Gestalt as Philosophy

Written By Shea Stevens
 
 

By Shea Stevens. Last edited 1/6/24

In this post I argue that recognition of Gestalt as philosophy is needed; that many gestalt concepts properly belong within the field of philosophy still to this day, which is the field they originated in. Gestalt philosophy is the set of philosophical ideas rooted in the idea of the "gestalt," defined and used in various ways, relating to the holistic principle of a whole that is different than the sum of its parts. Gestalt philosophy includes concepts shared in common with existential phenomenology, organismic theory, and holism. The Gestalt theory of Max Wertheimer was originally founded in the field of philosophy, before psychology emerged as its own discipline and the two subjects began to separate. [1]

I also made a video on the philosophical origins of gestalt psychology here:

Background

Max Wertheimer’s gestalt philosophical ideas were influenced by precursors including Goethe, Stumpf and Ehrenfels (the latter two taught him philosophy), and his views were also influenced by thinkers like Spinoza, whose work he read at an early age.[2]

Gestalt concepts have been explored in works by Max Wertheimer, Kurt Koffka, Kohler, Kurt Goldstein, and Kurt Lewin, and later developed by many other gestalt theorists including Fritz and Laura Perls. Many aspects of Gestalt philosophy are related to the philosophy of holism coined by Jan Smuts[4] and it also overlaps greatly with organismic theory of Kurt Goldstein. Gestalt philosophy also relates to the work of the existential phenomenology, especially in the work of Maurice Merleau-Ponty who discusses gestalt ideas in his work.

Merleau-Ponty’s Structure of Behavior[5] engages with Gestalt theory and phenomenology to obtain an understanding of the relationship between consciousness and nature: “Whereas the neo-Kantian idealism then dominant in France (e.g., Léon Brunschvicg, Jules Lachelier) treated nature as an objective unity dependent on the synthetic activity of consciousness, the realism of the natural sciences and empirical psychology assumed nature to be composed of external things and events interacting causally.”[3] Merleau-Ponty argues that ‘instead of either of these approaches, the natural world is fundamentally composed of Gestalts, structures of organization at multiple levels in the world.’[3]

While Gestalt psychology and Gestalt therapy are defined as theoretical approaches to psychology and therapy, gestalt philosophy refers to the system of philosophical ideas which thinkers in those fields have made reference to: Essential concepts including the term gestalt,[6] the whole and its parts,[6] the gestalt cycle,[6] organisms as wholes,[7] organismic self-regulation,[7] gestalt conceptualization of human beings,[7] phenomenological awareness,[8] figure and ground,[6] and the field, also called the total situation.[6]

Notable Precursors

  • Aristotle is associated with the idea of a whole being different than the sum of its parts. In Aristotle, Metaphysics 8.6 1045a: “What is the reason for a unity/oneness? For however many things have a plurality of parts and are not merely a complete aggregate but instead some kind of a whole beyond its parts."[9]

  • Spinoza influenced Wertheimer, who was introduced to his work in his early life by his grandfather.[2] Spinoza viewed the world as one substance with many attributes, valued logical thinking based in clear and distinct ideas, and held a deterministic view of the world,[10] all of which ideas Wertheimer's own work explores and critiques. Anne Harrington suggests that Spinoza's holism ‘gave Wertheimer a way to conceive of the problem of order (Gestalt) and mind in a non-dualistic way.’[2]

  • Goethe was a major influence in the development of the term "gestalt" in German literature and culture.[11]

  • Ehrenfels was Wertheimer's primary teacher in philosophy, who stated that the whole is different than the sum of its parts.[2] Wertheimer made changes to Ehrenfels' conceptualization of the whole and its parts, stating instead that the whole precedes the parts.[2] Ehrenfels studied under Franz Brentano. Both Ehrenfels and Husserl seem to have been inspired by Mach's work (Contributions to the Analysis of Sensations, 1886) in formulating their similar concepts of gestalt and figural moment, respectively. In 1890 Ehrenfels published his paper "On Gestalt Qualities," discussing the idea of a gestalt as human perception of ordered wholeness in a sum of elements. He was undecided at the time whether this orderliness was something the mind imposed on reality or discovered in reality, and 27 years later he decided it was the latter.[2]

Essential Concepts

-The German word "gestalt," its various uses and definitions[6]
-The Whole's Relation to its Parts[6]
-Gestalt Cycle[6]
-Organisms as Wholes[7]
-Organismic View of Humans[7]
-Total Situation, Field, or Lifespace[12]
-Figure and Ground[6]
-Phenomenological Awareness[8]

The Term "Gestalt," its definitions and usage

Gestalt originated as a German word. When Wertheimer and his peers were developing their ideas, the concept of Gestalt (which can be translated as "form" or "configuration") had already been in existence.[11] In this literature, “gestalt” worked as an ordering principle in partnership with wholeness.[2] The term "Gestalt" allowed writers to reference the idea of the world as a plurality of interconnected wholes, rather than either one undifferentiated whole, or no whole at all, being only reducible to particles. In this literature and culture of Germany at the time, chaos represented the opposite of "Gestalt" and the idea of the machine was the opposite of wholeness, in a struggle to retain order and wholeness.[2] Developments in science were prompting this existential tension: a sense of disenchantment was accompanying rapid advancements in evolution and physics.[2]

