How History Matters to Philosophy by Robert C. Scharff

Author:Robert C. Scharff [Scharff, Robert C.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781134626809
Publisher: Taylor and Francis
Published: 2022-06-15T00:00:00+00:00

5 Dilthey From Epistemology to the Problem of History

DOI: 10.4324/9781315885674-7

Wilhelm Dilthey became famous, and for the most part has remained famous, for being an epistemological pioneer of the specifically “human” sciences. The Geisteswissenschaften, he argued, try to “understand” historical human life as we live it, unlike the natural sciences which try to “explain” the external world as we observe it. Hence, to the extent that Dilthey is remembered today, he is usually associated with his role in the Erklären-Verstehen debate. For in raising the possibility that there are fundamentally different methods for fundamentally different types of science, Dilthey puts into play all the standard issues in mainstream philosophy of science—that is, issues concerning the nature of scientific explanation and justification, the unity and diversity of scientific disciplines, the metaphysical status of its subject matter, the accessibility of various subject matters to research, and so on.

In the Anglo-American tradition, Dilthey's role continues to be interpreted primarily in terms of these epistemological issues.1 In some circles, however, and especially in the Continental European tradition, the very existence of an Erklären-Verstehen debate is interpreted as posing a problem that all the hardest line logical empiricist must eventually come to realize cannot be resolved epistemologically. That there is even serious controversy over whether there are “types” of method, with different purposes of study, for different (e.g., “human,” not merely “natural”) phenomena—all of this raises a prior ontological question about the nature of the reality (or realities) studied by the science, not just the usual epistemic questions about how to do “it” better.

Yet in the end, Dilthey's arguments raise a problem that is finally neither epistemological nor ontological, but is rather at bottom what Heidegger calls hermeneutical, and its resolution requires that we focus first, not on the issue of objects of science or of the methods of studying them, but on the character of the philosophical orientation that is or ought to be assumed by those taking sides in the debates. What is it to “be” a philosopher “of” science (i.e., “who” is one), when it is science itself that constitutes the primary topic? As Heidegger claims and I shall argue, these questions already lead Dilthey himself toward the conclusion that the philosophical orientation required—he calls it the “standpoint of life”— is one for which “the problem of history” very definitely and explicitly matters. Viewed in this way, Dilthey's struggles to produce a “Critique of Historical Reason” make it possible to raise again the reflective question that Comte still demanded we ask, but in a way that does not require his answer—namely, if philosophy, like all human practices, is historical to the core, then what is it to “be” philosophical—about science or anything else—should be addressed first.

My discussion of Dilthey has three main parts. First, I analyze Dilthey's association with the original epistemological debates. The main purpose is to show how he ultimately makes the Erklären-Verstehen distinction, as an expression of the practices of studying Nature and Historical Life, respectively, a “hermeneutical problem” to be addressed from the “standpoint of life” (§§1–3).

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