Rickert's Relevance: The Ontological Nature And Epistemological Functions of Values

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Rickert’s Relevance

60

chapter two

Rickert’s Relevance The Ontological Nature and Epistemological Functions of Values

by

Anton C. Zijderveld

BRILL LEIDEN • BOSTON 2006

This book is printed on acid-free paper. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data A C.I.P. record for this book is available from the Library of Congress.

ISBN-10 90 04 15173 7 ISBN-13 978 90 04 15173 4 © Copyright 2006 by Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, The Netherlands. Koninklijke Brill NV incorporates the imprints Brill Academic Publishers, Martinus Nijhoﬀ Publishers and VSP. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, translated, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without prior written permission from the publisher. Authorization to photocopy items for internal or personal use is granted by Brill provided that the appropriate fees are paid directly to The Copyright Clearance Center, 222 Rosewood Drive, Suite 910, Danvers, MA 01923, USA. Fees are subject to change. printed in the netherlands

For Angelika, who for forty years now has followed my sociological and philosophical exploits with apposite distance and wholesome forbearance.

Wer erkennen will, muss denken und schauen. Heinrich Rickert Den Menschen, der erkannt wird, machen Natur und Geschichte: aber der Mensch der erkennt, macht Natur und Geschichte. Georg Simmel

CONTENTS Preface ........................................................................................

xi

Introduction ................................................................................ Rickert revisited ...................................................................... Motives .................................................................................... Rickert’s philosophical relevance argued e contrario .......... Systematic philosophy and heterology .................................. The two neo-Kantian schools .............................................. Composition ............................................................................

1 1 10 14 19 24 26

Chapter One

A Bird’s-Eye View of Rickert’s Philosophy ............

31

Chapter Two Critique of Vitalism .............................................. Irrationalism and intellectualism rejected ............................ Systematic and surrealistic philosophy .................................. Intuitionism and biologism .................................................... Darwin, facts and values ........................................................ Four types of biologism .......................................................... Biologism beyond Nietzsche .................................................. Rickert’s critique of biologism .............................................. There are no biologistic values ............................................ Life and culture ...................................................................... Vitalism’s credit side .............................................................. Philosophical anthropology ....................................................

45 45 47 53 60 65 67 70 72 75 78 82

Chapter Three Knowledge and Reality ...................................... Epistemology and ontology .................................................... Between Idealism and Empirism .......................................... Basic terminology .................................................................... The subjective (immanent) and the objective (transcendent) path .............................................................. Knowledge and the subject-object dilemma ........................ The standpoint of immanence .............................................. The subject as empty form .................................................. Transcendence in the immanent standpoint ........................

85 85 93 96 102 104 110 113 118

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Reality as an empty form ...................................................... The epistemological act ........................................................ The categorical imperative of judgments ............................ Conclusion ..............................................................................

123 126 130 133

Chapter Four Facts, Values and Meaningful Acts ...................... The total and bifocal reality ................................................ Facts and values .................................................................... From relativism to relationism .............................................. Being, existing and valid meanings ...................................... Stages of being and validity .................................................. The meaning bestowing act .................................................. Neither psychologism nor metaphysics ................................ The philosophy of culture in outline .................................... The systematic philosophy of values .................................... The formal matrix of value development ............................ The metaphysical principle of full-ﬁllment .......................... Conclusion ..............................................................................

139 139 145 155 161 168 174 180 184 198 201 212 215

Chapter Five The Demarcation of Natural and Cultural Science .......................................................................... The Quarrel of the Ancients and the Moderns .................. The continuum of sciences .................................................... Analytical matrix .................................................................... Nature and culture distinguished ontologically .................... Observable and understandable reality ................................ The generalizing and individualizing methods .................... Cultural-Scientiﬁc generalization .......................................... Empathic understanding ........................................................ Value-relationship, relating to values and abstaining from value-judgments .......................................................... Cultural-Scientiﬁc objectivity ................................................ Causality in Cultural Science ................................................ Conclusion .............................................................................. Chapter Six Rickert’s Echo: Applications, Ampliﬁcations, Amendments .................................................................................... Introduction ............................................................................ General philosophy (Georg Simmel) ....................................

219 219 226 235 241 244 246 255 261 271 275 282 291

297 297 299

contents

ix

Legal philosophy (Emil Lask, Gustav Radbruch) ................ History ( Johan Huizinga) ...................................................... Sociology (Karl Mannheim, Max Weber) ............................

308 315 320

Conclusion ..................................................................................

347

Index of Names ..........................................................................

361

PREFACE Heinrich John Rickert (1863–1936) has haunted me for a couple of decades. There are several individuals—students, friends and a few sociological colleagues—who had to endure my expositions about his ideas and writings. They helped me, often unknowingly, to clarify my own thoughts of and about the Rickertiana that got piled up in my mind. I cannot begin to mention them by name, but feel obliged to thank them anonymously for functioning as a formal audience in the lecture hall of the university and as an informal audience outside of it. René Foqué, professor of philosophy at the Catholic University of Louvain and the Erasmus University of Rotterdam is my esteemed colleague and friend with whom I am professionally connected for many years now. I am grateful for his willingness to function as my philosophical guide and advisor in a later stage of my Rickertproject. His astonishing knowledge of the history of ideas and the various currents of contemporary philosophy, but above all his joy of concept formations and theory constructions—what Rickert once aptly called Logosfreudigkeit—were a great source of inspiration. Naturally, I am responsible for all the ﬂaws and mistakes in this book, but in general it would not have become the book that it is now without his assistance and collegial advice. Herman Philipse was my advisor in an early stage of the project. I proﬁted from his phenomenal expertise in the ﬁeld of analytic philosophy, his unrelenting critical mind, mellowed by a great sense of witty humor. He remained alien to the world of neo-Kantianism and in particular to the somewhat surrealistic philosophy of Rickert, but we developed a mutual friendship which I shall always cherish. In the last stage of the project I have beneﬁted from very valuable, critical comments by Koo van der Wal, professor emeritus of the Erasmus University and Maurice Weyembergh, professor emeritus of the Free University of Brussels. Their impressive knowledge of the history of philosophy averted some serious errors of interpretation. Needless to add that I remain responsible for the faults that still remain in the present expositions.

xii

preface

Anton Bevers who in the early 1980’s wrote a PhD-thesis on Georg Simmel under my supervision, and is presently professor of sociology at Erasmus University, is the only sociologist I know who actually has read Rickert, in particular his ideas about the logic of Cultural and Natural Science. His intellectual support and his friendship have been crucial for the completion of my Rickert project. This book was written in what I felt and still feel as the fool’s liberty of academic retirement. No longer plagued by my post-Calvinist ‘ethic of responsibility’ towards the university as a bureaucratic organization, I have the opportunity now to read and write whenever I feel like doing so. I fully experience the luxury of what Karl Mannheim has called the freischwebende Intelligenz. However, I must express my gratitude to the Erasmus University for oﬀering me all of its facilities in a so-called ‘hospitality contract’ upon my retirement in December 2002. My special acknowledgement goes out to the secretaries of the Department of Sociology, Marianne Otte and Betty Thiels, and their successors Jolien Veensma and Shaheen Khan. They were always prepared to print the various drafts of the manuscript, and to assist me in bureaucratic matters. In the ﬁnal stage of the project Tineke van de Pas, secretary of the Law Department, has been equally helpful. Ilja Fase, graduate student of sociology, was of an invaluable help in ordering and collecting books and articles at the library of the university. I am grateful for her precision and dedication which have been essential since my ‘empirical data’ had to be collected in the library. A few preliminary comments may be helpful to the reader. The text is interspersed with short excursions which are printed in small letters. Many of them are references to other philosophers and philosophical currents. They can be skipped by the professional philosopher who obviously is (or should be) acquainted with the history of philosophical ideas. Even great thinkers are, of course, parts of larger networks made up of fellow thinkers and their thoughts, ideas and theories. It was a laborious task to reconstruct Rickert’s philosophical network, since he had the habit of not burdening his expositions with quotes and references. I am aware that my reconstruction is incomplete, but then the desire to be complete can be pedantic and quite burdensome for the reader. I am not in favor of the system by which references in the text and in the footnotes refer again to items in the bibliography at the

preface

xiii

end of the book. I prefer to present such references with their complete annotation as to publisher, place and date of publication in the footnotes. Finally, I wrote the book in English for two reasons. First of all, neo-Kantian philosophy in general and Rickert’s publications in particular are, apart from a few exceptions, not accessible to the AngloSaxon world. English, after all, is in this day and age of globalization the lingua franca, not just in the worlds of business and politics, but in the intellectual world as well. It is my hope that the present exposition and discussion may lead to translations of Rickert’s extensive oeuvre. His little book on cultural and natural science, for instance, and his brilliant exposition and witty criticism of vitalism are perfectly suitable for translations into English, particularly since they are still (or again) very timely. The second reason is yet more relevant. Translating Rickert’s often quite fanciful and sometimes even literary German into English helped me to clarify for myself and hopefully also for the reader his complex ideas, concepts and theories. It is my conviction that one should be able to translate German concepts and sentences into English, lest they are closed to a clear understanding of their meaning and signiﬁcance. Even in the exceptional case of English translations, such as a few essays from Weber’s Wissenschaftslehre and a partial translation of Rickert’s opus magnum on the demarcation of Natural Science and Cultural Science, I decided to translate all German quotations myself. But I added the original German texts in the footnotes in order to enable the reader who possesses a passive and/or active knowledge of the German language to control my translations.1 For biographical and bibliographical data I refer to the handsome volume of essays by Rickert edited by Rainer A. Bast.2 1 The translations and references of the two motto’s of this book are the following: (A) ‘Who wants to acquire knowledge, should think and perceive.’ Heinrich Rickert, Das Eine, die Einheit und die Eins, (‘The One [as opposed to the Other], the Unity, and the First [as in number 1]’), (Tübingen: Mohr-Siebeck, 1924), p. 87. (B) ‘Man who is being known, is made by nature and history: but man who knows, makes nature and history.’ Georg Simmel, Die Probleme der Geschichtsphilosophie, (‘The Problems of the Philosophy of History’), 1892, (München, Leipzig: Duncker & Humblot, 1923), p. VII. 2 Heinrich Rickert, Philosophische Aufsätze, (‘Philosophical papers’), (Tübingen: MohrSiebeck, 1999), pp. 437–457. See also the Internet: in November 2004 Google oﬀered 23,300 and Yahoo 70,400 hits under ‘Heinrich Rickert’.

INTRODUCTION Tief und ernstlich denkende Menschen haben gegen das Publikum einen bösen Stand. J. W. Goethe1

Rickert revisited The Reformation and in its wake the Enlightenment caused a penetrating transformation in Germany of the medieval universities in general and of philosophy in particular. It was a change from the medieval, other-worldly scholarship supervised and ideologically drenched by the Roman-Catholic Church, to a early-modern, innerworldly professional training of lawyers, medical doctors and protestant ministers. The theological faculty, for instance, still viewed as the ﬁrst and most important faculty, was rebuilt in the 16th century into a retraining institution for catholic priests converted to Lutheran Protestantism. The Enlightenment introduced not only a secularized version of rationalism but emphasized also the utilitarian notion of a practical education of young men who after their academic training were going to function as the societal elite of the future. In other words, the post-medieval, early-modern university was in fact a professional school in which young men were trained for practical jobs in the rapidly changing society. German Romanticism of the 18th and 19th centuries would soon object to this one-sided emphasis upon rational, practical and applied knowledge and allied skills, launching its ideal of Bildung, i.e. of an education in which students were primarily taught to cultivate and strengthen their mental as well as moral capacities. Schelling, Schleiermacher and Fichte were the ﬁrst propagandists of this Romantic Bildungsideal, but it was perhaps 1

‘Deeply and seriously thinking people are not very popular.’ J. W. Goethe, ‘Betrachtungen im Sinne der Wanderer’ (Contemplations in the Style of the Wayfarers), in: Vermischte Schriften, Werke Bd. VI, (Frankfurt a.M.: Insel Verlag, 1966), p. 459. Rickert has been deeply impressed throughout his life by the works of Goethe. It culminated in a monograph of 544 pages, which he published at the end of his life: Heinrich Rickert, Goethes Faust. Die dramatische Einheit der Dichtung, (‘Goethe’s Faust. The Dramatic Unity of the Poem’), (Tübingen: Mohr-Siebeck, 1932).

2

introduction

best expressed by Friedrich Schiller in his inaugural address at the University of Jena in the historically so pregnant year 1789. Schiller constructed and mutually opposed two types of academic intellectuals: the Brotgelehrte (the bread-scholar) and the philosophischer Kopf ( the philosophical head). The former studies at a university in order to acquire a proﬁtable position in society, thus trying to satisfy his petty craving for prestige. He is usually rather conservative since he loathes changes and alterations. Upon graduation he will no longer be interested in scientiﬁc and philosophical thoughts, but live intellectually on what he had piled up in his mind during his academic training. He is not interested in the intrinsic values of manual and spiritual work, but measures everything in terms of possible proﬁts. Schiller claims that this attitude is strongly fostered by the increasing specialization of the various scientiﬁc disciplines which was already prevalent in his day. However, Schiller continues, if young men do possess scientiﬁc talents they will protest against all this meaninglessly accumulated knowledge of details. He will experience a deep sense of aimlessness and then develop into a ‘philosophical head’. This is the opposite type, i.e. the academic intellectual who, to begin with, will try to explore the limits of his own discipline, to transcend them in order to arrive at a more systematic and integrated knowledge of the world. Where the ‘bread-scholar’ separates, the ‘philosophical head’ unites! In fact he will not just learn facts by heart, but search for a real understanding of the facts, without focusing from the start on possible applications of this knowledge, let alone on the proﬁts and prestige it may reap in the future.2

The ideal of Bildung in opposition to the pragmatic and utilitarian program of professional training was also the essence of Wilhelm von Humboldt’s university reform which in 1809 led to the founding of the University of Berlin. It soon became the model for most German and many European universities. Humboldt’s vision was that of an academic community of professors and students devoted

2 F. Schiller, Was heisst und zu welchem Ende studiert man Universalgeschichte? (‘What is the meaning of and for what end does one study universal history?), in: Schillers Werke, vol. IV, (Frankfurt A.M.: Insel Verlag, 1966), pp. 421–438. The rather exalted tone of Schiller’s address conceals the fact that he experienced considerable diﬃculties in his professorship, and that the sentiments of the ‘bread-scholar’ were not totally alien to him. According to Golo Mann, Schiller once sighed that the university could do one may not say what, if he only had married a rich wife. Golo Mann, ‘Schiller als Geschichtsschreiber’ (‘Schiller as Historiographer’), ibid., p. 890. For the context and content of this inaugural address see Rüdiger Safranski, Friedrich Schiller oder die Erﬁndung des Deutschen Idealismus, (‘Friedrich Schiller or the Invention of German Idealism’), (München, Wien: Hanser Verlag, 2004), in particular pp. 306–316.

introduction

3

to a life of social solitude and civil, thus also spiritual, freedom.3 The university in this vision educated young men not only cognitively, but also emotionally and morally, enabling them to develop into autonomous and creative personalities. It is in this sense that the academically educated young men could contribute to society and the public sector. In other words, theirs is an indirect not a direct socioeconomic and political utility and usefulness. Needless to add that the Humboldtian university was envisaged as the institutional haven of the Geisteswissenschaften with their emphasis upon Verstehen (understanding) of meanings and values in opposition to the Naturwissenschaften and its focus upon Erklären (explaining) of facts and causality.4 After roughly 1850, however, Germany went through several radical changes. Socio-economically and culturally the various German states developed from traditional-agrarian communities into modernurban and increasingly industrial societies.5 It led to a bourgeoisie growing in numbers and power in opposition to an equally increasing working class, causing the awakening of an initially slumbering class conﬂict. The Humboldtian Bildung was, of course, not able to prepare its students for this deeply penetrating socio-economic and societal transformation. Politically, Germany was transformed by Bismarck, after the French-German war of 1870–1871, into a uniﬁed empire in which the balance of unity and diversity became a dominant political aim. There was a dire need for public administrators which were able to maintain this balance. The ideal of a generalized Bildung was not suﬃcient to satisfy this public need. At the same time, the natural sciences and their technical applications in the emerging industrial society reaped unprecedented successes which exerted strong pressures on the university to deliver practically, usefully and scientiﬁcally trained academics. In fact, after 1850 the natural sciences

3 Cf. Helmuth Schelsky, Einsamkeit und Freiheit. Idee und Gestalt der deutschen Universität und ihrer Reformen, (‘Solitude and Freedom. Idea and Structure of the German University and its Reforms’), (Hamburg: Rowohlt, 1963), in particular pp. 79–130. 4 See also Theodor Litt, Wissenschaft, Bildung, Weltanschauung, (‘Science, Bildung, Worldview’), (Leipzig, Berlin: Teubner, 1928), in particular Chapter Two: ‘Naturwissenschaft und Geisteswissenschaft in Verhältnis zur Bildung’, pp. 12–36. 5 The transition was, of course, not limited to Germany but rather a general European process of modernization. It was conceptualized by Ferdinand Toennies in his classic essay Gemeinschaft und Gesellschaft. Grundbegriﬀe der reinen Soziologie, (‘Community and Society. Basic Concepts of Pure Sociology’), 1887, (Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1963).

4

introduction

became the predominant methodological model for all sciences, including the humanities. In philosophy there grew a penetrating and dominant positivism which was based upon the ﬁrm belief that Naturwissenschaft, Natural Science, operating with exact, quantitative methods produced the only legitimate knowledge because it was applicable and useful. If there still was any valuable reason for its existence, philosophy had to be compartmentalized, in the opinion of the positivists, into several methodologies of the diﬀerent scientiﬁc, specialized disciplines. There was no room any longer, it was believed, for a general, universal philosophy, since that would necessarily end up in unscientiﬁc metaphysics. Naturally, there was in the positivist view of the world and the sciences no legitimate place for metaphysical dreams and reﬂections. This, of course, led again to a Romantic reaction in which once more the humanities were propagated as legitimate sciences which were logically and methodologically diﬀerent, yet had to be seen philosophically on a par with the natural sciences. Social sciences such as psychology, sociology, history and even economics, it was argued, deal with human beings and their actions, emotions and thoughts, not with atoms and physical processes which unlike human beings are not related to values and meanings, do not act and interact in a meaningful manner and thus cannot be understood empathically. There is, it was argued, an essential diﬀerence between Natur which is driven by mindless causality and measurable objectivity, and Geist which on the contrary is driven by values and meanings, and by the forces of the human Seele and Bewusstsein, i.e. by the human psyche and consciousness. This essential diﬀerence cried out for a diﬀerentiation of the sciences: Naturwissenschaft versus Geisteswissenschaft. Moreover, modernization entailed indeed a process of rationalization, but that does not mean that the irrational had disappeared from the human universe. On the contrary, the more rational the scientiﬁc, technological and increasingly bureaucratic world grew, the more it seemed to escape our cognitive and emotive understanding, the more irrational factors which cannot be measured and analyzed in a natural-scientiﬁc manner, seemed to determine the economy, society and polity, and above all the human mind and soul. In fact, the ages old philosophical question as to how it could be possible to acquire rational and ordered knowledge of the world, let alone how we could begin to understand it rationally, returned in full weight and cried out for an answer.

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It is at this point that in the second half of the 19th century and in the ﬁrst two decades of the 20th century the two towering philosophers of the 18th and 19th centuries, Kant and Hegel, and their various schools of neo-Kantianism and neo-Hegelianism regained philosophical interest. In a admittedly too rough way we could label the latter as a sphere of thought in which ontology and metaphysics occupied a primary and logic and methodology a secondary position, whereas the former focused primarily on epistemology, logic and methodology, viewing ontology and metaphysics as sub-disciplines of the latter. We return to this later, because Rickert occupied a special position in this dilemma of ontology and epistemology. At this point it suﬃces to mention the fact that we will focus in the present study on neo-Kantianism, in particular on that of the SouthWest German School, and again in particular on that of Heinrich Rickert. As we shall see, Rickert assumed a philosophical position which tried to bridge the dilemma of Rationalism and Romanticism, of Natural Science and (as he preferred to call it) Cultural Science, of ontology and epistemology. He designed a modus operandi for that which he called heterothesis and heterology which in essence, as we shall see, is a playful alternation between opposites in a dilemma. It makes sense, I think, to renew the acquaintance with this philosopher who unjustly has been largely forgotten after his death in 1936. When he is still referred to, it is usually in terms of a rejecting critique which in my observation is most of the time not based upon a serious and close reading of his texts. In fact, there are a few critical clichés about his work which are generally unfounded, yet repeated all the time. Heinrich Rickert (1863–1936) was famous and the object of critical debates around the turn of the former century. But after World War I he fell into disrepute. In fact, it is fair to say that he was actually buried in oblivion already before his death in the 1930’s. There was no interest anymore in the intricate conceptual abstractions of neoKantian philosophy in general and Rickert’s brand of it in particular after the Great War, when young academic men, having survived the massive slaughter in and around the trenches, returned home. They were disoriented by what they saw as the Great Defeat and tried, together with their fellow Germans, to mend the fragments of their shattered lives. In fact, there was now this longing for a philosophy which would no longer focus, as Rickert did, on knowledge and thus on epistemology and logic. Instead one craved as it were

6

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for an inspiring, emotionally gratifying philosophy which would explain the intricacies of life, of being and existence, and which would satisfy the feelings of anxiety and alienation. There was above all this yearning for inspiring thinkers who surpassed the often rather authoritarian and allegedly solidly bourgeois philosophy professors at the German universities of pre-war, Wilhelmian society. Rickert was such a typical, allegedly old-fashioned university professor. Martin Heidegger and Karl Jaspers certainly were not. The historian Golo Mann (1909–1994) gives in his memoirs a lively, yet devastating picture of Heinrich Rickert as a teacher and professor. When Mann started his studies at the University of Heidelberg at the end of the 1920’s, he took a seminar which Rickert taught at his home. A small group of students sat around the table. Rickert entered the room and began to count the students, standing at the table, one by one. He then said: ‘This is the smallest seminar since I have been a university assistant. I did not expect anything else though. Please, gentlemen, take your seat.’ The seminar began with an exposition of what philosophy was all about. He explained in particular that his own philosophy was a Wissenschaft, whereas the fashionable philosophies of the day—he meant in particular his colleague Karl Jaspers and his former student Martin Heidegger—were in his view not scientiﬁc at all. He compared their lectures with organ concertos and added: ‘Well, gentlemen, with me you will certainly not hear an organ concerto!’ Mann was not amused but did at that time obviously not know that Max Weber, whom he greatly admired, used to make a similar remark in his lectures: ‘If you yearn for visions, go to the cinema.’ Rickert then read, Mann continues, a sentence from a publication of Heidegger and asked: ‘Can anyone translate that into Latin? What cannot be translated into Latin, does not exist for me!’ Yet, Rickert must have had some signiﬁcance as a logician, Mann adds, since Max Weber thought so. In fact, to his hardly suppressed surprise, Weber, ‘a radical democrat’, and Rickert were close friends. The at that time still young and philosophically inexperienced Mann did apparently not understand what Rickert’s philosophy was actually all about. He found it obviously too abstract and boring. He ends this brief recollection with a venomous remark: ‘The vain old man remains for me the empty shell of a once lively and strong tradition. Consequently, after 1933 this pupil of Immanuel Kant proved to be a mask without a character behind it.’ Mann left the seminar and turned to Karl Jaspers under whose supervision he wrote his PhD-thesis in philosophy.6

6 ‘Der eitle alte Mann bleibt für mich die leere Hülse einer ehemals lebensstarken Tradition. Als Maske, ohne Charakter dahinter, hat dieser Schüler Immanuel Kants sich dann auch 1933 erwiesen.’ Golo Mann, Erinnerungen und Gedanken. Eine Jugend in Deutschland, (Memories and Thoughts. A Youth in Germany), (Frankfurt am Main: Fischer Verlag, 1986), p. 291.

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Another student of Rickert, Hermann Glockner, paints quite a diﬀerent picture of his teacher. Rickert, he writes, was not at all weltfremd (unworldly) but had a lively interest in political, economic, social and cultural issues and events. His agoraphobia, however, bound him to his home, but he did enjoy meeting people. He was in social encounters an interesting and witty conversationalist with a healthy sense of humor. As an author he set himself the aim to write clearly and with a cultivated style. He hated superﬁciality, but disliked as much the dragging ponderousness, empty abstractions and tiresome pedantry of most philosophers of his days. (It must be added in all honesty that Rickert, as we shall see instantly, apparently lost this buoyancy at the end of his life in the 1930’s.) Glockner still adds that Rickert was not an exact philologist, and lacked Windelband’s talent for the history of philosophical ideas. He admitted that he did not possess the necessary encompassing memory. He was a system builder, although, much like Plato or Kant, he failed to complete his own philosophical system. Glockner relates that Rickert had an ‘architectural talent’. Apparently not just in philosophy, because in Freiburg, where he taught at the university for many years, he lived with his family in a house which he himself had designed.7

In an interview with him in Munich, February 28, 1985, Rickert’s youngest son, the goldsmith Franz Rickert (1904–1991),8 complained to me about the bitter atmosphere in his parents’ house. One of his brothers was epileptic which his father could not bear. He was sent to an institution. Another brother, and his father’s favorite student Emil Lask, fell in the war. The atmosphere at home was mostly depressing. Moreover, his father suﬀered from a neurological disorder, labored under agoraphobia, and was constantly under medication.9 He complained all the time about his students and in particular

7 Cf. Hermann Glockner, ‘Heinrich Rickert †’, in: Heinrich Rickert, Unmittelbarkeit und Sinndeutung. Aufsätze zur Ausgestaltung des Systems der Philosophie, (‘Directness and Interpretation of Meaning. Papers for the Construction of the System of Philosophy’), August Faust, ed., (Tübingen: Morh-Siebeck, 1939), pp. VII–XIV. 8 Cf. Julie Gibbons, ‘Zen and the Art of Franz Rickert’, in: Craft Culture, http://www.craftculture.org/archive/frickert.htm which gives an insight in Franz Rickert as craftsman and as teacher at the Academy of Arts, Munich, where he was appointed professor in 1938. 9 Franz Rickert told me in the interview that his mother who was a rather accomplished sculptor, and together with the wives of Max Weber and Georg Simmel, active in the women’s movement of those days, devoted her life mainly to her husband and her family. She saw to it that the philosopher took his medications on time and at regular intervals. He had many little bottles standing in a row on the mantelpiece in his study. ‘She meant well, of course, but I am afraid she actually poisoned my father slowly.’

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about his colleagues at the university.10 In fact, he grew increasingly rancorous, and was surrounded by a small band of followers who supported him in his grudges.11 The worst of them, according to Franz Rickert, was August Faust who turned into a radical Nazi and had a bad inﬂuence on his politically rather naive father.12 I asked him about his father’s political stance after 1933. He said that he was certainly not a friend of Hitler, but neither was he very brave, in particular regarding the problems of some Jewish colleagues at

10 A granddaughter of Heinrich Rickert, Mrs. Marianne Rickert Verburg from Hamburg, lived as a young girl with her grandparents in Heidelberg during the last two years of the philosopher’s life. In an interview (Hamburg, October 8, 1988) she showed me many, usually brief letters and cards Rickert received from various colleagues within and outside Germany. They were mostly letters and cards of thanks for a publication Rickert had sent. Among others: A. Meinong, H. Eucken, P. Natorp, R. Otto, G. Radbruch, E. Rothacker, M. Scheler, O. Spann, R. Stammler. There are in this personal archive of Mrs. Verburg also a few notes which Rickert and Max Weber exchanged. They give some insight in the (usually rather petty) faculty politics the two of them engaged in. It dealt mainly with appointments of new faculty members. Hermann Glockner provides an interesting personal insight in the social world of academic Heidelberg in Rickert’s days. Cf. his Heidelberger Tagebuch (‘Heidelberg Diary’), (Bonn: Bouvier Verlag, 1969). According to Franz Rickert the details about his father and his family are correct and reliable. 11 Walter Benjamin (1892–1940) who attended Rickert’s lectures and seminars in Freiburg wrote in a letter to his friend Gerhard Scholem (d.d. July 25, 1921): ‘Rickert ist grau und böse geworden.’ (‘Rickert has become grey and evil.’), In: Walter Benjamin, Briefe I, (‘Letters, vol. I’), G. Scholem, Th. Adorno, eds., (Frankfurt a.M.: Suhrkamp, 1978), p. 268. Although he once wrote Adorno with some pride that he had been Rickert’s student, he apparently distanced himself from him after he ﬁnished his academic studies. A long letter sent from Paris to Adorno, opened with ‘Mein lieber Teddie’ (‘My dear Teddie’), d.d. May 7, 1940. Briefe II (Franfurt a.M.: Suhrkamp, 1978), p. 857. 12 Cf. August Faust, ‘Sozialerziehung und Nationalerziehung’, Deutsches Bildungswesen, July 1933. Glockner gives an interesting picture of Faust. Cf. his o.c., pp. 221–245. Faust, who lived in Rickert’s house, was not just his teaching assistant but also considered to be part of the family. Although Mrs. Verburg claimed that the family was unaware of his nazi sympathies, it is unavoidable to assume that he asserted a fatal political inﬂuence on the aged and despondent Rickert who had always been a liberal politically but developed into a right-wing conservative after the defeat of World War I. That was apparently quite normal among German philosophy professors of those days. It happened, for example, also with the mathematical philosopher Gottlob Frege. Both Frege and Rickert joined the German Philosophical Society and its journal which was a right-wing split-oﬀ from the prestigious journal Kant Studien. It was founded by Rickert’s student Bruno Bauch who after 1933 became a devoted Nazi and anti-Semite. Glockner, himself not immune to the nazi ideology, mentions the fact that Rickert, impressed as he allegedly was by ‘the national-socialist revolution’, held a lecture on Fichte shortly before his death. It was, as Faust also claims, a national-socialist paean. The title (translated) was indicative: ‘Fichte

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the university.13 This stood in strong contrast to the philosopher’s father, Heinrich Rickert Sr. (1833–1902), who as a liberal politician in Berlin founded in December 1890 the ‘Society Against AntiSemitism’. Franz Rickert told me that his mother for fear of the Nazi’s burned after his father’s death in 1936 a stack of anti-Semitic hate-letters addressed to her father in law.14 In the last years of his life Rickert was well aware of the fact that his style of thinking and the problems he addressed were no longer popular.15 In a way he sympathized with the anti-rational moods of his contemporaries, as we shall see in Chapter Two. After all, as a young man he too was enthused by the exuberant writings of Nietzsche and the broody pessimism of Schopenhauer. But he soon became weary of their irrationalism and searched for a conceptual mastering of the eternal philosophical conﬂict between rationality and irrationality. He believed ﬁrmly that he found the solution of this problem in his epistemology and in particular in his philosophy of values. Yet, he was not successful in convincing his fellow philosophers and the young men and women of the Interbellum in Germany. After World War II a similar situation occurred. German and French

as a Social and National Thinker’. Glockner, o.c., p. VIII. Faust, ibid., p. XVIII. There is for many Germans, as the former German Kanzler Helmuth Kohl once said, ‘the grace of the late birth’, i.e. after 1945. It may be added that obviously some Germans have, like Rickert, also experienced the grace of a timely death. See Hans Sluga, Heidegger’s Crisis. Philosophy and Politics in Nazi Germany (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press), pp. 83–100. 13 Sluga mentions in a footnote that Rickert’s turn to the right caused the end of his friendly relationship with a former, Jewish student who taught at Freiburg university but was then in 1933 dismissed by rector Martin Heidegger. Rickert remained silent. Sluga, o.c., p. 267, note 48. Sluga probably refers to Jonas Cohn (1869–1947), an ‘extraordinary professor’ for philosophy and pedagogy, who ﬂed in 1939 to Birmingham, England, where he died after the war. Rickert did not intervene on his behalf. 14 Quoted interview in Munich. See Otto Friedrich, Before the Deluge (New York: Harper & Row Publ., 1972). The Dutch edition: Vóór de zondvloed (Baarn: het Wereldvenster, 1972), p. 92. 15 In his book on the ‘philosophy of life’, a current of thought which he saw as the dominant and fashionable trend in the philosophy of his days, Rickert noted that there were still small circles of thinkers who linked up with the work done by great thinkers in the past and tried to elaborate on their systems of thought. He mentioned himself as one of those, who worked in the tradition of German Idealism. Heinrich Rickert, Die Philosophie des Lebens. Darstellung und Kritik der philosophischen Modeströmungen unserer Zeit (‘The Philosophy of Life. Presentation and Critique of Fashionable Currents in the Philosophy of our Time’), 1920, (Tübingen: MohrSiebeck, 1922), p. 34.

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existentialism was much more akin to the post-war sentiments of the 1950’s and 1960’s than Rickert’s neo-Kantian epistemology and philosophy of values. Later various philosophical currents emerged which Rickert without doubt would have discounted as unscientiﬁc fads and foibles—except those that maintained some degree of rationalism. He would have labeled various brands of so-called post-modernism as specimens of a fashionable and philosophically objectionable irrationalism. He would in all probability have appraised positively certain trends in analytic philosophy, in particular its so-called ‘linguistic turn’.16 Lately, however, there is a renewed interest in the neo-Kantianism of the so-called South-West German School. Rickert’s opus magnum on historical methodology, Die Grenzen der naturwissenschaftlichen Begriﬀsbildung was translated into English, albeit in an abridged edition.17 Rickert’s shorter version of this voluminous book, Kulturwissenschaft und Naturwissenschaft, was reprinted in Germany in a paperback edition, while a volume of his main essays appeared in print recently.18 Meanwhile, the philosophy department of the University of Düsseldorf has opened a Heinrich Rickert Research Institute, the main objective of which is the publication of Rickert’s collected works in ﬁfteen volumes.19 Motives The present book is based on a close but critical reading of Rickert’s texts, and tries to reproduce his often complex and abstract ideas in a generally understandable language. Despite the yet pristine Rickert-

16 Cf. Richard Rorty (ed.), The Linguistic Turn, 1967, (Chicago: the University of Chicago Press, 1992). 17 Heinrich Rickert, The Limits of Concept Formation in Natural Science. A Logical Introduction to the Historical Sciences (abridged edition), edited and translated by Guy Oakes, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986). A rare study in the 1960’s was Hermann Seidel, Wert und Wirklichkeit in der Philosophie Heinrich Rickerts (‘Value and Reality in Henrich Rickert’s Philosophy’), (Bonn: Bouvier Verlag, 1968.) A recent, voluminous study is Christian Krijnen, Nachmetaphysischer Sinn (‘Postmetaphysical Sense’), (Würzburg: Königshausen & Neumann, 2001). 18 Heinrich Rickert, Kulturwissenschaft und Naturwissenschaft (Cultural Science and Natural Science), 1926, (Stuttgart: Reclam, 1986). Philosophische Aufsätze (Philosophical Papers), edited and introduced by Rainer A. Bast, (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1999). 19 See the website www.phil-fak.uni.duesseldorf.de/philo/rickert. It is the website of the ‘Heinrich Rickert Forschungsstelle’ of the University of Düsseldorf, Germany, of which professor Rainer A. Bast, PhD is the managing director.

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renaissance it should still be explained, why one would actually take on such a rather laborious task. There are, of course, various motives for writing about a particular philosopher. Usually there is, to begin with, an irrational, esthetic motive, which Rickert would ﬁnd philosophically inadmissible, but should not be kept secret. I have been in sympathy with Rickert’s style of thinking and writing ever since I began to read his books in the 1970’s, inspired to do so by Max Weber’s essays on the logic of the social sciences. Weber was obviously inﬂuenced by Rickert’s epistemology and philosophy of values. His references to this kind of thinking made me anxious to read the philosopher himself. It was then my experience that, while reading his less complex and intellectually more easily accessible texts, such as the small volume on the cultural and the natural sciences, or his critique of the vitalistic philosophies of his days,20 one meets a philosopher who is a lively thinker and who at times writes in an ironic way—an experience which is quite diﬀerent from the one Golo Mann described in his memoirs. Certainly, Rickert excels repeatedly in extremely complex and abstract thoughts, and sometimes gets himself lost on the way, but he is nevertheless mostly able to express his thoughts clearly and understandably. In fact, after a while, after one has seriously tried to understand his thoughts and ideas, one actually begins to like his style of thinking, arguing and writing. I for my part began even to develop some sort of emotional liking of the man as a thinker which, of course, does not preclude a critical stance towards him. After all, is this not the original meaning of the word philosophy? In one of my interviews with Franz Rickert, I told him that reading his father’s texts I got the impression as if he was talking to me, although he never addresses the reader directly. He smiled and then told me that this was almost literally true, since his father did not write his articles and books, but dictated them—not to a secretary, because he could not bear someone in his study, when he was at work. A friend of his around the turn of the century gave him a ‘Parlograph’ which he had bought in America. One spoke into a kind of huge horn and the sounds were then ‘printed’ into roles of wax. The large house in Heidelberg had a small room—the Parlographenzimmer —in which a secretary typed the spoken texts on

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Heinrich Rickert, Die Philosophie des Lebens, o.c.

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a type writer. The philosopher now had a written text which he edited by hand. The edited text was typed again, and then sent to the publisher. The wax roles were recycled: they were wiped out— a task Franz Rickert performed as a young boy—and used again. ‘The house always had this penetrating smell of bee wax’, he recalled.21 One of the consequences of this parlando writing technique is repetition. Anyone who teaches courses realizes that one will often repeat subjects and ideas in later lectures. That is, to a certain degree, a helpful technique as students get the opportunity to grasp what the course really is all about. Because the reader of Rickert’s texts gets the impression of sitting in his lecture hall, or in his study, listening to his expositions, he is helped to get acquainted gradually with his style of thinking and with the main themes of his idiosyncratic philosophy. At regular intervals Rickert interrupts his stream of thought in order to recapitulate what he has just said in a summarizing fashion. It is obvious that he ﬁnds this helpful. It organizes his thoughts, it helps him to remain on the main track. Yet, in that he is not always successful, as we shall see in due time. Also in this respect he was a student of Immanuel Kant who toiled on his publications and often got lost likewise in the thicket of his complex thoughts. There was still another, equally unphilosophical motive to subject Rickert’s thoughts and ideas to closer scrutiny. This motive was less esthetic, more or less socio-psychological. It is intriguing that there was this initially famous and respected philosopher, widely read,

21 Quoted interview with Franz Rickert. Glockner who rented for a while a room in Rickert’s house as did the literary historian Ernst Robert Curtius (1886–1956), and the previously mentioned August Faust, gives a slightly diﬀerent story. In a discussion with Curtius about Rickert’s writing habit Glockner mentions the fact that the ‘parlograph’ was eventually set aside because the secretary could not handle it. Rickert then dictated his texts to Frau Pfeiﬀer, without paying any attention to punctuation in the often very long sentences, to orthography of the philosophical concepts, and to the insertion of footnotes. That would have interrupted his stream of thoughts. The typed manuscript, a ﬁrst draft, was next drastically edited by hand, and dictated once more to the typing secretary. This was, Glockner relates, sometimes repeated four or ﬁve times. The texts were then given to Rickert’s closest assistants for comments on clarity and readability. This dictating procedure, Glockner concludes, made the texts too broad and too long. Rickert should have been more eﬃcient. But Curtius defends Rickert: ‘An ingenious author (. . . .) always imagines, also when he dictates, readers who are as smart and educated as he himself is; never a bunch of unknowing students who resist conceptual thought.’ (‘Ein geistreicher Schriftsteller (. . . .) stellt sich auch beim Diktieren immer nur Leser vor, die so klug und gebildet sind wie er selbst; niemals jedoch einen Haufen unwissender und begriﬀstutziger Studenten.’) Glockner, o.c., p. 255f.

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applauded and criticized in the decades before World War I, and suddenly, within one or two decades, he was set aside and next forgotten. Since I became increasingly critical of vitalistic philosophers from Nietzsche, Schopenhauer and Bergson to Dilthey and Scheler, and since I felt estranged also from currents like existentialism and phenomenology, let alone structuralism and so-called post-modernism, I became curious as to what Rickert’s rationalism was actually all about. The sentiments aired by Golo Mann, and shared by many in his days and in later decades, were misleading, certainly when they were not based on a careful reading of his texts. Rickert, I thought soon after I began to subject his publications to a close reading, was not at all a dusty, humorless, old-fashioned thinker. He deserved, it was my contention, a serious re-appraisal. But there is a more fundamental, methodological motive why it does make sense to get involved in Rickert’s thinking and writing. His ideas about values, culture, and the generalizing (natural-scientiﬁc) and individualizing (cultural-scientiﬁc) concept formations had a decisive inﬂuence upon the sociologist, whom I have always considered to be the most inﬂuential and important one in sociology, which is my ﬁeld of expertise: Max Weber. Rickert and Weber were friends during their younger years in Berlin, and they were eventually colleagues at the universities of Freiburg and Heidelberg. Reading and re-reading Weber’s methodological papers in particular demonstrated to me that one could not understand his brand of sociology which he called verstehende Soziologie correctly, if one did not know and understand Rickert’s philosophical, methodological and logical writings. To mention one simple point, the idea of a verstehende Soziologie is misunderstood, if one ties Weber’s rational notion of Verstehen to Dilthey’s conception of it and views it as a psychologically oriented sociology. Also Weber’s technique of constructing ideal types (reine Typen, Idealtypen) is misunderstood, if one has not learnt what the adjectives transzendental (a priori) and rein (pure) mean in neo-Kantian epistemology. Due to Rickert, Weber employed a neo-Kantian methodology and was not a Husserlian phenomenologist, let alone an adherent of one or the other kind of vitalism or psychologism. In the last chapter, all this will be discussed in more detail.22 We will then also see how 22 Cf. Guy Oakes, Weber and Rickert. Concept Formation in the Cultural Sciences (Cambridge, Ma.: The MIT Press, 1988). Thomas Burger, Max Weber’s Theory of Concept Formation. History, Laws, and Ideal Types (Durham, North Carolina: Duke University Press, 1976).

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Rickert’s philosophy had a strong echo on other philosophers like Georg Simmel, Gustav Radbruch, Emil Lask and Karl Mannheim. Rickert’s philosophical relevance argued e contrario These rather personal motives are, of course, not a suﬃcient reason for a detailed representation and analysis of Rickert’s writings. Why should one today pay attention to these often complex and at times warped thoughts and reﬂections, and subject them to a close reading? Most of his critics have failed to do this, why should we? It is the task of the following chapters to demonstrate why Rickert’s neo-Kantian (or maybe better post-Kantian) transcendentalism is less old-fashioned and out of date than it is usually believed to be. At this point, its philosophical relevance can only be painted preliminarily in some very broad and thus necessarily not very subtle outlines. To begin with, loyal to Kant’s three Critiques Rickert’s systematic philosophy was solidly based upon epistemology. The rather traditional epistemological questions he addressed as to the intricate relationships between knowledge and reality, between subjects and objects, between values and facts have not been answered satisfactorily by his critics. His detailed analyses in epistemology were usually simply brushed aside, in particular by those philosophers who superimposed ontology on epistemology. Likewise his methodological demarcation of Natural Science (Naturwissenschaft) and Cultural Science (Kulturwissenschaft) was systematically misinterpreted, because its formal logic was replaced by a substantial ontological juxtaposition of ‘nature’ versus ‘culture’. This will be discussed in detail in Chapter Five. In this section I shall try to argue in favor of Rickert’s philosophical relevance by representing brieﬂy and rejecting critically the usual objections against neo-Kantianism in general and Rickert’s system in particular. It is, in other words, an argument e contrario which will be formulated more positively in the succeeding chapters of this study. It is, to begin with, somewhat rash, of course, to lump philosophical currents with obvious internal diﬀerences, together into a few paradigms, but this is legitimate if it sheds some light on the question why Rickert’s philosophy has been neglected in the former century and why this neglect was and still is uncalled for. There was the predominantly European ontological opposition to transcendentalist epistemology, launched in particular (but not exclusively) by Nicolai

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Hartmann.23 In fact, an ‘ontological primacy’ was juxtaposed to the alleged epistemological primacy of Kant and a neo-Kantian like Rickert. The main stumbling block was and still is Kant’s conviction that the thing-in-itself (das Ding-an-sich) cannot be known. Reality as it exists outside human consciousness cannot be known without the structuring of the experiences by means of the a priori forms of perception (Anschauung), time and space, and the a priori categories of reason (Verstand ), such as quality, quantity, relations and modality. This has led to two misconceptions. First, it was and often still is believed that Kant denied the existence of reality outside consciousness which was then called his Idealism. Yet, he has stated repeatedly that this was not his position, emphasizing time and again the objective, autonomous existence of the thing-in-itself, but adding that it cannot be known as such without the interference of the senses (structured by the a priori forms time and space) and the a priori categories. This was the essence of the juxtaposition of what he called the noumenon and the phaenomenon—a position, incidentally, which was inspired by Hume’s pair of concepts sensation and reﬂexion. (Hume’s impact on Kant and the neo-Kantians should not be underestimated. It was, to say the least, a strong source of inspiration.) In any case, if one wants to maintain the opposition of Idealism versus Realism one should bear in mind that Kant and the neo-Kantians were not at all anti-realistic. As we will see in due time, certainly Rickert’s epistemology and philosophy of values was not. His transcendentalism was in fact a grand attempt to reconcile ontology and epistemology. A second misconception of the (neo-)Kantian epistemological primacy was the idea that its alleged Idealism was also a one-sided rationalism. But here again, Kant and certainly a neo-Kantian like Rickert tried to balance rationalism and irrationalism. As we will see in Chapter Two Rickert did indeed reject the one-sided irrationalism of various strands of vitalism (Nietzsche, Schopenhauer, Dilthey, Bergson, Scheler, etc.), but this did not at all mean that he neglected the irrational forces in life and reality. It was in his view the prime task of the sciences and philosophy to rationalize the irrationality of 23 Cf. Nicolai Hartmann, Grundzüge einer Metaphysik der Erkenntnis, (‘Essential Features of a Metaphysics of Knowledge’), 1921, (Berlin, Leipzig: Walter de Gruyter, 1925). As was quite usual in those days (Rickert did the same), Hartmann criticizes neoKantian epistemology without mentioning any of its authors. As the title of his book indicates, Hartmann tried to replace transcendentalist and idealist epistemology by an ontology which in the end is metaphysical.

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reality-in-itself. Each attempt to understand it, is an attempt to grasp it rationally by means of the a priori categories. This is thus not a denial of irrationality and irrational forces. The main agenda of neoKantianism was a rational understanding of the irrational by means of the a priori categories. It is absurd to accuse Rickert of a onesided rationalism that denies the existence, importance and inﬂuence of irrationalism. The ‘data’ which enter man’s consciousness through the senses are as such a disorganized and irrational mass which is being put in a rational order by the a priori categories, and, as we shall see in greater detail, by the transcendental and ‘objective’ formal values as well. Yet, he did not pretend, as the vitalists do with the help of their category ‘Life’ and their emphasis upon intuition, to be able to penetrate into the irrationality of reality-as-such. The ‘ontological primacy’ vis-à-vis the epistemological primacy has inspired and reinvigorated the nineteenth century vitalism (Lebensphilosophie) of Nietzsche and Schopenhauer. Despite severe internal diﬀerences, vitalistic ontology and its inherent irrationalism24 penetrated deeply into twentieth century philosophy, after World War I ﬁrst, and then under various disguises, such as French and German existentialism and certain strands of post-modernism, again after World War II. Not Kant, the summit of transcendentalist epistemology, was any longer the fountain of philosophical thoughts and insights, but Marx, Nietzsche, Freud, a vitalistically interpreted (and therefore misinterpreted) Darwin, and above all Heidegger, were the giants on the shoulders of whom various philosophers stood and are still standing. A common trait of this ontological and vitalistic rejection of neoKantian epistemology was and still is its anti-normative stance.25 As we shall see in the fourth chapter, Rickert emphasized the sociological fact of man’s inherent attachment to values (Wertbezogenheit), but if it comes to the scientiﬁc approach to reality—and he deﬁned philosophy as a scientiﬁc enterprise—one should refrain from evaluating, 24 Friedrich Nietzsche and Henri Bergson were, of course, the most inﬂuential philosophers of vitalism. Rickert’s interpretation of their brands of vitalism will be discussed in the second chapter. 25 The normative, moral and political dimensions of these intellectual giants (even if they were illegitimately imposed, as in the case of Darwin) have had a great inﬂuence on philosophy and the social sciences. The political component of Heidegger’s ontology in particular has been broadly discussed. Cf. Pierre Bourdieu, L’ontologie politique de Martin Heidegger (‘The Political Ontology of Martin Heidegger’), (Paris: Les Éditions de Minuit, 1988). Victor Farias, Heidegger and Nazism, 1987 (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1989). Rüdiger Safranski, Ein Meister aus Deutschland. Heidegger

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normative judgments (Wertungsfreiheit). This position, as is well known, was adopted also by Max Weber in his logic of the social sciences. This has probably been the greatest stumbling block for the critics of neo-Kantian epistemology. The Kantian concept of critique, as in the ‘Critique of Pure Reason’, was of course not at all socio-political and thus allegedly ‘concrete’, but epistemological and therefore allegedly ‘abstract’. If one keeps in mind that transcendentalist epistemology is not onesidedly idealistic and rationalistic and if one seriously listens to Rickert’s critique of vitalism and its irrationalism, one will not be convinced by the arguments in favor of the ontological primacy. It becomes obvious that Rickert’s analyses of the traditional philosophical questions as to the relationships of subjects and objects, of reality and consciousness, and of reality and values are not at all obsolete. Also his logical rather than ontological demarcation of Natural Science and Cultural Science as two mutually complementary approaches to reality deserves closer attention than it received in the last century. Rickert’s critical analysis of irrationalism as a fashionable current in the philosophy of his days is still much up-to-date in view of various popular so-called post-modernist philosophies which replace ‘abstract’ analytic thought by ‘concrete’ aesthetic and emotional reﬂections.26 And also his emphasis upon the need to abstain from value- judgments and normative evaluations in philosophy and the cultural sciences deserves renewed attention today—a position also taken by Max Weber, whose logic of the social sciences was severely criticized by the adherents of the so-called Frankfurt School during the politically and intellectually turbulent 1960’s and 1970’s.27 Also on this issue critics failed to understand the analytic distinction between ‘value relevance’ (Wertverbundenheit) as a fact and as an ‘abstain-

und seine Zeit (‘A Master from Germany. Heidegger and his Time’), (München, Wien: Carl Hanser Verlag, 1994). Heidegger was a student of Rickert and despite philosophical disagreements remained, as Mrs. Verburg told me, a friend of the family. See Martin Heidegger, Heinrich Rickert, Briefe 1912 bis 1933 und andere Dokumente, edited by Alfred Denker (Frankfurt a.M.: Vittorio Klostermann, 2002). 26 The popular, well written publications of Richard Rorty come to mind here. Cf. in particular his volumes of essays Contingency, irony and solidarity, 1989 (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1991) and Objectivity, Relativism and Truth (Idem, 1991). 27 The so-called kritische Theorie of the Frankfurter Schule rejected the abstaining of value-judgments in the social sciences and in social philosophy, yet engaged in epistemological reﬂections. Jürgen Habermas, for instance, did not ignore Rickert’s epistemology as most vitalists have done, but subjected it to a critical and extensive

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ing from value judgments’ (Wertungsfreiheit) as a methodological norm and democratic value. This will be discussed in more detail later. It suﬃces here to underline that also in this respect Rickert’s philosophy is not at all the kind of obsolete Fremdkörper most of his critics have declared it to be. The problem is that these critics usually did not carefully read and re-read Rickert’s books and articles. They usually quoted former critics, and almost blindly copied their often mistaken views and conclusions. After World War II Anglo-Saxon philosophy in particular developed in the positivistic, analytic direction. There are, of course, intrinsic diﬀerences within this trend which was at ﬁrst inspired by the prewar Vienna Circle (Carnap, Neurath) and developed later in England, where Russell ﬁrst and Wittgenstein next exerted a decisive impact on contemporary philosophical thought. The latter’s focus on language and speech led to a paradigmatic revolution which has aptly been termed the Linguistic Turn.28 There is admittedly a world of diﬀerence between the rather Germanic way of thinking and writing of Rickert and the inﬁnitely more lucid thoughts and sentences of most AngloSaxon analytic philosophers. Yet, as the following chapters hopefully will indicate there is also in Rickert’s transcendentalism a resemblance with the basic positions and tenets of analytic philosophers. Rickert rarely mentioned fellow philosophers by name but he was, as we shall see, impressed and inﬂuenced by the mathematical theories of Frege, who was in a sense the grandfather of analytic philosophy. For instance, although he did not mention his Begriﬀsschrift (conceptual script), Rickert was like Frege constantly in search of words which could catch meanings in an analytically clear manner. He complained time and again about the fact that he did not possess such an analytic language, and was doomed to express his thoughts in everyday life language. That led him to a verbosity which he regretted thoroughly. He died in 1936 and could thus not witness the Linguistic Turn. But it seems to me that he would be much in agreement with the basic tenets of it. It would, for instance, be interesting to learn how he would have reacted to Wittgenstein’ Philosophical Investigations of 1953. He would reject the aphoristic approach since he believed in

analysis. See his ‘Ein Literaturbericht (1967): Zur Logik der Sozialwissenschaften’, in: Jürgen Habermas, Zur Logik der Sozialwissenschaften (On the Logic of the Social Sciences), (Frankfurt a.M.: Suhrkamp Verlag, 1970), pp. 71–320. 28 Richard M. Rorty (ed.), o.c., 1992.

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the essentially systematic nature of philosophy. But he would be in agreement with several of its thoughts and statements. Particularly Rickert’s concept of the meaning bestowing act (Aktsinn), to be discussed in detail later, comes close to Wittgenstein’s concept of ‘language game’ and his linguistic behaviorism. There are, to use a Wittgensteinian concept, a couple of ‘family resemblances’.29 Meanwhile, it seems today that analytic philosophy has developed into a kind of orthodoxy which has acquired rather scholastic characteristics. If that is correct, contemporary philosophy is in need of a renaissance which, as was the nature also of the Renaissance of the sixteenth century, should start with a return to the classics in order to open new avenues towards the future. One of these classics is deﬁnitely Immanuel Kant. The epistemological primacy of his critical, transcendental philosophy is again attracting much attention these days. As no other philosopher Heinrich Rickert has made an ongoing attempt to go beyond Kant by constructing a philosophical system in which traditional ontological, logical, epistemological and methodological problems are discussed, analyzed and sometimes even solved. For example, as we shall see in Chapter Five, Rickert resolves the alleged opposition of the natural and the cultural sciences by a constructed continuum which, if taken seriously, is able to put an end to the methodical war (Methodenstreit) that raged in the social sciences and in the philosophical debates of the past century.30 Systematic philosophy and heterology Before we delve into the complex world of Rickert’s philosophy, we should try to grasp his idiosyncratic approach which he did not outline speciﬁcally but runs as a continuous thread through all of his thinking and writing. There are three elements in particular that stand out in this approach, namely the repeated emphasis upon the systematic nature of philosophy, the constant application of heterology, and the persistent rejection of psychologism.

29 Ludwig Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations, translated by G. E. M. Anscombe, (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1976), para 67, p. 32e. 30 Cf. Theodor W. Adorno c.s. (eds.), Der Positivismusstreit in der deutschen Soziologie (The Positivism Conﬂict in German Sociology), 1969, (Neuwied, Berlin: Luchterhand Verlag, 1972).

