In the present article, I compare Ernst Mach’s and Heinrich Gomperz’s contributions to the German-speaking positivist tradition by showing how, in trying to refound epistemology on the basis of one definite category of experiential element, namely, sensation and feeling, respectively, they each epitomized one major trend of Immanenzpositivismus. I demonstrate that, besides Mach’s “sensualist” conception of positivism – in light of which historians have tended thus far to interpret all German-speaking positivist research of that period – there also existed an (...) “affectivist” conception of positivism, which originated in Avenarius’s empiriocriticism and culminated in Gomperz’s pathempiricism. Here I aim to provide a new perspective on the history of positivism by highlighting the role played in it by psychological concerns. First, I revisit the notion of Immanenzpositivismus, the form of positivism that prevailed in both Germany and Austria between the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries: in addition to addressing the definition of this philosophical school of thought, I discuss the issue of “pure experience”, from which the positivists tried to reinterpret the foundations of knowledge. Second, I deal with Mach’s sensation-based approach to Immanenzpositivismus by commenting on his ontological and typological analysis of the constitutive elements of experience and emphasizing the fact that his concept of Empfindung is a relatively ill-defined notion in light of contemporary psychological standards. Moreover, I show that, despite his pretense of confining his epistemological developments to the analysis of sensations, Mach did not deny the involvement of feelings in epistemology, as clearly evidenced by some passages of Erkenntnis und Irrtum. Third, I analyze Gomperz’s feeling-based conception of Immanenzpositivismus, that is, pathempiricism, by highlighting how he strove to radically refound epistemology on the basis of the most recent advances of affective psychology. Focusing on the question of language sciences, I also discuss how he considered the role of feelings in the various forms of theoretical knowledge, the only field of investigation that he revisited in detail in his unfinished book, the Weltanschauungslehre. Fourth and last, I contrast Gomperz’s with Mach’s positivist model and argue that the former is more coherent and has a higher explanatory power than the latter. In conclusion, I insist on the importance of revisiting pathempiricism within the broader framework of affective epistemology. (shrink)

Fechner remains virtually unknown for his psychological research on the unconscious. However, he was one of the most prominent theorists of unconscious cognition of the 19th century, in the context of the rise of scientific investigations on the unconscious in German psychology. In line with the models previously developed by Leibniz and Herbart, Fechner proposes an explanative system of unconscious phenomena based on a modular conception of the mind and on the idea of a functional dissociation between representational and attentional (...) activity. For Fechner, the unconscious is a state of consciousness resulting from the isolation of representational activity from the rest of psychical life. Unconscious mental phenomena are unattended mental states that behave autonomously while remaining able to act on consciousness. This paper aims to revisit Fechner’s contribution to the history of the unconscious, but also the theoretical significance of the Fechnerian unconscious vis-à-vis current research on the cognitive unconscious. (shrink)

Au XIXe siècle, la question de la relation de l'âme au corps est profondément renouvelée par les travaux psychologiques allemands. Cette nouvelle manière d'envisager le rapport du psychique au physique participe de l’apparition d’un paradigme cognitiviste où les phénomènes mentaux sont considérés comme des entités isolables, objectivables et corrélables à l’activité de substrats neuraux particuliers. Les psychologues allemands sont confrontés au problème de la corrélation de la vie psychique et du système nerveux (localisation des phénomènes mentaux et nature de ce (...) rapport de corrélation) et proposent une réflexion approfondie sur le déterminisme neural et l’émergence des processus psychiques. (shrink)

Külpe’s contribution to affective psychology is nowadays largely disregarded. Yet he was one of the most important affective psychologists of his time, who did much to make feeling a subject of scientific study. In addition to discussing the basic tenets of Külpe’s affective psychology, I analyze its main outcomes regarding the theory of feelings. Moreover, I show how instrumental Külpe was in elaborating and systematizing the methods of experimental psychology. As a conclusion, I revisit the place of feeling and affective (...) psychology in Külpe’s thought in general. (shrink)

My article aims to revisit the aesthetic thought of the Austrian psychologist and philosopher Joseph Wilhelm Nahlowsky, as expounded in his formerly famous monograph Das Gefühlsleben. I show that although Nahlowsky was a direct heir of Herbart, his ideas were in keeping with both the contemporary debate about form and content and the then-emerging paradigm of psychological aesthetics. I describe his developments on aesthetic feelings and his remarkable attempt to elaborate a general psycho-affective theory on the experience of the aesthetic (...) object. I also discuss the importance of the notion of form, inherited from Herbart, in his psychological aesthetics. Finally, I demonstrate that, in addition to having marked an ‘affective’ turn in Herbartianism, Nahlowsky was a key actor in the evolution of ideas in psychological aesthetics in the second half of the nineteenth century. (shrink)

Theodor Lipps: Schriften zur Einfühlung. Mit einer Einleitung und Anmerkungen [Theodor Lipps: Writings on Empathy. With an Introduction and Comments] FaustinoFabbianelli Ergon Verlag. 2018. pp. 792. £68.26.