Discourses on the Soul in the Late Ottoman Empire In parallel with the diversification of Ottoman intellectual life in the Second Constitutional Era (1908 – 1918) discussions on psychology were carried out by Ottoman intellectuals from different political and religious backgrounds, such as progressivism, Islamism, materialism, and spiritualism. Intellectuals articulated a variety of ideas on the definition, nature, and use of psychology which were in tandem with the changes in cultural, political, and social areas. As Ottoman intellectuals envisioned a comprehensive social transformation and discussed the limits of modernization as well as the role of religion in a future society, the components of human nature remained controversial. The opposition between materialism and spiritualism and the mechanistic view of human nature constituted the backbones of the controversy. This paper is concerned with the changes within the intellectual discourses on the soul in the Ottoman Empire from 1908 and 1923. It studies the criticisms to the mechanistic view of human nature, nourished by Sufism and Bergsonian Spiritualism, via early books and journal articles on psychology. Broadly it aims to contextualize the debate between materialism and spiritualism within the larger global framework of science and religion to question in what ways Ottoman intellectuals contributed to this theme. It ultimately discusses the questions how the concept of soul was designated and framed by Ottoman intellectuals in relation to the concepts of selfhood, liberty, free-will, love for the nation, divine love; and to what extent the literature on the soul can be seen as a criticism of homogenization, submersion of the self in the collective and ultimately Ottoman / Turkish top-down modernization.