In Defence of Verstehen and Erklaren : Wilhelm Dilthey's Ideas Concerning A Descriptive and Analytical Psychology  

Oleh:

Harrington, Austin

Jenis: Article from Journal - ilmiah internasional
Dalam koleksi: Theory and Psychology vol. 10 no. 4 (Agu. 2000), page 435–452.
Topik: analytical; descriptive psychology; geisteswissenschaften; hermeneutics; understanding; analytical
Fulltext: 435TP104.pdf (80.38KB)

Isi artikel

Wilhelm Dilthey's essay of 1894, Ideas Concerning a Descriptive and Analytical Psychology, is the locus classicus for the distinction between 'understanding' and 'explanation', or Verstehen and Erklaren, in the 19th - century German tradition of hermeneutics and the Geisteswissenschaften. This article discusses the distinction Dilthey draws there between 'explanatory' psychology, based on subsumption of the behaviour of individuals under general laws, and 'interpretive', or 'descriptive and analytical', psychology, based on disclosure of the uniqueness of individual case - histories. It defends his conception against the objections of the Neo - Kantian philosophers Wilhelm Windelband and Heinrich Rickert and the experimental psychologist Hermann Ebbinghaus, as well as neo - positivist writers such as Theodore Abel. The article also argues more generally that Dilthey's dichotomy of 'spirit' and 'nature' still articulates a fundamental methodological difference between the sciences, despite our contemporary recognition of the importance of interpretation in both the natural and human sciences.

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