The problem of religious feeling in Gustav Vorbrodt’s psychology of fait
The paper deals with the way religious feelings were studied in the original system of the psychology of faith developed by the German theologian Gustav Vorbrodt. His project was of great importance for the development of the psychology of religion as a scientific discipline. Vorbrodt’s ideas are analyzed within the context of the history of the concept of «religious feeling» in the XIX century’s German philosophical thought. German thinker shares approach, according to which the sense is not of central importance for the religious life. In its place come more complex psychological States, such as the irrational «delight» (Genuss), the expression of which, in its connection with the feeling, will, and ideas of a person, according to Vorbrodt, are judgments of faith (value judgments, Werturteile). At the same time, faith is understood as an integral state, as a unity of ideas, feelings, and will of a person associated with «delight.» The latter is the psychological basis of faith and related judgments. The general direction of thoughts and the system of categories that Vorbrodt uses go back to the works of the famous German philosopher Rudolf Hermann Lotze. This line of succession, in our opinion, is interesting for the history of religious studies and deserves a separate study. The idea of feeling as a form that organizes the principle of human mental life, on the one hand, and an indicator of some significant processes that accompany personality change, on the other, is substantial, as well as the identification of two groups of feelings in the psychology of faith - ideal and «emotional,» also fitting in the framework of psychological theories of that period. We reveal this aspect at the end of the article.