The History of Understanding in Analytic Philosophy

Around Logical Empiricism

Adam Tamas Tuboly, Adam Tamas Tuboly

• Publisher: Bloomsbury Academic
• Year: 2022
• ISBN:
  9781350159228
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Philosophy
• Subtopic: Empiricism in Philosophy

Interpretive understanding of human behaviour, known as verstehen, underpins the divide between the social sciences and the natural sciences. Taking a historically orientated approach, this collection offers a fresh take on the development of understanding within analytic philosophy before, during and after logical empiricism. In doing so, it reinvigorates debates on the role of the social sciences within contemporary epistemology. Bringing together leading experts including Martin Kusch, Thomas Uebel, Karsten Stueber and Giuseppina D'Oro, it is an authoritative reference on the logical empiricists' philosophy of social science. Charting the various reformulations of verstehen as proposed by Wilhem Dilthey, Max Weber, R.G Collingwood and Peter Winch, the volume explores the reception of the social sciences prior to logical empiricism, before surveying the positive and negative critiques from Otto Neurath, Felix Kaufmann, Viktor Kraft and other logical empiricists. As such, chapters reveal that verstehen was not altogether rejected by the Vienna Circle, but was subject to various conceptual uses and misuses. Along with systematic historical coverage, the book situates verhesten within contemporary interdisciplinary developments in the field, shedding light on the 21st-century 'turn' to understanding among analytic philosophers and opening further lines of inquiry for philosophy of social science.

Part One Before Logical Empiricism

Chapter One Georg Simmel on Historical Understanding

Martin Kusch

1.1. Introduction

Since the early nineteenth century, “understanding” (Verstehen) has been a central category in philosophical debates over the aims and methods of the sciences and the arts, over methodological differences between fields of study, and even over the human condition in general. The term first gained prominence in the German-speaking lands where historians like Johann Gustav Droysen, philosophers like Wilhelm Dilthey, or social theorists like Max Weber used it to demarcate history from philosophy, the humanities from the natural sciences, or the right from the wrong approaches in history, economics, and sociology.

In this chapter, I shall analyze a contribution, of the same time and context, that has only rarely received detailed scholarly attention: Georg Simmel’s theory of historical understanding. Simmel’s account was closely related to the ideas of Droysen, Dilthey, and Weber; he critically responded to Droysen or Dilthey, and Weber reacted with both admiration and hostility to Simmel’s suggestions. At the same time, Simmel’s proposal was bold, original, and provocative. In what follows, I shall reconstruct Simmel’s reflections on understanding as he developed them from the 1890s until his death in 1918. Limitations of space do not, however, allow me to detail the various stages in the development of Simmel’s position.¹

I shall try to make plausible the following theses. First, Simmel’s theory of understanding was not initially part of a systematic attempt to demarcate the natural sciences from the social sciences or the humanities. Only from around 1905 onward did Simmel fall in line the neo-Kantian demarcation efforts. Second, Simmel criticized some ingredients and forms of the “reenactment” (Nachbilden) theory of understanding. Third, Simmel’s theory was anti-realist in its likening of the historian to an artist and in thereby emphasizing the historian’s creativity in constructing “historical pictures.” This anti-realism was of a piece with Simmel’s neo-Kantian “critique of historical reason” with its emphasis on the “historical” or “relative a priori.” Fourth, Simmel’s reflections on understanding fitted with his general relativistic outlook. Still, fifth, Simmel was “anti-historicist” if by “historicism” one means the attempt to reduce philosophy to history. And sixth, the development of Simmel’s ideas on understanding culminated in his efforts to integrate his conception of (historical) understanding with his “philosophy of life” (Lebensphilosophie).

Having reconstructed and analyzed Simmel’s position, I shall briefly consider criticisms by his contemporaries, especially Franz Eulenburg, Max Frischeisen-Köhler, Otto Hintze, and Max Weber. This will allow me to comment, in a context-sensitive way, on the strengths and weaknesses, as well as the originality, of Simmel’s position.

1.2. Verstehen and the Nineteenth-century “Demarcation Problems”

Nineteenth-century debates over the nature and role of understanding were tied to attempts to distinguish between philosophy, the natural sciences, the humanities, and the social sciences. Droysen ([1868] 2013: § 14) famously wrote: “In line with the objects and the nature of human thinking, there are three possible scientific methods: the (philosophically or theologically) speculative [method], the mathematical-physical [method], and the historical [method]. Their respective essence is: to come to know [erkennen], to explain, and to understand.” Dilthey used understanding in a similar way. His credo “nature we explain, mental life we understand” ([1894] 1990: 144) was frequently cited. The underlying thought was that in the study of “external nature, we postulate, below the appearances, a connection in the form of abstract concepts. But in the intellectual [geistig] world, the connection is experienced and reenacted [nachverstanden]” (Dilthey [1910] 2006: 49).

At least in his early writings (e.g., Einleitung in die Moralwissenschaft), Simmel ([1891–2] 1989–91) emphasized the “unity of science.” Thus, the first edition of Probleme der Geschichtsphilosophie merely conceded that the natural sciences differ from historical research in regularly displaying a stronger and broader consensus concerning “categories of ordering and evaluating” ([1892] 1989: 328). This was more a difference in degree than a difference in kind.

