Great Philosophers' contribution to Psychology

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Which of these made the greatest contribution to Psychology: Plato, Aristotle or Socrates. If you could answer why, it would be greatly appreciated. Thx for your time.

-- Tony Gomez (inxdbl@msn.com), May 22, 2003

Answers

Is this some sort of bet? :-)

"Greatness" of intellectual contribution is rarely adequately ranked along a single dimension, especially with three people who interacted as closely as Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle did. Each built on the previous one's contributions. Socrates' contribution is nearly impossible to estimate because most of what we know of him comes from his student, Plato. He seems to have written nothing himself. The early Platonic dialogues are often said to be "Socratic" -- more or less faithfully recording actualy conversations Socrates had -- but this is little more than an educated guess. (Most of the rest of what we know of Socrates comes from another of his students, Xenophon, who presents a quite different picture than Plato. Xenophon's Socrates is not Plato's "man who knows only that he knows nothing.")

We have many of Plato's books. None of them are specifically on what *we* would call psychology (the term did not even exist then), but he has many things to say about the nature of the psyche. The most detailed work on it is in the second half of Book IV of the _Republic_, where he lays out his famous "tripartite" scheme for the psyche. There is a great deal of material in the _Timaeus_ as well. One of the most important works on the topic is Thomas M. Robinson's book _Plato's Psychology_. You might have a look at that as well.

Aristotle wrote a book specifically on the topic of the psyche, though it now usually goes by the (not very well rendered) Latin translation, _De Anima_, or the English _On the Soul_. Aristotle's main concern is not with what we might call psychology, but rather with what it means for a body to be alive. Along the way, however, he discusses issues such as perception, intellect, desire, and imagination at some length. There are excellent collections of essays about _De Anima_ edited by Nussbaum & Rorty, and by Michael Durrant. As well, there are minor works by Aristotle about what we would think of as psychological topic -- e.g., memory, dreams. The _Ethics_ contains some psychological material as well. All of the works Aristotle published during his lifetime, however, are now lost. The books were have are edited compilations of his lecture notes.

For more information, see my suggestions for primary source readings in the history of psychology at: http://psychclassics.yorku.ca/suggestions.htm

Whose impact was greatest is a very complex question. A great deal of early Christian doctrine on the soul was drawn from the work of the "middle" and "neo-" Platonists of the first few centuries AD. Platonism was virtually the official philosophy of the first millennium in the Christian west. Aristotle wasn't "rediscovered" in the West until the 12th century, but by the 13th century his influence was probably greater than Plato's (inasmuch as it can be disentangled from Plato's). By the Renaissance, however, Aristotelianism had become rigid and dogmatic and was abandoned by many in favor of a resurgent neo-Platonism (many of the so-called Renaissance "scientists" -- a term that was not even in use until the 19th-century -- were actually neo-Platonists, Copernicus among them. See esp. Frances Yates' work on this).

By the time the "scientific revolution" hit psychology in the late 19th century, all three were rejected as having been "mere" philosophers, but their thought had for so long informed the basic assumptions of Western thought that there was no way to reject them fully.

If you think that empiricism is the prime feature of modern psychology, you'd probably pick Aristotle over Plato (though Aristotle was hardly the pure empiricist he is sometimes caricatured as). If you think that psychodynamics (the interplay of competing mental "parts") is the prime feature of modern psychology, you'd probably pick Plato over Aristotle (though Aristotle picked this up from Plato as well). Some have even suggested that Freud's id, ego, and superego are lifted more or less directly from Plato's epithumetikon, logistikon, and thumoeides (though the story of their relation is surely more complicated than simple pilfering).

-- Christopher Green (christo@yorku.ca), May 22, 2003.


give me the pre-socratics anyday!

-- (roman1221@zensearch.com), September 03, 2004.

Yes, well, if we knew much of what the presocratics actually said (as opposed to what the students of their students of their students said about them (or what the opponents of their opponents of their opponents said), that might be the case. As things now stand, however, we have almost nothing that can be wholly reliably attributed to any of them, and when we do, it is often presented so utterly out of context (e.g., "all is water," or "all things come into being in accordance with this logos") that it is difficult to know what they were actually getting at. Not until Parmenides do we have anything of substance, and most of that was picked up by Plato.

-- Christopher Green (cgreen@chass.utoronto.ca), September 04, 2004.

i guess aristotle was the greast of all the philosophers since most of his works were not found and those found weren influencial to the development of modern psychology

-- success wonderful (amicableterror@yahoo.com), February 22, 2005.

Since it was Aristole that posit that an empirical approach, rather than dialogue,was the best route to knowledg; I think no other than Aristole knew that it could be possible to subject the mind process to scientific test among his contemporaries. Aristole remains the great contributor.

-- Kenneth Obasi (kenmary2004jesus@yahoo.co.uk), March 15, 2005.


Since it was Aristotle that posit that an empirical approach, rather than dialogue,was the best route to knowledg; I think no other than Aristole knew that it could be possible to subject the mind process to scientific test among his contemporaries. Aristole remains the great contributor.

-- Kenneth Obasi (kenmary2004jesus@yahoo.co.uk), March 15, 2005.

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