ABSTRACT
Psychology is the study of the individual mind. The mind may have been something that existed before people thought of it and was discovered in the course of the evolution of philosophy and science. This chapter explores how people of the premodern period viewed mind and personality, as located as much outside the body as within. In the premodern world, the self was not a big deal, at least not for philosophers, scientists and other intellectuals who dealt with the kinds of ideas the authors are concerned with in their book and class. After the coming of dualist religions like Hinduism, Christianity and Islam there were ferocious arguments about the nature and existence of an eternal soul. The antique way of life had shattered and scattered, being slowly replaced by another premodern mode of life from which modernity finally sprang in the late eighteenth century.
