The first lecture of our course was devoted to identifying the specific features of mental phenomena. The answer to this complex question, of course, could only be given in the most general form. I emphasized that the most characteristic function of mental processes is reflection, that by reflection we mean a special, subjective form of reflection of reality that arises at a certain stage of biological evolution1. Thus, we attributed mental phenomena to the widest range of life phenomena. Mental phenomena and processes are generated during the development of life and are necessary for life. And precisely because their generation and development is inseparable from the evolution of living organisms, they represent a function of the body or, more specifically, a function of the brain.

From these provisions follows a preliminary definition of the subject of psychological science:

Psychology is the science of the laws of generation and functioning of mental reflection in life and in the activities of living individuals.

As a preliminary definition, this definition is essential in all its elements, although, like any definition, it is by no means exhaustive and requires a much more detailed development of what is hidden behind it. Nevertheless, it seems to me to summarize the results of the development of scientific thought concerning the nature of psychic phenomena so close to us and at the same time so mysterious.

There are different paths that their research can take. First of all, this is a way to study the history of the development of ideas about the psyche. The history of the development of ideas about the nature of mental phenomena is very instructive precisely for understanding their essence. Another avenue of research is opening up. Those who follow this path also study the development, but not the history of views on the nature of the psychic, but the psychic reflection itself, that is, they study the history of psychic phenomena themselves. The third way is the way of systematic research of facts characterizing mental phenomena and processes.

Which path is best for us to take? I think that the solution to the issue does not at all come down to choosing one path. In my opinion, you should go along one, and another, and a third.

Today we will talk about the history of the development of views on mental phenomena. But I will immediately note that I am not at all going to give a detailed account of the development of psychology as a science. This is the task of a special course in the history of psychology. I will limit myself to just mentioning how ideas about mental phenomena first arose and how the main problems faced by human knowledge aimed at solving the question of the nature of these phenomena were posed.

Psychology as a science has a very long prehistory and a very short history of its development as an independent field of scientific knowledge. If the problem of the psyche has attracted the attention of philosophers for more than two thousand years, then the history of psychology as a positive science does not even last one hundred and fifty years. Our science is both old and young. Old, if we consider as the history of psychology the entire history of the development of views on the nature of mental phenomena, and young, if we talk about their specific study. Even at the dawn of human knowledge, people persistently sought an answer to the question: “What are these strange phenomena?”

In the past, as now, people were able to intuitively separate these phenomena from the objective ones, that is, those that we observe outside ourselves. And this question, which in one form or another can arise before everyone thinking person, took a prominent place in the system of philosophical views of the past. Quite early, philosophical thought formulated several important problems related to the nature of mental phenomena. These problems are not a thing of the past. They live and influence the development of psychology as a field of specific knowledge. Thus, in ancient philosophy, two opposing approaches to understanding the nature of the psyche arose, the struggle between which continues to this day. Philosophers adhering to one line proceeded from the assumption of the existence of an objective world. From their point of view, mental phenomena depend on material phenomena. In other words, matter is primary, and psyche is secondary. This line is known in the history of philosophy as the line of materialism. In ancient philosophy it was most clearly represented by Democritus, and we usually talk about it as the line of Democritus, the line of a materialistic approach to mental phenomena.

Representatives of another line proclaimed the primacy of the spiritual world, considering material phenomena as products of this special world, that is, they argued that the psyche (or, more broadly, a special spiritual principle) is primary, and matter is secondary. This line of idealistic approach to mental phenomena is often called Plato's line.

The struggle of these two lines constituted the most important content of the development of philosophical thought in the next two millennia. However, it would be a grave mistake to understand this struggle in a simplified way, that is, by dividing philosophers into two camps and trying to fit all the richest directions of philosophical thought into this rigid external scheme. It is undeniable that philosophers were divided into two camps: the camp of materialism and the camp of idealism. But from this indisputable position it does not at all follow that the struggle of these two lines, these two main tendencies simply divided philosophical systems into two parts. Everything was much more complicated. And if we retrospectively trace the views of great philosophers, we often find contradictory elements in the same theoretical ideas. Thus, the struggle between two trends appears in history not as an external clash of two different systems, but as an internal contradiction of philosophical views.

This phenomenon found its classical expression in the system of one of the most prominent representatives of ancient philosophy - Aristotle. Aristotle, in in a certain sense, developed the line of Democritus. It was he who came up with the thesis: “If there were no perceived things, then there would be no sensations.” Consequently, Aristotle’s system of views recognized the existence of the objective world as a source of sensations. The thesis that sensation cannot arise without the presence of the sensed is certainly a materialist thesis. But in Aristotle’s system there is also Plato’s line. Solving the question of in what forms matter exists, in what forms it appears before the perceiving subject, Aristotle came to the conclusion that these forms are of extraterrestrial, that is, spiritual, origin. It is difficult to overestimate the influence of Aristotle's theoretical views on the development of mental problems. Some concepts introduced by Aristotle have remained relevant to our time. Such concepts include the concept of association. We are still talking about associations and reproducing the observations summarized in the Aristotelian system. We know those phenomena that served as the basis for highlighting the concept of “association” (connection). Associations of impressions or sensations arise if the events causing these sensations were either close in time, or similar to each other, or, conversely, one event sharply contradicted another (association by contrast). All these ideas are alive in one form or another, alive to this day. And the term “association”, having changed its original meaning, is one of the capital psychological concepts.

I emphasize this point when talking about the significance of the concept introduced by Aristotle in order to once again reinforce the previously stated thesis: “The history of philosophical views is instructive, and it cannot be crossed out.” It would be in highest degree It is unwise to take the position of not knowing kinship, because many of the problems posed by past thinkers have become purely psychological problems.

I will allow myself to make a leap in time, since we are not engaged in a consistent presentation of history, but only placing milestones along the path of development of philosophical thought. Our understanding of the prehistory of psychology as a specific science, and of modern psychology, is inextricably linked with the name of the greatest philosopher of modern times, Rene Descartes. When Descartes is remembered, the Latin word “cogito” often comes to mind, since it was Descartes who came up with the famous thesis: “Cogito ergo sum” (“I think, therefore I exist”). Behind this thesis lies a whole worldview. Descartes drew a clear boundary between two worlds: the world of mental phenomena and the world of material phenomena. One world is the world that we find within ourselves. Descartes calls this world the world of thinking, understanding by thinking the entire totality of mental phenomena. He repeatedly explained his thesis, emphasizing that thinking also refers to the processes of perception, memorization, feeling - in a word, all mental life. Descartes placed the world of mental phenomena inside the subject. We discover this world when we set ourselves a certain task. We don’t just think, but we find ourselves thinking, we find ourselves perceiving, we “find ourselves...”, that is, we discover for ourselves the world of mental phenomena. In this “we find ourselves...”, apparently, lies the key to understanding the broad interpretation of the term “thinking” as a reflection (reflection) of one’s inner life.

In addition to the world of psychic phenomena, there is a world outside of us, the world of extension. Can a thought or feeling be measured? Do they have those signs of extension that are inherent in objective bodily phenomena? Descartes answers this question in the negative and uses the criterion of extension as the basis for separating the two worlds.

We have an ambivalent attitude towards this division. It is valuable because it initially led to an emphasis on the uniqueness of mental phenomena and was reflected in the subsequent development of psychology, contributing to the separation or, more precisely, the isolation of the internal subjective world from the external objective one. Descartes' distinction between two worlds deserves close attention. And the external world, and a person’s own body, and human actions, of course, belong to the world of extension. But what then remains for the share of the inner world, which really has no metric, no extension? Where then should we place this thinnest plane, this stage on which the spectacle of constantly changing psychic phenomena is played out? Within the framework of Descartes’ concept, consciousness turns out to be isolated and turns into a closed world, isolated from life. Isolated from life, because life is the life of the body, because life is life in the environment, because life is action! Life is an active process that acts as an affirmation of existence on the part of every subject of behavior, and especially a person. Life as an affirmation is a practical and therefore material process. If we separate consciousness from this practical process, then it inevitably turns out to be closed in its own circle. Thus, the position about the isolation of the mental world comes into conflict with our basic position, according to which mental processes are life processes generated in the course of evolution and reflective in nature. Descartes' idea of ​​the world of consciousness, as separate from the world of extension, was developed directly in relation to psychology and in the interests of psychology. Next to Descartes, I would like to put another name, significant not only for the history of philosophy, but also for the entire history of the development of human positive knowledge. I mean... I. Newton. Newton mainly entered the history of human thought as one of the representatives of exact knowledge, the founder of the Newtonian worldview in physics. Apparently, one side of his activity has fallen out of the sight of historians. The fact is that Newton was also not indifferent to the problem of the psyche. He thought about the nature of strange psychic phenomena. These strange phenomena, at the same time the closest to us and the most difficult to understand, are hardly achievable for scientific analysis. Newton dreamed of an exact psychological science, possessing the same powerful power of prediction as physics, and asked the question: “How to penetrate the world of strange psychic phenomena that flicker bizarrely in our consciousness? “They flash brightly and then disappear, as if covered with clouds. Newton was well aware that the task of analyzing mental phenomena is equal in difficulty, if not more difficult, than the task of penetrating the world of the universe. In the Universe, we also observe flickering luminaries that from time to time hide behind clouds. Despite all the complexity and remoteness of the world of the Universe, we manage not only to penetrate into it through direct observation, but also to process the obtained empirical facts with our minds, giving them a mathematical form. But can’t we apply the same method to the analysis of the world of mental phenomena, that is, use the observation method to study the laws of the inner world? This was Newton's dream.

