WILHELM DILTHEY AND THE METHODOLOGY OF HUMAN SCIENCES

Victor Suchar, Member, on 3 September 2002

Dilthey's Basic Ideas

Wilhelm Dilthey is, next to Nietzsche, the most important and influential forerunner of `vitalism' (`lebensphilosophie' by its common translation in English). But while Nietzsche achieved the decisive turn to vitalism by focusing his attack on scientific method and the idea of progress, Dilthey was a forerunner, a transitional figure who attempted to set the vitalism on an epistemological foundation. I should say that, as a point of departure only, he was concerned with the differences between the methods of enquiry in natural sciences and those of the human sciences.

His starting point was the positivist neo-Kantianism of the 1860s and 70s, which he wanted to reconstruct in a new philosophy. He always adhered to a scientific standpoint, without overtly breaking with Kantianism, but his type of scientific method was different than that of the natural sciences. In fact, he undermined the use of the methods of natural sciences in human studies, and in this he proved just as effective as Nietzsche did, because of his epistemological arguments, although his style was not nearly as compelling and literary.

Dilthey's starting point was psychological and historical, and his life's work was intended to be a `Critique of Historical Reason'. He attempted to adapt Kant to contemporary needs and developed his philosophy in such a way as to lend itself to laying the foundations of human sciences, and particularly of history. He wanted to preserve the underlying characteristics of Kant's agnosticism and phenomenalism, but his philosophy took an important step beyond neo-Kantianism in the direction of vitalism, promoting its subsequent upsurge.

In fact, one can say that his thoughts run parallel to Husserl's phenomenological school, whose vitalistic advances he influenced more than anybody, and that he anticipated Bergson, the American pragmatists, and later, Heidegger and Gadamer. These tendencies emerged little by little, since he stood very close to positivist neo-Kantianism in his beginnings, but the seeds of innovation are clear from the outset.

Let me start by quoting the beginning of his famous `Althoff Letter', addressed to an important official of the Ministry of Education, in relation to his future professorship in Berlin, the then top academic post in the German speaking world, in which he attempted to explain his position:

"In contemporary science there is a basic opposition between the abstract theories of eighteenth- century political economy, natural law, and politics, on the one hand, and the Historical School, the demands of social reality, indeed a more profound feeling for this reality, on the other hand. The conflict has persisted ever since the effects of the French Revolution were experienced. The task is to justify and to delimit - by means of appropriate philosophical foundation - those contributions of positive jurisprudence, politics, theology, etc., that have validated historical and social reality, and to adjudicate their dispute with abstract theories."

"I begin with a straight forward fundamental idea. All science, all philosophy, is experiential. All experience derives its coherence and its corresponding validity from the context of human consciousness. The quarrel between idealism and realism can be resolved by psychological analysis, which can demonstrate that the real world given in experience is not a phenomenon in my representation; it is rather given to me as something distinct from myself, because I am a being that does not merely represent, but also wills and feels. The real world is that the will possesses in reflexive awareness when it meets resistance or when hand feels pressure"

Further, a couple of paragraphs from Section Two of Book Six of the Introduction, which state Dilthey's position:

`The hypothesis of the mechanism of the universe leads to all kinds of puzzles. It does not mean simply that there is a relation between a clear mechanical system and such puzzles, but that the nature of such mechanical system is itself problematical. It is unable to deal with biological and psychological problems. The number of those who are looking for flows in the presuppositions of a mechanical system is gradually increasing. It is necessary to ask what has been proven unconditionally, what is dependent on the presuppositions of the last three centuries, and what is merely hypothetical. The most certain of all experiences of the external world is of its uniformities, of its law-governed character.

` Of external nature we know only relations, not the essence that underlies them. This thesis is a direct consequence of the theory of the relativity of all external knowledge. Therefore, the only fully rational relation, namely, the mathematical, is the proper object of our knowledge of nature. Phenomenality, relativity, the theory of relations, and the knowledge of quantities are epistemologically interconnected.'

` In nature we observe only signs for unknown properties of a reality independent of us. Human life, by contrast, is given in inner experience as it is in itself. Therefore, only in anthropological reflection is the real there- for- us in its full reality.'

