of the soul, whose closest antecedents in the tradition are the views of Baumgarten, on the one hand, and his own views in the ‘L1’ metaphysics lectures, on the other.