At the very beginning of the 19th century, Newton’s dream unexpectedly found a lively response in the works of the famous German teacher and psychologist Herbart. From Herbart's point of view, the reality that we observe in ourselves is representations and their movements. The flow of representations is determined by the force relations between representations and, therefore, can be described mathematically in the same way as the movement of celestial bodies is described in physics. Herbart was deeply convinced that such a path, the Newtonian path of knowledge, could lead to the discovery of a completely special world of mental phenomena. Herbart's attempt was doomed to failure in advance, since he did not take into account the specifics of the world of subjective phenomena. The world of the Universe is dominated by its own internal laws, and to analyze these laws there is no need to involve some third force, since all the forces that control this world are located in it itself. We cannot in any way use the same method of analysis, that is, observation, to study the inner world, since the phenomena of this world reveal a direct dependence on influences that do not belong to the microworld itself, but are external to it. Any movement of ideas is closely connected with the movement of those phenomena that no longer belong to the world of mental processes. We see the world and imagine it, but, in Aristotelian terms, in order for us to have an idea, there must be some kind of represented thing that lies outside the world of consciousness.

You will have to come across Herbart’s theory more than once, which describes the mechanics of our ideas, but you are unlikely to find in the literature a mention of the fact that Herbart’s ideas were a replica of the great dream of Newton, who, in essence, first formulated the principle: process subjective phenomena with your mind and you will discover the laws that govern the world of our consciousness.

The struggle of materialistic and idealistic tendencies, reflecting in very complex forms the struggle of opposing ideologies, gave rise to some ideas that had a significant impact on the fate of our science. I will have to pick out a few more problems from history, without which it would be difficult to imagine some areas of modern psychology.

At the end of the 18th century, a group of philosophers appeared who tried to deduce mental phenomena directly from the work of the brain. The philosophers of this group undoubtedly represented a materialist line of development, since they adhered to the thesis about the primacy of matter and the knowability of the objective world. This direction is known in the history of philosophy as the direction of metaphysical and mechanistic materialism. It depicted a person with all his sorrows and joys by analogy with a machine. One of the first representatives of this trend, the French physician and philosopher La Mettrie, catchily called his main work “ Man-machine", reflecting with this name the very essence of French materialism. Philosophers of this school, comparing a person with a complex mechanism, tried to explain human behavior based on the structure of his body, about which at that time they knew quite little. To remove the psyche from the structure of the brain, in essence, means to reduce it to this device. We have two sides of the same coin. And nowadays we often come across theories that derive the psyche from the structure and functioning of the human brain. If we accept such a point of view, then psychology is, as it were, destroyed; it loses its subject, turning into physiology, biology, etc. And what the natural sciences cannot yet explain remains the responsibility of psychology as a temporary science, which, having described some phenomena and processes, must transfer them for truly scientific study into the hands of a physiologist... Thus, the ideas of mechanistic materialism, having adopted more sophisticated and hidden forms have migrated into our century. The psyche, of course, is a function of the brain. But what is its relationship to “brain” processes? Is it possible to derive the laws of mental activity from the laws of brain function? That is the question!

In conclusion, I must dwell on another representative of a major philosophical school - Bishop George Berkeley. Berkeley is considered one of the founders of subjective idealism. This direction is of particular interest, since it starts from a very important and purely psychological position: the first reality that we encounter is sensations. Those philosophers for whom this position is the starting point of philosophical constructions are called sensualists. The father of sensationalism, John Locke, succinctly expressed the credo of this movement when he said: “There is nothing in the intellect that has not first passed through the senses.” Locke's thesis, which argued that the formation of images, ideas and concepts is possible only on the basis of our sensations, can be given a double meaning. Materialistically understood, it means that sensations are an indispensable source of our knowledge. But the same thesis takes on a fundamentally different color in the context of ideas of subjective idealism (or agnosticism). Representatives of subjective idealism ask the following question: “The primary source of our knowledge is sensations, but what lies behind the sensations? What causes them? We see the reason that generated the image of this or that phenomenon through sensations. But the fact is that I can get information about this reason through all the same sensations.” So, a vicious circle is formed. If Descartes' circle closes and isolates consciousness from the outside world, then Berkeley's circle is a circle that isolates sensations. In the concept of subjective idealism, sensation acquires an independent existence, isolated from reality, that is, it exists without the sensed. With this interpretation of Locke’s thesis, our senses no longer act as unique windows into the world, no longer connecting us with the surrounding reality, but, rather, separating us and fencing us off from the outside world. Then mental phenomena become purely subjective phenomena, “purely” in the sense that there is nothing behind them except subjectivity. I see you based on the data that my senses provide me.

I can look at an object from a different angle, and then it will change, but I also learn about my movements from the same sensations. If we firmly adhere to the logic of subjective idealism, then we will come to the paradoxical conclusion about the unique existence of me as a subject. Just as subjective idealism takes on other forms, so mechanistic materialism has not yet left the arena of history.

And finally, a few words about that stage of history when psychology began to emerge from the depths of philosophy and develop as an independent science. I note that psychology left the womb much later than other natural sciences. It began to develop as a field of specific knowledge sometime in the mid-nineteenth century. The following appeal addressed to researchers of the nature of mental phenomena was of decisive importance for the emergence and development of psychology as an independent science. The scientists who raised this cry argued that psychology should break with speculative, purely philosophical constructions and move on to experimental analysis, designed in the image and likeness of the natural positive sciences. This idea became a turning point in the development of psychology as a field of specific scientific knowledge.

Animism. In tribal society, the mythological idea of ​​the soul dominated. Let us note that each specific sensually perceived thing was endowed with a supernatural double - a soul (or many souls). This view is called animism (from the Latin "anima" - soul). The surrounding world was perceived as dependent on the arbitrariness of these souls. Therefore, the initial views on the soul relate not so much to the history of psychological knowledge as such (in the sense of knowledge about mental activity), but to the history of general views on nature.

Shifts in the understanding of nature and man that took place in the 6th century BC became a turning point in the history of ideas about mental activity. The material was published on http://site

The works of the ancient Greek sages led to revolutionary changes in ideas about the world around us, the beginning of which was associated with the overcoming of ancient animism.

Animism is the belief in a host of spirits (souls) hidden behind visible things as special “agents” or “ghosts” that leave the human body with their last breath (for example, according to the philosopher and mathematician Pythagoras) and, being immortal, eternally wander through the bodies of animals and plants. The ancient Greeks called the soul the word "psyche", which gave the name to our science. It preserves traces of the initial understanding of the connection between life and its physical and organic basis (cf. Russian words: “soul, spirit” and “breathe”, “air”)

It is interesting that already in that ancient era, people, speaking about the soul (“psyche”), connected with each other phenomena inherent in external nature (air), the body (breath) and the psyche (in its subsequent understanding), although, of course, in everyday life In practice, they distinguished these concepts perfectly. Getting acquainted with ideas about human psychology from ancient myths, one cannot help but admire the subtlety of people’s understanding of gods endowed with cunning or wisdom, vindictiveness or generosity, envy or nobility - all those qualities that the creators of myths learned in the earthly practice of their communication with their neighbors. By the way, this mythological picture of the world, where bodies are inhabited by souls (their “doubles” or ghosts), and life depends on the mood of the gods, has reigned in the public consciousness for centuries.

Hylozoism. A fundamentally new approach was expressed by the doctrine that replaced animism about the universal animation of the world - hylozoism, in which nature was conceptualized as a single material whole endowed with life. Decisive changes initially occurred not so much in the actual composition of knowledge as in its general explanatory principles. Let us note that the information about man, his bodily structure and mental properties, which the creators of ancient Greek philosophy and science gleaned from the teachings of thinkers of the ancient East, was now perceived in the context of a new worldview, liberated from mythology.