Dilthey's epistemological rationale of vitalism proceeds from the thesis that experiencing the world is the ultimate basis of knowledge.

` Life itself, liveliness, beyond which I cannot penetrate contains structural connections from which all experiencing and thinking is explained. And this is the decisive factor for the whole possibility of knowledge'

Dilthey sensed that the epistemological solution to man's relationship with the objective external world could only be elucidated by action.

`Supposing that we have a man that was all observation and intelligence, than this intellectual apparatus might contain every possible means of projecting images, yet all of it would never succeed in differentiating a subject from concrete objects. The core of the distinction is far rather the relation of impulse and thwarted intention of will and resistance.'

But Dilthey is not speaking about the objective reality itself. For him, impulses, etc. are not agencies through which we comprehend and master intellectually a reality existing independently of consciousness, Rather, they form the inner side of the coherent framework of our observations, ideas and thought processes.

`Now impulse, pressure and resistance are the fixed components imparting their solidity to all external objects. Will, struggle, labour, need and satisfaction are the ever-recurring nuclear elements comprising the framework of intellectual activity'. So far this seems as purely determined by consciousness as that of the neo-Kantians. But then appears the new and distinguishing aspect of vitalistic terms of inquiry:

`Here we have life itself. It is perpetually its own proof.'

And then he added in another passage that all problems of transcendence contained in the Kantian `thing in itself' were automatically solved. Life replaces the `thing in itself' beyond which we cannot go.

`From the standpoint of life no proof can be obtained by proceeding beyond what is contained in consciousness to something transcendent. We are only analysing that which belief in the external world rests upon in life itself. Life gives the fundamental preconditions of knowledge, and thinking cannot reach behind them'

Dilthey's great discovery is, therefore, that our belief in the reality of the external world springs from the experience of resistance and obstruction forced upon us by our will-controlled relations to persons and things in the external world.

The vitalistic twist to the basic epistemological question necessarily brought psychology to the centre of philosophical interest. This is also a general trait of the positivist attempt to renew Kant. But Dilthey developed his own particular views, which added something qualitatively new: a programme for a special type of psychology. It amounted to a contrast between previous `explanatory' psychology (which was causal and sought out laws) and a new `descriptive' or `understanding' psychology. This new science was intended to lay the basis of all `human sciences' (Geisteswissenschaften - Dilthey's term for social sciences derived from translating Mill's `Moral Sciences') and principally history.

Dilthey's proposition had as its purpose a new methodological foundation for the historical sciences. In positivism, these were degenerating to the extent that the reality of history was receding more and more in the face of academic controversies with scholars concerning the phenomena of history, literature and art and so on. Dilthey's opposition to all this, the `turning to the matter itself' which he demonstrated in his work, and which he formulated in methodological terms, is understandable and it subsequently became of great influence. But it is not objective, for experience as the instrument of knowledge creates an atmosphere of subjective arbitrariness in selection, emphasis, designation, etc. With Dilthey, as it usually happens with the original exponents of a particular view, there was still a tendency toward objectivity - but in the followers (Gundolf, for example), subjective arbitrariness came to the forefront.

It is very important to note, however, that with Dilthey, as somewhat later with the neo-Kantians Windelband and Rickert, this struggle by `descriptive psychology' against law and causality relates only to social sciences. In these, objects appear from within, as reality and as a living structure, whereas the natural have as their object `facts which enter consciousness from without, as phenomena and separate data.

`Therefore: Nature is something we explain, the spiritual life is something we understand'

Here we should note an inconsistency in this recognition of the ordered (if also phenomenalistic) objectivity of nature from the angle of Dilthey's epistemology. If life replaces the Kantian `thing in itself' there is no reason that nature should form an exception. This very point shows how instinctively Dilthey identified life and experience. For considered from the angle of experience, the bi-partition is a logical one, albeit also a purely subjectivist one. Thus it is no coincidence that later developments corrected Dilthey's illogicality to the extent of including nature too in the subjective, irrationalistic equation of life and experience.

And so irrationalism came to occupy the centre of Dilthey's philosophy, at least as it dealt with social sciences, and these encompass his entire work.

