Herbert Spencer's Theory of Emotion

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  • ハーバート・スペンサーの感情論
  • ハーバート ・ スペンサー ノ カンジョウロン

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Herbert Spencer (1820-1903) included an evolutionary psychology in his synthetic philosophy. In this paper I treated the development of theory of emotion in his psychology. Spencer had four sources in his theory of emotion: Lamarkian theory of evolution, phrenology, association psychology, and theory of moral sense. Though association psychology which comes from empiricism is opposed to moral sense which is an inherent ability, he was able to dissolve the opposition through the Lamarkian theory of evolution which admits that an individual can hand down the ability he got to the next generation. From phrenology, he socceeded the opinion that psychological functions have their seats only in brain and nerve. Spencer gave a brief account of emotion in his early work (The Principles of Psychology, first edtion, 1855), but in the late 1850s he gradually considered it important. Through his reading Alexander Bain's The Emotion and the Will (1859), emotion occupied an important place in his system. In the second edtion of The Principles of Psychology (2vols. 1870-1872) he discussed the formation of social sentiments which is the base of social morality in his evolutionary way, and made it possible to engage psychology with sociology and ethics.

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