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As we shall see later, Rickert rejected a predominance of metaphysics in philosophy. To him philosophy is an autonomous science alongside the specialized (natural and cultural) sciences. It is founded upon a distinct (transcendentalist) ontology and epistemology and subjected to the laws and norms of formal logic. It also has its speciﬁc object of investigation and here lies the great diﬀerence between philosophy and the other sciences whose objects are necessarily specialized compartments of reality as a whole. Whereas we experience the world, including ourselves, pre-reﬂectively as an undiﬀerentiated whole, each natural science and each cultural science investigates its own particular, specialized part of reality. Philosophy, on the contrary, should subject das Weltall, that is reality-in-its-totality, realityin-toto (a concept, incidentally, not used by Rickert) to investigation and concept formation, lest it loses its legitimate, autonomous place in the realm of sciences. This encompassing object needs, of course, a systematic, non-specialized approach. Philosophy is systematic or it is nothing!31 This has ontological and epistemological consequences. Ontologically Rickert distinguishes diﬀerent yet related realities which he calls ‘realms’: the ﬁrst realm consists of observable objects (including man’s psyche), the second realm consists of understandable meanings and values, and the third realm, which connects the former two, is the reality of the transcendental I which links the formal and abstract values to the substantial and concrete objects in a meaning bestowing act (Aktsinn). As we shall see later, Rickert distinguished ﬁnally a fourth realm of this total reality, the metaphysical Beyond. This fourth realm, however, is no longer part of scientiﬁc philosophy because its concepts are similes, symbols, allegories. It is the abode of normative worldviews which yield not knowledge but faith. In order to realize such a systematic approach successfully, the philosopher must be able to bridge the alternatives and opposites of various epistemological dilemmas, otherwise he maintains a conceptual fragmentation of reality-in-toto. Rickert’s concept formation there-

31 See especially the ﬁrst two chapters of his Allgemeine Grundlegung der Philosophie (‘General Foundation of Philosophy’), (Tübingen: Mohr-Siebeck, 1921), pp. 1–14; 14–24. In his doctoral dissertation and ﬁrst book sized publication Rickert already emphasized the systematic nature of each science, including philosophy. See Heinrich Rickert, Zur Lehre von der Deﬁnition, (‘On the Theory of the Deﬁnition’), 1888, (Tübingen: Mohr-Siebeck, 1929, 3rd improved ed.), p. 23.

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fore operates with opposite pairs which do not exclude but include each other: subject and object, immanence and transcendence, theoretical thinking and non-theoretical thinking, thinking and acting, form and substance, identity and diﬀerence, empirical (sensual) reality and non-empirical (non-sensual) reality, being and validity, facts and values, Natural Science and Cultural Science, etc. These conceptual pairs are not each other’s opposites, as in Hegel’s thesis and antithesis which are then ‘lifted up’ (aufgehoben) into a synthesis that poses a new thesis. They constitute, on the contrary, a mutually inclusive heterothesis in which the autonomy of the pairs is not dissolved into a synthesis, but fully maintained.32 It is the systematic cross-reference of polar concepts. The meaning of the one is explained in terms of the opposite meaning of the other. Often such heterological arguments border on tautologies. For instance, he ﬁercely and recurrently criticizes those philosophers who proclaim the end of systematic philosophy because according to them modern philosophy could only focus adequately on parts and components of reality, not on a supposedly total reality. He then argues that it is only possible to think and talk about parts and components, if there is a conception of a totality of which they are parts and components. But such tautologies emerge only when one ‘ontologizes’ one’s concepts. If they are kept analytical, that is a priori, transcendental, heterology and heterothesis will not be tautological. The heterological approach, as will be seen repeatedly later, rather intends to preclude the rigidity of ‘ontologized’ conceptualizations. Due to heterothesis, Rickert’s concepts are not static, but ﬂexible. Concepts, he says time and again in a typically Kantian vein, do not depict a static reality, as is done by the so-called Abbildlogik—the logic which views concepts as pictures or mirrors of reality. They instead demarcate like pickets an eternally changing and moving reality. In a sense, reality lies or moves in the ‘space’ between the heterologically juxtaposed concepts which are, as we shall see, a priori, transcendental, to boot.

32 See e.g. Heinrich Rickert, ibid., pp. 50–57. Also Heinrich Rickert, Grundprobleme der Philosophie. Methodologie. Ontologie. Anthropologie (‘Fundamental Problems of Philosophy. Methodology. Ontology. Anthropology’), (Tübingen: Mohr-Siebeck, 1934), para 7: ‘Philosophie und Heterologie’, pp. 39–47. See also Christian Krijnen, op. cit., pp. 227–298.

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The main heterological pair of concepts is the ‘real’ reality of objects vis-à-vis the ‘virtual’ reality of values. It is a crucial heterology. Once more, Rickert’s basic intention was to restore and maintain the traditional idea that philosophy, unlike the specialized, empirical, scientiﬁc disciplines, is a general science, the aim of which is to acquire scientiﬁc (i.e. rationally controlled) knowledge of reality-in-toto. There are, of course, various specialized philosophies, such as the philosophy of religion, art, law, etc. But then the question arises what it is that justiﬁes the concept of philosophy in all these sub-philosophies. In order to be able to answer this question, there must be a general philosophy which sets out to investigate and interpret reality-in-toto (das Weltall ). In his systematic search for a conception of reality as a fulﬁlled (not a ﬁnal!) totality, Rickert claims that the heterological distinction between ‘real’ reality of objects and ‘virtual’ reality of values is a constitutive component. In fact, as we shall see later, realityin-toto, the admittedly awkward concept of das Weltall, is viewed by Rickert as a formal possibility rather than a material reality. It is a hypothesis, or better still a postulate, based upon the heterothesis of ‘empirical reality’ and ‘ideal reality’, rather than an empirically proven, ontological thesis. It is this continuous interplay between seemingly opposite concepts which constitutes the basic dynamics in Rickert’s concept formations. It prevented him from drifting oﬀ into conceptual realism (Begriﬀsrealismus) and its inevitably static, abstract and schematic rationalism on the one hand, and into naïve empirism and its inevitably unscientiﬁc irrationalism on the other hand. Heterology is, as we shall see in Chapter Five, of crucial importance in the conceptual juxtaposition of ‘nature’ and ‘culture’, and concurrently in the methodological juxtaposition and mutual demarcation of Natural Science (Naturwissenschaft) and Cultural Science (Kulturwissenschaft) as two diﬀerent yet complementary methodologies. They are not mutually exclusive, as is often believed by the adherents of so-called Geisteswissenschaften, but can be ‘reconciled’ heterologically. The origin of Rickert’s heterology of empirical, observable and virtual, understandable realities lies, of course, in Kant’s analytic dichotomy of the noumenon, reality-in-itself that does exist but cannot be known on the one hand, and the phaenomenon on the other hand which is reality as it is perceived through our senses (Anschauung) and is then molded into knowledge by our reason (Verstand ) through the a priori categories. This dualism, however, has led to a fatal

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misunderstanding of Kant’s philosophy in the form of psychologism in epistemology and logic. Like Frege and the early Husserl,33 Rickert has systematically and perpetually rejected psychologism in epistemology and logic. Kant’s theory of the transcendental a priori as the nonempirical abode of the ‘aesthetic’ forms time and space, and the categories of reason (quality, quantity, relation, modality), driven by an ‘absolute consciousness’ (transzendentale Apperzeption), did quite understandably, yet falsely, cause the idea of psychology as the core of Kantian ‘transcendentalism’. Or phrased diﬀerently, Kant’s ‘Copernican revolution’ which claimed that ‘reality as such’ (das Ding-an-sich) does exist objectively, but can as such not be known, that, in other words, knowledge is rather a construction of reality by the a priori, ‘innate’ categories imposed, as it were, on the sense impressions, has given rise to the idea that this is in essence a psychological construction of reality. Rickert rejects this misinterpretation persistently. This is not an anti-psychological animus on his part, because he respects the psychological discipline as an important empirical science.34 Psychology is, according to him, an empirical discipline like the other (natural or cultural) sciences, and cannot therefore possibly be ‘elevated’ to the a priori status of ‘transcendentalism’. It is also, like the other sciences, a specialized and thus fragmentary discipline which cannot therefore possibly function as the foundation of a systematic philosophy. In other words, psychology should remain an empirical, scientiﬁc discipline and not pretend to provide philosophy with an alleged

33 In 1894 Frege published his in some instances rather sarcastic critique of Husserl’s book on the philosophy of mathematics of 1891, attacking its allegedly psychologistic and subjectivist approach: Gottlob Frege, ‘Rezension von: E. G. Husserl, Philosophie der Arithmetik. I’ (‘Review of: E. G. Husserl, Philosophy of Arithmetic. Vol. I’) in: Gottlob Frege, Kleine Schriften, I ‘Small Papers. Vol. I’). Angelelli (ed.), (Hildesheim, Zürich, New York: Georg Olms Verlag, 1990), pp. 179–193. Husserl adopted later an anti-psychologistic approach in his Logische Untersuchungen, Bnd I: Prolegomena zur reinen Logik, (‘Logical Investigations. Vol. I: Preface to Pure Logic’), 1900, (Tübingen: Max Niermeyer Verlag, 1968), pp. 50–192. But under the inﬂuence of Brentano’s theory of intentionality and Dilthey’s ‘descriptive psychology’ his phenomenology remained again close to a kind of psychologism which Frege and Rickert rejected radically and systematically. For a detailed analysis see Jos de Mul, De tragedie van de eindigheid. Diltheys hermeneutiek van het leven, (‘The Tragedy of Finiteness. Dilthey’s Hermeneutics of Life’), (Kampen: Kok Agora, 1993, pp. 253–266. 34 For an early example of this misinterpretation of Rickert’s logical view of psychology as an empirical science see H. A. Leenmans, De logica der geschiedenis-wetenschap van H. Rickert. Een critiek, (‘The Logic of History by H. Rickert. A Critique’), (The Hague: no publisher mentioned, 1924).

24

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nucleus or foundation, otherwise philosophy degenerates into a metaphysical kind of psychologism. Rickert was quite positivistic in this. To him, psychology was an experimental and natural-scientiﬁc discipline, as for instance developed by Wilhelm Wundt. He was consequently in disagreement with Dilthey who developed a geisteswissenschaftliche, descriptive psychology.35 This brand of hermeneutic, descriptive psychology allegedly oﬀered a foundation for the normative (i.e. moral and aesthetic) statements within the Geisteswissenschaften. This, incidentally, stands also in strong opposition to Rickert’s methodological demand to abstain from normative value-judgments.36 I shall return to Rickert’s anti-psychologism stance in Chapter Three. The two neo-Kantian schools It is customary to distinguish two neo-Kantian schools: the so-called South-West German School or, as it was also called, the Baden School, in which Wilhelm Windelband (1848–1915), Heinrich Rickert and Emil Lask (1875–1915) were the dominant thinkers, and the so-called Marburg School, which acquired fame by Hermann Cohen (1842–1918), Paul Natorp (1854–1925) and in particular Ernst Cassirer (1874–1945).37 There was not much intellectual intercourse between the two schools. In their publications cross-references are either absent, or extremely sparse.38 Neo-Kantianism is often identiﬁed with the Marburg School, but the fact is that Cohen and Natorp moved away from transcendentalism. Cohen rejected Kant’s separation of Anschauung and Verstand, claiming that knowledge emerges only from pure, creative thinking. 35 See e.g. his Ideen über eine beschreibende und zergliedernde Psychologie, (‘Ideas about a Descriptive and Dissecting Psychology’), 1894, in: Wilhelm Dilthey, Gesammelte Schriften, vol. V, (Stuttgart: Teubner; and Göttingen: Vanden Hoeck & Ruprecht, 1957, 2nd ed.), pp. 139–240. 36 Cf. Jos de Mul, o.c., pp. 206–212. 37 See Hans-Ludwig Ollig (ed.) Neukantianismus (Neo-Kantianism), (Stuttgart: Reclam, 1982). The volume contains several texts of the two neo-Kantian schools. Also: W. Flach, H. Holzhey, eds., Erkenntnistheorie und Logik im Neukantianismus (‘Epistemology and Logic in Neo-Kantianism’), (Hildesheim: Gerstenberg Verlag, 1980). This book also contains several neo-Kantian texts. 38 In Ernst Cassirer, Zur Logik der Kulturwissenschaften. Fünf Studien (‘On the Logic of Cultural Sciences. Five Studies’), 1942, (Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1961) Windelband and Rickert are only mentioned brieﬂy. Neither Rickert’s voluminous volume Die Grenzen der naturwissenschaftlichen Begriﬀsbildung which is a fundamental discussion on the logic of the historical discipline, nor his shorter Kulturwissenschaft und Naturwissenschaft are refered to at all. His critique of Rickert’s logic and methodology is proportionally sparse.

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After a return to orthodox Judaism, he moved to Berlin, where he taught at a Jewish theological seminary. Here he was more interested in religious issues of worldview than in epistemology and scientiﬁc philosophy. Natorp too moved away from transcendental philosophy in the direction of Platonism, emphasizing its mystical thinking and focusing on the subjective, concrete existence. Cassirer, who was initially under the strong inﬂuence of his teacher Cohen,39 was a proliﬁc writer, a great expert in the history of philosophy in general and of Kant’s philosophy in particular.40 Cassirer developed his neo-Kantianism into a cultural philosophy which, particularly in his celebrated Philosophie der symbolischen Formen, was closely connected with such culturalscientiﬁc disciplines as cultural anthropology and comparative religion.41 As I shall argue in the Conclusion, Cassirer was much more successful in his cultural philosophy than Rickert has been at the end of his life. Wilhelm Windelband (1848–1915) introduced the critical, yet debatable notion that Kant’s vision of Wissenschaft was too one-sidedly oriented towards and inﬂuenced by the natural sciences. In his famous

39 At the end of his life Cassirer wrote an essay commemorating the hundredth birthday of Cohen: Ernst Cassirer, ‘Hermann Cohen, 1842–1918’, in: Social Research, vol. X:2, 1943, pp. 219–232. 40 Cf. Ernst Cassirer, Kants Leben und Lehre (‘Kant’s Life and Doctrine’), 1918, (Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft; Hamburg: Felix Meiner Verlag, 2001; volume 8 of the Hamburg Edition of Cassirer’s Collected Works in 25 volumes). Cassirer also co-edited the publication of Kant’s collected works. For a complete bibliography of Cassirer see Raymond Klibansky, H. J. Paton (eds.), Philosophy and History. The Ernst Cassirer Festschrift, 1936 (New York: Harper Torchbooks, 1963), pp. 338–353. 41 Ernst Cassirer, Philosophie der symbolischen Formen (‘Philosophy of Symbolic Forms’), three volumes, vol. One: Die Sprache (‘Language’/‘Speech’), vol. Two: Das mythische Denken (‘Mythological Thought’), vol. Three: Phänomenologie der Erkenntnis (‘Phenomenology of Knowledge’), 1925, (Darmstadt: Primus Verlag, 1997). This intellectual transition took place after his move to Hamburg University in June 1919. Here he got acquainted with the famous ‘Cultural-Scientiﬁc Library Warburg’, erected by the wealthy businessman Aby Warburg. The library harbored an enormous stock of historical, cultural-anthropological and sociological books which Cassirer used intensively while writing his three volumes on the philosophy of symbolic forms. According to Paetzold, ‘Hamburg was the place where Cassirer became a cultural philosopher’. See Heinz Paetzold, Ernst Cassirer. Von Marburg to New York. Eine philosophische Biographie (‘Ernst Cassirer. From Marburg to New York. A Philosophical Biography’), (Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1995), p. 47. On Cassirer and the Warburg Library: ibid., pp. 68–80. At the end of his life, living in the United States as a refugee (New Haven, 1941–1944; New York, 1944–1945) Cassirer expanded and intensiﬁed his interests in cultural philosophy. Cf. Paetzold, o.c., pp. 191–222. See Ernst Cassirer, An Essay on Man. An Introduction to a Philosophy of Human Culture (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1944; reprint: New York: Doubleday, 1951) and Ernst Cassirer, The Myth of the State (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1946).

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inaugural address as the Rektor (Vice-President) of the University of Strasburg, 1894, he argued that one should distinguish two basic approaches to reality which leads to two logically and methodologically diﬀerent, yet not mutually exclusive sciences: Geisteswissenschaften (‘sciences of the mind’) and Naturwissenschaften (‘sciences of nature’). There is not a principal diﬀerence between these two, but they should be distinguished methodologically: the former focus on what diﬀerentiates and is unique (‘idiographic’), the latter on what is general and law like (‘nomothetic’).42 We will discuss Windelband’s theory of the demarcation of the sciences in greater detail in Chapter Five. Rickert, as we will see then, elaborates on Windelband’s theory, yet rejects the concept Geisteswissenschaft as it suggests a psychologistic approach. After all, the concept Geist (spirit, mind, consciousness) is easily identiﬁed with Seele (soul, psyche). However, Rickert’s substitution of the concept Geisteswissenschaft by Kulturwissenschaft and of the concepts ‘idiographic’‘nomothetic’ by the concepts ‘individualizing’-‘generalizing’ is, as we will see, more than just playing with words.43 Composition The following chapters are the result of a close reading and re-reading of Rickert’s publications. The main focus was on his books and less on his essays, since he incorporated the latter often verbatim in the former. I did, of course, read the essays and at times incorporated them in my discussion of Rickert’s theories, if they oﬀered additional information. It is my contention that most of the (often critical) discussions of Rickert’s writings have not been the result of a careful

42 Wilhelm Windelband, ‘Geschichte und Naturwissenschaft’ (‘History and Natural Science’), 1894, in: Präludien. Aufsätze und Reden zur Philosophie und ihrer Geschichte (‘Preludes. Essays and Lectures on Philosophy and its History’), vol. 2, (Tübingen: Mohr-Siebeck, 1915), pp. 136–160. Windelband was more a historian of philosophy than a philosopher of history. He earned fame in particular with his textbook that deservedly acquired the status of a ‘classic’, Lehrbuch der Geschichte der Philosophie (‘Textbook of the History of Philosophy’), 1891, edited and enlarged with a chapter on philosophy in the 20th century by Heinz Heimsoeth, (Tübingen: MohrSiebeck, 1957, 15th ed.). 43 It is in this context interesting to read Hempel’s essay ‘Explanation in Science and in History’, 1963, in: James H. Fetzer (ed.), The Philosophy of Carl G. Hempel. Studies in Science, Explanation, and Rationality (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001), pp. 276–296. Without mentioning them he addresses the same logical and methodological issues as Windelband and Rickert, albeit within the paradigm of analytic philosophy.

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reading and re-reading of his texts. They often discuss ideas and theories in a fragmentary manner which is not only unfair but what is worse scientiﬁcally reproachable.44 In addition critics often repeat the criticism of other critics without apparently checking these criticisms by reading Rickert’s own texts. All this does, of course, not help at all to understand what Rickert actually meant to say. Therefore I found it necessary to read and re-read him closely and follow him, as it were, step by step, trying to understand his often complex and abstract, yet never boring and bone-dry argumentations without subjecting them to hasty judgments which are by deﬁnition almost always prejudgments. I found it necessary to write this book in English. His opus magnum on the limits of Natural-Scientiﬁc concept formation which is, as we shall see in the ﬁfth chapter, an elaborate logic of historical research, has been translated into English, albeit in an abridged edition.45 His books on epistemology, methodology, logic and philosophy of values are not available in English. It is therefore hard for the Anglo-Saxon world to get acquainted with Rickert’s peculiar philosophy which at present is experiencing a modest renaissance in Europe. Hopefully, the present study may lead to more translations of Rickert’s work.46 But there is a more private reason for this English publication. I found it heuristically helpful to represent Rickert’s ideas in English and to translate quotations from Rickert into English. I would ﬁnd it extremely diﬃcult, if not impossible, to do so in the case of Hegel, Husserl or Heidegger, but to my pleasant surprise Rickert’s German was, despite the complexity of his ideas, surprisingly transparent and, apart from a few technically philosophical concepts, not at all diﬃcult to translate. The ﬁrst chapter presents a ﬁrst introduction to Rickert’s philosophy by means of a brief summary. It is meant to facilitate the reading of this book with a general overview that omits all the complex 44 A telling example presents R. G. Collingwood who in less than two pages summarizes and severely criticizes Rickert’s concept of history and his historical methodology: The Idea of History, 1946, (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1978), pp. 168–170. 45 Heinrich Rickert, The Limits of Concept Formation in Natural Science. A Logical Introduction to the Historical Sciences (abridged edition), edited and translated by Guy Oakes, o.c. 46 The books most appropriate for English translation are, in my view, the small, lucid Kulturwissenschaft und Naturwissenschaft, o.c., the also lucidly written introduction to his own philosophy Grundlegung der Philosophie, o.c., and in particular the critical and at times ironical study on vitalism which will be discussed extensively in Chapter Two: Die Philosophie des Lebens, o.c.

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details of his philosophical system. The chapter can be read as a kind of map which indicates the main roads through the thicket of Rickert’s thinking. Summaries are usually placed at the end of books. I ﬁnd it much more helpful to start with one. The second chapter deals with Rickert’s critique of Lebensphilosophie (vitalism) which he rejects in so far as it presents a set of philosophical fads and fashions. However, in this critique too he argues in terms of heterology, that is, he is not a proponent of the abstract, lifeless and rationalist philosophy most vitalists object to. Throughout his philosophical thinking and writing Rickert searches for a connection between perception and reason, between senses and mind, between estheticism and rationalism. In addition he agrees with Kant that ethics ( praktische Vernunft) has priority over thinking (theoretische Vernunft). Thinking, as we will see in the second chapter, ends up in judgments (Urteile) which are in fact acts related to values. Despite his criticism of American pragmatism he comes at distinct moments in his epistemology and philosophy of values close to a pragmatic and behaviorist position. The third chapter focuses on the most diﬃcult part of Rickert’s philosophy: his epistemology and logic which is, again heterologically, tied to his ontology and, although almost residually, to metaphysics. It is necessary to delve into his often rather cumbersome epistemological reﬂections in order to understand his philosophy of values and his logic of the historical, cultural sciences. The fourth chapter discusses his philosophy of values in which he, again heterologically, juxtaposes the observable and explainable reality of objects with the understandable and virtual reality of meanings and values. He distinguishes, as we shall see, three realms: ﬁrst the reality of objective facts, second the reality of formal values, whereas the third realm, consisting of the transcendental Ego, connects these two heterologically into a total reality. The central concept here is Aktsinn, i.e. the meaning bestowing act which ties the second realm of values to the ﬁrst realm of facts, events and objects. At this crucial point his transcendentalism results surprisingly in a theory of action. Beyond that reality lies the metaphysical world which cannot be reached by rational, scientiﬁc concepts but only suggested by symbols, similes, allegories. It lies beyond the reach of science but constitutes the coping-stone of his systematic philosophy, since it represents the ﬁnal form of reality-in-toto.

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The ﬁfth chapter discusses Rickert’s demarcation of Natural Science (Naturwissenschaft) and Cultural Science (Kulturwissenschaft) as two heterologically related approaches to reality. As in everyday life sensations and reﬂections, scientiﬁc approaches to reality are either generalizing or individualizing. The generalizing approach is essentially ahistorical, whereas the individualizing approach is essentially historical. The former aims at law-like statements, whereas the latter is rather descriptive and sensitizing. In fact, although he did not formulate it explicitly so, Rickert constructed an ideal typical continuum between two heterological opposites. On this continuum the various empirical sciences are located—some more generalizing, like physics, chemistry, or experimental psychology, some more individualizing like history and cultural sociology, others somewhere in the middle of the continuum. The sixth and ﬁnal chapter presents a discussion of Rickert’s relevance, in particular in view of the cultural sciences. There is no one-to-one, direct inﬂuence to speak of. However, in various publications there is a strong echo of his work. In some cases, there is an inﬂuence on Rickert’s thinking in return. I shall single out some of the most prominent examples of this echo and its responsive chord. Georg Simmel, Emil Lask, Gustav Radbruch, Johan Huizinga, Karl Mannheim and in particular Max Weber will be reviewed. These are not exhaustive representations and analyses of their writings but rather brief discussions of their intellectual link with Rickert’s work. The conclusion will present a personal, critical evaluation of Rickert’s oeuvre and will end with the question, what then Rickert’s relevance today actually could be.

CHAPTER ONE

A BIRD’S-EYE VIEW OF RICKERT’S PHILOSOPHY Before we turn to a representation and interpretation of Rickert’s ideas and theories, based on a close reading of his texts, it might be helpful to summarize brieﬂy the main components of his complex and at times rather abstract philosophical system. There is the happy circumstance that Rickert himself presented a couple of summaries of his ideas. To begin with, the ﬁrst chapter of his ‘General Foundation of Philosophy’ explains the main lines of his idiosyncratic thinking. Secondly, two years before his death he published ‘Fundamental Problems of Philosophy’ which reads as a recapitulation of his philosophical system, and was obviously meant as an introductory text for lay-people. Finally, at the request of a philosophical periodical he wrote a brief summary of seven pages. This document was published again in 1982.1 Although these publications have been helpful in writing the present concise summary of Rickert’s thoughts and thinking, I shall allow myself a considerable amount of interpretational liberty. The succeeding chapters will follow Rickert’s texts as closely as possible, but in this summary I shall for clarity’s sake assume some distance from them. The following points, it seems to me, provide a concise synopsis of his philosophy. (1) Rickert is not happy when his philosophy is branded ‘neoKantian’, obviously because he ﬁnds his philosophy of values and the related logic and methodology too original and authentic to be put into the context of an existing brand of philosophy. Yet, particularly in three aspects he remains a loyal follower of the great philosopher of Königsberg, namely (a) in the idea of a transcendental philosophy, (b) in the ongoing emphasis upon the distinction between form and

1 Cf. (1) Heinrich Rickert, Allgemeine Grundlegung der Philosophie I, (‘General Foundation of Philosophy. Vol. I’ (Tübingen: Mohr-Siebeck, 1921), pp. 1–49; (2) Grundprobleme der Philosophie. Methodologie, Ontologie, Anthropologie (‘Fundamental Problems of Philosophy. Methodology, Ontology, Anthropology’), (Tübingen: Mohr-Siebeck, 1934); (3) ‘Thesen zum System der Philosophie’, (‘Theses on the System of Philosophy’), in: H.-L. Ollig (ed.), Neukantianismus, (Stuttgart: Reclam, 1982), pp. 174–181.

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content, and (c) in the epistemological conviction that reality outside human consciousness (das Ding-an-sich) is irrational and thus inaccessible for rational knowledge. Rickert calls this reality a heterogeneous continuum. (a) His transcendentalism is primarily epistemological, but secondly also ontological. It has its origin in Kant’s view that reality-in-itself (das Ding-an-sich), i.e. the world of facts, objects (including other living beings) and events can as such not be known. They constitute in that respect an ‘irrational’ mass of ‘senseless’ material. But human beings experience these objects through the sense-organs, these experiences are, as it were, structured ﬁrst by the a priori forms time and space into a phenomenal Anschauung and next into a ‘rational’, intelligible order by the categories of the Verstand which function in man’s consciousness prior to any experience. We order our sense-experiences in terms of here-and-there (space) and then-now-later (time). These experiences are next ‘structured’ by means of rational categories such as quality, quantity, causality, etc. which are also part of human consciousness prior to experience. This prior-to-experience of the concepts is called ‘transcendental’. Because of this ‘subjective’ nature of the categories transcendentalism is often described in psychological terms, and because of its anti-realism (or anti-empiricism) it is identiﬁed with metaphysics. Rickert rejects both vehemently and consistently. Psychology to him is one of the empirical sciences which investigates the functions of the psyche, preferably in an experimental manner, but it cannot be the philosophical essence of epistemology, just as sociology or economics cannot assume such a philosophical position. Moreover, Rickert emphasizes cogently that philosophy is a scientiﬁc discipline which diﬀers from the other (natural and cultural) sciences in that its object of investigation is not one specialized compartment of reality, as is the case with the diﬀerent scientiﬁc disciplines, but reality-in-toto, encompassing, total reality. (b) As in Kant’s ontology and epistemology, Rickert sees concepts as formal, abstract, contentless ‘categories’ which must, as it were, be imposed on experienced contents in order to generate rational knowledge. This is, in fact, such a simple fact that we do not realize it in everyday life. After all, through the words and sentences of our language we impose on experienced realities categories which are in themselves empty (formal). The word ‘tree’ is quite general and abstract, but becomes concrete and speciﬁc when we apply it to a particular apple or cherry tree. By doing so, we in a sense put

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order on a reality which in and of itself cannot possibly be known. Through our language this chaotic mass is altered into a coherent, meaningful and valuable order. The sciences and in particular of course philosophy, repeat this procedure but now in a logically ruled procedure, called methodology. (c) Rickert emphasizes the unbridgeable gap between reality and concepts, and therefore rejects the representational logic (Abbildlogik) and its inherent realism. Reality—the world of natural objects, historical events, psychological experiences, etc.—as we experience it through our sense-organs, does not contain and exhibit any sharp boundaries. It is, as he phrases it, a heterogeneous continuum. There are ﬂuent transitions between everything that exists and occurs in reality. Not only nature, as an old saying has it, but also culture does not jump. Everything ﬂows. This is reality’s continuity. But there is still something else going on in reality: not one single human being, thing, or event is completely identical with someone else, something else or another event. There are at most some similarities between them. In other words, each component of reality has its own special, singular, individual character. Everything is diﬀerent. It is reality’s heterogeneity. Wherever we look, we will always ﬁnd this combination of the ﬂoating continuity and the individual (special, singular) heterogeneity. This is why reality as a heterogeneous continuum may be called ‘irrational’. If our concepts should represent this heterogeneous continuum, as the representational logic wants them to do, it would saddle them with an impossible task. In the language of everyday life, and more structured and logically ordered in the conceptual language of the sciences, we do not depict the complex heterogeneous continuum but, on the contrary, simplify and in a sense ‘distort’ it. We can only master it scientiﬁcally (i.e. rationally), if we separate the continuity from the heterogeneity, conceptually transforming the heterogeneous continuum into a homogeneous continuum on the one hand, and a heterogeneous discretum on the other. The former is performed by mathematics, the latter by the diﬀerent (natural and cultural) sciences. As to the latter, it all depends on the point of view, where and how such a heterogeneously discrete segment is cut out of reality-in-toto, deﬁning that speciﬁc segment as its proper object of research and concept formation. Rickert distinguishes two main points of view: the ‘generalizing’ and the ‘individualizing’ approach, respectively applied by the natural and the cultural sciences.

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(2) Rickert then defends, to begin with, the thesis that philosophy ought to be both scientiﬁc (i.e. non-metaphysical) and systematic. That is, philosophy focuses, like the other sciences on empirical reality, i.e. the reality which we experience through our senses. The scientiﬁc approach is also called by him ‘theoretical’, in contrast to the socalled ‘a-theoretical’ approaches of music, the arts, religion, eros.2 Within the orbit of the sciences philosophy is not just a science among other sciences, but occupies a relatively exalted position, since its ‘object’ of investigation is reality-in-toto, unlike the specialized natural and cultural sciences which explore distinct parts of reality. Its aim is to construct concepts which refer to das Weltall, to total reality, not just to one speciﬁc, specialized part of reality. This, of course, needs a systematic approach. The concepts and their logically coherent theories form, as it were, a network which help us to know and understand reality not only rationally (i.e. logically and not just intuitively), but also systematically (i.e. not compartmentalized, as is necessarily the case with the specialized natural and cultural sciences). Reality-in-toto cannot be reconstructed by simply adding up the specialized scientiﬁc accounts of reality, and their speciﬁc philosophies. Neither does general, systematic philosophy come about by simply adding up the philosophies of various scientiﬁc disciplines, such as legal, social, economic, political, natural philosophy. That procedure would, of course, not lead to a philosophy with its own autonomy and authenticity, its own logical and methodological space among the other sciences. Yet once more, philosophy is not just a specialized discipline alongside, or in the service of, other specialized sciences. It has, as has been remarked before, a relatively exalted position but that should not be interpreted in a Platonic or Hegelian sense. Rickert uses the following metaphor: philosophy is still the queen of the sciences, but the days of its autocratic reign are over; it reigns today as in a constitutional monarchy, i.e. in constant communication with the parliament of sciences. Philosophy, we may also say, is no longer the prima donna she was in former days, but a prima inter pares.

2

Rickert juxtaposes ‘theoretisch’ and ‘atheoretisch’ as synonyms of ‘scientiﬁc’ and ‘non-scientiﬁc’. I translate ‘atheoretisch’ literally into ‘a-theoretical’ instead of ‘nontheoretical’. Similarly, throughout this book I shall use ‘ahistorical’ as a technical term instead of ‘non-historical’.

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(3) This emphasis upon a Weltall and upon the concurrent need of a non-specialized, systematic philosophy sounds rather old-fashioned and quite passé today. However, this was already so in Rickert’s days, and he was fully aware of that! He singles out Nietzsche’s vitalism and Kierkegaard’s existentialism, and their manifold followers, as the main representatives of an anti-rational and anti-systematic ‘philosophy’. But the fragmented vision of philosophy is, he realizes, also fostered by the strong specialization of the various, natural-scientiﬁc as well as cultural-scientiﬁc disciplines each of which, if they are interested in philosophy at all, develops and promotes its own ﬁeld-speciﬁc ‘philosophy’. In opposition to all this, Rickert sticks stubbornly to his ‘total’ and ‘systemic’ approach for two main reasons. First, if one sticks to the allegedly inevitable compartmentalization of philosophy in as many specialized philosophies as there are scientiﬁc disciplines, one must answer the question what it is that justiﬁes the qualiﬁcation of their being ‘philosophies’. Or, in other words, what is the genus of which these specialized philosophies are specimens? Second, to answer this question satisfactorily general philosophy needs to possess (a) its own object of investigation and (b) its own characteristic approach to this object. If the object cannot be a compilation of the specialized objects of the empirical sciences, it must be reality-in-toto. In order to be able to investigate this ‘total’ reality, it must be systematic. That may be old-fashioned, but the question is—also nowadays— whether it is logically unsound. Rickert does realize that Weltall, reality-in-toto, is a rather problematic and hazardous concept. It smacks of Platonic metaphysics, i.e. the vision of an encompassing, overarching reality from which the empirical realities, with which we humans have to do and in which we live day by day, emanates. This is not at all what Rickert means by it. There are several passages in his writings which indicate that the envisaged reality-in-toto is a Kantian postulate which one must stick to, in order to avoid the fragmentation of philosophical thought into many specialized philosophies. It is, in other words, more of an epistemological than an ontological and metaphysical concept. It is a fact, Rickert argues rather phenomenologically, that in our daily existence we do experience reality pre-reﬂectively as a whole, i.e. in toto, and thus not in the specialized terms of the various, compartmentalizing sciences. It is then the task of the philosopher to systematize and indeed rationalize this pre-reﬂective ‘totality’ of reality, but that does not mean that he has to get lost in the quicksand of metaphysics.

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What is at stake here is, of course, the philosophical status of the Weltanschauung, i.e. the worldview. There are, Rickert argues, many worldviews which are founded upon a particular component of realityin-toto and then generalized into an encompassing, metaphysical status. Examples are Nietzsche’s ‘Life’, Kierkegaard’s ‘Existence’, Freud’s ‘Eros’, Bergson’s élan vital, etc. Rickert rejects the view of philosophy as just another metaphysical worldview, or even worse as an arbitrary compilation of existing worldviews. He rather sees his own philosophy of values as a Weltanschauungslehre, i.e. as worldview theory which reﬂects rationally and critically about human life. But this worldview theory, which constitutes, of course, an anthropology, does not oﬀer a metaphysical, normative vision of what human life should be, or ought to be all about. This, incidentally, is one of the reasons why Rickert’s philosophy did not have the emotional appeal that Nietzsche, Bergson, or Heidegger exerted—and still exert today, we may add. (4) The main aim of his philosophy is to acquire scientiﬁcally sound (‘theoretical’) knowledge of reality-in-toto. In this sense epistemology (closely linked to formal logic and methodology) has a primacy over ontology and stands apart from metaphysics. However, this is not to say that he does not engage in ontological reﬂections. On the contrary, his ideas about ‘reality’ are distinctly ontological. At the root of his ontology is the distinction between two kinds of reality, the sensible (sinnliche), explainable (Erklären) reality of the experiences and the nonsensible (unsinnliche), intelligible (Verstehen) reality of the meanings and values. (This runs, of course, parallel to the Platonic distinction of the ‘aesthetic’ and the ‘understandable’ reality—the aisthèton and the noèton—or what Hume called the ‘sensible’ vis-à-vis the ‘intelligible’ reality.) Contrary to the persistent epistemological, Cartesian dualism of body-soul (or, in German, Geist which is usually used as an equivalent for psyche, or soul), Rickert argues that reality consists of three rather than these two dimensions: next to the sensible/observable corporeal reality, consisting of material objects, and the also sensible/ observable psychic reality, consisting of psychic/conscious processes— both of which can be studied empirically and are open to causal explanation (kausales Erklären)—there is as a second realm the nonsensible, intelligible, understandable yet also ‘real’ reality of meaning (Sinn, Bedeutung) which are open to a diﬀerent kind of knowledge which is usually called understanding (Verstehen). To give an example,

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men communicate by means of language. While speaking there are physical and psychic processes involved which can be studied empirically. However, the meaning of the words are non-sensible, yet very real. They are understandable, rather than empirically measurable. The linguistic meanings constitute an autonomous reality which is demonstrated by the fact that they can continue to exist and to be commonly understood even when there is no spoken or written expression anymore. We do not need any spoken or written texts in order to understand words like ‘water’, bread’, ‘air’, etc. Rickert still adds the fact that the sensible world develops all the time, is in a constant ﬂux. We observe, for instance, how a leaf is green in the summer and turns brown in the fall. However, the meaning of the word ‘green’ never ﬂows over into ‘brown’. Words in our language have relatively permanent meanings, otherwise we would not be able to communicate at all. The meaning of the words for the three colors of the traﬃc lights cannot suddenly or gradually be changed into ‘red’, ‘white’ and ‘blue’. Meanings are, of course, not limited to linguistic words. A facial expression, a glance of the eyes, a handshake, can often ‘say more’ than words. In a shared culture we do understand (rather than cognitively know) the facial and bodily gestures of our fellow men. They are an inherent element of our daily communication. Likewise, a serious disruption of communication may occur, if one is not acquainted with the meanings of gestures in a foreign culture. The very same argument holds true for non-verbal expressions such as those of music, the arts, religion, eros, etc. This again demonstrates the fact that meanings constitute an autonomous reality vis-à-vis the sensible reality of physical and psychic objects. (5) There is an additional dimension or component of this nonsensible, intelligible reality of the meanings of words or similar expressions. Take theoretical (i.e. scientiﬁc) statements as an example. In order to be communicated at all they must, of course, possess an understandable meaning. However, we want the statement also to be true! That is, the value of truth (and its counterpart falseness) is involved. Meaningfulness and meaninglessness, sense and non-sense, are interlinked with values and counter-values. A scientiﬁc statement which is proven to be false is meaningless, and if it is true, it is meaningful. Likewise, non-theoretical expressions like music, the arts, religion, etc. contain understandable and communicable meanings,

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but represent simultaneously also values and counter-values. In other words, the non-sensible (unsinnliche) and understandable reality which Rickert distinguishes from the sensible (sinnliche) and explainable reality, consists of meanings and values. And there is an important diﬀerence between these two realities: the denial of the facts of the latter results in nothingness, in non-facts and can thus be summarily discarded from our epistemological interest; the denial of values of the former results in a counter-value which in history and society may well play a dominant role. Every ‘god’ encounters in this world somewhere and some time a ‘devil’ worshipped by people as a ‘god’. It is the task of the philosophical theory of worldviews (Weltanschauungslehre) to describe and critically analyze these ‘gods’ and ‘devils’, but it cannot decide scientiﬁcally which ‘gods’ are legitimately to be demonized, or which ‘devils’ ought to be deiﬁed. That judgment is to be made by men in speciﬁc socio-cultural circumstances consisting of institutionalized ‘meaningful conﬁgurations’ (Sinngebilde). That is still another dimension of Rickert’s theory of values, it is the judgment (Urteil ) which in the end connects the abstract and formal values to the concrete and empirical contents of daily experience, and which likewise deﬁnes objects, processes and phenomena in the empirical reality of experience as being meaningful. For this judging activity Rickert employs the neologism Aktsinn, i.e. meaning bestowing act. (6) Rickert has thus conceptually split reality in two ‘spheres’, the sensible, observable world of facts and objects and the non-sensible, understandable world of meanings and values. He cannot leave it at that because he is, as we have seen, in search of reality-in-toto conceptually ‘covered’ by a ‘total’ philosophy. There must be a third reality which reconciles the observable and the understandable realities. His ontology coincides at this point with his epistemology. Epistemologically, he argues, human knowledge consists of objects to be known and a subject that knows the objects. The German word for object is Gegenstand which means literally ‘something standing opposite to something else’. Or phrased diﬀerently, a known object needs a knowing I. But this epistemological subject, the I of the knowledge process, cannot be the human psyche or consciousness because we can have knowledge of our psyche or consciousness which then is an object again, as is the case in the specialized scientiﬁc discipline, called psychology. It is equally incorrect to call this knowing

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I a metaphysical reality, because it is impossible to conceptualize such a metaphysical reality in a scientiﬁcally satisfactory manner. In fact, Rickert claims, this I, which Kant called a ‘transcendental apperception’ or a ‘general consciousness’ (Bewusstsein überhaupt), precedes as it were each kind of sensible/observable and non-sensible/understandable objectivity, and can therefore be labeled as pro-physical rather than meta-physical. It is the immaterial and non-sensible subject, the transcendental ‘pure Ego’ which cannot be objectiﬁed, but functions as the original, pro-physical source of all knowledge. The I involved cannot be experienced indirectly, for instance by means of words, concepts or intuitions, but functions directly, neither cognitively nor emotionally, at the moment we set out to acquire knowledge of the sensible and the non-sensible reality. (7) Rickert demonstrates here a modus operandi which is characteristic of all of his philosophizing. He called it heterothesis and heterology. It is a permanent thinking and arguing in terms of contrary, yet reciprocal concepts, i.e. conceptual alternatives which clarify one another and precludes a one-sided conceptual realism. The one is always deﬁned in function of the other: transcendental I—experiential reality, subject-object, sensible/observable-intelligible/understandable, general-particular/individual, value-unvalue, natural-cultural, deadalive, mechanical-organic, etc. It seems similar to the Hegelian dialectics, but is diﬀerent in that the thesis-antithesis opposition is not ‘solved’ by a synthesis which is in its turn a thesis that calls forth its antithesis. Rickert does not ‘solve’ but maintains the tension and ﬂexibility of the thesis-antithesis dualism, until he ﬁnalizes his philosophy in a metaphysical approach of reality-in-toto. (8) The sciences, but also everyday living outside the world of the sciences, depend on digital judgments: ‘yes’ vis-à-vis ‘no’, ‘positive’ vis-à-vis ‘negative’. Men can only make such digital judgments about reality or life in terms of values in science and in daily life we are driven by interests and motives which are always related to certain values and meanings. There is, in other words, the anthropological and ontological fact of the value-relevance, or value-relatedness (Wertbezogenheit) of men which causes them to constantly relate to values (Wertbeziehung). However, there is also, Rickert emphasizes, a distinct diﬀerence between scientiﬁc and everyday life knowledge: the latter is intrinsically bound by values and their inherent norms, and

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therefore will always argue in terms of normative judgments like beautiful-ugly, kind-unkind, attractive-unattractive, etc., whereas the latter should at all costs refrain from such normative judgments, lest it violates the aim of an ‘objective’ analysis, explanation and interpretation of reality. Scientists are related to values through their interests, (thus, there is no ‘value-free’ science), but in their research, writing and teaching they should obey the scientiﬁc norm which tells them to operate ‘free from value-judgments’ (wertungsfrei ), lest they explain their own, private interests and values and not the (naturalscientiﬁc) facts and (cultural-scientiﬁc) values and norms of the objects under investigation. Indeed, since the cultural sciences deal with meanings and values as their objects of investigation the norm of Wertungsfreiheit is of special importance. We have, meanwhile, left the realm of General Philosophy and entered the world of the empirical sciences which Rickert characterized in terms of a continuum of the Natural-Scientiﬁc approach versus the Cultural-Scientiﬁc Approach. (9) In Rickert’s ontology there is the distinction between the explainable world of the senses, divided into a corporeal and a psychic reality, vis-à-vis the understandable world of meanings and values—the one being sinnlich, the other unsinnlich. These two realities need, of course, diﬀerent scientiﬁc approaches. Rickert rejects the traditional distinction of Naturwissenschaft (Natural Science) versus Geisteswissenschaft (Spiritual Science) since the latter easily leads to all sorts of vague connotations. Geist is connotated in particular with ‘psyche’ or ‘consciousness’ and may then easily lead to a psychologistic, i.e. metaphysical ﬁlling in of the idea of a Geisteswissenschaft. Rickert holds psychology in high respect but it should be kept out of philosophy, since it is an empirical science which focuses upon the sensible reality of man’s ‘inner’ experiences. (Rickert prefers to deﬁne psychology’s methodology in natural-scientiﬁc terms, as in his days Wundt did in his experimental psychology. Other social sciences too, like sociology and economics, are viewed by him primarily in terms of the Natural-Scientiﬁc, generalizing, ahistorical approach.) The counterpart of Natural Science is, according to Rickert, Cultural Science (Kulturwissenschaft), i.e. the approach to empirical reality in terms of non-empirical, historical values, norms and meanings. Natural Science and Cultural Science are usually distinguished in substantive terms of ‘science of nature’ and ‘science of culture’, the former investigating the value-free world of measurable, causally

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determined, ahistorical objects, the latter investigating the understandable world of historical values and meanings. ‘Nature’ in Kant’s elegant deﬁnition is (liberally re-phrased) the ‘world left to its own development’, while ‘culture’ rather constitutes the ‘world worked upon by men with their value-related interests and designs’. Rickert, however, is not really in favor of such a substantive diﬀerentiation of the two main groups of sciences. He rather distinguishes Natural Science and Cultural Science in the formal terms of two mutually quite diﬀerent methodologies. Natural Science then is the generalizing approach to reality which searches for general and ahistorical concepts as the building blocks of general causal laws of development, whereas Cultural Science is the individualizing approach to reality which coins individual and historically grounded concepts which are the building blocks of interpretations of particular, individual men, events, and institutions. Particular facts or objects are for Natural Science just specimens of generic concepts. When these concepts have been formulated satisfactorily (in accordance with the demand of veriﬁcation and/or falsiﬁcation), there is no need any longer to search for and investigate more individual facts or objects. In Cultural Science historical facts and objects remain relevant for the ongoing research, since the values, norms and meaning to which they are related will change and develop in time. Newly discovered historical facts or events will also contribute to the re-formulation of the cultural-scientiﬁc concepts and theories. Unlike the traditional dichotomy of Naturwissenschaft versus Geisteswissenschaft, Rickert’s methodological pair of Natural Science and Cultural Science must be seen as constructed and therefore non-empirical ends on a continuum, which is the logical space wherein the empirical sciences operate—some very close to the Natural-Scientiﬁc pole of the continuum, like chemistry, physics, astronomy, etc., others operating at the opposite pole, like the historical discipline in particular. But most social sciences, like psychology, sociology, economics, etc. will operate somewhere in between the poles, sometimes close to the Natural-Scientiﬁc end of the continuum, as in behavioristic psychology or econometrics, sometimes closer to the Cultural Scientiﬁc pole of the continuum, like cultural sociology or institutional economics. The latter are usually active in historical and comparative analyses and interpretations, rather than in a search for exact laws of development. The conclusion of this methodological demarcation of the natural and the cultural sciences is that a conﬂict of methods

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(Methodenstreit) in the social sciences is logically unnecessary. It produces, as the history of these sciences has demonstrated, more noise than information. (10) Rickert distinguishes, as we have seen, three diﬀerent, yet interlinked realms (Reiche): ﬁrst the observable (sinnliche) realm of facts, objects and events, investigated by the specialized research of the (natural and cultural) sciences; second, the understandable (unsinnliche) realm of values and meanings; third, the pro-physical realm of the transcendental Ego which functions, as it were, as the motor of the knowledge process. These three realms constitute ontologically the reality-in-toto which is the proper object of philosophy as a transcendental, systematic and scientiﬁc discipline, next to the various empirical and specialized (natural- and cultural-) scientiﬁc disciplines. Yet, Rickert realizes, this ontology is still not really ‘total’ and not really ‘systematic’ since it still fragments the world into three components. What can be said about the fundamental anthropological quest for a meaningful life, for a coherent and overarching view of the world, of history and of the future—i.e. a worldview that oﬀers an open and positive perspective on life and history? Or phrased diﬀerently, what is the logical status of a full-ﬁlled (voll-ended )3 existence? These are no longer ontological reﬂections but clear-cut metaphysical yearnings which, however, may not be neglected, if one aims at a truly coherent and total vision of reality and history. To sum up, metaphysics which Rickert carefully keeps out of his transcendental philosophy is at the end introduced as a kind of copingstone without which philosophy would not be able to remain faithful to its mission of focusing philosophically on reality-in-toto. However, he wants to remain faithful also to the scientiﬁc nature of this total and systematic philosophy. These two motives exclude each other and there is no heterology that can solve this dilemma. As we shall see in Chapter Four, he takes refuge in the theory that metaphysics is epistemologically and ontologically indispensable as a postulate and that it can only be conceptualized by means of symbols, similes and allegories, not by theoretical, i.e. scientiﬁc concepts. Naturally, the ideas of Kant come to mind here. In any case, the metaphysical

3 Instead of the word ‘fulﬁlled’ I maintain Rickert’s neologistic German concept ‘voll-ended’, translating it into ‘full-ﬁlled’.

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reality-in-toto thus presents an atheoretical reality, comparable to religion, ethics, literature, and the arts. This is a remarkable conclusion, because at the end of his ontological and epistemological journey Rickert’s theoretical philosophy ﬁnds its fulﬁllment in an atheoretical, metaphysical Beyond, where knowledge is superseded by faith—an non-religious, agnostic type of faith.

CHAPTER TWO

CRITIQUE OF VITALISM Das, was lebt, ist etwas anderes als das, was denkt. Gottfried Benn1

Irrationalism and intellectualism rejected2 Rickert publishes in 1920 a small volume which provides a concise exposition as well as a ﬁerce critique of what he calls in the subtitle ‘the fashionable philosophical currents of our time’. It is a curious treatise in which he carefully and at times ironically analyses the various currents of philosophical thought which are usually lumped together in the concept of Lebensphilosophie, that is ‘philosophy of life’ or vitalism.3 Diﬀerent thinkers like Nietzsche, Bergson, Simmel, Dilthey, James and Scheler pass Rickert’s revue, yet it is not so much these individual, often quite diﬀerent thinkers he is interested in, but rather the convergence of their ideas as they pertain to their common

1 ‘That which lives diﬀers from that which thinks.’ Gottfried Benn, ‘Pallas’, in: Provoziertes Leben. Ein Auswahl aus den Prosaschriften, (‘Provoked Life. A Selection from the Essays’), (Berlin: Ullstein Bücher, nr. 54, 1961), p. 165. Benn calls this ‘die progressive Zerebralisation’ (‘the progressive cerebralisation’). 2 This dilemma refers exclusively to the world of sciences, including Rickert’s brand of scientiﬁc philosophy. In an essay on science and Christianity he defends the thesis that Christian faith is essentially irrational as it consists in essence of the intimate relationship of the single soul with a personal, loving God which is, in my view, a typically Lutheran-pietistic conception of faith. Science, on the other hand, is, according to Rickert, due to the impact on European thought of Greek philosophy intellectualistic and of Roman law rationalistic. Cf. Heinrich Rickert, ‘Christentum und Wissenschaft unter geschichtsphilosophischen Gesichtpunkten’, (‘Christianity and Science from the Points of View of the Philosophy of History’), in: Christentum und Wissenschaft, 6, 1930, (edited by R. Winkler, H. Sasse), pp. 361–376. The essay is mainly adopted from the seventh chapter of his book Kant als Philosoph der modernen Kultur, (‘Kant as Philosopher of Modern Culture’), (Tübingen: Mohr-Siebeck, 1924), pp. 76–93: ‘Griechentum, Römertum, Christentum’. 3 Like so many German concepts Lebensphilosophie is diﬃcult to translate into English. It means literally ‘philosophy of life’ but that is quite awkward. Although I realize this is not optimal, I shall use the concept vitalism as the English variant of Lebensphilosophie.

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irrationalist attack on the alleged intellectualism of German Idealism.4 It was, in particular, Dilthey who set the tone for the vitalism which Rickert rejects. For instance, when he wrote: ‘Life then is the fundamental fact, which must form the starting point of philosophy. It is what is known from the inside, it is that behind which one cannot retreat. Life cannot be brought before the tribunal of reason.’5 However, Rickert’s book on the Philosophy of Life is not just a simple and simplistic defense of rationalism. In a sense he sympathizes with the basic idea of vitalism, namely that ideas, thoughts and concepts do not emerge from an abstract world but from experiences, or, if one wants to phrase it that way, from life. Knowledge, after all, originates in sense impressions which are as such not rational by nature. They emerge, so to say, in the mêlée of everyday life. These impressions, however, according to Kant are put into a rational order by the a priori forms of time and space and by the likewise a priori categories of thought (Verstand ). Human reason constructs, as it were, reality epistemologically, including everything that stands for the concept of ‘life’. Rickert follows, as we shall see in the following chapters, the epistemological path systematically in what he calls his ‘transcendental philosophy’. The book on vitalism presents a helpful introduction to his philosophical thoughts and convictions. He writes it for a broad audience, which has the advantage that it lacks the labyrinthine sentences and thought constructions which were customary for most of his contemporary philosophical colleagues—and, I should add in all honesty, for Rickert himself at times as well. Its light touch, larded with witty, at times ironical humor, adds to the accessibility of his ideas. His expositions of the vitalistic theories and ideas he emphatically disagrees with, are always clear-cut and fair. His critique is, though at times quite sharp, at all times to the point. The most important thing is, 4 Heinrich Rickert, Die Philosophie des Lebens. Darstellung und Kritik der philosophischen Modeströmungen unserer Zeit, (‘The Philosophy of Life. Exposition and Critique of the Fashionable Currents of Contemporary Philosophy’), 1920, (Tübingen: Mohr-Siebeck, 1922). 5 ‘Leben ist nun die Grundtatsache, die den Ausgangspunkt der Philosophie bilden muss. Es ist das von innen Bekannte, es ist dasjenige, hinter welches nicht zurückgegangen werden kann. Leben kann nicht vor den Richterstuhl der Vernunft gebracht werden.’ Wilhelm Dilthey, Der Aufbau der geschichtlichen Welt in den Geisteswissenschaften, (‘The Construction of the Historical World in the Humanities’), 1926, B. Groethuysen ed., Gesammelte Schriften, Bd. VII, (‘Collected Publications’, vol. VII), (Stuttgart: Teubner Verlagsgesellschaft; Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1973), p. 261.

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that this critical analysis of vitalism’s irrationalism provides a ﬁrst introduction to Rickert’s philosophy of values which will be discussed in greater details in Chapter Four. Rickert makes it quite clear that he too—like Nietzsche whom he admired passionately as a young man and still read in his later years,6 or like Bergson, Dilthey, and Simmel—dislikes ‘rationalism’ or ‘intellectualism’ as the stale remnants of the Enlightenment, locked up in a fossilized academic dogmatism. Philosophy he believes, in concordance with the representatives of vitalism, should not evaporate in abstract clouds of concepts and theories which are separated from reality as it is lived and experienced by human beings. As much as he still believes in the power and relevance of German Idealism, he agrees with its vitalistic critics that it has often degenerated into a dry, ‘dead’ academism and stale dogmatism. However, philosophy, Rickert maintains, ought to remain scientiﬁc. That means, in his view it ought to be rational. In this respect he departs from the vitalists quite radically. Systematic and surrealistic philosophy Today, after the onslaught of logical positivism, the wide acceptance of linguistic philosophy, the ontological revolution brought about by Heidegger, and the irrational mêlée of so-called post-modernism, it sounds rather old-fashioned, if not outdated, to learn that Rickert maintains, even against the odds of his own days, that philosophy is systematic by nature, or is nothing. However, on closer scrutiny, this idea of Rickert may be less outdated than one is inclined to believe at ﬁrst sight. To begin with, he is in search of a scientiﬁc philosophy. If philosophy is a scientiﬁc enterprise, as Rickert emphatically believes, the question arises what its own object of investigation is and how it relates to the specialized, empirical sciences. Empirical reality, i.e. the reality 6 Ibid., p. 179f, footnote 1. As a young student in the summer of 1886, Rickert confesses, he read ‘Zarathustra’ with glowing enthusiasm (‘mit glühender Begeisterung’), in a time when Nietzsche was still unknown. He was then often warned not to overestimate Nietzsche, but ‘even today I return time and again to his works’ (‘und noch jetzt greife ich immer wieder nach seinen Werken’). Yet, he is not able to range Nietzsche among the ‘great philosophers’, as he has failed to address the ‘timeless problems of philosophy’ (‘die zeitlosen Probleme der Philosophie’). For other reasons as well, we shall see presently.