Dilthey defined the essence of the `understanding' process as follows: "Hence there is an irrational element in all understanding, just as life itself is irrational; it cannot be represented by formulae arrived by logical processes. And an ultimate, though completely subjective certainty that lies in this re - experiencing can find no substitute in an examination of the knowledge value of the chains of reasoning by which the process of understanding may be represented. The very nature of understanding imposes these limits on its logical treatment. Life cannot be brought before the judgement- seat of reason." In practical terms this translates into the grasping of the subjective meaning or intention behind men's actions.

The inevitable result of this is an intuitionist epistemology. Here, Dilthey proceeded consistently to the last. He said of the `hermeneutics' that is the systematic application of `understanding', that they "are however, conjectural and never produce demonstrative certainty" He stressed that interpretation as "the artistically governed reproductive understanding must always involve a touch of genius" and confirmed the methodologically central position of intuitionism.

But later, this new organ, intuition, was put in opposition to conceptual, rational thought. In reality, intuition constitutes a psychological element of every scientific working method. Superficial study can evoke the immediate impression that intuition is more concrete and synthetic than abstract discursive thinking in concepts. But this is only an impression, for psychologically, intuition signifies nothing else than the sudden conscious realisation of a thought process that has hitherto gone on partly unconsciously. So intuition is not separable from conscious working processes. And for conscientious scientific thinking, it is a serious task firstly, to check whether these intuitionally obtained results stand up scientifically, and secondly, organically to build them into the rational conceptual thinking so that it will afterwards be quite impossible to tell what has been discovered by the power of deduction (consciously) and what was discovered with the aid of intuition (below the threshold of consciousness, and only later become conscious). Thus considered in its proper place, as a psychological element of the working process, intuition is an integral part of conceptual thought, and not its antithesis. And the intuitional discovery of a correlation cannot become a criterion for truth.

But in my view, and this is the most important point in this talk: intuition and reason, to which I would add instinct, are integral parts of a continuing process. Each may become dominant at certain stage of the process, as the three Kantian categories of understanding, volition and feeling are, but are not separable.

In the philosophy of late 19th century, intuitionism played a central position in the objective theory and method. This need emerged because philosophers were turning away from the epistemological formalism of the preceding period, in a quest for a Weltanshauung - a view of the world.

This concept of grasping the reality intuitionally, this epistemology of where intuition is the instrument of higher knowledge and separated from reason, provided later the justification for arbitrariness. The proclamation of irrationalism of life's ordered framework, which found a sober expression in Dilthey himself, and of conjectural intuition as its organ for knowledge, formed the basis of the great influence which Dilthey exercised in late 19th and early 20th centuries.

Dilthey, to be sure, was not an irrationalist of the 1920s and 30s proportions, as it is manifest in the fact that he confined his method to social sciences. But here too, irrationalism although it was the logical conclusion of his method, was a consequence, which he constantly endeavoured to surmount and to direct back on the path of a scientific method.

For Dilthey did not believe in an irreconcilable antithesis between reason and life, science and intuition. He thought, rather, that it was possible to evolve the full splendour of the objective and subjective world out of experience; to proceed from experience via its understanding and systematisation of this understanding in the methodological interpretation of hermeneutics, to a higher and more comprehensive concept of the scientific method. Dilthey, who was a man of exceptional knowledge and genuine learning, himself frequently noticed that his two basic tendencies - toward an intuitional irrationalism and toward a scientific methodology - were in contradiction, and he overtly stated the resulting antimonies*. But again and again he attempted to overcome them.

Dilthey himself said of the circle inherent in the vitalistic argumentation of the science of history: "History is intended to teach us what life is. And it must find its resources in life." On one hand he said "human nature is always the same", and on the other, in analysing the natural system of the 17- 18th century "the human type melts away in the process of history" and that "for us, the question as to whether man of different periods may be regarded as the same within certain limits in respect to strength of motives cannot be answered at all at present".

This seems to make the psychological-anthropological rationale of the social sciences of somewhat problematic value. How are we to use imagination in interpreting different periods?

So here he introduced morphology. Dilthey succeeded in pulling apart the causal psychology of positivism, for which he substituted an essentially non-causal `morphology' of spiritual phenomena which became of decisive moment for vitalist relativism in later developments. There was then a morphological bias, but the original meaning of morphology increasingly faded away, becoming a colourful word rather then a defined method. But this was not Dilthey - rather his successors.

