A common feature of all the psychological teachings of antiquity is. The history of psychology, or rather the subject of psychology, but it is almost the same thing. Psychological concepts of Hellenism
The mythological understanding of the world, where bodies are inhabited by souls, and life depends on the gods, has reigned in the public consciousness for centuries. At the same time, the pagans often gave the style of behavior of the celestials deceit and wisdom, vindictiveness and envy, other qualities learned in the earthly practice of their communication with their neighbors.
Animism (from lat. anima - soul) is the first mythological doctrine of the soul. Animism included the idea of a host of souls hidden behind concrete visible things as special ghosts that leave the human body with their last breath. Elements of animism are present in any religion. Its rudiments make themselves felt in some modern psychological teachings and are hidden under the "I" (or "consciousness" or "soul"), which receives impressions, thinks, decides and moves the muscles.
In some other teachings of that time (for example, the famous mathematician and philosopher, Pythagoras, the champion of the Olympic Games in fisticuffs), souls were represented as immortal, forever wandering through the bodies of animals and plants.
Later, the ancient Greeks understood the "psycho" as the driving principle of all things. They own the doctrine of the universal animation of matter - hylozoism (from the Greek hyle - substance and zoe - life): the whole world is the universe, the cosmos is originally alive, endowed with the ability to feel, remember and act. The boundaries between living, non-living and mental were not drawn. Everything was considered as a product of a single primary matter (pra-matter). So, according to the ancient Greek sage Thales, a magnet attracts metal, a woman attracts a man, because a magnet, like a woman, has a soul. Hylozoism for the first time "placed" the soul (psyche) under the general laws of nature. This doctrine affirmed an immutable and for modern science the postulate of the initial involvement of mental phenomena in the circulation of nature. Hylozoism was based on the principle of monism.
The further development of hylozoism is associated with the name of Heraclitus, who considered the universe (cosmos) as an ever-changing (living) fire, and the soul as its spark. ("Our bodies and souls flow like streams"). He was the first to express the idea of a possible change, and consequently, the natural development of all things, including the soul. The development of the soul, according to Heraclitus, occurs through oneself: "Know thyself"). The philosopher taught: "No matter what roads you go, you will not find the boundaries of the soul, so deep is its Logos."
The term "Logos", introduced by Heraclitus, which is still used today, meant for him the Law according to which "everything flows", gives harmony to the universal course of things woven from contradictions and cataclysms. Heraclitus believed that the course of things depends on the Law, and not on the arbitrariness of the gods. Because of the difficulties in understanding the aphorisms of the philosopher, contemporaries called Heraclitus "dark".
The idea of development in the teachings of Heraclitus "passed" into the idea of causality of Democritus. According to Democritus, the soul, body and macrocosm are composed of atoms of fire; only those events, the cause of which we do not know, seem random to us; according to the Logos, there are no causeless phenomena, all of them are the inevitable result of the collision of atoms. Subsequently, the principle of causality was called determinism.
The principle of causality allowed Hippocrates, who was friends with Democritus, to build a doctrine of temperaments. Hippocrates correlated health disorders with an imbalance of various "juices" present in the body. Hippocrates called the ratio of these proportions temperament. The names of the four temperaments have survived to this day: sanguine (blood predominates), choleric (yellow bile predominates), melancholic (black bile predominates), phlegmatic (mucus predominates). So the hypothesis was framed, according to which the countless differences between people fit into a few general patterns of behavior. Thus, Hippocrates laid the foundation for scientific typology, without which modern teachings about individual differences between people would not have arisen. Hippocrates looked for the source and cause of differences within the body. Mental qualities were made dependent on bodily ones.
However, not all philosophers accepted the ideas of Heraclitus and his view of the world as a fiery stream, the ideas of Democritus - the world of atomic whirlwinds. They built their concepts. So, the Athenian philosopher Anaxagoras was looking for a beginning, thanks to which integral things arise from a disorderly accumulation and movement of the smallest particles, and an organized world out of chaos. He recognized reason as such a beginning; on the degree of its representation in various bodies, their perfection depends.
The idea of organization (systemic) of Anaxagoras, the idea of causality of Democritus and the idea of regularity of Heraclitus, discovered two and a half thousand years ago, became at all times the basis for the knowledge of mental phenomena.
The turn from nature to man was made by a group of philosophers called sophists ("teachers of wisdom"). They were not interested in nature with its laws independent of man, but in man himself, whom they called "the measure of all things." In the history of psychological knowledge, a new object was discovered - relations between people using means that prove any position, regardless of its reliability. In this regard, the methods of logical reasoning, the structure of speech, the nature of the relationship between the word, thought and perceived objects were subjected to a detailed discussion. Speech and thinking came to the fore as a means of manipulating people. Signs of its subordination to strict laws and inevitable causes operating in physical nature disappeared from the ideas about the soul, since language and thought are devoid of such inevitability. They are full of conventions depending on human interests and passions.