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we experience through our sense-organs, is carefully analyzed by various scientiﬁc disciplines—by the so-called natural sciences (Naturwissenschaften) ﬁrst and foremost, and subsequently, where these sciences run up against their limits, as in the case of the non-empirical values, by the cultural sciences (Kulturwissenschaften). According to Rickert, these two groups of sciences, as we shall see in Chapter Five, must be seen on a continuum rather than in mutual opposition or even exclusion. These empirical scientiﬁc disciplines necessarily compartmentalize reality, since they focus on reality in terms of their own, speciﬁc methods of research and logic of concept formation. Philosophy then is an additional and autonomous Wissenschaft which tries to approach reality not in a compartmentalized but in a total, systematic manner. Various scientiﬁc disciplines—physics, chemistry, astronomy, psychology, sociology, economics, history, etc.—dissect, as it were, reality into distinct parts or components. That is logically legitimate, Rickert argues, but reality as a whole is more than and diﬀerent from the sum of these parts. ‘Each of them (distinct disciplines, ACZ) covers, according to its conception, only a part of the world. The whole is something else than a mere stringing together of its parts.’7 Rickert warns against the devastating eﬀect, if philosophy followed this compartmentalization and cut itself up into specialized philosophies, such as philosophy of biology, of physics, of psychology, of sociology, of history, etc. The consequence of such a fragmentation, Rickert adds, would in the end of the day be an unsatisfactory kind of relativism, since these fragmented, empirical disciplines and their philosophies would have no access to shared and guiding values and norms. Or, in other words, scientiﬁc disciplines and their specialized philosophies are inherently unable to forge and formulate guiding values and norms. In the colloquial terms of today, a scientiﬁcally and philosophically compartmentalized world would yield a culture ruled by the dictum ‘anything goes’. In such a fragmented world theories could not possibly be more than sets of aphorisms.8 Naturally, Nietzsche, the great

7

‘Jede von ihnen behandelt ihrem Begriﬀ nach nur einen Teil der Welt, und das Ganze ist etwas anderes als die blosse Aneinanderreihung seiner Teile.’ Ibid., p. 13. 8 Heinrich Rickert, Allgemeine Grundlegung der Philosophie, (Tübingen: Mohr-Siebeck, 1921), p. 2. The ﬁrst section of the ﬁrst chapter deals with Rickert’s ideas about the systematic nature of philosophy. He indicates clearly that he is aware of the

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master of aphorisms, is then the leading and inspiring philosopher. In such a world, it does not make any sense whatsoever to ask what reality-in-toto is and how it could be conceptualized, how it could be ‘brought under’ rational concepts.9 In opposition to this relativism, Rickert launches the formal and absolute values, such as Truth, Justice, the morally Good, etc., which however become ‘real’ and then also ‘historically relative’ in judgments. Judgments of historical facts, events and objects render the formal and absolute values ‘empirical’, ‘real’, ‘concrete’. This is discussed in more details in the next two chapters. At this point it suﬃces to mention the fact that Rickert actually combines an ‘idealist’ view of absolute, formal and nonrelative values with a ‘realist’ view of the ‘realization’ of these forms in historical, empirical facts, events and objects. This realization takes place, as we shall see later, through judgments and their connected acts.10 In any case, the vitalistic relativism is in his view too facile, too superﬁcial, too unphilosophical. In opposition to this philosophical compartmentalization, Rickert coins and applies the concept of Weltall, reality-in-toto, the encompassing reality. It is the proper object of truly philosophical knowledge. The Weltall, reality-in-toto, not cut up by scientiﬁc specialisms, is in a sense a super-reality, a sur-reality which can of course not be experienced as such, i.e. in toto. It is rather posited as an analytic postulate, as a kind of conceptual and analytic, non-empirical canopy which overarches the multiple realities of the various, specialized, scientiﬁc disciplines. Reality-in-toto represents conceptually the core of the undivided and indivisible reality which must be assumed, because without it there could not be any specialization or compartmentalization to speak of. It cannot be experienced by the sense-organs, it can not be investigated empirically by the sciences, it is in this sense metaphysical. Yet, it must be there as a postulate. Rickert goes one step further and comes fact that also in his days the anti-systematic animus was rather fashionable. He refers to Nietzsche, Kierkegaard and Bergson, but also to romantic artists like Oscar Wilde, who in diﬀerent words and tones attacked the alleged rationalism and ‘lifeless’ intellectualism of each system. 9 ‘Unter einem Begriﬀ bringen’, literally ‘bringing under a concept’, is a typically neo-Kantian formula which gives expression to the idea that reality as it objectively is—das Ding-an-sich—cannot be grasped cognitively without concepts. In the acquisition of knowledge concepts are imposed on reality. 10 This point was missed by Maurice Mandelbaum who accused Rickert of relativism in his otherwise insightful study The Problem of Historical Knowledge. An Answer to Relativism, 1938, (New York: Harper Torchbooks, 1967), pp. 119–147.

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very close to vitalism, when he adds that in the routines of daily existence we do experience life in an integrated manner, not divided according to the diﬀerent natural and cultural sciences. Philosophy formalizes and systematizes this daily experience. In this sense, Rickert’s vision of a systematic philosophy resembles the artistic current of surrealism.11 The diﬀerence is, of course, that philosophy is theoretical (scientiﬁc), whereas surrealism as an art form is atheoretical (aesthetic). It should be kept in mind that vitalism which originated in the second half of the 19th century but came to intellectual prosperity around the First World War originated sociologically in the political turmoils of Europe. The rational ideals of the Enlightenment, inspired by such values as freedom, autonomy, tolerance, and solidarity were shattered by the political realities of class strife, war and revolution. The First World War was in a sense the complete demise of rationality. This war and the ensuing economic crisis at the end of the 1920’s shattered the previously relatively sheltered lives of Rickert’s compatriots. The Weimar Republic stands out as an example of a society characterized by political, societal and cultural compartmentalization. It collapsed eventually under the fragmented politics of various parties and movements, while its culture exploded, as it were, in a dazzling plethora of artistic and intellectual expressions. They all had one thing in common: they lacked each form of system, coherence, order, and tradition.12 It stands to reason that such a fragmented polity, society and culture was vulnerable. It proved to be defenseless against the onslaught of fascism and Nazi totalitarianism. Even Rickert, philosophically rooted in neo-Kantian rationalism, fell prey to it.13 11 The concept of surrealism and its synonym surnaturalism were for the ﬁrst time used in literature by Apollinaire in the introduction to his play Les mamelles de Tirésias, (‘The Breasts of Tiresias’), 1919. It refers to a super-realtiy which is not bound by the limits of the experienced, empirical reality. This ﬁts Rickert’s ideas well. Yet, in the arts surrealism then began to refer to the willful exclusion of the mind and of logical reasoning in favor of explorations of the unconscious, of dreams, and of black humor. André Breton’s Manifeste du surréalisme (1924) gives expression to this kind of subjectivism which erupted vehemently in the manifestations of Dadaism. Breton’s subjectivism was also strongly inﬂuenced by psychology and psychoanalysis. Psychologism and thus Breton’s brand of surrealism was alien to Rickert’s unemotional rationalism, although his brand of neo-Kantian transcendentalism seems to come close to it again. In any case, Breton and his fellow surrealists were more inﬂuenced by Freud’s psychoanalysis than by neo-Kantian transcendentalism as was the case with Rickert. 12 Cf. Peter Gay, Weimar Culture. The Outsider as Insider, (New York: Harper & Row Publishers, 1968), in particular chapter IV: ‘The Hunger for Wholeness: Trials of Modernity’, pp. 70–101. Also: Otto Friedrich, Before the Deluge, (New York: Harper & Row Publishers, 1972). 13 See Hans Sluga, Heidegger’s Crisis. Philosophy and Politics in Nazi Germany, (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1993), pp. 93, 98–100. He joined the right-wing German Philosophical Society, and contributed to its journal, erected and led by

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Rickert, trained in the Kantian tradition, rejects the so-called Abbildungslogik, that is the representational logic which views words, concepts, or theories as pictures of reality. In this ‘logic’ truth is measured by the realistic quality of the concepts and theories. Most vitalists hold on to this view, since they long for concepts and theories which are ‘true to life’. Indeed, in this view theoretical truth is not dependent on the rules of formal logic and the results of empirical research. It rather depends on the correspondence of concepts and theories with life—life which is experienced. Rickert rejects this type of ‘logic’ vehemently. Empirical reality is not just grasped by sense impressions. In daily life, for instance, we ﬁlter and order our experiences and sense impressions through language—through concepts and names that we attribute to things, events and beings. Language, according to Rickert, is in essence a reduction of the complexity of the world. In fact, there are two types of such complexity reducing words, names and concepts. For practical reasons we always reduce the complexity of reality by the use of generalizing concepts, that is, by means of generic species names (Gattungsnamen) which order individual objects (things, persons, events, etc.) according to their shared qualities, as specimens of general types. Or we order them in terms of individualizing proper names (Eigennamen) which rather focus on their unique and indivisible, that is individual qualities. This is still a pre-scientiﬁc kind of conceptualization, in which we, as speaking human beings, engage pre-reﬂectively and arbitrarily. In the natural and cultural sciences this conceptual ordering and reduction of complexity is realized in a systematic and logically cogent manner.14 But Rickert still adds another dimension to this. The world is not just the object of philosophy as the co-coordinating science of sciences, one also expects philosophy to elucidate man’s position in it. What the scientiﬁc disciplines cannot oﬀer, general philosophy should oﬀer. That is, systematic philosophy is also a philosophical anthropology, as it ought to demonstrate what man’s position in the world is, and what the meaning of his life is or could be. That, however,

his former student Bruno Bauch who was a devoted Nazi until his death in 1942. Sluga, pp. 82–85, 92–95, 164–167, 210–214. 14 Ibid., p. 7. The dynamics of generalization and individualization in everyday life human cognition is broadened by Rickert into a basic categorization and logic of the sciences and humanities. We shall discuss all this in more details in Chapter Five.

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is only possible, if we know what the values are that provide meaning to what we do and are in the world. Moreover, the specialized scientiﬁc disciplines are by deﬁnition limited in time. They either neutralize time, as in the case of the natural sciences which in actual fact are ahistorical, or they pin down time to the past, as in history, or the here-and-now, as in the social sciences. Philosophy with its focus on values transcends such limits of time, introduces eternity as a philosophical problem. After all, human evaluations are historical and thus time-bound, but the values to which these evaluations refer—truth, beauty, justice, the good, etc.—are timeless, ahistorical and in this sense eternal.15 If we lived without language, without names and concepts, we would experience reality as a chaos, as an irrational mêlée of sense impressions, as a congeries of meaningless fragments. But when we are able to order these bits and pieces into a meaningful whole linguistically, we will be able in principle to experience and understand reality as a meaningful cosmos. That is, in other words, its heuristic function. Philosophy should follow this heuristic path of everyday language. If it is systematic and general, philosophy will be able to contribute to such a sense of meaning and order: ‘Reality is not at all a “world” yet, as it ﬁrst meets us before we understand it systematically. It is rather a congeries of fragments or a chaos. It is only after we have ordered its components that something emerges which we call the cosmos. Only the system makes it possible that for us the world-chaos develops into a world-cosmos. In this respect one could say that each philosophy should have the form of a system.’16 Philosophy should not want to accomplish more, but as a universal approach its intentions should not be less. How much it is really able to accomplish, Rickert adds wisely, is a diﬀerent question. Despite their widely diﬀerent approaches and conceptualizations, vitalists share one basic insight—that of Life as the overarching concept which is viewed and treated as an encompassing principle (Weltallprinzip). With the help of this principle not only the various 15

Rickert, Die Philosophie des Lebens, p. 13. ‘So wie die Wirklichkeit uns zuerst gegenübertritt, bevor wir sie systematisch begreifen, ist sie überhaupt noch keine “Welt”, sondern eine Anhäufung von Bruchstücken oder ein Chaos. Erst indem wir ihre Teile ordnen, entsteht das, was wir den Kosmos nennen. Das System allein ermöglicht es also, dass aus dem Weltchaos für uns der Weltkosmos wird, und insofern kann man sagen, muss jede Philosophie die Form des Systems haben.’ Rickert, o.c., p. 14. 16

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sciences and the various philosophical traditions are usually criticized as being ‘lifeless’, if not ‘dead’, but it is also claimed that all value problems can be solved through it. In this double sense the claims of the vitalists are quite universal and systematic. Yet—and this is their paradox—vitalists ﬁercely reject the idea of a philosophical system! In fact, vitalism is anti-systematic by deﬁnition. Systems are, vitalists claim repeatedly, stiﬀ, inﬂexible, rigid, ‘lifeless’ things. Life is always on the move, is an ever changing, thoroughly ﬂexible process. Rickert summarizes this almost ‘post-modernist’ vision of the vitalists as follows: ‘Just one thing must be missing (in vitalism, ACZ) which seemed to belong to each true philosophy: the form of the system. The system is in all conditions something stiﬀ, something established, something curdled. It therefore stands in hostile opposition to permanently ﬂoating and streaming life. Thus, the vitalist is not allowed to think systematically in the traditional sense of the word. (. . .) His thinking has to cling to the rhythm and dynamics of a never resting life. (. . .) Like the distinction of form and content, that of chaos and cosmos disappears for vitalists. Life is both at once. The ongoing stream of life itself is the organizing and organized world, because its structure consists of ﬂowing and streaming, and in this respect the world does at the same time not ‘exist’.’17

Intuitionism and biologism As Rickert realizes, Lebensphilosophie is, as we say today, a black box concept containing many often quite diﬀerent and even contradictory ideas. For the sake of clarity he reduces this complexity by the introduction of two main types of vitalism: intuitionism and biologism.18 17

‘Nur eines muss ihr fehlen, was bisher zu jeder echten Philosophie zu gehören schien: die Form des Systems. Das System ist nämlich unter allen Umständen etwas Starres, Festgewordenes, Geronnenes und steht daher dem stets ﬂiessenden und strömenden Leben fremd, ja feindlich gegenüber. Im alten Sinn systematisch darf also der Lebensphilosoph nicht denken. (. . .) Sein Denken hat sich der Rhythmik und Dynamik des nie ruhenden Lebens anzuschmiegen. (. . .) Wie der Unterschied von Form und Inhalt, so fällt auch der von Kosmos und Chaos für sie fort. Das Leben is beides zugleich. Der ﬂutende Lebensstrom selbst ist die gestaltende und die gestaltete Welt, denn ihre Gestalt besteht im Fliessen und Strömen, und sie “besteht” insofern zugleich auch nicht.’ Ibid., p. 16. 18 Rickert uses the concepts ‘vitalism’ and ‘biologism’, but since I use ‘vitalism’ as a translation of Lebensphilosophie I rather speak of ‘intuitionism’ and ‘biologism’. These are, of course, but names which is not problematic as long as one applies them consistently.

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The ﬁrst one is broad, encompassing and in many respects rather vague, the second is restricted and more or less clear, if only because it stems from biology as a science. Yet, many vitalists managed to come up with a combination of intuitionism and biologism. Intuitionism then deﬁnes the notion of life primarily in terms of an immediate, non-reﬂective, intuitive way of experiencing reality. It is emphasized by intuitionism that cognitive concepts (Begriﬀe) by which one grasps reality, do not really yield true knowledge of reality. Such concepts, it is claimed, stand in opposition to the ever streaming and thus changing process of life which human beings are inherently part of. Cognitive concepts are ‘frozen’, ‘dead’, ‘lifeless’ pictures of reality which is conceived of as a ‘frozen’, ‘dead’, ‘lifeless’ objectivity separated from human subjectivity. They resemble, as Bergson once remarked, ready-made, oﬀ-the-peg clothes. However, if one focuses primarily and constantly on life, one will need to think, speak and argue in terms of a unity of subjectivity and objectivity, of thinking and living, of reﬂection and action. Vitalist concepts resemble clothes made to measure. One is inclined to view the inﬂuence of Arthur Schopenhauer on this point. Schopenhauer reformulated Kant’s distinction between the noumenon as the thing-in-itself and the phaenomenon as the imagination of the thing-in-itself: the noumenon is, according to Schopenhauer, the metaphysical will which we experience directly in our drives and desires but which is at work in all of reality, the inorganic world included; the phaenomenon is the imagination of the noumenon. Schopenhauer then argues that the will is a will to live, but it is a cosmic and ‘blind’ will without values and norms. Since it can never be gratiﬁed, it is a source of suﬀering. This will diﬀers from and is independent of human knowledge, or intellect, or cognition. Moreover, the will is the primary, knowledge the secondary force: ‘the will is not determined by knowledge, but knowledge by the will.’19 Knowledge is thus, as it were, driven by this ‘blind’, non-rational, cosmic force which is not alien to us, because we are voluntary, mentally and physically acting beings. The act of the will is the act of the body. In fact, the body is nothing else than the objectiﬁed will.20

19 ‘also nicht [. . . .] Wille durch Erkenntnis bedingt sei; wiewohl Erkenntnis durch Wille.’ Arthur Schopenhauer, Über den Willen in der Natur, (‘On the Will in Nature’), Zürcher Ausgabe. Werke in zehn Bänden, Kleinere Schriften I, (Zürich: Diogenes, 1977), p. 203. 20 Arthur Schopenhauer, Die Welt als Wille und Vorstellung, (‘The World as Will and Imagination’), ibid., Vol. I:1, 1 para. 18, p. 143: ‘ja, dass der ganze Leib nichts Anderes, als der objektivirte, d.h. zur Vorstellung gewordene Wille ist.’

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Simmel argues in a perceptive book on both philosophers that Nietzsche’s view of life was an optimistic one, based on a sense of the festive and permanent evolution of life, whereas Schopenhauer’s view was rather gloomy since the will to life could never reach its fulﬁllment, resulting in suﬀering and a deep sense of boredom.21 Nietzsche’s view of life’s evolution was not teleological, i.e. there was not a ﬁnal apotheosis, no ﬁnal end. Life’s aim was its very own enrichment, its Dionysian intensiﬁcation. Its ethos was immoralistic. In contrast, Schopenhauer’s will to live was rather amoralistic, as it was valueless, normless and aimless—a ‘blind’ force. The best man can hope for is the discontinuance of the will, either in radical asceticism or mysticism, or in the nothingness of nirvana or death. Rickert discusses Schopenhauer brieﬂy as one of the intellectual predecessors of the Philosophie des Lebens and entrusts his legacy with a penetrating inﬂuence on many vitalists. Yet, strictly speaking Schopenhauer’s philosophy was more a philosophy of anti-life (of boredom, stagnation, nothingness, death) than a philosophy of life (of creativeness, evolution, completion, anti-death). Nietzsche’s Dionysian enjoyment of life, therefore, had a much greater impact on the Philosophie des Lebens.

According to Rickert, intuitionist vitalism declares das Leben, life, as ‘the authentic “essence” of the world-in-toto and declares it simultaneously as the proper organ of its comprehension. Life itself should philosophize from life without the help of other concepts. Such a philosophy should then be experienced immediately.’22 This is a seemingly awkward rather redundant formulation: life is the essence of reality and can only be understood by life which is philosophically to be experienced immediately, i.e. intuitively and lively. Rickert phrases it that way on purpose. Vitalism, he means to say, is monistic and logically redundant, as it starts from the autonomy of life which does not acknowledge something else outside or beyond life. Life is measured by life, and can only be grasped intuitively by immersing oneself in life. One of the attractions of vitalism, Rickert adds ironically, is the emotionally appealing variety of the word Leben as it occurs in various emotionally gratifying verbs: sich ausleben (to live it up), erleben

21 Georg Simmel, Schopenhauer und Nietzsche. Ein Vortragszyklus, (‘Schopenhauer and Nietzsche. A Cycle of Lectures’), (München, Leipzig: Duncker & Humblot, 1920), the ﬁrst lecture, pp. 1–19. 22 ‘Man erklärt das Leben für das eigentliche “Wesen” des Weltalls und macht es zugleich zu Organon seiner Erfassung. Das Leben selber soll aus dem Leben heraus ohne Hilfe anderer Begriﬀe philosophieren, und eine solche Philosophie muss sich dann unmittelbar erleben lassen.’ Ibid., p. 5.

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(to experience), sich einleben (to immerse oneself ), mitleben (to sympathize with). In particular, life’s opposite—death—gives weight to the notion of life in the vitalist’s view of the world: ‘Only what is alive dies, and what has died has died out and is actually dead.’23 Note again, Rickert’s ironic use of a blatantly redundant formulation! In particular the cliché expression Erlebnis—“experience”—invites his derision. It is, he says, so hackneyed ‘that it is not suﬃcient enough anymore. Therefore, one believes it essential to advance into the notion of a primordial experience, which apparently is an even livelier experience than the ordinary one.’24 In any case, the word ‘experience’, Rickert continues, can actually not be used anymore, and is therefore often written between inverted commas. It lacks by now any sensible meaning: ‘Not rarely does it mean an empty phrase and serves as a cover up for thoughtlessness.’25 Vitalism has deeply penetrated into the arts, as is apparent, Rickert adds, in expressionism, but also in the religious life of his (and, one could add, also our) day. In expressionism the artist searches for authentic expressions which focus on individual originality rather than remaining faithful to the alleged coercion of artistic schools and forms. In religion mystic or emotional experiences are sought for, and opposed to doctrines and ‘lifeless’ religious language and ‘dead’ dogmatisms. But—and this has Rickert’s special interest—vitalism has in particular penetrated into the specialized sciences. The concept of ‘nature’, often tied to that of ‘the organic’, is revitalized and contrasted to a materialist and mechanistic notion of it. It is hard to fathom, Rickert asserts, how the natural sciences could be conceptualized in terms of these vitalist notions. What is one to understand by ‘lively physics’? Up till now, Rickert mocks, a ‘lively mathematics’ has not yet been introduced by the vitalists, but mathematics is anyhow not cherished by most proponents of ‘lively’ sciences.26

23 ‘Nur das Lebendige stirbt, und das Gestorbene allein ist abgestorben und im eigentlichen Sinne tot.’ Ibid., p. 6. 24 ‘. . . zumal der Ausdruck ‘Erlebnis’ ist allerdings bereits so abgegriﬀen, dass er nicht mehr genügt und man daher zum ‘Urerlebnis’ glaubt vordringen zu müssen, das wohl ein noch lebendigeres Erlebnis als das gewöhnliche sein soll.’ Ibid., p. 7. 25 ‘Nicht selten bedeutet es eine leere Phrase und dient zum Deckmantel für Gedanklenlosigkeit.’ Idem. 26 Ibid., p. 9. See also p. 37, where he calls the idea of a ‘lively mathematics’ absurd.

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Not surprisingly, vitalism also penetrated into ethics: Lebensethik (life ethic) it is called. It bases ethical ideals on life. We should, according to this ethic, experience as much as possible, and we should lead our lives as lively as possible in all directions: live and let live. Or, as Rickert phrases it: ‘Live! That is the new categorical imperative. Life acquires ethical signiﬁcance only, if it is led to the apex of liveliness and if it is run through by life in all its extensions.’27 Weber’s concept of a rather emotional Gesinnungsethik—ethic of ultimate ends—as opposed to the much more rational Verantwortungsethik—ethic of responsibility—is not mentioned by Rickert, but comes to mind immediately.28 The main problem of vitalism is the fact that it applies the concept of life to everything and everybody in which case it runs completely empty and indiﬀerent. It is next contrasted to the allegedly ‘dead’ concepts of the specialized sciences and general, rational, non-vitalist philosophy. A lively organism, Rickert counters, is admittedly not a mechanism, yet there is nothing wrong with attempts to construct physical or chemical concepts in order to know empirically how an organism functions. All that is needed is the basic awareness that (organic, inorganic or socio-cultural) reality is logically diﬀerent from the conceptualizations of that reality. Rickert, in other words, rejects vitalism’s monism and defends cognitive dualism. What lives is not just diﬀerent from what thinks, there is also a logically fundamental gap between what is and what thinks! Or in other words, there is no direct correspondence between subjective and objective reality, nor is there a direct connection between thinking and being. In daily life as well as in science and philosophy we think, speak and experience in terms of words, names and concepts, and these are not ‘dead’ things but the very coordinates of our experiences, emotions and thoughts. Life too can not be experienced directly and intuitively, but is as it were mediated by language, i.e. by words, names and concepts. ‘Life’ to begin with is such a concept. Vitalists would not be able to experience life without the concept of life! Moreover, by means of words, names and concepts we order the complexity, (which in and of itself is chaotic), of reality, i.e. nature,

27 ‘Lebe! so lautet der neue kategorische Imperativ. Ethische Bedeutung gewinnt das Leben nur, wenn es zum Gipfel der Lebendigkeit geführt und in seiner ganzen Breite vom Leben durchströmt wird.’ Ibid., p. 11. 28 Max Weber, ‘Politik als Beruf ’, (‘Politics as a Vocation’), 1919, in: Gesammelte Politische Schriften, (München: Mohr-Siebeck, 1971), pp. 551–560.

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culture, history, and thus create conceptually a cosmos in which we are able to experience life in a meaningful manner. After all, Rickert asserts, ‘it is in the form of a concept (Begriﬀ ) that perception (Anschauung) stops being theoretically “blind”. It becomes expressible, transmittable, theoretically distinct or true. Absolute formlessness therefore can never render science “lively”, but must “kill” it.’29 Although Martin Heidegger was once Rickert’s student and remained a friend of the Rickert family throughout his life,30 he is not mentioned in his book on vitalism. Yet, it is as if Rickert refers to Heidegger’s idea of (Un)eigentlichkeit—(in)authenticity—when he introduces an additional connotation of the vitalist notion of Erlebnis (experience) or Ereignis (event). In particular when applied with emphasis, Rickert argues, the notion of experience or event means ‘that what we have “experienced” in an actual sense, has not remained strange (‘fremd’), but became our possession, became part of our Self. It has settled down in the depth of our being and become anchored there.’31 The experience has then become the essential, the crucial, the authentic, 29 ‘. . . denn erst in der Form des Begriﬀs hört die Anschauung auf, theoretisch “blind” zu sein, wird sagbar, übertragbar, theoretisch diﬀerent oder wahr. Absolute Formlosigkeit kann daher die Wissenschaft nie “lebendig” machen, sondern muss sie “töten”.’ Rickert, o.c., p. 43. This is not the place to compare this neo-Kantian conception of the Concept (Begriﬀ ) with that of Hegel. See Charles Taylor, Hegel, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1975), pp. 297–350: ‘The Concept’. Taylor summarizes the diﬀerence as such: ‘The issue between Kant and Hegel is this: Hegel takes up Kant’s idea that reality or objectivity is only where the stuﬀ of sensible intuition is structured by thought. But whereas for Kant this principle was valid only for our knowledge of the world, i.e., for phenomena, and not for things in themselves; for Hegel this is valid ontologically. For the inner truth of things is that they ﬂow from thought, that they are structured by rational necessity. What for Kant just happens to be true of our faculty of knowledge is for Hegel an ontological fact which ﬁnds its reﬂection in our faculty of knowledge.’ Ibid., p. 297f. 30 This information was given to me by Mrs. Marianne Rickert Verburg, granddaughter of the philosopher, quoted in the Introduction. She told me in the quoted interview that Heidegger came to visit Rickert’s widow directly after the war, exchanging memories and war experiences. See the exchange of letters by the two philosophers: Martin Heidegger, Heinrich Rickert, Briefe 1912 bis 1933, edited by Alfred Denker, (Frankfurt a.M.: Vittorio Klostermann, 2002). Despite fundamental diﬀerences between them, Rickert remained loyal to his former student who already in 1917 implicitly criticized his teacher. In a letter dated January 27, 1917 Heidegger wrote that he had reread Rickert’s book on transcendental (pure) logic. He then said indicatively: ‘Pure logic is an extreme, a concealed rape of the lively mind’ (‘Die reine Logik ist ein Extrem, eine verkappte Vergewaltigung des lebendigen Geistes’). O.c., p. 38. 31 ‘dass das, was wir im eigentlichen Sinne “erlebt” haben, uns nicht fremd (italics by HR) geblieben, sondern zu unserm Eigentum oder zu einem Stück unseres Selbst geworden ist, sich in die Tiefe unseres Wesens gesenkt und dort verankert hat.’ Rickert, o.c., p. 43.

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and stands in opposition to everything indiﬀerent, meaningless, valuefree, alien, inauthentic and dead. Experience means in that case not just what is (‘was ist’), but what actually ought to be (‘was sein soll ’) because it has value. We desire experiences in order to enrich our lives and to make life worthwhile. Experience becomes an overarching value.32 At this point Rickert could have quoted Christian Morgenstern who in one of his quite surrealistic Palmström-poems exclaims: ‘And he comes to the result: “the experience was just a dream. Because”, he concludes razor-sharp, “what can not be, may not be.” ’33 Rickert discusses two vitalist philosophers who are also sociologists: Max Scheler and Georg Simmel. Like Max Weber he is critical of Scheler, whose brand of phenomenological intuitionism he hardly takes seriously, but he is also like Weber sympathetic to Georg Simmel. In fact, he devotes a whole chapter in his book to Simmel’s philosophy. Simmel published at the end of his life, when he was dying of liver cancer, a book called Lebensanschauung.34 Rickert is fascinated by the ideas in this book, particularly since Simmel demonstrates that he does not belong to what Rickert calls, with a hardly concealed disdain, ‘the prophets of vitalism’. Unlike them, Simmel realizes that life is not just a constant stream of change and evolution, but also needs forms in order to exist. This then places him before a dilemma: as a vitalist Simmel views life as a Bergsonian durée, a permanent process of change and development, but as a neo-Kantian sociologist who has developed an elaborate sociology of socio-cultural forms, he realizes that life is limited by forms which are rather rigid, solid, inﬂexible.35 Take for example the sociological phenomenon of conﬂict. In terms of substance there are many diﬀerent kinds and types of conﬂict (between groups, nations, individuals), yet it is possible to determine what the common characteristics of these conﬂicts are, reducing them to a single form which is timeless and ahistorical.36

32

Ibid., p. 43f. ‘Und er kommt zu dem Ergebnis: “Nur ein Traum war das Erlebnis. Weil”, so schliesst er messerscharf, “nicht sein kann, was nicht sein darf.” ’ Christian Morgenstern, Palmström, 1910, in: Palmström, Palma Kunkel, (München: Deutscher Taschenbuch Verlag, 1961), p. 68. 34 Georg Simmel, Lebensanschauung. Vier Metaphysische Kapitel, (‘View of Life. Four Metaphysical Chapters’), (München-Leipzig: Duncker & Humblot, 1922). 35 Cf. Anton M. Bevers, Dynamik der Formen bei Georg Simmel, (‘The Dynamics of Forms in Georg Simmel’), (Berlin: Duncker & Humblot, 1985). 36 Georg Simmel, ‘Der Streit’, in: Soziologie. Untersuchungen über die Formen der Vergesellschaftung, (‘Sociology. Investigations of the Forms of Sociation’), (Berlin: Duncker & 33

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This dualism of substance and life forms presents a formidable problem which Simmel tries to solve metaphysically. Brieﬂy summarized, Simmel claims that we are fully aware of the fact that we are limited, that in our life we run into limits all the time. But by this realization we manage to transcend ourselves, and yet at the same time set our own limits. We are thus our own masters over life, over its substance and also over its restrictive and rigid forms. Therefore, ‘life is always more-than-life’ is Simmel’s rather enigmatic formula. Life always pushes beyond the restricting forms, replacing old forms by new ones. Rickert who observes two rather disjunct concepts of life here (one immanent, the other transcendent), maintains against Simmel that the forms of life are not and cannot be lively forms. They are by deﬁnition rigid, inﬂexible, lifeless, like the concepts we construct in order to grasp reality rationally. After all— and here Rickert argues heterologically again—movement and change are relational concepts which presuppose something that does not move and remains stable. ‘That one should certainly in the era of the “relativity theory” not forget.’37 To Rickert, not just the forms of life but also the concepts of science and philosophy resemble the rigid reference bodies, or co-ordinate systems of Einstein’s theory of relativity. The co-ordinate systems set the frame of reference for the velocity and the path of moving bodies.38 At this point he could also have mentioned mathematics and formal logic as co-ordinate systems which in relation to reality or life, are frames of reference which in vitalistic terms are deﬁnitely ‘unreal’ and ‘lifeless’. Darwin, facts and values We should now turn to Rickert’s second type of vitalism which he dubbed biologism. At its cradle stood, of course, Darwin’s evolution theory. Rickert though is more interested in the philosophers who used and misused Darwin’s theories, than in the great natural scientist Humblot, 1958, 4th ed.), pp. 186–255. See also Lewis Coser’s elaboration of this essay in his The Functions of Social Conﬂict, 1956, (New York: The Free Press, 1964). 37 ‘Das sollte man gerade im Zeitalter der “Relativitätstheorie” nicht vergessen.’ Rickert, o.c., p. 72. 38 Albert Einstein, Relativity. The Special and General Theory, 1916, (New York: Crown Publishers, 1961). Einstein: ‘Of course we must refer the process of the propagation of light (and indeed every other process) to a rigid reference-body (co-ordinate system).’ O.c., p. 18.

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himself, who despite his theological training did not extrapolate his scientiﬁc ideas into an encompassing, metaphysical philosophy.39 It was rather the philosopher and sociologist Herbert Spencer, who developed an encompassing evolutionist worldview. Rickert fails to notice the fact that Spencer (whose name, incidentally, he spells consistently wrong as Spenzer) became the founder and grand old man of Social Darwinism which developed into a forceful socio-political ideology, legitimating liberalism and, in particular, American laissezfaire capitalism.40 This ideology ﬁts Rickert’s descriptions of biologism perfectly well. Although Darwin himself, as Rickert observes astutely, was not a philosophical vitalist, his biology and evolutionary views did give rise to metaphysical extrapolations. Rickert’s discussion of this point is quite interesting.41 The crucial component in Darwin’s biology, he claims, was the connection with Malthus’s demographical theory. It led to concepts which from the outset referred to human culture and social life, thus enabling followers to apply the evolution theory to areas outside nature. Malthus, as is well known, claimed that populations grow disproportionately faster than the supply of food. This then would eventually engender severe (global) inequalities and conﬂicts. Darwin applied this idea to his theory of the origins of species in which he attributed a central place to the struggle for food. In fact, this struggle was then generalized to all of organic nature. It is but a small step to then speak of a general (if not metaphysical) Struggle for Life. Before Lebensphilosophie became fashionable in Germany, Rickert adds ironically and maybe with a wink at Heidegger, it was usually called the struggle for Dasein. In any case, within the strictly scientiﬁc context of Darwin’s theory of evolution it is the struggle for food and for life which causes a natural selection and the concomitant emergence, survival and decline of the various species of organic nature. It is then but a small, yet scientiﬁcally false step to biologism as a metaphysical worldview and socio-political ideology. In this biologistic worldview the principle of natural selection as a mechanistic (non-voluntaristic, non-teleological) process and the closely related 39

Rickert calls Darwin ‘this great researcher of nature’. O.c., p. 87. Cf. Richard Hofstadter, Social Darwinism in American Thought, 1944, (Boston: Beacon Press, 1967, 14th ed.). 41 Rickert, o.c., pp. 86–90. 40

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processes of adjustment are essential. Not just organic nature, but culture and society as well, are now seen as being driven by the ‘blind’ and mechanistic forces of selection and adaptation. In each component of reality testifying to rational aims and plans, to mind and rationality, we ought to see the impact of natural selection.42 In the biologistic worldview even the values man believes in, and the aims he sets for his life and actions, are paradoxically viewed in terms of this non-voluntaristic and non-teleological approach. Before Darwin, values seemed to be suspended in the air. They were, of course, viewed and interpreted in theological rather than in biological terms. And if one tried to determine what the meaning of life actually was or could be, one rejected nature and natural life in favor of a metaphysically perceived and religiously redeemed life. In fact, nature was an evil principle. ‘Under this qualiﬁcation’, Rickert says, ‘man stands in his surrounding world as a sad stranger.’43 The Darwinian biologists radically abolished such ideas. There is, to begin with, in biology no space for values. But, Rickert adds once again, natural selection and adaptation were broadened and extended in post-Darwinian biologism. They became normative, moral concepts which were related to values and value-judgments. Natural selection and adaptation, it was claimed, did not just produce evolution, but also progress, that is evolution towards the good life and the moral betterment of mankind! If we let natural selection do its work, it was believed and professed, we will automatically witness a better world—a desirable world which ought to come about. This, in other words, was a transition from Sein to Sollen, from being to ought-tobe. In logic this is called an inadmissible metabasis eis allo genos, i.e. a transition to a diﬀerent logical species. Throughout his philosophy Rickert has been allergic to this primordial logical sin. The biologistic worldview has no use any longer for the traditional values. After all, adjustment and selection lead almost automatically

42 The contemporary reader is reminded of similar extrapolations of scientiﬁc genetics in the direction of a rather metaphysical and mechanistic worldview. See, for example, Richard Dawkins, The Selﬁsh Gene, 1976, (Oxford-New York: Oxford University Press, 1989) and Susan Blackmore, The Meme Machine, (Oxford-New York: Oxford University Press, 1999). Needless to add that Schopenhauer’s metaphysical conception of the ‘blind’ will comes to mind also. The will, after all, is seen as a strong developing force, yet this development (evolution) is aimless, non-teleological, ‘blind’. 43 ‘Der Mensch steht unter dieser Voraussetzung als trauriger Fremdling in der ihn umgebenden Welt.’ Rickert, o.c., p. 89.

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to harmony and balance. Life is a self-regulatory mechanism which should be left alone: laissez faire! Life is eﬀective because it resembles quite mechanistically a big machine. Yet, biologistic vitalists will not simply withdraw into quietism, into a passive resignation which lets the big machine do its work. Nature, it is believed, works everywhere according to the economic principle of parsimony. In order to survive in the struggle for life, people should be parsimonious in the application of their mental and physical energies. Parsimony improves one’s chances in the ongoing struggle for survival. American Pragmatism, Rickert adds, is a telling example. It established the economy of thinking as the basic principle of research. Only those ideas are true which enable us to contemplate the world and act upon it eﬀectively and eﬃciently. Reality should then be covered by the simplest system of concepts possible. In Europe a similar application of biologism occurred in so-called ‘energetic cultural philosophy’ which believed that the height of civilization depended upon the energetic parsimony of its people. ‘Don’t waste energy, put it to good use’ seems to be the categorical imperative here.44 It all ends up, Rickert sneers, in triviality and philistine utilitarianism. Biology, Rickert reminds us once more, is a specialized, empirical science which focuses on the structures and processes of living organisms. It deals with a speciﬁc, limited part of reality. Although ‘life’ is in a sense its proper object of research and analysis, its concepts and theories are very specialized and certainly not ‘lively’. Moreover, the scientiﬁc concepts and theories of biology are, as is the case with the other sciences, ‘objective’ and ‘value-free’, and are thus not directly applicable to social life and social policy. Naturally, biologistic vitalists reject these methodological and logical points of view. They rather see biology as the scientiﬁc foundation of their brand of vitalism which is not specialized but very general, and not

44 Ibid., p. 93. ‘ “Vergeude keine Energie, verwerte sie.” Das soll an die Stelle von Kants kategorischem Imperativ treten!’ Rickert also mentions Max Weber’s critique in his essay ‘ “Energetische” Kulturtheorien’, 1909, in: Gesammelte Aufsätze zur Wissenschaftslehre, (Tübingen: Mohr-Siebeck, 1968, 3rd ed.), pp. 400–426. Weber focused his critique on Wilhelm Ostwald, Energetische Grundlagen der Kulturwissenschaft, (‘Energetic Foundations of Cultural Science’), (Leipzig: Klinkhardt, 1909) and takes him severely to task for mixing value judgments with objective, scientiﬁc facts. See also Wilhelm Ostwald, ‘Naturphilosophie’ (Philosophy of Nature), in: Paul Hinneberg (ed.), Die Kultur der Gegenwart. Ihre Entwicklung und ihre Ziele, (‘Contemporary Culture. Its Development and Aims’), (Berlin, Leipzig: Teubner Verlag, 1908), pp. 138–172.

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‘objective’ or ‘value-free’, but ‘subjective’ and ‘normative’. In fact, this type of vitalism pretends to be a practical philosophy which is socio-politically applicable and useful. Previously mentioned Social Darwinism is a perfect example of this school of thought. Biologistic vitalists usually reduce Darwin’s biological theories to some basic tenets such as ‘natural selection’, ‘adaptation’, ‘survival of the ﬁttest’, etc. This reduced theory is then extended into a rather encompassing Welt- and Lebensanschauung, in which the notions of rise and decline, ﬂowering and fading, function as emotionally and intuitively appealing metaphors. Only what rises and ﬂowers represents life truly, and is thus positively evaluated, while declining, fading, sinking is valued negatively. It is the road towards death. Rickert then argues that these two forms of life (rise and fall) with their allegedly biological value opposition is extended into a biological founded ideal, namely health.45 The scientiﬁcally sounding concepts of health and sickness are then elaborated into basic norms according to which all other norms ought to be measured and evaluated. ‘Life form’, Rickert says, becomes ‘life norm’.46 This is ﬁrst applied to the single individual. His main philosophically grounded goal in life is—or rather, ought to be—health. He must aspire to health. If he does not aspire to health, he is not worthy of life. In this way, Rickert says, the philosopher turns into a physician.47 All this, the biologistic vitalist believes, is applicable also to the human species in general. Society, the nation, eventually humanity as a whole should live healthy lives! There is, in other words, a health of the species, as there ought to be a species hygiene. In fact these are, in the view of the biologistic vitalists, the ultimate aims of humanity. Natural selection, Rickert continues, occupies a crucial position in this type of vitalism. A society or a nation must necessarily degenerate, if it declines in vitality. Rickert could have mentioned here the romantic and fascist idea of a gesundes Volksempﬁnden (healthy feeling of the population). In any case, biologistic vitalists

45 ‘Rise and fall’ is, as is well known, a very strong trope in history. A recent example is Paul Kennedy, The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers. Economic Change and Military Conﬂict from 1500 to 2000, 1988, (London: Fontana Press, 1989). He published previously The Rise and Fall of British Naval Mastery, (London, 1976). 46 Ibid., p. 77f. 47 Ibid., p. 78. Needless to add that this vitalistic preoccupation with health is still very prominent in present day society, not in the least as an economically proﬁtable segment of the market.

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always emphasize the alleged fact that the law of natural selection, which is seen as a law of progress, reigns (Sein), and even should (Sollen) reign supremely in the body politic. But our individual thinking, feeling and acting too have to comply with the demands of these ‘biological’ norms. Ethical demands can allegedly be derived solely from these notions of rising life, progress, and health. Love, marriage, family, education—they ought to be lived in terms of these ‘biologically’ based life-norms. The arts and even the sciences too should serve Life. Religion can only be justiﬁed existentially, if it fortiﬁes the health of individuals and helps to strengthen nations in their struggle for life.48 Within biologistic vitalism, however, this type of post-Darwinian philosophy has been rejected, Rickert argues, by a new direction in biologism. In this new direction three fateful tendencies were avoided: the emphasis upon the Malthusian component in Darwin’s theory, the mechanistic view of culture and society, and the utilitarian ideal of parsimony. Rickert thinks that Henri Bergson in particular played the leading role in this new direction of anti-Darwinist vitalism. However, before we turn to this new direction in general and Bergson in particular, we should ﬁrst discuss Rickert’s typology of biologistic theories which is, I believe, still heuristically useful. Four types of biologism By now the picture of biologistic vitalism is quite complex and thus confusing. Rickert tries to clarify it by the introduction of four types which represent four fundamentally diﬀerent dimensions of biologism. They do share a common foundation, yet stand in opposition to each other. In a rare exercise of social philosophy, Rickert constructs a quadrant alongside two social-political dilemma’s: ‘socialism’ (or ‘collectivism’) versus ‘individualism’ on the one hand, and ‘democracy’ versus ‘aristocracy’ on the other. It yields four types of tendencies: (a) liberalism (individualism plus democracy); (b) social democracy (socialism plus democracy); (c) individual aristocracy (individualism plus aristocracy); (d) social aristocracy (socialism plus aristocracy). Rickert provides examples of these tendencies which he discusses in broad outlines.49 48 49

Ibid., p. 79. Ibid., pp. 82–86.

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(a) Democratic-individualistic convictions based on evolutionary biologism were formulated more or less systematically by Herbert Spencer. His philosophy and sociology functioned as legitimations of Manchester capitalism and liberalism. He could have added also, as we saw before, American Social Darwinism as an example of this type of biologism. Spencer emphasized the inherent conﬂict between individual interests and species interests, but for the sake of harmony and progress the natural selection will bring about a situation in which self-supporting acts will coincide with species-supporting acts. It will be the highest stage in the ongoing process of progressive evolution. Yet, survival of the ﬁttest may lead to an undemocratic rule of the strongest and most powerful. It is a mistaken (socialist) view to imbue the state in this regard with regulatory powers. Social laws and state succor of the poor, etc. disturb the natural selection processes. What cannot thrive in its own strength and power, should, according to the laws of nature, succumb. (b) According to the social democrats natural selection and competition (conﬂict) are the basic biological principles that bring about progress, yet they should not be identiﬁed with the existing societal order where a small minority possessing the means of capitalist production oppresses the mass of workers without capital. The law of natural selection is rendered inoperative by the allegedly anti-natural brutality of inheritance capitalism. In this way the weak and vulnerable within the class of capitalists are artiﬁcially supported. It is a decadent situation which will not be cured in an evolutionary way, but needs a revolutionary change of the existing societal order. (c) There has not been a more radical enemy of democracy than Nietzsche. His idea of a radically aristocratic and individualistic ideal of the Übermensch was founded upon biological notions. In ‘Zarathustra’ we ﬁnd the idea of a being that develops beyond man, as if the advent of a super-vertebrate is to be expected. Moreover, in line with the principle of natural selection the strong shall rule over the weak, natural inequality shall be the vehicle of progress. All Sklavenmoral—slave morality—which dares to question the right of the Herrenmoral—the morality of the lords—entails decline and depravity. Nietzsche calls for a ‘return to nature’ but not, of course, the idyllic and harmonious nature of Rousseau but the nature of competitive ﬁghts and conﬂicts of modern biology.

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(d) The social-aristocrats often refer to Nietzsche as far as antidemocratic aristocracy is concerned, but they reject Nietzsche’s individualism. They rather return to the ideal of the horde which is interpreted in terms of groups, nations and races. There is a social element in this aristocracy in that the members of the same group, nation, race, or species should help each other. This is not the idea of Christian neighborly love, since that is after all more democratic than aristocratic. It is rather the support of the best and the strongest so that the group, nation, race or species can survive in the biological struggle for life. Therefore, not the individual but rather society and the state ought to be the ultimate aim of our socio-political actions. Although Rickert does not use such concepts, it is not diﬃcult to ﬁll in fascism and even National Socialism as examples of this type of biologism. Rickert does mention the fact that this type of biologism is the direct opposite of the Spencerean type of individual democracy, and he does warn against the attempt to set up the Germans as the proper Aristokratenvolk von Lebewesen (‘aristocratic people of life-beings’) against the French nation which due to its anti-natural Malthusianism is allegedly destined to decline.50 This typology is in view of Rickert’s rather abstract transcendentalism remarkable, because it actually covers two specialized disciplines, sociology and political science the basic dynamics of which he apparently understood quite well. This was probably due to his close intellectual relationship with Max Weber. In any case, the typology presents a conceptual grid which, I think, is still quite heuristic and useful in modern political science and sociology. Biologism beyond Nietzsche Once again, Rickert distinguishes between an ‘old’ and a ‘new’ biologism. ‘Old’ biologism applies the basic tenets of Darwin’s evolutionary principles, whereas ‘new’ biologism, to which we must turn now, stands

50 Ibid., p. 86. Rickert could have mentioned Thomas Mann, Betrachtungen eines Unpolitischen, (‘Reﬂections of an Unpolitical One’), 1918, (Frankfurt a.M.: Fischer Verlag, 1983) as an example of such an anti-French, social-aristocratic type of vitalism.

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more in line with Nietzsche’s vitalism and was initiated in particular by Bergson. In the Nietzschean approach the mechanistic conception of life, as well as the principle of parsimony are rejected. Real life is not a mere existence (blosses Dasein) which maintains itself harmoniously, nor is adjustment in situations of crisis and danger a basic principle of vitality. It is also erroneous to view parsimony as life’s essential feature. Real life is, on the contrary, extravagant, if not wasteful. It does not set out to maintain itself but it wants to grow, to become richer, stronger, livelier! Vital life’s basic principles are activity and the expansive impulse, both of which are excluded by post-Darwinist biologism, in which, after all, development and change are being neutralized in harmony and stability. Life is not static, it is dynamic. It bears vital zest, it wants steady increments of power. Indeed, the world is not driven by Schopenhauer’s ‘will to existence’ (Wille zum Dasein), but by the ‘will to power’ (Wille zur Macht). As Nietzsche has observed correctly, the continuous struggle for power is the real meaning of truly vital life. The parsimony principle is for that reason contemptible and vulgar. It testiﬁes to decline and general decadence. This, of course, is the ‘aristocratic’ principle of biologism which comes to the defence of the strong and powerful. It is ‘individual aristocracy’, because life as the continuous increase of power depends on vital and outshining individuals—super-men, Übermenschen. Needless to add that truly vital life entails an ongoing struggle against ‘slave morality’ which is always in search for adjustment of the masses and for equality and leveling. Vital life needs an ‘immoralistic’ Herrenmoral, the morality of powerful ‘lords’ which rejects each kind of equality and leveling, any harmonization of interests, and any kind of paciﬁsm. Man should not aspire to adjust and to come to a harmonious standstill. That would in the end lead to the emergence of ‘the last human being’ (der letzte Mensch) who has found happiness but is also exposed to the ﬁnal low tide of the ocean of life. Man should want to transcend himself and ought to orient himself to something which is ‘beyond’ (über) him. He needs the Übermensch as model for the true meaning of his life and of the world.51

51 Ibid., p. 98. Rickert’s summary of Nietzsche’s vitalism strongly resembles Simmel’s perceptive discussion of Schopenhauer and Nietzsche, in which Simmel underlined Nietzsche’s Lebensfreudigkeit, i.e. his zest for life. Simmel, o.c.

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Like Nietzsche’s, Bergson’s vitalism was also in its essence biologistic, albeit anti-Darwinist. Unlike Nietzsche, however, who scorned metaphysics as an enterprise for philosophical Hinterweltler, i.e. people who live in an alleged world behind reality, Bergson viewed, more like Schopenhauer, ‘life’ metaphysically as the very essence of the world. In particular in his later writings he demonstrated that he was not just an intuitionist but a biologistic vitalist as well. It suﬃces to refer to the typically Bergsonian concept of évolution créatrice in which organic life is presented as an intrinsic part of the world in contrast to inorganic, ‘dead’ nature.52 He too rejects the post-Darwinian, mechanistic view of the world, the highest aim of which is harmony, balance, equilibrium, equality. The metaphysical essence of the world is the steady increase of life and vitality. The natural sciences with their inherent principles of mechanicity and parsimony are not suitable to acquire knowledge of this eternally changing and evolving, lively world. Intuition as the pre-reﬂective immersion of the mind into the ongoing stream of life (durée) is the proper epistemological vehicle. Like Nietzsche, Rickert hastens to add, Bergson is an important thinker and theorist.53 Their ideas became popular and entered into the fashionable current of vitalism in popularized versions distributed by minor minds. There is no need, Rickert argues, to discuss these minor philosophers but he makes one exception: Max Scheler. The few pages devoted to him are very critical, though, and do not add much to the picture of post-Nietzschean vitalism which the previous pages had oﬀered.54

52 Cf. Henri Bergson, L’Évolution Créatrice, (‘Creative Evolution’), 1907, (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1966, 118th ed.). 53 When I interviewed her in Hamburg, Mrs. Marianne Rickert Verburg showed me a letter by Bergson addressed to Heinrich Rickert, dated June 24th, 1909. Bergson thanked his ‘très honoré Collègue’ for sending him two of his publications, ‘Geschichtsphilosophie’ and ‘Zwei Wege der Erkenntnistheorie’. He writes that he will take these books on vacation upon the end of the teaching semester, and adds that he had for a long time already the plan to enter into direct contact with Rickert’s philosophy: ‘Je crois qu’il y a plus d’un point commun entre nous, et que, malgré la diﬀérence des sujets traités et des méthodes suivies, nous arrivons à des conclusions assez voisines ou tout au moins conciliables entre elles.’ (‘I believe that we have more than one point in common, and that, despite the diﬀerence of subjects dealt with and methods followed, we arrive at conclusions which are rather close to or at least reconcilable with each other.’) This conclusion was, I think, more courteous than correct. 54 Ibid., pp. 100–104.

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The present chapter began with a brief exposition of Rickert’s view of the systematic nature of philosophy and its crucial diﬀerence with the specialized (natural and cultural) sciences and their respective, mainly methodologically oriented philosophies. It stands to reason then that he ﬁercely criticizes biologistic vitalism for its attempt to base its metaphysical view of life and the world on biology which after all is a natural-scientiﬁc, specialized discipline. Biology as a specialism is part of a larger whole (science in general), but also its specialized object of research is part of a larger totality, reality-in-toto. Now, as a generalized philosophy biologism transforms a part of reality into a whole around which it constructs its worldview. Its seemingly encompassing philosophy is just fake, as is its claim of an exact scientiﬁc foundation. Intuition, Einleben, i.e. the romantic longing for emotionally experienced and immediate knowledge, and the rejection of the alleged mechanisticity of the (specialized natural) sciences, is crucial to the biologistic epistemology. It is believed that of all the sciences biology comes closest to vitality and life, and thus should oﬀer the basic concepts and premises of vitalism. But this is, of course, a rather false conception of biology as a scientiﬁc discipline. As such biology is as little ‘lively’ and ‘vital’ as mathematics or formal logic are, in which evidently not a trace of vitality and ‘real’ life can be discovered. Of course, sciences like physics and chemistry are somewhat ‘closer’ to real life experiences than mathematics and logic, as in the case of, for instance, gravity, or of H2O. This may be even more so in the case of biology, since we are living organisms. Yet, natural sciences remain removed from immediately and emotionally experienced realities, if alone because they employ general concepts which are at all times far removed from the always individual experiences of everyday life.55 In fact, all natural sciences lead one into a larger or smaller distance from reality and life. Biologistic vitalists always lament that the scientiﬁc ‘concepts of reason’ (Verstandesbegriﬀe) fail to reach real-life experiences in their alleged fullness and wealth, and thus are unable to catch reality, let alone truth. But then, are

55 Ibid., p. 107. In a footnote Rickert refers to his book on the limits of naturalscientiﬁc conceptualization which will be discussed extensively in Chapter Five.

