The psychological social imaginary
pp. 17-38
in: , Psychology as a moral science, Berlin, Springer, 2011Abstract
In the introductory Chapter, I argued that psychological modes of understanding are pervasive in today's Western culture. Roger Smith concludes that modern society is a Psychological Society. In the twentieth century, "everyone learned to be a psychologist, everyone became her or his own psychologist, able and willing to describe life in psychological terms' (Smith, 1997:577). In this chapter we turn our attention to the roots of Psychological Society with a special focus on the effects of psychologization on our moral lives. How have we learned to think about morality in an age dominated by psychological modes of understanding? How is it even possible to think about morality from the perspective of a psychological worldview? In order to answer these questions, we need to know what "the psychological worldview" is, how it arose historically, and how this worldview relates to our conceptions of morality and normativity.