Heraclitus: the soul as a “spark of Logos”. Hylozoist Heraclitus (late 6th - early 5th century BC) saw the cosmos as an “eternal living fire”, and the soul (“psyche”) as its spark. Based on all of the above, we come to the conclusion that the soul is included in the general laws of natural existence, developing according to the same law (Logos) as the cosmos, which is the same for all things, and was not created by any of the gods and none of people, but which has always been, is and will be “an ever-living fire, ignited in measures and extinguished in measures.”

The name of Heraclitus is also associated with the identification of several stages in the process of cognition of the surrounding world. Having separated the activity of the sense organs (sensations) from the mind, he gave a description of the results of human cognitive activity, proving that sensations provide “dark”, little differentiated knowledge, while the result of mental activity will be “light”, clear knowledge. At the same time, sensory and rational knowledge are not opposed, but harmoniously complement each other, like “multiple knowledge” and “mind”. Heraclitus emphasized that “much knowledge does not teach intelligence,” but at the same time, a scientist and philosopher must know a lot in order to form a correct idea of ​​the world around him. Based on all of the above, we come to the conclusion that the different aspects of knowledge in Heraclitus are mutually related harmonious opposites that help penetrate into the depths of the Logos.

He also pointed out for the first time the difference between the soul of an adult and a child, since, from his point of view, as the soul grows older, it becomes more and more “dry and hot.” The degree of moisture of the soul affects its cognitive abilities: “dry radiance is the wisest and best soul,” said Heraclitus, and therefore a child, who has a more wet soul, thinks worse than an adult. In the same way, “a drunk man staggers and does not notice where he is going, since his soul is wet.” Thus, the Logos, which rules the cycle of things in nature, also controls the development of the soul and its cognitive abilities.

Let us note that the term “Logos”, introduced by Heraclitus, acquired a great variety of meanings over time, but for him himself it meant the law according to which “everything flows”, phenomena pass into each other. The small world (microcosm) of an individual soul is identical to the macrocosm of the entire world order. Consequently, to comprehend oneself (the “psyche”) means to delve into the law (Logos), which gives the continuously flowing course of things a dynamic harmony, woven from contradictions and cataclysms. After Heraclitus (he was called “dark” because of the difficulty of understanding and “crying”, since he considered the future of humanity even more terrible than the present), the idea of ​​a law that rules all things entered into the stock of means allowing one to read the “book of nature” with meaning. including the non-stop flow of bodies and souls, when “you cannot enter the same river twice.”

Democritus: the soul is a stream of fiery atoms. Heraclitus’s idea that the course of things depends on the law of Logos was developed by Democritus (c. 460-370 BC)

Democritus was born in the city of Abdera, into a noble and wealthy family. His parents tried to give him the best education, but Democritus found it necessary to undertake several long journeys in order to obtain the necessary knowledge not only in Greece, but also in other countries, primarily in Egypt, Persia and India. Democritus spent almost all the money left to him by his parents on these trips, and therefore, when he returned to his homeland, his fellow citizens considered him guilty of embezzling his wealth and scheduled a trial. Democritus had to justify this behavior or leave his home forever. In this justification, Democritus, proving to his fellow citizens the benefit of the knowledge he had acquired, read to the people’s assembly his book “It is important to know that the great world-building” (which, according to contemporaries, was his best work). Fellow citizens felt that the money had been well spent. Democritus was not only acquitted, but also given a large monetary award, and copper statues were erected in his honor.

Unfortunately, the works of Democritus have reached us only in fragments.
It is worth noting that the basis of his theory is the concept according to which the entire world consists of tiny particles invisible to the eye - atoms. Atoms differ from each other in shape, order, and rotation. Man, like all surrounding nature, consists of atoms that form his body and soul. The soul is also material and consists of small round atoms, the most mobile, since they must impart activity to the inert body. Based on all of the above, we come to the conclusion that from the point of view of Democritus, the soul will be a source of activity, energy for the body. After the death of a person, the soul dissipates in the air, and therefore not only the body, but also the soul is mortal.

Democritus believed that the soul is located in the head (the rational part), in the chest (the masculine part), in the liver (the lustful part) and in the senses. When in the sense organs, the atoms of the soul are very close to the surface and can come into contact with microscopic, invisible to the eye copies of surrounding objects (eidoles), which float in the air, reaching the sense organs. These copies are separated (outflow) from all objects of the external world (that is why this theory of knowledge is called the “theory of outflows”) When eidols come into contact with the atoms of the soul, a sensation occurs, and this is how a person learns the properties of surrounding objects. Based on all of the above, we come to the conclusion that all our sensations (including visual, auditory) will be contact. By summarizing the data from several senses, a person discovers the world, moving to the next level - conceptual, which will be the result of the activity of thinking. In other words, Democritus has two stages in the cognitive process - sensations and thinking. At the same time, he emphasized that thinking gives us more knowledge than sensations. Thus, sensations do not allow us to see atoms, but through reflection we come to the conclusion about their existence. “We note that the theory of outflows” was recognized as the basis for the formation of our sensory knowledge of the objective world by all materialists of Ancient Greece.

Democritus also introduced the concept of primary and secondary qualities of objects. Primary - those qualities that actually exist in objects (weight, surface, smooth or rough, shape) Secondary qualities - color, smell, taste, these qualities are not in objects, they were invented by people themselves for their convenience, since “only in opinion there is sour and sweet, red and green, but in reality there is only emptiness and atoms.” Based on all of the above, we come to the conclusion that Democritus was the first to say that a person cannot completely correctly, adequately understand the world around him. By the way, this inability to fully understand the surrounding reality also applies to understanding the laws that govern the world and human destiny. Democritus argued that there are no accidents in the world, and everything happens for a predetermined reason. People came up with the idea of ​​chance to cover up ignorance of the matter and inability to manage. In fact, there are no accidents, and everything is causal.

This approach is called determinism, and the recognition of the unambiguous necessity of all events occurring in the world gives rise to a fatalistic tendency and denies the human will. Critics of Democritus emphasized that with such an understanding it is impossible not only to control one’s own behavior, but also to evaluate the actions of people, since they depend not on a person’s moral principles, but on fate.

At the same time, Democritus himself sought to combine a fatalistic approach with the idea of ​​human activity when choosing moral criteria behavior. It is worth noting that he said that moral principles are not given by birth, but will be the result of upbringing, which is why people become good through exercise, and not through nature. Education, according to Democritus, should give a person three gifts: to think well, speak well and do well. Children who grew up in ignorance are like dancing between swords with the blades facing up. It is worth noting that they die if, when jumping, they do not hit the only place where they should place their feet. Likewise, ignorant people, avoiding following the right example, usually perish.

Democritus himself considered education to be such a difficult matter that he deliberately refused marriage and did not want to have children, believing that they cause a lot of troubles and in case of success the latter was acquired at the cost of great labor, and in case of failure the grief of the parents is incomparable with any other.

The categories in which natural-philosophical* knowledge of the world and human relationships with it were expressed initially had only one area of ​​practical application - medicine. Subsequently (in the IV-IH centuries BC) another area of ​​application of this knowledge appeared - pedagogy. The concepts of doctors were formed under the direct influence of philosophical theories, but these concepts themselves, in turn, left their mark on the “picture of man” as it was drawn in philosophical systems. It is important to note that some of the most significant works physicians were the works of Hippocrates.

* Natural philosophers are thinkers focused on the study of the nature of things.

Hippocrates: doctrine of temperaments. The school of Hippocrates (c. 460-377 BC), known to us from the so-called “Hippocratic Collection,” viewed life as a changing process. Among its explanatory principles, we find air in the role of a force that maintains the inextricable connection of the body with the world, brings intelligence from the outside, and implements mental functions in the brain. The single material principle was rejected as the basis of organic life. If a person were one, then he would never get sick, and if he were sick, then the healing remedy would have to be one. But there is no such thing.

Hippocrates replaced the doctrine of a single element underlying the diversity of things with the doctrine of four fluids (blood, mucus, yellow bile and black bile). Hence, depending on which fluid predominates, there is a version of four temperaments, later called: sanguine (when blood predominates), phlegmatic (mucus), choleric (yellow bile) and melancholic (black bile)

For future scientific psychology, this explanatory principle, with all its naivety, was very important (it is not for nothing that Hippocrates’ terminology has been preserved to this day). First of all, the hypothesis was brought to the fore, according to which countless differences between people can be grouped into several common features behavior; thus laying the foundations of the scientific typology that underlies modern teachings about individual differences between people. Secondly, Hippocrates looked for the source and cause of differences within the body; mental qualities were made dependent on physical ones. The role of the nervous system in that era was not yet known, therefore the typology was, in today's language, humoral (from the Latin “humor” - liquid)

Alcmaeon: the brain is the organ of the soul. The humoral orientation of the thinking of ancient Greek physicians did not at all imply that they ignored the structure of organs specifically designed to perform mental functions. For a long time, both in the East and in Greece, two theories “heart-centric” and “brain-centric” competed with each other.

