Spranger, Edward

Childhood and Youth

E. Spranger was born on June 27, 1882 in Berlin in the family of the toy store owner Karl Franz Adalberg Spranger (1829–1922) and Henrietta Berta Schönebeck (1847–1909), the saleswoman of this store. The wedding took place only in 1884 , but Spranger Sr. recognized and documented his paternity.

When E. Spranger was six years old, his parents took him to a real gymnasium . E. Spranger studied well, so at the age of twelve, with the support of one of his teachers, he was transferred to the gymnasium "at the Gray Monastery" - one of the oldest and most prestigious gymnasiums in Berlin, which he graduated in 1900 .

Education

At first, E. Spranger considered the possibility of obtaining a musical education, but in the end his choice fell on philosophy, and he entered the University of Berlin , where he also studied psychology, pedagogy, history, economics, law, philology and the theory of music. Among his teachers were Friedrich Paulsen , Wilhelm Dilthey , Erich Schmidt and Otto Hinze .

E. Spranger’s first attempt to defend his doctoral dissertation in 1901 , when his supervisor was V. Dilthey, who proposed the development history of Friedrich Heinrich Jacobi as the topic of his qualification, was unsuccessful. However, in 1905 , already under the leadership of F. Paulsen and K. Stumpf , E. Spranger received his doctorate , defending a dissertation on his own theme “The epistemological and psychological foundations of history”.

During his studies at the University of Berlin, E. Spranger met Katharina Hendlich, with whom he actively corresponded throughout his life.

Teaching

Since 1909, E. Spranger taught philosophy at the University of Berlin . In 1911 - 1920 he was a professor at the University of Leipzig , and from 1920 to 1944 - a professor at the University of Berlin. Between 1936 and 1939 he gave guest lectures in Japan . In 1944, E. Spranger was arrested and imprisoned in Moabit prison . In 1945, he was appointed rector of the University of Berlin. From 1946 until his retirement in 1953 he worked as a professor at the University of Tübingen .

Awards and Prizes

In 1952, E. Spranger was awarded the Order of Merit in the Field of Science and Art .

The last years of life

In 1960, Katharina Hendlich, a close friend of E. Spranger, died, and in 1963 his wife Susanne. E. Spranger died five months after her death and was buried next to her at the Tübingen city cemetery.

The philosophical views of E. Spranger developed under the influence of the ideas of Wilhelm Dilthey and the philosophy of life , as well as the doctrine of the values ​​of Heinrich Rickert . In the main philosophical essay “Life Forms”, E. Spranger developed the ideas of a holistic, or “structural” psychology, which he - in the spirit of the neo-Kantian distinction between “science of the spirit” and “science of nature” - contrasted the natural-science “psychology of elements”.

Psychology as a science of spirit

A supporter of V. Dilthey’s method of “science of the spirit”, which is based on an intuitive comprehension of spiritual integrity, based on a methodological approach to interpret psychological processes only from psychological processes, E. Spranger introduced the concept of “ understanding psychology ”. Understanding psychology considers the mental process as a kind of integrity in its semantic connections, that is, in its inclusion in a certain content of culture. In his main work, “Life Forms,” E. Spranger rejected the psychology of elements, which divides the mental process into its components and is based on data from physics and physiology.

The main task of spiritual and scientific psychology as one of the “science of the spirit” is to study the relationship of the individual spiritual structure of a person to the structure of the “objective spirit”, and, accordingly, to identify the main types of orientation of an abstract person, who received the designation of “life forms” from E. Spranger.

The initial principle of psychology, according to E. Spranger, is understanding as a way of directly comprehending the semantic content of the phenomena of an objective spirit. Following V. Dilthey E. Spranger believes that the soul is

The experience of the connection of inner spiritual life and the values ​​of social spiritual life is carried out in acts of activity “I”, in which a certain value system is implemented.

The soul interacts with the spirit, and the principles and patterns of spiritual work are immanent to the soul, and the subjective

In turn, the objective E. Spranger derives from “vitality”, which appears in the form of “structures” or even “organisms”. One of these structures is society - supra-individual integrity, which includes individuals.

But both society and other structures and organisms operating in space and time are unknowable to us in their true structure.

