Although no direct claim for the autonomy of spheres was advanced in the scholastic speculations discussed in Chapter 5, such notions would be put forward in the circles where humanism and the artistic renewal pursued in contact with it emerged in Renaissance Italy. A powerful example was Giorgio Vasari’s assertion that what caused art and architecture to decline from its ancient heights was the substitution of religious values for aesthetic ones by Christianity as it became established under the Roman Empire. This defense of aesthetic autonomy would become more general and explicit as the expansion of the audience for painting and sculpture and the display of art objects in locations specifically dedicated to them – museums and galleries instead of churches or princely and noble residences – confronted viewers with “art as such,” and it would be theorized in Kant’s aesthetics at the end of the eighteenth century, which removed both religious and social value from judgments about art. But this development was singularly European. No similar move toward attributing autonomy to the aesthetic sphere would take place in India, China, or Muslim territories, despite the many beautiful objects produced in all of them and the exalted position attributed to artists in some.

Psychology’s past in Eastern civilizations were an inherent part of the religious and moral philosophies. In an overview of those non-Western traditions in psychology, points of interaction between East and West occurred in Persia, which served as a crossroad between India and the Arab world. Ancient Indian culture followed the traditions of Buddhism and Hinduism. The writings of the Vedas, especially the Upanishads, provided the foundation for Hindu philosophy. In China, imported Buddhism taught that self-denial and proper thinking were necessary to achieve well-being. However, the older philosophical movement of Confucianism offered a stronger basis for Chinese intellectual progress. Both Buddhism and Confucianism were exported to Japan, where they were transposed into Japanese philosophies to support nationalistic aspirations. Two Middle Eastern cultures, Egyptian and Hebrew, are important as predecessors for the ancient Greeks whose philosophical formulations would provide the foundations for the emergence of psychology. Egyptian achievements in art and architecture left us a legacy, especially expressed in astronomy and medicine. The Jewish foundation of monotheism and law, along with an understanding of the person as a unity of spirit and matter, interfaced with the Greek culture that was to dominate the Mediterranean world.