Subsequently, the word "sophist" began to be applied to people who, with the help of various tricks, give out imaginary evidence as true.
Socrates strove to restore strength and reliability to the idea of the soul, of thinking. The formula of Heraclitus "know thyself" meant for Socrates an appeal not to the universal law (Logos), but to the inner world of the subject, his beliefs and values, his ability to act as a rational being.
Socrates was a master of oral communication, a pioneer of analysis, the purpose of which is to reveal with the help of the word what is hidden behind the veil of consciousness. Selecting certain questions, Socrates helped the interlocutor to slightly open these covers. The creation of a dialogue technique was later called the Socratic method. In his methodology lurked ideas that, many centuries later, played a key role in psychological research thinking.
First, the work of thought initially had the character of a dialogue. Secondly, it was made dependent on the tasks that create an obstacle in its usual course. It was with such tasks that questions were posed, forcing the interlocutor to turn to the work of his own mind. Both features - dialogism, which assumes that cognition is originally social, and the determining tendency created by the task - became the basis of the experimental psychology of thinking in the 20th century.
The brilliant student of Socrates, Plato, became the founder of the philosophy of idealism. He affirmed the principle of the primacy of eternal ideas in relation to everything transient in the perishable corporeal world. According to Plato, all knowledge is memory; the soul remembers (this requires special efforts) what it happened to contemplate before its earthly birth. Plato bought up the writings of Democritus in order to destroy them. Therefore, only fragments remained from the teachings of Democritus, while almost the complete collection of Plato's works has come down to us.
Based on the experience of Socrates, who proved the inseparability of thinking and communication, Plato took the next step. He assessed the thought process, which was not expressed in the Socratic external dialogue, as an internal dialogue. ("The soul, thinking, does nothing else than talks, asking itself, answering, affirming and denying"). The phenomenon described by Plato is known to modern psychology as inner speech, and the process of its generation from external (social) speech was called "internalization" (from Latin internus - internal). Further, Plato tried to single out and delimit the various parts and functions in the soul. explained them Platonic myth about a charioteer driving a chariot to which two horses are harnessed: a wild one, torn from a harness, and a thoroughbred, amenable to control. The driver symbolizes the rational part of the soul, the horses - two types of motives: lower and higher. Reason, called upon to reconcile these two motives, experiences, according to Plato, great difficulties due to the incompatibility of base and noble desires. Thus, the aspect of the conflict of motives that have moral value, and the role of the mind in overcoming it and integrating behavior. A few centuries later, the idea of a person torn apart by conflicts will come to life in the psychoanalysis of S. Freud.
Knowledge about the soul grew depending on the level of knowledge about external nature, on the one hand, and from communication with cultural values, on the other. Neither nature nor culture by themselves form the realm of the psychic. However, it does not exist without interacting with them. The Sophists and Socrates, in their explanations of the soul, came to understand its activity as a phenomenon of culture. For the abstract concepts and moral ideals not derived from the substance of nature. They are products of spiritual culture. It was assumed that the soul is brought into the body from outside.
The work on the construction of the subject of psychology belonged to Aristotle, the ancient Greek philosopher and naturalist, who lived in the 4th century BC, who discovered new era in understanding the soul as a subject of psychological knowledge. Not physical bodies and not incorporeal ideas became for him a source of knowledge, but an organism where the corporeal and the spiritual form an inseparable integrity. The soul, according to Aristotle, is not an independent entity, but a form, a way of organizing a living body. "Those who think correctly," said Aristotle, "those think that the soul cannot exist without a body and is not a body." The psychological doctrine of Aristotle was based on a generalization of biomedical facts. But this generalization led to the transformation of the main principles of psychology: organization (consistency), development and causality.
According to Aristotle, the very word "organism" should be considered in connection with the related word "organization", which means "a well-thought-out device", which subordinates its parts to itself to solve a problem; the device of this whole and its work (function) are inseparable; the soul of an organism is its function, activity. Interpreting the body as a system, Aristotle singled out different levels of abilities for activity in it. This made it possible to subdivide the capabilities of the organism (the psychological resources inherent in it) and their implementation in practice. At the same time, a hierarchy of abilities was outlined - the functions of the soul: a) vegetative (available in animals, plants and humans); b) sensory-motor (available in animals and humans); c) reasonable (inherent only in humans). The functions of the soul are the levels of its development, where a function of a higher level arises from the lower and on its basis: after the vegetative one, the ability to feel is formed, from which the ability to think develops. In an individual person, during his transformation from an infant into a mature being, those steps are repeated that the entire organic world has passed through in its history. Subsequently, this was called the biogenetic law.
