BERZELIUS, J JACOBBiblio.com
FRIES, JACOB FRIEDRICHBiblio.com
Neue Kritik der Vernunft. 3 vols. - SEMINAL EARLY WORK ON “EMPIRICAL PSYCHOLOGY”
1807réf. 61857Heidelberg Muhr und Zimmer 1807. 8vo. Uniformly bound in three recent card-board bindings with gilt lettering to spine. Spines with sunning. Ex-libris Philosopher Carl Henrik Koch pasted on to pasted down front front end-paper. Verso and recto of front and back free end-paper in vol. 1 closely annotated in contemporary hand. With light occassional brownspotting throughout a nice set.2 L 347 pp.; 327 pp.; 392 pp. The very rare first edition of Fries seminal work on psychology. “In his earliest writings Fries generally referred to the science of psychology as “empirical psychology”. However by 1807 in Neue Kritik der Vernunft he preferred to call his own psychology “philosophical anthropology” and in 1820 under the influence of G. E. Schulze he changed the title of his psychology to “psychic anthropology”. In the second edition of Neue Kritik der Vernunft 1828-31 in which he again used the title of “psychic anthropology” Fries explained why he had avoided the use of the term “psychology”: “Although this science is usually called psychology we will deviate from this terminology for several reasons. The word «psyche» or soul has been used in philosophy to designat the metaphysical persisting simple and immortal essence of the spirit and its use therefore''implies certain assumptions which we cannot now entertain. We are only concerned with developing a doctrine of the nature of the human soul based upon "inner experience”. Thus we will deal only with inner anthropology. In thus narrowing our scope to the human spirit we arrive at the topic of empirical psychology or psychic anthropology. But our present task differs from empirical psychology which is an experimental physics of inner life eine innere Experimentalphysik which remains forever fragmentary. We will not be satisfied with such a science. We want to achieve a unified theory of inner life a doctrine of inner nature which will provide for the study of our inner psychic nature what 'the philosophy of nature now provides for physics. This part of psychic anthropology we want to call philosophical anthropology From the introduction to Vol. 1 p. 36. “Thus Fries called his psychology “psychic anthropology” both to avoid the metaphysical assumptions of the old rational psychology and to indicate his dissatisfaction with the current « fragmentary » and mechanical empirical psychology. On the first account in rejecting the old metaphysics of the soul Fries accepted Kant's critique of rational psychology; on the second in rejecting the merely empirical status of psychology he disagreed with Kant's evaluation of the limited epistemological possibilities of psychology. Instead he maintained that psychology need not be “merely empirical” that it can attain the true status of a science and in other words that its phenomena can be rationally organized according to metaphysical criteria. Kant 1786; trans. 1970 had denied this possibility claiming that the metaphysical principles of natural science were not applicable to psychology. Fries agreed that the principles which Kant referred to as “the metaphysical principles of natural science” could not be used in psychology but he pointed out that these principles were really « metaphysical principles of outer nature » not natural science per se and that another set of metaphysical criteria was possible.” Leary T he Psychology of Jakob Friedrich Fries 1773-1843: Its Context Nature and Historical Significance p. 231 unknown