The idea that the brain is an organ of the soul belongs to the ancient Greek physician Alcmaeon of Cretona (VI century BC), who came to this conclusion as a result of observations and surgical operations. In particular, he found out the fact that from the cerebral hemispheres “two narrow paths go to the eye sockets.” It is worth saying that, believing that sensation arises due to the special structure of the peripheral sensory apparatus, Alcmaeon at the same time argued that there is a direct connection between the sense organs and the brain.

Based on all of the above, we come to the conclusion that the doctrine of the psyche as a product of the brain arose due to the discovery of the direct dependence of sensations on the structure of the brain, and this, in turn, became possible thanks to the accumulation of empirical facts. Sensations, according to Alcmaeon, are the starting point of all cognitive work. “The brain provides (us) with the sensations of hearing, sight and smell, from the latter arise memory and idea (opinion), and from memory and idea, which have reached unshakable strength, knowledge is born, which is such by virtue of its strength.”

Let us note that in this way other mental processes arising from sensations were associated with the brain, although knowledge about these processes (unlike knowledge about sensations) could not be based on anatomical and physiological experience.

Following Alcmaeon, Hippocrates also interpreted the brain as an organ of the psyche, believing that it would be a large gland.

It should be noted that in the 20th century, scientists turned to research on both nervous processes and body fluids, its hormones (a Greek word meaning something that excites). Note that now both doctors and psychologists talk about a unified neurohumoral regulation of behavior.

If you look at the Hippocratic temperaments from a general theoretical perspective, you will notice their weak side (however, it is also inherent in modern typologies of characters): the body was considered as a mixture - in certain proportions - of various elements, but how did this mixture turn into a harmonious whole? remained a mystery.

Anaxagoras: "mind" as the beginning of things. The philosopher Anaxagoras (5th century BC) tried to solve this riddle. It is worth noting that he did not accept Heraclitean view of the world as a fiery stream, nor the Democritus picture of atomic vortices. Considering nature to consist of many tiny particles, he looked for the beginning in it, thanks to which an organized cosmos arises from chaos, from the disordered accumulation and movement of these particles. Anaxagoras recognized this beginning as the “subtlest thing,” to which he gave the name “nus” (mind). It is worth noting that he believed that their perfection depended on how fully the mind was represented in various bodies. “Man,” said Anaxagoras, “will be the most intelligent of animals due to the fact that he has hands.” It turned out that it is not the mind that determines a person’s advantages, but his bodily organization that determines the highest mental quality - rationality.

The principles formulated by Heraclitus, Democritus and Anaxagoras created the main vital nerve of the future system of scientific understanding of the world, incl. and knowledge of mental phenomena. No matter what tortuous paths knowledge took in subsequent centuries, it was subject to the ideas of law, causality and organization. The explanatory principles discovered two and a half thousand years ago in Ancient Greece have become the basis for the knowledge of mental phenomena for all times.

Sophists: teachers of wisdom. A completely new side of the knowledge of mental phenomena was discovered by the activity of the sophist philosophers (from the Greek “sophia” wisdom). They were not interested in nature, with its laws independent of man, but in man, who, as the aphorism of the first sophist Protagoras said, “is the measure of all things ". Subsequently, the nickname “sophist” began to be applied to false sages who, using various tricks, present imaginary evidence as true. But in history psychological cognition the activity of the sophists opened a new object: relationships between people, studied using means that are designed to prove and inspire any position, regardless of its reliability.

In connection with this detailed discussion, techniques were subjected to logical reasoning, the structure of speech, the nature of the relationship between word, thought and perceived objects. How can anything be conveyed through language, asked the sophist Gorgias, if its sounds have nothing in common with the things they denote. And this was not purely a logical trick, but raised a real problem. It is worth noting that it, like other issues discussed by the Sophists, prepared the development of a new direction in the understanding of the soul.

The search for the natural “matter” of the soul was abandoned. The study of speech and mental activity from the perspective of its use to manipulate people has come to the fore. Their behavior was not dependent on material causes, as was imagined by previous philosophers who drew the soul into the cosmic cycle. Let us note that now she fell into a network of arbitrary logical-linguistic intricacies. From ideas about the soul, signs of its subordination to strict laws and inevitable causes operating in physical nature disappeared. Language and thought lack such inevitability; they are full of conventions and depend on human interests and preferences. Let us note that thereby the actions of the soul acquired instability and uncertainty.

One of the most remarkable thinkers of the ancient world, Socrates (469-399 BC), sought to return strength and reliability to the actions of the soul, but rooted not in the eternal laws of the macrocosm, but in the internal structure of the soul itself.

Socrates: Know thyself. The son of a sculptor and a midwife, he, having received a common education for the Athenians of that time, became a philosopher who discussed the problems of the theory of knowledge, data, politics, pedagogy with any person who agreed to answer his questions anywhere - on the street, on the market square, in any time. Socrates, unlike the Sophists, did not take money for philosophizing, and among his listeners there were people of the most varied financial status, education, political beliefs, ideological and moral disposition. The meaning of Socrates' activity (it was called "dialectics" - finding the truth through conversation) was to help the interlocutor, with the help of certain questions selected in a certain way, find the true answer (the so-called Socratic method) and thereby lead him from vague ideas to logically clear knowledge of the subjects discussed. A wide range of “everyday concepts” about justice, injustice, goodness, beauty, courage, etc. were discussed.

Socrates considered it their duty to accept Active participation V public life Athens. At the same time, he did not always agree with the opinion of the majority in the national assembly and in the jury trial, which required considerable courage, especially during the reign of the “thirty tyrants.” Socrates considered his disagreements with the majority to be the result of the fact that he always strived to observe laws and justice, which most people do not always care about. It is worth noting that he was accused of “not honoring the gods and corrupting youth,” and was sentenced to death by 361 votes out of 500 judges. Socrates courageously accepted the sentence, drinking poison and rejecting the plans of their students to escape as salvation.

Socrates did not write down his reasoning, believing that only a live conversation leads to the desired result - the education of the individual. Therefore, it is difficult to completely reconstruct his views, which we know from the three main sources of the comedies of Aristophanes, the memoirs of Xenophon and the works of Plato. All these authors emphasize that it was Socrates who first considered the soul primarily as a source of human morality, and not as a source of body activity (as was customary in the theories of Heraclitus and Democritus). Socrates said that the soul is a mental quality of an individual, inherent to him as a rational being acting in accordance with moral ideals. Such an approach to the soul could not proceed from the thought of its materiality, and therefore, simultaneously with the emergence of a view on the connection of the soul with morality, a new view of it also emerged, which was later developed by Socrates’ student Plato.

Speaking about morality, Socrates associated it with human behavior. Morality is a good realized in the actions of people. Moreover, in order to evaluate this or that act as moral, one must first know what good is. Therefore, Socrates connected morality with reason, believing that virtue consists in knowledge of the good and in acting according to this knowledge. For example, a brave person is one who knows how to behave in danger and acts according to their knowledge. Therefore, first of all, it is necessary to train people, show them the difference between good and bad, and then evaluate their behavior. By learning the difference between good and evil, a person begins to know himself. Thus, Socrates comes to the most important point of their views, associated with the transfer of the center of research interests from the surrounding reality to man.

Socrates' motto was: "Know thyself." By self-knowledge, Socrates did not mean turning “inward” - to one’s own experiences and states of consciousness (the very concept of consciousness had not yet been isolated at that time), but an analysis of actions and attitudes towards them, moral assessments and norms of human behavior in various life situations. This led to a new understanding of the essence of the soul.

If the sophists took as their starting point man’s attitude not to nature, but to other people, then for Socrates the most important thing is man’s attitude to himself as the bearer of intellectual and moral qualities. Subsequently, they even said that Socrates was the pioneer of psychotherapy, trying to use words to reveal what is hidden behind the external manifestations of the work of the mind.

In any case, his method contained ideas that played a key role in psychological studies of thinking many centuries later. First of all, the work of thought was made dependent on the task, which created an obstacle to its usual flow. It was precisely this task that became the system of questions that Socrates brought down on his interlocutor, thereby awakening his mental activity. Secondly, this activity was initially in the nature of a dialogue. Both features: a) the direction of thought created by the task, and b) dialogism, which assumes that cognition is initially social, since it is rooted in the communication of subjects, became the main guidelines in the experimental psychology of thinking in the 20th century.

We know about this philosopher, who has become for all centuries the ideal of selflessness, honesty, and independence of thought, from the words of his students. He himself never narrated anything and considered himself not a teacher of wisdom, but a person who awakened in others the desire for truth.

After Socrates, whose center of interest was primarily the mental activity (its products and values) of the individual subject, the concept of the soul was filled with new substantive content. It consisted of completely special entities, which physical nature does not know.