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not the concepts employed by these vitalists also rationalized concepts derived from biology as a scientiﬁc discipline? Are not these biological concepts, so eagerly adopted by the vitalists, removed from real life as it is directly lived and emotionally experienced? As the science which it is, biology must ‘kill’ life, to apply for once the language of intuitionist vitalism. Or, to use an expression of Bergson, like the other sciences biology indeed creates ready-made clothes which do not ﬁt each individual in particular, since they must ﬁt all individuals in general. In short, if one wants to experience life directly, one should not engage in scientiﬁc research, even if its object of research is life, as in the case of biology. Rickert draws a radical conclusion which is the very essence of his epistemology and general philosophy: ‘Lifelessness and unreality is inherent to the products of not only the generalizing natural sciences, but of each scientiﬁc enterprise. (. . .) There is no science without conceptual thinking, and that is precisely the “sense” of each concept, namely that it puts objects at a distance from directly real life. Even the most lively object, to which any kind of understanding turns, stops living really, the moment it is understood. The dualism of reality and concept can never be abolished.’56 Then comes the ﬁnal, typically neo-Kantian verdict of all vitalism: ‘What is directly experienced as reality, cannot be known. Thus, there is no metaphysics of life. (. . .) As direct reality life can only be experienced. As immediate life it mocks any attempt to get to know it.’57 In fact, the mere experience of real life lacks a proper language. There are no appropriate words for it. It is, Rickert, says, born mute. The so-called essence of the real world must remain anonymous, lest it loses its directness and its reality.58

56 ‘Unlebendigkeit und Unwirklichkeit ist mit den Produkten nicht allein der generalisierenden Naturwissenschaften, sondern mit denen jeder Wissenschaft verknüpft. (. . .) Es gibt keine Wissenschaft ohne begriﬄiches Denken, und das gerade ist der “Sinn” jedes Begriﬀes, dass er die Dinge in einen Abstand vom unmittelbar wirklichen Leben bringt. Das lebendigste Objekt, worauf irgend ein Erkennen sich richtet, hört auf, real zu leben, so weit es begriﬀen ist. Der Dualismus von Wirklichkeit und Begriﬀ ist niemals aufzuheben.’ Ibid., p. 110. 57 ‘(. . .) was als Realität unmittelbar erlebt wird, kann nicht erkannt werden. Also gibt es keine Metaphysik des Lebens. (. . .) Das Leben als das unmittelbar Reale lässt sich nur erleben. Es spottet als unmittelbares Leben jedem Erkenntnisversuch.’ Ibid., p. 113. 58 Ibid., p. 114.

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Rickert realizes that his critique is rather disenchanting, but adds that this is only so for those who want to know and understand reality theoretically and cognitively. Outside the theoretical, cognitive attitude towards the world, in everyday life for instance, life and reality are experienced directly and intuitively. There is nothing wrong with that. If it pleases someone to constantly live and experience life intuitively, Rickert quips, we should not take that pleasure away from him. Only if he wants to acquire a theoretical understanding of life and grasp the world cognitively, should he realize that there is an unbridgeable gap between abstract concepts and experienced reality, between knowing and living. Indeed, as Gottfried Benn said, that what lives is diﬀerent from that which thinks. There are no biologistic values As we shall see in the fourth chapter, Rickert’s general philosophy is a philosophy of values. They represent the unsinnliche Wirklichkeit, that is the reality which cannot be experienced by the senses. Values are in this sense non-empirical, yet they are real in the sense of being valid or invalid. Now, according to Rickert there is much to criticize in the way vitalists deal with values. It is this critique which, as it were e contrario, gives insight into his own philosophical position. Most vitalists, in particular those of the biologistic persuasion, believe that the natural sciences, and especially biology as the science of life, enable us to arrive at a theoretical understanding of values. Is this correct? Can the natural sciences contribute to our understanding of values, and then help us in evaluating whatever is and happens in reality? As is his custom, Rickert begins with some basic conceptual distinctions. It is quite feasible, he says,59 that physics provides the technician with norms for his work. If he wants to build a bridge, he ought to know what weight it can bear. For that he has to turn to the laws of physics. The involved norms—what the technician should do—are purely causal and value-free. Physics tells him that such and such interventions yield such and such results. It is a causal ‘must’ (Müssen), not a moral ‘must’ (Sollen). Physics argues in terms of results

59

Ibid., pp. 117–142.

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and asks what conditions are needed to reap these results. The causal relationship is always conditional. A new component is introduced, however, when the will of the technician enters the relationship. He posits a certain eﬀect as his desired aim or objective. That is, he connects the aim with values and transforms thereby the conditions into the means by which he can obtain his cherished aim. The causality of physics is then altered into a teleological relationship. Consequently, the means of realizing the aim acquire a normative meaning. After all, it is the human, evaluating will that alters causal eﬀects into meaningful purposes, and causal conditions into teleological means which contain norms. However, physics itself does not contain such purposes, and is unable to provide moral norms. It tells the technician what to do, when he wants to arrive at certain eﬀects, but this ‘telling what to do’ is a matter of amoral ‘müssen’ not of moral ‘sollen’. Likewise, the value of an allegedly perfect machine depends solely on the human evaluation of its performance and achievements. Biologistic vitalists, however, claim that biology occupies in this respect a special place in the realm of the natural sciences. Usually the physician is taken as an example. He derives the norms of his profession from biology directly, that is without ﬁrst adding normative purposes to its concepts. Biology teaches him what the conditions are for a healthy life, and these are then the means which he must apply in order to do his job properly. Moreover, biology works with concepts such as ‘organism’ and ‘development’ which physics lacks. The notion of an organism as a whole to which all parts and components contribute to the advancement of its ‘lively’ and ‘healthy’ state is obviously teleological. Likewise, the biologistic vitalist argues, the notion of development is much more than just a series of merely causal transformations. The changes refer to a ﬁnal stage which is developed teleologically. In short, the biologistic vitalist claims, purposes and means, values and norms are not brought into the biological world of organisms and developments from the outside by the human will and its normative evaluations. They are inherent to biology. They are the ‘natural’ values and norms. This, Rickert counters, is a grave and fundamental, logical mistake. As is often the case, he argues, the basic lack of clarity is caused by the ambiguity of a word. In this case it is the word teleology that is ambiguous. It is derived from the Greek telos which has a double meaning. Its meaning is not only purpose which is a value concept

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to be used in order to set norms. It also means result which is a value-free concept and therefore useless for the imposition of norms. Now, the parts and components of a biological organism co-operate to the development and advancement of the organism as a whole, but this ‘co-operation’ and this ‘development’ are sheer causal processes towards a value-free result, not towards an evaluative and normative purpose! As in the other natural sciences, telos in biology is a valuefree result and the value-free eﬀect of non-normative means. But telos as a value concept, as purpose, is a voluntaristic concept and cannot possibly occupy a valid and legitimate position within biology as a natural-scientiﬁc discipline. In this natural-scientiﬁc sense of telos as value-free result and not as normative purpose, organisms are, like technological machines, ‘dead’ things. Vitalists can put ‘life’ (values and norms) into them, but that then is their imputation. It is a primitive sort of anthropomorphism and irrational magic to think otherwise. This magic, he believes, needs to be disenchanted.60 As to the physician, his purpose is to treat sick patients and if possible to heal them. This purpose can, of course, not be found in biology as a science, but belongs to our historically grown culture in which life and health have become very dominant values. Are we not constantly under pressure ‘to render life healthy, natural, fresh, original?’61 Rickert mocks the diﬀerent health movements which were also in his day rather fashionable in Germany. One should bear in mind here that his mental and physical condition was dismal. Due to his agoraphobia he preferred to lock himself up in his library, abhorring nature, freshness and originality. He refers to the Jugendbewegung, the youth movement of his days, as a telling example of this fashionable, romantic health ideology. It propagates health, freshness, youth, strength, originality, and, of course, nature. It is adverse, he continues, to the alleged intellectualism of the universities and aestheticism of the art institutions which are usually located in cities. Roaming through ‘free’ nature (das Wandern), the rejection of alcohol and nicotine, and, he could have added, nudism (Freikörperkultur), are the main components of the vitalist ideology of the youth movement of Rickert’s days. All these irrational celebrations of life and living, 60

Ibid., p. 116. Here he speaks of Entzauberung and gründlich entzaubern. ‘(. . .) ist es etwa kein allgemein gültiges Lebensziel, das Leben gesund, natürlich, frisch, ursprünglich zu machen?’ Ibid., p. 134. 61

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Rickert admits, are understandable after the horrible destructions of the First World War,62 yet as the foundations of a true philosophy of life they are useless and scientiﬁcally counterproductive. Life and culture Values and norms are incorporated in culture, in objective cultural goods (objektive Güter), i.e. in the state, the sciences, the arts and music, religion, etc. Vitalists generally believe that these cultural goods too are subjected to the vitalistic dynamics of rising and declining, ﬂourishing and fading. To them the highest purpose is, or rather should be, to be alive, vital, strong and healthy. Rickert again comes up with a sobering disenchantment: there is an unavoidably negative relationship between culture, or cultural goods, and life, or vitality.63 The sciences present, according to Rickert, a good example. They are an established, institutionalized cultural good in modern society, subjecting both ‘dead’ (inorganic) and ‘alive’ (organic) reality to rigid research and rational theory. It all began in Ancient Greece, where for the ﬁrst time some individuals no longer investigated reality in order to live, but the other way around, lived in order to be able to investigate. Truth was sought for its own sake, not just for the sake of living. Thinking about reality, which is diﬀerent from living it, acquired its own, autonomous value (Eigenwert) and distanced itself from life and living. It opened the road towards the sciences and the scientiﬁc attitude which is based upon the fundamental dualism of thinking and living. However, Rickert concedes, there are diﬀerent degrees of estrangement between life and science. The radically generalizing mathematician thinks and theorizes far removed from ‘real’ life and life experiences, while the individualizing historian, on the contrary, often identiﬁes with the lives of his objects. Between these opposites there is, as we shall see in chapter four, a whole range of scientiﬁc disciplines, of which some are closer to ‘life’ than others. Yet, in all these cases there still remains a gap between living and thinking.

62 63

Ibid., p. 134f. Ibid., pp. 156–195.

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It is often claimed by vitalists that the arts, another example of cultural goods, cannot be separated from life and its direct, vital experiences. Many artists, it is claimed, detest the abstractions of scientiﬁc theories. They work allegedly from their direct experiences and intuitions. Their main source of creativity and originality is life itself. Rickert, whose wife and one of their sons were accomplished sculptors, spends some time criticizing the vitalist conception of art. Most naturalistic art that claims to stay close to life and reality, is esthetically unattractive. He gives wax museums and panorama’s as examples, but could also have mentioned kitsch as a prime example of naturalistic art. In any case, he argues that works of art usually carry their aesthetic value by distancing themselves from reality and ‘real’ life. In fact, the most valuable works of art construct their own aesthetic world which is not a mere copy of the ‘real’, experienced world. ‘The aesthetic meaning of a work of art’, he claims, ‘which we understand and which alone is relevant to the aesthetic human being, is as unreal and non-alive, as the logical meaning of a true statement is.’64 One will search in vein, he adds, for a work of art which contains exclusively vital life.65 This is true a fortiori for music which among the arts is what mathematics is among the sciences. Here the removal from life is in fact the most radical. Music is essentially Apollinic. One should realize, Rickert adds, that in the aesthetic sphere in general Dionysus, the god of vital and irrational impulses, cannot ﬁnd a suitable place.66 It stands to reason that the erotic impulses are in particular prone to biologistic-vitalistic interpretations and ethical value imputations. Rickert points out that it does not make sense to speak of ethical values or unvalues (ethische Werte oder Unwerte) in the realm of sexual life. The sexual impulses are as such neutral, amoral, i.e. indiﬀerent

64 ‘Genau wie der logische Sinn eines wahren Satzes ist auch der ästhetische Sinn eines Kunstwerkes, den wir verstehen, und auf den es allein dem ästhetischen Menschen ankommt, ebenso unwirklich, wie es unlebendig ist.’ Ibid., p. 160f. 65 ‘Ein Kunstwerk, das nur lebendiges Leben enthält, wird man vergeblich suchen.’ Ibid., p. 161. 66 Ibid., p. 162. This was obviously meant as a critique of Nietzsche’s aesthetic theories. As to music, Rickert is quite ill informed. It suﬃces to just mention the ‘naturalistic’ tone poems of Richard Strauss, or Jean Sibelius, and the evocations of nature and celebration of life in Gustav Mahler’s Das Lied von der Erde, or the verismo in Italian opera (Giacomo Puccini). Naturalism is also prominent in the arts. Rickert discusses brieﬂy the sculptures of Gustave Rodin, and tries unsuccessfully to deny their naturalistic animus.

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to values (wertindiﬀerent). It is the will of human beings that assign ethical values (moralism) or unvalues (immoralism) to them. There are, of course, areas of culture, Rickert adds, in which elementary impulses play such a preponderant role that an extensive and intensive reﬂection about their functions would have a disturbing eﬀect on their vitality. This is, for example, the case in institutions such as marriage and the family. Rickert would, in all probability, not be a proponent of marriage counseling, as he was hesitant towards psychotherapy. If done well, i.e. scientiﬁcally sound, it would deaden the vitality of our primary, vital impulses. Yet, in and of themselves such impulses and their vitality are and remain neutral, i.e. indiﬀerent to values. Values are imputed voluntaristically by people. The alleged ‘right’ to erotic vitality and to the liberty to live it up erotically, as if this were a moral imperative, is naïve and has in the ﬁnal analysis nothing to do with culture.67 Religion is a special case. It stands to reason, Rickert claims, that religious values are not an intrinsic part of biological life.68 They usually transcend all other values, and for the true believer they are ‘absolute’ values. Religious man ought to reject attempts to underpin his values by other values. In a sense, religious man comes closest to life and its direct experiences, since religion, certainly in its non-institutional form, is devoid of specializations and compartmentalizations. In order to exist, religion needs to penetrate into existence deeply and totally. But its values cannot possibly be derived from biological life. As there is a dualism of thought and concepts on the one hand and life and experiences on the other, there is this dualism between a god people believe in and the life people live. To sum up, here too Rickert rejects vitalistic monism which boils everything down into a single, vague and multi-interpretable concept of life. In religion too that which lives diﬀers from that which thinks (believes).69

67

Ibid., p. 165. One could counter this thesis of Rickert by claiming that there may well be religious genes, as there are perhaps erotic, artistic and scientiﬁc genes. Rickert would answer though that these are still the biological impulses, not the values imputed to them by men. 69 Rickert fails to observe that there is such a thing as ‘natural religion’ as opposed to religion based on a believed revelation. Proponents of natural religion could well argue in terms of biologistic and/or intuitionist vitalism. Moreover, in mysticism the dualism of God and life is dissolved in a monism of irrational religiosity, the so-called unio mystica. 68

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chapter two Vitalism’s credit side

Meanwhile, the impression may have arisen that Rickert could not discover anything positive and worthwhile in vitalism.The concluding chapter of his book on vitalism negates this impression.70 He argues that this school of thought has a certain right of existence. According to Rickert, philosophy is, as we saw before, a non-specialized, systematic science, based upon and ruled by formal logic. It is in a sense an empirical science, since its ‘sense-data’ stem from reality, or, if you want, from life, as it is experienced through the senses. It is systematic in that it transcends the fragmented views of reality by the specialized scientiﬁc disciplines, arriving at a rational comprehension of the world-in-toto. As we will see in the following chapters, this totalizing comprehension comes about by means of abstract concepts (the transcendental categories) and through the relating of values to facts in acts of judgment. As a scientiﬁc enterprise philosophy, like the specialized sciences, works with concepts and theories which are detached from life and direct existential experiences. Yet, Rickert is well aware of the fact that the history of philosophy has demonstrated time and again, how great and ‘classic’ philosophers have been followed slavishly by multitudes of admirers, smaller minds which swear by the words of the masters, even when these words have become obsolete and have been surpassed by the ongoing development of thinking and research. The result is a stale dogmatism which correctly can be called rigid. It is a kind of deadening scholasticism which severely impairs the progress of philosophy. It stands to reason that people will emerge who rebel against this rigid dogmatism and scholasticism, dealing summarily with it. Understandably, yet falsely, these people will revolt subsequently against each and any system, seeing them as the seedbeds of dry and lifeless rationalism. It is a kind of reaction which emphasizes what is conceived of as being original, elementary, natural. Allegedly, the ‘original’, the ‘elementary’, the ‘natural’ cannot be grasped by reason but must be ‘experienced’ in an irrational, intuitive manner. Such a ‘naturalistic reaction’ was exempliﬁed by German romanticism (particularly in Sturm und Drang), but its basic tenets occur also

70

Ibid., pp. 171–195: ‘Das Recht der Lebensphilosophie’ (‘The Right of Vitalism’).

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in various currents of vitalism. Rickert then views vitalism as a basically false, yet fully understandable ‘naturalistic reaction’ against a rationalism which had become petriﬁed into a dogmatic and indeed lifeless kind of intellectualism. Bergson’s complaint about the ready-made clothing and reach-medowns of rationalistic concepts comes to mind immediately. And in all fairness, Rickert says, his intuitionist vitalism has its advantages. Those who rigidly stick to obsolete systems of thought and certainly those who believe that a mix of natural-scientiﬁc concepts can be employed in order to understand and grasp the world-in-toto—basing their ideas and concepts, for instance, on the physics of Newton, the biology of Darwin, or the mathematics and astronomy of Einstein71— should be advised to read Bergson. The world is not so small and poor that it can be understood completely and exclusively by statistical calculations. Bergson, Rickert comments, has seen the other side of reality which is impervious to calculation. As no one in his day he saw the limits of natural-scientiﬁc conceptualizations. Before him, Nietzsche exerted the same eﬀect on his readers. With an overwhelming linguistic force (Sprachgewalt) he managed to communicate ‘the atheoretical importance of what cannot be forged into concepts. One feels it directly while reading Nietzsche, without understanding it logically.’72 Nietzsche’s enticing, Dionysian celebration of life is not philosophy yet, but it reminds us, Rickert claims, of the fact that philosophy is not a mere game of abstract concepts and theories. Indeed, although philosophical concepts and theories are necessarily estranged from life, they yet focus at the end of the day on life and try to grasp it theoretically. If this is forgotten, one ends up in a fruitless and abstract intellectualism and rationalism. Rickert then formulates the dilemma somewhat enigmatically as follows: ‘We are unable to think about what we do not somehow “live”, and in philosophy we must think about all of life.’73 He claims then that he too wants to develop a Lebensphilosophie, but he is not prepared to let it drift oﬀ into irrationalism. He wants to remain

71

Ibid., p. 177. ‘(. . .) die ungeheure atheoretische Wichtigkeit dessen, was sich in keinen Begriﬀ bringen lässt. Man fühlt sie bei Nietzsche unmittelbar, auch ohne dass man sie logisch versteht. Ibid., p. 179. 73 ‘Was wir nicht irgendwie “leben”, darüber können wir auch nicht denken, und über alles Leben haben wir in der Philosophie zu denken.’’ Ibid., p. 181. 72

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loyal to the tradition of German Idealism, in particular as it was explored by Kant.74 He was, however, not a slavish follower of the great man from Königsberg, and forged his own brand of philosophy. Rickert sees still another advantage in vitalism. It not only placed the concept of life but also that of value in the center of philosophical attention. Vital life, vitalists emphasized time and again, is wertendes Leben, evaluating life.75 The problems of life are problems of values, as for example Nietzsche claimed when he called for an Umwertung aller Werte, a re-evaluation of all values. Evaluating life and re-evaluating values—these are enchanting ideas and notions. Rickert is fully aware of the attractiveness of such conceptual celebrations of life and values, but then engages immediately in a thorough and sobering disenchantment. Apart from the question whether values can be re-evaluated as values, which Rickert denies, such an exercise can never be the task of science and scientiﬁc philosophy. Human evaluations (Wertungen) and their adoption of positions vis-à-vis values in practical life (Stellungnahmen) should not be confused with values. One can inﬂuence the evaluations of people. One can, for instance, exert such an inﬂuence by substituting one value for the other. But the values themselves—truth, beauty, justice, etc.—cannot be inﬂuenced, transformed, or re-evaluated. They remain what they are: ‘Values as values cannot alter themselves. Only our taking position towards them is subjected to change.’76 That is, beauty as general value remains unalterable, yet our artistic and aesthetic evaluations in terms of beauty (or its opposite) will be subjected to change in the course of history. Moreover, philosophy as a Wissenschaft is not interested in a practical evaluation of values. It only wants to grasp values theoretically. Therefore, a Nietzschean re-evaluation of values, if one wants to maintain that idea at all, cannot fall within its competence. Values belong to our world as much as the value-free reality of the natural sciences does. But values are ‘real’ in quite a diﬀerent sense than the objects of the natural sciences are. Rickert’s philosophy

74 For Rickert’s philsophical aﬃnity with Kant see his Kant als Philosoph der modernen Kultur, (‘Kant as Philosopher of Modern Culture’), o.c. 75 Ibid., p. 185. 76 ‘Werte als Werte können sich nicht ändern. Nur unsere Stellungnahme zu ihnen ist dem Wandel unterworfen.’ Ibid., p. 185f.

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of values presents the idea of a realm made up of non-empirical, formal values, whose main characteristic is that they do not ‘exist’ in the sense of ‘being’. Values are not ‘real’, they rather are ‘valid’ or ‘invalid’. How can these ‘unreal’ but ‘valid’ values be known theoretically? One resorts often, Rickert says, to Verstehen (‘understanding’) which is then opposed to description (Beschreiben) and explanation (Erklären). The concept of Verstehen is often blurred. To Rickert it maintains its pregnant meaning only, if it stands in relation to the sense (Sinn) or signiﬁcance (Bedeutung) of objects. But an object without a connection to values, value-free reality in and of itself, is senseless and without signiﬁcance, and thus inaccessible for Verstehen: ‘When one wants to “understand”, one may not ignore the values. Otherwise one would not know, what it is that one understands.’77 We return to Rickert’s ideas about values and understanding in later chapters. At this point, we should rather focus upon his notion of the validity of values; that is, values are not ‘real’ or ‘unreal’, but ‘valid’ ( gültig) or ‘invalid’ (ungültig). Rickert then states rather bluntly that what merely is (das bloss Seiende), is neither valid, nor can it be understood.78 Yet, we often say that a fact is valid. But that is an imprecise expression. Not the fact, but the sentence (Satz) that something is a fact, is valid. And the statement is only valid, if it carries a true meaning. Truth is, of course, a value. Thus, theoretical validity—the validity of statements about facts—is not value-free. Stronger still, truth is a value which is directed towards our interests. We adopt an evaluating stance towards truth, as will be demonstrated in more detail in the next chapter. This point was made also by the epistemology of American Pragmatism, although it went astray, when it deﬁned a theoretical value (truth) in utilitarian terms of usefulness which, of course, is an atheoretical (practical) good. All of this shows that philosophy in general should be a philosophy that focuses its main attention upon the realm of valid or invalid values to which people in practical life refer all the time in their evaluations.

77 ‘Wo man (daher) ‘verstehen’ will, darf man die Werte nicht ignorieren. Sonst weiss man nicht, was man versteht.’ Ibid., p. 187. 78 ‘Das bloss Seiende gilt nie, ebenso wie es unverständlich ist.’ Ibid., p. 187.

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chapter two Philosophical anthropology

Rickert’s book on vitalism was published in the early 1920’s. It would be interesting to know, how he would have reacted to a current in German philosophy which went beyond intuitionist and biologistic vitalism, yet ignored his critique of vitalism and by-passed his philosophy of values: the philosophical anthropology of Helmuth Plessner and Arnold Gehlen. In one of his early essays Arnold Gehlen (1904–1976) discussed Rickert’s transcendental philosophy. In another essay, published the same year (1933), he engaged in a ﬁerce polemic against the existential philosophies of Kierkegaard, Heidegger and Jaspers in defense of traditional Idealism. But his opus magnum in philosophical anthropology, Der Mensch (1940), departed from that tradition an was based on biology.79 He then left the German idealist tradition and claimed to profess an empirical philosophy, called philosophical anthropology. Biology as a specialized natural science in particular was of great importance to the philosophical anthropology of Helmuth Plessner (1892–1985) and Gehlen. Each in his own way tried to design a scientiﬁc (empirical) philosophy that avoided the fatal trap of biologism as well as the equally fatal trap of metaphysics. Both were students of the biologist Hans Driesch at the University of Leipzig in the early 1920’s, both became professional philosophers and sociologists during and after World War II. Max Scheler who was less averse to metaphysics, phrased the basic problem of philosophical anthropology as ‘man’s position in the cosmos’.80 Plessner and Gehlen then developed their respective anthropologies in two inﬂuential books which testiﬁed to their systematic and scientiﬁc mindset. Rickert

79 Arnold Gehlen, ‘Idealismus und Existentialphilosophie’, 1933, in: Arnold Gehlen, Philosophische Schriften I (1925–1933), (‘Philosophical Essays, vol. I, 1925–1933’), Gesamtausgabe Band I, (‘Collected Works, vol. I’), (Frankfurt a.M.: Vittorio Klostermann, pp. 383–403). See also his paper “Heinrich Rickert und die Transzendentalphilosophie’, 1933, ibid., pp. 403–417. His anthropology was systematically treated in Der Mensch. Seine Natur und seine Stellung in der Welt, (‘Man. His Nature and Position in the World’), K.-S. Rehberg, ed., two volumes, Collected Works, vol. 3.1 and 3.2, (Frankfurt a.M.: Vittorio Klostermann, 1993). 80 Max Scheler, Die Stellung des Menschen im Kosmos, 1928, (Bern: Francke Verlag, 1962).

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would, of course, have appreciated this.81 But he would not have accepted their claim that a philosophy of man would and should coincide with the sociology and psychology of human behavior and socio-cultural institutions. It meant, of course, a departure from Idealism in general and Rickert’s brand of transcendental philosophy in particular. Naturally Rickert would point out that sociology and psychology as specialized scientiﬁc disciplines could never be generalized validly into a systemic philosophy that covers reality-intoto, or as Scheler phrased it, the cosmos. A biologically and sociologically based philosophical anthropology, he would argue, must remain stuck in a fragmented view of the world, and cannot fulﬁll its promise to forge an encompassing theory about ‘man’s position in the world’. What kind of world and how is it to be conceptualized adequately? Rickert would ask. However, this is not the place to discuss such questions regarding philosophical anthropology in further detail, since it would need a rather detailed exposition of its theories and concepts. That would transcend the boundaries of this book.82 Rickert would in all probability feel at home philosophically with Ludwig Wittgenstein’s thesis 6.41 of the Tractatus logico-philosophicus, where it is stated that everything in the world is as it is, and happens as it happens, that there is in it no value—and if there were a value in it, it would not have value. In Wittgenstein’s view of the world everything that happens, and also being-as-it-is by itself, is accidental. That which makes it non-accidental, lies outside the world. Rickert viewed the world likewise as being chaotic and in that sense accidental and irrational. Meaningful and valuable characteristics, rendering the world into a cosmos, are imputed by men from the outside through practical evaluations which necessarily draw upon the transcendent ‘non-reality’ of eternal values. That is admittedly a position Wittgenstein in his turn would not accept, since he thought,

81

Helmuth Plessner, Die Stufen des Organischen und der Mensch, (‘The Stages of the Organic and Man’), 1926, (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 1965). Arnold Gehlen, Der Mensch, o.c. For an introduction to biologically founded anthropology see Marjorie Grene, Approaches to a Philosophical Biology, 1965, (New York-London: Basic Books, 1968). She does, however, not discuss Arnold Gehlen which is a serious omission. 82 I discussed Plessner and Gehlen in my The Institutional Imperative. The Interface of Institutions and Networks, (Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2000). See in particular chapter 2, ‘Institutions and the Transcendence of Biology’, pp. 43–76. On Plessner, pp. 45–51; on Gehlen, pp. 51–63.

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unlike Rickert, that nothing sensible can be said about such a transcendent reality. Practical evaluations are after all ethical statements, and these are in Wittgenstein’s view senseless. ‘It is clear’, Wittgenstein declares in thesis 6.421, ‘that ethics cannot be expressed verbally. Ethics is transcendental.’83 Note the concept ‘transcendental’! Rickert would immediately want to know what Wittgenstein means by the concept ‘transcendental’. He had some ideas about that. What are his ideas about transcendental philosophy, its peculiar logic and its related epistemology? This is the main subject of the next chapter.

83 ‘Es ist klar, dass sich die Ethik nicht aussprechen lässt. Die Ethik ist transcendental.’ Ludwig Wittgenstein, Tractatus logico-philosophicus, 1921, (Frankfurt a.M.: Suhrkamp Verlag, 1964), p. 112.

CHAPTER THREE

KNOWLEDGE AND REALITY Form: in ihr ist Ferne, in ihr ist Dauer. Gottfried Benn1

Epistemology and ontology Rickert’s neo-Kantianism is not a servile following of the thoughts and theories of the master of Königsberg, but in one respect he deﬁnitely is Kant’s successor.2 Particularly in his thesis for the German doctorate (Habilitation), Gegenstand der Erkenntnis (‘The Object of Knowledge’), the ﬁrst edition of which was published in 1892, he followed Kant’s positing of the epistemological primacy over against ontology. In this respect Rickert diﬀered from Nicolai Hartmann who, in opposition to the Kantian thesis that the thing-in-itself—reality, or being prior to experience—cannot be known, defended the ontological primacy, as had been customary in most traditional (medieval and Classic) philosophies. In their view being is the origin, cause, and context of knowing. Philosophy is therefore ﬁrst and foremost ontology, and beyond that metaphysics, and not logic and epistemology. Rickert rejects this idea. To him and his fellow neo-Kantians of the South-West German School, epistemology precedes ontology, not the other way about. After all, the concept itself suggests this epistemological precedence: onto-logy! This has lead to the standard criticism that neo-Kantianism suﬀers from a general neglect of ontology and an overemphasis of epistemology. At the end of his career Rickert counters this critique. As we 1 ‘Form: in it is distance, in it is permanence.’ Gottfried Benn, ‘Zukunft und Gegenwart’ (‘Future and Presence’), in: Doppelleben, (‘Double Life’), 1944, (Frankfurt a.M.: Fischer Taschenbuch Verlag, 1984), p. 468. 2 Cf. Heinrich Rickert, Kant als Philosoph der modernen Kultur. Ein geschichtsphilosophischer Versuch, (‘Kant as Philosopher of Modern Culture. An Essay in the History of Philosophy’), (Tübingen: Mohr-Siebeck, 1924). He admits in the Preface to be ‘ein Kantianer’, but not in a scholastic sense. The greatness of Kant is, according to him, that he did not create a System which one must either accept or reject in its totality. It is rather the Kantian ‘critique’ as a philosophical attitude and method which inspires one to engage in philosophy.

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shall see shortly, he then re-deﬁnes the concept of Being which he initially had separated from the non-sensual reality of values and meanings. He admits that the ﬁnal concept of systematic philosophy which is, as we shall see, reality-in-toto (das Weltall ), is, of course, an ontological concept. In this sense, systematic philosophy is indeed ﬁrst and foremost ontology and may even end up in metaphysics. However, since philosophy aims at an understanding of the world, the balance between being and knowing leans towards the latter. But philosophy can, of course, never be deﬁned as ‘just’ epistemology, nor can it be deﬁned as being ‘just’ ontology. In fact, knowledge is expressed in language, i.e. in sentences, in judgments. The basic logical structure of these sentences is always a connection by the copula ‘is’ of a subject and a predicate. Beyond its mere copula-function being is contained by the predicate. The logic of the predicate is the essence of ontology.3 Thus, logic and epistemology cannot be separated strictly from ontology and vice versa. Rickert argues ‘that true enough the sentence: “there is no problem of knowledge without a problem of being” is correct, but precisely as correct, however, is simultaneously, at least in the case of general ontology, the reversal of this sentence: “there is no problem of being without a problem of knowledge.”’4 Yet, since philosophy’s aim is the conceptual understanding of reality, epistemology must occupy an autonomous position in philosophy and cannot be viewed as a derivative of ontology. Rickert argues that the close bond between epistemology and logic on the one hand and ontology on the other constituted the heart of Plato’s theory of the metaphysical Ideas. In order to be true, knowledge ought to be ‘general’, i.e. ought to transcend the particularity of the individual observations of the senses. For this epistemological and logical reason he distin-

3 Heinrich Rickert, Die Logik des Prädikats und das Problem der Ontologie, (‘The Logic of the Predicate and the Problem of Ontology’), (Heidelberg: Carl Winters Universitätsbuchhandlung, 1930), passim. For the copula-function, cf. ibid., p. 60f. 4 ‘dass zwar der Satz: “es gibt keine Erkenntnisfrage ohne Seinsfrage” richtig ist, genau ebenso richtig jedoch zugleich, wenigstens für die allgemeine Ontologie, die Umkehrung dieses Satzes: “es gibt keine Seinsfrage ohne Erkenntnisfrage.” ’ Ibid., p. 172. When Rickert uses the concept ‘logic’ he does not refer to ‘formal logic’, as in Aristotelian logic, but much broader to a form of epistemology. The proper object of logic is, according to Rickert, the truth of thought and knowledge, and beyond that the essence of truth. How do we arrive at, and what is actually, a true sentence about reality which then yields true knowledge? Logic is always epistemology, epistemology is not necessarily always logic. Epistemology studies and analyzes the processes of knowledge production, the formation of concepts in the ﬁrst place.

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guished ontologically two realms, the ‘aistheton’ and the ‘noeton’, i.e. the relative ‘phaenomena’ and the absolute ‘noumena’. The latter constitute a world of non-empirical concepts, the Ideas. They transcend the sheer ‘appearance’ of the senses which are unable to produce any true and generally valid knowledge. (Needless to add that this is quite diﬀerent from Kant’s deﬁnition of the ‘noumenon’.) The metaphysical Ideas constitute a transcendent reality which must be understood and functions as the aboriginal picture of reality and as the model for all general concepts of reality. It is the world of absolute Being which is the source and origin of everythingthat-is: ontos on. This exhibits a second presupposition of the Platonic epistemology and ontology, namely the notion that true knowledge is a representation, a picture of reality. It is in fact the origin of the Abbildlogik, the representational logic, that was elaborated in the medieval, scholastic doctrine of the adequatio rei et intellectus, also adopted by early-modern philosophers, like Hume, and then vehemently rejected by Kant. However, this presupposition too demonstrates that in the Platonic philosophy the ontological concept of ‘true Being’ depends on the epistemological concept of ‘true knowledge’. The question which metaphysics must answer is, what in sentences about reality does constitute a ‘true’ predicate and what must be deﬁned as sheer ‘appearance’. Before one answers the question one must know what true knowledge is. In early-modern philosophy the search was for an ontology without metaphysics. According to Rickert, Hume was in this respect the most important eye-opener. He is usually discussed as a theoretician of knowledge, but he was, Rickert emphasizes, at the same time an ontologist who searched for an understanding of the ‘being of the world’ in its totality. Although he maintained the Platonic representational logic, he developed in fact a radically opposed theory. If Plato created a metaphysical ontology, Hume was the originator of an anti-metaphysical, sensualistic ontology. He deﬁned being as a combination of sense-impressions and its copies, i.e. the ‘ideas’. Everything outside these impressions and ideas is, in his view, ﬁctitious. Here again we encounter the close bond between ontology and epistemology or logic: ‘Ontology is the result of logic.’5 Rickert, as we shall see later, is a great admirer of Hume, but certainly not an uncritical one. In particular the notion that concepts, ‘ideas’, were the representations or pictures of the sensual impressions, could not meet with his approval. Hume, he points out, forged and applied concepts all the time which were not all representations of impressions. His theory of causality, for example, presupposed a conception or an ‘idea’ of causality which is far removed from sensual observations. Causality emerges, Hume claimed, from habits and thus eﬀectuates itself. Hume’s ontology and epistemology, Rickert concludes, got stuck in the logical fallacies of ‘sensualism’, i.e. the belief that knowledge emerges from sense impressions which

5

‘Aus der Logik ergibt sich die Ontologie.’ Ibid., p. 182.

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are then, as it were inductively, represented by concepts, or ‘ideas’. Kant, as is well known, turned this around, when he claimed that we do indeed experience reality intuitively , but these in themselves chaotic and irrational intuitions and impressions of the senses are structured into perception (Anschauung) by the forms time and space, and then put into a rational order by the a priori categories of the Verstand. But this, Rickert emphasizes, is not a one-sided epistemological and logical approach but aims in the end at an understanding of reality, the world, ‘being’.6

Descartes, Locke, Berkeley, Hume and Kant were the founders of a great philosophical tradition which focused on the question what precisely human knowledge is, and how its reasoning behaves. It was, in a sense, a reprise of the epistemological and logical ideas of Plato and Aristotle, but at the same time these early-modern philosophers tried to avoid Platonism and Aristotelianism as the metaphysical systems of thought so dear to medieval philosophers and theologians. After all scientists and mathematicians like Copernicus, Kepler, Galilei and their culmination in Newton and Boyle had altered the medieval worldview radically, causing a paradigmatic change in philosophy—in epistemology in particular. What precisely is human thinking and what is the relationship between our concepts and theories with the objective world of things and events? How can we arrive at an empirically tested knowledge of the objects outside our minds? We do experience them through our senses, so the question arises if we can know them prior to this experience— as they are, so to say, in and of themselves. Kant tried to make us believe that his transcendentalism—knowledge through the a priori categories imposed on the experiences of reality—constituted a Copernican change in philosophy, and posited an epistemological primacy over traditional ontology. But he was less original in this than he himself wanted to believe. He had predecessors, particularly in France, England, Scotland and Ireland. Descartes set the epistemological tone in post-medieval philosophy by his call for systematic doubt. Actually, there is, according to him, but one certainty in life and that is cogito ergo sum (‘I think, therefore I am’). This was a revolutionary turn around from ‘being’ (ontology) to ‘thinking’ (epistemology): ‘my essence consists in this alone, that I am a thinking thing, or a substance whose whole essence or nature consists of thinking.’7 Obviously,

6

For Rickert’s critique of Hume, cf. ibid., pp. 183–185. René Descartes, ‘Sixth Meditation’, in: Descartes, Discourse on Method and the Meditations, translated by F. E. Sutcliﬀ, 1968, (London: Penguin Classics, 1974), p. 156. 7

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however, he was still unable to free himself from the dominant ontological thinking of his days, inherited from Classic and medieval philosophies, completely. After all, he saw man as a ‘thinking thing’ tied to a body in a rather contradictory manner: ‘And although perhaps (or rather I shall shortly say, certainly,) I have a body to which I am very closely united, nevertheless, because, on the one hand, I have a clear and distinct idea of myself in so far as I am only a thinking and unextended thing, and because, on the other hand I have a distinct idea of the body in so far as it is only an extended thing but which does not think, it is certain that I, that is to say my mind, by which I am what I am, is entirely and truly distinct from my body, and may exist without it.’8 This is a crucial point in Descartes’ argument: ‘my mind by which I am what I am’—independently, that is, of the body. In fact, this argument in the Sixth Meditation reads like a foreshadowing of the Kantian transcendental a priori. Descartes continues to discuss ‘the faculties of imagination and perceiving’ which he views as ‘faculties of thought’. Such faculties cannot be conceived without some sort of attachment to the body as an ‘extended thing’. But the conceptions (ideas) of these faculties do not just emerge in my mind passively. There must be in me ‘an active faculty capable of forming and producing those ideas.’9 This saddles Descartes with a formidable problem because, he continues, this active faculty is obviously not part of me as a thinking thing since these ideas often emerge in my mind without any contribution to them on my part. Indeed they frequently do so against my will. This active faculty must be a substance diﬀerent from me. Descartes then jumps to the metaphysical conclusion that ‘it is God himself, or some other creature more noble than body, in which body itself is contained eminently.’10 Needless to add that neither Kant, nor Rickert or Husserl would accept this epistemological deus ex machina. In neo-Kantian transcendental philosophy and in Husserl’s phenomenology this active faculty consists of the completely unextended, formal ‘transcendental Ego’. Prior to Kant, Rickert and Husserl the earlymodern philosophers would more often have recourse to the epistemological deus ex machina. Locke confronted a basic problematic issue in Descartes’s epistemology and ontology. If the ‘unextended thinking thing’ (res cogitans) is separated from the ‘extended things’ (res extensae) the fundamental epistemological question emerges how it could be possible at all that the subjective mind acquires knowledge about the objective world. Ontologically Locke stuck to the socalled corpuscular theory which in eﬀect was a resumption of the Classic atomism of Democritus and Epicurus, felt to be adequate again in the

8

Descartes, idem. Descartes, ibid., p. 157. The concept of ‘ideas’ is used by most philosophers discussed in this section but that is done with many diﬀerent meanings. This is not the place to discuss this concept in the broader context of early modern philosophy. It would deserve a special monograph though. 10 Ibid., p. 158. 9

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context of the recently emerged natural sciences as introduced by Newton and Boyle.11 The basic idea of the corpuscular theory was that the world consisted of atoms or miniscule particles moving in an inﬁnite empty space, where they coalesce incessantly. Locke then saw causality as a perpetual coalescence of these atoms, or particles, an ongoing process which he called ‘impulse’. He then believed in conformity with the corpuscular philosophy that knowledge is the result of the impulse of the invisible atoms on the human senses. These movements are led through the nerves to the brain and cause the emergence of sensations—which he also called ideas. As to God, Locke posited him as the prime mover who initially set the whole mechanism of the world and its incessant impulses in working, and then left it alone. Locke then introduced the distinction between two kinds of qualities of the objects of knowledge: primary and secondary qualities. The primary qualities of things or objects are extension, ﬁgure, motion, rest, solidity or impenetrability and number. They are the intrinsic qualities of matter or substance which exist without any interference of the senses. Matter would thus continue to exist even if there were no human beings to experience it through their senses. (It reminds one of Kant’s thing-in-itself.) In fact, he called matter ‘unthinking’ and even ‘stupid’. Color, heat, cold, sound, smell, on the contrary, are secondary qualities. They are not true qualities of objects or material bodies, but subjective sensations called forth by the objects or bodies. They are, unlike the primary qualities, highly variable and ﬂuctuating. As Warnock summarizes it elegantly, ‘we can ﬁnd no one such quality to be assigned as the quality of the object. Things look diﬀerent colors in diﬀerent lights and from diﬀerent points of view, they taste diﬀerent to diﬀerent percipients, water feels warm or cold depending on the temperature of the hands with which we feel it; and so on. But there is no reason to suppose that the object itself varies in this extreme fashion; the ideas we have vary, as our own physical state of the conditions of observation vary, but the object itself does not vary in this way.’12 (This, of course, reminds one of Kant’s distinction of the noumenon vis-à-vis the phaenomenon.) It is at this point that Berkeley opened his attack on Locke whom he, apart from his epistemology, admired greatly. Berkeley was an empirist in the sense that knowledge about the world was only possible through the senses. It is through our senses that we forge our ideas about the world. Now if matter or substance due to its primary qualities, in and of itself, cannot be experienced, it cannot be understood. After all, matter without

11 Cf. J. O. Urmson, Berkeley, (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1982), chapter one. I used the Dutch translation by A. van Kersbergen: J. O. Urmson, Berkeley, (Rotterdam: Lemniscaat, 2003, 2nd ed.), pp. 7–23. See also G. J. Warnock, Berkeley, 1953, (London: Penguin Books, 1969), pp. 91–109. Locke developed his ontology and epistemology in his Essay Concerning Human Understanding, 1689. 12 Warnock, o.c., p. 93.

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color, smell, taste, heat or cold cannot be perceived, experienced and observed, and thus may as well not exist. It is impossible to form ideas about this ‘senseless’ material world, it cannot be object of the human mind, it cannot be known. ‘Matter’ is just an empty word. Moreover, Locke’s epistemology is quite mistaken in another respect, because why would the primary qualities, such as extension, motion, solidity, etc., not be located in the mind like the secondary qualities, such as color, heat and cold? Are not, for instance, extension and color inseparably united? Any object which is extended and solid must have some color?13 Berkeley then elaborated this criticism in the direction of a surprising brand of Idealism. Locke, he argued, maintained the existence of external objects beyond the ideas we actually perceive and carry about in our minds. However, due to the primary qualities these objects cannot be experienced and observed. In other words, matter is in Locke’s terminology ‘something we know not what’ which nevertheless ‘supports’ the alleged qualities. Now, according to the fashionable ‘representation theory’ the ideas were, according to Locke, pictures of the objects they represent but these objects could not to be observed and experienced. So how do we know then that the ideas are in fact pictures of the material objects? Moreover, what is the use of ideas which would duplicate objects which are completely unobservable counterparts to boot? Warnock again formulates Berkeley’s criticism succinctly as follows: ‘What could be the point of supposing a second set of things behind the scenes, things that we never perceive? We could not possibly know that there were any such things, and it could make no diﬀerence at all to us if there were not.’14 Berkeley drew the conclusion that the whole notion of matter or substance is superﬂuous. He coined a brief and famous, if not notorious formula: ‘esse is percipi ’, being is just perceiving and being perceived. Objects do exist only when they are being perceived by us. That, of course, is quite problematic! Does the table I am presently working on no longer exist, when it is no longer being perceived by me because I have left the room? Berkeley calls upon the deus ex machina of pre-modern philosophy, in order to avoid the absurdity of a denial: yes, it would still be perceived by the Eternal Mind, called God. To the majority of readers this answer would not be less absurd.15 Without a recourse to the deus ex machina of medieval philosophy and theology, Hume continued the epistemological line of thinking of Descartes and Locke. Yet, he went beyond them and served as an inﬂuential source of inspiration for Kant and his transcendental epistemology. The only thing we can be certain of, Hume argued, is the fact that we are thinking. Perceptions of the mind are the prime elements of human thought. Hume discerned two diﬀerent types of such perceptions. The ﬁrst and most important ones

13 Ibid., p. 99. Berkeley developed his epistemology in his A Treatise Concerning the Principles of Human Knowledge, 1710. 14 Ibid., p. 101. See also p. 108. 15 See the Dutch edition of J. O. Urmson, o.c., pp. 66–69.

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are the often lively impressions when we hear, or see, or feel, or hate, or desire. There are secondly the less powerful and lively, more abstract thoughts or ideas which are representations or copies of these impressions. The human mind is able to combine the impressions into sometimes fantastic images as long as the components of these images are based upon impressions. Thus, we can imagine a golden mountain because we know from experience what gold is and what mountains are, although a golden mountain does, of course, not exist empirically and objectively.16 Is there then, according to Hume, such an objective reality of things and objects independently of the human mind? Hume argues that it is the natural attitude of man to assume that the images of the senses reﬂect external objects: ‘This very table, which we see white, and which we feel hard, is believed to exist, independent of our perception, and to be something external to our mind, which perceives it. Our presence bestows not being on it: our absence does not annihilate it. It preserves its existence uniform and entire, independent of the situation of intelligent beings, who perceive or contemplate it.’17 It would be nice, Hume admits, to be able to believe in the existence of independent objects—a belief which is widely spread and popular. Yet, this is, he admits, not possible. He deplores, as Ayer claims, the consequential skepticism but does not know how to avoid it.18 His position is a bit wavering: ‘It is a question of fact, whether the perceptions of the senses be produced by external objects, resembling them: how shall this question be determined? By experience surely; as all other questions of a like nature. But here experience is, and must be entirely silent. The mind has never anything present to it but the perceptions, and cannot possibly reach any experience of their connexion with objects. The supposition of such a connexion is, therefore, without any foundation in reasoning.’19 He then illustrates this point by his famous and best known analysis of the phenomenon of cause and eﬀect. The steady succession of cause and eﬀect—is, of course, not caused by God, or any other metaphysical force, but by the association of ideas in our mind. If a billiard ball bounces against another still billiard ball, we see the movement of the ﬁrst ball, then the collision, and then the movement of the other ball which did not move before. That is all. The eﬀect of the collision of the two balls cannot be found in the supposed cause, because the eﬀect diﬀers totally from the cause: ‘Motion in the second billiard-ball is a quite distinct event from motion in the ﬁrst; nor is there anything in the one to suggest the smallest hint of the other.’20 Due to experiences and past observations we have been able to ascertain certain regularities and then 16 Cf. David Hume, Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding, 1772, (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1975, 3rd ed.), Section II, ‘On the Origin of Ideas’, pp. 17–23. 17 Ibid., p. 151f. 18 A. J. Ayer, Hume, (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1980). I used the Dutch translation by W. Visser (Rotterdam: Lemniscaat, 1999), p. 57. 19 Hume, o.c., p. 153. 20 Hume, o.c., para 25, p. 29.

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to develop certain ‘laws’ which should explain the process of cause and eﬀect. However, we shall never know what precisely last causes are and what precisely causality is. In this sense, Hume’s epistemology ends in skepticism.21

Kant, as we know, elaborated on this idea by claiming that we are indeed not able to know what objective reality in itself, i.e. prior to our observations and sense perceptions, actually is. The Ding-an-sich does, of course, exist. It is in fact the ontological rock bed of Kant’s epistemology. The question, however, is whether this thing-in-itself can be known, can be reached adequately by our mind. Kant then introduced his well-known distinction of the noumenon and the phaenomenon. The former remains closed for human knowledge, but it appears to us, it is experienced by us through our senses. In that respect it is a phenomenon also. The mind then molds these sense perceptions by means of a priori, i.e. non-empirical (transcendental) forms and categories, the forms of perception (Anschauung), time and space to begin with. We structure our sense perceptions in the sequence of past-present-future, and in terms of here-and-there. We next structure them through the a priori (mainly Aristotelian) categories of Verstand, like quality, quantity, relation (including causality), modality. Kant himself called this a Copernican change in philosophy: from the primacy of ontology to that of epistemology, and within the latter from a passive, receptive cognition to an active and constructive cognition through the molding of sense perceptions by a priori (transcendental) forms and categories. Between Idealism and Empirism In a rare reﬂection upon his own development as a philosopher Rickert writes in 1924 that it was reading David Hume as a young man which inspired him to become a philosopher.22 As so many 21 This is, of course, not the place to give an extensive survey of the evolution of epistemology in Western philosophy. I have only focused on some highlights which as it were foreshadowed Kant and neo-Kantianism which is, of course, the main frame of reference of Rickert’s epistemology. For a detailed historical survey see Ernst Cassirer, Das Erkenntnisproblem in der Philosophie und Wissenschaft der neueren Zeit (‘The Problem of Knowledge in the Philosophy and Science of Modernity’), 1906, four volumes, (Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1999–2000). 22 He would have agreed with A. J. Ayer who began his book on Hume with the statement that for him Hume had been the greatest philosopher England had ever known. Ayer, o.c., Dutch edition, p. 9.

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young men and women in the ﬁnal days of the nineteenth century he is enticed, he admits, by Hume’s ‘empirism’ which claims that our ideas and thoughts are caused by impressions which must be ascertained as facts. What is not an impression or a copy of an impression is a ﬁction. Rickert believes that this naïve empirism is essentially what contemporary phenomenology (Edmund Husserl) is in essence still all about, since it claims that knowledge is in the end the result of what is ‘viewed’ immediately and intuitively—Wesensschau. This is not altogether wrong but too one-sided. Kant, Rickert continues, can help us to overcome such naïve impressionism and intuitionism. Sheer impressions of reality, intuitively viewed, observed and absorbed can, according to Kant, never yield reliable and valid knowledge. Such knowledge emerges only, when the content of the impressions and sensations is in a sense molded by logical, rational forms, called concepts (Begriﬀe) or categories, such as causality, quality, quantity, etc. Kant, in other words, did not dismiss Hume’s impressionism but corrected it by the consequent linking of the impressions and sensations (content) with the abstract concepts or categories (forms). It is more than linking, we may add. The passive impressionism of Hume is transformed by Kant into an active ‘constructionism’, because by our concepts or categories we in a sense construct reality. This dualism was aptly formulated by Kant in these often quoted words: without conceptual forms perceptions (Anschauungen) are ‘blind’, while concepts or categories without perceptions remain ‘empty’. If we follow this basic epistemological idea of Kant consistently, and that is what Rickert sets out to do, we will avoid the ‘empirism’ of Hume and the ‘rationalism’ of, for example, Hegel or the Marburg School of Neo-Kantianism (particularly Paul Natorp). Avoiding both pitfalls, yet acknowledging their partial validity, he forged an epistemology which once was called transcendental empirism —a label Rickert did accept with a few reservations.23 However, Rickert is not an orthodox neo-Kantian philosopher. In many respects he follows his own idiosyncratic path. But from one point of view he is deﬁnitely a follower of the great philosopher of

23 Heinrich Rickert, Das Eine, die Einheit und die Eins. Bemerkungen zur Logik des Zahlbegriﬀs (‘The One [as opposed to the Other], the Unity, and the First [as in number 1]’), (Tübingen: Mohr-Siebeck, 1924), pp. 84–86.

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Königsberg: he sees and treats not ontology but epistemology as the ﬁrst and basic discipline of philosophy. What is knowledge, and how is it possible that we have valid knowledge of the transcendent world outside our consciousness? Naturally, epistemology—the systematic investigation of knowledge, in particular of the conditions of its truth or falsehood—is closely related to logic and scientiﬁc methodology. His epistemological investigations are in eﬀect logical investigations, comparable to Frege’s or Husserl’s Logische Untersuchungen.24 But there is still one point we must discuss ﬁrst. Rickert refuses to reduce epistemology to psychology, as happened repeatedly in his day. ‘My book wants to present only a theory of knowledge, and not psychology or metaphysics’, he wrote in the Preface of the second edition of Der Gegenstand der Erkenntnis (‘The Object of Knowledge’).25 He is, to give just one example, a great admirer of Franz Brentano (1838–1917), and actually uses, without giving him credit by mentioning his name, his idea of the intentionality of consciousness. I.e. consciousness is always consciousness of something, of things, events, other human beings, even of our own consciousness.26 But he takes Brentano to task severely for his alleged psycholigism. If one deals with concepts like ‘mind’ and ‘consciousness’ all the time, as epistemologists of the idealist tradition, including Rickert himself, do, one will easily take refuge in psychology and psychological conceptualizations.

24 A detailed and systematic analysis of Husserl’s logical investigations was given by Herman Philipse, De fundering van de logica in Husserls ‘Logische Untersuchungen’, (‘The Foundation of Logic in Husserl’s Logical Investigations’), PhD dissertation Leiden University 1983, (Leiden: Labor Vincit, 1983). For Frege see his ‘Logische Untersuchungen’, 1918,1923, in: Gottlob Frege, Kleine Schriften (Small Papers), 1967, (Hildesheim, Zürich, New York: Georg Olms Verlag, 1990), pp. 242–394. 25 ‘meine Schrift will nur Erkenntnistheorie, und nicht Psychologie oder Metaphysik geben.’ Heinrich Rickert, Der Gegenstand der Erkenntnis, 1892, (Tübingen: SiebeckMohr, 1921, 4th and 5th ed.), p. VII. His ﬁght against any introduction of psychology in epistemology and logic is very similar to Frege’s rejection of attempts to found logic and arithmetic on psychology. See e.g. Frege’s very critical appraisal of Husserl’s book on the philosophy of arithmetic: ‘Rezension von: E. G. Husserl, Philosophie der Arithmetik. I,’ (1891), (‘Review of E. G. Husserl, Philosophy of Arithmetic, vol. I’), 1894, in: Gottlob Frege, o.c., pp. 179–192. Frege speaks of ‘the devastations which the infringement of psychology caused in logic’ and called it ‘a widely spread philosophical disease.’ Ibid., p. 192. 26 For a concise and adequate survey of Brentano’s philosophy in general and his concept of intentionality in particular which, incidentally, also inﬂuenced Husserl’ phenomenology, see Wolfgang Stegmüller, Hauptströmungen der Gegenwartsphilosophie. Eine kritische Einführung, (‘Main Currents of Contemporary Philosophy. A Critical Introduction’), (Stuttgart: Alfred Kröner Verlag, 1960), pp. 2–48.

