9.4 REFLECTIVE EXPERIENCE AND THE APPERCEPTION OF CULTURAL MEANING
Dilthey planned to supplement his descriptive psychology with a comparative psychology. But because his Ideas were not received favorably at first (they would later be embraced by Husserl as a “genial” anticipation of phenomenology), he decided to publish a more broadly conceived work called Contributions to the Study of Individuality (1895–6). There he answers both those who attacked him from the standpoint of explanative psychology, which continued to model psychology on the natural sciences, as well as those who challenged his approach to the human sciences from the Neo-Kantian perspective. Neither the explanative psychologist Hermann Ebbinghaus nor the Neo-Kantian Wilhelm Windelband could do justice to the richness of inner experience. That was because they did not recognize the importance of the acquired psychic nexus that continues to articulate our inner experience. We spoke of this nexus as an apperceptive fund that regulates future experiences. It also provides the basis for what Dilthey calls “transcendental reflection” (SW2, 216), which leads to the recognition that not all experiences that have an inner resonance derive from within. The acquired psychic nexus allows us to make a reflective distinction that delineates a third class of experiences. Such experiences have an external reference, but “provide an analogue of inner experience and serve to expand our knowledge of the nexus of psychic life beyond the horizon of inner experience” (SW2, 216).
This third kind of experience in effect apperceives a perceived outer object as possessing a value or meaning not derived from my own life, but from a pre-given cultural context with which one identifies. Thus an individual may recognize that a statue in a park is of a leader from that person’s nation’s past as well as a creation of a well-known sculptor. This third kind of experience involves an understanding that locates something “inner” in what is outer. One finds a shared or public meaning in this statue from one’s cultural heritage.
The fact that Dilthey spoke of this kind of experience in the context of a discussion of transcendental reflection allows us to think of it as a reflective experience. It appeals to transcendental conditions, not as Kant did to gain access to the natural world of outer experience, but to reflect on our place in the spiritual-cultural world. This is not a world that stands apart from us or even in opposition to our will; it is a social world that can be said to be co-constituted by us. In doing so, we apperceive certain objects as more than external givens, namely, as objectifications of human activity and productivity. What outer experience perceives as a natural object can, under certain conditions, be apperceived by reflective experience as expressing something about human life in general. Reflective experience is “transcendental” in giving our life-context a spiritual significance. Whereas Windelband proposed that the historical and cultural sciences can be delineated from the natural sciences by focusing on idiographic detail and dispensing with nomothetic or lawful generalizations, Dilthey discerns generalizations on both sides. But generalizations about nature are based merely on external correlations while those about historical and cultural life involve a reflective understanding of an inherent connectedness.
In 1900 Dilthey published his famous essay “The Rise of Hermeneutics.” There he shows how the art of interpretation “originated in the personal and inspired virtuosity of the philologist”3 from which rules of overcoming exegetical challenges were handed down. The subsequent need to find a basis for such rules leads to the science of hermeneutics, which he defines as the theory of the rules of interpreting written texts and documents. In conclusion Dilthey writes: “in relation to epistemology, logic and the methodology of the human sciences, the theory of interpretation becomes an important link between philosophy and the historical sciences, an essential component in the foundation of the human sciences” (SW4, 250).
If hermeneutics is to claim an essential role for all the human sciences, how are we to conceive its relation to Dilthey’s earlier reliance on psychological description and analysis? Dilthey still maintains that the human sciences have an advantage over the natural sciences in that each of us has access to an inner reality that constitutes a psychic nexus experienced from within. Yet the reflexive awareness of one’s own condition cannot by itself bring one an understanding of one’s individuality. That requires a comparison of oneself with others. Just as one comes to understand others from the outside, one too can only adequately understand oneself from the outside. In the Ideas it was assumed that what is grasped in lived experience provided self-understanding. But now Dilthey writes that “the apprehension of our own states can only be called understanding in a figurative sense” (SW4, 236). True self-understanding also requires one to come to terms with the way one expresses oneself. Understanding is redefined as “the process by which we recognize, behind signs given to our senses, that psychic reality of which they are the expression” (SW4, 236). What we learn about ourselves from the inside must be tested and even corrected by observation of how we express what we feel and think.
