Wilhelm Dilthey and the Neo-Kantians Wilhelm Windelband

Total Page：16

File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb

Wilhelm Dilthey and the Neo-Kantians Wilhelm Windelband and Heinrich Rickert engaged in a life-long controversy about the distinction between the human and the natural sciences, about the epistemological foundations of history, and about the methods of psychology. In this paper, I defend two theses about this exchange, one historical, the other systematic. The historical thesis is that the explicit debate between Dilthey and the Neo- Kantians on the issue of science classification was driven by a deeper, although seldomly acknowledged concern with “psychologism”. (Broadly construed, “psychologism” amounts to the view that moral norms and logical principles are reducible to psychological processes.) The systematic thesis is that precisely those features of Dilthey’s thinking which invited charges of “psychologism” also allowed him to solve the central epistemological problems of his foundational project. In particular, three of Dilthey’s theses appeared as “psychologistic” and potentially “relativistic” to his Neo-Kantian critics. First, Dilthey thought of epistemology and logic as inseparable from psychology, and devised an account of primitive logical operations which he regarded as immanent in the structure of experience. Second, he claimed that historical objects are “psychic life that has become objective”, and that historical meaning is ultimately constituted by what is experienced as meaningful within inner experience. And third, he provided a theory of psychological development according to which values emerge from their functions within psychic activity. The first thesis seemed to reduce logic to psychological acts. The second thesis seemed to reduce historical meaning to psychological experience. And the third thesis seemed to reduce values to psychological functions. But what seemed like a dangerous “psychologism” in the eyes of his critics, for Dilthey worked towards grounding the objective statements of human science in the certainty of inner experience. The continuity between primitive logical operations and formal logic bridged the gap between immediate experience and scientific statements about this experience. And the idea that historical objects and values are constituted by psychic activity allowed for inner experience to provide reliable epistemic access to the meaning structures of the historical world. .

Copy Link

Recommended publications

Hegel's Apocrypha
Chapter 3 Hegel’s Apocrypha 1 A Rediscovery The term Jugendschriften—writings of youth, is used to refer to a series of texts and fragments produced during Hegel’s years as student and private tutor from the period 1793 to 1800 which he did not himself publish. In 1801 Hegel moved to Jena with the help of Schelling, published his first book, took his habilitation and began his academic career. The Jugendschriften were first published by Hermann Nohl in 1907.1 Nohl was a student of Wilhelm Dilthey (1833–1911), the advocate of the philosophy of life and of hermeneutics, who is also important as one of the founders of historicism. Dilthey himself held the view that a phi- losophy is best described in terms of the history of its development and hence that the biography of a philosopher is often the key to his philosophy. In 1905 he published a work with the title Die Jugendgeschichte Hegels—The history of the young Hegel,2 which was based on the documents in the Royal Prussian Library in Berlin that Nohl published two years later. Dilthey’s concern with Hegel’s early works was thoroughly determined by his own philosophy. For instance, he found that Hegel’s interest in the importance of biography to his- tory was comparable to his own. Hegel had written a Life of Jesus, which means that Hegel tried, just as Dilthey did in the history of philosophy, to consider Jesus Christ not as a dogmatic ‘object’ of theology, but historically, as a matter for historical investigation.
[Show full text]
Jürgen Habermas and the Third Reich Max Schiller Claremont Mckenna College
Claremont Colleges Scholarship @ Claremont CMC Senior Theses CMC Student Scholarship 2012 Jürgen Habermas and the Third Reich Max Schiller Claremont McKenna College Recommended Citation Schiller, Max, "Jürgen Habermas and the Third Reich" (2012). CMC Senior Theses. Paper 358. http://scholarship.claremont.edu/cmc_theses/358 This Open Access Senior Thesis is brought to you by Scholarship@Claremont. It has been accepted for inclusion in this collection by an authorized administrator. For more information, please contact [email protected]. Introduction The formation and subsequent actions of the Nazi government left a devastating and indelible impact on Europe and the world. In the midst of general technological and social progress that has occurred in Europe since the Enlightenment, the Nazis represent one of the greatest social regressions that has occurred in the modern world. Despite the development of a generally more humanitarian and socially progressive conditions in the western world over the past several hundred years, the Nazis instigated one of the most diabolic and genocidal programs known to man. And they did so using modern technologies in an expression of what historian Jeffrey Herf calls “reactionary modernism.” The idea, according to Herf is that, “Before and after the Nazi seizure of power, an important current within conservative and subsequently Nazi ideology was a reconciliation between the antimodernist, romantic, and irrantionalist ideas present in German nationalism and the most obvious manifestation of means ...modern technology.” 1 Nazi crimes were so extreme and barbaric precisely because they incorporated modern technologies into a process that violated modern ethical standards. Nazi crimes in the context of contemporary notions of ethics are almost inconceivable.
