Prelogic

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Pre-logic is a cultural-scientific term created by the French ethnologist and philosopher Lucien Lévy-Bruhl (1857–1939), which describes a corresponding pre-logic style of thinking among primitive peoples. Lévy-Bruhl also referred to the underlying psychological principle as participation mystique . It is an archaism . Pre-logical thinking can also be observed in young children. They mix objectively incompatible things, since no sufficient distinction is made between the world of experience and the environment as a real world of things. The definition of pre-logical thinking is also natural, emotional , imaginative thinking. Intuitive insights must therefore first be grasped rationally and formulated in language. Inventive thinking is therefore to be seen as the natural form of thinking in contrast to problem-oriented logical thinking and deductive reasoning.

reception

According to the German linguist and folklorist Heinrich Harmjanz (1904–1994), Levy-Bruhl's concept of prelogic means “that the individual does not seek contradiction, but neither does it avoid it in things”; hence things are similar for the transfer of the term prelogic to premoral . “Pre-logic is tied to the individual like community / society, morality, but only a result of the community / society and only possible here”. For the Austrian National Socialist racial biologist Friedrich Keiter (1906–1967), all mythologies were prelogical: “Of course, prelogic does not mean that the people involved do not think at all, but only that they do not present the logical architecture and the criticism of reality and truth in areas that are so far beyond everyday practice and mean something else like mythologies ”.

The Swiss developmental psychologist Jean Piaget (1896–1980) reinterpreted the term as perceptual prelogic .

The German English scholar and linguist Winfried Nöth uses the term in semiotics .

criticism

The accusation of devaluing non-European forms of thought has been raised against the designation prelogic, in that when comparing with a “European” logic, the latter is regarded as the “normal case” ( Eurocentrism ). Klaus Neumann quotes the criticism that the prelogic is not a pre-logic at all, but rather a completely healthy logic that is applied to superstitious assumptions of facts. Ethnopsychiatry , which is becoming increasingly widespread at times, is also exposed to these questions . Nevertheless, Erwin H. Ackerknecht speaks here of a fad.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b Klaus Neumann: Understanding the foreign - basics of a cultural anthropological exegesis. Volume 2. Lit, Münster 2000, ISBN 3-8258-4261-4 , p. 772.
  2. ^ Carl Gustav Jung : Definitions. In: Collected Works, Vol. 6, Psychological Types , Paperback, special edition, Walter-Verlag, Düsseldorf 1995, ISBN 3-530-40081-5 ; P. 486 § 780 and P. 469, § 740. on Paragraph “Participatiuon mystique” and P. 442 f. § 684 f. to section “Archaism”.
  3. ↑ Uwe Henrik Peters : Dictionary of Psychiatry and Medical Psychology .3. Edition, Urban & Schwarzenberg, Munich 1984; P. 119 to Wb.-Lemma: "Thinking, prelogical".
  4. ↑ Schischkoff, Georgi (ed.): Philosophical dictionary. 14th edition, Stuttgart 1982, ISBN 3-520-013215-5 , p. 554 on Lemma: "prelogical" and p. 143 on Lemma "imaginative thinking".
  5. ^ Heinrich Harmjanz : People, man and thing. Critical studies of folklore concepts. In: Writings of the Albertus University: Humanities series. Volume 1, Ost-Europa-Verlag, 1936, pp. 77-88.
  6. ^ Friedrich Keiter : Race and Culture: a cultural balance sheet of the human races as a way to the racial soul. Volume 3, Enke, 1940, p. 120 ( view of quotations in the Google book search).
  7. ↑ Jean Piaget : The development of knowing III: The biological thinking. Psychological thinking. Sociological thinking. In: Collected Works (study edition). Volume 10. Klett-Cotta, 1975, ISBN 3-12-929200-4 , pp. 139 and 156.
  8. ↑ Winfried Nöth : Dynamics of semiotic systems. From old English magic to illustrated advertising text. Metzler, 1977, ISBN 3-476-00370-1 , pp. 66-79: Chapter 5 Prelogic in Advertising and Schizophrenia.
  9. ↑ Erwin H. Ackerknecht : Brief history of psychiatry . Enke, Stuttgart 3 1985, ISBN 3-432-80043-6 ; P. 2 (footnote 2) on the section “Ethnopsychiatry”.