A further refinement about the reflective understanding (Verstehen) needed for the human sciences as distinct from the cognitive understanding (Verstand) that suffices for the natural sciences can be found in Dilthey’s last major work, The Formation of the Historical World in the Human Sciences of 1910. The human sciences study human beings both by how they are formed by historical events, state institutions, social customs, and how they give objective form to the world through their productive activities. Such objective achievements, Dilthey writes, “always contain, like man himself, a reference back from an outer sensory aspect to one that is withdrawn from the senses and therefore inner”4 (SW 3,106). He then goes on to warn that it is a common error to resort to psychic life to account for what this inner aspect is (an error that still lingers in “The Rise of Hermeneutics” as reflected near the end of the previous paragraph). Thus to understand the inner meaning of the laws of a state at a particular time one need not go back to the mental states of the legislators who voted for them. Historians must study the relevant legal documents of an age, the available records of court procedures, the behavior of judges, plaintiffs, and defendants as the expressions of the rules and norms that govern a system of jurisprudence. Understanding the inner core of Roman law requires, not a reliving of the intentions of individual legislators or judges, but “a regress to a spiritual formation that has its own structure and lawfulness” (SW3, 107) and represents a common will.
This also applies to the understanding of individual human creations such as the work of a dramatic poet. What is expressed in such a work “is not the inner processes in the poet; it is rather a nexus created in them but separable from them. The nexus of a drama consists in a distinctive relation of material, poetic mood, motif, plot, and means of representation” (SW 3, 107). What is to be understood “at first” (SW3, 107) is the inner structural meaning of these moments that constitute the work. The qualification “at first” added here about an individual work indicates that in some cases the psychic processes of the author may become relevant if there is something about the structural nexus of the work that seems unusual or even incoherent. But for most historical objectifications the hermeneutic regress locates a meaning nexus that is publically accessible because what we experience is infused with local commonalities.
9.5 COMMON OBJECTIVE CONTEXTS AND PRODUCTIVE SYSTEMS
From infancy our consciousness is nurtured by the local social and cultural context in which we find ourselves. Dilthey thinks of this context as the medium of objective spirit. He borrows the term “objective spirit” from Hegel, but makes it clear that he can no longer accept the rational presuppositions of Hegel. Instead of deriving objective spirit from reason, Dilthey goes back to the structural nexus that places human beings in historical communities.
Once objective spirit is extricated from its one-sided foundation in a universal reason…a new conception of it becomes possible that encompasses language, custom, every form and style of life, as well as
family, civil society, state, and law. And what Hegel distinguished from objective spirit as absolute spirit, namely, art, religion, and philosophy, also falls under this same concept (SW3, 173).
We are always already immersed in objective spirit as a medium of commonalities that allows us to understand each other at least locally. It is the task of the human sciences to move from this elementary understanding of our familiar surroundings to the level of higher understanding that considers to what extent the commonalities that are locally shared can be universalized. The greater the distance between a given objectification of life and the interpreter, the more uncertainty tends to arise. But even expressions that are familiar to us may disclose inconsistencies that need further analysis that can be facilitated by the disciplinary methods of the human sciences. Each of the human sciences considers what is expressed and objectified in terms of its special systematic context. If what is objectified concerns human interaction, then social, political, and cultural considerations will become relevant. Sociology for instance could be used to bring generalizations about group behavior to bear. Certain behavioral anomalies might even need to be explained causally. However, if what is expressed is more personal in nature, the generalizations of psychology could still be useful.
