Introduction

Author(s):  
Mattia Riccardi

Chapter 1 clarifies which parts of Nietzsche’s thought belong to his philosophical psychology and what role his philosophical psychology plays within his overall project, in particular, his critique of morality. Whereas some scholars have been primarily interested in Nietzsche’s specific claims about moral psychology, this book is primarily interested in Nietzsche’s philosophical psychology understood as a body of claims about more basic and more general psychological phenomena. The chapter also discusses methodological issues regarding the use of Nietzsche’s unpublished notes, and argues that unpublished materials may be an essential tool when one is interested in investigating how Nietzsche came to adopt a certain concept or formulate a certain view. The chapter ends by offering a brief overview of the book’s content.

Author(s):  
Keith Dowding

Chapter 1 introduces the subject matter of the book. It analyses the methodological issues that arise when conceptualizing power in society. It first looks at the definitional divisions that demarcate different approaches to power. The first division describes causal approaches to power and dispositional accounts of power. It argues that power is a disposition concept – power is best seen as a property of individuals that they can choose or not to wield. The second division concerns structural versus individualist accounts. The chapters argues we need to transcend this division. Whilst in this book power is seen as a dispositional property of agents, and can thus be seen as methodologically individualist, it is equally a structural account. A structure is the relationship between people which can be described in terms of their relative powers. We concentrate on actors for some questions and the structure for others.


1990 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-17 ◽  
Author(s):  
David Magnusson

This article is about the lessons that can be learned from the mistakes of the past. After a critical, constructive analysis of current theorizing and research, important directions of future personality psychology are described against the background of a general theoretical framework. It is argued that individual functioning cannot be understood or explained if the environmental factors that are operating in the individual's interactions with the environment and the biological factors that are constantly interacting with the cognitive‐emotional system are not considered. Finally, the article focuses on conceptual and methodological issues that are of major importance for further progress in personality psychology, viz. (a) the match between level of psychological processes and type of data, (b) the nature of psychological phenomena studied in terms of variables, (c) the use of chronological age as the marker of individual development, and (d) the comparison between a variable and a person approach.


2018 ◽  
Vol 21 (10) ◽  
pp. 61-69
Author(s):  
V. V. Kryvoshein

The role and place of Georges Guerwich in the foundation of a sociological school at the University of Dnipro. It was found out that at the beginning of his academic career, Georges Guerwich, a coryphae of the Paris School of Sociology, worked for some time at the University of Katerynoslav, thus having laid, at least implicitly, the seeds of sociological education in the Pridneprovsky region. The course of events preceding the opening of the classical university in Katerynoslav is described. It is also noted that when opening the Faculty of Law of the named above, special attention was paid to ensuring the sociological component of the training of future lawyers. Relying on the experience of Western European and especially American universities, it was proposed at the opening of the Faculty of Law in Katerynoslav to establish a department of sociology. For this mission to the University of Katerynoslav, a talented graduate of the Petrograd University George George Gurvich was invited, who is a pupil of intellectual leaders of the Russian law school L. Petrazhitsky, P. Novgorodtsev, F. Taranovsky. While working at the Department of Encyclopedia, History of Philosophy of Law, he laid the foundations of sociological culture at this institution of higher education. It is proved that his general sociological views have a phenomenological basis. G. Gurvich determined that the object of sociology is sui generis phenomena, which are neither reduced to physical nor chemical, biological or psychological phenomena, and the explanation of their main attributes is the main task of sociology. In this case, the main attributes of social phenomena may be in agreement or in conflict. Characterized by the sociological views of Georges Gurvich, it was noted that his sociology is distinguished by the principal attention to theoretical and methodological issues, the phenomenological angle of considering social problems, the elucidation of the historical and genetic foundations of social processes. It was emphasized that it is precisely this focus of the problem’s consideration that is inherent in a sociological school formed at the Dnipro University. Georges Guerwich’s intellectual heritage, academic and scientific-organizational activities are of great importance for the development of world sociology. He co-operated with P. Sorokin, N. Timashev, F. Stepun, P. Struve, and maintained friendly relations with L. Brunswick, L. Lévy-Bruhl, M. Mouss, M. Halbwachs, T. Parsons, R. Merton and others luminaries of modern sociological science. His lectures were attended by J.-P. Sartre and J. Lacan.


2020 ◽  
pp. 095935432097549
Author(s):  
Manolis Dafermos

This article aims to examine the relation between psychology and metaphysics. Despite psychology’s claim of being an exact science, like physics, it contains an implicit commitment to metaphysical assumptions, such as ahistorical universalism, ontological dualism, abstract individualism, and the fragmentation of the human mind. This paper proposes a dialectical perspective as a way to overcome the unidimensional examination of psychological phenomena as the sum of independent, fixed, and static elements. By revealing the shortcomings of reductionism and elementarism, dialectics highlight the complex and dynamic nature of psychological processes and provide an original way of conceptualizing crucial theoretical and methodological issues of psychology as a discipline.


Author(s):  
Simon Robertson

Nietzsche gives an important role to psychology in his revaluative project. This and the next chapter focus on those aspects that concern the explanation of action and motivation. Many commentators place ‘will to power’ at the centre of his philosophical psychology. The present chapter considers two forms this takes: one treats power as a content of motivation; the other sees will to power as a thesis about the structure of motivation. Both face similar and serious difficulties. The chapter concludes that we should reject the kinds of totalizing power-based psychology often attributed to Nietzsche.


Memory ◽  
2019 ◽  
pp. 3-31
Author(s):  
Jordi Fernández

Chapter 1 sets up the discussion that will lead to an account of memory and addresses some preliminary methodological issues. It specifies the kind of memory to be accounted for, as well as the features of memories of that kind which require explanation. These include one feature concerning the metaphysics of memory, one feature concerning its intentionality, two features concerning the phenomenology of memory, and two features concerning its epistemology. The chapter then distinguishes several ways in which those features can be approached, depending on which of them are taken to be basic. Finally, one of the possible approaches is selected for the book. According to this approach, the facts in virtue of which a mental state qualifies as a memory, and the content that the memory has, are fundamental aspects of that memory. The phenomenological and epistemological aspects of the memory are to be explained in terms of them.


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