[Show full text]
Lotze and the Early Cambridge Analytic Philosophy
LOTZE AND THE EARLY CAMBRIDGE ANALYTIC PHILOSOPHY ―This summer I‘ve read about a half of Lotze‘s Metaphysik. He is the most delectable, certainly, of all German writers—a pure genius.‖ William James, September 8, 1879.1 Summary Many historians of analytic philosophy consider the early philosophy of Moore, Russell and Wittgenstein as much more neo-Hegelian as once believed. At the same time, the authors who closely investigate Green, Bradley and Bosanquet find out that these have little in common with Hegel. The thesis advanced in this chapter is that what the British (ill-named) neo-Hegelians brought to the early analytic philosophers were, above all, some ideas of Lotze, not of Hegel. This is true regarding: (i) Lotze’s logical approach to practically all philosoph- ical problems; (ii) his treating of the concepts relation, structure (constructions) and order; (iii) the discussion of the concepts of states of affairs, multiple theory of judgment, general logical form; (iv) some common themes like panpsychism and contemplating the world sub specie aeternitatis. 1. LOTZE, NOT HEGEL, LIES AT THE BOTTOM OF CAMBRIDGE ANALYTIC PHILOSOPHY Conventional wisdom has it that the early philosophy of Moore and Russell was under the strong sway of the British ―neo-Hegelians‖. In the same time, however, those historians who investigate the British ―neo-Hegelians‖ of 1880–1920 in detail, turn attention to the fact that the latter are not necessarily connected with Hegel: William Sweet made this point in regard to 1 Perry (1935), ii, p. 16. Bosanquet,2 Geoffrey Thomas in regard to Green,3 and Peter Nicholson in regard to Bradley.4 Finally, Nicholas Griffin has shown that Russell from 1895–8, then an alleged neo-Hegelian, ―was very strongly influenced by Kant and hardly at all by Hegel‖.5 These facts are hardly surprising, if we keep in mind that the representatives of the school of T.
[Show full text]
Husserl's Position Between Dilthey and the Windelband-Rickert School of Neo-Kantianism John E
Sacred Heart University DigitalCommons@SHU Philosophy, Theology and Religious Studies Faculty Philosophy, Theology and Religious Studies Publications 4-1988 Husserl's Position Between Dilthey and the Windelband-Rickert School of Neo-Kantianism John E. Jalbert Sacred Heart University Follow this and additional works at: http://digitalcommons.sacredheart.edu/rel_fac Part of the Philosophy of Mind Commons, and the Philosophy of Science Commons Recommended Citation Jalbert, John E. "Husserl's Position Between Dilthey and the Windelband-Rickert School of Neo-Kantianism." Journal of the History of Philosophy 26.2 (1988): 279-296. This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the Philosophy, Theology and Religious Studies at DigitalCommons@SHU. It has been accepted for inclusion in Philosophy, Theology and Religious Studies Faculty Publications by an authorized administrator of DigitalCommons@SHU. For more information, please contact [email protected]. +XVVHUO V3RVLWLRQ%HWZHHQ'LOWKH\DQGWKH:LQGHOEDQG5LFNHUW 6FKRRORI1HR.DQWLDQLVP John E. Jalbert Journal of the History of Philosophy, Volume 26, Number 2, April 1988, pp. 279-296 (Article) 3XEOLVKHGE\7KH-RKQV+RSNLQV8QLYHUVLW\3UHVV DOI: 10.1353/hph.1988.0045 For additional information about this article http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/hph/summary/v026/26.2jalbert.html Access provided by Sacred Heart University (5 Dec 2014 12:35 GMT) Husserl's Position Between Dilthey and the Windelband- Rickert School of Neo- Kanuamsm JOHN E. JALBERT THE CONTROVERSY AND DEBATE over the character of the relationship between the natural and human sciences (Natur- und Geisteswissenschaflen) became a central theme for philosophical reflection largely through the efforts of theo- rists such as Wilhelm Dilthey and the two principal representatives of the Baden School of Neo-Kantians, Wilhelm Windelband and Heinrich Rickert.~ These turn of the century theorists are major figures in this philosophical arena, but they are by no means the only participants in the effort to grapple with this issue.
