ABSTRACT
The first and the most widespread of the arguments is the psychological one. The most popular version of it may be stated as follows: The old rationalism absurdly overemphasized the power of conscious reasons as motives. Hard distinctions and necessary rational order are certainly more easily ignored in speculative psychology than in physics. Positivism, reacting violently against the romantic “rational” or soul psychology, and following the directly opposite route, arrives at strikingly similar results. The anti-rationalism common to positivism and to certain forms of idealism shows itself in the effort to deny the significance of logic by reducing it to psychology. It is, of course, perfectly obvious that no branch of philosophy can hope to attain substantial truth if it ignores or goes counter to the teachings of psychology. Similar to the attempt to dispense with reason by reducing everything to the facts of psychology is the attempt to dispense with reason by reducing everything to the facts of history.