Gestalt Theory as Epistemology

In early 20th century Germany, among the tension of reductionism, atomism and disenchantment, Wertheimer's gestalt theory described an epistemology that affirmed what Goethe had said before him: that “the basis of reality was not meaningless, reducible to the smallest particles of matter, but rather "immanent structuralism," order and wholeness.”[13] Gestalt theory was, from its founding, a philosophy of reality and knowledge that affirmed that people's lived reality is meaningful and there is orderliness and structure in the world; the world is a plurality of wholes which are not merely reducible to the sum of their parts.[2]

On December 17, 1924 Wertheimer delivered a talk on Gestalt theory to the Kant Society at the University of Berlin, taking on the theme of scientific disenchantment.[14] In this talk, which may be seen as very much in dialogue with the talk delivered by Max Weber five years prior, he asked '“if the sort of stoicism and resignation of Weber was necessary, since recent findings in science need not contradict the existence of loveliness, beauty, meaning, and the existence of meaningful wholes” (Harrington). Wertheimer’s talk might be interpreted as a proposal of a third way beyond atomism and vitalism.[2] I made a video exploring this address by Max Wertheimer here.

Gestalt theory as epistemology is also explored in Wertheimer's essay "On Truth" (1934). I have a video exploring that essay here.

Piecemeal Thinking: Pieces vs. Parts

In Max Wertheimer's four major essays from 1934-1940, he focuses on the issue of piecemeal thinking, which he sees as the primary concern of his age. What is needed is more logical thinking, looking at the total situation, to fully understand the Truth (T), rather than the more superficial, piecemeal facts alone, form of truth (t).[15] This practice of paying attention to the interconnection of the total situation is what is needed for people to engage ethically, democratically, and to create conditions for freedom in the world. People can easily become misguided when facts that are separated from their fuller context, and that is how poor logic, poor ethics, and authoritarianism takes root.[2] He synthesizes his ideas in these four interconnected essays, building on the ideas of (T) Truth and (t) truth he describes in his essay "On Truth" (1934)[15] in the papers that followed: "Some Problems in the Theory of Ethics" (1935)[16], "On the Concept of Democracy" (1937),[17] and "A Story of Three Days" (1940).[18] Piecemeal thinking sees independent facts in isolation, when instead, facts should be seen as interrelated parts in relation to other parts in a whole system; hence his contrast of "pieces vs parts".[15] This focus on man's inner goodness and the need for better thinking to improve society is reminiscent of Enlightenment thought.

References:

  1. Ash, Mitchell G. (1998). Gestalt psychology in German culture, 1890 - 1967: holism and the quest for objectivity. Cambridge studies in the history of psychology (1. paperback ed.). Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press. ISBN 978-0-521-64627-7.

  2. HARRINGTON, ANNE (2020-09-01). Reenchanted Science. Princeton University Press. ISBN 978-0-691-21808-3.

  3. "Maurice Merleau-Ponty". Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Retrieved July 28, 2023.

  4. Smuts, J. C. (1926). Holism and Evolution. London: Macmillan & Co.

  5. Merleau-Ponty, Maurice; Merleau-Ponty, Maurice (2006). The structure of behavior (8. print ed.). Pittsburgh, Pa: Duquesne Univ. Press. ISBN 978-0-8207-0163-9.

  6. Henle, Mary, ed. (1961-12-31). Documents of Gestalt Psychology. University of California Press. ISBN 978-0-520-31351-4.

  7. Goldstein, Kurt (1939). The Organism: A Holistic Approach to Biology Derived fro Pathological Data in Man.

  8. Yontef, Gary (1988). Awareness, Dialogue and Process: Essays on Gestalt Therapy. The Gestalt Journal Press.

  9. Aristotle (2019-05-31), "Metaphysics", Clarendon Aristotle Series: Metaphysics: Lambda, Oxford University Press, retrieved 2023-06-27

  10. Spinoza, Benedictus de (1994). Curley, E. M. (ed.). A Spinoza reader: the Ethics and other works. Princeton, NJ Chichester: Princeton Univ. Pr. ISBN 978-0-691-00067-1.

  11. Poggi, Stefano (2021-08-23), Follesa, Laura; Vercellone, Federico (eds.), "Goethe and Gestalt Psychology: A Commonplace Revisited", Bilddenken und Morphologie, De Gruyter, pp. 133–142, doi:10.1515/9783110674194-009, ISBN 978-3-11-067419-4, retrieved 2023-06-27

  12. Lewin, Kurt (1976). Field Theory in Social Science: Selected Theoretical Papers.

  13. Ash, Mitchell (1985). The Emergence of Gestalt Theory: Experimental Psychology in Germany, 1890-1920. Harvard University.

  14. Wertheimer, Max; Riezler, Kurt (1944). "Gestalt Theory". Social Research. 11 (1): 78–99. ISSN 0037-783X.

  15. Wertheimer, Max (1961-12-31), "ON TRUTH", Documents of Gestalt Psychology, University of California Press, pp. 19–28, ISBN 978-0-520-31351-4, retrieved 2023-06-27

  16. Wertheimer, Max (1961-12-31), "SOME PROBLEMS IN THE THEORY OF ETHICS", Documents of Gestalt Psychology, University of California Press, pp. 29–41, ISBN 978-0-520-31351-4, retrieved 2023-06-27

  17. Wertheimer, Max (1961-12-31), "ON THE CONCEPT OF DEMOCRACY", Documents of Gestalt Psychology, University of California Press, pp. 42–51, ISBN 978-0-520-31351-4, retrieved 2023-06-27

  18. Wertheimer, Max (1961-12-31), "A STORY OF THREE DAYS", Documents of Gestalt Psychology, University of California Press, pp. 52–64, ISBN 978-0-520-31351-4, retrieved 2023-06-27

Shea Stevens
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