Explaining the patterns of character development, Aristotle argued that a person becomes what he is by performing certain actions. The idea of the formation of character in real actions, which in people always presuppose a moral attitude towards them, put the mental development of a person in a causal, natural dependence on his activity.
Revealing the principle of causality, Aristotle showed that "nature does nothing in vain"; "You need to see what the action is for." He argued that the end result of the process (goal) affects its course in advance; mental life at the moment depends not only on the past, but also on the desired future.
Aristotle should rightfully be considered the father of psychology as a science. His work "On the Soul" is the first course in general psychology, where he outlined the history of the issue, the opinions of his predecessors, explained his attitude towards them, and then, using their achievements and miscalculations, proposed his solutions.
The psychological thought of the Hellenistic era is historically associated with the emergence and subsequent rapid collapse of the largest world monarchy (4th century BC) of the Macedonian king Alexander. There is a synthesis of elements of the cultures of Greece and the countries of the Middle East, characteristic of the colonial power. The position of the individual in society is changing. The free personality of the Greek was losing ties with his native city, its stable social environment. He found himself in the face of unpredictable change, bestowed by the freedom of choice. With increasing acuteness, he felt the fragility of his existence in the changed "free" world. These shifts in the self-perception of the individual left their mark on ideas about mental life. Faith in the intellectual achievements of the previous era, in the power of the mind, began to be questioned. There is skepticism, refraining from judgments concerning the world around, because of their unprovability, relativity, dependence on customs, etc. Refusal to seek the truth made it possible to find peace of mind, to reach the state of ataraxia (from the Greek word meaning absence of unrest). Wisdom was understood as a renunciation of the shocks of the outside world, an attempt to preserve one's individuality. People felt the need to resist the vicissitudes of life with its dramatic turns, depriving of peace of mind.
Stoics ("standing" - a portico in Athenian temples) declared harmful any affects, seeing in them damage to the mind. According to them, pleasure and pain are false judgments about the present, desire and fear are false judgments about the future. Only the mind, free from any emotional upheavals, is able to properly guide behavior. This is what allows a person to fulfill his destiny, his duty.
From ethical orientations to the search for happiness and the art of living, but on other cosmological principles, the school of serenity of the spirit of Epicurus developed, which departed from the version of Democritus about the "hard" causality that reigns in everything that happens in the world (and, therefore, in the soul). Epicurus allowed spontaneity, spontaneity of changes, their random nature. Capturing the feeling of unpredictability of what can happen to a person in the stream of events that make existence fragile, the Epicureans laid in the nature of things the possibility of spontaneous deviations and thus the unpredictability of actions, freedom of choice. They emphasized the individualization of the individual as a quantity capable of acting independently, having got rid of the fear of what was prepared from above. "Death has nothing to do with us; when we exist, then there is no death yet; when death comes, then we are no more." The art of living in a whirlpool of events is associated with getting rid of fears of the afterlife punishment and otherworldly forces because there is nothing in the world but atoms and emptiness.
Additional
Main
1. Zhdan, A.N. History of psychology. From Antiquity to the Present Day: Textbook for High Schools. - 5th ed., Revised. and additional / A.N. Zhdan - M .: Academic Project, 2007. - 576 p. - (“Gaudeamus”, “Classical University Textbook”). Recommended by the Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation.
2. Luchinin, A.S. History of psychology: textbook / A.S. Luchinin. - M .: Publishing house "Exam", 2006. - 286 S. (Series "Textbook for universities").
3. Martsinkovskaya, T.D. History of psychology: Textbook for students. institutions of higher education - 5th ed., ster. / T.D.Martsinkovskaya - M .: Publishing Center "Academy", 2006. - 544 C. Grif UMO.
4. Saugstad, Trans. History of psychology. From the origins to the present day. Translation from Norwegian by E. Pankratova / P. Saugstad - Samara: Bahrakh-M Publishing House, 2008. - 544 p.
5. Smith, R. History of psychology: textbook. allowance for students. higher textbook institutions / R. Smith. - M.: Academy, 2008. - 416 p.
6. Shabelnikov, V.K. History of psychology. Psychology of the soul: Textbook for universities / V.K.Shabelnikov - M.: Academic project; Mir, 2011. - 391 p. - (Gaudeamus). Griffin UMO.
7. Yaroshevsky, M.G. History of psychology from antiquity to the middle of the XX century. / M.G. Yaroshevsky - Publisher: Direktmedia Publishing, 2008 - 772 C. Recommended by the Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation.