The ideas put forward by Socrates were developed into the theories of his outstanding student Plato.

Plato: the soul and the kingdom of ideas. Plato (428-348 BC) was born into a noble Athenian family. His versatile abilities began to manifest themselves very early and served as the basis for many legends, the most common of which attributes to him divine origin (making him the son of Apollo). Plato’s real name is Aristocles, but in his youth he receives a new name - Plato, which means broad-shouldered (in In his early years he was fond of gymnastics) Plato had a gift for giving, his philosophical works were written in a highly literary language, they contained many artistic descriptions and metaphors. At the same time, his passion for philosophy and the ideas of Socrates, whose student he became in Athens, distracted Plato from his original intention to devote his life to poetry. Plato carried his loyalty to philosophy and his great mentor throughout his life. After the tragic death of Socrates, Plato leaves Athens, vowing never to return to that city again.

His travels lasted about ten years and ended tragically - he was sold into slavery by the Sicilian tyrant Dionysius, who initially called on Plato to help him build an ideal state. Plato's friends, having learned about this, collected the amount necessary for the ransom, but by that time Plato was already freed. Then the collected money was handed over to Plato, and he bought a plot of land on the northwestern outskirts of Athens and founded a school there, which he called the Academy. Already in his old age, Plato makes a second attempt to participate in state affairs, trying to create an ideal state together with the son of Dionysius, Dionysius the Younger, however, this attempt also ended in failure. Disappointment in his surroundings darkened the last years of Plato's life, although until the end of his days he was surrounded by many students and followers, among whom was Aristotle.

Plato relied not only on the ideas of Socrates, but also on certain provisions of the Pythagoreans,* in particular on the deification of number. Above the gate of Plato's Academy it was written: "Let him who does not know geometry enter here." In an effort to create a universal concept that unites man and the cosmos, Plato believed that surrounding objects would be the result of the union of the soul, the idea, with inanimate matter.

* According to the views of the Pythagorean school (about whose founder there is no reliable information), the universe has not a material, but an arithmetic-geometric structure. Harmony reigns in everything that exists, having a numerical expression.

Plato believed that there is an ideal world in which there are souls, or ideas, of things, those perfect examples that become prototypes of real objects. The perfection of these samples is beyond the reach of objects, but makes us strive to be like them. Based on all of the above, we come to the conclusion that the soul will be not only an idea, but also the goal of a real thing. In principle, Plato's idea will be a general concept, which does not exist in real life, but a reflection of which will be all the things included in this concept. So, there is no generalized person, but each of the people will be, as it were, a variation of the concept “person”.

Since the concept is immutable, then the idea, or soul, from Plato’s position, is constant, unchanging and immortal. It is worth noting that she will be the guardian of human morality. Being a rationalist, Plato believed that behavior should be prompted and directed by reason, and not by feelings, and opposed Democritus and his theory of determinism, asserting the possibility of human freedom, the freedom of his rational behavior. The soul, according to Plato, consists of three parts: lustful, passionate and rational. The lustful and passionate soul must submit to the rational soul, which alone can make behavior moral. In their dialogues, Plato likens the soul to a chariot drawn by two horses. The black horse - a lustful soul - does not listen to orders and needs a constant rein, as he strives to overturn the chariot and throw it into the abyss. White horse - passionate soul Although he tries to follow this path, he does not always obey the driver and needs constant supervision. And finally, Plato identifies the rational part of the soul with the driver, who seeks the right path and directs the chariot along it, driving the horse. In describing the soul, Plato adheres to clear black-and-white criteria, proving that there are bad and good parts of the soul: the rational part for him will be clearly good, while the lustful and passionate part will be bad, lower.

Since the soul is constant and a person cannot change it, then the content of the knowledge that is stored in the soul is also unchanged, and the discoveries made by a person will not, in fact, be discoveries of something new, but exclusively the awareness of what has already been stored in the shower. Thus, Plato understood the process of thinking as remembering what the soul knew in its cosmic life, but forgot when entering the body. And thinking itself, which he considered the main cognitive process, will essentially be reproductive thinking, not creative thinking (although Plato operates with the concept of “intuition”, leading to creative thinking)

Exploring cognitive processes, Plato spoke about sensation, memory and thinking, and he was the first to talk about memory as an independent mental process. It is worth noting that he gives memory a definition - “the imprint of a ring on wax” - and considers it one of the most important stages in the process of cognition of the environment. The process of cognition itself in Plato, as already mentioned, was presented in the form of recollection; thus, memory was the repository of all knowledge, both conscious and unconscious at the moment.

At the same time, Plato considered memory, like sensations, to be a passive process and contrasted them with thinking, emphasizing its active nature. The activity of thinking is ensured by its connection with speech, as Socrates spoke about. Plato develops the ideas of Socrates, proving that thinking is a dialogue of the soul with itself (saying modern language, inner speech) At the same time, the process of logical thinking unfolded in time and consciously cannot convey the fullness of knowledge, since it relies on the study of surrounding objects, that is, copies of real knowledge about objects. Let us note that, nevertheless, a person has the opportunity to penetrate into the essence of things, and it is associated with intuitive thinking, with penetration into the depths of the soul, which stores true knowledge. It is worth noting that they are revealed to a person immediately, in their entirety. (This instantaneous process is similar to “insight,” which will later be described by Gestalt psychology. Moreover, despite the procedural similarity of intuitive thinking with “insight,” they are different in content, since Plato’s insight is not associated with the discovery of something new, but exclusively with awareness what was already stored in the soul.)

Plato's research laid new trends not only in philosophy, but also in psychology. It is worth noting that he was the first to identify stages in the process of cognition, discovering the role of inner speech and the activity of thinking. He also for the first time presented the soul not as an integral organization, but as a certain structure, which is under the pressure of opposing tendencies, conflicting motives, which are not always possible to reconcile with the help of reason. (By the way, this idea of ​​Plato about the internal conflict of the soul will become especially relevant in psychoanalysis, while his approach to the problem of knowledge will affect the position of the rationalists.)

Knowledge about the soul - from its beginnings on ancient soil to modern ideas - developed, on the one hand, in conjunction with the level of knowledge about external nature, on the other - as a result of the assessment of cultural values. Neither nature nor culture in themselves form the realm of the psyche, but the latter cannot exist without interaction with them. Philosophers before Socrates, thinking about mental phenomena, focused on nature, looking for one of the natural elements as an equivalent of these phenomena, forming a single world governed by natural laws. Only by comparing this idea with the ancient belief in souls as special doubles of bodies, one can feel the explosive power of the philosophy professed by Heraclitus, Democritus, Anaxagoras and other ancient Greek thinkers. It is worth noting that they destroyed the old worldview, where everything earthly, incl. the mental, became dependent on the whim of the gods, crushed the mythology that had reigned in the minds of people for thousands of years, raised the mind and ability of man to think logically, and tried to find the real causes of phenomena.

This was a great intellectual revolution, from which scientific knowledge about the psyche should be counted. After the Sophists and Socrates, in the explanations of the essence of the soul, there was a revolution towards understanding it as a cultural phenomenon, since the abstract concepts and moral ideals that make up the soul cannot be derived from the substance of nature. It is worth noting that they are products of spiritual culture.

For representatives of both orientations – “natural” and “cultural” – the soul acted as a reality external to the body, either material (fire, air) or incorporeal (the focus of concepts, generally valid norms). Whether we were talking about atoms (Democritus) or about ideal forms (Plato) - it was assumed that both enter the body from the outside, from the outside.

Aristotle: the soul is a way of organizing the body. Aristotle (384-322 BC) overcame these views, opening a new era in the understanding of the soul as a subject of psychological knowledge. Its source for Aristotle was not physical bodies and incorporeal ideas, but an organism where the physical 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. Let us note that this put an end to both the naive animistic dualism and the sophisticated dualism of Plato.

Aristotle was the son of a physician under the Macedonian king and was himself preparing for the medical profession. Having appeared as a seventeen-year-old youth in Athens to the sixty-year-old Plato, he studied for several years at his Academy, with which he later broke up. Raphael's famous painting "The School of Athens" depicts Plato pointing his hand to the sky. Aristotle - to earth. These images capture the difference in orientation of the two great thinkers. According to Aristotle, the ideological wealth of the world is hidden in sensually perceived earthly things and is revealed in direct communication with them.

On the outskirts of Athens, Aristotle created his own school, called the Lyceum (later the word “lyceum” began to be used to refer to privileged educational institutions). It was an indoor gallery where Aristotle, usually walking, taught classes. “Those think correctly,” Aristotle told his disciples, “who imagine that the soul cannot exist without a body and will not be a body.”