Dilthey's historical innovations were important and influential. Along with Nietzsche and Eduard von Martmann he inaugurated the campaign against great rationalistic philosophy since Descartes, with its natural scientific bias. With his biography of Schleiermacher (who transformed hermeneutics from biblical interpretation to a systematic study of historical text) and with his works on Novalis and Hoelderin, he was one of the initiators of Romantic renaissance in late 19th century.

If we consider Dilthey's researches in the history of literature and philosophy, we see that they have the function of proving that metaphysics (a philosophy of being in itself) were impossible in principle, and that the medieval theological system, the scientific `natural system' of the 17th and 18th century, and the attempt by Kant's major successors to revive metaphysics in a new way, were all doomed to failure. In the process, he also disclosed some of the contradictions of intuitionism.

"Philosophies are not products of thinking. They do not arise out of the mere volition of knowing. The comprehension of reality is an important element in their shaping, but only one among others"

This was a genuine question, concerned with the broader, and not narrowly philosophical, basis of the origins of world views in man's social being, and Dilthey, in facing it, endeavoured to exceed the limits of positivism. But he transformed the question into the subjective, into an antithesis of intuition and reason. He stated:

"Every genuine philosophy is a world - view (Weltanshauung), and is an intuition springing from the state of being- within- life."

Thus in Diltheyan philosophy, the scientific method was limited to leading up to the threshold of the world view, at which point it was revoked. So Dilthey, to a great extent against his own intentions, became the founder of irrationalism in questions of world view or outlook. Dilthey's own solution had its basis in relativism - his efforts led to the achievement of a psychological and historical typology of philosophical outlooks - typology as the expression of historical relativism.

The impossibility of discovering real historical connections from hypotheses, the denial of a set of principles behind history, and particularly of an ascertainable progress within it, inspired in Dilthey the idea of giving expression to historical, and generally social, spiritual connections by setting forth a typology of the standpoints which might be adopted.

The anthropological foundation of the types was later condensed into a myth-like `substantiality', into a figure (gestalt), with typological figures seen as the leading actors in the drama of history. (To a large extent this was already the case with Nietzsche, who actually promoted the rise of explanatory myth, but it is the successors who created a mythicised type history.)

Dilthey thought he discovered in history three major types: 1) naturalism (by which he meant materialism, which in his opinion transits into positivism); 2) subjective idealism (the idealistic freedom doctrine); and 3) objective idealism. Psychologically, he traced these three types back to Kant's understanding, volition and feeling. In his methodological and historical discussions he revealed the inevitable narrowness and one-sidedness of each type. He believed, however, that these confines resulted from the then dominant practising of philosophy along the lines of understanding.

"The contradiction comes about, therefore, through the independent status that objective world - images acquire in the scientific consciousness. It is the acquisition of independence which turns a system into metaphysics."

So Dilthey's intent was not to put reason in conflict to intuition, but rather see it part of the Kantian understanding - volition - feeling process. His view was that the contradictions could be removed if the systematic tendency toward extension toward metaphysics were blocked. In other words, if the systematic extension of the methods of natural science, or scientism, into human studies could be blocked. He opined:

"In the sphere of objective interpreting, each of these outlooks contains a combination of world knowledge, life appreciation and principles of action"

In tracing back the psychologically rooted types to understanding, emotion and volition, Dilthey aimed at a harmony of philosophical types similar to the harmony that these psychical forces might achieve in a human being.

That mental reflections of reality, intellectual syntheses of its elements, were undertaken from different viewpoints in the course of history, is a fact of the history of philosophy. But the fact that merits examination is this - under what specific historical conditions different viewpoints may be of assistance in comprehending different sides of reality.

Dilthey as a historian of philosophy, substantiates relativism, an unceasing battle of rival philosophies in which a specific selection is made, but there is no single choice. Its major types stand beside one another, autonomous. Indeed, Dilthey himself came to refute the possibility of the aimed at synthesis:

"It is denied to us to behold these facets together. The pure light of truth we can glimpse only via an irregularly broken ray"

At the end of his life, Dilthey sounded a note of resignation on this matter of synthesis - he said that quite candidly he envied such personalities as Rousseau or Carlyle, who dared to express their convictions publicly, deterred by no scientific scruples. And this dilemma of science and philosophy in the broader sense was highly characteristic of Dilthey's endeavours.