1. Lafargue P. The origin and development of the concept of the soul. M., 1923.
2. Yakunin V.A. History of psychology. - St. Petersburg, 1998.
3. Shults D.P., Shults S.E. History of modern psychology. St. Petersburg,. 1998.
Antiquity(from lat. antiquus - ancient) - a term traditionally used in the meaning of "Greco-Roman antiquity." Chronologically, the framework of ancient psychology - from the 7th century. BC. and conditionally until the II - IV century. AD - this is the time of formation, heyday and decline of the Greco-Roman civilization. All the later types of European worldview originate precisely in antiquity, when the categorical structure of psychological science was laid down (image, motive, behavior, personality, social relations) and its main problems were formulated (correlation between body and mind, feelings and mind, thinking and speech, personality and society, emotions and thinking, innate and acquired, etc.).
In primitive society, the soul was understood as a supernatural entity and was explained by the principle animism (from lat. anima - soul, spirit - a form of primitive thinking, attributing a soul to all objects). During the period of change of the primitive communal system by a class slave-owning society (urbanization, colonization, development of commodity-money relations, the flourishing of culture, the emergence of mathematics, astronomy, medicine, etc.), the soul is introduced into a number of natural phenomena, there is a transition from sacredness (when knowledge is based on faith and does not require proof) to the explanation of the soul by the principle hylozoism (from the Greek hyle - matter and zoo - life - philosophy about the animation of all nature).
Antiquity is a heterogeneous period, which can be conditionally (according to priority tasks and results) divided into 3 stages:
1. Pre-Socratic period - from VI to IV centuries. BC.
2. Classical period - from IV to II centuries. BC e.
3. Hellenistic period - II century BC. – II century AD Hellenism literally means the spread of ancient Greek science and culture throughout the world (with the conquests of Alexander the Great), which continued until the rise of Rome and the beginning of religious dominance over science during the Middle Ages.
First stage development of ancient psychology is associated with the allocation of philosophical rational thinking from mythology and the formation of the first historical form Sciences - natural philosophy, studying the general patterns of society, nature and man. One or another type of matter is taken as the natural fundamental principle of the soul ( arche): water ( Thales), an indefinite infinite substance "apeiron" (Anaximander), air ( Anaximenes), fire ( Heraclitus) and others. Note that Heraclitus entered the history of science as one of the first researchers of mental activity proper. Then the foundations were laid materialistic views and methodological principles development(Heraclitus), determinism (Heraclitus, Democritus). Materialism received its most consistent expression in the doctrine Democritus, in which the fundamental principle of the world and the soul is the atom (from the Greek "atom" - that which is not divided). is the foundation of everything in the world. Since the soul, like everything in nature, consists of atoms, it is mortal, like the body. Based on atomistic ideas, any human activity was explained by the mechanical movement and collision of atoms, regardless of the will and motivation of a person. (hard causal determinism).
On second stage development of scientific ancient thought, materialism begins to resist idealism asserting priority spirituality over the material: the soul is immortal and independent of the perishable body, which is only a temporary refuge for the soul. By this, the idealists affirm the activity of the subject instead of the mechanistic causality of Democritus. The idealists saw the causes of human behavior not in the collision of atomic flows, but in knowledge of moral truth located inside the person himself, in his mind. The social prerequisite for the birth of idealism was the growing confrontation between slave-owning democracy (raising the role and value of each individual) and the monarchical form of government (assuming the rise of one individual and the suppression of all others). The transfer of scientific interest from the problems of the universe to the problems ethical and psychological orientation clearly reflected in the philosophy Socrates - Plato . Aristotle, eliminating the contradiction between the extreme versions of idealism and materialism, explains the world from the positions integrity, unity of the material and spiritual. Having systematized the ideas of his predecessors about the soul, Aristotle formulated his own, general biological approach to explaining mental phenomena, which are the result of the interpenetration of the material and the ideal. The soul, according to Aristotle, is the form and essence of the body. Just as matter cannot exist without a form, so a form (soul) cannot exist without a material basis ( the idea of unity, consistency, integrity). With the death of Aristotle classical period antiquity ends.
Third stage The development of ancient psychological thought is characterized by a reorientation of research interest from general theoretical reasoning to solving the practical problems of people who experience an acute sense of instability and insecurity of existence in a cruel world. In the historical annals, the period from the 4th c. BC. according to the II century. AD characterized as the era of civil wars and the loss of independence of Dr. Greece, the Macedonian conquests in Asia, the bloody battles of Rome for dominance in the Mediterranean, the persecution of nascent Christianity, etc. The specifics of political and social life led to the loss of value not only of the individual, but also life itself person. Leading psychological schools solved the problem of preserving human life and dignity in a cruel society in different ways. Yes, at school cynics(cynics) the freedom of the individual was considered through freedom from public opinion, knowledge and benefits of civilization ( Antisthenes), as well as, in the universal detachment from attachments ( Diogenes of Sinop). Epicurus and his school "Garden of Epicurus" urged people to free themselves from the fear of death and be guided in their actions by reason and moral principles, taking as a basis the atomism of Democritus: “when we exist, death is not yet; when death comes, we are no more.” Like the cynics, the Epicureans called for self-elimination from public life which is a source of anxiety, cruelty and conformism. School representatives stoic, on the contrary, they did not share the idea of self-withdrawal from society and insisted on socialization, adaptation of a person to life in society. The general idea of the Stoics is the idea fate, fatal inevitability both in nature and in the fate of each person. A person can preserve the freedom of the spirit in any circumstances if he accepts social duties without suffering, as an internal necessity.
