Voluntarism in early psychology: the case of Hermann von Helmholtz

The failure to recognize the programmatic similarity between (post-)Kantian German philosophy and early psychology has impoverished psychology's historical self-understanding to a great extent. This article aims to contribute to recent efforts to overcome the gaps in the historiography of contemporary psychology, which are the result of an empiricist bias. To this end, we present an analysis of the way in which Hermann von Helmholtz's theory of perception resonates with Johann Gottlieb Fichte's Ego-doctrine. It will be argued that this indebtedness is particularly clear when focusing on the foundation of the differential awareness of subject and object in perception. In doing so, the widespread reception of Helmholtz's work as proto-positivist or strictly empiricist is challenged, in favor of the claim that important elements of his theorizing can only be understood properly against the background of Fichte's Ego-doctrine.