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Kant’s transcendentalism seems to open indeed the gates for psychological notions and concepts, although Kant himself was critical of any ‘psychologicalization’ of his epistemology. Rickert, as we saw before, claims repeatedly that there is a distinct diﬀerence between philosophy as a general discipline which tries to grasp reality-in-toto and the various specialized sciences which approach and investigate reality in the compartmentalized terms of their speciﬁc world of objective facts and their speciﬁc methodological focus. Psychology is such a specialized scientiﬁc discipline and is as such unable to function as a foundation of general philosophy and general epistemology. As a specialized and exact scientiﬁc discipline, psychology has in his view nothing to oﬀer to general philosophy and general epistemology, and the other way around. In fact, all attempts at introducing psychology into epistemology and logic result eventually in a rather murky, metaphysical psychologism which does harm to both psychology as a specialized science and philosophy as a general science. Philosophy, he emphasizes time and again, is a science which tries to acquire knowledge of total reality, unlike the specialized sciences, including psychology, which focus their scientiﬁc attention on speciﬁc parts of reality. Basic terminology In his book on epistemology Rickert complains at regular intervals about a linguistic problem that plagues him permanently but cannot be solved by him in a satisfactory manner. With this book he tries to introduce the reader into his brand of Transzendentalphilosophie (transcendental philosophy) and wants to stay as close as possible to everyday life language in order to remain understandable for students and lay philosophers. Yet, he permanently feels that this language is not able to express precisely and exactly what he wants to say and convey. Actually, everyday language is not just inadequate but, which is, of course, much worse, rather misleading too. Since, for instance, ‘consciousness’ and ‘mind’ play a leading role in epistemology, one is easily seduced to attribute scores of psychological features to it, and thus gradually relapse in psychologism. Rickert complains, as we saw previously in the introduction, about the fact that ‘normal’, everyday-life language does not oﬀer words and concepts that are in accordance with the theoretical, epistemological

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standpoint of transcendentalism. ‘Maybe’, Rickert surmises, ‘eventually a special terminology will be forged for the theory of knowledge.’27 In the mean time, he realizes, he must do with multi-interpretable concepts and expressions. I do not know, if he had any knowledge of Frege’s attempt to come up indeed with a formalized language of logic which he called Begriﬀsschrift.28 He would have concluded in all probability that such a formalized language does not really solve the problem, because it cannot be used in the kind of introductory text that he wants to present to his readers. Since he lacks a concise, formalized, yet commonly understandable language for his epistemology, he is forced to explain things in extenso and to engage in lengthy explanations. Before we follow Rickert in his guided tour through the often complex, labyrinthine world of his transcendentalist theory of knowledge, we must focus ﬁrst on Rickert’s basic epistemological terminology which he fails to do in advance, probably because it belongs to the common philosophical knowledge of his days. If one is not acquainted with the world of German Idealism it may take some time to grasp Rickert’s basic epistemological concepts and theorems. To start with, there is the crucial adjective ‘theoretical’. Whenever it is used by Rickert, it means speciﬁcally ‘logical’, i.e. ‘strictly rational’, ‘formal’, in opposition to ‘direct’ and ‘concrete’. But it also means ‘non-practical’ and ‘normatively neutral’ or ‘free of value-judgments’. Actually, ‘theoretical’ means ‘scientiﬁc’ and is juxtaposed to ‘a-theoretical’ which refers to the arts, music, religion, ethics. It takes a while for the reader who is not trained in the neo-Kantian and idealistic ways of thinking and arguing to grasp the rather heavy heuristic load of this seemingly simple word ‘theoretical’. The greatest obstacle for someone not trained in Kantian philosophy may be presented by the concepts of immanence, transcendence and transcendental as in Kant’s and Rickert’s Transzendentalphilosophie. 27

‘Vielleicht bildet sich einmal für die Erkenntnistheorie eine besondere Terminologie.’ Rickert, o.c., p. 100f. Also: ‘Language has not construed words for the epistemological point of view, and it was not able to do so.’ (‘Die Sprache hat für den erkenntnistheoretischen Standpunkt keine Worte gebildet, und sie konnte es nicht.’) Ibid. p. 100. 28 Gottlob Frege, Begriﬀsschrift, eine der arithmetischen nachgebildete Formelsprache des reinen Denkens (‘Conceptual Script, a Formal, Arithmetically Modelled Language of Pure Thinking’), 1879, Ignacio Angelelli (ed.), (Hildesheim, Zürich, New York: Georg Olms Verlag, 1998).

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Transcendence, derived from the Latin noun transcendens, meaning ‘exceeding’, refers to what goes beyond a certain area or order, what exists independently of it, or is not explained by it. Epistemologically, transcendence then refers to objects which go beyond the experience and knowledge of them, and exist independently of them. Ontologically, transcendence refers to what transcends a presupposed order, such as organic vis-à-vis inorganic matter, the present vis-à-vis the past or future, the spiritual vis-à-vis the physical. Transcendent is in this sense also everything which goes beyond the worldin-toto, or exceeds all ﬁnite beings. Theologically, this conception of transcendence, is then, of course, applied to God who is believed not to be dependent at all of his creation. Yet, in Christian theology it is believed that God’s transcendence does not exclude his immanence, since his creation depends on him and reveals his power. In this sense God is immanent to the world-in-toto. His immanence is radicalized in pantheism which holds that all of reality, the world-in-toto is in fact divine. Immanence, derived from the Latin in and manere, meaning ‘remaining within something or someone’, refers philosophically to the fact that a certain sphere or order cannot be transcended, that a certain development or process can occur without any outside inﬂuence. For instance, a critique of theories, doctrines, or theses is epistemologically immanent, if it originates from its very own premises. Transcendental referred originally to transcendere, meaning ‘to exceed’, ‘to go beyond’. It stems from medieval philosophy, where it refers to concepts such as ‘being’, ‘good’, ‘beautiful’ etc. which apply to everything that is and therefore transcends the categorical classiﬁcation of things and their speciﬁc characteristics. It acquired a speciﬁc meaning in Kant’s philosophy, i.e. in his (and Rickert’s) Transzendentalphilosophie the adjective transcendental relates to the a priori preconditions of knowledge, not to its objects. Kant’s basic transcendental question was, how a priori and synthetic knowledge is at all possible. (Knowledge-a-priori is independent of experiences, knowledgea-posteriori is derived from experiences. Synthetic knowledge is knowledge which adds something to a concept which was previously not inherent to it, yet is applicable to reality and in that sense objectively valid.) But not just the reﬂection about our a priori epistemic preconditions, but also these preconditions themselves are called transcendental. For instance, there are epistemic conditions in the knowing subject prior to any experience or any real knowledge. When they enable objectively valid knowledge, Kant calls them transcendental. He mentions in this respect the transcendental imaginative power (transzendentale Einbildungskraft), the a priori forms of Anschauung, time and space, the categories of Verstand, such as quantity, quality, causality, and the ideas of Vernunft, God, freedom and the immortality of the soul. Finally, the knowing subject itself, the transcendental consciousness, is viewed as the ﬁnal cause of all knowledge.29 29 This necessarily brief discussion of the Kantian notions of immanence, transcendence and transcendetal philosophy depended heavily on Kant’s expositions in his Kritik der reinen Vernunft and his Prolegomena, but was also inﬂuenced by secondary

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Rickert is largely in agreement with these conceptual distinctions but still adds his own peculiar interpretations to them. In his Gegenstand der Erkenntnis he hardly deﬁnes them, since he obviously trusted that his readers were suﬃciently acquainted with them.30 This is regretful since he deviates from Kant’s conceptions in some respects. Transcendence is, according to him, the act of leaving the abodes of subjective consciousness and ‘transcendent reality’ is then everything beyond this subjective consciousness. We then think immediately of the ‘real world’ of ‘objective’ things and events, like Descartes’s res extensae vis-à-vis the res cogitans. But that is not what is meant by transcendence and transcendent. Faithful to Kant’s epistemology Rickert emphasizes that the ‘objective reality’ of things and events (Kant’s Ding-an-sich) cannot be cognitively grasped. It is experienced by our sense-organs, and all we really can get to know are these phenomenal experiences. (Kant’s distinction between the noumenon and the phaenomenon). We are conscious of these experiences (even our self-experiences, i.e. self-consciousness), and as such the latter are transcendent vis-à-vis our consciousness. We shall see later that Rickert also deﬁnes the non-empirical, un-real values as being transcendent vis-à-vis our consciousness. Rickert is particularly interested in consciousness as a transcendental condition of objectively valid knowledge of and about the world. As we shall see presently in more detail, he focuses on the transcendental immanence of the ‘pure Ego’ which he labelled ‘absolute consciousness’ (Bewusstsein überhaupt, or Bewusstheit rather). It is the abstract instance that thinks, feels, observes, and that is conscious of its consciousness. It is bodiless, space- and timeless, and thus a pure form—in short, transcendental.31

literature. Particularly helpful have been H. J. de Vleeschauwer, Immanuel Kant, (Nijmegen: Dekker & Van de Vegt, 1931), pp. 112–123, 224–254; Otfried Höﬀe, Kants Kritik der reinen Vernunft. Die Grundlegung der modernen Philosophie, 2003, (München: C. H. Beck, 2004), pp. 53–68, 331–334; Roger Scruton, Kant, (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1982), chapter 3: ‘The transcendental deduction’. I used the Dutch translation by T. Bos: Roger Scruton, Kant, (Rotterdam: Lemniscaat, 2004, 4th ed.), pp. 34–55; and the concise yet informative exposition of A. E. Loen, Inleiding tot de Wijsbegeerte, (‘Introduction to Philosophy’), (The Hague: Boekencentrum, 1955, 3rd ed.): ‘Kant’, pp. 116–124. 30 Cf. Rickert, Gegenstand der Erkenntnis, o.c., passim, in particular pp. 20–27; 61–117. 31 This goes back to Kant’s transzendentale, reine Apperzeption (transcendental, pure apperception) which is the instance that enables us to think at all. See Immanuel Kant, Kritik der reinen Vernunft, para 16, 1781, (Wiesbaden: Insel Verlag, 1956), p. 136.

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Immanence then is the ‘subjective’ reality of mind and consciousness—two of such misleading concepts which we must use in default of adequate epistemological words. Mind, the cognitive Geist, is manageable theoretically, but consciousness (Bewusstsein) is, Rickert acknowledges, an awkward concept. Yet, it suﬃces here to realize that one can grasp it intuitively by realizing that we humans do not only experience fellow men, animals, things, and events, but are also able to reﬂect upon them in our mind and next reﬂect upon our experiences of them. In fact, consciousness is ﬁrst and foremost selfconsciousness. I know that I know, I experience that I experience, I am aware that I am aware. The I is immanent, but so are its feelings, impressions, ideas, observations. All this is lumped together in the concept of ‘immanence’ which stands vis-à-vis ‘transcendence’. But, as we shall see, loyal to the Idealist tradition he bridged the Cartesian gap between them by arguing that transcendent reality is in epistemology only viewed as reality because we, conscious human beings, adorn it with the idea of reality which is an empty, epistemological form put to use by our mind in its judging capacity. That needs, of course, a further explanation which will be given presently. It is also useful to reﬂect preliminarily on Rickert’s concept of Gegenstand which is hard to translate. In the expression Gegenstand der Erkenntnis the translation could be ‘object of knowledge’. Rickert realizes fully that the Idealist tradition is in danger of a radical subjectivism in which subjective consciousness, as it were, colonizes the objective world of things. He rejects that position and emphasizes, as we shall see, the simple fact that in the case of knowledge there ought to be a reality to be known which somehow is in contrast to the knowing subject. The German word Gegen-stand means literally ‘something that stands over against something else’: ob-jectum. Naturally das Ding-an-sich, Kant’s reality in and of itself, does exist. It is the substance of all knowledge, it is the chaotic and complex stuﬀ of which knowledge is ‘made’. Yet, the object of knowledge is not, as one tends to believe at ﬁrst sight, the world of things-in-themselves because epistemologically a Ding-an-sich acquires the status of reality only after it has been experienced (as phaenomenon) and after the human mind has invested it with the form of reality in the act of judging. In this respect the object of knowledge is partly, i.e. as far as the form is concerned, the product of the subjective mind. Later we shall see that to Rickert the proper Gegenstand, or object of knowledge is not ‘empirical reality’, as the empirists want us to believe,

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but in the ﬁnal analysis the transcendent (i.e. not subjectively conscious), non-empirical values. (It is for this reason also that his epistemology must end up in a philosophy of values. That is the subject of the fourth chapter.) This distinction of ‘objective’ content and ‘subjective’ form is essential to Rickert’s epistemology, in particular since he wants to avoid what he calls the absurdity of solipsism which is the point of view in which all knowledge is reduced to the subjective construction of reality. ‘The solipsist’, he sneers, ‘goes to bed at ten o’clock in the evening and wakes up again at six in the morning without having dreamed. The real existence of the world was thus interrupted for eight hours. The solipsist was born in the year such and such at this and this deﬁnite time of the day. This means that this moment was the beginning of the real world. And from then on the world continues to exist with daily interruptions of so and so many hours while being asleep, until his death, and then there is no real world anymore. What was there before the year of his birth? And what will there be after his death? He can come up with only one answer: nothing that would really exist. This result is after all a bit dubious.’32 In a sense, subjectivist solipsism is the exact opposite of naïve realism, or empirism. Rickert tries to avoid both erroneous positions— erroneous, that is, in the context of epistemology. As to the distinct, specialized, empirical sciences, he argues, there is nothing wrong with such empirism. Rickert puts so much emphasis upon the Gegenstand dimension of knowledge, because it represents the standard or measuring rod (Massstab) of its objectivity and truth. Without a proper and objective Gegenstand knowledge would ﬂoat around without sense or meaning, just as, by the way, the Gegenstand in its turn needs the conscious form of reality in order to be molded into ‘reality’. But again, within the context of Rickert’s epistemology Gegenstand, object of knowledge, does not

32 ‘Der Solipsist legt sich abends um 10 Uhr schlafen und wacht um 6 Uhr wieder auf, ohne geträumt zu haben; dann ist das reale Sein der Welt für acht Stunden unterbrochen gewesen. Der Solipsist ist im Jahre so und so viel um die und die Zeit geboren. Daraus folgt, dass dieser Zeitpunkt der Anfang der wirklichen Welt war. Von da an dauert die Welt mit täglichen Unterbrechungen von so und so vielen Stunden, während er schläft, bis zu seinem Tode, und dann gibts keine reale Welt mehr. Was war vor dem Jahre seiner Geburt, und was wird nach seinem Tode sein? Er kann darauf nur eine Antwort geben: Nichts, was real existiert. Dies Resultat ist doch etwas bedenklich.’ Rickert, o.c., p. 76f.

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belong to the naively experienced world of inorganic and organic ‘things’. He calls it a minor Copernican revolution, when he argues that the true object of knowledge which functions as measuring rod for its objectivity and truth, is the world of values, not that of ‘things’. This needs some explanation which must be summarized in advance. Rickert views knowledge primarily in terms of judgments (Urteile). Knowing is judging in positive or negative terms—quite digitally by means of ‘yes’ or ‘no’. The criteria needed for such judgments are the values which in a sense steer and mold them. He distinguished two main groups of values: (1) the theoretical values (truth/falsehood, reality/unreality) on which he mainly focuses in his epistemology, and (2) the a-theoretical values, such as erotic (lust/pain), aesthetic (beauty/ugliness), legal ( justice/injustice) and ethical (good/evil) values. Epistemology should avoid the second group of values and their inherent normative value-judgments. Epistemologically, only the ﬁrst group of values and their logical, non-normative value-judgments are relevant. In the ﬁnal analysis, Rickert claims, these values contain the (transcendental) Gegenstand of knowledge, and where knowledge is concerned the values of truth or falsehood function as the ﬁnal measuring rod or Massstab of knowledge’s validity. Again, all this will be further discussed in this chapter, yet had to be mentioned in advance in order to grasp the main gist of Rickert’s often very complex and abstract thoughts and concepts. The subjective (immanent) and the objective (transcendent) path In his monumental and at times quite baroque epistemological treatise Rickert tries to determine what knowledge of the world is and what precisely the object of this knowledge (Gegenstand der Erkenntnis), as its criterion of objectivity and truth, is. It is a basic fact of epistemology that one can and should distinguish conceptually between a knowing subject and a known object. In the reality of everyday life both are intertwined, as is illustrated by the close connections of the subject and the predicate in the language we speak and write. But if one wants to grasp what knowledge is all about, one must start with conceptual distinctions, and the one between subject and object is the ﬁrst and most basic one. One can begin one’s epistemological investigations by focusing upon the object and then try to

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determine what epistemologically speaking the nature and functions of the object of knowledge are, and then what the position of the knowing subject is. It is the transcendent path. But one can also start from the other end, i.e. the knowing subject, trying to determine what its place and functions are in the process of knowing, and then what the nature of its object is. It is the subjective, or immanent path.33 Rickert starts with the latter, the immanent path, since it is the easiest way, because, he asserts, after all, we are knowing subjects. Speaking about the role and functions of the subject can easily be understood empathically and intuitively. The subjective path along which Rickert leads his readers, covers more than half of the book. Surprisingly though, at the end of this path he draws the conclusion that it is a dead end road. That, of course, is quite a disappointment to the reader who up till then has followed his complex arguments with a considerable investment of time and mental energies. Although one should, of course, be careful with any imputation of motive, I cannot help thinking that he thoroughly enjoys the trick. Rickert takes the reader by the hand, shows him around in a kind of epistemological wonderland which the reader slowly begins to understand, and then tells him abruptly that this is not the way to do it. He then starts all over again but this time it is the objective, transcendent path. The subjective path he calls Immanenzphilosophie, it is the philosophy and epistemology which was so eminently introduced by David Hume, when he deﬁned knowledge as the interplay between impressions which stem from the senses and the sensorial experiences and the ideas which impose their formal order (notions of causality, quality, quantity, space, time) on them. Most neo-Kantians, Arnold Gehlen has argued,34 followed this path which starts with the impressions of reality (Wahrnehmungen), and are next confronted by the ideas (Vorstellungen). The disadvantage and the epistemological fault of this road is the subjectivist, if not solipsistic deconstruction of objective reality. Even the formal, a priori, transcendental categories of Kant fell prey to 33

Rickert, o.c., pp. 2–6: ‘Zwei Wege der Erkenntnis’ (‘Two Roads of Knowledge’). See Arnold Gehlen, ‘Heinrich Rickert und die Transzendentalphilosophie’ (‘Rickert and Transcendental Philosophy’), 1933, in: Arnold Gehlen, Philosophische Schriften I, 1925–1933, (‘Philosophical Papers’), (Frankfurt a. M.: Vittorio Klostermann, 1978), pp. 403–413. 34

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subjectivism, often in the disguise of psychologism. Rickert would probably agree with this interpretation. His Transzendentalphilosophie rejects this subjective path of Immanenzphilosophie. It begins by deﬁning knowledge in terms of judgments (Urteile). In immanent philosophy reigns still what Rickert dubbed the Abbildungslogik, the representational logic, that is the logic of depicting reality. In this approach, knowledge is true, if it represents an exact picture of reality. The direct impressions (Wahrnehmungen) are allegedly true to the transcendent reality outside consciousness, while within consciousness the ideas (Vorstellungen) cover again in their turn the impressions. Knowledge thus is, so to say, a double picture: of realityoutside and of the impressions and ideas within consciousness.35 Like Berkeley Rickert rejects this naïve, representational logic. Unlike Berkeley, however, he replaces it by a logic in which knowledge is deﬁned in terms of judgments guided by values (i.e. in the case of knowledge: truth/falsehood, and reality/unreality). Such judgments, as we shall see later in more detail, do not depict reality but put it in a value perspective, and thus reconstruct it. It is not Abbildungslogik but on the contrary Umbildungslogik, i.e. logic that deconstruct and reconstruct. What then is transcendental about Rickert’s Transzendentalphilosophie? The answer is—still rudely and thus inadequately formulated—that the object of knowledge (Gegenstand der Erkenntnis) which is the standard or measuring rod of knowledge’s objectivity and truth, is neither the thing-in-itself, the objective reality as such, nor the sense impressions within consciousness to which the concepts relate, but the non-empirical world of values as ‘empty’, a priori forms.36 Before we follow Rickert on his journey through transcendental epistemology which starts, as announced, with the subjective, immanent path, we must ﬁrst discuss Rickert’s treatment of an ages-old epistemological dilemma. Knowledge and the subject-object dilemma When talking about knowledge we usually distinguish a knowing subject vis-à-vis an object which is known or needs to be known. The latter is a Gegen-stand, an ob-jectum, that is something that stands over 35

Cf. Rickert, o.c., pp. 104–117. This will be dealt with in more detail in chapter four, where Rickert’s philosophy of values will be discussed. 36

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against the knowing subject as something independent in the sense that the act of knowing ought to conform to it, if it wants to realize its aims. The object of knowledge, in other words, is the criterion of the truth or falsehood of knowledge.37 The epistemologically naïve person is inclined to come up with the following explanation of what knowledge is all about: there is this objective reality outside our consciousness (i.e. so-called ‘empirical reality’) about which I have due to the senses (seeing, hearing, feeling, tasting, touching) certain impressions; these impressions then constitute correct or true knowledge, when they manage to cover, represent, or depict reality. This kind of ‘logic’ (Abbildungslogik) is rather problematic. Reality as it is in itself, i.e. outside our consciousness and its categories, is very complex, chaotic and thus not rational. (Later Rickert introduces the concept of ‘heterogeneous continuum’ for this ‘irrational’ reality.)38 What is the use of a picture of it in our consciousness? It would just be a duplication of the complexity and irrationality of reality, and thus not yield any knowledge or understanding. Obviously, in epistemological terms knowledge is not just a direct, unmediated imagining of an objective, independent reality outside my consciousness. Knowledge is rather the result of concepts which impose a conceptual order on reality. It is put into a rational perspective by space and time, it is structured by the notion of causality, in fact it is ‘subjected’ to start with by the concept of reality. What we therefore need, is another conception of the knowing subject and then also another conception of the epistemological object, the Gegenstand of knowledge which is to function as the criterion of its objectivity and truth. There is, it cannot be repeated often enough, no room for subjectivism in Rickert’s epistemology. He rejects, as we saw, solipsism as an absurdity, but also the various brands of spiritualism which have in common that they deny the existence of an objective reality outside human consciousness. In fact, in spiritualism reality is viewed as and reduced to a ‘world of consciousness’ (Bewusstseinswelt), as an illusion or a veil or similar metaphysical notions. Maybe, such spiritualism may

37

Rickert, o.c., p. 1. Rickert fails to distinguish between ‘non-rational’ and ‘irrational’. A stone as such is ‘non-rational’, but a person who in an attack of fury throws a stone at someone else acts ‘irrationally’. I prefer to call the Kantian thing-in-itself ‘non-rational’, and not, as Rickert does, ‘irrational’. However, this is not the place to discuss this distinction in more detail. I follow Rickert’s use of the adjective ‘irrational’. 38

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lead to an enticing worldview, as was, for example, oﬀered, allegedly inspired by Buddhism, by Schopenhauer. However, it does most certainly not yield sound epistemology. Epistemologically as absurd is the skeptical point of view which throws doubt on the possibility of any kind of knowledge. Solipsism, spiritualism, skepticism—Rickert rejects them radically as epistemological absurdities.39 This is not to say, Rickert hastens to add, that we should not engage in any doubt as to the objective reality of ‘things’. Since Descartes’ rule de omnibus dubitandum est (everything ought to be doubted) philosophers have engaged in such exercises of epistemological doubt. Descartes’ doubt, however, was inspired by a false preposition. He believed that the sciences of his days were still philosophically unreliable and stood in need of a solid foundation in man’s rationality. So far so good, but he identiﬁed consciousness, psyche and logical thought which causes all sorts of confusions. Moreover, it is epistemologically incorrect to proclaim philosophical doubt as a remedy for the scientiﬁc weaknesses of the day. This is, to begin with, not a systematic but a historical and thus contingent and unsystematic instigation of doubt. It is, however, equally incorrect to believe that epistemological doubt about everything would be of any inﬂuence in the specialized sciences. ‘It is hard to envisage’, Rickert remarks, ‘how through it (epistemological doubt, AZ) the views of special sciences, say about the surface of Mars or the functions of the cerebral cortex, ever could be corrected or corroborated.’40 Specialized sciences are always in search of substantial truths, whereas epistemology leaves them for what they are, and subjects all knowledge to formal questions: ‘It asks: what does it mean that objects are “real”? Thus, it investigates something which is of no consequence to the content of knowledge.’41 Here we encounter again Rickert’s distinction between the content and the form of knowledge, and the epistemological and logical primacy of the form. One should not take for granted that there is an objective reality outside consciousness. The question is not, if such a reality really

39

Ibid., pp. 7f. ‘Es ist nicht einzusehen, wie hierdurch spezialwissenschaftliche Ansichten, etwa über die Oberﬂäche des Mars oder die Funktionen der Grosshirnrinde, jemals korrigiert oder bestätigt werden könnten.’ Rickert, o.c., p. 10. 41 ‘Sie fragt: was heisst es, dass Objekte “real” sind? Sie untersucht also etwas, das den Inhalt der Erkenntnis nicht berührt.’ Idem. 40

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does exist, because the answer is obviously aﬃrmative. The question rather is, if, and if so, how this reality can be known, and how it can convey objectivity to the knowledge of it. Once more, this kind of epistemological doubt is irrelevant to the naïve man of practical life, and it is also of no concern to the man of science in his laboratory or library. It is, however, the prime question for any serious philosophical theory of knowledge.42 The main issue here is what precisely should be understood by the concept of ‘object of knowledge’ (Gegenstand der Erkenntnis)? Rickert distinguishes three of them. There is, ﬁrst of all, the notion of the object of knowledge as a spatial world-outside (räumliche Aussenwelt). This world is viewed as a reality which stands opposite the I as the unity of body and ‘soul’ or ‘psyche’. The I , in other words, as a psycho-physical subject vis-à-vis an objective reality of things. ‘The world-outside is’, Rickert adds, ‘always there where I am not, and the boundary between myself and it is located on the surface of my skin.’43 It is a spatial reality, it ﬁlls space except for the place which I, as a bodily I, occupy. Rickert will dismiss, as we shall see presently, this spatial world outside our bodies as a valid Gegenstand, as a valid object of knowledge, much to the obvious chagrin of naive realists and materialists who tend to proclaim this spatial and material world as the ultimate reality of knowledge. That is, according to Rickert, a legitimate, empirist position to be taken by the naive man of the practical, everyday life world, and by the man of specialized science. It is, however, a false position, if one wants to grasp philosophically, what the essential nature of knowledge actually is.44 But there is a second notion of the object of knowledge, called the transcendent object (das transzendente Objekt). It is the world as it exists outside my consciousness, including my own body, objectiﬁed into a soulless thing. It is, in other words, the total physical world, including my body and my fellow men. That is, the transcendent object is all of reality, except my I as consciousness and psyche. ‘As not

42

Ibid., p. 13. ‘Die Aussenwelt ist also immer dort, wo ich nicht bin, und die Grenze zwischen mir und ihr liegt an der Oberﬂäche meiner Haut.’ Ibid., p. 14. 44 Husserl’s concepts ‘the natural attitude’ or ‘the natural thinking’ is similar. Cf. for example Husserl, o.c., p. 19. Husserl includes, however, ‘pure grammar’ and ‘pure logic’ in the sphere of ‘natural thinking’ which is, of course, quite problematic, as the adjective ‘pure’ (rein) refers also in Husserl’s logic to the sphere of the transcendental. 43

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belonging to this object remains only my psychical I with its ideas, impressions, feelings, expressions of the will, etc.’45 There is no spatial boundary between myself and this transcendent object, because my body, conceptually stripped of its consciousness and psyche, is part of this object. This does, of course, not just pertain to my individual I and consciousness, but holds true of all consciousness and each manifestation of the I in man. In other words, the transcendent object is reality outside my consciousness, including my own body as it exists independent of my awareness of it—my body, so to say, as a thing or object, just as it lies unconsciously on the operating table of a surgeon. Naturally, the transcendent object is not just juxtaposed to my consciousness, but stands over against the total world of consciousness (die gesammte Bewusstseinswelt), which is the immanent world (die immanente Welt). The third object of knowledge is the immanent object (das immanente Object). Up till now we have spoken about the subject in terms of the I with its ideas, impressions, feelings and expressions of the will. That means, within the subject we juxtaposed consciousness and the content of consciousness. We thus distinguish within the subject between this content—the ideas, impressions, feelings and expressions of the will, etc.—and confront it as an object by the subject that issues the ideas, impressions, feelings, expressions of the will, etc. This subject—an a priori, transcendental subject—is without content, is as it were empty. It is pure consciousness, a pure Ego.46 Rickert called it ‘absolute consciousness’ (Bewusstsein überhaupt). Thus, Rickert distinguishes three objects of knowledge and juxtaposes them to three parallel subjects: Objects:

Subjects:

1. the spatial world 2. the transcendent object 3. the immanent object

1. the I as body and psyche/soul 2. consciousness and its content 3. pure consciousness without content (transcendental, pure Ego)

Which object should then be subjected to epistemological doubt? Let us begin with the third object, the immanent object. There can be no doubt whatsoever that I feel my feelings, experience my impressions, 45 ‘Als nicht zum Objekt gehörig bleibt dann nur übrig mein seelisches Ich mit seinen Vorstellungen, Wahrnehmungen, Willensäusserungen usw.’ Rickert, o.c., p. 15. 46 Ibid., p. 16.

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think my thoughts or want my expressed will. The two—pure Ego and content of consciousness—form an inseparable correlation. There is no way to separate the two conceptually. This is the standpoint of immanence which, amazingly, Rickert also called ‘positivism’.47 The ﬁrst object, the world of spatial things, can likewise not really be doubted. Its existence is, after all, not less certain than that of my own body. Would this certainty stop, Rickert’s asks rhetorically, on the spot where my hand lies, would doubt begin at the tabletop on which my hand rests? The spatial world-outside is as certain as the fact that my body and the supposedly enclosed soul are real. ‘Whoever sees the reality of the spatial world-outside or the “things outside us” as a philosophical problem,’ Rickert puts it as a philosophy teacher addressing sophomores in college, ‘has not yet understood what the theory of knowledge is all about.’48 However, truly problematic in terms of the theory of knowledge is the second, transcendent object which lies beyond, or vis-à-vis my consciousness and its content of impressions, ideas, feelings and expressed will. How is it possible that the world of immanence (the I with its ideas, impressions, feelings and expressions of the will) reaches at the transcendent world of my own unconscious body, the bodies of others, the physical world, etc.? After all, the basic problem of epistemology is this one: knowledge needs an objective reality as Massstab, as criterion of objectivity and truth, which one could that be? It is certainly not Locke’s matter with its primary qualities, or the world of objects and things of naïve realism. Naïve realism which is, Rickert repeats time and again, legitimate in the case of the specialized, empirical sciences, is quite popular in philosophy because it is so easy to understand. However, it is epistemologically objectionable. Locke’s distinction of the primary (quantitative) and secondary (qualitative) qualities of the transcendent reality, for example, can be helpful or even indispensable to the natural sciences, but it is irrelevant to epistemology, for the simple reason that the allegedly objective primary qualities (extension, movement, position, etc.) are epistemologically as much conceptual as the qualitative secondary qualities (color, temperature, tone, etc.) are. Rickert comes close to Berkeley’s position, when he argues that in terms

47 Ibid., p. 17. Rickert’s use of the word positivism is not very clear, nor very consistent but that is in the totality of his thinking a minor point. 48 ‘Wer die Realität der räumlichen Aussenwelt oder der “Dinge ausser uns” für ein philosophisches Problem hält, hat noch nichts von Erkenntnistheorie verstanden.’ Ibid., p. 19.

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of epistemology both the quantitative and the qualitative qualities of the ‘objective’ world (Locke’s ‘matter’) belong to the immanent world of consciousness, since they are the result of concept formation. If one deﬁnes reality with its primary qualities as an autonomous world vis-à-vis the immanent world of consciousness, and in addition as the source and cause of this immanent world of consciousness—e.g. physiology as the cause of thought and thinking—one engages not only in concept formation, but also in a kind of metaphysical realism. It is in fact a hypostatization or ‘ontologization’ of concepts which are by deﬁnition immanent and conscious. Epistemological Idealism is, Rickert observes, often deﬁned and even ridiculed as ‘dream idealism’ (Traumidealismus). This would be correct, if epistemological idealism denied the existence of things and objects outside our bodies, if it claimed that we are made to believe through the arousal of our nerves and brains that there still exist other bodies in addition to our psychophysical I’s, whereas in reality they do not exist. This is a meaningless point of view, a piece of spiritualistic metaphysic, Rickert concludes. The world of ‘objective’ things cannot be subjected to any doubt, but epistemologically we must maintain the fact that we bestow this indubitable reality with concepts the moment we try to get to know and understand it. ‘Reality’ is, as we will see shortly, probably the most elementary concept. But quality, quantity, objectivity, subjectivity, etc. are other concepts which are not components of the ‘Ding-an-sich’ but belong to the immanent world of consciousness.49

Thus, Rickert deﬁnes the epistemological dilemma of subject vis-à-vis object in terms of ‘immanence’ vis-à-vis ‘transcendence’—i.e. the I with its ideas, impressions, feelings and expressions of the will vis-à-vis the world of bodies and things, including my own body. How can this epistemological gap be bridged? We shall eventually see that he adds the values to this world of transcendence, and even deﬁnes them as the ultimate Gegenstand der Erkenntnis and criterion of objectivity! The standpoint of immanence Let us return once more to the third type of epistemological objects: the immanent objects. They consist of conscious contents (ideas, impressions, expressions of the will, etc.). They are, of course, immediately given and directly experienced realities. These contents of consciousness—the ideas, impressions, etc.—emerge from reality through the senses, since they obviously do not fall out of the skies. 49 See Ibid., 64–70. Also Heinrich Rickert, Psychophysische Causalität und psychophysischer Parallelismus, (Tübingen: Mohr-Siebeck, 1900).

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(Rickert is, of course, not in need of Berkeley’s deus ex machina.) Yet, they are immanent, i.e. ‘within’ consciousness, and in that sense ‘ideal’, not ‘real’. This would mean that the ideas, feelings, impressions, etc. produced by direct experiences constitute the unquestionable object (Gegenstand ) of knowledge, and not a transcendent reality, like Locke’s ‘matter’, which is independent of human consciousness. Thus, from the standpoint of immanence reality would consist of the contents of consciousness. It is an immediately experienced reality consisting of observations (Wahrnehmungen), emotions, willful expressions, and imaginations (Vorstellungen). This position could, therefore, also be called Vorstellungsidealismus, i.e. imaginary idealism. Nothing can guarantee us that these immanent realities are still something else or more than such contents of consciousness. This then is the thesis of immanence, according to which ‘everything that exists for me, must obey to the most general condition of being a fact of consciousness.’50 What then is, according to the immanence thesis, the knowing subject vis-à-vis the known (immanent) object? The concept of consciousness has come up time and again. What is consciousness (Bewusstsein), or the conscious (das Bewusste)? There is, to begin with, an instance which feels the experiences, thinks the ideas, undergoes the impressions, wants the expressions of the will: ‘the I which is, as the saying goes, conscious of itself and his ideas.’51 It is consciousness (subject) which contains contents of consciousness (immanent objects). The latter constitute das Bewusste, the conscious, i.e. everything that is immediately given and experienced, embodied in impressions and ideas. This is, of course, easily associated with ‘knowing’: the conscious (das Bewusste) as the known (das Gewusste). If I am conscious of something, I obviously know it. But Rickert issues a warning here. Knowledge is unlike consciousness the result of logical and rational, i.e. theoretical thinking. However, obviously we can be aware of something without any logical and rational conclusions. This is the case with the irrational in us, as well as in the world of everyday life which we are conscious of without penetrating it rationally and logically. Moreover, there are contents of consciousness—

50 ‘der Satz der Immanenz (. . .), wonach alles, was für mich da ist, unter der allgemeinsten Bedingung steht, Tatsache des Bewusstseins zu sein.’ Ibid., p. 27. (Italics by Rickert) 51 ‘. . . das Ich das sich, wie man sagt, seiner selbst und zugleich seiner Vorstellungen bewusst ist.’ Ibid., p. 28.

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impressions, ideas, feelings, etc.—of which we are rationally and logically ignorant. Knowing, knowledge, the known—they constitute theoretical behavior in which logical rationality plays a dominant role. This diﬀers, for instance, from aesthetic behavior which is often devoid of knowledge and rather illogical and irrational. A good example is to be seen in listening to music: the contents of music enters our consciousness and is thus bewusst, but for musical enjoyment there is no need for (musicological) knowledge of the score. It is therefore not gewusst by the ordinary listener.52 This is also illustrated by our memories. Remembering things from the past is a conscious activity, but it is usually not a theoretical behavior, as it is in the case of history as a scientiﬁc discipline. In fact, memories are often very illogical, irrational, emotional. Three sorts of conscious objects ought to be distinguished: (a) logically permeated, rational objects; (b) real or possibly ideal objects which are logically impenetrable, yet known and recognized; (c) objects in consciousness which are neither logically permeated, nor acknowledged or known. These three types of conscious objects correlate with three types of conscious subjects which Rickert discusses in reversed order: (c) the most comprehensive subject (das umfassendste Subjekt), or consciousness which has conscious content without knowing anything theoretically about it; (b) the theoretical or knowing subject which knows its objects even though they are irrational; (a) the knowing subject which knows its objects as being rational (logical) as in the case of mathematics or formal logic. Later, when we follow the objective path, we shall see that the last type (a) predominates in transcendental philosophy. In the standpoint of immanence, it is the ﬁrst type (c) which plays the leading role.53 Rickert issues another warning still. In the tradition of transcendental philosophy one should not equate consciousness with spatial realities, to which ordinary language often invites, or rather seduces us. The expression ‘within consciousness’ is often equated with ‘in our head’. Yet, this is not very helpful since in the theory of knowledge consciousness is not an entity in space and time. It is to be conceived of as a ‘brainless’ subject (hirnloses Subjekt). Naturally, thinking, knowing, being aware and being conscious need physical brains, but rational

52 53

Idem. Idem.

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and empirical knowledge of the (nature and functions of the) brains is irrelevant to transcendental epistemology. Brains are the proper objects of investigation and analysis within the specialized science of neurology. This, we may add, is also the case with cognitive psychology. But neurology and psychology have nothing of theoretical interest to oﬀer to epistemology, just as epistemology could not contribute a thing to the neurologist’s or the psychologist’s empirical knowledge. Moreover, epistemology’s doubt with regard to transcendent reality is irrelevant to neurology and psychology. They hsd better stick to their naively realistic belief in the objectivity of their ﬁelds of research. Finally, one should not equate consciousness and subject, because, as we saw before, consciousness can be divided in a subjective part (that what thinks, feels, expresses, etc.) and an objective part (impressions, ideas, feelings, expressions, etc.). In other words, there is consciousness which is not a subject but an (immanent) object. In addition, although this is hard to imagine, one must, as in a hypothesis, keep open the possibility of an unconscious subject which is correlated with the unconscious and irrational transcendent reality. An example, I may add, could be the complete emptiness of the mind in mysticism. This is admittedly hard to fathom, because we are only able to imagine conscious objects (impressions, ideas, etc.). Yet, an unconscious and thus irrational subject can be ‘constructed’ logically and hypothetically as the subjective, opposite pole of transcendent, objective reality. It sounds a bit over-ingenious and quibbling, Rickert admits, but we must conclude that if there is consciousness which is not a subject, there can be subjects which are not conscious.54 The subject as empty form Our journey through the world of immanence should next explore what then in terms of epistemology subjects actually are and do. We have seen that the standpoint of immanence juxtaposes within consciousness a subject that imagines, feels, thinks, expresses and objects which are the impressions, ideas, imaginations, feelings, expressions of will, etc. Its point of departure, in other words, is that everything we acknowledge and know, including our own bodies, is an immanent

54

Ibid., p. 31.

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object and as such dependent upon our consciousness.55 Now, that is at ﬁrst sight quite odd because, if this were true, the immanent were dependent upon the immanent. Should there not be a transcendent compared to which immanent (as well as transcendent) objects are related? Would this subject be something absolute? The I as subject should remain part of consciousness (unless one takes refuge in metaphysics), yet should it also be transcendent? Let us leave the question for the moment and focus on the nature and functions of the subject. Here we run into a formidable problem. We can speak of and about the immanent objects (impressions, ideas, feelings, etc.), but how is it possible to speak about the subject of consciousness, the I that experiences, thinks, feels, expresses? Here we enter rather thin air. Particularly men of science who are used to dealing with a solidly empirical, objective reality to be investigated by a solidly empirical researcher, will suﬀocate in it. What is worse, Rickert adds still, the moment one enters into the a priori ‘reality’ of the transcendental subject, ordinary language with its empirical concepts—‘reality’, ‘objects’, ‘subjects’, ‘things’, etc.—deserts us. We must resort to metaphors and parables. Maybe, all this cannot be said, is vielleicht unsagbar,56 because the moment I speak about the I it is reduced to an object. Yet, even in everyday life we want to speak about ourselves and then not as objects but as subjects. In terms of grammar, the nominative must become an accusative, yet remain a nominative!57 Rickert tries to solve this problem as follows. To begin with, he calls to mind the memories we have. I can remember myself as a child. But in this act of remembering I duplicate myself into the I then which is an object to the I-now which is a subject. Moreover, I know myself, I know of myself, I know that I am. Again, I am a knowing subject and at the same time a known object. Naturally,

55

Ibid., p. 32. Ibid., p. 33. 57 Ibid., p. 34. George Herbert Mead who distinguished within the Self an ‘I’ and a ‘me’ argued in a similar manner, albeit within the context of empirical social psychology: ‘The “I” does not get into the limelight. . . . I talk to myself, and I remember what I said and perhaps the emotional content that went with it. The “I” of this moment is present in the “me” of the next moment. There again I cannot turn around quick enough to catch myself. I become a “me” in so far as I remember what I said.’ Mead, o.c., p. 174. 56

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the knowing I is not the same as the known I.58 ‘The yesterday known and the today knowing I are not identical, but only one part of the I is the known of yesterday, and the other part is the knowing I of today. (. . .) We may conclude then that the complete I can never be knowing and known at the same time.’59 Now, how do we arrive at a subject which is not an object? Rickert employs a method which he uses quite often: thinking away components of a phenomenon, conceptually stripping it successively of its constitutive elements or dimensions. The concept of consciousness, he argues, is often used thoughtlessly, as if it were a coherent thing. This is wrong, it is a complex and always changing world which we reduce for clarity’s sake to two main components: the immanent subject and the immanent object. Now, in order to arrive at a proper understanding of what the I is as nominative, i.e. as pure subject, we should mentally strip consciousness of all its objective elements and dimensions, i.e. of its predicative contents. What remains is the subject for itself (das Subjekt für sich) which cannot be reduced into an object. This contentless, formal, pure subject which is hard to imagine and impossible to deﬁne with the help of ordinary language, is the counterpart of the immanent objects and the transcendent objects.60 We saw earlier that Rickert distinguishes three types of subjects which are correlated to three types of objects. Let us retake once more the ﬁrst, psycho-physical subject, i.e. the I as my body plus a psyche/soul. Now, Rickert proposes, let us de-objectify and think away one hand ﬁrst, the second hand next, the legs, the torso, and ﬁnally even the head with its brains. What is left in this physical reduction in the form of a thought experiment is the psychic sphere as a border concept (Grenzbegriﬀ ). It is the concept of a bodyless and brainless subject. Its counterpart is the massive, transcendent objectivity

58 Rickert, o.c., p. 38. Once again, this is similar to Mead’s distinction between the ‘I’ and the ‘me’. 59 ‘Das gestrige gewusste und das heutige wissende Ich sind nicht identisch, sondern nur der eine Teil des Ich ist das gewusste gestrige, der andere Teil ist das wissende heutige Ich. (. . .) So kommen wir zu dem Ergebnis: das ganze Ich kann nie wissendes und zugleich gewusstes sein.’ (Italics by Rickert) Ibid., p. 39. 60 Idem. Rickert elaborates here on Kant’s concept of the ‘transzendentale Apperzeption’. Similarities and diﬀerences of this pure I and the ‘transzendentales Ego’ of Husserl cannot be discussed here. It would take us too far away from the main path alongside which Rickert leads us now. Cf. Ibid., p. 39.

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consisting of things and objects, including my own body. The psycho-physical subject has become less and less physical and more and more psychical until it has reached the ultimate concept of the psychical I vis-à-vis a massive objective reality, including my own body. Rickert continues this de-objectifying, ‘de-ontologizing’ process, stripping the psychical subject too of all possible characteristics and objective elements/dimensions. In fact, as long as we think of the psychical subject as some sort of substance or entity in our consciousness (vis-à-vis the immanent and transcendent objects) it is still invested with objectivity and reality. If we think all that away, we arrive at a ﬁnal border concept: the subject as an empty form. Rickert calls it the epistemological subject (das erkenntnistheoretische Subjekt). At the end of the de-objectifying, object stripping process we are thus left with a concept of the subject as a contentless empty form. Without this subject form or formal subject, Rickert claims, we would be unable to even think about subjects!61 He uses still another concept for this subject form or formal subject: Bewusstsein überhaupt, which can be translated as absolute consciousness. Or better still, since Bewusstsein still carries the concept of being (Sein), Bewusstheit—the absolute conscious status. It will play a crucial role in the second part of our journey, the objective path, but Rickert introduces it here in order to complete the picture of the subject-component of the subjectobject relationship in knowledge. This idea of a formal subject— subject conceived as a contentless, empty form—may be odd at ﬁrst sight but is on second thought quite understandable. After all, we all know from experience what we mean when we say ‘subject’, just as we understand immediately what the word ‘form’ means since all reality consists of content and form. Now then, the concept ‘subject form’ is that which cannot be objectiﬁed, which cannot be thought as an object, and is yet understandable as long as we do not relate it to real things but to a conceptually isolated, formal dimension only. ‘With each real subject we also think of this form of subject, that is, if we think at all of a subject distinguishable from an object. All it needs is to think of the form itself, while we disregard all content.’62

61

Ibid., p. 42. ‘Bei jedem realen Subjekt denken wir diese Form des Subjekts mit, falls wir überhaupt ein Subjekt im Unterschied vom Objekt denken, und es kommt nur darauf an, die Form für sich zu denken, indem wir von allem Inhalt abstrahieren.’ Ibid., p. 49. 62

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It stands to reason that even the idea of an I ought to be eliminated from the subject form. The contentless absolute consciousness can never be my consciousness since that would re-introduce notions of substance and content again. ‘Everything individual in the I, or everything that made me into this unique and special, real person, is objectiﬁable. It must therefore as object be juxtaposed to the formal, unreal, epistemological subject which is the end of the series of subjects.’63 Absolute consciousness is formal and timeless, comparable to mathematics and the rules of formal logic. But we should at all times keep in mind what Rickert says about its main function: it is because of the subject form that we are able at all to think, speak and write about subjects. That is precisely why it is called the epistemological subject! In fact, Rickert adds, we should refrain from speaking about a subject which experiences impressions and thinks ideas, since such a subject is still not an empty form. We are confronted here with ‘a nameless, general, impersonal consciousness.’64 It is indeed an absolute consciousness (Bewusstsein überhaupt), Bewusstheit which is impossible to translate but means something like the ‘state of being conscious’.65 But again, it is actually not wise to speak in ontological terms about this absolute consciousness. Actually, Rickert thinks and writes about it in functionalist terms. We cannot determine what it is, but only what it does. All this leads to an epistemological question which is, incidentally, not asked within the standpoint of immanence, but very crucial to Rickert’s brand of transcendentalism: is there outside the immanently

63 ‘Alles Individuelle am Ich oder alles, was mich zu dieser einmaligen, besonderen realen Person macht, ist objektivierbar. Es muss daher als Objekt dem formalen irrealen erkenntnistheoretischen Subjekt gegenüber gestellt werden, das am Ende der Reihe von Subjekten steht.’ Ibid., p. 43f. 64 ‘ein namenloses, allgemeines, unpersönliches Bewusstsein’. Ibid., p. 45. 65 Not surprisingly Rickert and his assistants had quite a few Buddhist students from Japan. See Glockner, op. cit., 229–234. There is, of course, a kind of selective aﬃnity between the mystical elements of buddhism and (neo)Kantian transcendentalism. Rickert even taught in private an extremely rich ‘samurai’, named Kuki. With him he read Kant’s ‘Critique of Pure Reason’. There were two advantages for the philosopher: ﬁrst, he enjoyed to once again subject Kant to a close reading; second, he could improve his private ﬁnances which had suﬀered great losses during the inﬂation years of the 1920’s. Kuki claimed himself that his name meant ‘Neunteufel’ (Nine Devils), and in the family circle of Rickert he was always called ‘Baron Neunteufel’. Mrs. Rickert Verburg gave me a witty poem written by Rickert for a festive occasion in the family, in which he praised his Japanese student, in particular because of his ﬁnancial succor. See also Glockner, op. cit., p. 232.

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conscious objects (the impressions, ideas, feelings, expressions of will etc.) which depend on the formal, epistemological subject still another reality which is transcendent and consists of ‘things in themselves’ which do not carry the character of consciousness, or are unable to ever become immanently real objects?66 In the second half of our journey we shall discover that this other (transcendent) reality to which the absolute consciousness as formal subject is correlated, does exist indeed. It is a realm of values which are unreal—they don’t ‘have’ being —but they are valid or invalid. Not being (Sein) but validity (Geltung) is what makes values ‘real’. The formal subject bestows reality on them. But that is all for later. At this moment we are still moving forward on the ﬁrst path exploring the immanent standpoint. Transcendence in the immanent standpoint We must now return once more to the concept of transcendence, since we are able to describe and analyze it more precisely after we have received a better understanding of the concepts of immanence, immanent objects, and formal subject as absolute consciousness. Rickert begins with a typically Idealistic statement that must be oﬀensive to all empirist realists. In terms of the theory of knowledge, i.e. epistemologically (and thus not ontologically or metaphysically), transcendent ‘reality’ cannot occupy the space in which we live and in which the natural sciences conceptually locate their moving (evolving, functioning, changing) objects.67 The reason is that, if it comes to knowledge, this space is ﬁlled with immanent realities. All of the socalled ‘objective’ facts within spatial reality, including those of the

66 Rickert phrases this question, which I paraphrased, as follows: ‘gibt es ausser dem formalen erkenntnistheoretischen Subjektzugehörigen oder von ihm abhängigen, immanenten, bewussten Objekten noch transzendenten Objekte als Realitäten? Oder: gibt es ausser den vorgestellten Dingen, die Inhalte eines Bewusstseins überhaupt sind, noch “Dinge an sich”, die als transzendent reale Dinge nie den Charakter der Bewusstheit tragen oder nie immanent reale Objekte werden können?’ Ibid., p. 46f. 67 This reference to the evolving, functioning and changing objects of the empirical sciences reminds one of Ernst Cassirer, Substanzbegriﬀ und Funktionsbegriﬀ. Untersuschungen über die Grundfragen der Erkenntniskritik, (‘Concept of Substance and Concept of Function. Investigations about the Fundamental Problems of the Critique of Knowledge’), 1910, (Hamburg: Felix Meiner Verlag, 2000. Collected Works, vol. 6). Rickert’s conception of the transcendent objects is predominantly substantive (almost ‘cor-

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natural sciences, are in epistemological terms ‘contents of consciousness’: observations (Wahrnehmungen), theories (Vorstellungen), and yes often also expressions of the will. Again, as Kant emphasized, the thing-in-itself does exist. It would be absurd to deny this ontological fact. But the point is epistemological: the thing-in-itself as it exists outside consciousness cannot be known, yet it is to be noted that ‘thing-in-itself ’ is a concept all the same! Indeed, it is to be conceived as the irrational substance of our sensual experiences and observations which are to be rationalized by formal concepts—the notion of space to begin with. It belongs to our consciousness. The same holds true for time: past, present and future are immanent facts of consciousness (Bewusstseinstatsachen), and thus is everything that somehow exists temporally, immanently real. But here again language plays nasty tricks on us. The word ‘transcendent world’ and a sentence like ‘the world of the senses is immanent’ sound spatial. ‘In’ and ‘outside’ consciousness, as we have characterized immanence and transcendence, are very misleading expressions. As was said before, Rickert actually longed for a formal language stripped of the empirical connotations of ordinary or scientiﬁc language—a language which could avoid such hypostatizations. He settled for ordinary language and the necessity to express his ideas with lengthy explanations.68 In any case, at the start of a theory of knowledge one can only say about transcendence that it represents that which is not immediately given and experienced. It is a reality in and of itself which is beyond (or better: prior to) experiences and initially (logically) independent of the absolute consciousness. It has been said that transcendence, viewed as independence of consciousness, cannot exist since transcendence transforms into immanent consciousness the moment one starts thinking about it with the help of the concept transcendence. This Rickert says, is as incorrect as the statement about the subject changing into an object the moment one starts thinking and talking

puscular’), but comes often also close to Cassirer’s more modern functionalism. However, since his epistemological focus is primarily on what goes on in the observing, thinking and judging subject the diﬀerence between a substantive and a functional view of ‘objective’ reality is not very relevant. Moreover, Rickert would probably argue that Cassirer’s discussion pertains to the specialized, empirical sciences, not to his own brand of transcendental epistemology. Rickert, incidentally, did exchange a few brief letters with Cassirer but did not incorporate his extensive writings in his own publications, neither did Cassirer in his. 68 Rickert, o.c., p. 54f.

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about it. The basic fault of this kind of criticism is that one deﬁnes thinking as imagining (vorstellen) and a concept as a kind of imagination (eine Art Vorstellung). But what we have here is judging (urteilen). The judgment ‘the transcendent is not a content of consciousness’ is valid and not at all a contradiction.69 (We will later return to Rickert’s theory of judgments.) The concept of ‘transcendent object’ is problematic, since this object is apparently independent of a subject which is not possible, since in our thinking subject and predicative object always presuppose each other. Yet, we saw before that we could and conceptually should as in a theoretical hypothesis coin the concept ‘unconscious subject’. In that case we can also speak of a correlated ‘unconscious— i.e. transcendent—object.’ It is admittedly very thin conceptual air, but Rickert believes that in the conceptual world which is, to phrase it in modern terms, a virtual world, such constructions are possible, admissible and even unavoidable. He then comes to the following concluding, negative deﬁnition of the concept of transcendence. It is something of which it is denied that its ‘destiny’ would be to become a content of consciousness, or to be imagined by consciousness.70 Kant used, of course, a less cumbersome description of the transcendent world: das Ding-an-sich, the thing in and of itself, without the interference of subjective consciousness. But, as we have just seen, Rickert would comment that the concept of ‘Ding’ already contains as concept or as name the interference of subjective consciousness. One of the major problems of the epistemological concept of transcendence is the naive realism by which we usually think and reﬂect about it. For example, there is a tenacious tendency to interpret the relationship between subject and object in physiological terms. The idea behind it is that physiology could function as a reliable, scientiﬁcally under girded foundation for epistemology. Rickert rejects that conclusion relentlessly. ‘There is really nothing more simple’, he argues, ‘than the following chain of thought: here is a table; its color, solidity, temperature etc., which is all subjective, content of consciousness, pure experience, immanent. That can surely not be doubted. But all this is, at the same time, just the eﬀect of the table, as it exists really, independent of any experience of the subject. Without transcendent table there would be no immanent table. As a result one may not 69 70

Ibid., p. 57. Ibid., p. 60.

