20 ORIGIN OF MATERIALIST DIRECTION IN RUSSIAN PSYCHOLOGY

The economic and cultural rise of Russia after the reforms of Peter I promoted the development of progressive social, philosophical and scientific thought.

Russia is pushing one of the famous natural scientists - M. V. Lomonosov, who advocated a natural science approach to the human psyche. A. N. Radishchev writes a treatise "On Man, His Mortality and Immortality." The treatise included two parts. In the two primary books, the doctrine was formed that all internal phenomena "are truly properties of a sensing and thinking substance." In other books, arguments were made in favor of the immortality of the soul.

Determining the place of mental phenomena in the universe, A. N. Radishchev used the principles of materialistic monism and determinism as a basis. A. N. Radishchev believed that mental phenomena occur in space, are personified in spatial structures. A. N. Radishchev thought about the “uncountable materiality of diversity”, about the “unified ladder” in which a multitude of forces and properties are recognized.

A look at the relevance, sensation and thinking as levels of a single material “ladder” spoke about the unification of the views of materialistic monism, put forward in the 17th century, with the principle of evolution, approved in the 18th century. Believing that thinking is the “intrinsic-quality” of a person, A. N. Radishchev criticized K. Helvetia for neglecting the qualitative differences between thinking and feeling. He disagrees with K. Helvetius also in his views on the determination of intellectual abilities. Similarly, D. Diderot A.N. Radishchev argued that the development of an individual’s intellectual qualities depends not only on the influence of the environment, but also on physical organization. Like D. Diderot, he shared the intellectual development of the people as a whole and of a particular person. The first is due to other conditions than the second.

The fact that his disagreement with K. Helvetius in the interpretation of mental abilities coincides with the opinion of D. Diderot on these issues, A.N. Radishchev could not know, because D. Diderot did not publish his critical comments concerning the books of K. Helvetius "On the Mind" and "On Man." The coincidence of the opinions of A. N. Radishchev and D. Diderot speak about the common logic of the formation of the materialistic idea. GV Plekhanov noticed that A. N. Radishchev was looking for the key to the psychology of people in the circumstances of their social life. In this case, it was not about the psychology of a separate subject in its dependence on social causes, but about the psychology of large groups of people - social psychology.

From the peculiarities of the human nervous activity it follows that it is an “imitative creation”. Imitation is performed "automatically." Acts created by imitation, occur in a different type than actions regulated by reasoning. Imitation was used by many rulers to "manage a large crowd."