Draft:Nikolai Yakovlevich Grot

Nikolai Yakovlevich Grot (Николай Яковлевич Грот; 30 April 1852 – May 23 [O.S. June 4] 1899 Russian idealist philosopher, psychologist, ordinary professor at Moscow University. Brother of philologist Konstantin Yakovlevich Grot. Active State Councilor.

He developed a early psychological theory that invoked the concept of "psychic energy".

Biography
Born in Helsingfors on April 18  (30), 1852 in the family of philologist, academician Y. K. Grot, and writer Natalia Petrovna Semyonova (1824-1899), sister of famous figures and writers Nikolai Petrovich Semyonov and Pyotr Semyonov-Tyan-Shansky.

He studied at the Wiedemann Gymnasium (1862-1868) and the Larinsky Gymnasium (1868-1871), from which he graduated with a gold medal. He also graduated from the History and Philology Department of St. Petersburg Institute of History.

After a one-year internship, at his own expense, in Berlin and Strasbourg (with Waldeyer), in June 1876 he was appointed as a corrective extraordinary professor at the Nizhyn Historical and Philological Institute, where he taught psychology, logic and the history of philosophy at the Department of Philosophy. From September 1878 to September 1881 he was the scientific secretary of the institute; from September 1, 1881, he was on a business trip abroad for a year in order to prepare his doctoral dissertation.

He defended at Kiev University: in May 1880, his master's thesis "Psychology of feelings in their history and main foundations" ; in February 1883 his doctoral thesis "On the question of the reform of logic. Experience of a new theory of mental processes".

From December 1, 1879, he held the post of ordinary professor at the Nizhyn Institute (approved on May 14, 1880)). In 1883-1886 he headed the Department of Philosophy at the Novorossiysk University in Odessa, from August 1886  he was an ordinary professor at Moscow University , where he worked at the Department of Philosophy until his death.

He was repeatedly published in the French journal " Philosophical Review " (" Revue philosophique "), edited by academician Théodule Ribot.

In February 1888 he was elected chairman of the Moscow Psychological Society.

In 1889 he founded the journal Questions of Philosophy and Psychology, which he headed from 1889 to 1896.

He died on May 23  ( June 4 ),  1899 in the village of Kochetok, Zmievsky district, Kharkov province.

Scientific views
In the early period, under the influence of K. D. Kavelin, Grot's views gravitated towards Positivism. Later, Grot's views changed, and he began to engage in metaphysics based on the data of experimental science (the so-called monodualism) and to the search for natural scientific foundations for ethics and axiology. Grot tried to integrate the systems of Kant, Schelling, Schopenhauer and von Hartmann. He believe in the reality of the consciousness of the Universe, and endowed a person with an extra-temporal beginning, invested in him by God. He developed a psychological theory in which he singled out “mental turnover” as a unit of analysis, in which sensation (as an external impression on the body), feeling (as the processing of an external impression into an internal one), thinking (as a movement caused by this impression) and will (as an external movement of the body towards the object) were combined.

In the work "Foundations of Experimental Psychology" (1896) he proposed a program for the construction of psychology, which should be an objective, natural, experimental science. He was an active supporter of the practical use of psychology, its connection with pedagogy, medicine and jurisprudence. One of the most important topics of Grot's work is the problem of emotional development. In the book "Psychology of feelings in their history and main foundations" (1880) in relation to psychology, he uses the laws of differentiation and integration discovered in physiology, proves the possibility of experimental study of emotions. Combining, according to the tradition of that time, the problem of the formation of emotions with the development of morality, Grot approached the issue of free will in a new way, linking it with the nature of a person’s dependence on his state. At the same time, the very problem of the presence or absence of free will, in his opinion, can be understood and solved only on the basis of a person’s self-awareness, that is, a person’s awareness of the freedom of his choice of one or another form of activity.

In philosophy, he called his method the method of "subjective induction". As a criterion, he put forward the law of "the monotony of nature", but he interpreted it idealistically, as one of the moments of human experience.

N. Y. Grot tried to reform logic based on his view that all mental processes are homogeneous and can be reduced to six initial forms: association, dissociation, disassociation, integration, disintegration and differentiation, of which association is the main one. The first three forms are judgment processes, and the other three forms are inference processes. The judgment, according to Grot, has two subjects, and in addition, it contains the idea of ​​the relationship between the subjects. He called induction 'methodical synthesis', and deduction 'methodical analysis'.

N. Y. Grot showed the inconsistency of the metaphysical, empirical, formal and psychological interpretations of the formal logical laws of thinking. He subjected contemporary logical concepts to a thorough criticism, and tried to reduce logic to a section of psychology.