Gustavo Castañon

This article examines the historical, epistemological, and institutional relations between the emergence of Psychology as an autonomous scientific discipline and the rise of Phenomenology, particularly in the early work of Edmund Husserl. The analysis begins with the nineteenth-century German educational reforms and the progressive institutionalization of Psychology within universities, highlighting the tensions generated by its separation from Philosophy. The study explores academic and theoretical disputes surrounding psychologism, scientific legitimacy, and institutional conflicts — including the Marburg Chair controversy — revealing both proximity and antagonism between philosophers and psychologists. It argues that Phenomenology did not emerge in isolation but developed through a critical dialogue with experimental Psychology and broader transformations in the German academic system. The conclusions indicate that both fields were historically co-constituted through shared institutional environments and epistemological challenges. The article also acknowledges limitations related to its historical-documentary scope and proposes future comparative research extending the analysis to other national contexts and to contemporary developments in the relationship between Psychology and Phenomenology.

The so-called 'New Social Movements' (feminist, LGBTQIA+, and racialist) have largely abandoned liberal and Marxist traditions and embraced relativist theses, aligning themselves with what is currently called 'Identity Politics'. The main theses of these groups have a strong influence from Social Constructivism in Sociology of Science and end up generating consequences opposite to those intended when applied to politics. We identify seven of these consequences here: the dissolution of the concept of active subject, the justification of authoritarianism and political violence, anti-realism, the transformation of the struggle for changing reality into a struggle for changing language, the delegitimization of humanity's cultural achievements, the dissolution of criteria for validating knowledge and the justification of religious fundamentalism. A critical discussion of the theoretical bases of this type of political action is necessary, as well as the already visible consequences of this in society before they cause a greater setback in the rights of minorities.

Abstract‘Possibilist Explanation’ is a promising account of scientific explanation which avoids the familiar problems of “how-possibly explanations”. It explains an event by showing how-actually it was epistemically possible, instead of why it was epistemically necessary. Its explanandum is the epistemic possibility of an actual event previously considered epistemically impossible. To define PE, two new concepts are introduced: ‘permissive condition’ and ‘possibilist law’. A permissive condition for an event is something that does not entail the event itself, but a necessary condition for it. A ‘Possibilist Law’ is a kind of scientific law that predicts that in the absence of a necessary condition N, the event E is not possible. Both PE and PL are legitimate and neglected parts of scientific knowledge and are especially suitable for human sciences.

Viktor Frankl’s Logotherapy is based on Max Scheler’s theory of values and anthropology. Frankl builds his psychological thinking based on critical concepts of Schelerian thinking such as (i) value and goods, (ii) will and feelings, (iii) the hierarchy of values, and (iv) the idea of person. It is with them that he develops his original theses of (i) the spiritual motivation of human action, (ii) the search for meaning and (iii) the spiritual unconscious. In doing so, he offered not only a psychotherapy of values, but also a new theory of positive human motivation, not conceived as a result of deficiency or need, but as a result of the free spirit toward objective values. The human search for meaning in life can only be successful by living and realizing superior values, in the hierarchical sense proposed by Scheler.

Resumo: A Logoterapia proposta por Viktor Frankl está fundamentada na teoria dos valores e antropologia de Max Scheler. Frankl constrói seu pensamento psicológico baseado em conceitos-chave do pensamento scheleriano como (i) o valor e os bens, (ii) o querer e os sentimentos, (iii) a hierarquia de valores e (iv) a ideia de pessoa. É com eles que desenvolve suas teses originais da (i) motivação espiritual da ação humana, (ii) busca de sentido e (iii) inconsciente espiritual. Ao fazê-lo, ofereceu não só uma psicoterapia dos valores, mas também uma nova teoria da motivação humana positiva, não concebida como fruto de deficiência ou necessidade, mas do espírito livre direcionado a valores objetivos. A busca humana por sentido na vida só é possível ser bem-sucedida com a vivência e realização de valores superiores, no sentido hierárquico proposto por Scheler.