Neo-Kantianism, because of this dilemma dismissed the questions of world outlook from its philosophy. But Dilthey's need for a world outlook impelled him in this direction. The importance that he attached to the question as well as his immediate subjective viewpoint led him to intuitionism*. The later vitalism rejected science and scientific philosophy in the name of irrationalism - already an ideology, as the later positivists attempted to extend science and scientific methodology to human studies in the name of scientism - also an ideology.

So perhaps one can say that Dilthey was a transitional figure between these two extreme positions, which flowered in the first part of the 20th century. But Dilthey was different from the thinkers who later carried and extended his argument. He was not devoid of hope for a synthesis:

"The knife of historical relativism which has dissected all metaphysics and religion must also provide the remedy. We must be thorough. We must make philosophy itself the object of philosophy"

Dilthey's influence was as broad and profound and it extended both psychological and historical relativism. It was his successors who, against the spirit of his very philosophy, cast aside all his attempts at scientific argumentation and used his suggestions only to oppose the scientific spirit in the name of irrationalism. Postmodernism is the last incarnation of this ideology.

Dilthey's Influence

Husserl, quaintly referring to himself in the third person wrote in 1929 to Mish, one of Dilthey's disciples: "The Dilthey - Heidegger confrontation concerns me too, because it implies one between Dilthey and Husserl. You do not know that a few conversations with Dilthey in Berlin in 1905 stimulated the Husserl of the Logical Investigations so that he became the Husserl of the Ideas; the phenomenology of the ideas, incompletely described then and really completed between 1913 and 1925 agrees intimately with Dilthey- though the method is quite different." Without going into any details, the shift that Husserl refers to is one towards greater awareness of historical perspectives, of the empirical world and of the relevance of philosophy to its own problems.

Heidegger, despite disagreements, explicitly acknowledged Dilthey's influence. He picked out and powerfully emphasised three themes which laid buried in Dilthey's works: 1) the need for a basic philosophic analysis of the crucial characteristics of human experience which alone can provide the key to knowledge of any kind; 2) the outstanding importance of temporal perspectives, of man's `historicity', which is why Heidegger called his main work `Being and Time'; 3) His exclusive emphasis on hermeneutic method. These three themes claimed the increasing attention of continental philosophers and became major features of the intellectual scene.

Max Weber, who played a pivotal role in 20th century sociology and who elaborated its methodological principles, was undoubtedly influenced by Dilthey's ideas. Prominent among these is the concept of `understanding as the grasping of the subjective meaning or intention behind men's action'. According to Runciman, a commentator on Weber, this concept was a great and unqualified contribution by Dilthey to Weber's thought.

Gadamer in `Truth and Method', under Dilthey's influence provided the most sustained philosophic discussion of hermeneutics, much taken up in its new form in various areas of scholarship in the humanities (literary criticism in addition to its more traditional use in theology). Gadamer's explicit discussion of hermeneutics encouraged Habermas to examine it anew and used it in his polemics against positivism.

Habermas, a member of the Frankfurt school, brings us to another channel through which Dilthey's work was transmitted. The Frankfurt school was founded as an Institute by a group of marxist-oriented scholars during the Weimar republic, and its leading members such as Adorno and Marcuse, as well as the younger Habermas, became well known in the 60s and 70s. On one hand, they realised that orthodox marxism and its application in the Soviet Union has not produced the humane society they envisaged; on the other, they found logical positivism and behaviourism sterile. So they sympathised with the sense of practical commitment in Dilthey's philosophy, sharing his interest in cultural phenomena and appreciating his insistence on the value of the individual. Hence they subscribed to and adopted the methods that Dilthey advocated and justified in his work. The most explicit expression of this trend comes from Habermas' use of Dilthey's ideas to combat positivism and to demonstrate the constructive functions of cultural criticism.

Ortega- y- Gasset, the Spanish philosopher of history, not only acknowledged Dilthey's influence, but also initiated a Spanish translation of his works - the most comprehensive in any language, I am told.

