O corpo na história: a dupla natureza do homem na perspectiva materialista dialética de Vigotski

• Main Author: Nilson Guimarães Doria
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro 2014-07-01
• Series: Arquivos Brasileiros de Psicologia
• Subjects: Vygotsky; Body; Epistemology.
• Online Access: http://pepsic.bvsalud.org/scielo.php?script=sci_arttext&pid=S1809-52672004000100004&lng=pt&nrm=iso

The main idea of this work is that Vygotsky should not be seen just as theoretical of the development, but also, and mainly, as metodologist and epistemologist of Psychology. Our objective is showing how his approach of mind-body problem led him to the search for a scientific operacionalization to it. His answer to the problem lies on the notion of dialectical synthesis of opposites. We intended to show the originality of his contribution in a few different fields: a) his proposal of units of analysis in Psychology, when he proposes the study of the psychological phenomena as dialectical synthesis of the psychic and the physiologic; b) treating cognitive deficits decurrent from cerebral lesions as "natural experiments" that would allow the research of the "psychological systems" in deterioration (a counterpart of his developmental studies); c) the Marxist's anthropological project of production of "a new man", embodied in the pedologic movement. Our aim is to show how his perspective of three developmental lines (evolutionary, historical and ontogenetic) can lead to a psychological model that considers the biological factors without succumbing to the temptations of the recapitulacionist and maturationist tendencies. Vygotsky's expanded developmental perspective considers man endowed of a dual nature, both biological and social. It seems to provide a useful approach of the relationships between the psychic phenomena and the corporal, once: a) it assumes them in a no reductionist way the idiosyncrasies of the involved instances, having practicable methodological proposals, and b) it considers that the unit of the human behavior, conscience and History, is a datum that is not denied by the existence of several different disciplines devoted to the focal study of each factor, since it is taken in its correct place in the mosaic of the sciences.