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We shall eventually come to an evaluation of "the present status of philosophical anthropology;" but the reader may find it more than a little odd that the enterprise had its beginning in Germany 1874. That was the year, however, in which both Wundt's Grundzüge der Physiologischen Psychologie and Brentano's Psychologie vom empirischen Standpunkt were published. Before them, of course, psychological reflection had abounded, in various forms: Helmholz and Fechner were immediate predecessors of Wundt; and Bain, Spencer and Mill (and also Kant, Herbart and Lotze) figure in the background, while Brentano's inspiration was drawn from the observational penchant of Goethe and Hering (and, more basically, from Aristotle). But Wundt is considered by all historians as the first modern experimental psychologist, and Brentano as the father of modern phenomenology. Boring draws the contrasts between these two enterprises: "Brentano's psychology was empirical but not experimental; Wundt's was experimental. Hence Brentano's method was argumentative and Wundt's was descriptive in intention… Brentano organized his system about the psychical act; Wundt built his about sensory contents." Between the two there is a world of difference, although both were attempting to formulate the "new" psychology of the late nineteenth century as a science; and Boring underlines the fifty-year dilemma of systematic psychology as the choice between Brentano and Wundt—especially between act psychology and content psychology.

DOI: 10.1007/978-94-010-2792-2_1

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