The last milestone in the development of ancient psychology was a new author's reading of Plato's teachings - the theory Dam (205 – 270) (Neoplatonism). Plotinus defines the human soul as derived from world soul in the process of radiation outflow creative activity of God. Plotinus explains the basis of the integrity of the soul self-awareness, which any mental act transforms into spiritual, since everything, even the sensual sensations of the body, are associated with the activity of the soul, which is completely the creativity of God. Plotinus's idea of inner mental life anticipated principle of introspection , which became fundamental in psychology until the end of the 19th century. practical meaning the introduction of the categories of self-consciousness and reflection was justified by the need to switch people's attention from external difficult reality to internal, i.e. spiritual, created and filled with God. On the Platonic theory of Plotinus, ancient psychology ends.
Parallel to philosophical aspect studies of the soul, during the Hellenistic period, active anatomical and physiological studies of the psyche ( Alexandria School of Physicians). The most famous and significant were the works Herophilus And Erazistratus who described the structural and functional features of the nervous system and the brain as the substratum of the soul. In the II century AD. these anatomical and physiological discoveries were combined and supplemented by a Roman doctor Claudius Galen(130 - 200 years). He experimentally proves the dependence of the vital activity of the whole organism on the nervous system, following Hippocrates he continued the development of the humoral doctrine of temperaments, studied the nature of affects and their connection with the body. His teaching is considered the pinnacle of ancient psychophysiological thought.
Practical tasks
1. Make a matrix of ideas according to the given criteria:
"Comparative analysis classical theories antiquity"
“For psychics, death is to become water, and death to water is to become earth; water is born from the earth, and psyche is born from water ... A dry, radiant fiery soul is the wisest and best.
3. Determine which ancient philosopher is referred to in this fragment scientific text:
“This philosopher created the first philosophical and psychological school in antiquity ... He is one of the semi-legendary "7 wise men of Greece", who for the first time named the number of days in a year, inscribed a triangle in a circle, predicted solar eclipse 585 BC e. (according to Herodotus). His name has become a household name, denoting a sage in general. He was the first to formulate the scientific problem: "What is everything?", aiming at the search for the universal substratum of the universe. And he replies that the basis of everything is water. Earth floats on water, originates from it, is surrounded by it. Water is mobile, changeable, passes from one state to another and thus forms everything that exists. All things and all cosmic phenomena, including man and his soul, arise from it. Thus, man is seen as part of the natural world.”
4. Make a matrix of ideas in the form
"Comparative analysis of the views of schools of Hellenism"
5. Expand (briefly) the essence of the following concepts:
1) Animism.
2) Hylozoism.
6) Nervism.
7) Materialism.
8) Temperament.
9) Idealism.
10) Dialectics.
11) Corruption of the mind.
12) Catharsis.
13) Ataraxia.
Control questions
1. Describe the social prerequisites for the emergence of the first scientific knowledge in antiquity, its principles of explanation and differences from mythological knowledge.
2. Give a description of the ideas about the soul of the philosophers of the Milesian school.
3. How did Heraclitus of Ephesus understand the nature of the psychic?
4. What is the essence of the idea of nervism in the teachings of Alcmaeon?
5. Describe the psychological views of Empedocles and Anaxagoras.
6. Describe the atomistic teaching of Democritus.
7. Explain the essence of the teachings of Hippocrates and his role in the development of psychology.
8. Expand the essence of objective idealism in the philosophical and psychological views of Socrates - Plato.
9. Describe Aristotle's teaching about the soul.
10. Describe the main philosophical and psychological concepts of the Hellenistic period.
11. Give a description of Neoplatonism in the teachings of Plotinus.
12. What achievements and discoveries of Alexandrian doctors in the field of anatomy and physiology of the nervous system and brain influenced the further development of science?
13. Describe the scientific contribution of K. Galen to psychophysiology.
14. What are the general results of the development of psychological views in the ancient period?
Written sources of knowledge that have come down to us from the depths of centuries indicate that people have been interested in psychological phenomena for a very long time. The first ideas about the psyche were associated with animism (from lat. anima, animus-“soul” and “spirit”, respectively) - the most ancient view, according to which everything that exists in the world has a spirit or soul - an entity independent of the body that controls all living and inanimate objects.