[Show full text]
Wilhelm Windelband and the Problem of Relativism
Wilhelm Windelband and the problem of relativism Katherina Kinzel, University of Vienna [email protected] This is a preprint version. The final edit will appear in British Journal for the History of Philosophy. Abstract This paper analyses the shifts in Wilhelm Windelband’s ‘critical philosophy of values’ as it developed hand in hand with his understanding of relativism. The paper has two goals. On the one hand, by analysing the role that relativism played in his philosophical project, it seeks to contribute to a better understanding of Windelband's intellectual development in the context of historicism and Neo-Kantianism. On the other hand, by highlighting Windelband’s contribution to the understanding of relativism, it sheds light on an important episode in the history of that problem. The paper distinguishes between three phases in Windelband’s thinking and shows that his views about relativism changed in close connection with his conception of history. The early Windelband thought that historicism was compatible with absolute validity because he was firmly convinced of historical progress. The mature Windelband rejected progress as a means for justifying validity and put the problem of relativism into sharp relief. In response to the failure of his mature philosophy to fend off relativism, the later Windelband strengthened the role of history again. The paper concludes that Windelband’s significance lies not in his arguments against relativism, but rather in having furthered philosophical understanding of the problems at stake. Keywords Wilhelm Windelband; Relativism; Historicism; Psychologism; Neo-Kantianism 1. Introduction In late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century Imperial Germany, relativism was a recurring topic of debate.
[Show full text]
Philosophy in the Nineteenth Century
GEORGEMASON UNIVERSITY UNIVERSllY LIBRARIES THE OXFORD HANDBOOK OF GERMAN PHILOSOPHY IN THE NINETEENTH CENTURY ............................................................................................................................................................... Edited by MICHAEL N. FORSTER and KRISTIN GJESDAL OXFORD U N lV ERSITY PR ESS OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS Great Clarendon Street , Oxford, o:u 6oP, United Kingdom Oxford University Press is a depart ment of the t:niver,11r of Chford It furthers the University's obJective of excellence m n·s~·arch, s.:hol.1r,h1r , . and edu cation by publishing wor ldwide . Oxford is a regmereJ trade mJrk ,,t Oxford University Press m the IJK and in certain other countnc, © The several contribu tors 1015 The moral rights of the authors have been asserted First Edition pub!t,hed 10 2015 Impress ion 1 All rights reserved . No part of this publication may be rerroJuceJ. stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any mea ns, without the prior permiss ion in writing of Oxford University Press, or as npreHl y pcrm1tteJ by law, by licence or under terms agreed with the arpropr1ate repr oi:raph1,, rights organi zation. Enquiries concerning reproduction outsi de th e swre of the above should be sent to the Rights Department, Oxford tJ111vers1ty Pre,,, at the address above You must not circulate this work in any other form and you must impo se this same condit ion on any .icqu irt'r Published in the United States of America by Oxford University l're,s 198 Madison Avenue , New York, NY wo16, United StJ tes of Amer tCJ British Library Cataloguing in Puhlication l>Jta Data availa ble Library of Congress Control Numher: 2014946121 ISBN 978- 0 -19-969654 - 3 Printed and boun d by CPI Gro up (UK) Ltd, Croydon, CRO 4YY Links to thud party websites are provided by Oxford in !(OOJ faith anJ for information only.
[Show full text]
Wilhelm Dilthey's Doctrine of World Views and Its Relationship to Hermeneutics
David Naugle Philosophy 5329/501 Hermeneutics Spring 1993 University of Texas at Arlington Dr. Charles Nussbaum WILHELM DILTHEY'S DOCTRINE OF WORLD VIEWS AND ITS RELATIONSHIP TO HERMENEUTICS INTRODUCTION Wilhelm Dilthey (1833-1911), whom José Ortega y Gasset called "the most im- portant philosopher in the second half of the nineteenth century"1 (1946: 131), was a man of passion, vision, and calling. The great crises of his age gripped his soul and propelled him on an intellectual and spiritual journey in quest of solutions to the prob- lems of Western culture at his moment in history. Here is his own personal testimony to the single-minded objective of his life. The great crisis of the sciences and European culture which we are now living through has so deeply and totally taken possession of my spirit that the desire to be of some help in it has extinguished every extraneous and personal ambition (JD vii; in Ermath 1978: 15). This crisis of modernity, of mammoth proportions to Dilthey who described it as "a shaking of human society and its foundations such as has not been seen since the declining days of the Greco-Roman world" (GS 6: 246), could be called a Streit der Weltanschauung—a clash, or "protracted crisis of consciousness or 'world view'" (Ermath 1978: 15). Dilthey lived through "the Hegelsstreit, Religionsstreit, Materialis 1 This is no small compliment when we realize that the competitors for this distinction include J. S. Mill, C. Darwin, H. Spencer, H. Bergson, K. Marx, F. Engels, J. Royce, F. Bradley, A. N.
