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Hermeneutics and Historicism: Reflections on Winch, Apel and Vico

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 August 2009

Fred R. Dallmayr
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Extract

For nearly three centuries, Vico's name remained virtually unknown outside narrow philosophical and literary circles; indications are, however, that he is beginning to emerge from this obscurity.1 His resurgence, it seems to me, is by no means fortuitous or the result of mere antiquarian interests. In a striking manner philosophical developments in our time have revived central themes of the Neapolitan thinker; his preoccupation with practical-historical experience and its exegesis reverberates in many facets of contemporary thought—even bypassing the barrier between Continental and Anglo-Saxon perspectives. On the Continent, Vico's legacy had been preserved to some extent in Dilthey's “life-philosophy”; in a more rigorous fashion, the implications of this legacy were exploredby existential phenomenology and hermeneutics with their focus on the human “life-world” and on the significance of prereflective understanding for cognitive operations. Comparable concerns havesurfaced in analytical philosophy. Abandoning (or at least modifying) the quest for an artificial symbolism capturing the structure of the empirical universe, linguistic analysis during recent decades has shifted attention increasingly to ordinary language as the underlying matrix of practical and theoretical endeavors. In a similar vein, philosophers of science have tended to turn from logical calculation and empirical verification to the concrete “context of discovery”—the paradigmatic frameworks in terms of which investigative procedures are sanctioned and research goals formulated.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Review of Politics , Volume 39 , Issue 1 , January 1977 , pp. 60 - 81
Copyright
Copyright © University of Notre Dame 1977

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References

1 Compare Tagliacozzo, Giorgio and White, Hayden V., eds., Giambattista Vico: An International Symposium(Baltimore, 1969)Google Scholar; and Tagliacozzo, G. and Verene, Donald P., eds., Giambattista Vico's Science of Humanity(Baltimore, 1976)Google Scholar.

2 See esp. Hanson, Norwood R., Patterns of Discovery(Cambridge, 1958)Google Scholar; also, for a comparison of Anglo-Saxon and Continental trends, Kisiel, Theodore, “Zu einer Hermeneutik naturwissenschaftlicher Forschung,” Zeitschrift fur allgemeine Wissenschaftstheorie, 2 (1971), 195–221CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

3 Compare, e.g., Strauss, Leo, Natural Right and History(Chicago, 1953), chap. 1Google Scholar; Miller, Eugene F., “Positivism, Historicism, and Political Inquiry,” American Political Science Review, 66 (1972), 796–817CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

4 Similarly, while insisting (against Weber) on the need for value judgments as a premise for all types of inquiry, he tends to proceed immediately to the stipulation of absolute standards—a stipulation claiming a degree of objective neutrality comparable to value-free scientific propositions. Compare, e.g., Strauss, , Natural Right and History, chap. 2; What Is Political Philosophy? And Other Essays(Glencoe, III., 1959)Google Scholar; for a more recent statement, see “Philosophy as Rigorous Science and Political Philosophy,” Interpretation, 2 (1971), 1–9Google Scholar.

5 Winch, Peter, The Idea of a Social Science and Its Relation to Philosophy (London, 1958), pp. 11–12, 15, 40Google Scholar.

6 Ibid., pp. 25, 29, 57, 100. Commenting on logical propositions, Winch noted at another point that “it is only from their roots in this actual flesh-andblood intercourse that those formal systems draw such life as they have; for the whole idea of a logical relation isonly possible by virtue of the sort of agreement between men and their actions which is discussed by Wittgenstein in the Philosophical Investigations…It will seem less strange that social relations should be like logical relations between propositions once it is seen that logical relations between propositions themselves depend on social relations between men” (p. 126).

7 Ibid., pp. 30, 63. As he added: “Establishing a standard is not an activity which it makes sense to ascribe to any individual in complete isolation from other individuals. For it is contact with other individuals which alone makes possible the external check on one's actions which is inseparable from an established standard” (p. 32).