The hermeneutical approach to the human sciences that Dilthey developed at the end of his life no longer allows psychology (or any other discipline) to claim a relative priority, but it does not reject psychology either. In fact, he welcomed Husserl’s early phenomenological works as a confirmation of the validity of his own earlier efforts to develop a descriptive psychology. In three preliminary studies for the Formation of the Historical World, Dilthey sketched some of the ways Husserl’s theory of the intentionality of consciousness could be adapted to account not only for the way cognitive perception is of things, but also for the way feelings about them are referred back to our own state of mind and can lead us to reflect on structurally related past experiences. Here the direction of consciousness is not projective but involves a “being-pulled-along by the state of affairs itself” (SW3, 51).
In the Formation of the Historical World, Dilthey still considers individual human beings to be the main carriers of historical life and the crossing points of social and cultural systems. However, he is now willing to speak of the spirit of people (Volksgeist) as a logical subject of historical discourse as long as it is not reified into a real subject or soul of the people (Volksseele). In the Introduction to the Human Sciences Dilthey had rejected both concepts as mystical. Another change that occurs in the later work is that social and cultural systems are not all called purposive systems with an intentional direction. Instead he introduced a more neutral concept of a productive nexus or system (Wirkungszusammenhang). The efficacy of life in the historical world is to be understood in terms of productivity before any causal or teleological explanations can be attempted. The carriers of history, whether they are individuals or communities, cultures or institutions, can all be conceived as productive systems capable of producing value and meaning. Each productive system can be thought of as centered in itself and as possessing what Kant had called “immanent purposiveness,” but it may not have one defining purpose.
The agency of human individuals too can be considered in terms of a productive nexus in so far as they select what is of interest in their present experience on the basis of past evaluations and can set themselves purposes in light of both. The productivity of a person’s acquired psychic nexus lies in its regulative role in responding to its surroundings. Individuals as productive systems are centered in themselves, but they are never fully self-sufficient and must be related to other more inclusive productive systems. Once these larger cooperative systems are created, they can assume a life of their own and outlive the individuals that formed them. But they cannot perpetuate themselves without the participation of other human beings.
Although individuals must rely on cultural and socio-economic systems, they need not be subordinated to them. Dilthey upholds this claim by arguing that each productive system only engages partial aspects of individuals. It is also the case that some individuals are capable of putting their stamp on the way such systems function so that more than the rationally agreed upon goals of the system may be achieved. Individuals need only give part of themselves to these more inclusive systems, yet they can express something of their whole being through this part. This is why no productive system can be adequately understood through a rational reconstruction of the purposes it was designed to fulfill.
Productive systems articulate the intermediary structures of the development of historical life. A further complication arises from Dilthey’s pluralistic approach whereby many such systems are allowed to intersect and interact. It is the task of the human sciences to develop disciplinary and methodological tools to analyze these productive systems and how they can influence each other. However, their scientific contributions arise at the level of higher understanding and aim to refine what was assimilated at the level of elementary understanding. Here we come back to the distinction we saw Dilthey make between knowledge (Wissen) and cognition (Erkenntnis). What individuals make sense of on the basis of the commonalities of everyday experience counts as the knowledge of elementary understanding. The human sciences make an additional cognitive contribution by bringing the universal perspective of epistemic and logical thought to bear. But unlike the natural sciences, the human sciences cannot dismiss what was already grasped at the level of lived experience as irrelevant. The hermeneutical task of the human sciences requires them to use the results of their methodological inquiries to return to the concerns and questions that already arose at the level of elementary understanding. But it also requires a further consideration of what knowledge is. In the Breslau draft of the Introduction of the Human Sciences, Dilthey referred to the immediate knowledge (Wissen) of reflexive awareness that precedes the conceptually mediated cognition (Erkenntnis) of the natural sciences. In The Formation of the Historical World Dilthey proposes a more comprehensive theory of knowledge for the human sciences that “must refer to all classes of knowledge” which now extends “to the conceptual cognition of reality, to the positing of values, and to the determination of purposes and the establishment of rules” (SW3, 25). This more encompassing knowledge that the human sciences are expected to produce must include not only the immediate knowledge that comes with the reflexive awareness of ordinary experience, but also the cognitive clarification that derives from descriptive analysis and conceptual explication. The disciplinary approach of the distinct human sciences can reorganize our understanding of historical life in terms of structural systems. But what ultimately differentiates the theory of knowledge (Theorie des Wissens) of the human sciences from the epistemology (Erkenntnistheorie) of the natural sciences is the reflective inclusion of value considerations and the normative prescription of rules. The knowledge of the human sciences aims at what Dilthey had earlier called the self-reflection that comes to terms with both action and thought. Therefore, we can say that the overall goal of Dilthey’s project of a Critique of Historical Reason is to move from (1) the immediate knowledge of life to (2) its conceptual cognition to (3) a more comprehensive reflective knowledge that is normative. The higher understanding of the human sciences must go over into what could be called a reflective understanding. Here the human sciences begin to overlap with the normative aspects of philosophy dealing with ethical and legal issues.