E. Spranger considered the only way of knowing any spiritual forms to be comprehension of the individual structure of the spirit. He believed that even considering social groups as super-individual forms, it is impossible to understand their meaning except through a scheme of spiritual individuality. And since individual spiritual structures exist in the form of life forms, the perception and cognition of society through the prism of these forms is the final perception and cognition. Above them there is no higher, privileged cognitive instance.

Based on these considerations, E. Spranger came to the conclusion that sociology as a social science, organized according to the model of natural sciences, is not able to understand science, art, religion, culture as a whole, "dissolving" them in abstract social structures and interactions. In his opinion, the alpha and omega of culture are an individual, a person is a bearer of the spirit, and for sociology a specific person does not exist. For this reason, E. Spranger called for free from the "sociological illusion", and in his hostility towards sociology was close to his teacher V. Dilthey. Although he recognized the inextricable connection of social form and cultural content, he assigned a decisive role not to forms of social relations, but

that unfolds in these forms and determines their value.

Since the relationship between socio-communal life and culture is broken, the design and development of culture is the duty of individuals, who, in turn, shift it to the state, which turns out to be, in the final analysis, an instance linking individual, that is, intra-cultural, integrity to supra-individual , objective cultural unity. This position became, in particular, the theoretical basis of the enormous work that Spranger conducted in the field of pedagogy, educational organization and cultural policy.

The doctrine of life forms

In his main work, "Life Forms," ​​E. Spranger developed a cultural philosophical interpretation of the basic types of human existence. These types, or life forms, are historically invariant structures that remain self-identical in the diversity and variability of life and combine individual spiritual integrity with supra-individual spiritual formations.

According to E. Spranger, an understanding of an individual is possible on the basis of his attitude to the historical environment - cultural phenomena. Highlighting the six basic human values, he developed ideas about six life forms, or cultural and psychological types , each of which corresponds to a unique structure of motivation, perception of reality, organization of the affective and emotional sphere, etc.

1. A theoretical person is one for whom cognition is the highest form of activity that determines the nature of all his life manifestations. All other values ​​are secondary to him. In the sphere of motivation, he seeks to overcome affects, tries to be independent of particular, specific goals, if he cannot include them in the universal system of laws of life and behavior.
2. An economic person is one who is oriented towards usefulness in all life relationships. Everything becomes for him a means of sustaining life, a quasi-natural struggle for existence. He saves matter, energy, space and time in order to extract from them the maximum useful for his purposes. His motives differ from those of the “theoretician” in that instead of the values ​​of logic, utility values ​​play a decisive role.
3. An aesthetic person is one who "transforms all his impressions into expressions." Its specific form of motivation is “the will to form”, expressed in the motives of a private order, such as self-realization, “building and designing oneself”, universalization of aesthetic vision, totalization of forms.
4. A social person is one whose organizing principle of life is love in the religious sense of the word.
5. An imperious person is one that can exist in any of the value areas. This is one who wants and can inspire other people with their own value attitude as a motive for activity. In its most general form, the motivation of a powerful person is the desire to prevail over others. All other motivations are auxiliary. Aesthetic, for example, for him is only a link in the chain of means to achieve the goals of power. But if an imperious person begins to be moved not so much by rational calculation and knowledge of circumstances, as by a boundless imagination, resulting in gigantic projects of designing and redesigning the world as a whole, then he stands on the border between an imperious person and an aesthetic person. These were many of the greatest conquerors in world history.
6. A religious person is one whose integral spiritual structure is constantly oriented towards the discovery of a higher and bringing infinite and absolute satisfaction value experience.

E. Spranger believed that in each person orientation to all these types of values ​​can be represented, but in different proportions, some of them will dominate.

In his cultural studies, Spranger considered antiquity, Christianity, German idealism as the main forces that determined the content of modern culture.

From typological ideas about the individual soul, Spranger made pedagogical conclusions: when raising children, the teacher must intuitively understand the type of orientation that can become the leader in this child and provide him with the appropriate operational composition. The methodological guidelines of understanding psychology were implemented by Spranger in his study of the psychology of youth.

The cultural-psychological typology created by E. Spranger was subsequently repeatedly used by sociologists and psychologists to analyze the life styles of individuals and groups. Based on the typology of G. Allport , P. Vernon and G. Lindzey, a Test of the Study of Values ​​was developed, and a Test of Interests by J. Holland was created. Also based on the idea of ​​cultural-psychological types, Bill J. Bonnstetter , the head of TTI Success Insights, developed an online diagnosis of the main human motivators ( https://ttisi.ru/about_Motivation ) PIAV - Personal Interests, Attitudes & Values), used in HR management for the selection, motivation, increase the efficiency of employees.