Moreover, Simmel reasoned that since all historical research is ultimately concerned with human mental states, psychology must have a central position within it. He wrote that “if psychology were a science of laws of nature, then history would be applied psychology in the very sense in which astronomy is applied mathematics” ([1892] 1989: 304). Three things are important about this sentence. First, Simmel did not say that history is applied psychology. He formulated a counterfactual with a false antecedent; that is, he did not believe psychology to have (strict) laws (ibid.: 339–79), and hence he denied that historical research is simply applied psychology. Second, even if there were psychological laws of nature, history would still not reduce to psychology. After all, and to stick to Simmel’s comparison, many astronomical entities cannot be reduced to mathematics. Finally, while Simmel rejected the idea that history is applied psychology, he was comfortable with saying that “psychology is the a priori of the historical sciences.” And it was the descriptive—not the normative!—task of epistemology to find the rules “according to which, on the basis of mind-external documents and traditions, one infers not only mental processes but also the elements that suffice to create an ‘understandable’ connection between these processes” (ibid.: 338).

In subsequent writings, Simmel’s attitude towards demarcation changed. The second (1905) and third (1907) editions of Probleme der Geschichtsphilosophie discussed the relationship between historical research and psychology in new ways. (I shall follow the 1907 edition throughout, since it differs only slightly from the 1905 edition.) To begin with, Simmel now aimed to explain how history’s focus on individuals could be reconciled with a (limited) role for psychological laws. Key here was an analogy with a major thesis in Simmel’s philosophy of natural science. According to this thesis, nature consists of two (kinds of) elements, laws of nature and a “primary matter” with a structure in and of itself. This primary matter is governed by laws of nature. It can be conceived of, Simmel [1907] 2015: 234) proposed, as a “total individual” (Gesamtindividuum). Concerning psychological laws in particular, Simmel reasoned that we can think of each human being as an individual in the sense introduced: each one of us is governed by the same psychological laws, and yet, in each case, these psychological laws govern a different primary structure, a different “real a priori.” In this way, general psychological laws and ultimately ineffable individuals both have to be reckoned with (ibid.: 235).

Moreover, for Simmel historical research was situated between psychology and logic. Logic concerns itself with the contents of propositions and the logical relations between them. Psychology investigates mental processes. History differs from both logic and psychology. Like psychology, history focuses on mental processes; and like logic, history is preoccupied with contents. In other words, history is interested in the “psychological development of contents”; it aims to understand how individuals experienced, shaped, and responded to such contents (ibid.: 237). Simmel also held that historical understanding is primarily preoccupied with “reenacting meaning” (Sinn). This sets history apart from the causal analysis of psychology and the inference-centered perspective of logic. In addition, historical understanding is distinctive also because it homes in on particular events rather than general patterns. Historical understanding draws contents and mental processes together into “unique constellations,” “syntheses of imagination,” where “there is no necessity of psychological events based on laws of nature, and there is no logical necessity connecting the contents with general validity” (ibid.: 274). Reaching this goal requires the peculiar talents and dispositions of outstanding individual historians. In the natural sciences—where “mathematics is the ideal”—the individuality of the researcher is of little significance in the constitution of the subject matter. But it is of great importance in the case of history (ibid.: 296).

The demarcation efforts of the second and third editions of Probleme der Geschichtsphilosophie clearly resonated both with Droysen’s and Dilthey’s emphasis on understanding as unique to the humanities and with the Southwest School of neo-Kantians’ urging that history is essentially about particular events (Windelband, Rickert).

In later writings, Simmel tied the concerns with demarcation to his “philosophy of life” (Lebensphilosophie). In a paper of 1918, he conjectured that the historian deals with a peculiar object: an object to which the historian “has to grant a being-for-itself”; that is, an object in “the category of the you.” The “you” is the only element in the universe allowing for a “mutual understanding” (gegenseitiges Verstehen) and a feeling of unity. Simmel regarded it as obvious that the category of the “you” is, for the both the everyday and the historical worlds, as important as are the categories of substance or causality for the natural scientific world (1918: 161–2). With this claim, Simmel committed himself to a very strict divide between the natural and the historical sciences.

1.3. The Critique of the Theory of Reenactment

One central thread running through all of Simmel’s discussions of understanding was the criticism of certain versions or ingredients of the “reenactment” theory of understanding. An influential formulation of this version could be found in some passages of Droysen’s Historik:

Understanding is made possible by the fact that […] every outward expression reflects inner processes. When it is perceived, the expression, by projecting itself into the inner of the perceiver, arouses the same inner process in him. When we hear the scream of fear we experience the fear of the person screaming. […] [T]he act of understanding […] occurs […] as an immediate intuition, as a creative act, like a spark of light between two approaching electrophoretic bodies, like conception in copulation. (Droysen [1868] 2013: §§ 9, 11)

Similar notions can be found in many other nineteenth-century German historians, artists, theologians and philosophers (cf. Wach 1926, 1929, 1933; Beiser 2011). Dilthey claimed, for instance, that our attribution of mental states to others i...