Collingwood in the UK, and Croce (the latter extensively translated into English), the two non- marxist historicists*, knew, admired and were highly influenced by Dilthey. In fact, it was Collingwood under Dilthey's influence who said: "All history is the history of thought" and " the cause of an event was the thought in the mind of the person by whose agency the event came about". The historian understands of such an event therefore consists in the reconstruction or `re- enactment' of the process of thinking from which it issued. Such a model of historical procedure was sharply contrasted to the explanation that Collingwood attributed to the scientist. In natural sciences, particular occurrences were shown to be intelligible by virtue of their exemplifying generalisations correlating them with other events. But halt! How about his critics?

Criticism of Dilthey's Ideas

The conception of historical understanding illustrated by the work of Dilthey and later Collingwood, entered in a period of heavy criticism in the 1930s and 40s. His critics considered his claim that such understanding is radically different in form from scientific kinds of explanation is unwarranted.

The gist of this criticism was expressed by the `Covering Law' model, developed by the logical positivists in the 30s and 40s and formulated by Carl Hempel, a leading exponent, in his article `The Function of General Laws in History', published in 1942.

The Covering Law model rested on the contention that any adequate explanation of a causal type must necessarily exhibit the event to be explained as instantiating* some general laws.

When strictly interpreted, this was held to imply that the explanandum (what is to be explained) should be deduced from a set of premises consisting, on the one hand, of statements descriptive of initial or boundary conditions, and on the other, of further statements expressing well confirmed universal premises.

Collingwood resisted this claim resting on Dilthey. The proponents of the claim, on the other hand, suggested that it conformed to the account of causality given by Hume. They argued that historical explanation when the basic structure is fully revealed, displayed no significant divergences from those used in other fields of inquiry. Indeed, it was only on an analysis along the lines that the historians manner of making the past understandable could be appreciated as implying a rational procedure subject to the check and verification that was a precondition of respectability in any empirical discipline.

Talk of understanding the intentions and mentality of historical agents, as indulged by Dilthey and Collingwood may have heuristic value in the historian's work, but as far as enunciating the fundamental logic of historical explanation, it was just a mystifying irrelevance.

Despite its seeming plausibility, `The Covering Law' analysis encountered in turn considerable criticism from more recent philosophers of history such as Wm. Dray and Allan Donegan.

Here are their conclusions:

First, the explanations of the historians do not measure up to the stipulations of the covering law model. The historian would be hard put to cite universal hypotheses upon which the meaning or validity of his causal propositions allegedly depends.

Second, the presentation of events as rationally intelligible in the light of the motives, aims and beliefs of agents involved constitutes an intrinsic feature of historical understanding and that feature cannot be accommodated within the limits of the covering law theory.

Third, the actions of the agents stem from their intentionality, and are not occurrences expected or predicted on the basis of inductively established uniformities.

Collingwood, Croce, Dray, Donegan, carried forward Dilthey's line of thought into the most recent debates about the nature of historical knowledge and about the difference between the methodology of human studies and that of natural sciences.

Dilhey himself was a seminal figure who had a profound influence on 20th. C. thought. His work is very much alive and stimulating for those interested in the dialogue between Anglo- American and Continental philosophical traditions.

Victor Suchar

REFERENCES

Dilthey, Wilhelm: Introduction to the Human Sciences. Selected Works/Vol. I. Princeton Univ. Press, 1989.

Dilthey, Wilhelm: Hermeneutics and the Study of History. Selected Works/Vol. IV. Princeton Univ. Press, 1996.

* GLOSSARY

Antimony, -ies. A pair of equally defensible yet contradictory conclusions. Kant employed the antinomies of pure reason to show the consequences of misapplying regulative principles in the attempt to gain knowledge of noumea. (Philosophical Dictionary, www. philosophicalpages.com/dy)

Historicist An advocate of historicism.

Historicism. Belief that social structures, events, and texts are best to be understood in the context of their historical development. (Phil. Dicty.)

Instantiating Representing by an instance (example). (OED)

Intuitionism The doctrine of Reid and others that in perception, external objects are known immediately, without the intervention of a vicarious phenomenon. (OED)