Descriptive Psychology and Historical Understanding

152 Pages·1977·7.878 MB·English

by  Wilhelm Dilthey (auth.)

DESCRIPTIVE PSYCHOLOGY AND
HISTORICAL UNDERSTANDING
DESCRIPTIVE PSYCHOLOGY
AND
HISTORICAL UNDERSTANDING
by
WILHELM DIL THEY
translated by
RICHARD M. ZANER AND KENNETH L. HEIGES
with an introduction by
RUDOLF A. MAKKREEL
MARTIN US NUHOFF / THE HAGUE / 1977
"Ideas concerning a Descriptive and Analytic Psychology (1894)," translated by Richard
M. Zaner, originally appeared as: Wilhelm Dilthey, "Ideen iiber eine beschreibende
und zergliedemde Psychologie," from Wilhelm Dilthey's Gesammelte Schriften, V.
Band: Die Geistige Welt, Erste Halfte ("Abhandlungen zur Orundlegung der
Oeisteswissenschaften") (Leipzig und Berlin: B.O. Teubner, 1924), pp. 139-240.
"The Understanding of Other Persons and Their Expressions of Life," translated by
Kenneth L. Heiges, originally appeared as: Wilhelm Dilthey, "Das Verstehen anderer
Personen und ihrer Lebensausserungen," Gesammelte Schriften, Band VII (Leipzig
und Berlin: B.O. Teubner, 1927), pp. 205-227.
© 1977 by Martinus Nijhoff, The Hague, Netherlands
All rights reserved, including the right to translate or to
reproduce this book or parts thereof in any form
TSBN-13: 978-90-247-1951-8 e-TSBN-13: 978-94-009-9658-8
DOl: 10.1007/978-94-009-9658-8
TABLE OF CONTENTS
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS VII
INTRODUCTION
by Rudolf A. Makkreel 3
Descriptive Psychology and the Human Studies 3
Lived Experience, Understanding and Description 4
Structure and Development in Psychic Life 8
Psychology and Hermeneutics 11
Understanding, Re-experiencing and Historical Interpretation 13
IDEAS CONCERNING A DESCRIPTIVE AND ANALYTIC PSYCHOLOGY (1894)
translated by Richard M. Zaner 21
Chapter I: The Problem of a Psychological Foundation for the
Human Studies 23
Chapter II: Distinction between Explanatory and Descriptive
Psychology 37
Chapter III: Explanatory Psychology 41
Chapter IV: Descriptive and Analytic Psychology 51
Chapter V: Relationships between Explanatory Psychology and
Descriptive Psychology 72
Chapter VI: Possibility and Conditions of the Solution of the Task
of a Descriptive Psychology 78
Chapter VII: The Structure of Psychic Life 81
Chapter VIII: The Development of Psychic Life 94
Chapter IX: Study of the Differences of Psychic Life: The Individua1106
Remark 117
VI TABLE OF CONTENTS
THE UNDERSTANDING OF OTHER PERSONS AND THEIR EXPRESSIONS OF
LIFE
translated by Kenneth L. Heiges 121
I. Expressions of Life 123
II. The Elementary Forms of Understanding 125
III. Objective Spirit and Elementary Understanding 126
IV. The Higher Forms of Understanding 128
V. Projecting, Re-creating, Re-experiencing 132
VI. Exegesis or Interpretation 135
Appendices 139
INDEX 145
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
I would like to express my deep appreciation to Professors Frank
Jakobsh and Rolf George of the University of Waterloo, whose
assistance, suggestions and encouragement were invaluable throughout
the early stages ofthe preparation of my portion ofthe translation, and to
Gabriele Hanowski for her kind assistance in sorting out the fmal
problems.
Kenneth L. Heiges
We are most grateful to Professor Rudolf Makkreel for his careful
reading and detailed criticism of the entire text.
Kenneth L. Heiges
Richard M. Zaner
INTRODUCTION
INTRODUCTION
Perhaps no philosopher has so fully explored the nature and conditions of
historical understanding as Wilhelm Dilthey. His work, conceived
overall as a Critique of Historical Reason and developed through his
well-known theory of the human studies, provides concepts and methods
still fruitful for those concerned with analyzing the human condition.
Despite the increasing recognition of Dilthey's contributions, relati
vely few of his writings have as yet appeared in English translation. It is
therefore both timely and useful to have available here two works drawn
from different phases in the development of his philosophy. The "Ideas
Concerning a Descriptive and Analytic Psychology" (1894), now
translated into English for the first time, sets forth Dilthey's programma
tic and methodological viewpoints through a descriptive psychology,
while "The Understanding of Other Persons and Their Expressions of
Life" (ca. 1910) is representative of his later hermeneutic approach to
historical understanding.
DESCRIPTIVE PSYCHOLOGY AND THE HUMAN STUDIES
Dilthey presented the first mature statement of his theory of the human
studies in volume one of his Einleitung in die Geisteswissenschaften
(Introduction to the Human Studies), published in 1883. He argued there
that for the proper study of man and history we must eschew the
metaphysical speculation of the absolute idealists while at the same time
avoiding the scientistic reduction of positivism. The system of the human
studies, which encompasses both the humanities and the social sciences,
must be distinguished from that of the natural sciences - not because of a
metaphysical or material difference in their objects, but as systems with
divergent epistemological concerns. Throughout his writings this diver
gence is explored through the contrast between natural causal explana
tion and historical understanding. And in his efforts to determine the
4 INTRODUCTION