8 Ibid., pp. 15–16, 84–85, 87, 110.

9 Ibid., pp. 3, 23, 47, 71–72, 104, 109, 112–113, 118–119, 123.

10 See Winch, Peter, “Mr. Louch's Idea of a Social Science,” Inquiry, 7 (1964), 202–208CrossRefGoogle Scholar. The essay is primarily a rejoinder to Louch's, A. R. “The Very Idea of a Social Science,” Inquiry, 6 (1963), 273–286CrossRefGoogle Scholar. On a broader basis, the change of an idealist bias was advanced by Ernest Gellner in “The New Idealism—Cause and Meaning in the Social Sciences,” in Lakatos, Imre and Musgrave, Alan, eds., Problems in the Philosophy of Science (North-Holland Publishing Co., Amsterdam, 1968), pp. 377–406Google Scholar. The issues raised in the exchange between Louch and Winch were further pursued by Levison, Arnold, “Knowledge and Society,” Inquiry, 9 (1966), 132–146CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Silvers, Stuart,“On Our Knowledge of the Social World,” Inquiry, 10 (1967), 96–97CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

11 Idea of a. Social Science, pp. 84, 100, 107–108; for a direct attack on Popper see ibid., pp. 127–128. The challenge to scientific progress and objectivity was noted, among others, by Gellner, “The New Idealism—Cause and Meaning in the Social Sciences,” pp. 381–406; compare also Saran, A. K., “A Wittgensteinian Sociology?” Ethics 75 (1965), 195–200CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

12 Idea of a Social Science, p. 103. As he added, “the philosopher will in particular be alert to deflate the pretensions of any form of enquiry to enshrine the essence of intelligibility as such, to possess the key to reality. For connected with the realization that intelligibility takes many and varied forms is the realization that reality has no key” (p. 102).

13 See Winch, , “Nature and Convention,” Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, n.s. 60 (1959–1960), 235–238, 240–242, 250–252Google Scholar; Vico, Giambattista, The New Science, tran. Bergin, Thomas G. and Fisch, Max H., paragraph 161 (Anchor Books, 1961), p. 25Google Scholar.

14 See Winch, , “Understanding a Primitive Society,” American Philosophical Quarterly, 1 (1964), 308–309, 321–324Google Scholar. The relevant passages in Vico's treatise read: “Now since the world of nations has been made by men, let us see in what institutions men agree and always have agreed.… We observe that all nations, barbarous as well as civilized, though separately founded because remote from each other in time and space, keep these three human customs: all have some religion, all contract solemn marriages, all bury their dead. And in no nation, however savage and crude, are any human actions performed with more elaborate ceremonies and more sacred solemnity than the rites of religion, marriage, and burial. For by the axiom that ‘uniform ideas, born among peoples unknown to each other, must have a common ground of truth,’ it must have been dictated to all nations that from these institutions humanity began among them all, and therefore they must be most devoutly guarded by them all, so that the world should not again become a bestial wilderness. For this reason we have taken these three eternal and universal customs as the first principles of this Science.” The New Science, paragraphs 332–333, p. 53. For another example of Vico's influence on ordinary language philosophy see Toulmin, Stephen, Human Understanding, vol. 1 (Princeton, N.J., 1972), 23Google Scholar.

15 In Winch's words, the task of social inquiry was to bring the inherent sense of an alien culture (S) into “relation with our own conception of intelligibility…we are seeking a way of looking at things which goes beyond our previous way in that it has in some way taken account of and incorporated the other way that members of S have of looking at things.” See “Understanding a Primitive Society,” pp. 310, 316–317, 321.