Who was meant by those who “think correctly”? It is quite clear that they are not natural philosophers, for whom the soul is the most subtle body. But not Plato, who considered the soul a pilgrim, wandering through bodies and other worlds. The decisive result of Aristotle’s thoughts: “The soul cannot be separated from the body” - contradicted Plato’s views on the past and future of the soul. It turns out that Aristotle considered his own understanding to be “correct,” according to which it is not the soul that experiences, thinks, and learns, but the whole organism. “To say that the soul is angry,” he narrated, “is equivalent to saying that the soul is engaged in weaving or building a house.”

Aristotle was both a philosopher and a naturalist explorer of nature. It is important to note that at one time he taught science to the young Alexander the Great, who subsequently ordered samples of plants and animals from the conquered countries to be sent to his old teacher.

A huge amount of comparative anatomical, zoological, embryological and other facts accumulated, which became the experimental basis for observations and analysis of the behavior of living beings. The generalization of these facts, primarily biological ones, became the basis of Aristotle’s psychological teachings and the transformation of the main explanatory principles of psychology: organization, patterns, causality.

The very term “organism” requires us to consider it from the point of view of organization, that is, the ordering of the whole to achieve a goal or to solve a problem. The structure of this whole and its work (function) are inseparable. “If the eye were a living being, its soul would be vision,” said Aristotle.

The soul was thought of by Aristotle as a way of organizing a living body, the actions of which are expedient. It is worth noting that he believed the soul to be inherent in all living organisms (including plants) and subject to objective, experimental study. It is worth noting that it cannot exist without a body and at the same time will not be a body. The soul cannot be separated from the body. Let us note that thereby the versions about the past and future of the soul, the ways of its connection with the material body external to it were rejected. Not the soul itself, but the body thanks to it learns, thinks and acts. The primary level of these relationships is represented in the processes of nutrition (“plant soul”) as the assimilation by a living body of the material substances necessary for its existence. This relationship presupposes the specific activity of the organism, thanks to which the external is absorbed by the living body differently than by the inorganic one, namely, through expedient distribution “within the boundaries and the law.” Such a way of apprehending the external, specific to a living organism, should, according to Aristotle, be considered the soul in its most fundamental biological form. The starting point for life will be nutrition as a strengthening of the external. Aristotle extended this general explanatory principle to other levels of activity of the soul, primarily to sensory impressions, to the ability to sense, which he interprets as a special likeness of the sense organ to an external object. Moreover, here, unlike nutrition, it is not the material substance that is assimilated, but the form of the object.

The soul has various abilities as stages of its development: plant, sensory and mental (inherent only to man). In relation to the explanation of the soul, Aristotle, contrary to his postulate about the inseparability of the soul and the body capable of life, believed that the mind in its highest, essential expression is something different from the body. Hierarchy of levels cognitive activity ended with the “supreme mind”, which was not mixed with anything corporeal or external.

The beginning of knowledge is the sensory ability. It is worth noting that it imprints the form of things just as “wax receives the impression of a seal without iron or gold.” In this process of assimilating the living body to external objects, Aristotle attached great importance to a special central organ called the “general sensory organ.” This center cognizes the qualities common to all sensations - movement, size, figure, etc. Thanks to it, it becomes possible for the subject to distinguish between modalities of sensations (color, taste, smell)

Aristotle considered the central organ of the soul not the brain, but the heart, connected with the organs of sense and movement through blood circulation. The body imprints external impressions in the form of “fantasy” images (data meant ideas of memory and imagination). It is worth noting that they are connected according to the laws of association of three types - contiguity (if two impressions followed each other, then subsequently one of them causes the other), similarities and contrasts. (These laws discovered by Aristotle became the basis of the direction, which later received the name of associative psychology.)

Aristotle adhered, in modern terms, to a systematic approach, since he considered living body and his abilities, as appropriate current system. His important contribution would also be the affirmation of the idea of ​​development, since he taught that a higher-level ability arises on the basis of a previous, more elementary one. Aristotle correlated the development of an individual organism with the development of the entire animal world. In an individual person, during his transformation from a baby into a mature being, those steps that the organic world has passed through during its history are repeated. This generalization contained in its rudimentary form an idea that was later called the biological law.

Aristotle distinguished between theoretical and practical reason. The principle of this distinction was the difference between the functions of thinking. Knowledge as such does not in itself make a person moral. His virtues depend neither on knowledge nor on nature, which only potentially endows the individual with inclinations from which his qualities can further develop. It is worth noting that they are formed in real actions that give a person a certain stamp. This is also due to how he relates to his feelings (affects)

The action is associated with affect. It is worth saying that every situation has an optimal affective reaction to it. When it is excessive or insufficient, people act badly. Combining motivation with a moral assessment of an act, Aristotle brought the biological doctrine of the soul closer to data. “Everyone is able to be angry and easily, as well as give out money and spend it, but not everyone knows how and it is not easy to do it in relation to the one to whom it should be and for what and how it should be.” If the affect (emotional state) and action are adequate to the situation, then spending money is usually called generosity: if it is inadequate, it is either wastefulness or stinginess. The right way It is extremely important to develop reactions through experience, study of others and oneself, and hard work. A person is what he cultivates and develops within himself.

Aristotle first spoke about the nature-conformity of education and the need to correlate pedagogical methods with the level mental development child. It is worth noting that he proposed periodization, the basis of which was the structure of the soul he identified. He divided childhood into three periods: up to 7 years, from 7 to 14 and from 14 to 21 years. It is worth saying that for each of these periods a specific education system should be developed. For example, speaking about preschool age. Aristotle emphasized that in this period the most important place is occupied by the formation of the plant soul; Therefore, for young children, daily routine, proper nutrition, and hygiene are so important. It is extremely important for schoolchildren to develop other skills, in particular movements (with the help of gymnastic exercises), sensations, memory, and aspirations. Moral education must be based on the exercise of moral action.

If Plato considered feelings to be evil, then Aristotle, on the contrary, talked about the importance of educating children’s feelings, emphasizing the need for moderation and a reasonable correlation of feelings with the environment. It is important to know that he attached great importance to affects that arise independently of the will of a person and the fight against which with the power of reason alone is impossible. That's why he emphasized the role of art.
It is worth noting that especially dramatic art, which, by evoking strong emotions in viewers and listeners, promotes catharsis, i.e. cleansing from affect, while simultaneously teaching both children and adults the culture of feelings.

Speaking about morality, Plato emphasized that only absolutely correct and perfect behavior is moral, and any deviations from the rule, even with the best goals, will already be an offense.

In contrast, Aristotle emphasized the importance of the very desire for moral behavior. Thus, he encouraged the child's attempts, albeit unsuccessful, to “be good,” thereby creating additional motivation.

Thus, Aristotle transformed the key explanatory principles of psychology: systematicity (organization), development, determinism. The soul for Aristotle is not a special entity, but a way of organizing a living body, which is a system; the soul goes through different stages in development and is capable of not only capturing what is acting on the body at the moment, but also being consistent with a future goal.

Aristotle discovered and studied many specific mental phenomena. But there are no “pure facts” in science. Any fact is seen differently depending on the theoretical angle of view, on the categories and explanatory schemes with which the researcher is armed. Having enriched the explanatory principles, Aristotle presented a completely different, compared to his predecessors, picture of the structure, functions and development of the soul.

Psychological views in the Hellenistic era. As already mentioned, after the campaigns of the Macedonian king Alexander (IV century BC), the largest monarchy of antiquity arose.

Its subsequent collapse opened a new period in the history of the ancient world - the Hellenistic - with its characteristic synthesis of elements of the cultures of Greece and the countries of the East.

It is worth saying that the position of the individual in society has changed radically. The free Greek lost contact with his hometown, a stable social environment and found himself faced with unpredictable changes. With increasing acuteness he felt the fragility of his existence in a changed world. These shifts in the real situation and self-perception of the individual left an imprint on ideas about her mental life.

Belief in the power of reason, in the great intellectual achievements of the previous era, is called into question. A philosophy of skepticism arises, which recommends generally abstaining from judgments concerning the surrounding world, due to their unprovability, relativity, dependence on customs, etc. (Pyrrho, late 4th century BC) It was precisely this intellectual attitude that came from data motivation. It was assumed that giving up the search for truth would allow one to find peace of mind, to achieve a state of ataraxia (from the Greek word meaning absence of worries)

The idealization of the lifestyle of a sage, detached from the play of external elements and thanks to him able to preserve his individuality in an unstable world, to withstand shocks that threaten his very existence, directed the intellectual searches of the other two philosophical schools that dominated the Hellenistic period - the Stoics and the Epicureans. Connected by their roots with the schools of classical Greece, they rethought their ideological heritage in accordance with the spirit of the new era.

Stoics. The Stoic school arose in the 4th century BC. It is worth noting that it received its name from the name of the place in Athens (“standing” - the portico of the temple), where its founder Zeno (not to be confused with the sophist Zeno) preached this teaching. Representing the cosmos as a single whole, consisting of endless modifications of fiery air - pneuma, the Stoics considered the human soul to be one of such modifications.