Ancient philosophy adopted the concept of the soul from previous mythology. This is evidenced by the scientific treatises of Democritus, Socrates, Plato, Aristotle.
Democritus (460-370 BC) developed an atomistic model of the world. The soul is a material substance. All mental phenomena are explained by physical and mechanical causes. For example, human sensations arise because the atoms of the soul are set in motion by atoms of the air or atoms directly emanating from objects.
For the first time, a person, his inner, spiritual world becomes the center of philosophical reflection in Socrates (469-399 BC). Unlike his predecessors, the philosopher focused on the beliefs and values of a person, the ability to act as a rational being. He assigned the main role in the human psyche to mental activity. After his research, the understanding of the soul was filled with such ideas as "good", "justice", "beautiful", etc., which physical nature does not know.
The world of these ideas became the core of the teaching about the soul of the student of Socrates - Plato (427-347 BC). According to his teaching, the soul exists along with the body and independently of it. The first is the beginning of the invisible, sublime, divine, eternal. The second is the beginning of the visible, base, transient, perishable. They are in a complex relationship. According to its divine origin, the soul is called to control the body. However, sometimes the body, embraced by various desires and passions, takes precedence over the soul. Mental phenomena are divided into reason, courage (in the modern interpretation - will) and lust (motivation). Their harmonious unity gives integrity to the spiritual life of a person.
Plato first identified such a form of mental activity as inner speech: the soul reflects, asks itself, answers, affirms and denies. He was the first to try to reveal its internal structure, isolating the triple composition: the higher part of the soul - the rational principle, the middle - the volitional principle and the lower - the sensual principle. The first part of the soul is called upon to coordinate the lower and higher motives and impulses coming from different parts of the soul.
Plato and Socrates draw ethical conclusions from their idea of the soul. The soul is the highest thing in a person, so he must take care of its health much more than the health of the body.
We encounter much more complex concepts of the soul in the views of Aristotle (384-322 BC). His treatise "On the Soul" is the first specially psychological work, which for a long time remained the main guide to psychology, and he himself can rightfully be considered the founder of psychology. The philosopher denied the view of the soul as a substance. At the same time, he did not consider it possible to consider the soul in isolation from matter (living bodies).
The soul, according to Aristotle, although incorporeal, is the form of the living body, the cause and purpose of all its vital functions. The main essence of the soul is the realization of the biological existence of the organism. The driving force behind human behavior is aspiration, or the internal activity of the organism. Sense Perceptions constitute the beginning of knowledge. Memory stores and reproduces sensations.
When characterizing a person, the philosopher put forward knowledge, thinking and wisdom in the first place. This setting in the views of man, inherent not only to Aristotle, but also to antiquity as a whole, was largely revised within the framework of medieval psychology.
A characteristic feature of the psychological knowledge and concepts of antiquity is their materialism. The boundaries between living, non-living and mental were not drawn. Everything was considered as a product of a single primary matter. So, according to the ancient Greek sage Thales of Miletus (625-547 BC), a magnet attracts metal, a woman attracts a man, because a magnet, like a woman, has a soul. Thales of Miletus considered water to be the basis of everything - an amorphous, flowing concentration of matter. Everything else arises by way of "condensation" or "rarefaction" of this primary matter.
According to Anaximander (611-546 BC), the beginning and the basis of everything is the infinite, indefinite in space and time - apeiron. Anaximander considered all matter to be alive.
Anaximenes (585-524 BC) considered air to be the beginning of everything. The rarefaction of air leads to the emergence of fire, and the condensation causes winds - clouds - water - earth - stones. Soul, Anaximenes also considered consisting of air.
Thales, Anaximander, Anaximenes considered soul and nature to be inseparable. Heraclitus agreed with this. Heraclitus (540-480 BC) considered the universe (cosmos) as an ever-changing (living) fire, and the soul as its spark. He was the first to express the idea of a possible change and natural development of all things, including the soul. The development of the soul, according to Heraclitus, occurs through itself. The term "Logos", introduced by Heraclitus, meant for him the Law according to which "everything flows", gives harmony to the universal course of things, woven from contradictions and cataclysms. Heraclitus believed that the course of things depends on the Law, and not on the arbitrariness of the gods.
The Athenian philosopher Anaxagoras was looking for a beginning, thanks to which integral things arise from a disorderly accumulation and movement of the smallest particles, and an organized world out of chaos. He recognized reason as such a beginning; on the degree of its representation in various bodies, their perfection depends.