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cast doubt on the one or the other.’71 The typically realistic idea behind this chain of thought is, of course, that reality outside consciousness is the main cause, the causa eﬃciens, of the impressions and sensations of it in the human mind. So far so good, but what sort of cause is the realist thinking of ? Certainly not the epistemological subject of the absolute consciousness (Bewusstsein überhaupt), but the psycho-physical object—the body invested with psyche or consciousness. In fact, the realist arguing in physiological terms views the subjectobject relationship in terms of physiological processes between bodies. That is certainly correct within the context of the natural-scientiﬁc, specialized discipline of physiology, but it does in no way whatsoever bear on the epistemological problem of immanence and transcendence in knowledge. Let us recall once more the three types of subject correlated with the three types of object, as has been explained before. It was the third type of subject—the epistemological one as a contentless form72— which was correlated to a very problematic transcendence. Transcendence is a problem, not physiologically, but epistemologically, because it is permeated by immanence due to the concepts which are imposed on it. Even the realities of the natural sciences, e.g. physiology, are not real in and of themselves but real due to the concepts which the knowing subject employs and applies in order to understand them. Color, temperature, solidity, and yes the overarching concept of reality—they are not intrinsic components of the table but conceptually imposed upon it by us who are epistemological subjects. Rickert speaks of ‘the immanence of all spatial beings.’73

71 ‘’Es gibt wirklich nichts Einfacheres als diese Gedankengang: hier ist ein Tisch; seine Farbe, seine Härte, seine Temperatur usw., das alles ist subjektiv, Bewusstseinsinhalt, blosse Empﬁndung, immanent. Daran dürfen wir gewiss nicht zweifeln. Aber das alles ist zugleich nur Wirkung des Tisches, wie er an sich, unabhängig von jeder Empﬁndung des Subjekts real besteht. Ohne transzendenten Tisch gäbe es auch keinen immanenten Tisch. Folglich darf man den einen so wenig wie den anderen in Frage stellen.’ Ibid. p. 64. 72 ‘Das Bewusstsein als Subjekt ist keine transzendente Seele; es ist überhaupt keine Realität.’ (‘Consciousness as subject is not a transcendent soul; it is no reality at all.’ Ibid., p. 73. 73 Ibid., p. 63. The thesis that there is a logical diﬀerence between the natural sciences on the one hand and (transcendental) epistemology on the other, and that there is no conﬂict between the two, is essential in Rickert’s thinking. We will discuss it again in the chapter on the natural and cultural sciences. It returns several times in Rickert’s Der Gegenstand der Erkenntnis, but is elaborated speciﬁcally in the section ‘Das Transzendente als Ursache’ (‘Transcendence as Cause’), o.c., pp. 62–73.

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Through our words, concepts, in short language, we spread, as it were, a blanket of consciousness and thus of immanence over reality. But it is in addition not the reality of neutral things and objects, Rickert argues, but the ‘unreal reality’ of values which through judgments constitutes the object (Gegenstand ) that correlates with the epistemological subject and provides it with validity and objectivity. This at ﬁrst sight strange point will return presently. But we must repeat what was said before: Rickert rejects any sort of spiritualism or solipsism which somehow denies the existence of transcendent reality. A thing does, of course, not disappear, he mocks, when I close my eyes and have no experience of it. Reality did exist before I was born and will continue to exist after my death. My parents were not called into existence by me and my consciousness. This is ontologically obvious and indubitable. But transcendental realism, which is Rickert’s position elaborated in the second part of his Der Gegenstand der Erkenntnis, does not argue ontologically, let alone metaphysically, but epistemologically and logically. From this point of view, transcendent objects, including those of the natural sciences, are permeated with (conceptual and linguistic) immanence, unlike the ‘unreal reality’ of mathematics, formal rules of logic, and values. We can now leave the path towards the standpoint of immanence which ended up in a insoluble problem: the allegedly transcendent object of knowledge appeared to be also immanent which is problematic, because it cannot serve as the much needed objective criterion (Massstab) for the knowing subject. Indeed, the standpoint of immanence must eventually evaporate into solipsism, or deteriorate into psychologism and metaphysics. It is a dead end road. Rickert then invites us to follow him on the second path which will lead us to the standpoint of transcendence, that is to an epistemology which avoids the pitfall of (naive) realism, because it stays in the tradition of (Kantian) Idealism, yet remains loyal to realism as well. It is in search of a transcendent reality as objective criterion, outside subjective consciousness, yet also outside the objective world of things and events of everyday life experience and of the specialized sciences. This objective criterion, we shall see, lies, according to Rickert, in the ‘unreal reality’ of the values which constitute a ‘realm’ that is not founded upon being but upon validity: values ‘are’ not (Sein) but they are valid (Gelten). The entrance to this realm is the judgment (das Urteil ). Let us follow Rickert on this path which will lead us eventually to his comprehensive, systemic philosophy of values—the subject of the next chapter.

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Reality as an empty form It must be asked again: what is the object of our knowledge (Gegenstand der Erkenntnis)? As we have seen so far, it is not the transcendence of the realists, nor the immanence of the subjectivist idealists. Actually, it is no reality in the common sense of the word whatsoever. In addition, in knowledge the object is always correlated to a subject. So the question emerges next: what is the knowing subject? We begin with the subject and move from there to the object. We must return once more to the theory which states that knowledge consists of impressions and observations (Vorstellungen) which are immanent contents of consciousness and as such represent, or rather depict, real objects. It is the tenacious representational logic (Abbildungslogik) according to which knowledge consists of the ascertainment of a concurrence of a picture and an original. However, there is a major problem here: (transcendent) reality and thus its (immanent) representations or pictures present a chaotic, immense, constantly changing and moving pluriformity. It is, as Rickert calls it, a heterogeneous continuum, because it does in itself not possess any homogeneity, nor any ﬁxed and ﬁxing borders.74 This well-nigh oceanic, and in itself irrational heterogeneous continuum cannot possibly be portrayed naturalistically by our limited consciousness. Knowledge consists of an ordering of this chaotic material through concepts and is, therefore, a conceptual transformation (Umbildung) of the (immanent) imaginations and impressions.75 We run now into two basic epistemological questions: ﬁrst, which (immanent) instance performs the conceptual transformation of the heterogeneous continuum; second, what is the (transcendent) origin of the (immanent) imaginations and impressions? We begin with the second question which is, as Rickert phrases it, ‘the epistemological problem of reality’76

74

See for an explanation of the ‘heterogeneous continuum’: Chapter One, 1(c). Mach’s thesis of conceptual parsimony, Denkökonomie, comes to mind here. Rickert, however, does not refer to him. He was in general rather parsimonious in referring to other philosophers, except when he was criticized by them. Cf. Ernst Mach, ‘Die ökonomische Natur der physikalischen Forschung’, lecture at Vienna University, May 25, 1882, published in a volume of lectures: Ernst Mach, Populärwissenschaftliche Vorlesungen, (Leipzig, 1896). I made use of a Dutch translation in a volume of essays: Ernst Mach, Natuurkunde, wetenschap en ﬁlosoﬁe, (‘Physics, science and philosophy’), transl. by W. de Ruiter, (Amsterdam: Boom Meppel, 1980), pp. 72–94. 76 ‘das erkenntnistheoretiche Problem der Wirklichkeit’, Rickert, o.c., pp. 120–123. 75

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What do we focus on, when we ascertain (which is, of course, a judgment!) that something is real ? The question—and this is crucial in Rickert’s epistemology—relates to form, not to content! Take for example the statement ‘this sheet of paper is real’. The word ‘real’ is an empty form. ‘Real’ is not ‘paperish’ or so. It is a form which we put on substance—in this case a sheet of paper. Or, in a typically neo-Kantian expression, we bring the sheet of paper under the concept of reality. Or, to use another metaphor, the concept of reality functions as an empty shell. In fact, Rickert argues, we must distinguish between the real as the content ﬁlled object or, for that matter, as the material of scientiﬁc research, and reality as the conceptual form according to which the content is molded, i.e. transformed from chaotic material into conceptually ordered and thus understandable reality. He uses the often quoted example given by Kant who once said that hundred real Taler do not contain one bit more than hundred possible Taler. That is, the content of the concept of ‘hundred real Taler’ diﬀers from that of ‘hundred possible Taler’ only by the addition of the conceptual form of reality. That must be seen as sheer form, because it does not change anything in the content. Thus, the knowledge or judgment that something is real poses the problem of reality as form.77 We experience (transcendent) reality in daily life immediately, while the sensations, images, pictures of it in our consciousness (i.e. the immanent objects) are chaotic, formless, indeed in need of conceptual forms such as ‘reality’, ‘quality’, quantity’, etc., if we want to acquire structured knowledge about it: ‘this sheet of paper is real, white, and light-weight.’ The words ‘real’, ‘white’, ‘light-weight’ but also ‘this’, which we, as it were, impose on the content (the sheet of paper) are general, abstract, timeless and spaceless, whereas the experienced content (this particular sheet of paper as an immanent object) in contrast is individual, i.e. concrete, time and space bound. Those words can be applied to other objects than this particular piece of paper, to a butterﬂy for instance. But in the case of our example we focus our attention on this concrete and speciﬁc sheet of paper, not on a butterﬂy, or for that matter on a chair, a dog, or another ‘piece of reality’. All this means epistemologically that we cannot think and speak about (immanent) contents—about ‘reality’—without mentioning

77

Ibid., p. 125.

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the forms in which we mold them conceptually. Content without form is inexpressible (unsagbar). It is indeed because of form that we enter the theory of knowledge. ‘All problems of the theory of knowledge are for that reason’, Rickert concludes, ‘problems of form, and everywhere the question arises: to which should the form of the content of knowledge orient itself so that the knowledge becomes true, i.e. becomes true knowledge?’78 That is, in epistemology we are concerned not just with the object of knowledge (Gegenstand der Erkenntnis) but with the object of the form of knowledge (Gegenstand der Erkenntnisform).79 This must be applied also to statements of fact and that has far reaching consequences for the empirical sciences, as they claim correctly to be sciences of facts. Facts too constitute a form which is conceptually imposed on the contents the sciences investigate. It is in Rickert’s terminology the empty form of pure actuality or ‘facticity’ (reine Gegebenheit oder Tatsächlichkeit). Pure and empty—that means, general, ahistorical, non-experiential, devoid of conscious content. ‘Facticity’ is added to (immanent) contents as a form without which these contents would remain sheer chaos, epistemological wilderness. Yet, ‘facticity’ itself is not inherent to the contents. It is a priori and added to it by the previously discussed pure Ego, or absolute consciousness. We must return to the latter presently, but should ﬁrst draw an important conclusion which pertains to our later discussion of the natural and cultural sciences (Chapter Five): if scientiﬁc work wants to maintain its sense and usefulness, it must presuppose that its material is molded by the conceptual form of reality, i.e. is actual and factual. But that leads to the epistemological question, what actually the object of knowledge is that claims: ‘this or that content is real’. Or, in other words, what is the ground of its truth? This ground cannot be found, as the standpoint of immanence falsely claims, in the (immanent) impressions and ideas because they are the raw material which is to be molded by the form ‘reality’ or ‘facticity’, or if you wish ‘truth’.80

78 ‘Darum sind alle Probleme der Erkenntnistheorie Formprobleme, und überall entsteht die Frage: wonach soll die Form des Erkenntnisinhaltes sich richten, damit die Erkenntnis wahr, d.h. Erkenntnis wird?’ Ibid., p. 127. His is an intriguing formulation of the question. I believe it should be read as follows: ‘to which form should the (immanent) content of knowledge be oriented in order to ascertain truth, i.e. true knowledge.’ 79 Idem. 80 Ibid., p. 129.

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Rickert ﬁnally reaches the destination of his epistemological journey, when he decides to further investigate the knowledge act, that is the act of attributing conceptual forms (real, actual, factual, true, etc.) to immanent contents (experiences, impressions, ideas, etc.). If we conclude that something is real or a fact, we express a judgment (Urteil ). Till now our search for the epistemological object of knowledge has been negative. We have investigated various roads which were unsatisfying, although in many respects enlightening and at some points not totally incorrect. But Rickert invites us now to look at the problem of knowledge and its criterion of truth and objectivity in a positive manner: knowing is an act, namely judging: ‘Each knowledge starts with judging, progresses to judgments and can only end in judgments. Therefore, as “actual” knowledge it consists only of acts of judgment.’81 The epistemological act If we deﬁne knowing in terms of the act of judging, we choose for the primacy of the practical reason above the theoretical reason. Or, phrased diﬀerently, we deﬁne the theoretical reason which generates words and concepts in terms of the practical reason which generates acts. But here another change is involved still. From the standpoint of immanence knowledge is an aﬀair of consciousness. Reduced to its essence, knowledge is from this standpoint, as we have seen, an immanent imagining (Vorstellen) of the equally immanent impressions (Wahrnehmungen). Now we must go beyond that position and deﬁne knowledge in terms of an act of judgment by which a form, e.g. ‘reality’ or ‘truth’, is imposed on experiences and impressions. Knowledge is then transformed from something conscious (Bewusstes) to something known (Gewusstes). What then is the object (Gegenstand ), i.e. the objective criterion (Massstab) which is independent of the judging subject and therefore transcendent? Also, what then is the judging subject which imposes its judgments on the immanent impressions and experiences? We are back at the initial question of the subject-object relationship of knowledge, but this time knowledge is deﬁned in terms of an act, not an inner-consciousness aﬀair—the act of judging. 81

‘Jede Erkenntnis beginnt mit Urteilen, schreitet in Urteilen fort und kann nur in Urteilen enden. Sie besteht also als “aktuelle” Erkenntnis allein aus Urteilsakten.’ Ibid., p. 163.

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In epistemology we are, of course, not interested in the question what precisely, say psychologically, the act of judging is, but we want to know, what judging does and means to knowledge. The concept ‘act of judging’ is not an ontological question, is not concerned with Dasein, but a purely epistemological one, concerned with signiﬁcance (Bedeutung) and sense (Sinn). It is, Rickert adds, a concept of performance (Leistungsbegriﬀ ), or, as we would say today, it is a concept of function.82 This is, according to Rickert, a simple but little acknowledged distinction. After all, we can look at objects in terms of what they in themselves really are. We then conﬁne ourselves to the description and analysis of their Dasein, there sheer being there, without asking questions like “what is their sense and meaning?”, or “what are their functions?” In the sciences such a description and analysis is quite normal. Rickert calls it Daseinswissenschaft which focuses its attention on reality as being-without-sense (sinnfreies Dasein). But we can also approach objects by asking what they mean and do to other objects beyond their sheer, meaningless and senseless being. In that case, the objects interest us because in their performance they point beyond there own being towards other objects for which they apparently carry sense (Sinn) and signiﬁcance (Bedeutung). This is no longer meaningless and senseless being, but reality ﬁlled with meaningful, sensible performance (sinnvolle Leistung).83 What then is the act of judging? What is, in Rickert’s wording, its meaning structure (Sinnstruktur)? The answer is simple: judging is giving a positive or a negative answer to a question. Judging is, to phrase it in contemporary words, digital because it is saying yes (bejahen) or it is saying no (verneinen) to a question—it is plus or minus, one or zero. This is comparable to the act of wanting (wollen) which is also bifurcated: we desire something or we despise it. In moral and in cognitive judgments we approve (billigen) or disapprove (missbilligen). Such an act of judging is, of course, not an uninvolved

82 Once again, this resembles the main argument of Ernst Cassirer, Substanzbegriﬀ und Funktionsbegriﬀ. Untersuchungen über die Grundfragen der Erkenntniskritik, o.c. The diﬀerence between Rickert and Cassirer is the fact that the former argues in terms of systematic transcendentalism, while the latter argues in terms of the specialized discipline of the history of philosophy. 83 Ibid., p. 140f. Gottlob Frege’s important distinction of Sinn and Bedeutung will be discussed in Chapter Four. Rickert does not distinguish as sharply between ‘sense’ and ‘signiﬁcance’, as Frege does.

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observing of reality. On the contrary, in judgments we take positions vis-à-vis one or more values! That is, we value things, rate them, estimate them—positively (approving) or negatively (disapproving). True or false judgments are always evaluating acts.84 Thus, knowledge is not a neutral, value-free, and passive observation, but it is an act of judging in terms of an approval or a disapproval, based upon positive or negative values. But we should keep in mind that this brand of epistemology is Idealistic by nature. We make observations and receive impressions (Wahrnehmungen). These immanent objects, however, are in and of themselves rather chaotic contents which must be molded and ordered by forms in order to become coherent, solid and reliable knowledge. Well then, in the case of judgments these forms are the approvals or disapprovals of the act of judging which in their turn again are related to positive or negative values. Meanwhile, Rickert emphasizes the fact that we are dealing here with knowledge, and thus with a purely theoretical approving and disapproving related to the theoretical values of truth/falsehood, or reality/unreality. If I say ‘this is a sheet of paper’, I do not express a purely neutral ‘fact’, but issue (usually without being aware of it) a judgment in which I impose forms like ‘facticity’ and ‘reality’ on my impression of the sheet of paper. But these impositions are values because the question to be answered after the statement was made, is something like this: “is it true? Is this object really a piece of paper?” The question is to be approved or disapproved. Now, Rickert acknowledges that all this is rather strange at ﬁrst sight. It is strange, because in everyday life we usually rate and evaluate in terms of non-theoretical values, such as the hedonistic values (pleasure/displeasure, lust/pain), aesthetic values (beautiful/ugly), or ethical values (good/evil).85 In epistemology, however, these non-theoretical values should be distinguished from the cognitive, theoretical act of judging. Only truth/falsehood and reality/unreality are admissible in our theoretical judgments about reality—or, more precisely, about the immanent objects, i.e. our impressions and experiences of reality.

84 Ibid., p. 165. This is similar to Brentano’s epistemology in which the positive or negative judgment (Urteil ) plays a crucial role. The diﬀerence again is that Brentano sees the act of judging as a psychological act which Rickert rejects as a psychologistic fallacy. For Brentano see Stegmüller, o.c., pp. 2–17. 85 Ibid., p. 170. We will return to this in more detail in the next chapter.

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‘Thus the meaning of sentences like: this smell is pleasant, or: this picture is beautiful, or: this will is morally good, remain outside consideration.’86 These sentences, Rickert adds, are strictly speaking also truth claiming judgments, but fall outside the realm of epistemology because they refer predominantly to hedonistic, aesthetic and ethical values and ratings. If the question of their truth is raised, it is very hard to decide whether hedonistic, aesthetic and ethic evaluations are correct or incorrect, true or false. In epistemology which searches theoretically for objectivity and truth, we should abstain from them. We must now direct our attention to the knowing subject. It is, so much is clear by now, the approving or disapproving, evaluating and rating subject. However, it should not be confused with the individual, historical knowing person of ﬂesh and blood. Rickert disagrees with Wilhelm Dilthey on this point. In his philosophy Dilthey warned not to isolate a knowing subject from the total human being of ﬂesh and blood. He stood, as we saw before, in the tradition of Lebensphilosophie and rejected any attempt, such as Rickert’s, to isolate the knowing function from the rest of the human being. This may be the correct thing to do, Rickert counters, in psychology or in history as scientiﬁc disciplines, but it is inadmissible in epistemology which works with a theoretical concept of knowledge and searches for the objectivity of the cognitive performance of judging. Epistemology is not to be confused with philosophical anthropology. Its mission is much more modest. ‘After all, we only want to understand the essence of theoretical thinking and its capacity to arrive at objectivity.’87 The theory of knowledge is only concerned with the theoretical behavior of the subject, and is in that sense ‘a theory of theory’.88 But it must be repeated once more, the subject acquires reliable knowledge only by issuing judgments. That is, knowing is not only theoretical but above all practical as well: it approves or disapproves and thereby relates objects to positive or negative values.

86 ‘Der Sinn von Sätzen wie z.B.: dieser Geruch ist angenehm, oder: dieses Bild ist schön, oder: dieser Wille ist sittlich, bleibt deshalb hier völlig ausser Betracht.’ Ibid., p. 169f. 87 ‘Wir wollen ja lediglich das Wesen des theoretischen Denkens und seine Fähigkeit zur Objektivität verstehen.’ Ibid., p. 168. 88 ‘eine Theorie der Theorie’. (Italics by Rickert). Idem.

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The categorical imperative of judgments At this point of our journey which nears its end, another dimension must still be added to the act of judging in terms of positive or negative values. Rickert calls it the judgment’s necessity (die Urteilsnotwendigkeit), or its commanding dimension expressed in verbs like ‘to have to’, or ‘ought to’ which contrasts with ‘being’—in German: das Sollen as opposed to the ‘facticity’ of das Sein.89 It is obvious that the theoretical and non-theoretical values to which the judgments relate, cannot be characterized by the concept of being. Values do not ‘exist’ in terms of sheer being, as things, human beings, animals, and also events and happenings exist. Values cannot be experienced by the senses. That is, values ‘are’ not, but are valid or not valid. Not being, or existence but validity is their ‘essence’, although one should actually not talk about them in such essentialist terms. In any case, in and of themselves values are not real. They acquire reality (‘being’) by attaching them to real beings through their judgments. We want these judgments about reality to be ‘true’ in the sense of ‘valid’. If that is accomplished, we may even experience a hedonistic sense of certainty. (The famous German ‘Aha-Erlebnis’ comes to mind here.) But, Rickert hastens to add, this is a psychological category which should be left out of the exclusively theoretical, scientiﬁc orientation of his epistemology. It certainly cannot function as the theoretical foundation of the judgment’s necessity we are discussing here. Rickert did (and probably would) not phrase it this way, but I am inclined to call this necessity of judgment an epistemological categorical imperative which is again to be seen and interpreted as an empty and timeless form attached to equally timeless, ahistorical values as forms (true-false, real-unreal). Unlike the hedonistic values (pleasure and pain) which are historical, time bound and individually real, the theoretical values (true-false, real-unreal) are logical values and thus, like the rules of mathematics, ahistorical, timeless and formal. More relevant still, these theoretical values are independent of our individual contents of consciousness, i.e. our impressions, imaginations, feelings, expressions of the will. The latter are not general or universal but individual and time bound, since they have a beginning at our birth and ﬁnd their end in our death. Theoretical values, on

89

Ibid., pp. 171–180.

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the contrary, are and remain valid independent of our birth and death. They are universal and general like the rules of mathematics. Because of the universal and general nature of the theoretical, logical values we cannot judge, i.e. approve or disapprove, vicariously but are bound by a ‘power’ which we are obliged to acknowledge and obey. To give a simple example, when I hear tones and am asked, if I hear anything, I must, I have to admit that I hear tones: ‘Yes, I hear music.’ Without this necessity, this Sollen, I would remain stuck in uncertainty, and either not judge at all, or decide to abstain from any judgment. This certainty gives my yes-judgment the character of unconditional necessity. It is a ‘thought necessity’ and ‘judgment necessity’ (Denknotwendigkeit and Urteilsnotwendigkeit),90 that is, a categorical imperative. Naturally, this pertains equally to statements of fact. They acknowledge the necessity that one has to judge this and this way and not diﬀerently. It is the necessity of the Sollen which is not a causal-psychic coercion but a logical ground: it is a logical Sollen, not a causal Müssen.91 Rickert then draws a spectacular conclusion which he himself labeled as ‘our “Copernican” standpoint’:92 the assignment of reality and truth to the impressions and observations (Wahrnehmungen and Vorstellungen), and not these impressions and observations themselves, decides what is real and true, or unreal and false. Such an assigning Urteil can only be accomplished by the interference of logical values (true/false, real/unreal), and by valuing, rating judgments in the form of admitting (bejahen) or denying (verneinen). These values are, in the theoretical sphere of epistemology, not speciﬁc, historical and individual, but timeless, general and universal. They are above all couched in the necessity of the verb ‘ought to’ (Sollen). In the ﬁnal analysis then—and this concludes Rickert’s epistemological search for the Gegenstand der Erkenntniss, i.e. for the object of knowledge that functions as the criterion (Massstab) of truth and objectivity—the object of knowledge and criterion of its objectivity and truth is not

90

Ibid., p. 177. Ibid., p. 179, footnote 1. It is for a non-native user of the German language hard to distinguish Müssen from Sollen. Maybe the following simple example may help somewhat: all human beings must (Müssen) eventually die; a prisoner condemned to death has to (Sollen) die on a set date. Müssen (have to) is naturally causal, Sollen (ought to) on the other hand is morally, or legally causal. 92 ‘unser “kopernikanischer “ Standpunkt’, ibid., p. 182. 91

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the thing-in-itself as the naïve realists believe, nor the impressions and observations as the immanent idealists claim. The object of theoretical knowledge consists of the theoretical values (truth/falsehood, reality/unreality) which are ontologically ‘unreal’ yet valid or invalid, plus their inherent necessity, their intrinsic Sollen. The searched for Gegenstand der Erkenntnis is thus the combination of values and necessity of judgment—Werte plus Sollen. They are, of course, not immanent, intrinsic components of consciousness, but as transcendent as the objects and facts of the empirical, everyday experiences and of the specialized sciences! Rickert called this epistemological position transcendental Idealism. It remains loyal to the German Idealistic tradition, since the knowing and judging subject focuses on the immanent contents of consciousness consisting of the impressions and observations of a transcendent reality.93 Yet, it is at the same time also transcendental in that the ﬁnal Gegenstand der Erkenntnis is found in the ‘unreal’ (but not metaphysical) reality of values with their compelling and obliging Sollen character as essential components of man’s judging acts (Urteile). To sum up, epistemological object (Gegenstand ) and objective criterion (Massstab) consist of the logical values (true-false, real-unreal) couched in an epistemological categorical imperative and expressed in practical judgments. This peculiar Gegenstand, Rickert adds, is as objective and as transcendent as the empirical objects of the specialized sciences which believe and trust in their given nature and objectivity. Their philosophically naïve empirism is, given the logical and methodological framework of the specialized sciences, understandable and legitimate. It is, however, within philosophy as a general science that such a naïve epistemological empirism is fallacious and objectionable.

93 In the next chapter we shall see that Rickert has called his position also transcendental empirism. After all, he never denied the existence of an objective, transcendent reality (Kant’s thing-in-itself ) which is the proper object of the empirical, specialized sciences and the very source of human experiences and sensations. This is indeed an empirist dimension of his epistemology, but the Kantian idea that the proper object of knowledge is not the thing-in-itself that cannot be known but the immanent ‘deposit’ of the experiences and sensations in consciousness is its Idealist dimension.

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Conclusion With this conclusion we have reached the ﬁnal destination of our epistemological search for the object and the subject of theoretical knowledge. We are, as Rickert observes correctly, in everyday life and in the diﬀerent scientiﬁc disciplines as well, thoroughly embedded in empirism. We do not cast doubt on the objectivity of facts, organic beings and inorganic things. Yet, if we do not discard epistemology as a valid philosophical enterprise, one may wonder with Kant and the neo-Kantians, as to how valid or true knowledge of the surrounding reality and of our own bodies and minds as parts of this reality, can come about at all. It is a basic and directly understandable fact that we perceive this reality through our senses. We hear, taste, see, feel reality (organic and inorganic ‘things’, and historical events) incessantly, and it is quite obvious that these sensations and perceptions are the raw material of what we usually call ‘knowledge’. It is then quite convincing also that there must be an ‘instance’ which organizes this raw material into a structured and systematic material, using categories like ‘time’, ‘space’, ‘quality’, ‘quantity’ and ‘causality’ as organizing instruments. This ‘instance’ is not the ‘I’, or the ‘mind’ or the ‘psyche’ of empirical psychology, because they are still predicative objects of the knowing subject, which is itself obviously not part of this reality. It is not real or empirical, but a priori and transcendental. When we are prepared to engage in epistemology, Rickert asks us to shed our everyday life, often naïve realism or empirism. Scientists, who want to reﬂect upon epistemological issues, are also invited to bracket their legitimate belief in the objectivity of the facts which are being investigated within the boundaries of their speciﬁc disciplines. That reminds one, of course, of Husserl’s epochè. In fact, Husserl is next to Rickert one of the few philosophers who elaborated on Kant’s transcendentalism. There are, however, basic diﬀerences between Rickert’s neo-Kantianism and Husserl’s phenomenology. In particular Husserl’s Wesensschau as the phenomenological technique that allegedly could bridge immanence and transcendence is alien to Rickert’s epistemology and philosophy of values.94 Reduced to its 94 This is not the place to enter into a detailed, comparative analysis of the similarities and diﬀerences of Rickert’s and Husserl’s transcendental epistemologies. That would be an interesting exercise though.

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essence Rickert’s epistemology claims that in knowledge the subject consists of a formal, empty, absolute consciousness (Bewusstsein überhaupt, Bewusstheit), which is a transcendental and pure (non-empirical) Ego, juxtaposed to objects which consist of theoretical (logical) values as empty, timeless and abstract forms. They assist the necessity to judge (Urteilsnotwendigkeit), which is also an empty form. In logically necessary, binary judgments (true/false, real/unreal) theoretical knowledge is supposed to occur or happen. Meanwhile, this phrasing is, in terms of Rickert’s transcendentalism, all wrong because verbs like ‘to consist of ’, ‘to juxtapose’, ‘to assist’, ‘to occur’, or ‘to happen’ suggest transcendence and content, not immanence and forms. However, the problem is that there are no appropriate words available. There is no useful transcendental language and script like that of mathematics by which all of this can be explained. So Rickert roams around linguistically in the abstract abodes of transcendentalism hoping to make himself clear. He leads us into domains of thought—a sort of chimerical, surrealistic world of empty forms—in which indeed normal language can no longer function. Much of what he thinks and wants to say is, as he says himself regularly, unsagbar, i.e. inexpressible. Indeed, words do not only objectify things but provide them also with substance. Rickert believes that the concepts of his transcendental philosophy ought to remain empty forms which allegedly mold chaotic and irrational contents (the transcendent and immanent realities) into a rationally understandable cosmos. But in the end, we are left with conceptual emptiness only, for which there is no appropriate language. Maybe Rickert should have taken to heart Ludwig Wittgenstein’s advise to remain silent, when things cannot be said. But he goes on talking and often gets lost in an abstract thicket of empty concepts and meaningless words. Reading the last pages of his book, where he roams around in a conceptual haze, one is reminded of the mystics who deﬁne their God in terms of Emptiness and consequently withdraw into silence—muein, the Greek verb for being silent, which is the virtue of the mystics.95 Rickert’s epistemological God—his Gegenstand der Erkenntnis—is a trinity (subject, object and value-related judgment)

95 As I related earlier, several Japanese philosophy students came to Heidelberg in the 1920’s in order to learn the intricacies of neo-Kantian transcendentalism. This is not amazing, since in the Zen-Buddhist and Shintoïst traditions emptiness

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which is as empty as the Christian trinity of the mystics. Yet, he decides not to withdraw into mystical or Wittgensteinean silence. A distinct departure from Rickert’s neo-Kantian transcendentalism is presented by two philosophical currents which take their departure from language, but elaborate on that in diﬀerent ways. There is the Anglo-Saxon linguistic philosophy which was once labeled the ‘linguistic turn’, initiated by Ludwig Wittgenstein.96 There is next the French school of thinking about language in which particularly Michel Foucault and Jacques Derrida played leading roles.97 The notion of deconstruction comes, of course, to mind here. Rickert would in all probability have sympathized with it, but next ask the question what then after this deconstruction reliable, valid, if not true knowledge, is all about. This is not the place to enter into a comparative analysis. It suﬃces to remark that the phenomenon of language which has plagued Rickert so much because of its alleged insuﬃciency to verbally ‘catch’ the abstract unrealities of transcendentalism, became the central philosophical issue, drawing philosophy away from transcendental epistemology. As to the Anglo-Saxon ‘linguistic turn’ and the French ‘deconstructionists’ Rickert would in all probability remark that in the end both

and empty forms play a predominant role. Once, during a stay in Japan as a visiting professor, I participated in a tea ceremony held in one of the many Japanese temples. Afterwards I asked the Japanese colleague who accompanied me, what the meaning of the ceremony actually was. He smiled and said that this was a typically Western question: the ceremony had to have a meaningful content. He explained to me that it has no meaning, no substance, no content. It is an empty form which puts one at rest, which in a way empties the mind and the soul. It does so by simple forms such as the very sparse furniture ( just a wooden table and a few tatamis), the simple shape of the bowl from which one drinks the tea (with the imperative that the bowl is to be held by both stretched hands), and also the gestures of the hostess who pours the tea and of the guests who drink it. Rickert, who incidentally was an avid tea drinker, would certainly have sympathized with this Japanese ceremony and its inherent formalism. But then, he would also realize that this formalism was primarily aesthetic and maybe even hedonistic, but not theoretical and epistemological. It may bring about a kind of mystical, phenomenological Wesensschau, but it will not render any rational, value related, theoretically sound knowledge of reality. 96 Richard M. Rorty (ed.), The Linguistic Turn. Essays in Philosophical Method, 1967, (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1992). The ‘classic’, although disputed text is Alfred J. Ayer, Language, Truth and Logic, 1936, (New York: Dover Publications, n.d.). 97 E. Berns, S. IJsseling, P. Moyaert (eds.), Denken in Parijs. Taal en Lacan, Foucault, Althusser, Derrida, (‘Thinking in Paris. Language and Lacan, Foucault, Althusser, Derrida’), (Alphen a.d. Rijn, Brussel: Samson Uitgeverij, 1981), p. 23.

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of them reduced epistemology to the empirical (mainly sociological, psychological and historical) study of language. That may, he would argue, easily result in unconscious forms of psychologistic, sociologistic and historicist metaphysics. A telling example is John R. Searle’s The Construction of Social Reality which comes close to Kant’s epistemology, but deviates from its transcendentalism because of his stern defence of (typically Anglo-Saxon) realism. His focus on institutions and institutional facts results in fact in an ontology which in the end is more part of the sociology of knowledge than transcendental-philosophical epistemology.98 The French philosophers in particular easily end up in grave logical anomalies. Foucault and Derrida, for instance, may ‘deconstruct’ the subject and the author of written or spoken texts, claiming the primacy of the discourse and the ‘intertextuality’ of the printed or spoken texts. But then there remains still the simple fact that it is Foucault and Derrida who as authors and subjects invented, expressed and published the very notions of ‘discourse’ and ‘intertextuality’, and impose these categories as forms on the sense impressions of their readers and audiences. ‘No one else did’, I am conﬁdent, Rickert would remark wryly. Next the question suggests itself, how the subject in them went about, what, in other words, the nature is of the epistemological process at work in them. Rickert’s subject—and both Foucault and Derrida would probably sympathize with him on this point—is not the empirical author of the texts, but—and this they would ﬁnd hard to fathom—the transcendental pure Ego as the sheer possibility of subjectivity and of knowledge. Finally, there is a structural weakness in Rickert’s epistemology which renders it to my mind illogical. Right at the beginning of his epistemological journey he claims that the object of knowledge (Gegenstand der Erkenntnis) is also its criterion (Massstab) of objectivity, truth, or reality. But object and criterion are theoretically and logically two diﬀerent things. An object is, in the ﬁnal analysis, a passive thing, an unstructured content, an ob-jectum, which in Rickert’s own theory must have been shaped, structured or molded by conceptual forms in order to be an object at all. Criterion, on the other

98 John R. Searle, The Construction of Social Reality, (New York: The Free Press, 1995; Harmondsworth, Middlesex: Penguin Books, 1995). We return to Searle’s constructionism within an institutional context in the Conclusion.

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hand, is an instrument for action, i.e. for judgment—a sort of measuring rod which is used by the subject, when it makes judgments. Now, at the end of his epistemological chain of arguments, Rickert introduces necessity (Sollen) as the essence of judgments, and judgments as the essence of knowledge. He next argues that the necessity of judgment is the main criterion for its theoretical truth or falsehood. So far so good, but he then proclaims this criterion (Massstab) as the object (Gegenstand ) of knowledge. Well, it may be a criterion but it is very hard to fathom how necessity (Sollen) as a characteristic of the evaluating judgment could be an object (Gegenstand ) of knowledge. If object and criterion are mixed up theoretically, one ends up in theoretical confusions which no language could ever put into words, let alone clear them up. In the concluding pages of his epistemological treatise he engages in ﬁnely tuned analyses of the values which in fact are a prelude to his general and systemic philosophy of values. That leads us beyond his epistemology. It is time now to leave the epistemological considerations, and focus our attention on his philosophy of values. It will be the main subject of the next chapter. After that, we turn to his ideas about natural-scientiﬁc and cultural-scientiﬁc concept formations, for which the road was paved by his epistemology and his theory of values.

CHAPTER FOUR

FACTS, VALUES AND MEANINGFUL ACTS Wenn es Wirklichkeitssinn gibt, muss es auch Möglichkeitssinn geben. Robert Musil1

The total and bifocal reality When he speaks of the various sciences, as we saw in the former chapter, Rickert emphasizes two characteristics. First, most scientists have a rather naïve notion of the objectivity of reality. It is a kind of common-sense positivism which leads them to believe that reality is only real because it exists independently of subjects, who live in it, and act upon it. They believe, in other words, in the solid objectivity of facts and are not plagued by epistemological doubts about a possible epistemological rift between immanence and transcendence, between values and facts, norms and acts. This naïve positivism is, according to Rickert, legitimate, especially, as we shall see in the next chapter, if it occurs in the realm of the generalizing, ahistorical natural sciences. When engaged in empirical research, the scientist should not bother to reﬂect upon these epistemological issues and problems. Philosophical considerations remain important for them, but they are methodological by nature and pertain to the logic of the speciﬁc ﬁelds of research. If scientists venture upon general philosophical issues, they easily end up in unscientiﬁc metaphysics, such as vitalistic biologism, psychologism, historicism, sociologism or economic materialism. Yet, it stands to reason that within the framework of general philosophy the epistemological issues and problems cry for a theoretical analysis and for a solution to boot. Second, the various scientiﬁc disciplines are, as Rickert often phrases it, Spezialwissenschaften (special and specialized sciences) which focus

1 ‘When there is a sense of reality, there must be also a sense of possibility.’ Robert Musil, Der Mann ohne Eigenschaften, (The Man without Qualities), 1952, (Hamburg: Rowohlt Verlag), p. 16.

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only upon mutually isolated parts of reality. The specialists of physics, chemistry, and astronomy, or, for that matter, those of psychology, sociology, history, or economics approach reality in a specialized manner. In a sense, each discipline cuts out of reality its specialized part, and subjects it to its speciﬁc brand of research. Even if they aspire to so-called ‘interdisciplinary studies’, they still merely combine specializations and do not approach reality in its totality. It also entails in the end an unavoidable compartmentalization of reality. Rickert wants to save an autonomous place for philosophy, next to these specialized sciences. If in philosophy one sticks to naive positivism, and if one also accepts the inherent compartmentalization of reality as an unavoidable fate, philosophy would be limited to logic and compartmentalized methodology of the sciences. Or, even worse, philosophy would be ‘upgraded’ into some sort of encompassing metaphysics ﬂoating in abstract air high above the ﬁelds of the various scientiﬁc disciplines, dictating the sciences how to behave. Vitalism, as we saw, presented according to Rickert a telling and fateful example. He rejects both options. The former is too modest, the latter too pretentious. Philosophy is scientiﬁcally unsustainable, if it does not entertain clear and peaceful relationships with the specialized, empirical sciences. He coins a witty metaphor in which he dresses philosophy in a royal coat: ‘Also the queen of the sciences may only reign in harmony with the parliament of the single scientiﬁc parties. The times of her absolute monarchy are over.’2 As to the scientiﬁc compartmentalization of reality, Rickert tries to develop a scientiﬁc brand of philosophy—and by ‘scientiﬁc’ he means ‘focused upon reality’ and ‘logically sound’. It is a philosophy of values which supersedes the various scientiﬁc disciplines, but does not present a brand of overarching metaphysics emerging from one or other scientiﬁc discipline. It has its own autonomous place alongside, and in addition to, the various specialized sciences. He deﬁnes the reality which philosophy should theoretically analyze and conceptually grasp, as a totality of which the compartmentalized ﬁelds of the scientiﬁc disciplines are the parts. However, this totality is more than and diﬀerent from the sum of its parts: ‘The totality of

2 ‘Auch die Königin der Wissenschaften darf nur in Harmonie mit dem Parlament der einzelwissenschaftlichen Parteien regieren. Die Zeiten ihrer absoluten Monarchie sind vorbei.’ Heinrich Rickert, Allgemeine Grundlegung der Philosophie I, (Tübingen: Mohr-Siebeck, 1921), p. 94.

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the world is something else than the aggregate of its parts. Moreover, if someone has understood all the parts, he has not yet grasped the totality scientiﬁcally. (. . .) The totality is nothing but the name for the form which holds all the parts together.’3 It is an autonomous reality with its own constitution and characteristics. We cannot put it together by placing, as it were, the various scientiﬁc disciplines in a row and adding them up into one gigantic whole. This is a misconceived sort of holism which Rickert rejects. There would be, in all probability, no end to this row. It would yield an ‘endless reality’ (unendliche Wirklichkeit), representing a semi-empirical, and rather metaphysical kind of whole. Indeed, specialists of the various sciences have come up with such metaphysical speculations as is testiﬁed by biologism, psychologism, historicism, etc. In all these cases one can observe the typically holistic pars pro toto reasoning. Next to holism as a metaphysical system based on biology, which was explicated ﬁrst by Jan Christiaan Smuts in 1926, Wolfgang Köhler’s Gestalt psychology and Kurt Lewin’s Field Theory come to mind here. J. C. Smuts (1870–1950), South-African General and Prime Minister who was a student in literature and science at Stellenbosch University and studied law at Cambridge University, saw ‘holism’ as a tendency in the organic world which incessantly forge parts into wholes that acquire autonomy vis-à-vis the parts: ‘Both matter and life consist of unit structures whose ordered grouping produces natural wholes which we call bodies or organisms. The character of “wholeness” meets us everywhere and points to something fundamental in the universe.’4 He saw six ‘progressive phases’ in the holistic evolution of the world: (1) The sheer synthesis of parts in the inorganic world which lack mutual internal activities as in a chemical compound. (2) The synthesis of parts with mutual activities in order to maintain the body as in plants. (3) The co-operative activities are centrally controlled, yet implicit and unconscious as in animals. (4) The central control is conscious and culminates in a single personality, or collectively in societal groups. (5) In human associations this control is superseded by the state and similar group organizations. (6) ‘Finally, there emerge the ideal wholes, or Holistic Ideals, or Absolute Values, disengaged and set free from human personality, operating as creative factors on their own account in the upbuilding of a spiritual world. Such are the Ideals of Truth, Beauty and Goodness, which

3

‘. . . das Ganze der Welt ist etwas anderes als das Aggregat ihrer Teile, und auch wer alle Teile begriﬀen had, hat daher noch nicht das Ganze wissenschaftlich erfasst. (. . .) Das Ganze ist nichts als der Name für die Form, die alle Teile zusammenhält.’ Heinrich Rickert, o.c., p. 16f. 4 Jan C. Smuts, Holism and Evolution, 1926, (New York: The Viking Press, 1961), p. 86.

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lay the foundations of a new order in the universe.’5 Phase 6 is very similar, as we shall see, to Rickert’s notion of the ‘realm of values’. Yet, Smuts social philosophy and metaphysics are very diﬀerent, because to Rickert absolute values are not empirical emergences from ‘lower’ systems but unreal, transcendent forms. Rickert would, of course, also reject the metaphysical idea of ‘holism’ as an ubiquitous process in the universe. It results in a mere adding-up of so-called ‘unit structures’ without any systematic order. The result is limitless and thus unknowable. Köhler’s well-known psychological notion of a Gestalt, i.e. a structured whole, seems likewise to be similar to Rickert’s concept of totality, but is also essentially diﬀerent. Rickert would sympathize with Köhler (1887–1967), yet remark that the concept of Gestalt belongs to the specialized discipline of psychology, not to general philosophy. Therefore it cannot contribute to a general-philosophical and transcendental notion of the cosmos as a totality. The following quote corroborates this: ‘Phenomenally the world is neither an indiﬀerent mosaic nor an indiﬀerent continuum. It exhibits deﬁnite segregated units or contexts in all degrees of complexity, articulation and clearness. Secondly such units show properties belonging to them as contexts or systems.’6 That might be psychologically correct, philosophically this notion is useless. Smuts combined his idea of wholes with that of ﬁelds. As there are, he argued, ﬁelds of energy in physics, there are ﬁelds or zones of energy around concepts and theories, as well as around things and objects.7 This resembles the well-known Field Theory of Kurt Lewin (1890–1947) which was forged and applied by him as a method of studying group dynamics. It is essential according to Lewin to observe the individual within his or her situation and to view that situation as a whole, as a ﬁeld: ‘What is important in ﬁeld theory is the way the analysis proceeds. Instead of picking out one or another isolated element within a situation, the importance of which cannot be judged without consideration of the situation as a whole, ﬁeld theory ﬁnds it advantageous, as a rule, to start with a characterization of the situation as a whole. After this ﬁrst approximation, the various aspects and parts of the situation undergo a more and more speciﬁc and detailed analysis.’8 Rickert would again sympathize with this notion of a ‘ﬁeld’ as a whole of facts constituting the situation of the individual, but he would once more point out that it remains restricted to the specialized ﬁeld of empirical psychology. He would probably object though to Lewin’s use of the concept ‘theory’, since it apparently is not a theory but rather a method or research technique. 5

Smuts, o.c., p. 106f. The quotation is on p. 107. Wolfgang Köhler, The Place of Value in a World of Facts, 1938, (New York, London: A Mentor Book, 1966), p. 75. 7 Smuts, o.c., pp. 17f., 112–114. 8 Kurt Lewin, ‘Field Theory and Learning’, 1942, in: Kurt Lewin, Field Theory in Social Science. Selected Theoretical Papers, 1951, (New York: Harper Torchbooks, 1964), p. 63. 6

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Holism, Gestalt, Field—these concepts and their related theories are not useful in Rickert’s conception of philosophy as an autonomous, general and totalizing science.9 As we saw in the former chapter, Rickert rather searches for a diﬀerent kind of totality. He calls it ‘the world totality’ (das Weltall ) and views it not as an endless (unendlich) reality, but as a full-ﬁlled (voll-endlich) reality. That sounds like a game of words, but, as we shall see, it is not. From the start, Rickert divides the world conceptually into two mutually inﬂuential (heterological) components. There is ﬁrst the reality of the subject-object (immanent-transcendent) dichotomy as discussed in the former chapter. It is the subjective-objective ‘real’ reality which we all know through our senses: we hear, touch, smell and see it. It is the reality of things and objects to which also our bodies and brains belong, but which we can only ‘reach’ indirectly through our sense-experiences. As we saw in the former chapter, it is a transcendent reality, the sensual impressions of which are molded by our concepts into an immanent reality, the proper substance of our knowledge. But this ‘real’ (transcendent/immanent) reality is, as we saw at the end of Chapter Three, linked to another reality—the reality of theoretical and non-theoretical values which gives direction to our cognitive activity of judging, as well as to our emotional (non-theoretical) experiences of beauty, moral goodness, justice, faith and lust. That is, it structures our thinking and behavior. It is, however, a non-empirical, and in that sense unreal, yet not metaphysical reality. After all, we cannot see, hear, touch, taste, or smell theoretical and non-theoretical values like truth, reality, justice, the moral good, beauty. We can also not quantify them. In Rickert’s own words, the unreal reality of values is ‘something beyond the subject and object (. . .), it is a realm which is actually close to all of us yet misunderstood by many in its idiosyncrasy, because it seems to be (. . .) neither I nor non-I, neither world nor non-world, neither

9

Needless to note that Popper’s well-known critique and rejection of holism is very diﬀerent from Rickert’s. According to Popper, holism in the social sciences is an utopian social engineering aiming at the improvement of society as a whole, as in socialism or Marxism. He favors the ‘piecemeal engineering’ in which singular institutions are either designed or, when they exist, improved in order to realize a piecemeal improvement in society. Institutions are in his view not aims in themselves, but only means towards aims. Cf. Karl Popper, The Poverty of Historicism, 1957, (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1969), pp. 64–71: ‘Piecemeal versus Utopian Engineering’.

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subject nor object, thus nothing. Maybe this country is the homeland of philosophy?’10 This is an exaggeration. It is obvious that the homeland of Rickert’s philosophy consists of two heterologically linked parts: the immanent/transcendent reality of objects and facts, and the ‘unreal’ reality of values. Before we explore this further, we must emphasize at this point once again that Rickert’s reality-in-toto (Weltall ) is initially a non-metaphysical and non-scientiﬁc concept. He views it, as we have seen, deﬁnitely as a theoretical concept of philosophy-as-science, which is a general, not specialized science. Neither is this reality-in-toto the metaphysical result of the adding-up of the diﬀerent compartmentalized realities of the specialized sciences into some sort of massive and endless whole, as happens in holism. It is also not a neo-Platonic, encompassing and idealistic totality from which all realities metaphysically emanate. Weltall is a formal and autonomous ‘reality’, yet it is not real in the empirical sense of the word. In fact, he sees this reality-in-toto rather as a postulate which the philosopher needs in order to grasp the world of facts and the world of values in a noncompartmentalized and non-specialized manner. Or rather, realityin-toto is more of a formal Möglichkeit (possibility) than a material Wirklichkeit (reality).11 Indeed, coping with Rickert’s philosophy needs a good deal of Robert Musil’s Möglichkeitssinn, a sense of possibility, rather than, as we are used to in the various scientiﬁc disciplines, Wirklichkeitssinn, a sense of reality. With this concept of the Weltall, which is admittedly at ﬁrst sight hard to grasp, Rickert searches for a concept which distinguishes and simultaneously links the world of transcendent/immanent things on the one hand, and that of values on the other hand, without destroying their respective autonomies as happens in the dialectics of thesis and antithesis merging into a synthesis. In fact, he distinguishes within this total reality three interlinked realisms. There is the First Realm of transcendent/immanent facts and objects, which

10 ‘. . . etwas jenseits vom Subjekt und Objekt, (. . .) ein Reich, das zwar allen naheliegt, das aber viele in seiner Eigenart verkennen, weil es (. . .) weder Ich noch Nicht-Ich, weder Welt noch Nicht-Welt, weder Subjekt noch Objekt, also Nichts zu sein scheint. Vielleicht ist dies Land die eigentliche Heimat der Philosophie.’ Rickert, o.c., p. 72. 11 In order to understand Rickert’s concept of the Weltall one needs to divest oneself of what Musil called the ‘sense of reality’ (Wirklichkeitssinn), and exchange it for the ‘sense of possibility’ (Möglichkeitssinn). Robert Musil, o.c., p. 16.

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is heterologically linked to the Second Realm of values and meanings. Reality-in-toto is in this sense bifocal. But that would still not be a really total, encompassing reality. There is therefore a Third Realm of meaning bestowing acts which is not metaphysical but in fact very empirical, yet not ‘real’ in the empiricist or positivist sense of the word. This is remarkable, because the bifocal reality in this conception of Rickert is integrated and uniﬁed by means of an act— the act by which the meaning of the Second Realm is bestowed on the transcendent/immanent facts and objects of the First Realm. However, these three realms do not yet constitute reality-in-toto since they are after all still three autonomous realms. We shall see later that he posits an encompassing (and quite surrealistic) Fourth Realm which is the metaphysical Weltall. It cannot be ‘grasped’ cognitively by means of scientiﬁc concepts, but ‘reveals’ itself by means of symbols, similes and allegories. But before we enter into this phantasmagoric world we must ﬁrst continue the analysis of values and meanings. Facts and values The ﬁrst and most basic idea of Rickert’s theory of values is his distinction between two realms which exist autonomously, yet are linked to each other: ‘The unreal values are an independent realm. They are juxtaposed to the real objects which also constitute an independent realm.’12 This sounds like Platonism, but that is not what it is. The Platonic world of ideas is the ﬁrst and utmost (essential) reality from which all realities emanate metaphysically. Rickert’s realm of values, on the contrary, is heterologically linked with the empirical realm of facts and objects. Both realms are transcendent vis-à-vis the immanence of consciousness. They are autonomous and in that sense independent, yet they are heterologically linked to each other: the one is nothing without the other. There is yet a distinct diﬀerence between the two realms. The real (transcendent) objects are not of anybody’s interest, they just exist, they are just factual. They are as such irrelevant, they do not touch us, we can imagine them but consider them as just being there. It is a mere existing (blosses Existieren). Take a block of granite somewhere in nature as an example. It is 12 ‘Die irrealen Werte stehen als ein Reich für sich allen wirklichen Gegenständen gegenüber, die ebenfalls ein Reich für sich bilden.’ Heinrich Rickert, o.c., p. 114.

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just there. However, a value like (theoretical) truth or (aesthetic) beauty, of which we are conscious, moves and interests us, touches us positively or negatively. We take position vis-à-vis values, and subject them to evaluating (approving or disapproving) judgments (Werturteile). The block of granite under the hands of a sculptor is no longer factually there, does no longer just exist. It has changed into a valuable object and is transformed by the sculptor into a piece of art which embodies an aesthetic value. Facts and factual objects can be explained (erklären), values and valuable objects must be understood (verstehen). Rickert admits that it is hard to deﬁne the concept of value, because it is one of those concepts which are very hard to reconstruct, much like the concepts of Being, Existing, or Reality. However, the concept of value can be made more explicit, if one contrasts it heterologically with that of existence, i.e. merely being there, and then subject both, the value and the mere existence, to denial. Negation is, according to Rickert, a criterion for the diﬀerence between mere existence and value. One can, for example, deny the existence of the unicorn. What is meant is not that there is a non-unicorn, but that the ‘thing’ unicorn does not exist at all. Existence denied, i.e. a non-existence, is nothingness. Not-coldness is not yet heat, notheight is not automatically the same as lowness, not-right is not yet left. In fact, it does not exist. It is simply nonsense to say ‘the notcoldness was suﬀocating’. However, the negation of a value is itself an evaluation and yields not nothingness but a contrary value. Notsense is nonsense (a negative value), not-beautiful is ugly (a negative value), not-true is false (a negative value as in a lie). As Max Weber once remarked, in the realm of values there is a continuous ‘war of the gods’ which cannot be solved rationally and scientiﬁcally. Each ‘god’ is always opposed by a contesting ‘god’ or ‘devil’.13 If one wishes to get to know something which is merely existing, merely being there, one ought to refrain from judgments about possible values adhered to it. One observes the thing, the object, without any involvement or interest, as something that is simply and merely there—a value-free Dasein, so to say. This happens in everyday life all the time: we simply want to know, irrespective of its value(s), if something is a fact or not, if it simply exists or not. This Wertungsfreiheit,

13 Max Weber, ‘Wissenschaft als Beruf ’ (‘Science as a Vocation’), 1919, in: Max Weber, Gesammelte Aufsätze zur Wissenschaftslehre, (Tübingen: Mohr-Siebeck, 1968), p. 604.

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i.e. this abstaining from making value-judgments, is the essence of the scientiﬁc attitude towards reality.14 Inspired by Heidegger’s exposition of das Nichts in the inaugural address of 1929,15 Rickert devotes the last section of his book on predicative logic and ontology to the same issue.16 Not surprisingly he discusses it primarily in the epistemological and logical terms of concept formation, adding that it has occupied metaphysicians in the past, such as Plato, the mystics and Hegel.17 The concept of non-being, or nothingness (Nichts) is on ﬁrst sight nonsensical because it says that something is not, does not exist, yet it apparently ‘is’, ‘exists’. Rickert points out that there is a double meaning of being at play here: ﬁrst as form of thought (Denkform), second as form of knowledge (Erkenntnisform). He gives a simple example: we can think, or imagine a ‘four cornered circle’, i.e. as a form of thought, or as an image such a ‘thing’ exists, yet it can never be a real object of knowledge. We know that a ‘four cornered circle’ cannot be, does not exist. In this sense we can think of nothingness as the opposite of being, but it can never be a predicate of our knowledge. Or, as Rickert re-formulates it, ‘nothingness is the something which in fact is thought of as being, but which does not exist in the world.’ The mythological unicorn, I may add, ‘is’ as a form of thought, but it does not exist in the world as an object of knowledge. We must, Rickert argues, have thought about the ‘four cornered circle’, otherwise we could never say something about it which is true, e.g. that it does not exist in the world of mathematics.18 Rickert continues his concept formation by distinguishing an absolute and a relative nothingness. Absolute nothingness is ‘something’ which can in no way be thought of. It is the complete denial of any predicative being. It simply denies each something. But the concept is usually not applied in

14 In Chapter Six I shall discuss Simmel’s important critique of this theorem of Rickert, which he calls the ‘negation problem’ (Negationsfrage). 15 Martin Heidegger, Was ist Metaphysik?, (Frankfurt a.M.: Vittorio Klostermann, 1975; 11th ed.). 16 Heinrich Rickert, Die Logik des Prädikats und das Problem der Ontologie, (‘The Logic of the Predicate and the Problem of Ontology’), (Heidelberg: Carl Winters Universitätsbuchhandlung, 1930), pp. 198–236. 17 Rickert discusses the concept of nothingness in Plato’s ‘Sophistes’, the ‘negative theology’ of the mystic Angelus Silesius, Goethe’s Faust (the radical nihilism of Mephistopheles), and Hegel’s dialectical logic comparatively: ibid., pp. 210–226. Quite remarkably Rickert overlooks the theory of being and nothingness by his neoKantian predecessor Hermann Lotze (1817–1881) who claimed that the being of things is experienced in their relations and interactions with other things. He then deﬁnes nothingness as ‘pure being’ without relations and interactions. It is not a metaphysical but a logical concept, Lotze claimed. Cf. Hermann Lotze, Der Zusammenhang der Dinge, (‘The Coherence of Things’), (Berlin: Deutsche Bibliothek, 1864), pp. 7–19. 18 This conceptual distinction reminds one of Gottlob Frege’s distinction of sense (meaning) and signiﬁcance (Bedeutung) which will be discussed presently.

