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psychological-reductionism

The tendency to reduce complex individual behaviors and desires to combinations of abstract, universal tendencies or basic givens.

1 chapter across 1 book

Being and Nothingness (1943)Jean-Paul Sartre

Chapter 2GT602

This chapter critiques empirical psychology's approach to understanding human desires and individuality, emphasizing that desires are not static contents within consciousness but are expressions of consciousness's transcendent and projective nature. Sartre argues against reducing individual human projects to abstract, universal schemas or basic givens, using Flaubert's literary ambition as an example to illustrate the failure of psychological explanations to capture the concrete individuality and freedom inherent in human existence.