IDEA OF HISTORY FROM JOHANN DROYSEN TO ROBIN COLLINGWOOD – 2014-4

Part Two. Ernst Bernheim and psychophysical principle of causality

Summary 

Gevorg S. Khudinyan

Ernst Bernheim (1850-1942) is one of the most original figures of European historiography of the late 19th and early 20th century. By means of published books, he formed a specific system of knowledge concerning the theoretical problems of history. He continued and deepened the best traditions of anthropocentric knowledge of the history of Jo. Droysen, also resorting to the help of the principle of psychophysical causality, which was proposed by B. Spinoza and specified by H. Lotze. The particularity of Bernheim’s study of the relationship and interdependence of the two forms of psychophysical causation – mental and physical, as well as the three levels of their manifestation – single typical and collective, is to examine the history as a the development process. It was carried out in a number of double causality – the common causes and conditions and special conditions, including the fact surveyed as part of them.

Clarifying for himself the ratio of pair units of psychophysical causation, E. Bernheim took as a basis the problem of the particular historical review of their capabilities of transformation into functional reasons of development in the historical process, the study of mutual relations and the definition of the functional role of each in different conditions.

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