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this radical manner. When we use the word ‘nothing’ it carries mostly the meaning that it can be actually thought of, but that it does not in fact exist in the world. It is the relative nothingness, i.e. nothingness in relation to the actual existing in the world. Again, the ‘three cornered circle’ or the unicorn are examples of relative nothingness. Rickert does not provide us with an example of absolute nothingness. That, of course, is impossible because there is no way to imagine it, thus there are no words for it. The mystic would have an answer: in mysticism God is the absolute, unimaginable Nothingness which can only be experienced without thoughts and without words.19 Rickert then concludes his discussion of the concepts of being and nothingness by addressing himself to Heidegger’s inaugural address. Heidegger, he argues, rejects logic and epistemology in favor of metaphysical ontology. As to nothingness, das Nichts, he rejects the idea that logic, epistemology, reason are able to grasp and reveal its very nature. However, Rickert points out, Heidegger has to use words in order to explain his ideas, words which must be understood by means of reason. The word ‘nothingness’ is such a word, a concept that must be clariﬁed. The epistemological and logical question then emerges what Heidegger means by ‘nothingness’ and what its relation is to the theory of ‘nothingness’ as a logical predicate, i.e. not just as a form of thought, but as a form of knowledge. In Heidegger’s metaphysics, Rickert summarizes nothingness is the ‘something’ of which nothing positive can be said, yet which ‘is’ not a simple negation but a non-something in view of its predication. Actually, Heidegger’s ‘nothingness’ is heterologically the other side of predicative being (das Andere der erkennbaren Welt). It is even the source and origin of each ‘no’ and each denial, not the other way around. He goes even one step further, Rickert continues, when he describes the world in which we live, the world of predicative and immanent being, as a ﬁnite world, whereas the other dimension of this world is the inﬁnite world of transcendent nothingness. Being reveals itself in our Dasein when it is confronted with this transcendent nothingness. Rickert wants to elaborate this metaphysical notion in an epistemological and logical direction: ‘we need nothingness as the other dimension of the world, in order to “catch” comprehensively that which is, i.e. that which is for us, or the world, i.e. our world.’ And he adds

19 In his discussion of Silesius he brands this mystic as a representative of the relative notion of nothingness. Silesius did indeed put his ‘negative theology’ into words ‘deﬁning’ God by negating everything that is usually said, felt, written about him: ‘What God is, we do not know: he is not light, not spirit, not truth, unity, oneness, not what one calls divinity, not wisdom, not reason, not love, not will, not goodness, no thing, no non-thing (Unding), etc.’ Rickert, o.c., p. 212. Yet, it seems to me that even this attempt to formulate the being of God in terms of various negations is not really relative, as it strips God of all positively existing features. What rests is total emptiness, total kenosis, i.e. total nothingness. The true mystic remains silent, abstains from speech and written words. The Greek verb muein from which the word ‘mystic’ is derived, means ‘to remain silent’.

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with some pride: ‘Heidegger thus thinks not just logically, but even “heterologically”, i.e. he knows that one understands “the one” only then completely logically, when one distinguishes it simultaneously from “the other”.’20 Rickert ﬁnishes with the observation that all the philosophers whom we call “great” focused primarily not on the metaphysical Beyond of Nothingness, but on the world which can be known and understood, i.e. real world which can be predicated positively. Heidegger’s expositions about nothingness may be confronted, Rickert concludes, by these words of Goethe: ‘Remain happy in Being.’21

Science usually starts with non-evaluative indiﬀerence to the objects to be investigated. The scientist wants to know ﬁrst of all—sine ira ac studio—if something that he wants to investigate, does exist, is at all the case. This, in fact, is the very essence of scientiﬁc objectivity. In other words, the form Reality is adjudicated to the objects under investigation: “the objects of research are really there”. One wants to know next, if the knowledge one has acquired about the existing objects, laid down, as it were, in theories, is true. Does the theory really pertain to the observed objects? Thus, a value (truth) and a value-judgment (veriﬁcation) come into play. Truth is, of course, a (theoretical) value and it is a value that interests and moves us! Rickert phrases it as follows: ‘The question if an object exists, and the statement that it exists, interest us. These conﬁgurations do not leave us “indiﬀerent”. Truth is not simply merely there, but it interests us, and as theoretically involved human beings we cannot disregard this interest. Truth is thus not just imagined by us, but it involves us, it moves and grasps us, and we take up a position in regard to it.’22 The second basic idea in Rickert’s theory of values is the distinction between theoretical and atheoretical values. Truth and, narrowly related with it, Reality as forms imposed on contents, are theoretical values. That can be simply illustrated by the sentence: “this statement is true”. 20 ‘wir brauchen das Nichts als das Andere der Welt, um das Seiende, d.h. unser Seiendes, oder die Welt, d.h. unsere Welt, im Ganzen zu “begreifen”. Heidegger denkt hiernach nicht nur logisch, sondern sogar “heterologisch”, d.h. er weiss, dass man “das Eine” nur dann logisch vollständig erfasst, wenn man es zugleich vom “anderen” unterscheidet.’ Ibid., p. 231. 21 ‘Am Sein erhalte Dich beglückt.’ Ibid., p. 235. 22 ‘Die Frage, ob ein Gegenstand existiert, und der Satz, dass er existiert, geht uns etwas an. Diese Gebilde lassen uns nicht “gleichgültig”. Wahrheit ist nicht einfach bloss da, sondern sie interessiert uns, und wir können als theoretische Menschen von diesem Interesse nicht absehen. Wahrheit also stellen wir nicht nur vor, sondern an ihr sind wir beteiligt, sie ergreift und fesselt uns, zu ihr nehmen wir Stellung.’ Ibid., p. 115.

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That is to say, what is being said about reality makes sense, has meaning. The meaning of the sentence is, more precisely, that this statement applies the value Reality to the content of the statement. Or in Kantian terms, the content the statement is about, is brought under the form Reality. “This statement is true” means “this statement covers reality”. It is the essence of science to arrive at meaningful and true statements about reality—whatever that reality may be. The essence of such scientiﬁc, theoretical statements is their value which is in this case truth (Wahrheit). That is, of course, closely connected with reality (Wirklichkeit). As scientists and philosophers we are involved with Truth and Reality, they grasp us, and we take up positions in regard to them. Rickert is in his theory of values primarily interested in these theoretical values. They are, in fact, the measuring rods for the other (atheoretical) values. Atheoretical values are either aesthetic (beauty-ugliness), hedonistic (pleasure-pain), ethical (goodness-badness), or religious (faith-unbelief ).23 They are non-scientiﬁc and cannot be criticized sensibly by rational logic. Rationalists like to believe that these non-theoretical values can be criticized logically, but they disregard the essential diﬀerence between scientiﬁc and non-scientiﬁc rationalities.24 Scientiﬁc rationality, Rickert argues, is dominated and even steered by the value of truth. However, it cannot employ legitimately the values of the other atheoretical domains (e.g. beauty, goodness, or faith), nor can it ‘reach’ the atheoretical domains by means of its value of truth. The theoretical statement “this is true” cannot be criticized or rejected in terms of

23

One may, of course, raise the question whether this series of values is exhaustive. What about the economic value of economic goods? What about socio-political values such as power—powerlessness, order/system—chaos/anarchy, or the legal values ( justice-injustice)?. He did refer to the monetary value, as we shall see instantly, but this did not result in a special category of Economic Value, comparable to Truth, Beauty, etc. At the end of his life, Rickert did try to construct a social philosophy in which socio-political values, such as community and people (Volksgemeinschaft ), occupied a prominent role. Regretfully, he then came close to a fascist worldview, evaluating power, order, system positively and their heterological counterparts negatively. 24 Here Rickert diﬀers, of course, radically from the Vienna School. See the manifesto of this school written by R. Carnap, H. Hahn, O. Neurath, Wissenschaftliche Weltauﬀassung: der Wiener Kreis, (‘The Scientiﬁc Worldview of the Vienna Circle’) (Vienna: Wolf, 1929). Also R. Carnap, Der logische Aufbau der Welt, (‘The Logical Construction of the World’), (Berlin: Weltkreis Verlag, 1928). For an introduction and collection of relevant texts see A. J. Ayer (ed.), Logical Positivism, (Glencoe, Illinois: The Free Press, 1959).

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aesthetic beauty or ethical goodness, just as it is diﬃcult to fathom how a statement like “this painting is beautiful” could be rejected in terms of theoretical truth, as it is impossible to prove empirically that the painting is in actual fact beautiful, or for that matter ugly. Atheoretical values depend on belief, not on proof.25 Again, in the realm of values there is a continuous ‘war of the gods’. The theoretical and atheoretical values belong to an unreal, virtual reality, yet they become concrete and can then be investigated empirically (for instance, sociologically or psychologically) in the valuejudgments (Werturteile, Wertungen), and in what Rickert called the Güter (literally, the goods) which are the empirical embodiments of the values. The theoretical value of truth, for example, is rendered ‘concrete’ and ‘empirical’ in scientiﬁc statements (papers, books, lectures) and in cultural institutions, like laboratories or universities. Atheoretical values in their turn are ‘embodied’ in aesthetic ‘goods’, such as objects of art and institutions like the museum or the symphony orchestra. Religious or hedonistic values ﬁnd their ‘objectiﬁcation’ in ‘goods’ like respectively the church, the temple, the mosque, the brothel, and the amusement park, etc. Incidentally, instead of Güter Rickert also uses the concept Sinngebilde which can best be translated as ‘meaningful conﬁguration’. It is equivalent, I ﬁnd, to the sociological concept institution in which sense it is used by Max Weber. In any case, here again Rickert distinguishes conceptually the real from the unreal, keeping the two connected heterologically: ‘Only goods and value-judgments are real, values as values are never real.’26 Rickert takes a painting as a concrete example. As a material composition of linen and paint it lacks, in the eye of a beholder, meaning or value (sinnfrei und wertindiﬀerent). It is a matter of sheer objectivity. Standing in front of a painting that hangs on the wall of a museum as part of an exposition (two goods, or institutions), the objective dimensions of the painting will not interest him. It is the painting as a work of art and as a meaningful conﬁguration (Sinngebilde), representing an aesthetic value, which concerns the beholder, draws his attention, exerts his fascination and involvement.

25 As to scientiﬁc proof Rickert was somewhat naïvely positivistic. In the debate on veriﬁcation (Carnap) and falsiﬁcation (Popper) he would probably have chosen for the former. It is not clear, if he was acquainted with this debate. That could have been possible, since Karl Popper’s Logik der Forschung, translated into The Logic of Scientiﬁc Discovery, 1959, (London: Hutchinson, 1974, 7th ed.) appeared in Vienna in 1934. 26 ‘Nur Güter und Wertungen sind real, Werte als Werte nie.’ Rickert, o.c., p. 122.

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Clearly, there is an essential diﬀerence between the real, material object and the unreal, ideal value. In our daily parlance we are usually not aware of it, but in philosophy it is essential to be conscious of this conceptual diﬀerence. Take monetary value as an example: ‘Money in itself is not a value, just like the work of art as a real object isn’t, but there is a value which is attached to it. When we say that it is a realized value, we mean to say that a value connects itself with it through which it is transformed into a good. Also in this case, the value itself is not real. If we look at money solely as a real object, it is value-free.’27 Rickert mentions the atheoretical, hedonistic value of pleasure (Lust) as another example. As a psychological feeling pleasure is a real good that can be investigated empirically. But it is at the same time an unreal value which ought to be distinguished conceptually from the real psychological pleasure experience. In fact, Lust is a general, unreal value which attaches itself realistically to scores of hedonistic individuals throughout the ages. Thus, we should distinguish Lustwirklichkeit (the reality of pleasure) from Lustwert (pleasure as a value).28 There is, incidentally, an essential diﬀerence between the theoretical value of truth and the hedonistic value of pleasure. Truth is, according to Rickert, valid even if there are no individuals to whom it bears validity,29 whereas pleasure lacks such an independent and eternal validity, as it always needs historical subjects who will claim validity, when their pleasure is or is not

27 ‘Das Geld selber ist kein Wert, sowenig wie das reale Kunstwerk, sondern es haftet an ihm Wert, und wenn wir sagen, dass es ein verwirklichter Wert sei, so meinen wir damit, dass ein Wert sich mit ihm verbindet, der es zum Gut macht. Der Wert selber ist auch in diesen Fällen nicht real. Betrachten wir Geld ausschliesslich als reales Objekt, so ist es wertfrei.’ Ibid., p. 119. I changed the plural ‘in diesen Fällen’ in the singular ‘in this case’, since the main subject of the quoted sentence is a singular. An interesting case is, of course, the restorers of old paintings. Their interest is not only and not even primarily the aesthetic value of the painting to be restored, but in particular the material composition of the linen and the chemical composition of the paints and lacquer which the painter originally used. Natural science, art history and the skills of craftsmanship thus form a unique unity within the interest and expertise of the art restorer. See Anne van GrevensteinKruse, Restauratie: Geschiedenis en Vooruitgang, (‘Restoration: History and Progress’), inaugural address University of Nijmegen, May 26, 2005, (Rotterdam: Nijmegen University Press, 2005). 28 Rickert rarely referred to Freud but it seems obvious that he would disagree with his theory of the pleasure principle vis-à-vis the reality principle. He would interpret pleasure, as Freud has dealt with it, as a psychological good, and thus as a an inherent component of reality. 29 Rickert claims that such values, in particular the theoretical value of truth, are eternally and absolutely valid. But there are, of course, occasional statements such as “it rains now” and “this is red”. Rickert would probably counter that, if it has been proven empirically that the rain falls and the color is red indeed, the validity of these truths will be eternal and absolute because it is no longer dependent on “now” and “this”.

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gratiﬁed here and now.30 Here Rickert disagrees obviously once more with Nietzsche, whose Zarathustra sang: ‘All pleasure wants eternity, wants deep, deep eternity.’31 Pleasure, Rickert would probably sneer, does not want eternity, it wants immediate gratiﬁcation. Yet, values, including Truth, do not ﬂoat about but are always connected to the interest and the will of empirically real, evaluating subjects: ‘There can be no values without a will that acknowledges or demands them. The will, however, is always part of reality.’32

Naturally this Wollen (will) is closely tied to the Sollen (ought to): most Sollen depends on Wollen in whose name something ought to be and thus is demanded. However, we should realize that a demanding value is never identical with the demanding will as it occurs in reality, because there is this diﬀerence between the ‘real’ reality of the objects and the senses, and the ‘unreal’, ideal reality of the values and norms. Nevertheless, it is obvious that the value which expresses a demand would disappear, if there were no people who wanted it, and who practically and actually demanded it. Take the normative rule “thou shall not kill”. It could be seen as the demand of a divine will. Since in that case God wants it (a divine Wollen), many of us consider this norm to be valid for us. But if one no longer believes in God, one will either no longer acknowledge the norm’s validity, since the real divine will disappeared, or one will in its stead posit a human will, and next claim that this human will validates the norm. Killing is then no longer viewed as sin, i.e. as an oﬀence against the norm “thou shall not kill”, but as an inhumane injustice, or a crime punishable by a secular state law. If, however, there were no people who rejected killing, it would no longer be an injustice, and the norm would no longer be valid.33 Incidentally, this goes to show that values and norms are actually not that tidily knit together as is often believed. The norm “thou shall not kill” was connected ﬁrst, as part of the Ten Commandments,

30

Ibid., p. 124. ‘Doch alle Lust will Ewigkeit, will tiefe, tiefe Ewigkeit.’ Friedrich Nietzsche, Also sprach Zarathustra, (‘Thus Spoke Zarathustra’), part three, in: Friedrich Nietzsche, Werke in Drei Bänden (Worls in Three Volumes), volume two, (München: Carl Hanser Verlag, 1955), p. 473. 32 ‘Ohne einen Willen, der sie anerkannt oder fordert, gibt es auch keine Werte, die gelten, und der Wille gehört stets zum Wirklichen.’ Ibid., p. 128. This stands in contrast to Rickert’s observation that the theoretical value of truth is eternal and absolute, not related to individuals, including their will we may assume. 33 Ibid., p. 128. 31

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with a divine will and thus with an allegedly divine value. But the very same norm may disengage itself from this religious value, and next be tied unaltered to a very diﬀerent, more humanist kind of value, namely that of humane justice. Nowadays we ﬁll the norm in with the notion of human rights. All this demonstrates once again that values do not exist, but are or are not valid. Not Sein (being) but Geltung (validity) is the essence of values! This validity is not something like recognition or acknowledgement on the part of empirical human beings. In that case validity would be an empirical, rather relativistic fact or datum which it is not. Validity is not empirically real and contingent like facts, things or objects. Validity is tied to values and partakes in their ‘unreal’, virtual character. Try to imagine value-free validity! ‘Value-free validity’, Rickert comments playfully, ‘reminds one of non-nicotine tobacco or decaﬀeinated coﬀee. Maybe many love it only, because they are philosophically too “nervous” to “endure” the world problems scientiﬁcally.’34 Only values can be valid. Something that just exists and in fact does not interest us, cannot be valid. So facts as such are never valid or invalid, but value-judgments about facts are valid or invalid in so far as the values involved are valid or invalid. The existence of a piece of paper is neither valid nor invalid, but the statement “this paper is white” is either true or false, since the form and value Reality is or is not applicable: it is or is not ‘really’ white. After all, the value couple of truth/reality-falsehood/nonreality is involved here. These are theoretical values, but the atheoretical values too are characterized not by their existence but by their validity. A banknote is valid or invalid. However, not the real object, i.e. the banknote as a piece of paper, but its ‘embodied’ unreal monetary value is valid or invalid.35

34 ‘Wertfreies Gelten erinnert an nikotinfreien Tabak oder koﬀeinfreien Kaﬀee. Manche lieben es vielleicht nur deshalb, weil sie philosophisch zu “nervös” sind, um die Weltprobleme wissenschaftlich zu “vertragen”.’ Ibid., p. 126. 35 In daily parlance we, of course, say this banknote is counterfeited and thus invalid. Yet, if we go to the bank for reimbursement, we will be told that the counterfeited banknote is null and void because it does not ‘carry’ any monetary value. Or, in other words, that this banknote is indeed just a piece of paper like any other valueless piece of paper. Values are ‘carried’ by ‘goods’, but Rickert emphasized time and again that one should distinguish between ‘unreal’ values and ‘real’ goods which are the ‘carriers’ or ‘embodiments’ of the values.

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From relativism to relationism Rickert points out that there is a time dimension involved in this conceptual distinction between the ‘real’ reality of objects and the ‘ideal’ reality of values. The former is always historical, temporal and in that sense relative, the latter is ahistorical, timeless and in that sense absolute. It is of great importance, he continues, to avoid two mutually opposed pitfalls: relativism which denies the ‘ideal’ world and absolutism which rejects the ‘real’ world. The latter, the rather radical rejection of the ‘real’ world, can be found in Schopenhauer’s worldview in which he ﬂirted with Buddhism and the notion that reality is but a phantasmagoric illusion. Rickert ﬁnds relativism far more interesting than Schopenhauer’s ‘illusionism’, because it had in his days much more impact—and, as we will see presently, probably also because he himself came in some respects rather close to a relativistic position. He speaks of the contemporary tendency to focus all philosophical attention on the here and now, and to be wary of philosophical ideas about a timeless and absolute, ‘unreal’, ‘ideal’ reality. An easy going relativism is, Rickert claims, most clearly visible in the various currents of vitalism, discussed in Chapter Two. He himself is always trying to ﬁnd a heterological balance between the ‘real’ and the ‘ideal’ which, he believes, can be found in the idea of a total reality (Weltall ) which is neither relative nor absolute. But he is also aware of the fact that this attempt is out of step with the modern, strongly relativistic tendencies of vitalism. In a small and in my view fascinating little book on the logic of the concept of numerals,36 Rickert juxtaposes a similar heterological opposition of two visions on the nature of numerals: empiricism and rationalism. There are logicians who claim a necessary connection between numerals and the empirical, psycho-physical reality of the senses. This is the empiricist position as, for example, phrased by John Stuart Mill who allegedly had said that we cannot at all be certain, if 2 + 2 could not be 5 on another planet. It is, of course, a relativistic position. Rickert quotes Frege who labeled it

36 Heinrich Rickert, Das Eine, die Einheit und die Eins. Bemerkungen zur Logik des Zahlbegriﬀs, (‘The One [as Opposite of the Other], the Unity, and the First [as in Number One]. Comments on the Logic of the Concept of the Numeral’), (Tübingen: Mohr-Siebeck, 1924).

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‘ginger biscuits and pebble mathematics’.37 But it is interesting to learn that Rickert, despite his strong Kantian leanings, also rejects the opposite, rationalist position which believes that numerals belong to an autonomous, ideal realm. In this ideal reality there are allegedly rules which do not necessarily ﬁt real, empirical circumstances. Arithmetic knowledge is in this rationalist vision an a priori knowledge which is valid without any connection to time, space, and the world of our senses. Numerals, it is concluded, are purely logical phenomena. Rickert is in agreement with this rationalist position in so far as numerals are indeed and of course not sensually real (sinnlich real ). But he rejects this position at the point where mathematics is identiﬁed with formal logic. As abstract, pure, ideal and non-sensual as numerals are, they are nevertheless the substantial, quantitative objects of mathematics. After all numerals do exist. Logic on the other hand deals with qualitative forms, not with substances. Validity, not existing, is what characterizes logic. Logical validity is a theoretical value as in the case of the truth of a theoretical (scientiﬁc or mathematical) statement. The sentence 1 + 1 = 2 does as such, substantially, not belong to logic, but to mathematics as a science. Logic presupposes that the sentence is true. That is, it assigns the form and value of truth to this sentence. Or phrased diﬀerently, logic investigates which form the objects of the sentence, the numerals 1 and 2, possess. In this essay Rickert analyses in detail the diﬀerent forms of the numeral 1 and their mutual relationships. The numeral One can be (i.e. can assume the form of ) the diﬀerentiated opposite, i.e. the Other, as is the case of 1 as distinct from 2 within the sentence 1 + 1 = 2. Or, we may add, as in the expression ‘the one and only’. The symbol + is a pluriform object also. It can be just a copula, a connection, as in 1 + 1 +1 +1, but it can in cooperation with the symbol = also be a multiplier as in 1 + 1 = 2. The numeral 1 can, however, also be the ﬁrst in a row: 1, 2, 3, 4, etc. Thus, logic always focuses abstractly on the forms of numerals (or other objects),

37 ‘Pfeﬀerkuchen- und Kieselsteinarithmetik’, Rickert, ibid., p. 6. Mill did not argue in such a simplistic manner. In his logic of the sciences he defended a radically inductive method, applying it even to what he called ‘the science of number’. ‘All numbers must be numbers of something; there are no such things as numbers in the abstract. Ten must mean ten bodies, or ten sounds, or ten beatings of the pulse.’ But such induction will eventually lead to the notion ‘numbers of anything’ and thus give cause to the idea that numbers are abstract things not tied to concrete experiences. The proposition 1=1 is not as certain as we want to believe because both units are not necessarily equal: ‘for one actual pound weight is not exactly equal to another, nor one measured mile’s length to another; a nicer balance or more accurate measuring instruments would always detect some diﬀerence.’ John Stuart Mill, A System of Logic, 1843; abridged version: Ernest Nagel (ed.), John Stuart Mill’s Philosophy of Scientiﬁc Methods, 1950, (New York: Hafner Press; Collier Macmillan Publishers, 1974), 161–170; quotations on pp. 163, 167, 168. For Nagel’s critique on Mill’s inductive theory of number see his (informative) Introduction, o.c., p. XLVI f.

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not, as in arithmetic, on substances like the numerals. The numerals of arithmetic do exist like other substantive objects we encounter in life, albeit that their existing is non-sensual, thus ideal. The forms of logic are also ideal, but they do not exist like the sensually real objects and the non-sensually ideal objects (e.g. numerals) of mathematics. They are instead valid or invalid. They constitute vis-à-vis the reality of the sensually real objects (First Realm) and the reality of the non-sensually ideal objects (Second Realm) a Third Realm which does not as in an Hegelian synthesis transcend the ﬁrst and the second realm, but connects them logically. It judges that the sentence 1 + 1 = 2 is true under all circumstances, also in the sensual reality of everyday life. If one wants to give this position a name, it could be called, Rickert suggests, ‘transcendental empirism’.38

His philosophy of values may be alien to vitalistic notions and tendencies, yet he is convinced that this is only the case on a ﬁrst and superﬁcial view. In a sense, he argues, Nietzsche set the tone, when his Zarathustra prophesized a radical re-evaluation of all values (Umwertung aller Werte). Rickert commended Nietzsche for this idea, because it at least opened the minds of his readers to the relevance of value problems. However, Nietzsche’s brand of philosophy is, according to Rickert, more concerned with value-judgments, i.e. with evaluations and re-evaluations, than with values as such. If one really wants to understand what life is all about, one should focus one’s philosophical attention on values. ‘Without them’, Rickert claims, ‘all of life is reduced to a meaningless shoving and pushing.’39 What is denied by vitalists like Nietzsche, yet systematically emphasized by transcendental philosophy, is the fact that man’s evaluations and value-judgments are historical and temporal, and in themselves merely unstructured substances which come and go. On the other hand, values like truth, justice, beauty, lust, etc. are timeless and eternal, and function as the forms which structure these in and of themselves chaotic substances. Value-judgments are relative, 38

Rickert, ibid., p. 8. The concept ‘transzendentaler Empirismus’ was coined, Rickert says, by the philosopher Sergius Hessen in his book Individuelle Kausalität. Studien zum transzendentalen Empirismus, (‘Individual Causality. Studies on Transcendental Empirism’), (Berlin: Reuther & Reichard, 1909). Rickert, o.c., p. 84. It is incidentally important to realize that Rickert’s conception of logic is not the traditional one which we usually associate with Aristotelian syllogisms or, as Rickert phrased ironically, with ‘Byzantine embellishments’ (byzantinische Verschnörkelungen). He admittedly restricts logic ‘to what words mean when they are members of a meaningful, true statement.’ (‘. . . . was Worte bedeuten, wenn sie Glieder eines sinnvollen, wahren Satzes sind.) Ibid., p. 76. 39 ‘Ohne sie wird alles Leben zum sinnlosen Geschiebe und Getriebe.’ Ibid., p. 48.

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values are absolute. There is, therefore, in transcendentalism no room for either relativism or absolutism. Once again, Rickert wants to subject relativism to a critical analysis since it has infected, often covertly though, modern philosophical thought and reasoning. He distinguishes two kinds of relativism: an absolute, radical relativism on the one hand, and a relative, conservative one on the other hand. He is brief about absolute relativism, because it is obviously an absurdity, as it posits itself as being something absolute and thus not relative. It is the absurdity of the Cretan who claims that all Cretans are liars. He focuses on the nonradical relativists and in fact shows some sympathy with them, yet rejecting their position as philosophically unsustainable. Relativists always claim, Rickert asserts, that the theoretical (scientiﬁc) man should not argue in terms of an absolute truth, because all he can search for and he should want to ﬁnd is historically relative truth. But in that case, there is nothing stable and clear in the temporal ﬂoat of events. This is the opposite of the philosophical belief in the absolute contrast of true and false ideas, and in the possibility to advance from falsehood to truth.40 Relativism would indeed be the euthanasia of philosophy as an autonomous, theoretical (scientiﬁc) enterprise.41 Relativists usually point at the temporal and thus permanently changing nature of all thoughts and ideas, but do not realize that this then applies to their own relativistic thoughts and ideas as well. In that case, the relativistic thoughts and ideas are constantly discharged and dissolved in time. What they desperately need is a concept of temporality which as a concept is free from the brute force of time. Without such a concept the notion of relativity is itself relative and thus self-destructive. Moreover, if one believes that everything is always in motion, one can claim that everything is true, but also that everything is false. That ends up in a theoretical limbo with the obvious result that relativism is itself dissolved in scientiﬁc nothingness and nihilism.42 What is actually the meaning of the words ‘relative’ and ‘relativity’? ‘Relative’, Rickert argues, ‘is everything that does not rest in itself, but stands in a relationship to something or someone else, on

40 41 42

Ibid., p. 40. ‘Die Euthanasie der Philosophie als Wissenschaft’. Ibid., p. 16. Ibid., p. 41.

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which it conceivably somehow depends. Relative truth, for instance, does not stand on its own, but is only valid with respect to a subject that believes it to be true. To diﬀerent subjects diﬀerent things can seemingly be true.’43 This is the very old, epistemological position of skepticism.44 Protagoras expressed it, when he claimed that man is the measure of all things. Does this then necessarily end up in epistemological relativism, or skepticist Pyrrhonism, as the concept ‘relative truth’ seems to suggest? One should realize, Rickert reminds us, that the essence of the concept ‘relative’ is the concept ‘relationship’ (Beziehung), and simultaneously the concept ‘something or someone else’ (der/das Andere) to which one relates. Relative then means that something is related to something else which is not relative but absolute. Here Rickert argues once again heterologically: ‘whoever thinks something relative, thinks necessarily something absolute, with regard to which he relates the relative’.45 Because, if one missed the absolute as the non-relative, stable point to relate to, one would relate parts of reality to other parts of reality and that can be repeated endlessly. In fact, one would be busy, as in an endless regression, relating parts to parts indeﬁnitely. This then would 43 ‘Relativ ist alles, was nicht in sich ruht, sondern in Beziehung zu einem Andern steht, von dem es in irgendeiner Weise abhängig gedacht wird. Relative Wahrheit z.B. hat keinen eigenen Bestand, sondern gilt lediglich mit Rücksicht auf ein Subjekt, das sie für wahr hält, und verschiedenen Subjekten kann Verschiedenes wahr scheinen.’ Idem. Is not ‘relative truth’, to use Rickert’s own metaphor, comparable to caﬀeinefree coﬀee, or nicotine free cigarettes? ‘Relative truth’ is, of course, a remarkably relativistic concept which Rickert immediately corrects by the heterological argument given in the text above. However, as we shall see shortly, Rickert avoids such relativism also by deﬁning truth as a formal, transcendental (eternal and thus absolute) value, while human evaluations as judgments are circumstantially and historically relative. 44 Cf. Richard H. Popkin, The History of Scepticism from Erasmus to Descartes, (Assen: Van Gorcum & Comp.; Prakke, 1964). In particular chapter two: ‘The Revival of Greek Scepticism in the 16th Century’, pp. 17–44. The skeptic and relativist position is known in the history of philosophy as Pyrrhonism. Pyrrho of Elis (360–270 BC), who joined Alexander the Great during his expedition to the East, was allegedly inﬂuenced by Indian, ascetic philosophy and taught that it was impossible to have knowledge of the world as it is in itself. For that reason men should abstain from any judgment about it, and live without any preferences. Cf. Popkin, o.c., p. X: ‘The stories about Pyrrho that are reported indicate that he was not a theoretician, but rather a living example of the complete doubter, the man who would not commit himself to any judgment that went beyond what seemed to be the case.’ Rickert, of course, was far removed from this kind of non-theoretical Pyrrhonism. 45 ‘wer Relatives denkt, denkt notwendig Absolutes, mit Rücksicht auf welches er das Relative relativ setzt.’ Ibid., p. 44. This reminds me uncomfortably of the ﬁrm believer who claims that atheism is impossible, because before one can deny the

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lead to the notion of an endless total reality as the sum of all the mutually relative parts. Rickert admits that this logically faulty concept of an endless Weltall is at least able to function as the stable, non-relative point to which single parts of reality can be related meaningfully. But that is, of course, no longer relativism. In fact, it is the only correct use of the concept of relativity, i.e. as something relating to something else which is not relative. As we shall see presently, he does not embrace the relativistic notion of an ‘endless totality’ as the result of an endless regression, but is in agreement with the allegation that it at least can function as a relatively stable point to which the compartmentalized parts of reality can be related. He prefers to call it relationism instead of relativism,46 and searches next for a more adequate concept of the non-relative Weltall (totality). Rickert then sums all this up in his custormary heterological manner: ‘Everything is never just the one which is related to something else, but everything is always the one and the other to which the one is related. In the one and the other linked together we then encounter the absolute, within which something relative is at all possible.’47 It is remarkable that the notion of relativity is not rejected,

existence of God there must be something—God—that is being denied. It may be a satisfactory argumentation theologically, but logically it is just a circular argument and a petitio principii to boot. Rickert would defend his argumentation about the relative and the absolute as an example of heterology. 46 The philosopher and sociologist of knowledge Karl Mannheim also uses this distinction. Yet, his brand of relationism is in Rickert’s terminology a form of absolute relativism, since he rejects the notion of a non-relative, transcendental and absolute realm of values and meanings. One ﬁnds the endless relating of parts to parts in Mannheim’s theory: ‘Relationism signiﬁes merely that all of the elements of meaning in a given situation have reference to one another and derive their signiﬁcance from this reciprocal interrelationship in a given frame of thought. Such a system of meanings is possible and valid only in a given type of historical existence, to which, for a time, it furnishes appropriate expression.’ Karl Mannheim, Ideology and Utopia. An Introduction to the Sociology of Knowledge, translated from the German by Louis Wirth and Edward Shils, 1936, (New York: A Harvest Book. Harcourt, Brace & World, Inc., n.d.), p. 86. Later on he deﬁnes relationism in terms of relating ideas and thoughts to the surrounding social structures, but the latter are still conceived of as historical and culturally relative phenomena. Ibid., p. 282f. Rickert would probably argue that Mannheim’s arguments may well be valid within the context of the specialized science of sociology, but is null and void within the context of general philosophy. 47 ‘Alles ist niemals bloss das Eine, das auf ein Anderes bezogen wird, sondern alles ist immer das Eine und das Andere, auf welches man das Eine bezieht. In dem Einen und dem Andern zusammen haben wir dann aber das Absolute, innerhalb

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but placed in the context of the transcendentally absolute—the formal reality-in-toto. It is this a priori, unreal, formal absolute which enables the relative to exist at all. However, as far as the non-theoretical (religious, ethical, aesthetic, hedonistic) values are concerned, Rickert seems to be a relative relativist himself—a position, incidentally, which he compares with agnosticism. The absolute, radical relativist is an atheist who radically rejects the notion of the absolute. But the relative relativist is an agnostic who will not categorically deny that there is an absolute, but who is unable to acquire a ﬁrm knowledge of it and therefore settles for the relative.48 Being, existing and valid meanings As we know by now, Rickert deﬁnes the realm of values in terms of an unreal reality, a rather paradoxical formulation which needs further explanation. The problem is, according to Rickert, that it is diﬃcult to distinguish between being and meaning (Sein und Sinn), existence and signiﬁcance (Existenz und Bedeutung), reality and value (Wirklichkeit und Wert), the real and the unreal or irreal (Reales und Irreales).49 It is particularly hard to realize that the unreality of values is not necessarily the negation of reality, but rather a kind of non-reality which is heterologically linked to reality. Rickert, we have seen earlier, does not distinguish as sharply between Sinn (meaning, or sense) and Bedeutung (signiﬁcance), as Frege did. The meaning of a sentence is, according to Frege, expressed by the thought it contains, whereas the signiﬁcance of this meaning consists of its truth value, i.e. whether it is true or false. Signiﬁcance is usually attributed (or, for that matter, denied) to the meaning of a sentence by scientiﬁc research. Sentences can be meaningful without being signiﬁcant in the sense of true or false. For example, the sentence ‘Ulysses was put to land in Ithaca while soundly asleep’ is meaningful, yet lacks any signiﬁcance. The same holds true, Frege says, for an epic, or we may add, for novels, mythologies and religious dogma’s. They are meaningful but in Frege’s deﬁnition of signiﬁcance, insigniﬁcant. Judgments (Urteile) are the results of advancing from thought

dessen ein relatives überhaupt erst möglich wird.’ Allgemeine Grundlegung der Philosophie, o.c., p. 42f. This heterological section of his book on General Philosophy is repeated verbatim in his previously quoted essay Das Eine, die Einheit und die Eins, pp. 9–16. 48 Cf. Allgemeine Grundlegung, p. 43. 49 I shall consistently translate the concept Sinn by meaning or sense, and the concept Bedeutung by signiﬁcance.

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(meaning) to truth value (signiﬁcance), and may often oﬀend our aesthetic or religious sensitivities: ‘With the quest for truth we would leave the enjoyment of art and turn towards a scientiﬁc observation. For that reason we do not care, whether for instance the name “Ulysses” contained any signiﬁcance, as long as we adopt the poem (i.e. Homer’s ‘Odyssey’, ACZ) as a work of art. It thus is the pursuit of truth, which inspires us everywhere to push from meaning to signiﬁcance.’50 Rickert’s conceptual distinction of Sinn (meaning, sense) and Bedeutung (signiﬁcance) is not as clear as Frege’s. However, the weak spot in Frege’s theory is the (sociological!) notion that we are being driven from meaning to signiﬁcance everywhere and thus always. This is, of course, extremely questionable. In everyday life, and also outside Western culture, people are more often than not quite satisﬁed with meaning-without-signiﬁcance. In fact, it can be argued that unlike science, particularly religion and art are grounded upon meaning-without-signiﬁcance. Truth and its pursuit have a very diﬀerent meaning in religion and art than in science and logic.

Let us start, Rickert the teacher proposes, all over again.51 The most comprehensive concept which covers all conceivable objects is that of Being (Sein). Being can indeed mean everything that we are able to think of. If we say ‘this paper is white’, we state that this particular sheet of paper belongs to being, carrying predicatively an additional feature, namely that it is white. Next, we can also say ‘the world is’. We then mean to say that everything that belongs to the world exists, including what possibly could be thought of as being unreal. After all, ‘something is unreal’ means to say that the unreal

50 ‘Mit der Frage nach der Wahrheit würden wir den Kunstgenuss verlassen und uns einer wissenschaftlichen Betrachtung zuwenden. Daher ist es uns auch gleichgültig, ob der Name “Odysseus” z.B. eine Bedeutung habe, solange wir das Gedicht als Kunstwerk aufnehmen. Das Streben nach Wahrheit also ist es, was uns überall vom Sinne zur Bedeutung vorzudringen treibt.’ Gottlob Frege, ‘Über Sinn und Bedeutung’, 1892, in: Gottlob Frege, Kleine Schriften (Small Papers), 1967, (Hildesheim, Zürich, New York: Georg Olms Verlag, 1990, 2nd ed.), pp. 143–162. Quotation, p. 149. In this context the quest for the ‘historical Jesus’ is an interesting case. The four gospels in the New Testament provide ‘stories’, it is claimed by most theologians, which are not ‘historical’ but ‘kerygmatic’; i.e. they belong to and originate in the preaching and teaching of early Christianity. Some New Testament scholars have tried to destill from the recorded sayings of Jesus a picture of who he historically, i.e. prior to the preaching and teaching of the early Christian community, ‘really’ was. In Frege’s terms, the gospels have meaning (in particular for Christian believers), but they have no signiﬁcance (in particular for historians). Cf. H. Ristow, K. Matthiae (eds.), Der historische Jesus und der kerygmatische Christus (‘The Historical Jesus and the Kerygmatic Christ’), (Berlin: Evangelische Verlagsanstalt, 1960). 51 Cf. Rickert, o.c., pp. 101ﬀ.

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is thought to exist. Otherwise it would be nothing in the sense of non-existent. That would be a nonsensical statement: ‘The sentence that something is non-being, sounds indeed like something falls nonfalling, or burns non-burning, and thus seems to express nonsense.’52 We encounter here the double meaning of the concept of being. There is, ﬁrst of all, the grammatical, analytic copula-meaning. The verb ‘is’ merely connects an arbitrary subject with an arbitrary predicate as in ‘this paper is white’. Nothing is being said about the being or non-being of the subject or of the predicate. The statement is merely analytical and descriptive. Subject and predicate are just linked by the copula ‘is’. The second meaning of the concept of being is synthetic, if it expresses a statement about the being or the non-being of something. In this second meaning the sentence ‘something is non-being’ (etwas ist nicht-seiend ) can make sense! After all, the non-being is conceivable. The reason why we ﬁnd it generally hard to conceive of it, is the simple fact that we, as in a naïve empirism, usually identify being with the empirical and physical reality which we can observe through our senses—i.e. the spatial and temporal reality of the sense-data (die räumlich-zeitliche Sinnenwelt) in which we live.53 This reality of the senses is then usually distinguished in an objective, physical reality which is spatial, temporal, and identical for all persons on the one hand, and the subjective, psychological reality which is temporal but not spatial and belongs exclusively to single individuals. But, as we saw, there is still another kind of reality, the unreal, non-sensual reality of the values. Truth or beauty cannot be seen, touched or smelled, neither can the meaning of a sentence. In that sense they are non-sensual (unsinnlich), and in that sense not real. They are also spaceless and timeless. In short, they constitute a non-empirical, unreal reality.54

52 ‘Der Satz, etwas ist nicht-seiend, klingt in der Tat wie: etwas fällt nicht fallend, oder brennt nicht brennend, und scheint also Unsinn zu enthalten.’ Rickert, o.c., p. 103. 53 I have adopted the useful concept of ‘sense-data’ from Bertrand Russell. Cf. Bertrand Russell, ‘The Relation of Sense-Data to Physics’, in: A. Danto, S. Morgenbesser (eds.), Philosophy of Science, 1960, (New York: New American Library/Meridian Books, 1974), pp. 33–55, in particular p. 36. 54 One may object that lust can deﬁnitely be felt and experienced physically. However, Rickert would remind us to distinguish between the lust experience and the lust value, as we usually know to distinguish beauty as value and the experience of it in daily life.

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If we ﬁnd it diﬃcult to think of a reality which is non-empirical, unreal because it is (a) neither physically objective nor psychologically subjective, (b) neither spatial nor temporal and (c) neither collective nor individual, Rickert invites us to think of the objects of mathematics, e.g. the numerals, since they present a reality which lacks these three characteristics of sensually experienced reality. Mathematical numerals do exist, as we all know, but it is an unreal reality compared to the world of the senses. Rickert could have quoted Frege whom, incidentally he had read, yet rarely mentions or quotes: ‘The theorems of mathematics are never about signs, but about the objects which are designated by them. These objects are admittedly neither tangible nor visible and not even real. . . . The numerals do not change, because the theorems of mathematics contain eternal truths.’55 The world of values is a non-empirical, unreal reality in the double sense of unsinnlich (i.e. not carried by the senses) and unwirklich (i.e. neither subjective-objective, nor time and space bound, nor collective and individual). The fanatics of reality (Wirklichkeitsfanatiker)56 often decry all this as ‘Platonism’ which in a sense is correct, since Plato was the ﬁrst to understand that reality is more than what lies between subject and object, space and time, collectivity and individuality. It is incorrect because Rickert’s theory of the non-empirical values is not metaphysically essentialist, as Plato’s theory of the ideas was. Moreover, Platonic ‘Idealism’ drifted oﬀ into the massive metaphysics of neo-Platonism (cf. Plotinus) and its emanation theory. This is epistemologically, of course, unacceptable because it is in eﬀect an ontology that degenerated into metaphysics. In order to avoid this kind of epistemological derailment, Rickert, who, as we have seen repeatedly, defends the primacy of epistemology over ontology, proposes to substitute the concept of existing (Existieren) for that of being (Sein).57 Existing is in Rickert’s system a 55 ‘Die Theoreme der Arithmetik handeln also niemals von den Zeichen, sondern von den durch sie dargestellten Gegenständen. Diese Objekte sind freilich weder greifbar noch sichtbar und nicht einmal wirklich. . . . Die Zahlen ändern sich nicht; denn die Theoreme der Arithmetik enthalten ewige Wahrheiten.’ Frege, ‘Le nombre entier’, German translation by M. and K. Held in: o.c., p. 212. Rickert mentions Frege approvingly a few times in his essay Das Eine, die Einheit und die Eins, without however giving any references. The two philosophers had much in common, particularly, as we saw before, with regard to the unremitting rejection of founding logic on psychology. 56 Allgemeine Grundlegung, p. 107. 57 He is regretfully not very consistent in this, because the concept of being returns in his expositions recurrently. That is, apparently, unavoidable.

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purely technical term and thus not at all related to any kind of metaphysical ‘existentialism’. It is introduced in order to cover the two dimensions of reality: existing is ﬁrst the subjective-objective (immanent-transcendent) reality of the senses (sinnlich Reales) and second the ideal reality beyond, or prior to the senses (unsinnlich Ideales),58 as in the case of values. These are two epistemological domains, two realms. However, there is still a kind of reality which is something, yet does not exist in the double sense mentioned. It constitutes a third domain, a third realm. It is neither sinnlich real, nor unsinnlich ideal. For example, if we understand that a statement is ‘true’, we call that which is being understood the meaning of the sentence. There is, in other words, this understandable meaning of the true sentence, yet this meaning is unreal, i.e. it does not exist as either an empirical and sensual reality (meaning cannot be smelled, touched, heard, etc.), or as a non-sensually ideal reality (meaning is not comparable to a mathematical statement or a value). It is an ideal (transcendent) reality but without existing in the dual sense of the word. In short, meaning does not ‘exist’, but is valid. Being valid and validity ( gelten, Geltung) characterize meanings.59 Or, as Rickert phrases it, the word ‘existing’ (Existieren) contains everything that is not valid. Validity then can be viewed as a special kind of ‘being’, but is not ‘existing’.60

58

Ibid., p. 108. Rickert applies this also to the rules of formal logic which are, unlike the rules of mathematics that belong to the non-sensual, ideal reality, components of a third realm that ‘is’ not and that does not ‘exist’, but that is or is not valid. This validity, as we shall see, is part and parcel of the value of Truth. 60 Rickert, Das Eine, die Einheit und die Eins, o.c., p. 83. This is, on ﬁrst sight, confusing, since we saw before that validity is also what diﬀerentiates values from the being of the immanent-transcendent reality of experiences and impressions. In the Preface to his Die Logik des Prädikats und das Problem der Ontologie, (‘The Logic of the Predicate and the Problem of Ontology’), (Heidelberg: Carl Winters Universitätsbuchhandlung, 1930), p. 8, Rickert announces ‘an essential change of the use of language’. The concept ‘Being’ is now no longer used in opposition to the unreal ‘Validity’, i.e. to values, meanings and ‘Sollen’. Validity, value and meaning, are, he argues, after all, inherent components of the world-in-toto which without them would be incomplete. He refers to the Preface of the 4th and 5th edition of Gegenstand der Erkenntnis, (‘Object of Knowledge’), 1892, (Tübingen: Mohr-Siebeck, 1921), p. XII, where he also re-deﬁned ‘Being’ as no longer the opposite of ‘unreal’ validity and meaning, but as the encompassing concept for ‘everything that can be thought of at all’ (‘alles Denkbare überhaupt’). Regretfully, he did not incorporate this re-deﬁnition in this epistemological opus magnum and neglected the useful distinction of ‘Existieren’ and ‘Sein’. Consequently, this re-deﬁnition does not contribute to the necessary perspicuity of his ontological and epistemological concept formation. 59

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Scientiﬁc activity is not possible without understandable, true meanings.61 But, once more, the meaning of a true sentence is unreal in the sense of non-existent. The psychological act of understanding the meaning of the true sentence (Verstehen) is real, and thus does exist, yet the meaning that is to be understood, ‘is’ but does not ‘exist’. Here we encounter once more the diﬃculty of expressing all this in everyday life language which is inaccurate, when it comes to a priori phenomena. Meaning, it was said, is neither sensually real, nor non-sensually ideal, and thus is non-existent. Yet, it is not nothingness in which case we would not have to talk about it at all. This is hard to conceive: meaning ‘is’ not and does not ‘exist’, yet the word ‘nothingness’ does not apply to it. It is in a sense a third realm which connects the ﬁrst realm of sensual objects and the second realm of ideal objects in a heterological manner. He views these three realms as the Weltall, the reality-in-toto, he searched for. It covers the ‘real’ and the ‘unreal’, i.e. it covers (1) what exists sensually real (sinnlich real ), that is, the sense-data. Rickert calls it the First Realm. It covers also (2) what exists unsensually ideal (unsinnlich ideal ), that is, the values and the mathematical statements. He calls it the Second Realm. But it covers in addition (3) what is non-existent ideal (ideal nicht-existierend ), that is, the meaning of a true statement or, Rickert adds, the rules of logic. This is the Third Realm. These are three realms, of which the third one ‘reconciles’ the other two that are heterologically diﬀerentiated. That resembles Hegel’s Aufheben, because the ﬁrst and the second realm are not annulled but, as it were, lifted up into a third realm.62 We will see, however, that this is not what Rickert meant.

61 Naturally Frege would use the concept of signiﬁcance (Bedeutung) here instead of the concept of meaning (Sinn). 62 This is not the place to discuss the similarities and in particular the diﬀerences of Hegel’s dialectics and Rickert’s heterology. Rickert admired Hegel’s logic which he studied intensively, yet placed his own heterological logic in the tradition of Kant. Cf. Heinrich Rickert, ‘Die Heidelberger Tradition und Kants Kritizismus. Systematische Selbstdarstellung’ (The Heidelberg Tradition and Kant’s Criticism. Systematic Self-Presentation), 1934, in: Heinrich Rickert, Philosophische Aufsätze, (Philosophical Papers), R. A. Bast, ed., (Tübingen: Mohr-Siebeck, 1999), pp. 347–412. In his preface to Das Eine, die Einheit und die Eins, he calls Hegel ‘the greatest philosopher Heidelberg has had’. O.c., p. III.

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The expression ‘the meaning of a true statement’ needs a further explanation. Here Rickert introduces a logical diﬀerence between meaning, that belongs to the Third Realm, and value, that belongs to the Second Realm. It is obvious that the Truth of a true statement is in fact a value. It actually is, as we saw before, the predominant value of all theoretical (scientiﬁc) statements. Yet, by assigning in an act of judgment this (formal, transcendent) value Truth of the Second Realm to statements, which belong to the First realm, we render them meaningful. The meaning that can be understood, does not belong to the First Realm of sensual reality, nor to the Second Realm of non-sensual unreality, but is a component of the Third Realm of validity. The theoretical value of truth, in other words, partakes through judgments in the unreal, non-existent, ideal Third World of validity. Moreover, the atheoretical (hedonistic, ethical, religious and aesthetic) values and their correlated meanings share this basic feature of the theoretical value of truth. The crucial factor in all of this is the act of judging and assigning. As a result of this a curious element of activism enters into Rickert’s epistemology and theory of values and validity. This needs a further analysis. But before, we must understand Rickert’s ideas about values and meanings. They are in the ﬁrst instance logically diﬀerent, in that the former belong to the Second Realm, which is non-sensual (unsinnlich) and unreal (ideal ), and the latter to the Third Realm, which is also unreal (ideal ) but in addition non-existent (nicht-existierend ). After all, the beauty of a painting can be beheld (is ‘in the eye of the beholder’), but the meaning of a word or a sentence can merely be understood, not sensually felt or grasped. However, there is more to meanings than that. By means of a value-judgment, i.e. the active assignment of Truth, or Beauty, or any other value to statements or objects of art or any other sense-data in the First Realm, values of the Second Realm are linked to the sense-data of the First Realm. Moreover, the values thus are rendered meaningful and partake in the Third Realm which is in eﬀect the ‘reconciliation’ of the heterologically diﬀerent First and Second Realm, and constitutes what we have been searching for: reality-in-toto. To sum up, we must further analyze the logical nature of meanings, values and the act of judging which is, as we shall see shortly, a meaning bestowing act (Sinnakt). The crucial concept in all this is not ‘being’ but ‘validity’.

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But before we discuss Rickert’s theory of values, validity and meaning bestowing acts, we must still investigate ﬁrst another aspect of real being and valid values, namely the fact that they occur in three, or perhaps four stages. Rickert enumerates ﬁrst the three, or four, stages of being. Firstly, we begin with the stage of real being which Rickert heterologically links to appearance (Schein). Being and appearance (Sein und Schein) are, of course, strictly separated in scientiﬁc research. Also in common-sense the two are usually kept apart. The diﬀerence between being and appearance depends on the subject-object relationship. After all, each appearance presupposes a subject that holds for real something that is not real, whereas real being exists ‘objectively’ independent of any subject. Yet, quite often appearance is a form of real being as well, as is the case with the hallucinations of an individual. They are, strictly taken, appearances, but they are not nothing, in fact they are quite real to the individual involved. (Or in Frege’s terminology, hallucinations are subjectively, i.e. to the person involved, meaningful but have objectively, in terms of empirical science, no signiﬁcance.) The hallucinating person sees something apparently real which others do not behold. It is easy to think of other examples of such individual and subjective, phantasmagoric appearances. This then is the ﬁrst stage of real being. It is an individual-subjective stage of being, which is the heterological counterpart of appearance. Whenever we want to determine what is real, we must avoid this primary form of appearance. Secondly, there are forms of collectively subjective appearances which do exist, yet are unreal. For example, we all see a straight staﬀ as if it were broken in the water, or in the summer the cellar feels cool, while it feels warm in the winter. These are not individual and particular, but collective and general experiences. They are real, yet they are nonetheless only subjective appearances. Thirdly, the former two stages of appearance were (individually and collectively) subjective. The third stage is very diﬀerent, as it concerns an objective, independent being which is the objectively testable reality of the empirical sciences—the ‘proper’ and ‘real’ reality, devoid of any appearance (Schein). Neo-positivists believe it to be the one and only true reality, outside of which everything is but appearance.

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Rickert would agree with the following argument of Rudolf Carnap. In section 10 of his Scheinprobleme in der Philosophie, (‘Fictitious Problems in Philosophy’), 1928, he presents by means of illustration the following philosophical case. Two geographers, the one a philosophical realist, the other a philosophical idealist, are sent to Africa to ﬁnd out, whether a legendary mountain really exist or not. As scientists the two geographers are in possession of certain criteria by which the question can be answered, independently of idealist and realist philosophical positions and propositions. After some diligent research the two geographers will arrive at a consensus as to the existence (or non-existence) of this mountain. And if it exists, they will also come up with concurrent facts about its height, location, Gestalt, etc. There will be consensus on all such empirical questions. The option for one or the other philosophical standpoint has no substantial bearing on their scientiﬁc investigations. However, disagreement will arise the moment these scientists change into philosophers and begin to interpret the data of their empirical research. The realist will then say that this mountain does not only carry geographical characteristics, but is also ‘real’; or, he will conclude in a ‘phenomenalist’ version of realism that there is something real, though unknowable, in the essence of this mountain. The idealist will disagree and claim that this mountain is not real, but it is our observations and other conscious processes that are real. Now these two theses, Carnap concludes, lie beyond our empirical experiences and are therefore nicht sachhaltig, not relevant. Neither of them proposes to verify his thesis by a joint, conclusive experiment, nor does either of them oﬀer the suggestion of an experience which could give a foundation for his thesis.63 Rickert would agree with this conclusion, but add that Carnap should have said ‘scientiﬁcally not relevant’. Geography is one of the specialized sciences which focuses its attention on but one compartment of total reality, and in doing so is completely justiﬁed in disregarding philosophical questions and sticking to a (philosophically naïve) positivism or empiricism. However, the moment one does ask realist or idealist questions as to the constitution of reality and consciousness, one engages logically in a metabasis eis allo genos, i.e. a transition to a completely diﬀerent world—a generalphilosophical world in which the debate between realism and idealism is meaningful. In fact, Carnap himself testiﬁes blatantly to the fact that he has chosen for a radically realist position. Moreover, after this logical transition from specialized science to general philosophy and epistemology it does make sense to conclude that both geographers are as scientists also ‘driven’ or ‘guided’ by values, the value of Truth to begin with. These values

63 Rudolf Carnap, Scheinprobleme in der Philosophie. Das Fremdpsychische und der Realismusstreit, (‘Fictitious Problems in Philosophy. The Non-I and the Realism Conﬂict’), (Berlin: Im Weltkreis-Verlag, 1928), pp. 35f. The concept ‘Fremdpsychisches’ is very hard to translate. It means the psyche or consciousness of other people apart from myself. I decided to translate it as ‘Non-I’.