most appropriate methods for clarifying understanding, Dilthey turned
first to description and then to interpretation.
One of the key claims of the Einleitung was that the epistemology and
methodology of the human studies must be established in conjunction
with a new psychology based on experience. Traditional associationist
psychology as well as experimental psychology were modelled on the
natural sciences and failed to do justice to the fullness and continuity of
experience. The "Ideas Concerning a Descriptive and Analytic Psy
chology" constitutes Dilthey's most thorough attempt to re-define
psychology as a human study. Among those recognizing the significance
of this work is HusserI, who credits Dilthey for having convincingly
demonstrated how experimental psychology with its atomistic approach
distorted the data of psychic life. He praises Dilthey's efforts to delineate
the overall structure of consciousness and concludes that his "writings
contain a genial preview and certain rudiments of phenomenology. "1 It is
of course Dilthey's descriptive approach to psychology that drew
HusserI's attention and makes it important relative to the epistemological
problem of locating an indubitable starting point for the sciences.
Dilthey wrote his "Ideas" to provide the human studies with a neutral
empirical foundation. An examination of some of the important concepts
developed in Dilthey's essay-lived experience, acquired psychic nexus,
understanding and description - will show that his psychology was
intended to give an initial orientation for the human studies, not an
axiomatic ground from which the others could be derived. Psychology
would be "first" within the system of the human studies without,
however, establishing an a priori epistemological grounding for the
system of the human studies. Obviously psychology could only be the
first of the human studies to the extent that it was non-speculative.
Therefore, Dilthey considered it necessary to suspend as many hypothe
ses of traditional psychology as possible, whether they be psycho
physical or associationist.
LIVED EXPERIENCE, UNDERSTANDING AND DESCRIPTION
Dilthey opens his "Ideas" with an attack on traditional explanative and
constructive psychologies. Their goal is to explain all psychic processes
as different CQnstructions or combinations of certain basic mental
1 Edmund Husser!, Phiinomenologische Psycho logie, Husserliana, vol. IX, 2nd ed., The
Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1968, p. 35.
INTRODUCTION 5
elements such as representations. However, these elements cannot be
well-detemlined, with the result that psychological hypotheses relating
them have remained largely untestable.
It is possible, according to Dilthey, to dispense with most psychologi
cal hypotheses about the association of representations because inner
experience is already interconnected. Whereas outer experience presents
us with many unconnected phenomena which can only be related through
the hypotheses of the natural sciences, psychology must consult the data
of inner experience which are given as parts of a real continuum. This
means that connectedness in psychic life does not need to be explained
hypothetically, but can be directly experienced.
Yet Dilthey does not altogether rule out hypotheses from his
descriptive psychology. They are, however, prevented from assuming
the fundamental role they play in the natural sciences. He claims that it is
only necessary to appeal to hypotheses in those instances when the
continuity that exists among psychic processes is broken or interrupted.
In cases where we were not fully attentive, questions of detail may
remain problematic and thus require hypotheses to clarify what might
have happened. Whereas explanative psychology qua natural science
begins with hypotheses, descriptive psychology ends with them,2
The non-hypothetical starting point for Dilthey's psychology lies in
Erlebnis (lived experience). The concept oflived experience is somewhat
difficult to define and therefore has often been confused with that of inner
experience. Indeed Dilthey himself at times writes as if Erlebnis were
another term for innere Erfahrung. But in his poetics of 1887 Dilthey had
already claimed that the concept of lived experience "contains a relation
of inner and outer" (GS, VI, 226). Lived experience is broader in scope
and certainly does not carry the subjective connotations so often
associated with inner experience.
In addition to the particular connections disclosed by the unfolding of
inner experience, Dilthey finds that in it "something is given as a lived
experience," namely, a more general sense of the connectedness of the
whole of psychic life (See GS, V, 170). This direct sense of the overall
psychic nexus underlies the actual "transitions from one state to
another" (GS, V, 206). Lived experience can be seen to encompass
psychic states and processes which need never be consciously as
certained in inner experience (See GS, V, 207). What is only suggested
2 Wilhelm Dilthey, Gesammelte Schriften (to be referred to in the text hereafter as GS) 18
vols., Stuttgart: B.G. Teubner, G6ttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1914-1977, V, 175.
The GS numbers for the present translations are placed in the margin of each essay.