In the VI century. BC. the first idealistic doctrine arose - Pythagoreanism. Pythagoras (582-500 BC) and his followers were engaged in the study of the relationship of numbers, they absolutized numbers, elevated them to the rank of the essence of everything. Numbers were understood as independently existing objects, and the ideal existing number was 10. In the teachings of Pythagoras, the soul seemed to consist of three parts - reasonable, courageous and hungry. Pythagoras also considered the soul to be immortal, forever wandering through the bodies of animals and plants.
In the V-IV centuries. BC. in the theories of Leucippus and Democritus (460-370 BC), the idea of atoms arose, the smallest particles invisible to the world, of which everything around consists. An atom is an indivisible quantity that has size and weight. Atoms move in an infinite void, while colliding with each other, due to this they are connected, from this everything that we see arises. The soul is a collection of the smallest atoms of fire, which have an ideal spherical shape and have the greatest mobility. The soul is mortal and dies with the body - it dissipates after the death of a person. Democritus accepted the Pythagorean division of the soul into three parts and believed that the rational part is placed in the head, the courageous part is in the chest, and the hungry (thirsty for sensual lust) is in the liver.
Hippocrates (460 - 377 BC) built the doctrine of temperaments. Hippocrates correlated health disorders with an imbalance of various "juices" present in the body. Hippocrates called the ratio of these proportions temperament. The names of the four temperaments have survived to this day: sanguine (blood predominates), choleric (yellow bile predominates), melancholic (black bile predominates), phlegmatic (mucus predominates). Thus, Hippocrates laid the foundation for scientific typology, without which modern teachings about individual differences between people would not have arisen. Hippocrates looked for the source and cause of differences within the body. Mental qualities were made dependent on bodily ones.
Aristotle (384-322 BC) made a huge contribution to the development of psychology. He established two of the four laws of thought in traditional logic. Aristotle's statements about the soul are interesting. He believed that only a natural body, not an artificial one, could have a soul. Aristotle distinguished three types of soul: vegetable, belonging to plants (the criterion for distinguishing the latter is the ability to feed); animal belonging to animals (the criterion for their selection is the ability to touch) and the highest, human (the criterion for selection is the ability to reason and think). The philosopher attributed people and God to the owners of the higher soul. God has only a rational soul, and man is still vegetable and animal. Aristotle rejected the doctrine of the transmigration of souls, but believed that there is a part in the soul that does not arise and is not subject to death. This part is the mind. With the exception of the mind, all other parts of the soul are subject to destruction in the same way as the body. Explaining the patterns of character development, Aristotle argued that a person becomes what he is by performing certain actions. a source of knowledge, but an organism where the corporeal and spiritual form an inseparable integrity. The soul, according to Aristotle, is not an independent entity, but a form, a way of organizing a living body, the soul cannot exist without a body and is not a body. He argued that the end result of the process (goal) affects its course in advance; mental life at the moment depends not only on the past, but also on the desired future.
In the IV centuries. BC. the first scientific concepts of the psyche appear, in which it was considered, first of all, as a source of body activity. Also during this period, on the basis of medical experience, there was an assumption that the organ of the psyche is the brain. This idea was first expressed by Alcmaeon, and later it was shared by Hippocrates. At the same time, the first theories of knowledge arose, in which empirical knowledge was given priority. Emotions were seen as the main regulator of behavior. The main thing is that already in this period the leading problems of psychology were formulated: what are the functions of the soul, what is its content, how does the knowledge of the world take place, what is the regulator of behavior, does a person have the freedom of this regulation.
Thus, views on the soul, its nature and components were varied. However, ancient psychologists called the knowledge of the world the most important function of the soul. At first, only two stages were distinguished in the process of cognition - sensation (perception) and thinking. At the same time, for psychologists of that time there was no difference between sensation and perception, the selection of individual qualities of an object and its image as a whole was considered a single process. Gradually, the study of the process of cognition of the world became more and more significant for psychologists, and several stages were already distinguished in the process of cognition. Plato was the first to single out memory as a separate mental process, emphasizing its importance as a repository of all our knowledge. Aristotle also singled out such cognitive processes as imagination and speech. So by the end ancient period ideas about the structure of the process of cognition were close to modern ones, although opinions on the content of these processes, of course, differed significantly. At this time, scientists for the first time began to think about how the image of the world is built, what process - sensation or reason - is the leading one, and how much the picture of the world built by man coincides with the real one. In other words, many of the questions that remain leading for psychology today were posed precisely at that time.
Topic 2. Psychological views in ancient times
2.1. Reasons for the emergence of rational scientific ideas about the psyche in antiquity
2.2. The main stages in the development of ancient psychological thought
2.1. Reasons for the emergence of rational scientific ideas about the psyche in antiquity
Chronological framework of ancient psychology - XVI century. BC. - IV century. AD This is the time of formation, heyday and decline of the Greco-Roman civilization. It was during this period that rational scientific knowledge about the psyche was born and formed, the sprouts of which already appear within the framework of ancient Eastern culture. The works of Greek thinkers mark a true revolution in the scientific worldview: the mythological picture of the world was refuted and it was opposed by a rationalistic, scientific view of the surrounding reality - nature, man, his inner mental world. And although the main concept reflecting mental phenomena remains the concept of "soul", which originated in ancient times and goes back to the very origins of human civilization, but its content is significantly transformed, an attempt is made to rationalistically explain it.