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cannot be grasped or understood, if one sticks to the naïve positivist focus on objective facts. In fact, these values are facts as well, but they are facts of a completely diﬀerent composition and status.

Fourthly, many philosophers go one step further still. They are in search of a metaphysical reality which transcends the subjective and objective reality and constitutes the essence of being. In their view, even the objective reality of the sciences is but appearance (Schein), or phenomenon (Erscheinung) hiding the real and true being. Schopenhauer’s view of the world as just a phantasmagoric illusion, and of the spaceless and timeless Will as the true being and moving force, is a telling example of such a metaphysical philosophy. In such metaphysics being or reality is radically separated from each kind of subject, and next posited as something absolute and trans-objective. Scientiﬁcally—Rickert’s transcendental philosophy, one should not forget, wants to remain scientiﬁc—this sort of metaphysics is ‘completely problematic’.64 Each stage considers the previous stage as being too subjective and thus as appearance instead of being. As to the subjective side, there are, Rickert teaches, three heterologically linked types of subject: (a) the single and individual subject, (b) the collective and general subjective and (c) the scientiﬁc and everyday life subject. In the fourth, metaphysical stage the subject is, as we have just seen, actually annihilated, causing a total evaporation of subjectivity and objectivity. That is, of course, a complete domination of appearance. Rickert then distinguishes three parallel stages of values, in which again each stage considers the previous stage as an apparently unreal and thus invalid value. However, one should keep in mind that Rickert discusses here not so much the formal values, but rather their concretizations as evaluations and valued practices, as value judgments and goods in the First Realm. Formal, transcendent values after all do not exist and can thus not be discussed. Value judgments and valued practices, however, are empirical data, sense-data, and can be subjected to research and to discussion. Firstly then, there are the individually and particularly subjective values which are only valid for the individuals adhering to them. These are personal preferences or hobbies, the validity of which depends generally on

64

Rickert, o.c., p. 131.

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the moods of the moment. It is hard to give examples, Rickert observes, since examples usually refer to more general and collective kinds of values. Nevertheless Rickert comes up with a telling example: the habit of collecting stamps with a printing error, a curious and rather rare idiosyncrasy. Such idiosyncratic preferences are comparable to the hallucinations which are not facts, but carry validity only to the individuals involved. The second stage consists of collectively and generally subjective values which are valid to all human beings. Rickert mentions the hedonistic values (Lustwerte) as an example: food, average temperatures, sensual and erotic pleasures, etc. There are, of course, always ascetically inclined people who will deny the validity of such values, but they represent the unavoidable exceptions. They are comparable to people who do not partake in the collective illusions and hallucinations of the second stage of being and appearance, although the hedonistic values are far more binding and coercive. One cannot but see the straight staﬀ in the water as if it were broken, but one cannot be forced to embrace values which are collectively and generally subjective. After all, one has the moral liberty to say ‘no’ to them. Yet, these are exceptional cases. Without exception food will be a valid good to hungry people, and we may add, exquisite food will be a valid and quite coercive good to wealthy and hedonistically inclined people. In short, such goods constitute a reality to which unreal values are attached that are valid to all hungry or wealthy and hedonistic persons. Yet, these values still remain subjective. Thirdly, Rickert asks, if it is actually possible to speak of ‘objective’ values which function independently of evaluating subjects, just as there is the scientiﬁc objectivity of facts and objects that are independent of subjects. Or, philosophically formulated, can we construct a concept of objective values? ‘Objective’ means independently valid— independent of all empirical, sensually real subjects. For Rickert this is, of course, a rhetorical question. He gives once more the example of the theoretical value of true sentences, i.e. of Truth. The theoretical (scientiﬁc) value of truth is objective, as was illustrated by Carnap’s geographers who concluded after diligent research that the legendary mountain in Africa did indeed exist. After their empirical research, nobody in his right mind would challenge the statement ‘this mountain does indeed exist’. It expresses what is really the case, it is selfevident. Its truth is an objective value! In contrast, the value of food is always (individually or collectively) subjective, never (universally)

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objective. Yet, one may not forget the fact, as ‘rationalists’ are prone to do, that the statement ‘this mountain does indeed exist’ is also a value-judgment (Werturteil ), because truth or falsehood is involved here, and truth is after all the prime (theoretical) value. However, what applies to the theoretical value of truth (i.e. its objective validity), cannot simply be applied also to the atheoretical (aesthetic, ethic, hedonistic, religious) values, because if these values were objectively valid, i.e. true, they would not be atheoretical but theoretical, i.e. scientiﬁc. It would be sheer intellectualism to believe that the atheoretical values, like beauty or lust, could be proven logically and scientiﬁcally to be true and absolutely valid. This, we could add, would be scientism, i.e. an inadmissible, metaphysical overrating of science through which the world is viewed as a scientiﬁc world.65 Rickert labels it rationalism or intellectualism. Its origin lies, according to him, in Plato’s concept of the metaphysical Logos, which was further elaborated by Hegel in his concept of Geist. ‘Logos’ or ‘Geist’ as the most general concept which covers everything, not just the real reality of objects and things but the goods, as the incorporations of values, as well.66 The rejection of intellectualism or rationalism, Rickert warns, should not lead us astray into relativism or skepticism. First of all, if the atheoretical values cannot be theoretically (i.e. logically and scientiﬁcally) supported, their validity can at the same time not be theoretically shaken either. All attempts to prove by means of logical arguments that aesthetic, ethic, hedonistic or religious values are invalid, are as untenable as opposite attempts to prove their objective validity by means of theoretical arguments. It is the main task of a sound theory of values to understand, not to falsify or prove, the

65 This is, of course, what Rickert separates from the philosophers of the Vienna Circle. See for instance Rudolf Carnap, Der logische Aufbau der Welt (‘The logical Construction of the World’), o.c. It is interesting to contrast this book with Alfred Schutz, Der sinnhafte Aufbau der Welt. Eine Einleitung in die verstehende Soziologie, (The Meaningful Construction of the Social World. An Introduction to Understanding Sociology), 1932, (Wien: Springer Verlag, 1960). Alfred Schutz (1899–1959) was a professional banker and a lay philosopher, but he saw himself as a student of both Edmund Husserl and Max Weber. In this PhD dissertation and later publications he made an attempt to go beyond Weber’s neo-Kantianism in the direction of a phenomenologically inspired understanding sociology. 66 Rickert, o.c., p. 150. Needless to add that Carnap would not have been amused by this argument which labels his ‘positivism’ as ‘scientism’, and ‘scientism’ as Platonic or Hegelian ‘Idealism’.

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atheoretical values and their possible validity or invalidity. Rickert launches again one of his paradoxical statements: ‘one just ought to understand the atheoretical validity in its theoretical groundlessness.’67 This, of course, begs the question. The question was and is, if, and if so, how relativism regarding atheoretical values is to be avoided. Or, in other words, how we can ascertain that the atheoretical values are not relative but objectively valid without the interference of the theoretical value of truth? We come back to this question in the next section but ﬁnish ﬁrst our discussion of the four stages. Rickert warns against any preferential treatment of the theoretical value of truth or of one of the atheoretical values, as happens in scientism, aestheticism, hedonism, moralism, etc. Most of theseisms excel in value-prophecy (Wertprophetentum), from which a truly scientiﬁc theory of values should abstain. We should rather try to understand (Verstehen) values and their validity, and should abstain from practical, atheoretical evaluations in terms of good and bad, beautiful and ugly, pleasant and unpleasant, moral and immoral, etc. It also cannot tell us how to live a blissful life. A scientiﬁcally sound theory of values rather aspires to bring about theoretical clarity about theoretical and atheoretical values. If the philosopher of values is driven by pathos at all, it is the ‘pathos of pathoslessness’.68

67

‘(. . .) man hat gerade das atheoretisch Geltende in seiner theoretischen Unbegründbarkeit zu verstehen.’ Ibid., p. 152. We encounter here, of course, again Rickert’s previously discussed distinction between a normative, metaphysical worldview and a scientiﬁc, theoretical analysis of worldviews, i.e. Weltanschauung versus Weltanschuungslehre. 68 ‘das Pathos der Pathoslosigkeit’. Ibid., p. 155. Rickert emphasizes the importance of philosophical pathos but distinguishes three diﬀerent types: (a) the intellectualist pathos as exhibited by Spinoza; (b) the anti-theoretical pathos, as in Nietzsche, Wilde or Kierkegaard (the main prophets of the Philosophy of Life!) and (c) the pathos of pathoslessness which distinguishes theoretical, objective values from atheoretical, subjective values and rejects the primacy of either one of these two groups of values. He gives Kant as an example but adds that he relapsed often into (a). Naturally, he meant to say that he himself is the best example of the third pathos. Cf. ibid., p. 154. Max Weber fulminated against ‘lectern prophets’ at the university in similar terms. In his swan-song ‘Science as a Profession’, 1920, he claimed ‘that the prophet and the demagogue do not belong on the lectern of the university classroom.’ Max Weber, ‘Wissenschaft als Beruf ’, in: Gesammelte Aufsätze zur Wissenschaftslehre, o.c., p. 602. See also Theodor Geiger, Demokratie ohne Dogma. Die Gesellschaft zwischen Pathos und Nüchternheit, (‘Democracy without Dogma. Society between Pathos and Soberness’), 1950, (München: Szczesny Verlag, 1964). See also my The Abstract Society. A Cultural Analysis of Our Time, (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1970), chapter 7: ‘The Need for Intellectual Asceticism’, pp. 168–190.

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Finally, is there a fourth stage of values and validity? Is there a metaphysical validity of values which generally denegrates even the third, objective stage as a collection of allegedly ﬁctitious values with an allegedly ﬁctitious validity? This is hard to fathom, since it seems that objective values and validity (the third stage) present the highest stage possible. One could imagine some sort of trans-individual, divine, absolute Will to which everything is arbitrarily ‘absolute’, or for that matter ‘relative’. But that would not render validity more valid. The objective validity which is independent of all subjectivities, is the apex of transcendental, a priori validity. ‘No value can do more than be objectively valid. When a value is objectively valid, it is already detached or absolute, if it does exist at all.’69 The meaning bestowing act70 Rickert is in search of a concept which covers reality-in-toto. Up till now he has distinguished two heterologically connected realities. There is the world of objects and facts which is a temporal, spatial and causally determined world—the observable ‘real’ reality. He calls it the First Realm (das erste Reich). It is juxtaposed to the Second Realm (das zweite Reich) which consists of the spaceless, timeless and non-causal world of values—the understandable ‘unreal’ reality which cannot be ‘reached’ by the senses (unsinnlich). But this then yields a divided reality which is not the Weltall, the reality-in-toto, the sur-realité, he is searching for. There must be a Third Realm (das dritte Reich) which connects the First and the Second Realm without destroying their independent existence, their autonomy. This Third Realm, we have just seen, is not a kind of Hegelian synthesis resulting from a coalescence of a thesis and its antithesis, both elevated into (aufheben) and merged in an alleged synthesis. Nor is it a kind of metaphysical, Platonic aboriginal reality which incorporates or colonizes the First Realm and the Second Realm. It is rather a heterological connection of the autonomous First Realm and the autonomous Second Realm, 69 ‘Mehr als objektiv gelten kann kein Wert. Gilt er objektiv, so ist er schon losgelöst oder absolut, falls es ihn überhaupt gibt.’ Ibid., p. 136. 70 The concept ‘the Third Realm’ completes Rickert’s conceptualization of the reality-in-toto (Weltall ). The following discussion of it is based on a pivotal section in his Allgemeine Grundlegung der Philosophie, o.c., pp. 254–265. However, as we shall see, Rickert postulates a Fourth Realm which is in fact a metaphysical super-reality which represents a true Weltall.

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a conceptual bridge between facts and values, being and validity— a mediating and bifocal reality. Rickert views this third, connecting realm as an act, i.e. a meaning bestowing act, namely the judgment (Urteil ) that plays, as we saw in Chapter Three, such a crucial role in his epistemology. This needs further analysis. Ordinary language, we have repeatedly seen before, is deﬁcient in Rickert’s eyes, if one tries to conceptualize the ‘unreal’ reality of the values. It is even more so, if one tries to construct rational concepts for the Third Realm which establishes a total reality by bridging the juxtaposed worlds of the empirical, objective, temporal, spatial, causal reality of things and objects (the First Realm) and the nonempirical, subjective, non-temporal, non-spatial and non-causal reality of values (the Second Realm). In his system the conceptual bridging of these two realms is of crucial importance. For most of us, who, like Rickert’s contemporaries, are used to thinking positivistically, exclusively in terms of the First Realm, his thoughts on the Third Realm are hard to grasp. In order to help us, Rickert starts with a common-sense expression: what do we mean, when we speak of the ‘meaning of life’ (Sinn des Lebens)? We do not simply couple meaning and life, but relate, without actually realizing it, an ‘unreal’ meaning (Second Realm) to ‘real’, immediately experienced life (First Realm). Intuitionists and vitalists take the easy road: allegedly we can directly experience (erleben) what life and its meaning is all about, so why bother to conceptualize it? As we saw in Chapter Two, Rickert sympathizes to a certain extent with that position, but ﬁnds it insuﬃcient, if one has the ambition to think about the world theoretically and scientiﬁcally. Unlike the vitalist, the theoretical (scientiﬁc) philosopher wants to grasp the world in terms of concepts, just like the empirical and specialized scientist does. Now, as to the expression ‘the meaning of life’, it is hard to explain it in terms of ordinary language, but after the previous exposition it is not diﬃcult to realize that this expression refers not only to the heterological duality of meaning (Second Realm) and life (First Realm), but also to the act of connecting them. This act is the Third Realm. It may sound as if the Third Realm would refer to a metaphysical ‘beyond’ but that is not at all what Rickert means. As a metaphysical ‘beyond’ the Third Realm would destroy the autonomy of the First and the Second Realm as in an Hegelian synthesis. Rickert wants to maintain their autonomy and postulates the Third Realm as their practical connection.

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Once again, the Third Realm consists of the act of connecting the First and the Second Realm, the world of objects and facts on the one hand and that of values on the other. This is, of course, an evaluating act (Akt des Wertens), because the ‘meaning of life’ is not meant as an objective fact, but constitutes a subjective, evaluative judgment (Werturteil ), namely that life has meaning, is inherently meaningful.71 Or, in other words, we evaluate life as being more than just a biological fact. It is a biological fact which carries an inherent meaning. The fact is thus related to a value, and that is an act. How one ﬁlls in this ‘more’, this inherent meaning, depends on one’s set of values. To a believer life may be a gift of God, to the unbeliever a gift of Nature, to some a miracle, to others a painful burden.72 Yet, they all have in common that they experience and express a connection between facts and values, that they actively connect the First Realm of real facts with the Second Realm of unreal values. For this act Rickert coins the concept Aktsinn, i.e. meaning bestowing act.73 He views it as the Third Realm that stands between the First and the Second Realm, connecting them heterologically (as it were bifocally), without annihilating their autonomy. Life still remains a biological aﬀair, its value still remains a non-sensual, non-real reality. By connecting values of the Second Realm with facts, events and objects in the First Realm, human beings render the latter meaningful. In this sense the Aktsinn is a meaning bestowing act. This is remarkable, because the Third Realm then consists of an activity comparable to the epistemological evaluating judgment. The values in the Second Realm may be subjective and thus relative, the act of linking the two realms is universal, objective and thus non-relative. Everywhere and in all times, human beings have been busy bestowing meanings on the objects and events they ran and run into. In conjunction the three realms constitute the world-in-toto.

71 Naturally, the judgment about life can be, and often is, also negative: ‘life is meaningless’. Each value, we have seen before, has its counter-value which is not its denial but an opposite value. For the sake of clarity Rickert restricts the present discussion to the positive value. 72 Schopenhauer was, of course, the philosopher who pre-eminently deﬁned life as a painful burden. For a modern version of this vision see E. M. Cioran, De l’inconvénient d’être né, (‘On the Inconvenience of Being Born’), (Paris: Éditions Gallimard, 1973). 73 Aktsinn (literally: Actmeaning) is an awkward neologism. In the present context I prefer to translate Aktsinn as ‘meaning bestowing act’.

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Rickert’s three realms may remind the contemporary reader of Popper’s First, Second and Third World, or as he preferred to phrase it, world 1 (‘the physical world or the world of physical things or states’), world 2 (‘the mental world or the world of mental states’), and world 3 (‘the world of intelligibles, or of ideas in the objective sense; it is the world of possible objects of thought: the world of theories in themselves and their logical relations; of arguments in themselves; and of problem situations in themselves.’) World 2 is pivotal, since it can ‘interact’ with the other two worlds and links them. World 1 and world 3 cannot interact without the help of world 2. For instance, the mind (world 2) can literally, i.e. by means of the eyes, behold physical objects in world 1, but is also capable of ‘seeing’ or ‘grasping’ objects in world 3, such as a number, or a geometrical ﬁgure. World 3 can work upon world 1 as in the case of technological interventions which apply certain consequences of the mathematical or scientiﬁc theories. But this is only possible via world 2, the mind. Actually, these theories might have been invented by persons who were not aware of their practical possibilities, and have remained hidden until they were discovered by other people who have tried to grasp, to understand them and apply them in world 1. This testiﬁes to the fact that also world 3 is an objective reality.74 Rickert would remark that world 1 and world 2 are the Cartesian res extensae and res cogitans, a dualism which Popper does not solve but which Rickert solves by juxtaposing them heterologically as transcendence and immanence within the First Realm. Popper’s world 3 is then similar to Rickert’s Second Realm. Despite Popper’s often repeated claim that he is a realist, he falls back, Rickert would certainly remark, into idealism when he inhabits world 3 admittedly with Plato’s Ideas, although he deﬁnes them not as metaphysical realities but as human products, more precisely as products of language. But that is also problematic. He even applies this idea to numbers: ‘I believe (. . .) that even the natural numbers are the work of men, the product of human language and of human thought. Yet, there is an inﬁnity of such numbers, more than will ever be pronounced by men, or used by computers.’75 Pronouncing numbers is counting (adding, subtracting, multiplying), Rickert would certainly say, but counting is not the same as numbers in themselves, just as words in themselves are not speaking or writing, or thoughts in themselves are not thinking. It remains odd to state ‘that the third world (i.e. the abstract world of mathematics, logic, true statements, etc. ACZ) originates as a product of human activity.’76 That, of course, reminds one of Mill’s rather fallacious inductivism, which in view of Popper’s devotion to deductivism is quite curious. Rickert’s Third Realm, on the contrary, is a true activity—a meaning bestowing act—which connects the transcendent/immanent First Realm with the ideal Second Realm of values. 74 Karl R. Popper, ‘On the Theory of the Objective Mind’, 1968, in: Karl R. Popper, Objective Knowledge. An Evolutionary Approach, 1972, (Oxford: At the Clarendon Press, 1974), pp. 153–190. Quote on p. 154. 75 Ibid., p. 160. 76 Ibid., p. 159.

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In everyday life, Rickert argues, we engage constantly in meaning bestowing actions, relating values to realities. In fact, we evaluate constantly, i.e. connect with values what we encounter, see, hear, feel and smell. Naturally, common sense does not distinguish an objective world of ‘real’ facts from a subjective world of ‘unreal’ values, let alone a Third Realm of meaning bestowing acts. In our experience the ﬁrst two realms are blurred, and we are not at all consciously aware of our meaning bestowing acts. There is nothing wrong with that, but in the theoretical and scientiﬁc attitude, we are obliged to distinguish these realms conceptually. In science we ought to be critical and criticism is in essence nothing else than drawing analytical lines of distinction and diﬀerence. Then the problem arises, how the two realms can be connected without destroying their heterological independence. But we need to connect them, lest we remain burdened theoretically with a fragmented, dualistic reality concept. In order to further elucidate his idea of a Third Realm which connects the First and the Second Realm, Rickert gives two examples. First, in science a true statement is a theoretical good (theoretisches Gut) which as such belongs to the First Realm, because we can hear and read it, subject it to investigation or debate, and thereby objectify it. It also belongs to the institution science which again is part of the institution university. In other words, a true statement is solidly embedded in the First Realm. But there is always the duality of the person who expresses and intends the statement (e.g. a teacher), and the person who hears and does or does not understand it (e.g. a student). This duality of intending and understanding is made possible by thoughts, or rather by judgments. Now, the judgment ‘this statement is true’ involves both the First Realm ( judgments can be investigated objectively, for instance by psychology) and the Second Realm (the judgment belongs to the theoretical value of truth). But there is a third dimension involved here. Due to the acts of intending and understanding, on which all theoretical communication between people depends, the ‘unreal’ value of truth is as it were bestowed upon the ‘real’ statement. Intending and understanding connects the statement with the value of truth, rendering the statement meaningful. It is a theoretical meaning (theoretischer Sinn), carried by the acts of intending and understanding. It is in that sense again an Aktsinn, a meaning bestowing act.77 77

H. Rickert, o.c., p. 263f.

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Rickert’s second example is in the area of atheoretical values. A work of art, say a painting, is an objective reality (linen, paint, lacquer, etc.) to which an aesthetic value (e.g. beauty or its opposite) is attached. If one focuses only on the objective reality, one will not understand the meaning of the painting, nor its aesthetic value. The painting acquires meaning the moment the beholder begins to evaluate it aesthetically, i.e. by calling it ‘beautiful’ or ‘not beautiful’. That is a meaning bestowing act relating the object involved (First Realm) to the world of aesthetic values (Second Realm), thereby providing the object with an aesthetic meaning. Naturally, this has nothing to do with reason and logic, as in the case of the theoretical judgment. The aesthetic meaning depends on the atheoretical aesthetic values (Second Realm) which is actively brought into the world of the work of art (First Realm) by the beholder of it. If we disregard this meaning bestowing act of the beholder, the reality of the painting and the ‘unreal’ aesthetic values would, of course, still exist, but they would remain juxtaposed as two separated realities, not linked into a total reality. It is by the meaningful aesthetic act of the beholder (Third Realm) that the First and the Second Realm are connected and joined into the total reality.78 Finally, Rickert does not only distinguish three realms but also three diﬀerent methods of approaching them theoretically. The First Realm of objective reality is investigated in an explanatory manner (Erklären), the Second Realm of values is investigated in an understanding manner (Verstehen). The Third Realm of the meaning bestowing act, linking the two realms, is investigated in an interpretive manner (Deuten). These conceptual distinctions seem to be quite arbitrary, yet they are meant to maintain the conceptual diﬀerentiation of reality (Wirklichkeit), value (Wert) and meaning (Sinn). This can be summarized in a simple scheme: 1. Reality

– Explanation (Erklären)

– the in itself meaningless and value-free world of objects 2. Value – Understanding (Verstehen) – the normative world of values 3. Meaning – Interpretation (Deuten) – the act of relating values to realities 78 Ibid., p. 264f. One can, of course, also bestow theoretical (scientiﬁc) meaning on a piece of art, as in the case of the restorer or renovator, who in fact will combine theoretical (chemical, physical, art-historical) and atheoretical (aesthetic) values and relate them to the painting or the historical building that must be restored or renovated. Cf. footnote 27.

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The previous section may give rise to the opinion that the Third Realm is in essence a psychological world, since the Aktsinn is performed by the subject. Others may conclude that Rickert’s conceptualization of the Third Realm in terms of the meaning bestowing act which connects the ‘real’ world of objects and the ‘unreal’ world of values is, despite his arguments to the contrary, actually rather metaphysical. He spends considerable time in denouncing these two opinions which in his view gravely distort his theoretical intentions.79 In Rickert’s view, we repeatedly saw, psychology is an empirical, specialized discipline whose object of research lies in the First Realm. The object of psychology is circumscribed by him alternatively as ‘empirical psychic life’ (empirisches Seelenleben) and as ‘real psychic being’ (real psychisches Sein). Today, he would probably rather speak of ‘individual behavior’ or ‘psychological functions’. In any case, as an empirical science psychology should stick to the description and explanation (Beschreibung und Erklärung) of facts. Its proper ﬁeld of operation is, according to Rickert, the empirical world of objective things and processes, not the ‘unreal’ reality of values and meanings. He is, therefore, certainly not an adversary of psychology as a scientiﬁc discipline. On the contrary, he holds for instance experimental psychology in high esteem as long as it abstains from philosophical considerations and metaphysical ruminations. His criticism is, in other words, directed against metaphysical transgressions of the disciplinary boundaries of the psychological discipline into the domains of philosophy, i.e. he fought and rejected psychologism.80 In his view 79

Cf. ibid., pp. 277–297. In a letter to the experimental psychologist Alexius Meinong (1853–1920), founder of the ﬁrst laboratory for experimental psychology in Graz, Austria, Rickert allegedly had written that he knew not one central issue in philosophy to which psychology could contribute positively. Meinong responds to this remark in a letter dated December 22, 1912, in which he turns the argument around: ‘I know of no problem which would be so central, that one would not have addressed it, as far as one is acquainted with it, by means of psychological techniques, and that, while doing so, one would not need, given the circumstances, to stay in close contact with a possibly advanced stage of psychological knowledge.’ (‘Ich weiss kein Problem, das so zentral wäre, dass man an dasselbe, sofern man es kannte, nicht schon mit psychologischen Bearbeitungsmitteln herangetreten wäre und bei dem man nicht unter Umständen eine recht enge Fühlung mit einem möglichst vorgeschrittenen Stande psychologischen Wissens bedürfte.’ (Letter from the personal archive of Mrs. Marianne Rickert Verburg.) With such a petitio principii a further discussion between Rickert and Meinong was, of course, impossible. 80

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psychologism leads in philosophy to all sorts of confusions. He mentions in particular Dilthey, Wundt and Litt as philosophers-psychologists who confuse facts, values and practical evaluations. Despite various mutual diﬀerences they share the belief that the human being who interprets meanings in terms of values (Sinndeutung auf Grund von Werten) should be analyzed in terms of these meanings and values. They thereby confuse facts and values, real being and unreal meaning, description and interpretation. It is a psychology soaked in normative value-judgments, and thus neither scientiﬁcally nor philosophically acceptable. Rickert emphasizes time and again that a psychology of science, morality, art, love or religion is logically completely legitimate, but it diﬀers logically greatly from the normative interpretation of the intrinsic meanings of these phenomena in terms of their values (truth, the good, beauty, eros, desire, faith). Psychology should stick to the First realm and restrict itself to the description and (causal) explanation of the factual events that occur, when people make theoretical judgments, behold works of art, act morally, are bound with others through ties of love, belief in God, etc. Of course, values do play a role in such descriptions and explanations, certainly in the case of cultural psychology which focuses upon cultural, i.e. value related phenomena. Yet, also in that case the values and their related meanings remain objects of investigation, constitute value-judgments and goods (institutions), i.e. they belong to the First Realm, never change, within the boundaries of the scientiﬁc explanation, into constitutive components of meaningful interpretation (Sinndeutung). The task of cultural psychology is indeed the explanation and description of values and evaluations as objects (goods) in the First Realm, not the meaningful interpretation of values as components of the Second Realm. This is clearly illustrated in the case of a theoretical judgment which depends on logic and its central value of truth, as was the case, we may add, with Carnap’s geographers who upon closer scientiﬁc scrutiny came to the consensual conclusion that the legendary mountain did indeed exist. But they must stick to that and not transgress the borders of science into the nature of Truth as a non-sensual and unreal value. Naturally, man’s psyche is involved, when he engages in logical and scientiﬁc arguments, yet the intrinsic meaning of logic and science—its truth content—is not psychological. It is essential to distinguish between psychological being (psychisches Sein) and its description and explanation on the one hand, and logical meaning (logischer Sinn) and its interpretation on the other.

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The agent who interprets the meaning of a theoretical judgment or a work of art in terms of the values truth or beauty, is the subject of the ensuing statement. It is but a small step to view this subject as a super individual ‘spirit’ (Geist) which subsequently is posited as the solution to the problem of the total reality. The Third Realm of the immanent Aktsinn is to the philosophical taste of many too abstract and too ‘unreal’. What holds everything together should be something ‘real’, should be that which is actually and absolutely ‘real’. This metaphysic of the spirit is the psychology of the metaindividual I—an absolutely valuable, trans-sensual Geist or Logos which evaluates only valid values. Religiously speaking, this meta-individual I is a god who incorporates all realities and all values. From this metaphysical point of view, Rickert continues, the values and their validity, as well as the meanings and their interpretations become quite thin, ghostly, liquid. According to the metaphysicians philosophy ought to go beyond this and penetrate into the depth, the essence, the background of reality. This would mean, Rickert says on purpose rather grandiloquently and ironically, that ‘it (i.e. philosophy) ought to base the valid values upon an absolute, metaphysical reality of a world subject in order to understand the meaning which inhabits our individual evaluations, as a reﬂection of the global acts of the true global reality of the spirit.’81 Another drawback of this metaphysical approach is the fact that the absolute spirit assumes a unifying position in which the essential autonomy of the three realms is lifted, or better: annihilated. The result is ‘a multiplication table of witches which is equally mysterious

81

‘. . . sie hat die gültigen Werte auf eine absolute, metaphysische Realität des Weltsubjektes zu stützen, um dann den Sinn, der unsern individuellen Wertungen innewohnt, als Wiederspiegelung oder Abglanz von Welttaten der wahren Wertwirklichkeit des Geistes zu verstehen.’ Ibid., p. 291f. This is obviously an ironical reference to Hegel’s philosophy. He adds that this sort of metaphysics works with words and names that resonate strongly in the chest of many people and obviously satisfy more than just theoretical needs. ‘The word “Geist” alone has a magical inﬂuence on many which by far transcends that of a scientiﬁc theory.’ (‘Schon das Wort “Geist” übt auf Manche einen Zauber, der weit über den einer wissenschaftlichen Theorie hinausgeht.’) Ibid., p. 292. The same holds true, of course, of the Platonic Logos, and it is not far-fetched to apply it also to the Marxist notion of the Proletariat as the agent which eventually causes the End of History in the world revolution. Cf. Georg Lukács, Geschichte und Klassenbewusstsein, (‘History and Class Consciousness’), 1923, (Neuwied, Berlin: Hermann Luchterhand, 1971).

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to wise men as to fools: and three make equal, so you are rich! To the scientiﬁc man the three parts will always remain unequal.’82 Science always moves from the fuzzy and indistinct mass of experiences to the clear plurality of concepts. It is the only way to make people conscious of the wealth of the world. ‘Yes, one will skeptically examine the content of the word “spirit”, when man searches more for clarifying concepts than for uplifting or intoxicating sounds.’83 Rickert agrees with Nietzsche: we should shy away from this metaphysical ‘back world’ (Hinterwelt).84 Since he loves to play with words, he states that his own theory of the logically predominant role of the Third Realm of meaning interpretation (Sinndeutung) and meaning bestowing activity is not a meta-physical ‘back world’, but rather a pro-physical ‘front world’ (Vorderwelt): it is the logical predecessor of reality and values, and of our knowledge of them.85 This ‘front world’ is not an abstract, far away reality, but it is part of our everyday world, since we constantly, though usually unconsciously, interpret the meaning of what we and the others do and say in terms of values. Or, in more modern terms, we are essentially meaning bestowing, that is communicating beings. It is the task of philosophy to conceptualize this activity. That is precisely what the not meta-physical but pro-physical theory of the three independent, yet heterologically connected realms does. ‘In the night of the back world everything is, to quote Hegel, “black”. In the day of the front world the one stands out clearly from the other. He who wants to know, cannot doubt in which direction he ought to look.’86

82 ‘. . . ein Hexeneinmaleins, geheimnisvoll für Weise wie für Toren: Und Drei mach gleich, so bist du reich! Für den wissenschaftlichen Menschen werden die drei Teile immer ungleich bleiben.’ Ibid., p. 293. 83 ‘Ja das Wort “Geist”wird man besonders misstrauisch auf seinen Gehalt prüfen, falls man mehr nach klärenden Begriﬀen als nach erbaulichen oder berauschenden Klängen sucht.’ Idem. This is one of the main reasons why Rickert, as we shall see in Chapter Five, replaces the concept Geisteswissenschaft by Kulturwissenschaft. 84 Ibid., p. 295f. 85 In view of this concept of ‘pro-physics’ the title of Christian Krijnen’s voluminous study is remarkable: Nachmetaphysischer Sinn, i.e. ‘post-metaphysical meaning’. Krijnen, o.c. 86 ‘In der Nacht der Hinterwelt wird, um mit Hegel zu reden, alles “schwarz”. Im Tage der Vorderwelt hebt sich das Eine von dem Andern deutlich ab. Wer erkennen will, kann nicht zweifeln, wohin er zu blicken hat.’ Ibid., p. 297.

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We must now ask how it could be possible to acquire philosophical knowledge of values. This is, of course, a tricky question, in particular since Rickert rejects the metaphysical approach. In answer to this question he argues that to begin with values can only be known through their deposit, or objectiﬁcation in value-judgments and cultural goods (from scientiﬁc theories and objects of art to institutions). These, of course, belong to the First Realm. The values of the Second Realm are, as we saw before, forms which are in the meaning bestowing acts ‘imposed’ on the contents of the First Realm. As empty forms values cannot be experienced and known. Truth, beauty, justice, moral goodness, etc. cannot be seen, smelled, heard, or touched. They are in this basic sense not real as the transcendent objects are which through the senses become immanent phenomena, enter our minds as impressions after they have been ‘caught’ by the senses. However, values are, as it were, deposited in our value-judgments and in our cultural goods which are objective components of the First Realm. It is there that we can acquire knowledge about them. This is remarkable because the philosophy of values now seems to coincide with the cultural sciences, the historical discipline in the ﬁrst place. Indeed, Rickert seems to come close to the notion of a cultural and historical philosophy derived from various culturalhistorical disciplines. But that is, of course, a notion which he has rejected earlier, when he stated that the total reality, as the objective of systematic philosophy, is more than the sum of the realities under investigation by the specialized sciences. It is precisely at this point that the Third Realm is so strategically important. The empirical cultural sciences (history, as we will see in the next chapter, in the ﬁrst place) describe, analyze and explain the objective sedimentations of values in goods and value-judgments, without leaving or transcending the First Realm. The philosophy of values, on the contrary, having its proper abode in the Third Realm, performs the Aktsinn, the meaning bestowing act, by linking the Second Realm of unreal values to the First Realm of real objects. By doing so the meaning and nature of values are rendered understandable (verstehbar). Thus, the philosopher does not distill objectively valid values from the (individually or collectively) subjective value-judgments and the cultural goods, as investigated by the cultural-historical disciplines. He rather instills them with meaning and clariﬁes why it is

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that for example institutions are true Sinngebilde, meaningful conﬁgurations. Such interpretations could eventually even produce knowledge, Rickert claims, about what life is all about, i.e. about the grand issue of ‘the meaning of life’. In the end his philosophy or theory of values, which can also be called a philosophy of culture, could thus produce a philosophical Lebensanschauung. This is, of course, a large order, certainly if one takes into account that such a philosophy may not result in a metaphysical Weltanschauung. At this point of his argument he again warns and argues against psychologism. We should not focus on individual and personal acts of value-judgments, since that would not yield any systematic knowledge and insight. One would get lost in the chaotic thicket of subjective emotions and opinions. Individuals, for instance, usually experience and evaluate the aesthetic value of a work of art in vastly diﬀerent manners. And when individuals are described and analyzed psychologically in a uniform manner, as in the case of a true scientiﬁc statement, it is generally not asked, whether their judgment is true or false, because it is psychologically irrelevant whether someone thinks and argues correctly or falsely. Telling lies is psychologically interesting in terms of the mental and psychic processes involved in the lying. The nature of a lie in terms of truth and falsehood as values is of no concern to the scientiﬁcally operating psychologist, nor are for that matter the normative, moralistic value-judgments about lying. Those are philosophical issues. Psychology as an empirical science should stick to the explanation of real psychological processes and is as such not of any signiﬁcance to the philosophical theory of values. This argument can be illustrated additionally in the case of religion. The scientiﬁc study of religion, as in the case of ‘comparative religion’, or ‘sociology of religion’, or ‘psychology of religion’, is interested in the empirical expressions of religious values in the First Realm. It subjects these values which are dear to the true believers, to objective analysis and research, without leaving the First Realm, e.g. without asking what the intrinsic values and meanings of the religious expressions under investigation ‘essentially’ are. An atheist can be a perfect scientiﬁc student of religion, just as a musicologist does not have to excel in musicality. In Rickert’s Aktsinn, however, the philosopher will focus on the immanent meaning of the religious values in the Second Realm and bestow them on the empirical religious expressions in the First Realm. Without necessarily being a believer, he will try to determine what it exactly is that renders these expressions ‘religious’. In this sense he will search for the essence of religion, but without

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any normative religious intentions. This brings him close to the phenomenology of religion, as formulated in an exemplary manner by Gerard van der Leeuw who would be fully acceptable for Rickert because he did not take refuge in psychologism as most phenomenologists of religion have been prone to do, nor did he alter his comparative study of religious phenomena into a normative theology.87 It is necessary to distinguish the philosophy of religion as a scientiﬁc enterprise from systematic theology as a normative, dogmatic discipline. In Rickert’s terms theology would certainly not belong to the Third Realm, but rather be part of metaphysics which is beyond the three realms. The history of systematic theology, however, would again be part of the First Realm, as a scientiﬁc study of religion.88

Rickert then draws the conclusion that not individual value-judgments which lack objective validity, but collective goods which carry an intersubjective validity, constitute the proper material of the philosophy of values. They are objective realities—the institutions of historical culture—to which the values adhere. To a philosophical theory of values history as a scientiﬁc discipline is of far greater importance than psychology and the natural sciences. In the next chapter we shall encounter Rickert’s idea of historical or cultural science (Kulturwissenschaft) as a distinct approach of reality, heterologically distinguished from the natural-scientiﬁc approach (Naturwissenschaft). We shall then also discuss his ideas about a speciﬁc philosophy of history. Following Kant, he singles out four areas which he deems to be the heart of cultural reality constituting the four basic, but mutually distinguishable domains of a philosophy of values, or cultural philosophy

87 Gerard van der Leeuw, Religion in Essence and Manifestation. A Study in Phenomenology, 2 volumes, 1933, transl. From the German by J. E. Turner, (New York, Evanston: Harper & Row Publishers, 1963). See also Mircea Eliade, The Sacred and the Profane. The Nature of Religion, 1957, transl. From the French by W. R. Trask, (New York: A Harvest Book; Harcourt, Brace & World, 1959). A classic in this tradition is Rudolf Otto, The Idea of the Holy. An Inquiry into the Non-rational Factor in the Idea of the Divine and its Relation to the Rational, 1917, transl by J. W. Harvey, 1923, (Oxford, New York: Oxford University Press, 1969). This book is drenched in romantic psychologism though, as it deﬁnes the Sacred as the human feeling of being nothing, and thus dependent on the awe inspiring sacred as a mysterium tremendum (tremendous mystery). 88 As an example of such a normative, dogmatic theology see the brief introduction in orthodox-Calvinist, systematic theology of Karl Barth, Evangelical Theology, 1963, (Garden City, New York: Anchor Books; Doubleday, 1964). For a liberalLutheran introduction see Paul Tillich, Dynamics of Faith, 1957, (New York: Harper Torchbooks, 1958). A classic history of Christian doctrines is Adolf Harnack, Dogmengeschichte, 1889, (Tübingen: Mohr-Siebeck, 1905). Examples from other world religions can, of course, be added.

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(Kulturphilosophie): (a) mores and morality; (b) the arts and beauty; (c) the religions and the divine; (d) the sciences and truth. It is interesting to note though that the domain of pleasure and erotic lust which Rickert discusses also, is absent from this Kantian catalogue, as is the domain of justice which Rickert too neglects.89 In any case, Rickert repeats once more that the cultural-historical, special sciences subject the institutions (cultural goods) within these domains to investigation. They thereby remain in the First Realm of objective facts. They oﬀer the material for the philosophy of values which distills from these investigations information about the values of the Second Realm. By an interpretation of the intrinsic meaning (Sinn) of these four cultural areas, relating it to their respective values, Rickert tries to construct an autonomous philosophy of values. Let us brieﬂy follow his arguments. Mores and morality.90 Human beings grow up and lead their lives in an environment of mores which are part of a collective, social culture. These ‘ways of doing things’ are, of course, related to values and the philosophical observer naturally wants to know what the validity of these values are. He will observe that these value laden mores provide people with the experience of meaning (Sinn). It is, for example, impossible to interpret the ‘meaning of life’ without reference to these mores and their inherent values. Now, what does actually the concept of morality mean? In order to be called ‘moral’, Rickert argues, human actions must be driven by a conscious and purposeful will which intends to do what is considered to be right. There must be an intrinsic sense of duty (Pﬂicht, Sollen), yet this should not be seen as some sort of slave morality (Sklavenmoral ) which blindly follows alien orders. On the contrary, the sense of duty should be an autonomous self-control which is based upon the conviction that it is intrinsically right to do what one has 89 For a philosophy of law which is inspired by neo-Kantianism see Gustav Radbruch, Rechtsphilosophie, 1914, (Stuttgart: J. F. Koehler Verlag, 1950; 4th ed.), in particular chapter one: ‘Wirklichkeit und Wert’ (‘Reality and Value’), pp. 91–97, and various references to Kant, Windelband and Rickert. 90 Cf. the section ‘Die Sitten und die Sittlichkeit’, ibid., pp. 324–333. The German concept Sitten can be translated as folkways which in itself is again a rather pluriform concept, covering ‘usages’, ‘manners’, ‘customs’, ‘mores’ and ‘morals’. Cf. William Graham Sumner, Folkways. A Study of the Sociological Importance of Usages, Manners, Customs, Mores and Morals, 1906, (New York: A Mentor Book; The New American Library, 1960) I shall use ‘mores’ for Sitten and ‘morality’ for Sittlichkeit.

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to do.91 This is not blind obedience but voluntary compliance. In morality, the free will is essential. This free will is not arbitrary and autocratic, but based upon autonomy in the original sense of this word, i.e. self (autos)-imposed rule (nomos). The autonomous person is bound by his conscience which consists of the conviction that there are moral values which are objectively, albeit abstractly, valid. In certain historical circumstances, such as a war, it may be necessary to kill people, but the value of life is an objective one and internalized throughout history as the conscientious duty to defend it, whenever and wherever necessary and possible. Just as the sentence with a true meaning constitutes the core of logic, and the work of art with its beauty the core of aesthetics, so the autonomous personality constitutes the core of ethics.92 Rickert adds the idea that human autonomy as the essential moral value is not a private and individual autonomy but a social one. Human beings grow up and live within a social community and a traditional, collective culture which they internalize, whereby their conscience develops into a social conscience. But again, they are not the puppets of their society and culture. As moral individuals they are autonomous persons who choose or reject voluntarily the moral values of their surroundings: ‘It is in this manner that an individual develops into a moral human being, which freely absorbs the mores of his community into his will or refuses to absorb them.’93 In any case, an individual is a moral personality, when he accepts and enacts the mores of his community, not because everyone is doing so, and one is supposed to do so, but because he ﬁnds them ‘objectively’ valid, and therefore morally binding. It is remarkable, of course, that Rickert puts so much emphasis on the fact that the objectivity of the validity of the values is the result of the deﬁnition of it by the

91 Rickert comes close here to the well-known distinction of Selbstzwang and Fremdzwang as developed by Norbert Elias in his historical-sociological study Über den Prozess der Zivilisation. Soziogenetische und Psychogenetische Untersuchungen, (On the Process of Civilisation. Sociogenetic and Psychogenetic Investigations), two volumes, 1936, (Bern, München: Francke Verlag, 1969, 2nd ed.), in particular vol. 2, pp. 312–454. 92 Rickert, o.c., p. 362. 93 ‘So erst wird er zum sittlichen Menschen, der mit Freiheit die Sitten seiner Gemeinschaft in seinen Willen aufnimmt oder nicht aufnimmt.’ Ibid., p. 329. It is in view of Rickert’s emphasis upon the importance of the free will of the individual as a moral personality strange that he embraced at the end of his life the social philosophy of the national-socialists.

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autonomous, moral person. This comes close to the rather relativistic, sociological theorem of the self-fulﬁlling prophecy which was initiated by William Isaac Thomas which runs as follows: ‘If men deﬁne situations as real, they are real in their consequences.’94 It seems as if Rickert at this point remains stuck in the First Realm of valuejudgments and cultural goods, and is unable to get hold conceptually and theoretically of the ahistorical, unempirical (ideal, formal) values in the Second Realm. He would, however, probably argue that he as philosopher bestows meaning on the values of the Second Realm linking them to their moral enactment by human beings (moral personalities) in the First Realm. He follows the same route of arguing, when he deﬁnes cultural goods in terms of institutions such as marriage, family, law, state, etc. which harbor the social values of a social morality. These institutions, he argues, are the proper object (Gegenstand ) of social sciences, like psychology, sociology and anthropology. When philosophy tries to formulate its autonomous theory of moral values in the format of social ethics, it must stay in close contacts with these disciplines, because they explain how the mores and the institutions function. Yet, it ought to transcend these empirical sciences and try to understand the intrinsic meaning (Sinndeutung) of the institutions as meaningful conﬁgurations (Sinngebilde) which are related to objective values and their objective validity. In this respect there is this special place of philosophy next to the special sciences: a moral theory in the format of a social ethics which does not oﬀer normative directives but rather interprets moral values as the immanent moral meaning of the social institutions. It, in other words, reveals the moral nature of the institutions which empirical disciplines like sociology or anthropology could never do without leaving their speciﬁc ﬁeld of expertise. To sum up, the concept of freedom or autonomy, linked to the internalized sense of duty, is what demarcates mores and morality as the special subject and focus of moral philosophy. This branch of cultural philosophy is in fact social ethics which, as we have seen above, views morality as being social, personal, and active. This is in contrast to the other branch of cultural philosophy which is predominantly non-social, factual (sachlich), and contemplative. 94 Cf. Willliam Isaac Thomas, The Unadjusted Girl, 1928, (New York: Harper and Row, 1967), p. 42f. Also Robert K. Merton, Social Theory and Social Structure, 1944, (New York: Macmillan, 1964), pp. 421–438.

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The arts and beauty.95 Works of art are cultural goods and therefore bearers of a value which we can loosely describe as ‘beauty’ (or its heterological counterpart). This artistic value is not attached to individual human beings or social units, but to buildings, sculptures, paintings, poems, plays and musical compositions.96 Even if the artist is seen as a creative subject, driven by the aesthetic value of beauty, he or she is actually not viewed as a person, but rather as the bearer of an aesthetic value, and thus as an aesthetic object (‘Sache’). In that respect the domain of aesthetic values is, unlike the moral domain, sachlich, ‘factual’ or ‘matter-of-fact like’. There is and has been a rather romantic worldview of aesthetic beings (Weltanschauung des Aesthetentums) which tries to superimpose the aesthetic values on personal, social, or political values, as was exempliﬁed by Oscar Wilde whom Rickert mentions here speciﬁcally. But that is not of much interest to the philosophical theory of art and beauty. In this theory the focus is rather upon the intrinsic value of art (Eigenwert der Kunst) and not upon aestheticist ideologies. Beauty is the basic value here. However, Rickert is aware of the fact that this word is quite old-fashioned and misleading. Yet that is, according to him, but a matter of terminology. What is meant essentially, is the fact that special values adhere to art and these values are lumped together in the concepts ‘beauty’ and ‘beautiful’ (and their heterologically related opposites). How can we theoretically substantiate these admittedly vague concepts? Rickert argues as follows. We behold an object of art and dwell with it for its own intrinsic worth. It stands apart from the rest of the world, and it constitutes, with all its often quite diﬀerent, yet mutually related parts, a complete, well-nigh closed conﬁguration. A framed painting demands its own place on a wall, a sculpture ﬁlls its very own space in the exhibition hall. Furthermore, such works of art do not need any reference to other realities. It is in that sense, unlike mores and morality, impersonal and non-social. In fact, we are ready to call ‘beautiful’ each part of reality which constitutes a ‘harmonious’, ‘independent’ whole, which seems to rest in itself. Our primary reaction towards

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‘Die Künste und die Schönheit’. Rickert, o.c., pp. 333–338. Rickert speaks speciﬁcally of works of art. There is, of course, the beauty of persons (beautiful women or children or men), of animals (beautiful horses or dogs or cats), or the beauty of nature (mountains, sunset at sea), but he restricts himself here to the world of the arts. 96

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it is not one of activity, as in mores and morality, but of contemplation.97 Our personal will remains silent, the urge to act dwindles. We just behold, listen. This is the intrinsic meaning of our evaluation of a work of art. It is an inner taking up of position without reference to any outward behavior. At the same time, feeling (Gefühl ) is not a relevant component of the aesthetic experience, as is often mistakenly believed. To begin with, aesthetic values adhere to things, to objects, and are in that sense rather factual and emotionally neutral. Moreover, aesthetic creation and observation (seeing, hearing, reading) of works of art are primarily matters of contemplation and looking, more than of emotional feeling. Contemplation and observation constitute the proper meaningful act (Aktsinn) which does justice to the harmony, equilibrium, and autonomy of the beautiful object or work of art. They are comparable to the autonomous will which expresses the moral freedom in the area of social ethics. But whereas the moral individual is pressed to participate actively in social life, the value of beauty suppresses each urge to act. It detaches the beholder or listener from the humdrum of social life for the sake of a calm tranquility and impersonal surrender to the beholden object.98 Arguing in terms of the Aktsinn in the Third Realm Rickert asks what kind of valid values make art possible: ‘What is it that makes a work of art into a work of art, i.e. a cultural good which pretends to be evaluated by everybody without factually being evaluated by everybody? Which value should attach itself to a piece of reality in order for us to treat it as a work of art?’99 These are the basic questions, he continues, for the philosophical discipline called aesthetics. Aesthetic philosophy takes as its proper object the arts in all their 97 This emphasis upon contemplation conﬂicts in my opinion with Rickert’s crucial concept of Aktsinn as the meaning bestowing act of subjects on objects. This will be discussed presently. 98 This is, of course, an anti-romantic, almost functionalist view of art. Piet Mondrian or Arnold Schönberg would probably agree with it. But it is a rather narrow view. Rickert should at least have added the heterological observation that a work of art may have an opposite eﬀect and produce a sense of chaos instead of a sense of harmony. Expressionism certainly had this eﬀect, and I wonder how Rickert would ﬁt a performance of Igor Strawinski’s Le sacre du printemps in his description of aesthetic harmony and tranquility. 99 ‘Was ist es, wodurch ein Kunstwerk zum Kunstwerk wird, d.h. zum Gut, das den Anspruch erhebt, von allen gewertet zu werden, ohne faktisch von allen gewertet zu sein? Welcher Wert muss an einer Wirklichkleit haften, damit wir sie zur Kunst zählen?’ Ibid., p. 335.

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diversity, i.e. the works of architecture, painting, design, poetry, music, dance, etc. However, the philosophical science of aesthetic meaning and value does not ask how art has actually and factually developed, what it does and does not do, because that is what the empirical disciplines, like art history, or the sociology, psychology and economics of art, should do. The results of these disciplines are put to use by aesthetics as material, as the empirical sedimentations of aesthetic values in the First Realm. But its proper objective is to ask what the factors are on which the aesthetic values are dependent. That is, it asks on which factors the beauty, the loftiness, the humor, or the tragedy of a piece of music, a painting, a play, a poem, etc. depend. That question cannot be answered by the specialized, empirical sciences. It is a quest for the immanent meaning of a work of art. Objects in nature can, of course, be bearers of aesthetic values also. In fact, it is quite feasible, Rickert surmises, that natural beauty is the very origin of all things beautiful. Maybe art is just an elaboration or imitation of what nature has to oﬀer in terms of beauty? Or, maybe it is the other way around, maybe the paradoxical phrase is correct that the beauty of nature is an imitation of the beauty of art, which means, of course, that it is works of art that teach us to behold nature as something beautiful, i.e. artistic?100 In any case, this demonstrates once more that through the meaning bestowing act (Aktsinn) the non-empirical value of beauty attaches itself to the realities of the First Realm and thereby determines what is and what is not art. Thus, in contrast with mores and morality art and beauty constitute a domain which in essence is non-social, factual (sachlich) and contemplative. Its inherent meaning (Sinn) is the harmonious synchrony of parts and components which often diﬀer vastly, yet come together in a closed reality which stands apart in social life and compels the beholder to stop his activities and enjoy the beauty of it in a contemplative mood.

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Rickert does not mention Oscar Wilde by name here, but it is obvious that he refers to Wilde’s well-known essay in the form of a dialogue ‘The Decay of Lying. An Observation’, 1891, in: Complete Works of Oscar Wilde, ed. by Vyvyan Holland, 1948, (London, Glasgow: Collins), pp. 970–992. The conclusion of the essay is that life follows art: ‘The third doctrine is that Life imitates Art far more than Art imitates Life.’ Ibid., p. 992. Rickert loved paradoxes since they are, of course, essentially heterological. And although he rejected his aestheticism and vitalism he had a distinct preference for Oscar Wilde’s writing, probably also for heterological reasons.

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Religions and the divine.101 Whether one is a religious believer or not, Rickert argues, one has to admit that there are religions allover the world, albeit in vastly diﬀerent historical and sociological settings. And there are people who believe in religious values and try to enact them in their lives. Apparently, these values are ‘objectively’ valid to them. In fact, These religious values determine what the meaning of their lives is or could be. One can try to demonstrate that these believers are wrong, i.e. that their ‘truth’ is ‘false’, but in that case one argues in terms of theoretical values—‘truth’ and ‘falsehood’—which belong to another domain, namely that of the sciences. It is in other words a conﬂict of diﬀerent and diﬀering value domains which can not be solved in terms of one of the domains. One can call religious belief ‘unaesthetic’ or ‘unscientiﬁc’, but that is as unconvincing as the religious believer who decries art or science as ‘godless’ and therefore ‘objectionable’. Max Weber spoke of ‘the combat of the gods’ (Kampf der Götter) which necessarily reigns in the realm of values and their respective validities: ‘Fate rules over these gods and in their combat, but certainly not any “science”.’102 In the theoretical domain of the sciences a statement can be proven to be true or false, but in the atheoretical domains of the arts or of the religious convictions one cannot prove scientiﬁcally that a piece of art, or a religious conviction is true or false. An interesting case is the quarrel between creationism and evolutionism. Fundamentalist Christians maintain that the cosmos was created by God in seven days as Genesis 1 tells us. History is then a matter of Providence. Evolutionists claim that this is nonsense, since it has been scientiﬁcally proven ever since Darwin’s theory of evolution and the cosmological theory of the Big Bang that the world began ex nihilo and then slowly developed according to the laws of natural selection without any meaningful (divine) plan behind it. Evolution is ruled by chance. In Rickert’s terms, both fundamentalist creationism as well as scientiﬁc evolutionism transport Genesis 1 from the atheoretical religious abodes of mythology (the realm of faith) to that of the theoretical abode of science (the realm of empirical evidence). In a sense, the fundamentalists argue as scientistically as the evolutionary biologists do. In logic this is called a metabasis eis allo genos, a transition to a totally diﬀerent genus of thought. The ‘debate’ between the two is senseless and fruitless. 101

‘Die Religionen und das Göttliche’. Rickert, o.c., pp. 338–344. ‘Und über diesen Göttern und in ihrem Kampf waltet das Schicksal, aber ganz gewiss keine “Wissenschaft”.’ Max Weber, ‘Wissenschaft als Beruf ’, 1920, in: Gesammelte Aufsätze zur Wissenschaftslehre, (Tübingen: Mohr-Siebeck, 1968), p. 604. 102

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With the help of Frege’s distinction of meaning (Sinn) and signiