The sciences of the soul : the early modern origins of psychology / Fernando Vidal ; translated by Saskia Brown.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Vidal, Fernando.

Contributor:

Brown, Saskia.

Standardized Title:

Sciences de l'âme XVIe-XVIIIe siècle. English

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Psychology--History.

Psychology.

Psychology--History--18th century.

Soul.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (429 p.)

Place of Publication:

Chicago : University of Chicago Press, c2011.

Language Note:

English

Summary:

The Sciences of the Soul is the first attempt to explain the development of the disciplinary conception of psychology from its appearance in the late sixteenth century to its redefinition at the end of the seventeenth and its emergence as an institutionalized field in the eighteenth. Fernando Vidal traces this development through university courses and textbooks, encyclopedias, and nonacademic books, as well as through various histories of psychology. Vidal reveals that psychology existed before the eighteenth century essentially as a "physics of the soul," and it belonged as much to natural philosophy as to Christian anthropology. It remained so until the eighteenth century, when the "science of the soul" became the "science of the mind." Vidal demonstrates that this Enlightenment refashioning took place within a Christian framework, and he explores how the preservation of the Christian idea of the soul was essential to the development of the science. Not only were most psychologists convinced that an empirical science of the soul was compatible with Christian faith; their perception that psychology preserved the soul also helped to elevate its rank as an empirical science. Broad-ranging and impeccably researched, this book will be of wide importance in the history and philosophy of psychology, the history of the human sciences more generally, and in the social and intellectual history of eighteenth-century Europe.

Contents:

The "Century of psychology"

Psychology as a discipline

A long past but a short history?

Psychology in the sixteenth century: a project in the making?

The function of the neologism "psychology"

Aristotelianism and galenism

Psychologia and the scientia de anima

Rudolph Goclenius's psychologia

From the science of the living being to the science of the human mind

Psychology as the generic science of the living being

Psychologia and empsychologia

On whether de anima books can themselves constitute a science

From soul-form to soul-mind

Psychology as a metaphysics of the rational soul

The new psychology: Christian Wolff

Psychology in the age of enlightenment

Psychology, anthropology and the human sciences

A republic of letters

Methodological discussions in enlightenment psychology

"The best way to perfect this fine science"

Historicizing psychology

Inventing a bibliographic tradition

Constructing a history for psychology

"Psychologiae historico-criticae speciminae"

The history of the "theory of ideas"

Philosophers write the history of psychology

Psychology and the history of humankind

Friedrich August Carus and the "history of humanity"

The primitives and the ancients

Toward a total history of psychology

The psychology of the Hebrews

Homeric psychology

Anthropology's place in the encyclopedias

Enlightenment encyclopedias

The syntax of the Encyclopedies

The Paris and Yverdon Encyclopedies

The "systemes figures"

Anthropology in the text

The anthropological transformation of morals

Human perfectibility and the primacy of psychology

Psychology in the Paris Encyclopedie

Psychology in the Yverdon Encyclopedie

The fields claimed for psychology

Metaphysics

Logic

Morals

The psycho-anthropology of perfectibility

The union and interaction of the soul and the body

Psychology, the body and personal identity

The soul, the body and the "completeness of the nerve"

Psycho-theology and "modern identity"

The body in resurrection

The loss of the body

The seed and the brain

The emergence of the cerebral subject.

Notes:

Translation of: Les sciences de l'ame: XVIe-XVIIIe siecle.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Description based on online resource; title from PDF title page (publisher's Web site, viewed 24. Apr 2020)

ISBN:

9786613362919

9781283362917

1283362910

9780226855882

0226855880

OCLC:

772845763