E. Spranger is the author of various works on the history of European culture, psychology, pedagogy, philosophy and religion.

German editions

• Die Grundlagen der Geschichtswissenschaft. Eine erkenntnistheoretisch-psychologische Untersuchung ; Berlin 1905
• Wilhelm von Humboldt und die Humanitätsidee ; Berlin 1909
• Die Idee einer Hochschule für Frauen und die Frauenbewegung ; Leipzig 1916
• Kultur und Erziehung. Gesammelte pädagogische Aufsätze ; Leipzig 1919
• Lebensformen. Geisteswissenschaftliche Psychologie und Ethik der Persönlichkeit ; Halle 1921
• Psychologie des Jugendalters ; Leipzig 1924
• Über Gefährdung und Erneuerung der deutschen Universität. Sonderdruck aus der Zeitschrift Die Erziehung ; Leipzig 1930
• Volk, Staat und Erziehung. Gesammelte Reden und Aufsätze ; Leipzig 1932
• Goethes Weltanschauung ; Leipzig 1933
• Schillers Geistesart, gespiegelt in seinen philosophischen Schriften und Gedichten ; Berlin 1941
• Die Magie der Seele. Religionsphilosophische Vorspiele ; Berlin 1947
• Pestalozzis Denkformen ; Stuttgart 1947
• Goethes Weltanschauung. Reden und Aufsätze ; Leipzig 1949
• Zur Geschichte der deutschen Volksschule ; Heidelberg 1951
• Aus Friedrich Fröbels Gedankenwelt ; Heidelberg 1951
• Pädagogische Perspektiven. Beiträge zu Erziehungsfragen der Gegenwart ; Heidelberg 1951
• Kulturfragen der Gegenwart ; Heidelberg 1953
• Gedanken zur Daseinsgestaltung (aus Vorträge, Abhandlungen und Schriften) ; München 1954
• Mein Konflikt mit der Hitler-Regierung 1933 , als Manuskript gedruckt im März 1955, geschrieben bereits 1945
• Der geborene Erzieher ; Heidelberg 1958
• Der Philosoph von Sanssouci ; Heidelberg 1962
• Das Gesetz der ungewollten Nebenwirkungen in der Erziehung ; Heidelberg 1962
• Menschenleben und Menschheitsfragen. Gesammelte Rundfunkreden ; München 1963

Editions in Russian

• Spranger E. Psychology of adolescence. = Psychologie des Jugendalters // "Pedology of Youth". - M.-L .: Literature, 1931.

• Spranger Edward // New Philosophical Encyclopedia: in 4 vols. / Under. ed. V. S. Styopina. - M .: Soviet Encyclopedia, 2010 .-- 2816 p. - ISBN 978-5-244-01115-9 .
• Spranger Edward // Philosophical Encyclopedic Dictionary / Under. ed. L.F. Ilyicheva , P.N. Fedoseyev , S.M. Kovalev, V.G. Panov. - M .: Soviet Encyclopedia, 1989 .-- 840 p. - ISBN 5-85270-030-4 .
• Kondakov I.M. Spranger Edward // Psychology. Illustrated Dictionary / Under. ed. A. G. Maklakova. - M .: Prime-Euroznak, 2007 .-- 784 p. - (Large University Library). - ISBN 5-93878-262-7 .
• Popov Yu. N. Spranger Eduard // Great Soviet Encyclopedia: 30 vol. - M.: Soviet Encyclopedia, 1969-1978.
• Popov Yu. N. Spranger Edward // Philosophical Encyclopedia: 5 vol. / Under. ed. F.V. Konstantinova. - M .: Soviet Encyclopedia, 1960 .-- 2520 p.
• Yaroshevsky MG The history of psychology: from antiquity to the middle of the XX century / Under. ed. A. G. Maklakova. - M .: Academy, 1996 .-- 416 p. - (Large University Library). - ISBN 5-7695-0068-9 .
• Croner EE Spranger. - B., 1933.
• Gruhle HW Verstehende Psychology. - Stuttgart, 1948.

• Eduard Spranger on a site dedicated to the Order of Merit in the field of science and art (German)