[Show full text]
Three DECONSTRUCTION and HERMENEUTICS. on THE
Three DECONSTRUCTION AND HERMENEUTICS. ON THE CONTROVERSY BETWEEN JACQUES DERRIDA AND HANS-GEORG GADAMER Piotr Dehnel In his Songs of Experience, Martin Jay1 cites Jacques Derrida’s critical assessment of the fact that experience has always been referred to in terms of metaphysics of presence, which he finds both in Edmund Husserl’s experience of meaning and in Emmanuel Levinas’s utterances about experiencing the other or a difference. Jay reflects also on the 1981 debate between Derrida and Hans- Georg Gadamer and stresses Derrida’s objections to the hermeneutical reliance on the dialogic experience. In this paper I would like to have a closer look at the aforementioned debate and shed some light on the question whether Gadamer’s hermeneutics can be grasped in the categories of the metaphysics of presence. Gadamer, the founding father of philosophical hermeneutics, and Derrida, the founding father of deconstruction, met in April 1981 in the Goethe Institute in Paris during the Text and Interpretation Symposium organized by Philippe Forget.2 Inaugurating the symposium with an eponymous paper, Gadamer discussed various elements of his own intellectual biography, which commenced with a critique of idealism and methodologism of the prior epistemological theory and was decisively influenced by his encounter with Martin Heidegger’s philosophical thought. Heidegger, namely, broke with Wilhelm Dilthey’s concept of understanding as a method of humanities and made it into an existential, i.e. into a basic determinant of the human Dasein. For Heideggger, understanding is simply a certain mode of being, and not a mode of knowledge. Such formulation enabled Gadamer to include the experience of art and the experience of history into the sphere of hermeneutics, both types of experience culminating in the concept of historically effected consciousness (wirkunggeschichtliches Bewußtsein).
[Show full text]
Immanuel Kant and the Development of Modern Psychology David E
University of Richmond UR Scholarship Repository Psychology Faculty Publications Psychology 1982 Immanuel Kant and the Development of Modern Psychology David E. Leary University of Richmond, [email protected] Follow this and additional works at: http://scholarship.richmond.edu/psychology-faculty- publications Part of the Theory and Philosophy Commons Recommended Citation Leary, David E. "Immanuel Kant and the Development of Modern Psychology." In The Problematic Science: Psychology in Nineteenth- Century Thought, edited by William Ray Woodward and Mitchell G. Ash, 17-42. New York, NY: Praeger, 1982. This Book Chapter is brought to you for free and open access by the Psychology at UR Scholarship Repository. It has been accepted for inclusion in Psychology Faculty Publications by an authorized administrator of UR Scholarship Repository. For more information, please contact [email protected]. 1 Immanuel Kant and the Development of Modern Psychology David E. Leary Few thinkers in the history of Western civilization have had as broad and lasting an impact as Immanuel Kant (1724-1804). This "Sage of Konigsberg" spent his entire life within the confines of East Prussia, but his thoughts traveled freely across Europe and, in time, to America, where their effects are still apparent. An untold number of analyses and commentaries have established Kant as a preeminent epistemologist, philosopher of science, moral philosopher, aestheti cian, and metaphysician. He is even recognized as a natural historian and cosmologist: the author of the so-called Kant-Laplace hypothesis regarding the origin of the universe. He is less often credited as a "psychologist," "anthropologist," or "philosopher of mind," to Work on this essay was supported by the National Science Foundation (Grant No.