By pneuma (the original meaning of the word is inhaled air), the first natural philosophers understood a single natural, material principle that permeates both the external physical space and the living organism and the psyche residing in it (i.e. the area of ​​sensations, feelings, thoughts)

In Anaximenes, as in Heraclitus and other natural philosophers, the view of the psyche as a particle of air or fire meant that it was generated by the external, material cosmos. Among the Stoics, the fusion of psyche and nature acquired a different meaning. Nature itself was spiritualized, endowed with signs characteristic of reason - but not individual, but super-individual.

According to this teaching, the world pneuma is identical to the world soul, “divine fire,” which will be the Logos or, as the later Stoics believed, fate. Man's happiness was seen in living according to the Logos.

Like their predecessors in classical Greece, the Stoics believed in the primacy of reason, in the fact that a person does not achieve happiness because he does not know what it consists of. But if previously there was an image of a harmonious personality, in a full life in which the rational and the sensual (emotional) merge, then among the thinkers of the Hellenistic era, in an environment of social adversity, fear, dissatisfaction, anxiety, the attitude towards emotional upheavals - affects - changed.

The Stoics declared war on affects, seeing in them “corruption of the mind,” since they arise as a result of “wrong” activity of the mind. Pleasure and pain are false judgments about the present; desire and fear are equally false judgments about the future. Affects should be treated like diseases. They need to be “rooted out of the soul.” Only the mind, free from any emotional shocks (both positive and negative), is capable of correctly guiding behavior. It is this that allows a person to fulfill his purpose, his duty and maintain his inner integrity.

By the way, this data-psychological doctrine was usually associated with an attitude that, in modern language, could be called psychotherapeutic. People felt the need to resist the vicissitudes and dramatic turns of life that deprive them of mental balance. The study of thinking and its relationship to emotions was not of an abstract theoretical nature, but was correlated with real life, with learning the art of living. Increasingly, philosophers were turned to to discuss and solve personal, moral problems. From seekers of truths, they turned into healers of souls, as priests and confessors later became.

Epicureans. The school of Epicurus (late 4th century BC) was based on different cosmological principles, but with the same orientation towards the search for happiness and the art of living. In their ideas about nature, the Epicureans relied on the atomism of Democritus. At the same time, in contrast to the Democritus’ doctrine of the inevitability of the movement of atoms according to laws that exclude chance, Epicurus assumed that these particles could deviate from their natural trajectories. This conclusion had a data-psychological basis.

In contrast to the version of “hard” causality in everything that happens in the world (and, therefore, in the soul), the Epicureans allowed spontaneity, the spontaneity of changes, their random nature.
From one point of view, this approach reflected a sense of the unpredictability of human existence, on the other, it recognized the possibility of spontaneous deviations inherent in the nature of things, excluded the strict predetermination of actions, and offered a certain freedom of choice. In other words, the Epicureans believed that a person is capable of acting at his own fear and risk. However, the word “fear” here can only be used metaphorically: the whole point of the Epicurean teaching was that, imbued with it, people would be saved precisely from fear.

The doctrine of atoms also served this purpose: a living body, like the soul, consists of atoms moving in emptiness, which at the moment of death are scattered throughout general laws all the same eternal space. And if so, then “death has nothing to do with us; when we exist, then death is not yet there, but when death comes, then we are no longer there.”

The picture of nature and man’s place in it presented in the teachings of Epicurus contributed to the achievement of serenity of spirit, free from fears, first of all, of death and the gods (who, living between worlds, do not interfere in the affairs of people, since this would disrupt their serene existence)

Like many Stoics, the Epicureans thought about ways to achieve independence of the individual from the external. They saw the best way in self-removal from all public affairs. It is this behavior that will allow you to avoid grief, anxiety, negative emotions and thereby experience pleasure, since it is nothing other than the absence of suffering.

A follower of Epicurus in Ancient Rome was Lucretius (1st century BC). It is worth noting that he criticized the Stoic teaching about reason, poured in the form of pneuma. In reality, according to Lucretius, there are only atoms that move according to the laws of mechanics; as a result, the mind itself arises. In cognition, sensations will be primary, transformed (like “how a spider weaves a web”) into other images leading to the mind.

The teachings of Lucretius (stated, by the way, in simple form), like the concepts of the thinkers of the previous Hellenistic period, were his kind of instructions in the art of surviving in a whirlpool of disasters, forever getting rid of the fear of afterlife punishment and otherworldly forces.

Problems of moral behavior and education. Based on all of the above, we come to the conclusion that in the Hellenistic period, the problem of data, moral behavior fell into the center of interests of psychologists of different directions. For both the Stoics and the Epicureans, the study of the criteria of moral and immoral, by which human behavior can be assessed, was of great importance. The main reason The divergence of the positions of the Stoics and Epicureans was the question of the relationship between the individual and society. Should a person obey external rules or should he follow only his own ideas about good and evil? own desires and standards?

Even in the culture of Ancient Greece, the idea arose that a strong, significant person has the right to laws, his own position and his actions must be assessed by data standards other than life common man. In our time, this idea of ​​​​a superman was developed by F. Nietzsche.

The Cynic school believed that the true personality should pointedly ignore public opinion. From this point of view, each person will be self-sufficient, i.e. has everything necessary for spiritual, data life within itself. At the same time, as one of the leading scientists of the school, Diogenes of Sinope, emphasized, not every person is able to understand himself, come to himself and be content only with what he has in himself. People are accustomed to the help of society, other people, and comfort.

Therefore, the only way for moral self-improvement is the path to oneself, a path that limits contacts and dependence on the outside world. It is best to carry out such self-improvement with early childhood; that's why they should be special schools cynics for children (although such training is possible in adulthood)

Path moral development and training in Cynic schools consisted of three stages - asceticism, apadekia and autarky. The first step consisted of giving up the comfort and benefits that society provides. The Cynics walked in shabby clothes, in rags, even in the rain and cold they did not accept warm clothes, ate very little, did not have permanent housing, they could sleep in the open air, without washing. It is worth noting that they denied all the achievements of everyday culture, striving for simplification. In this way, from their point of view, dependence on society was overcome, which, in exchange for comfort, required a person to betray himself. At the next stage, a person was instilled with the idea of ​​​​ignoring the knowledge accumulated by society; illiteracy was even considered a virtue. At the third stage of independence, a person was taught not to pay attention to public opinion, to praise and blame. For this purpose, a special exercise was invented, which consisted in the fact that the student had to beg from a marble statue. Such behavior was considered successful when he continued his prayers despite the stony, cold silence of the statue. In the same way, students were taught not to pay attention to the ridicule, insults and threats that accompanied their appearance in the cities in torn and dirty clothes. In fact, the Cynics, striving for independence, taught not so much self-sufficiency as negativity towards society, shocking public opinion.

More widespread were the views of Epicurus, who argued that not negativism, but alienation, withdrawal from society is the most certain path of spiritual self-development and self-improvement. It is worth noting that he believed that the only source of both good and evil would be man himself, who is also the main judge of his own actions. Thus, the source of activity, like the source of morality, lies in man himself. Epicurus opposed the assertion that only behavior based on reason will be moral. It is worth noting that he believed that it is not the mind, but the feelings that control human behavior, causing in him the desire to do what causes pleasure and avoid those objects that cause displeasure.

Epicurus emphasized that from early childhood a person must learn to distinguish between desires and build behavior based on knowledge. It is worth noting that he argued that anything that causes pleasant feelings will be moral. You cannot live pleasantly without living morally, and you cannot live morally without receiving pleasure from it, Epicurus believed. In this case, true pleasure is provided only by spiritual pleasures, which are eternal and enduring, while bodily pleasures are temporary and can turn into their opposite. So, after a good dinner with excesses, your head or stomach may hurt, after contact with an unfamiliar woman you can catch a bad disease, and exclusively communication with books and friends is eternal and always brings only joy.

Expanding the position of Epicurus, Lucretius Carus narrated that “all those who strive to reach the heights of pleasure have made the path that ascends to him disastrous...” True happiness is for the one “who has the wealth of a moderate life, a serene spirit and he lives, being content with little."

There were vulnerabilities in Epicurus’s position, since if a person finds strength in himself and only in himself, punishes and encourages himself, he lacks the support necessary for many, helping to overcome difficulties and temptations, giving hope that someone will appreciate his behavior and reward him. If a child, as Epicurus said, is taught to rely only on own strength, without fear of failures and condemnation, then such upbringing certainly helps you find your way faster strong people, but it can be painful and even dangerous for the weak who need help and support. At the same time, one cannot but agree with his position that fear - both of teachers and of gods - hinders human development.

