PSYCHOLOGISM. — In general, this indicates “the tendency to make the psychological point of view (that is, the empirical analysis and scientific observation of facts and their ‘causal laws’) predominate over the specific point of view of other disciplines (in particular, the theory of knowledge and logic)” (A. Lalande, Psychologische, in Vocab. de la philos., 5th ed., Paris 1947, pp. 836–37). The term was given precise definition only through the controversies which, at the beginning of this century, opposed in Germany certain forms of neo-Kantianism (Rickert, Natorp) and Husserl’s (v.) attempt to establish a “pure” phenomenology (v.), on the one hand, to classical English psychology (Hume, Mill, Spencer), and, on the other, to certain tendencies in logic (Erdmann, Sigwart) and conceptions of psychology (Wundt, Stumpf, Lipps, Brentano). Although in itself it entails neither a pejorative sense (E. Husserl, Logische Unters., cited in the bibliography, I, p. 52) nor a systematic one, the use made of it by its critics, first and foremost Husserl, confers upon psychologism the organic unity of a doctrine, not always conforming to the letter (even if not to the spirit) of the authors cited.
According to Wundt (Psychologismus und Logizismus, in Kleine Schriften, cited in the bibliography, I, pp. 511–34), psychologism and its opposite, logicism, re-present the ancient antithesis between empiricism (v.) rationalism (v.): on both sides there is the same totalitarian claim; psychologism transforms logic into psychology, while logicism transforms psychology into logic (ibid., p. 156 ff.). In its rigorous form, psychologism would resolve philosophy as such into psychology: “Aesthetics is the psychology of the beautiful and of art, ethics the psychology of the moral will, logic the psychology of the formation of concepts and reasoning” (ibid., p. 515).
According to Husserl, psychologism may be considered both on the plane of pure logic and on that of pure phenomenology. On the logical plane it may be summarized in the following propositions: 1) “the normative laws of knowledge must be grounded in the psychology of knowledge itself” (Logische Unters., I, chap. 8, p. 154). Hence the reduction of logical laws to the empirical laws of association or opposition and, in general, of “normative laws” to “laws of efficacy” (ibid., pp. 66–69, 78 ff., with quotations from Mill and Spencer). 2) The very content of logic belongs among psychic phenomena: representations, judgments, conclusions, truths, probabilities, possibilities, and necessities are nothing but psychic acts and their modalities; logic is therefore a function of psychology (ibid., p. 167 ff.; p. 52). 3) judgment (v.); but since judgment is true insofar as it is evident, evidence (v.) is a value of a psychological-subjective order, logic by this route falls within psychology (ibid., p. 180 ff.). On the phenomenological plane, psychologism may be characterized by three principal motifs: 1) the reduction of the “object or essence” to the empirical object and, consequently, knowledge (v.) experience (v.), and of every science, even a “pure” one such as mathematics, to positive science (Ideen, cited in the bibliography, I, section 1, chap. 1, p. 17 ff.). 2) The confusion of the act with the object of knowing and hence the reduction of objects to psychic facts (Zustände; cf. ibid., chap. 2, p. 40 ff.; Log. Unters., I, chap. 8, pp. 170–73). 3) The confusion of problems of “genesis” with problems of “structure”: since, for example, “mathematical essences” originate in experience (as, moreover, does all knowledge; cf. ibid., I, p. 75), it is concluded that the meaning and value of such knowledge do not transcend its empirical origin (Ideen, cited in the bibliography, I, section 1, chap. 2, p. 45). In conclusion, according to Husserl, psychologism amounts to integral empiricism and, consequently, to skepticism and absolute relativism (ibid., p. 37, and Log. Unters., chap. 7).
Apart from every controversy, it is appropriate to distinguish psychologism as a doctrine, as a tendency, and as a method. 1) Doctrinal psychologism (assuming that it actually exists; outside the English school, it would seem necessary to hold, with Wundt, that historically it is rather a matter of “compromise”) in fact incurs some of the fundamental criticisms directed against it by Husserl. The distinction between act and its content, between the “causal” and the “normative,” and the analysis of consciousness as an intentional structure (v. INTENZIONALITÀ) phenomenology (v.). 2) Psychologism as a tendency is nothing other than the exaggeration (for the most part professional and therefore not always conscious) of a legitimate attitude connected with the “subjective-anthropological unity of knowledge” (Husserl, Log. Unters., I, pp. 173–74) and of every other activity (art, logic, ethics, etc.). In this sense psychology is universally relevant, but from the standpoint of subjective activity, to all the sciences of the object (cf. id., Formale u. Transzend. Logik, pp. 34–35, where psychology is called Wissenschaft von allen Subjektiven). In the opposite direction, logicism is likewise an exaggeration of the objective tendency, which is legitimate in itself. The conflict between the two orientations helps to restrain the excesses of both. 3) Methodological psychologism recognizes the inevitable partiality of psychologism and logicism. In reality, “science” is neither a psychic flow of “cogitationes,” nor a simple abstract aggregate of “cogitata,” nor a system of norms. But within this undivided totality, the psychologist intends, by means of a methodological abstraction, to delimit a field of observation or reflection which, precisely as a matter of method, he does not intend to go beyond. This aim, according to the maxim “abstrahentium non est mendacium,” must be recognized as legitimate in itself.