 To understand Wundt’s philosophical importance one must know something of his intellectual context. Early nineteenth-century German psychology labored under the looming shadow of Kant and his arguments that a science of psychology is in principle impossible. This fact by itself illustrates the oddity of the situation, from our point of view: why would a psychologist care what a philosopher thought about his practice? The answer is that since ancient times, psychology had been a basic part of philosophical speculation, though after Kant’s criticisms many considered it a dying branch, dangerously close to breaking off. Psychologists were philosophers on the defensive (cf. L III: 163).