KÜLPE, OSWALD. – Psychologist and philosopher, b. at Candau on 3 Aug. 1862, d. at Munich on 30 Dec. 1915. After having been assistant to W. Wundt (1887–94), he was professor at Würzburg (1894), then at Bonn (1909), and finally at Munich (1913). K. succeeded in reacting both against the naturalistic tendency, which then dominated experimental psychology, and against the idealistic orientation.
His contribution to experimental psychology was fundamental. Although a pupil of Wundt, he clearly departed from the latter’s view (who considered introspection entirely fallacious). K. no longer treated experimental psychology as a mere chapter of the natural sciences and devoted himself to the study of the subjective world, founding in 1893 the Würzburg school (which was also called the Paris school). He devised systematic introspection (“provoked introspection”); he maintained that introspection is the means of knowing what takes place in inner life and indeed exaggerated its importance by considering it the sole means of studying psychological processes. He examined the process of abstraction and resorted to the associative method (of G. E. Müller) in order to study judgment. For K., intelligence is not merely a process of “associating” and “dissociating” sensations, and one must admit the existence of a faculty capable of abstracting and recognizing formal identity. Against Kant, he held that metaphysics is not only possible but necessary.
Among the philosophical problems most discussed by K. is the problem of reality; he devoted his most important work to it (Die Realisierung, I, 1912; II and III published posthumously by A. Messer, 1920). Having criticized and rejected psychologism (which reduces reality to a mere object of consciousness), K. examines various arguments in favor of realism and divides them into empirical, rational, and mixed arguments, recognizing validity only in the latter. With regard to the religious problem, he was by no means hostile to theism, but was unable to see any clear demonstrability of God’s existence, and regarded religion as a “completion of the mentality.”
Other principal works: Grundriss der Psychologie (Leipzig 1893); Einleitung in die Philos. (there 1895; 9th ed. 1919); Die Philosophie der Gegenwart (7th ed., there 1920); J. Kant (3rd ed., there 1921); Erkenntnistheorie u. Naturwissenschaft (there 1910); Psychologie u. Medizin (there 1912); Die Ethik u. der Krieg (there 1915); Vorlesungen über Psychologie (there 1920, published by K. Bühler); Grundlagen der Aesthetik (published by S. Behn, there 1921).
K.’s varied activity opened up for science the experimental study of the psychology of thought (Denkpsychologie) and initiated the “neorealist” movement.