2.1.1. Features of mythological thinking
The main feature of the mythological world outlook was anthropomorphism, or the transfer by a person of his properties and characteristics to the world around him (according to C. Jung, a person projecting himself outside). By analogy with himself as the starting point of the universe, man explained all natural and cosmic phenomena, the whole world of animate and inanimate nature, and even divine beings created by his imagination. Such views were explained by the low level of development of knowledge, extremely vague ideas of people about the reality around them, fear of the incomprehensible and formidable forces of the world and the desire to give them any explanation accessible to the consciousness of a person of that time. From anthropomorphism as the main feature of the mythological worldview, its characteristics such as hylozoism (from the Greek words meaning "matter" and "life"), consisting in the "revitalization" of the surrounding reality, when the whole world, the cosmos was considered as originally living, borders between the living, the inanimate and the psychic has not been carried out; and animism (from Latin "anima" - "soul", "spirit") - "spiritualization" of the surrounding world, the assertion that behind all the phenomena of reality (living and inanimate) there is a host of spirits (souls) that determine their existence and functioning.
2.1.2. Features of the philosophical rational worldview and the reasons for the emergence of scientific ideas about the psyche in the period of antiquity
Philosophical scientific thinking, or "thinking, rational worldview", which replaced mythological views, is characterized by other features:
The search for the genetic beginning of the world is complemented by attempts to find its substrate, substance.
There is a deanthropomorphization, demythologization of the surrounding world, nature, space.
The task is not just to describe, but also to explain the soul and its functions.
Faith and figurative-associative processes as the main tools of mythological knowledge are being replaced by the desire to give a logical justification and proof of the propositions put forward.
The emergence of this new type of thinking corresponded to qualitative changes in the human mental world, which, according to K. Jaspers, took place in the 8th-3rd centuries. BC. - at the stage of historical development, which he called "axial time" and defined as the transition from a mythological, archaic person to a person of this type, "which has survived to this day" (K. Jaspers, 1987. p. 32) At this stage of historical development there is a transition from "religious", archaic man to "political" and rational man. The level of evolution of the psyche reached by this moment allows a person to realize "being as a whole, himself and his boundaries ...
In addition to the above-mentioned transformations in the human mental sphere, there are a number of other factors that determined the emergence of scientific rational psychological views in antiquity:
Development of the socio-economic and political system ancient greece as an important stimulus for the emergence of rational knowledge (the rapid rise in production, agriculture based on slave labor; the growth of trade and relations with the outside world; the emergence of large city-states as centers of public life, in some of which a democratic system is being established).
The flourishing of culture - poetry, music, architecture, literature (Homer, Hesiod, Archilochus, etc.).
The study, comprehension and creative processing of psychological ideas accumulated in the ancient Eastern world.
The relative anti-religiousness of ancient culture and the absence of religious prohibitions as the basis for the free development of scientific thought ( Olympic gods they reign, but they are not omnipotent; they do not frighten a person, but are standards that people follow, an object of admiration and imitation; gods are close to people, they communicate with people, participate in their lives, representing, in fact, ennobled, "improved" people, differing from others only in immortality). Falling on the soil of anti-religious ancient culture, the ancient Eastern psychological mythological ideas acquired a rational sound.
The emergence of science as a sphere of public consciousness with its criteria and requirements for cognition and presentation of material (conclusiveness, consistency, systematization), as well as the related tendency to consider a person and his soul not in line with mythological traditions, but on the basis of objective data (mathematical, medical, anatomical, physiological, biological).
The psychological thought of antiquity, developing on the basis of these innovations in the socio-cultural and psychological spheres, as a whole, acquires a deeply rational character. People who have acquired the ability to think, rationally explain everything that was previously inexplicable, frightened, filled their lives with unknowability, exalted and glorified the mind, raised it to a pedestal. It is argued that the god-likeness of a person is determined by the development of his mental abilities (Zeno, Chrysippus, Panetius), that the mind is the highest divine part of the soul (Plato, Aristotle), the principle of human organization (Anaxagoras), the source of its development and improvement (Heraclitus, Socrates, Plato) , purification of the soul (Plato), that rational knowledge is the only true one (Democritus, Plato). God himself is regarded as the mind (Thales) or nous (Anaxagoras), as the Logos (Heraclitus). Enmity and love acted as sources of the origin of the world (Empedocles).
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