Foundations of Psychology by Herman Bavinck

Foundations of Psychology Herman Bavinck Translated by Jack Vanden Born, Nelson D. Kloosterman, and John Bolt Edited by John Bolt Author’s Preface to the Second Edition1 It is now many years since the Foundations of Psychology appeared and it is long out of print.2 I had intended to issue a second, enlarged edition but the pressures of other work prevented it. It would be too bad if this little book disappeared from the psychological literature. The foundations described in the book have had my lifelong acceptance and they remain powerful principles deserving use and expression alongside empirical psychology. Herman Bavinck, 1921 1 Ed. note: This text was dictated by Bavinck “on his sickbed” to Valentijn Hepp, and is the opening paragraph of Hepp’s own foreword to the second, revised edition of Beginselen der Psychologie [Foundations of Psychology] (Kampen: Kok, 1923), 5. The first edition contains no preface. 2 Ed. note: The first edition was published by Kok (Kampen) in 1897. Contents Editor’s Preface ��ix Translator’s Introduction: Bavinck’s Motives �� xv § 1� The Definition of Psychology ��1 § 2� The Method of Psychology ��5 § 3� The History of Psychology ��19 Greek Psychology .................................................................19 Historic Christian Psychology ..............................................22 Enlightenment Psychology ...................................................26 Nineteenth-Century Psychology ..........................................28 § 4� The Essence of the Soul ��35 Materialism ...........................................................................36 Pantheism .............................................................................39 Theism ..................................................................................43 § 5� The Faculties of the Soul ��51 Herbart’s Metaphysical Psychology ......................................53 Associationist Psychology .....................................................60 § 6� The Organization of the Faculties ��69 Historical Review .................................................................69 A Third Faculty? ...................................................................75 Intellectualist Psychology ...............................................77 Psychology of Feeling .....................................................78 Voluntaristic Psychology ................................................94 § 7� The Faculty of Knowing �� 103 A. Innate Knowledge ..........................................................103 Empiricism ...................................................................106 Rationalism ...................................................................108 Kant’s Attempted Reconciliation ..................................111 Another Attempt at Reconciliation ..............................113 vii Bavinck Review 9 (2018) B . Sensation .......................................................................119 C . Perception .....................................................................122 D . Unconscious Representations ........................................126 E . Association of Representations .....................................131 F . Memory and Imagination .............................................137 Memory .....................................................................137 Imagination ................................................................143 G . Understanding and Reason ...........................................145 H . Conscience and the Idea of Beauty ...............................154 Conscience .................................................................154 Aesthetic Judgment ....................................................162 I . Self-Consciousness .......................................................166 J . Language ......................................................................170 § 8� The Faculty of Desiring �� 177 A . Distinction from the Faculty of Knowing .....................177 B . The Natural Faculty of Desiring ...................................182 C . Instinct ..........................................................................189 D . Desiring ........................................................................192 E . Emotions and Passions .................................................199 1. Essential to distinguish ...........................................200 2. Governed by attraction or repulsion .......................203 3. Soul’s action the origin, feeling an activity ..............205 4. Reciprocal relation .................................................209 F . The Will ........................................................................219 G . Freedom of the Will .....................................................226 1. Will not distinct and separate ................................231 2. Will not completely arbitrary and separated ...........233 3. Questions about free will are complex ...................235 4. Human beings are free, acting, and responsible ......238 5. Freedom is a problem because of sin ......................242 Index �� 245 viii Editor’s Preface Editor’s Preface Herman Bavinck’s Beginselen der Psychologie was translated and presented in 1981, with introduction and evaluation, as a thesis for the Master of Christian Studies degree at Calvin College, Grand Rapids, Michigan, by Jack Vanden Born. Dr. Mary Vander Goot, professor of psychology at Calvin College, was the supervisor. Herewith we offer our thanks to Dr. Vanden Born for his permission to use his translation as the basis for our edited and modified translation to be published in the Bavinck Review. In addition to Vanden Born, John Bolt and Nelson Kloosterman are listed as translators because Bolt edited the entire manuscript and translated material that Vanden Born had not included in his translation. Sub- sequently, Kloosterman carefully went over the work again and made a significant number of changes. The final, published product, therefore, is the work of three hands. Major thanks are also due to Dr. David Sytsma, professor at Tokyo Christian University and a research curator at the Junius Institute for Digital Reformation Research, for carefully reading the manuscript and making a number of corrections to translations of Latin phrases. Let me highlight some of the key changes made to the original translation in the editorial process. Vanden Born worked from the second, revised edition of 1923 that was prepared for publication by Bavinck’s successor at the Vrije Universiteit in Amsterdam, Dr. Valentijn Hepp. While we must be cautious about inferring too much from this, it is noteworthy that Hepp was not as sympathetic to Bavinck’s book as he was to Bavinck’s theology more generally. He judged it to be “the least successful of all his works.”1 In particular, Hepp found the “scholastic” faculty psychology inadequate 1 Dutch original (DO): het minst gelukkige; literally “least lucky or happy”; “Fore- word” to Herman Bavinck, Beginselen der Psychologie, 2nd ed., ed. Valentine Hepp (Kamp- en: Kok, 1923), 5. This edition is hereafter cited as Beginselen der Psychologie 2. ix Bavinck Review 9 (2018) for dealing with “the psychological facts and insights of recent years.”2 In his work on the second edition, Hepp had access to “large envelopes” of Bavinck’s notes that likely were preparatory to a revision and noticed that some had been reworked a second and even a third time.3 Hepp made ju- dicious use of this material in the second edition and we are in his debt for this enrichment. But he also decided to delete Bavinck’s original reference notes because he judged them to be, for all intents and purposes, “dated.”4 Restoring these notes was one of the more labor-intensive dimensions of the editorial work, but the restoration was necessary because, in addition to their intrinsic value to the subject, the notes are important to Bavinck scholarship.5 To provide only one example, we note that an important reference to William James’ discussion of the “methods and snares of psychology” in his Principles of Psychology was dropped by Hepp in his revision of the chapter on the method of psychology (§ 2). While we are indebted to Hepp for the significant expansion of this chapter from four pages to eleven, dropping the James reference is obviously a loss that can hardly be justified on the basis that Bavinck’s scholarship is dated. The only way one could determine whether Hepp’s judgment that Bavinck’s “scholastic” faculty psychology is inadequate for dealing with “the psychological facts and insights of recent years,”6 is to examine carefully Bavinck’s own sources. When this is done, I remain convinced that it is Hepp’s dismissal of Bavinck’s faculty psychology that is inadequate to refute the case Bavinck makes for it. In the edited and translated text below, notes that are unmarked are Bavinck’s original notes; those marked “Hepp note” are taken from the 2 “Foreword” to Beginselen der Psychologie 2,

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