16 Ibid., pp. 310, 313, 319. A purely conceptual interpretation of the “limiting notions” gains support from Winch's formalistic assessment of universal “rationality” (p. 318). His reluctance to compare and evaluate religious “life-forms” was aptly criticized by Kai Neelsen when he wrote: “Without a participant's understanding of God-talk, we could not raise the question of the reality of God, but with it, this is perfectly possible and perfectly intelligible” (“Wittgensteinian Fideism,” Philosophy, 42 (1967), 208Google Scholar). For other recent criticisms of Winch's essay, originating chiefly from Popperian premises (with an insistence that experimental science furnishes the criteria of cross-cultural evaluation) compare, e.g., Jarvie, I. C., “Understanding and Explanation in Sociology and Social Anthropology,” in Borger, Robert and Cioffi, Frank, eds., Explanation in the Behavioral Sciences(Cambridge, 1970), pp. 231–248Google Scholar; also Jarvie, I. C. and Agassi, J., “The Problem of the Rationality of Magic,” in Wilson, Bryan R., ed., Rationality(Evanston, III., 1970), pp. 172–193Google Scholar; and Meynell, Hugo, “Truth, Witchcraft and Professor Winch,” Heythrop Journal, 13 (1972), 162–172CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

17 Compare, e.g.,Munson, Thomas N., “Wittgenstein's Phenomenology,” Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, 23 (1962), 37–50CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Spiegelberg, Herbert, “The Puzzle of Ludwig Wittgenstein's Phanomenologie (1929-?),” Amer-ican Philosophical Quarterly, 5 (1968), 244–256Google Scholar. For a broader comparison of the two philosophical contexts see van Peursen, Cornelis A., Phenomenology and Analytical Philosophy(Pittsburgh, 1972)Google Scholar, and Radnitzky, Gerard, Contemporary Schools of Metascience, 2nd rev. ed., (Goteberg, 1970)Google Scholar.

18 For detailed comparisons between Anglo-Saxon and Continental thought, with a focus on Wittgenstein, compare his essays “Wittgenstein und Heidegger: Die Frage nach dem Sinn von Sein und der Sinnlosigkeitsverdacht gegen alle Metaphysik” and “Wittgenstein und das Problem des hermeneutischen Verstehens,” in Apel, Karl-Otto, Transformation der Philosophie(Frankfurt-Main, 1973), 1: 225–275, and 335–377Google Scholar.

19 Apel, “Die Entfaltung der ‘sprachanalytischen’ Philosophic und das Problem der ‘Geisteswissenschaften’,” ibid.. 2: 83.

20 Ibid., pp. 89, 91, 93, 95. A translation of the essay under the title “Analytic Philosophy of Language and the ‘Geisteswissenschaften’” appeared in Foundations of Language, suppl. series No. 4 (Reidel, Dordrecht, 1967)Google Scholar.

21 Apel, , “Die Kommunikationsgemeinschaft als transzendentale Voraussetzung der Sozialwissenschaften,” in Transformation der Philosophie, 2: 253–255Google Scholar. As he noted: “The ideological confusion of ideal conditions with social reality—a confusion characterizing the idealistic outlook of the ‘Geisteswissenschaften’ in the 19th century—merges here with a perspective of relativism according to which history is devoid of any regulative principle pointing toward its possible transcendence. I would use in this case the label ‘idealistic fallacy,’ as a counterpart to the ‘naturalistic fallacy’ implicit in the positivist reduction of intelligible conduct to scientifically explicable conditions. At the same time I would propose to interpret the nexus of ordinary language, action, expression and world view inherent in Wittgenstein's ‘language games’ or ‘life-forms’ as a dialectical unity or synthesis which does not preclude conflict between its various elements” (p. 260).

22 Ibid., pp. 255–259, 262, note 85. In a recent rejoinder to a critic, Winch hints at least broadly at the distinction between a “demystifying” and a “restorative” hermeneutics when he writes: “… it is easy to point out, as Jarvie does, obvious advantages in tackling, e.g., disease by the methods of Western medicine rather than by the methods of Zande magic. It is also easy to overlook the good things that may be lost in such a transition; though again, of course, I do not claim that the losses must outweigh the gains.” See “Comment,” in Borger, and Cioffi, , Explanation in the Behavioral Sciences, p. 258Google Scholar. For the distinction between the two types of hermeneutics compare esp. Ricoeur, Paul, Freud and Philosophy: An Essay on Interpretation, tran. Savage, Denis (New Haven, 1970), pp. 3–56Google Scholar.

