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Psychologism: A Case Study in the Sociology of Philosophical Knowledge. By Martin Kusch. London: Routledge. 1995. Pp. xviii+ 327 +4 appendices. Cased, 45. ISBN 0 415 12554 5. Paper, /14.99. ISBN 0 415 12555 3.
The standard textbook histories of philosophy write exultantly of the expulsion of `psychologism ' and the subsequent independence of philosophy and logic from mistaken psychologistic interpretations: logical necessity was one thing and psychological necessity quite another. Matters, of course, were not really so simple, and this book shows the full complexity of the real picture. There were battles between philosophers; and battles between philosophers and experimental psychologists; and these battles were institutional, academic and political all in one. This book succeeds in showing the bewildering range of things going on under the names of ' psychologism ' and 'antipsychologism and `antipsvchologism'. The term `psychologism ' was not a neutral description but a weapon of war: being accused of psychologism was a threat to the pure philosopher's standing in his community. One had to defend oneself against the charge, and one had to turn it against the accuser (p. 190). Of course psychologism is a term normally attributed by enemies, not one used in self-description; and thus one should expect to find less a concern with strict accuracy than a rhetorical use of a term to damn those so designated:
Authors who were willing to regard themselves as 'psychologicists' formed but a small minority in German language philosophy between 1990 and 1930. Most philosophers regarded psychologism as a gross philosophical error that needed to be ruthlessly identified in the thought of their contemporaries. All philosophical schools participated in this merry-go-round of charge and countercharge, and practically every single German philosopher, dead or alive, was unmasked as a proponent of psychologism. Not surprisingly, this merry-go-round was possible only because the criteria for attributing a psychologistic stance to another philosopher were extremely flexible. While the different schools agreed on the fact that psychologism entailed a mistaken grounding of...