Was Freud a Philosopher

[BlueChicken]

Regardless of his hackery (which I rate very high) Freud is often considered to be a 'philosopher'. People attribute him to a philosophical line of thinking, regardless of the fact that he never called himself a philosopher and he approached philosophy from a rather 'scientific' view. I would argue he stole much of his though from others, but this doesn't make him a non-philosopher (but actually more like one). What are your views on this? Does he belong in the canon, or is he merely some guy people either love to love or love to hate?

[Theaetetus]

Freud was a philosopher, but he was not a very good one. He had great influence on psychology, but had he been a competent philosopher, his relevance would be far greater, and historically speaking would not be regarded as such a hack.

[jgweed]

It is one thing to have some philosophical ideas or positions in amongst others, in fact almost all important thinkers generally do; but then everyman is a philosopher and the Idea of philosophy fogs into meaning nothing.

From an historical perspective, the distinction between a more specialised study and doing philosophy becomes stronger as the specialisation begins to separate itself from the philosophical tradition and then achieves an independence of method and content.

But should we not distinguish between thinkers whose primary (and perhaps sole) focus is on philosophical questions and inquiry on the one hand, and those whose focus and respect lies elsewhere?

[NeitherExtreme]

I think he was a much better philosopher than scientist, he just didn't realize it.

[logan]

As history progresses the distinctions between concepts continually grows. When Newton invented his physics, such works were still known as natural philosophy, which was a one of the domains of philosophy. As the Age of Reason and the Enlightenment came and passed physics, and other 'natural sciences,' began to little-by-little become distinguished as separate fields until the mid 1800s when they were finally called the methodological "Sciences." In this same way, psychology was rooted in philosophy and then distinguished as a science in 1879.

However, psychology to this day still has not created the level of distinction in its terminology away from philosophy as physics and other sciences have. This is mostly in part because psychology has not created universal methodologies which have been taken up by popular culture. The physical sciences, on the otherhand, have created a successful mystique of methodologies that the popular culture believes is concrete. (However, as most philosophers know, the confidence of the physical sciences is largely illusionary at its core.)

Modern psychology still takes most of its new paradigms from the work done in philosophy. For example, cognitivism, behaviorism, functionalism, identity theory, phenomenology, and existentialism. Since the 1970s, the new fields of science, known mostly as the cognitive sciences, have arisen. These fields allowed for a bridged gap between more concrete physical sciences and traditional theoretical psychology (and its friends) by basing the majority of their research on laboratory research rather than on the field/theoretic research tradition.

With this brief conceptual history presented, I hope you will understand that Freud and many other eminent psychologists had strong ties to philosophy. Much of the distinctions of these early psychologists are attempts to create the very distinction between philosophy and psychology that I have mentioned. Therefore, it can been understood that not only that these avant-garde thinkers must have been a priori aware of the philosophy in order to draw distinctions and create their theories, but that the further back in history one goes the more interconnected these fields become.

[nameless]

As I see it, philosophy is (the art and science of) 'critical thought'. I'm sure that Freud engaged in it and thus qualifies as a philosopher.

[boagie]

Hi All!

At Freud's eighth birthday, Thomas Mann was a chosen speaker. When the time came he spoke more of himself then of Freud, but he did say that Freud utilized the ideas of the great philosphers such as Nietzsche, Schopenhauer, Hume and Kant. He said that Freud put those ideas into a clinical context, but that he himself/Mann, already knew what Freud presented in his writings because he had already read the above philosophers, thus Freud did not directly influence his own writings, not exactly a toast of respect to Freud. That said, I think he deserves respect for fathering the field of psychoanalysis, no small accomplishment, a step forward one would think for humanity, a great man, in his own right.

[ejones4@uoregon]

Freud was a radical, and highly creative thinker. His work was heavily informed by the likes of Nietzsche, Schopenhauer, Hume and Kant, but also heavily influenced by Darwin. Whether you want to call him a philosopher, scientist, or hack does not matter to me, but those interested in the human condition, the self, or man's relationship to society, should give Freud an honest attempt. His thoughts have a huge influence on the language we use today, the way we describe ourselves, as well as the kind of experiments and theories currently being pursued in philosophy, psychology, and the arts. You may call him a hack if you are a full fledged materialist in regards to "mind" sciences, but he is also an interesting thinker when his views are applied to the arts. He also gives the atheist scientist a funny characterization of religion when he called it a "neurosis".

[Reconstructo]

Freud created a mental model of psyche and also, if you will, an epistemology. He so focused on one aspect of philosophy, that he is not often considered a philosopher. And yet philosophy separate from psychology is absurd. Epistemology, ethics, metaphysics, etc. are all products of the human mind.

Freud created/modified a body of tropes / concepts. Which is just what philosophers do. Genre distinctions are convenient but misleading.

One should definitely consider Carl Jung's theory of archetypes, for instance, in relation to metaphysics. And in relation to the motives of philosophers in general. We are not as modern as we think we are. It's only a crust of pseudo-novel dried metaphor that inflates us so.