It is important to note that one of the main postulates of the Stoic school said that a person cannot be absolutely free, since he lives according to the laws of the world into which he finds himself. In this case, we cannot choose either the play we ended up in or the role we played. This is given by fate, by fate, which no one can change. What can a person himself do? He can only play with dignity the role that is destined for him. Based on all of the above, we come to the conclusion that the main moral law is the need to preserve one’s essence, one’s dignity in any, even the most difficult circumstances. Man with early years he must understand that he is unable to change his fate, to evade it, the Stoics believed. Therefore, whether you like it or not, you will still fulfill the will of fate. But you can be a pitiful spectacle of a person crying and not understanding his goal, or you can walk through life with your head held high, aware of where you are going.

The Stoics argued that “whoever willingly obeys orders avoids the most unpleasant side of slavery - doing what you don’t want.” Unhappy is not the one who carries out other people's orders, but the one who carries them out against his will; Therefore, you need to accustom yourself to desire what circumstances require.

Based on all of the above, we come to the conclusion that the main danger in the process of education for the Stoics was the element of feelings, which must be curbed in children for their own benefit.

Achieving complete self-control, tranquility, which is not disturbed by any everyday worries, is a sign of the highest mental health, and from the position of Marcus Aurelius, who said: “Consider it a sign of complete development if you are not disturbed by any noise, no voices will disturb you.” whether they contain flattering words, or threats, or just empty sounds.”

Stoic ethics in no way called for passivity. On the contrary, she was filled with faith in man, in the power of his mind. From an early age, children were taught that they could understand and overcome absolutely everything. Marcus Aurelius, in this instruction to young men, told: “If something is inaccessible to you, do not think that it is inaccessible to everyone, but if it is available to someone, then it is also available to you, since you are a person.” Based on all of the above, we come to the conclusion that every child had to understand that despite external limitations (poverty, illness), morally and intellectually he is no different from his more successful peers and therefore the laws and requirements for him are the same , as for them.

The Stoics emphasized that a strong person in any conditions, even in slavery and prison, will be internally healthy.

Alexandrian science. During the Hellenistic period, new cultural centers arose where various currents of Eastern thought interacted with Western ones. Among these centers, the ones created in Egypt in the 3rd century BC stood out. (at royal dynasty Ptolemy, founded by one of the generals of Alexander the Great) library and Musaeus in Alexandria. The Musey was essentially a research institute where research was carried out in various fields of knowledge, incl. in anatomy and physiology.

Thus, the doctors Herophilus and Erasistratus, whose works have not been preserved, significantly improved the technique of studying the body, in particular the brain. Among the most important discoveries they made was the establishment of differences between sensory and motor nerves; After more than two thousand years, this discovery formed the basis of the most important doctrine of reflexes for physiology and psychology.

Galen. Another great researcher of mental life in its connection with the physical was the ancient Roman physician Galen (2nd century AD). He wrote over 400 treatises on philosophy and medicine, of which about 100 have survived (mainly on medicine). Galen synthesized the achievements of ancient psychophysiology into a detailed a system that served as the basis for ideas about the human body over subsequent centuries. In the work “On Parts of the Human Body,” he, relying on many observations and experiments and summarizing the knowledge of doctors of the East and West, incl. Alexandrian, proclaimed the dependence of the vital activity of the entire organism on the nervous system.

In those days, dissecting human bodies was prohibited; all experiments were carried out on animals. But Golets, operating on gladiators (slaves whom the Romans essentially did not consider human), was able to expand medical ideas about man, primarily about his brain, where, as he believed, the “highest grade” of pneuma as the bearer of the mind is produced and stored.

The doctrine of temperaments as proportions in which several basic “juices” are mixed, developed by Galen (following Hippocrates), was widely known for many centuries. Let us note that he called a temperament with a predominance of “warm” courageous and energetic, a predominance of “cold” - slow, etc.

It's important to know that great attention Galen paid attention to affects. Aristotle also said that, for example, anger can be explained either by interpersonal relationships (the desire to take revenge for an insult) or by “boiling blood” in the body. Galen argued that changes in the body will be primary in affects ("increased cardiac warmth"); the desire for revenge is secondary. Many centuries later, discussions between psychologists will again arise around the question of what comes first - subjective experience or bodily shock.

Philo: pneuma as breathing. The disasters that the peoples of the East experienced in cruel wars with Rome and under its rule contributed to the development of teachings about the soul, which prepared the views that the Christian religion assimilated.

It is important to know that the teachings of the mystical philosopher from Alexandria Philo (1st century AD), who taught that the body is dust, receiving life from the breath of the deity, gained great popularity. This breath is pneuma. The idea of ​​pneuma, which occupied an important place in ancient teachings about the soul, was, as already mentioned, of a purely hypothetical nature. This created the ground for irrational, inaccessible to empirical control, judgments about the dependence of what happens to a person on supersensible forces, intermediaries between the earthly world and God.

After Philo, pneuma was credited with the function of communication between the mortal part of the soul and the incorporeal entities that connect it with the Almighty. A special section of religious dogma arose that described these “pneumatic” entities and was called pneumatology.

Plotinus: the concept of reflection. The principle of the absolute immateriality of the soul was approved by the ancient Greek philosopher Plotinus (c. 203 - c. 269 AD), the founder of the Roman school of Neoplatonism. At the basis of the existence of everything corporeal, he saw the emanation (outflow) of the divine, spiritual principle.

If we ignore religious metaphysics, imbued with mysticism, then in relation to the progress of psychological thought, Plotinus’ ideas about the soul contained a new important point. With Plotinus, psychology for the first time in its history becomes the science of consciousness, understood as “consciousness itself.” A turn to the study of the inner mental life of man began in ancient culture long before Plotinus. At the same time, with the tendency towards individualization noticeably growing in the Hellenistic period, the prerequisites for the subject to recognize himself as the final independent center of mental acts had not yet taken shape. These acts were considered to be derived from pneuma by the Stoics, and from atomic flows by the Epicureans.

Plotinus - following Plato - taught that the individual soul comes from the world soul, towards which it is directed; another vector of activity of the individual soul is directed towards the sensory world. Plotinus himself identified one more direction, namely, the soul’s turning toward itself, toward its own invisible actions: it, as it were, follows its work, becomes its “mirror.”

After many centuries, the subject’s ability not only to sense, feel, remember, think, but also to have an internal idea of ​​these functions was called reflection. It is precisely this ability that serves as an integral “mechanism” of a person’s conscious activity, connecting his orientation in the external world with orientation in the inner world, in himself.

Plotinus distinguished this “mechanism” from other mental processes, the explanation of which was the focus of many generations of mental researchers. No matter how wide the range of these explanations was, they ultimately led to the search for the dependence of mental phenomena on physical reasons, from processes in the body, from communication with other people.

The reflection revealed to Plotinus could not be explained by any of these factors. It is worth noting that she looked like a self-sufficient entity that could not be derived from anything. It remained so for centuries, becoming the original concept of introspective psychology of consciousness (see below)

In modern times, when real social foundations for the self-affirmation of the subject as an independent free person claiming the uniqueness of his mental being were formed, reflection acted as the basis and main source of knowledge about this being. It was precisely this interpretation that was contained in the first programs for the creation of psychological science, which had its own subject, which distinguishes it from other sciences. Indeed, no science is engaged in the study of the ability to reflect. Of course, while highlighting reflection as one of the areas of activity of the soul, Plotinus could not consider the individual soul to be a self-sufficient source of its own internal images and actions. The soul for him is an emanation of the super-beautiful sphere of the highest origin of all things.

Augustine: the concept of inner experience. The teachings of Plotinus influenced Augustine (354-430 AD), whose work marked the transition from the ancient tradition to the medieval Christian worldview. Augustine gave the interpretation of the soul a special character: considering the soul to be an instrument that rules the body, he argued that its basis is formed by the will, and not the mind. Let us note that by doing so he became the founder of the doctrine later called voluntarism (from the Latin “voluntas” - will)

According to Augustine, the will of the individual depends on the divine and acts in two directions: it controls the actions of the soul and turns it to itself. All changes occurring in the body become mental thanks to the volitional activity of the subject. Thus, from the “imprints” that are preserved by the senses, the will creates memories.

All knowledge lies in the soul, which lives and moves in God. It is worth noting that it is not acquired, but is extracted from the soul, again thanks to the direction of the will.
It is worth noting that the basis for the truth of this knowledge is internal experience: the soul turns to itself in order to comprehend with utmost certainty its own activity and its invisible products.

The idea of ​​an internal experience, different from the external, but possessing a higher truth, had a theological meaning for Augustine, since it was assumed that this truth was bestowed by God. Subsequently, the interpretation of internal experience, freed from religious overtones, merged with the idea of ​​introspection as a special method of studying consciousness, inherent only in psychology.