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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 25 February 2009
The object of the present article is to indicate where and how Gestalt psychology bears on the problems of the ethical philosopher. Unlike the other “schools” of psychology (Behaviourism, Freudianism, and Purposivism), Gestaltism has no obvious bearing on these problems; and yet, if we accept its fundamental tenet, it appears to carry important implications for ethical philosophy. This tenet concerns the primacy of totalities or wholes. I will begin with it, and then proceed to consider certain further principles of Gestalt which are of interest to the moralist.
page 450 note 1 Page 97.
page 451 note 1 Op. cit., p. 101.
page 451 note 2 Ibid., p. 103. Joseph, it may be noted, is not thinking of Gestalt psychology. On the contrary, he discounts the Gestalt hypothesis (along with that of Behaviourism) because of what he regards as mechanistic implications incompatible with the ethical viewpoint. At the same time, if we disregard the question of ultimate presuppositions and try to apply the Gestalt concept of form to the ideational or non-perceptual levels, we get something at least very like what Joseph is trying to describe.
page 451 note 3 Psychological Principles, p. 100.
page 452 note 1 The Name and Nature of Poetry, p. 49 (italics mine).
page 454 note 1 Wheeler, : The Science of Psychology, p. 126.Google Scholar
page 455 note 1 One is reminded of Bergson's theory of laughter, according to which the comic is the result of an attempt to impose mechanism on life. In the same connection (i.e. “living according to rule"), Muirhead's question is interesting: “Does it fall outside morality, we might ask, to cultivate the sense of truth and perfection (not to say of humour) that preserves a man from being ‘uncoguid'?” (Rule and End in Morals, p. 109; italics mine).
page 455 note 2 Series I, pp. 156–157.Google Scholar