Leopold Blaustein’s Descriptive Psychology and Aesthetics in Light of His Criticism of Husserl

Wilhelm Dilthey saw his work as contributing to a ‘Critique of Historical Reason’ which would expand the scope of Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason by examining the epistemological conditions of the human sciences as well as of the natural sciences. Both kinds of science take their departure from ordinary life and experience, but whereas the natural sciences seek to focus on the way things behave independently of human involvement, the human sciences take account of this very involvement. The natural sciences use external observation and measurement to construct an objective domain of nature that is abstracted from the fullness of lived experience. The human sciences (humanities and social sciences), by contrast, help to define what Dilthey calls the historical world. By making use of inner as well as outer experience, the human sciences preserve a more direct link with our original sense of life than do the natural sciences. Whereas the natural sciences seek explanations of nature, connecting the discrete representations of outer experience through hypothetical generalizations and causal laws, the human sciences aim at an understanding that articulates the fundamental structures of historical life given in lived experience. Finding lived experience to be inherently connected and meaningful, Dilthey opposed traditional atomistic and associationist psychologies and developed a descriptive psychology that has been recognized as anticipating phenomenology. Dilthey first thought that this descriptive psychology could provide a neutral foundation for the other human sciences, but in his later hermeneutical writings he rejected the idea of a foundational discipline or method. Thus he ends by claiming that all the human sciences are interpretive and mutually dependent. Hermeneutically conceived, understanding is a process of interpreting the ‘objectifications of life’, the external expressions or manifestations of human thought and action. Interpersonal understanding is attained through these common objectifications and not, as is widely believed, through empathy. Moreover, to fully understand myself I must analyse the expressions of my life in the same way that I analyse the expressions of others. Not every aspect of life can be captured within the respective limits of the natural and the human sciences. Dilthey’s philosophy of life also leaves room for a kind of anthropological reflection whereby we attempt to do justice to the ultimate riddles of life and death. Such reflection receives its fullest expression in worldviews, which are overall perspectives on life encompassing the way we perceive and conceive the world, evaluate it aesthetically and respond to it in action. Dilthey discerned many typical worldviews in art and religion, but in Western philosophy he distinguished three recurrent types: the worldviews of naturalism, the idealism of freedom and objective idealism.

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Brentano, Franz Clemens (1838–1917)

Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy ◽

10.4324/9780415249126-dc009-1 ◽

2018 ◽

Author(s):

Roderick M. Chisholm ◽

Peter Simons

Keyword(s):

Twentieth Century ◽

Philosophy Of Mind ◽

Philosophy Of Language ◽

History Of Philosophy ◽

Descriptive Psychology ◽

Phenomenological Movement ◽

Precise Statement ◽

Philosophical Language ◽

History Of ◽

Sparse Ontology

Brentano was a philosopher and psychologist who taught at the Universities of Würzburg and Vienna. He made significant contributions to almost every branch of philosophy, notably psychology and philosophy of mind, ontology, ethics and the philosophy of language. He also published several books on the history of philosophy, especially Aristotle, and contended that philosophy proceeds in cycles of advance and decline. He is best known for reintroducing the scholastic concept of intentionality into philosophy and proclaiming it as the characteristic mark of the mental. His teachings, especially those on what he called descriptive psychology, influenced the phenomenological movement in the twentieth century, but because of his concern for precise statement and his sensitivity to the dangers of the undisciplined use of philosophical language, his work also bears affinities to analytic philosophy. His anti-speculative conception of philosophy as a rigorous discipline was furthered by his many brilliant students. Late in life Brentano’s philosophy radically changed: he advocated a sparse ontology of physical and mental things (reism), coupled with a linguistic fictionalism stating that all language purportedly referring to non-things can be replaced by language referring only to things.

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