İlm-i Ahvâl-i Rûh—The Science of States of the Soul meets our readers for the first time, nearly 110 years after its initial publication in 1327/1911. The work was printed at the Hikmet Matbaa-i İslamiyesi, which was founded by Ahmed Hilmi. We learn from Ahmed Hilmi’s introduction under the heading “A Few Words” that this work, which was taught at the Darülfünûn-ı Osmanî—the first Ottoman university—was not written merely as a textbook: “An effort has been made to write it in as clear and simple a language as possible so that the benefit expected from the work is not limited and exclusive only to the distinguished students of the Darülfünûn.”

This thought lies at the foundation of the entire corpus penned by Ahmed Hilmi, who said, “Every human is indebted to speak the truth they find in their conscience.” The truth he found in his conscience is to advise a society, which had changed its course with the Tanzimat, to avoid imitation in the face of the transformation it was confronting. All of his recommendations, advice, and ideas presented are not in a style of blind defense within a framework of mere partisanship, but rather in the form of a satisfying intellectual reckoning processed with scientific methods. Thus, by showing the theoretical infrastructure of the views he presents and conveying their verified results, the author desires a mindset free from imitation to prevail in the conflict between the modernization movement and traditional institutions. In his intellectual works, Ahmed Hilmi confronts philosophers such as Auguste Comte, Descartes, Kant, Spinoza, and Leibniz; he asks questions and provides answers with the equipment he draws from Islamic thought. With this attitude, he exhibits neither a stance of total rejection nor total acceptance against the imitation that may stem from a complex regarding Western thought; he never departs from a critical-inquisitive approach.

The Science of States of the Soul was written with this purpose and method, and it is a work that contains the importance, definition, method, and subjects of the science of psychology. The work is one of the first Turkish sources to examine Psychology, which had just declared its independence by breaking away from “philosophy,” considered the mother of all sciences at the end of the 19th century.