[Show full text]
European Journal of Pragmatism and American Philosophy, IV - 1 | 2012, « Pragmatism and the Social Sciences: a Century of Influences and Interactions, Vol
European Journal of Pragmatism and American Philosophy IV - 1 | 2012 Pragmatism and the Social Sciences: A Century of Influences and Interactions, vol. 2 Roberto Frega and Filipe Careira Da Silva (dir.) Electronic version URL: http://journals.openedition.org/ejpap/758 DOI: 10.4000/ejpap.758 ISSN: 2036-4091 Publisher Associazione Pragma Electronic reference Roberto Frega and Filipe Careira Da Silva (dir.), European Journal of Pragmatism and American Philosophy, IV - 1 | 2012, « Pragmatism and the Social Sciences: A Century of Influences and Interactions, vol. 2 » [Online], Online since 23 July 2012, connection on 23 September 2020. URL : http://journals.openedition.org/ejpap/758 ; DOI : https://doi.org/10.4000/ejpap.758 This text was automatically generated on 23 September 2020. Author retains copyright and grants the European Journal of Pragmatism and American Philosophy right of ﬁrst publication with the work simultaneously licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution- NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License. 1 TABLE OF CONTENTS Symposia. Pragmatism and the Social Sciences: A Century of Influences and Interactions, vol.2 Pragmatism and the Social Sciences A Century of Influences and Interactions, vol. 2 Roberto Frega and Filipe Carreira da Silva Section I. Classical Pragmatists and Contemporary Sociology Peirce and Iconology Habitus, Embodiment, and the Analogy between Philosophy and Architecture Tullio Viola Experiencing Practical Knowledge Emerging Convergences of Pragmatism and Sociological Practice Theory Tanja Bogusz The Social Scientist, the Public, and the Pragmatist Gaze Exploring the Critical Conditions of Sociological Inquiry Philippe Gonzalez and Laurence Kaufmann Section II. Law, Power, and the Prospects of a Pragmatist Social Theory Naturalistic Values and Progressive Politics A Missing Link Between Pragmatism and Social Theory Christoph Henning American Pragmatism and European Social Theory Holmes, Durkheim, Scheler, and the Sociology of Legal Knowledge Frederic R.
[Show full text]
Epistemological Problems of Ecology
BTU Chair of General Ecology Epistemological Problems V 1 Epistemological Problems of Ecology: Philosophy of Nature in the 19th and 20th Century Udo Bröring Chair of General Ecology Lecture Manuscript Table of Contents Introduction The 19th century: Selected topics Romanticism, Hegel, Schopenhauer, Schelling, Engels History of science and ecology The 20th century: Selected topics Preliminaries Philosophy of Alfred North Whitehead Consequence of the doctrine of evolution: Constitution of modern biology Holism and reductionism Some remarks on scientific ecology and nature conservation Outlook References and some further readings Introduction We describe a changing of views in the philosophy of nature and general attitudes towards nature up to the beginning of the new age in the course of the 18th century. – At first, a pro- cess of de-mythologizing of world and nature (Hesiod) can be observed, followed by a second process of de-sacralization (secularization) of world and nature by the ionic philosophy of nature (Anaximandros, Anaximenes). Science was established by the prae-Socratics (Parmen- ides, Heraklitos) and the Socratics (Sokrates, Platon, Aristoteles). The Parmenides/Heraklitos- dichotomy was solved by Demokritos and Platon: disjunctive, discursive, analytical forming of terms, suppressing sensation and holistic perception: The concept of logos that is reason is advanced. The integration and synthesis on Indo-European and Jewish views and ideas, and the establishment of a specific Christian philosophy of nature (Augustinus, Boethius), which was close together with Platon´s ontology and (later) Aristoteles´ empiricism lead to the end of the era of the antique. In the medieval era syncretism is advanced by combining aspects of Platon’s and Aristoteles’ philosophy.
[Show full text]
The Experience of Meaning and Hermeneutics
THE EXPERIENCE OF MEANING AND HERMENEUTICS Vasile Macoviciuc∗∗∗ [email protected] Abstract : The author sustains the necessity/possibility of a theoretical- methodological complementarity among structuralism, semiotics, and hermeneutics within the effort to conceptualize meaning as existential experience. These analytic perspectives must be also received as contributions pertaining to the sphere of the ontology of the humane. Keywords : semiotics, understanding/comprehension, interpretation, hermeneutics, meaning, language. “Language – notes Hans-Georg Gadamer – is the environment in which the I and the world unite or rather in which we are presented with their primal [co]-belonging.” 1 Due to this multi-dimensional symbiosis, the grasping of meaning cannot be a purely intellectual operation, but “engages the entire human being” 2, assuming the recognition of some methodological criteria, very different as source, significance or comprehensive goal. If the structural method and semiotics are relatively recent in European culture, hermeneutics had a historical evolution from antiquity on, receiving changes that seriously affected its theoretical shape, fields of problems, and stakes. Schleiermacher is taken as the founder of modern hermeneutics since, on the one hand, he believes that this can no longer be reduced to its traditional realm (interpretation of the Bible), but covers the large field of moral sciences and, on the other hand, it notices the fact that the understanding of the part (the element) is conditioned by the understanding of the text as a whole. His intention is to ground a general theory of the art of understanding and interpretation that unifies and guides the special hermeneutics. This is why he displays the phenomena of language: what must (and can) be assumed within the hermeneutic act and what can be discovered in and by it is no more than language.
[Show full text]