Psychology and Philosophy

Psychology and Philosophy provides a history of the relations between philosophy and the science of psychology from late scholasticism to contemporary discussions. The book covers the development from 16th-century interpretations of Aristotle's De Anima, through Kantianism and the 19th-century revival of Aristotelianism, up to 20th-century phenomenological and analytic studies of consciousness and the mind.

In this volume historically divergent conceptions of psychology as a science receive special emphasis. The volume illuminates the particular nature of studies of the psyche in the contexts of Aristotelian and Cartesian as well as 19th- and 20th-century science and philosophy. The relations between metaphysics, transcendental philosophy, and natural science are studied in the works of Kant, Brentano, Bergson, Husserl, Merleau-Ponty, Wittgenstein, and Davidson. Accounts of less known philosophers, such as Trendelenburg and Maine de Biran, throw new light on the history of the field. Discussions concerning the connections between moral philosophy and philosophical psychology broaden the volume's perspective and show new directions for development.

All contributions are based on novel research in their respective fields. The collection provides materials for researchers and graduate students in the fields of philosophy of mind, history of philosophy, and psychology.

Sara Heinänaa is Senior Lecturer of Theoretical Philosophy at the University of Helsinki, Finland. She also works as Professor of Humanist Women's Studies at the University of Oslo, and officiates as the president of the Nordic Society for Phenomenology. She has published widely on phenomenology and philosophy of mind-body, focusing on the problems of method, embodiment and affectivity. Her latest publications include Toward a Phenomenology of Sexual Difference: Husserl, Merleau-Ponty, Beauvoir (2003), Metaphysics, Facticity and Interpretation (2003), co-edited with Dan Zahavi and Hans Ruin, and Consciousness: From Perception to Reflection (2007), co-edited with Vili Lähteenmäki and Pauliina Remes.

Martina Reuter is Academy Research Fellow at the University of Helsinki and member of the Academy of Finland Centre of Excellence in Philosophical Psychology, Morality and Politics. Among her recent publications are 'The Significance of Gendered Metaphors,' Nora: Nordic Journal of Women's Studies 14: 3 (2006); and 'Mary Wollstonecraft and Catharine Macaulay on the Will,' in J. Broad & K. Green (eds) Virtue, Liberty, and Toleration: Political Ideas of European Women, 1400-1800 (2007).