A unidade da psicologia no pensamento de Christian Wolff

Abstract

The current understanding of the role played by the psychology of German philosopher Christian Wolff (1679-1754) in the history of psychology is problematic. And the main reason is that, both in the historiography of psychology and in Wolff scholarship, some general questions remain unanswered: 1- What kind of relationship is there between Wolff‟s German and Latin psychological writings? 2- What does the Wolffian separation between empirical and rational psychology consist in? 3- Which perspective does Wolff adopt in his psychology: monist or dualist? Our study intends to answer these questions, and to contribute to the improvement of the available knowledge about Wolff‟s psychology and the role played by it in the history of psychology. Three hypotheses are presented here as possible answers: (1) Wolff‟s psychological writings form an unity; (2) Wolff‟s psychological system is an unity; (3) Wolff establishes an unity between monism and dualism in his psychology. After a thorough explanation of the research problems and procedures in the Introduction, Chapters 1 and 2 display a historical and philosophical analysis of Wolff‟s German and Latin main psychological writings. Chapter 3 contains the evaluation of the hypotheses, which is developed by means of the confrontation of the results from chapters 1 and 2 with several theses from the secondary literature. The Conclusion addresses once more those questions presented at the Introduction, and finishes with some general considerations regarding the value of this study to the historiography of psychology and to Wolff scholarship.