A psicologia empírica e sua relação com a filosofia em Johann Nicolas Tetens

Abstract

Although the eighteenth century is little emphasised in the historiography of psychology, it is possible to observe a richness of psychological material within logic, metaphysics, moral philosophy, physiology, aesthetics, and so forth, especially in the German Enlightenment. In this century, we focus on the empirical study of the soul that Johann Nicholas Tetens discussed in his Philosophical Essays about Human Nature and its Development (Philosophische Versuche über die menschliche Natur und ihre Entwickelung), published in 1777. Our main objective is to analyse the conception of empirical psychology, as well as its relation to philosophy, in this work. This question is particularly relevant as it allows us to verify that there are different and even diverging interpretations about this subject in the secondary literature. In our analysis, we verify that, in continuity with the discussions of 1760 and 1775, in the Philosophical Essays, empirical psychology is understood as historicalphilosophical knowledge that has a preliminary fundamental role in the determination of the legitimacy of metaphysics, and that the primacy of the introspective method does not mean an unconditional refusal of rational analysis.