9.6 WORLD-VIEWS
It is this reflective knowledge or third kind of understanding that Dilthey also attempts to come to terms with in his theory of world-views. The sciences are by their nature partial and cannot provide an overarching world-view. A world-view (Weltanschauung) literally means an intuition of the world, but it really aims to provide a fundamental insight into its nature. It constitutes an attempt to provide not only a cognitive picture of the world, but also an estimation of what is valuable in life and a determination of what is worth striving for. World-vi
ews seek to address all aspects of our relation to the world. They are not products of mere thought, but arise from life-concerns and attitudes toward life that express the overall structure of our psychic life. At their root, world-views are mood-like ways of being attuned to the world. Dilthey calls them “life-moods (Lebensstimmungen)” (GS VIII, 81) in a way that expands a psychological state of mind into a worldly orientation. World-views aim to develop a total picture of reality and guidance about how we should respond to it. They have received their most prominent realizations in literary, religious, and philosophical works. But because they attempt to provide an overall understanding of reality, no account has been provided that is fully coherent and has received universal acceptance. Dilthey’s admission of this shortcoming has led many to charge him with relativism. To avoid this consequence we must stay within the limits of what we can cognize about reality on the basis of the natural and human sciences, each of which brings a universally valid but a distinctive perspective on things.
Through their attempts to give conceptual determinacy to world-views and spell them out in terms of metaphysical systems, philosophers have underscored the problem of relativism by producing conflicting formulations. Dilthey analyzes three recurrent types of such metaphysical formulations: naturalism, the idealism of freedom, and objective idealism. They often challenge each other and this leads each type to return in a revised form.
The naturalism of Democritus, Hobbes, Hume, and Nietzsche attempts to account for as much as possible in life from what can be cognized. Its epistemology is sense-based and its metaphysics tends to be deterministic. Yet its reliance on the senses also leads to an acceptance of the passions. This produces tensions that make room for skepticism. Naturalism can therefore be characterized as being ultimately pluralistic. Idealism of freedom as found in Plato, Cicero, Kant, and Fichte insists on the sovereignty of the will and is dualistic in that it places a limit on the deterministic powers of nature. Objective idealism as found in Heraclitus, the Stoics, Spinoza, Leibniz, Schelling, and Hegel affirms the overall unity of reality and sees all dissonances of life dissolve in a universal harmony. The three types of metaphysical world-views are incommensurable in that each sets its priorities differently. Naturalism prioritizes the cognitive aspect of experience, the idealism of freedom the volitional aspects, and objective idealism the intermediary feelings that hold things together. Dilthey finds naturalism too reductive; his ethical views lead him towards the idealism of freedom; his own life-perspective makes objective idealism the most attractive.
The Oxford Handbook of German Philosophy in the Nineteenth Century Page 36