Sources, sens et vocation de la psychologie de l'enfant

In: Enfance, Band 33, Heft 1, S. 3-30

Abstract

Through a rapid sketch of the understanding of childhood from its earliest times, the A., both experimentalist and philosopher, shows that the consciousness of the concept of childhood implies, besides other factors, a factor which may be said a philosophic factor. The evidence of this fact is at the utmost with J.J. Rousseau, but as well with the regression of child psychology that followed troughout almost a whole century, more concerned with sociology.
The analysis of the meaning of child psychology, (so long as this science is not careless of superior activities of the psyche) shows that the foundations of an available philosophy - if they must always be scientific research - will be found nowadays rather in child psychology than, for instance, in sociology.
Childhood indeed is the true « age of values » : thereby childhood must be the first basis of a « genetic philosophy » which deals with human nature, anterior to special philosophies dealing with morals, politics, economics or education. By these ways, the A. draws two inquiry lines both for philosophy and for child psychology.