23 “Although devoid of immediate impact,” he wrote, “Vico's inauguration of a ‘transcendental philology’ (the aim of his ‘New Science’) is classical evidence for the rise of later transcendental hermeneutics out of the merger of humanist philology and Christian ‘logos’-speculation.” See Apel, , Die Idee der Sprache in der Tradition des Humanismus von Dante bis Vico.(Archiv für Begriffsgeschichte, vol. 8; Bouvier Verlag, Bonn, 1963), pp. 20, 29, 83, 141Google Scholar.

24 Ibid., pp. 321–332, 338–344, 374–378.

25 Compare ibid., pp. 20, 52–62, 153–155. By contrast, the tradition of nominalistic empiricism was sketched from Occam over Bacon, Hobbes, Locke and Berkeley to John Stuart Mill, while the rationalist conception of a mathesis universalis was traced over Bernouilli, Lambert, Condillac and Frege to Russell's Principia Mathematical see ibid., pp. 68–70.

26 See Apel, , “Der philosophische Wahrheitsbegriff als Voraussetzung einer inhaltlich orientierten Sprachwissenschaft” and “Sprache und Wahrheit in der gegenwartigen Situation der Philosophic,” in Transformation der Philosophie, 1: 106–137Google Scholar (esp. pp. 126–130) and pp. 138–166 (esp. pp. 163–166). Compare also Macomber, W. B., The Anatomy of Disillusion: Martin Heidegger's Notion of Truth(Evanston III., 1967)Google Scholar, and Tugendhat, Ernst, Der Wahrheitsbegriff beiHusserl und Heidegger, 2nd ed. (Berlin, 1970)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

27 See Apel, , “Einleitung: Transformation der Philosophie,” in Transformation der Philosophie, 1: 9–76Google Scholar, esp. 35–52. A similar trend (but perhaps aiming at a more thorough separation) is noticeable in some of Jurgen Habermas' writings; e.g., his “Einleitung zur Neuausgabe,” in Theorie und Praxis, 4th rev.ed. (Frankfurt-Main, 1971), pp. 9–47Google Scholar; and his “Wahrheitstheorien,” in Festschrift fur Walter Schulz(Pfullingen, 1973)Google Scholar. In his monograph on humanism Apel interpreted the relationship between “philology” and “philosophy” quasi-dialectically in the sense of a “hermeneutical circle,” pointing to Vico's statement: “These philological proofs enable us to seein fact the institutions we have meditated in idea as touching this world of nations.… Thus it isthat with the help of the preceding philosophical proofs, the philological proofs both confirm their own authority by reason and a t the same time confirm reason by their authority.” Compare Apel, Die Idee der Sprache, p. 336; Vico, , The New Science, paragraph 359 (p. 65)Google Scholar.

28 Ricoeur, Paul, History and Truth, tran. Kelbley, Charles A. (Evanston, III., 1965), pp. 42, 50–51, 54–55, 282–283Google Scholar. Compare also Maurice Merleau-Ponty's comments: “The concept of history in its most profound sense does not shut the thinking subject up in a point of space and time; he can seem to be thus contained only to a way of thinking which is itself capable of going outside all time and place in order to see him in his time and place.… Since we are all hemmed in by history, it is up to us to understand that whatever truth we may have is to be gotten not in spite of but through our historical inherence. Superficially considered, our inherence destroys all truth; considered radically, it founds anew idea of truth.” See “The Philosopher and Sociology,” in Signs, tran. McCleary, Richard C. (Evanston III., 1964), p. 109Google Scholar.