KÜLPE, Oswald. - Psychologist and philosopher, b. at Candau on 3 Aug. 1862, d. at Munich on 30 Dec. 1915. After serving as assistant to W. Wundt (1887-94), he became professor at Würzburg (1894), then at Bonn (1909), and finally at Munich (1913). K. was able to react both against the naturalistic tendency, which then dominated experimental psychology, and against the idealistic approach.
His fundamental contribution was to experimental psychology. Although a pupil of Wundt, he clearly broke away from his master’s ideas (which held introspection to be entirely fallacious). K. no longer treated experimental psychology as a mere chapter of the natural sciences, but devoted himself to the study of the subjective world, founding in 1893 the Würzburg school (also known as the Paris school). He devised systematic introspection («elicited introspection»); maintained that introspection is the means of knowing what takes place in inner life and indeed went so far as to regard it as the only means of studying psychological processes. He examined the process of abstraction and employed the associative method (of G. E. Müller) to study judgment. For K., intelligence is not merely a process of «associating» and «dissociating» sensations; one must admit the existence of a faculty capable of abstracting and of recognizing formal identity. He held, against Kant, that metaphysics is not only possible but necessary.
Among the philosophical problems most discussed by K. is that of reality; he devoted to it his most important work (Die Realisierung, I, 1912; II and III published posthumously by A. Messer, 1920). Having criticized and rejected consciousness (which reduces reality to the mere object of consciousness), K. examined various arguments in favour of realism, dividing them into empirical, rational and mixed arguments, and recognizing validity only in the last. On the religious problem, he was by no means hostile to theism, but failed to see any clear demonstrability of the existence of God, and regarded religion as a «complement of mentality».
Other principal works: Grundriss der Psychologie (Leipzig 1893); Einleitung in die Philosophie (vii 1895; 9th ed. 1919); Die Philosophie der Gegenwart (7th ed., vii 1920); La Kant (3rd ed., vii 1921); Erkenntnislehre und Naturwissenschaft (vii 1910); Psychologie und Medizin (vii 1912); Die Ethik und der Krieg (vii 1915); Vorlesungen über Psychologie (vii 1920, published by K. Bühler); Grundlagen der Ästhetik (published by S. Behn, vii 1921).
K.’s varied activity opened to science the experimental study of the psychology of thought (Denkspsychologie) and inaugurated the «neo-realist» current.