Background
Ehrenfels, Christian Freiherr von was born in 1859 in Rodaun (near Vienna).
philosopher psychiatrist psychologist
Ehrenfels, Christian Freiherr von was born in 1859 in Rodaun (near Vienna).
University of Vienna.
Ehrenfels is known principally as one of the founders of the Gestalt School of psychology. He also made important contributions to philosophical ethics and metaphysics. A man of many accomplishments, he wrote several plays and published essays on Richard Wagner. In his paper ‘Über Gestaltqualitaten’ [On Gestalt Qualities] 1890) Ehrenfels, although perhaps more of a theorist than a systematic practical psychologist, was the first to attempt a thorough and comprehensive account of the perception of complex wholes. Mach had commented on the significance of our ability to ‘sense’ complex wholes: and the German word Gestalt means ‘shape’, ‘figure’ or ‘form’. But Ehrenfels was the first to develop a specific and detailed theoretical foundation for a psychology of the Gestalt. Gestalt psychology starts from the observation that our ability to perceive complex wholes is in important respects independent of moment-bymoment perceptions. Thus the book you are now reading is perceived as ‘this book’ whether it is seen from one angle or another, in daylight or, say, yellow streetlight, for real or in a photograph, and so on. The same is true of other sensory modalities: a particular tune is perceived as ‘this tune’ whether played on the piano or by an orchestra, whistled or sung. Moreover in both cases we may perceive the ‘whole’ even though at the time we are aware only of a part: it is the particular tune we perceive even if we have heard only a few notes; it is the particular book we perceive, even though we have seen only the spine. From observations such as these Ehrcnfels argued that the perception of a complex whole depends on more than an awareness of its elements. We are of course aware of these elements and of their spatial and temporal associations. The associationist psychologists believed that these were sufficient to explain the perception of the figure as a whole. But Ehrenfcls argued that we directly apprehend the whole as an additional quality or attribute, alongside and in addition to apprehending its parts and the associations between them. It is this additional attribute which is the Gestalt in Ehrenfels’ theory. Ehrenfels, who was a considerable musician, was concerned particularly with the perception of musical forms such as melodies. But he showed that his theory of the Gestalt could be applied equally to objects and to geometrical figures, to mathematical and logical forms, and to social ‘forms’ such as style and taste. He argued that complex Gestalts were related hierarchically to simpler Gestalts, and speculated on the nature of a ‘protoGestalt’, a simple undifferentiated form from which all others were built up. Ehrenfels' original statement of his theory, although detailed, left many questions unanswered. Is the Gestalt a real entity or an abstract universal? What is the precise relationship between the Gestalt and the complex of elements by which it is carried? Is the Gestalt part of the act of perception or independent of it? Although many of these issues were given coherent treatment by Meinong. Husserl, Stumpf and others, Ehrenfels’ theory stimulated a considerable theoretical and empirical literature in its own right. His colleague and teacher, Meinong, built up an influential School of Gestalt Psychology in Padua. One of Ehrenfels’ pupils, Wertheimer, established the better-known school of experimental psychology in Berlin. The Berlin school differed from Ehrenfels in regarding individual elements of the complex whole as inseparable, the very natures of these elements being determined by their place within the Gestalt. It was this school, too, which emphasized the phenomenal basis of the Gestalt—such as the figure/ground relationship—- familiar in experimental Gestalt psychology; and an associated physiological theory of cerebral integration. Ehrenfels’ theory also had a wider influence beyond Gestalt psychology. William James, for instance, in the Principles, described brain processes as giving rise to ‘figured consciousness’, awareness of definite objects rather than ‘mere hodge-podges of elements’. Ehrenfels' work in ethical theory, although less well-known, is as significant as his Gestalt psychology. Indeed value theory is widely regarded as originating with a celebrated debate between Ehrenfels and Meinong. Ehrenfels noted that the separate theories of value which had been developed for different fields—moral, aesthetic, economic—had certain common features. He sought to bring these together in a detailed account of the relationship between value and desire. Value is taken to be a property of an object; but the property in question is that of being desired by someone, or being desirable. Values are thus relativistic but in practice there is almost universal agreement about the desirability of such things as pain and pleasure. Yet value is not solely instrumental; on the contrary, instrumental value depends on the intrinsic value of certain ‘psychic’ realities—we value things not merely for their utility, nor is their desirability necessarily connected with a desire for possession of them; value consists rather in a v'ertain fittingness. Similarly, a desire theory of value does not necessarily lead to individualism. Superior non-individualistic values, transcending even personal survival, emerge through cultural progress and are transmitted by education and good example. Ehrenfels extended his work on value theory to a number of other areas. He developed a social ethic, for instance, concerned with intrinsic values, those which most individuals embrace. Similarly, combining this with the notion of an intrinsic biological value of survival, he came to Question received views on sexual morality and, less acceptably nowadays, to advocate selective breeding. Ehrenfels published his metaphysical theories ■n Kosmogonie (1916). He rejected the idea that the evolution of the universe could be explained as the result of an accumulation of chance events. Instead he postulated two interacting principles; a Principle of disorder and a principle of unity. The Principle of unity takes the form of a Gestalt which, operating over cosmological periods of time, acts creatively to account for the emergence °f non-random structures. Although as a systematic and experimental science Gestalt psychology owes more to the work of Wertheimer, Koffka and Köhler, Ehrenfels is widely regarded as *ts philosophical founder. Except in the field of Perception, the influence of Gestalt psychology waned during the postwar period with the rise of behaviourism. Renewed philosophical and psychological interest in the phenomena of consciousness and complex cognitive activities resulted in something of a revival of interest in the late twentieth century, and the burgeoning cognitive sciences owe much to Ehrenfels’ legacy. Sources: Reese; Edwards; Union Catalogue of Departmental and College Libraries; British Library Catalogue to 1975; Ftychlit journal articles.