Gurevich P.S. Specificity of Сharacters in the System of Spiritual Coordinates of Eduard Spranger

Abstract: The subject of study is classification of characters by the German philosopher and psychologist Eduard Spranger. People have long time ago noticed that the human has many faces. Socrates and Don Quixote, Falstaff and Maria Theresa, Sancho Panza and marquis de Sade, Alexander of Macedon and Harun who “ran faster than a fallow deer”, Marcus Aurelius and Dantes. Philosophers and historians sought similar and different traits in human beings. We see an individual as he conveys himself: as he moves, loves and feels, as his way of life is, as his needs, goals and longings, his ideals are and how he shapes them, what values drive him, what and how he does, realizes, creates. There are many approaches to dividing individuals as carriers of a character or type. The article offers a critical analysis of Spranger’s conception.The author uses methods and principles of philosophical anthropology. He takes into account many attempts at creating classifications of human characters. He analyzes psychological conceptions, too. In particular, the characterology of E.Spranger is compared with the typology of C.G.Jung.The characterology of Spranger becomes a subject of critical analysis for the first type in Russian literature. The author points to the arbitrariness of the principle from which the German philosopher proceeds when he describes various spiritual attitudes underlying some way of life or another. As a rule, one of such attitudes prevails in activities of a particular individual. Singling out fundamental values to which a human being is oriented in his behaviour and which finally predetermine him, Spranger does not take into account that in each of these spheres there can often be found individuals with directly opposite psychic properties and specific traits. In the article his principle is characterized as abstract.

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