Вестник Православного Свято-Тихоновского гуманитарного университета: Серия I. Богословие, философия (Dec 2019)
Wilhelm Stern: personalism, organism, teleology
Abstract
This article deals with main elements of the system of personalism developed by the German and American psychologist V. Stern. This system is practically unknown in Russia. Stern’s conception is described in the context of teleological worldview which was developing at the beginning of the 20th century. The article discusses Stern’s criticism of the preceding personalism and impersonalism and argues that the main feature of Stern’s concept of the person is that he places in the position of the ability of consciousness the function of the individual viability of an activity as the person’s selfdevelopment. The article also analyses his fundamental principle of teleomechanical parallelism, according to which the person, from the external side, interacts with other persons and is therefore inevitably conditioned by the law of causality. As for the internal side, it is an autonomous goal-setting being. The article gives a detailed analysis of features of this model of personalism, i.e. the simultaneous view of the person in perspectives of teleology and causality; placing in the foundation of the personality such parameters as self-protection and self-development; understanding of existence as a hierarchy of persons, panpsychism. The article also discusses Stern’s revision of understanding the personality in the spirit of individual causality. According to Stern, the world is a hierarchically designed organism of persons. Each person is a living being potentially able to develop. The system of operating and interacting persons exists between the two borders of the absolute person (“God”) and absolute impersonality (“matter”). The article also analyses gnoseological foundations of Stern’s ontology. It is Kant’s revised doctrine of categories that makes up the foundation of his ontology. The article analyses critically Stern’s conception as a sui generis rationalist version of philosophy of life. An attempt of the synthesis undertaken by Stern carries an obvious contradiction of the deductive substantiation of life as an irrational element. The article discusses critical evaluations of Stern’s book in Russian philosophical literature (S. L. Frank, priest Pavel Florensky). Stern’s conception is incorporated into the context of the doctrine of creative causality in the Russian neo-Leibzianism (L. M. Lopatin, N. O. Lossky, S. A. Levitsky).
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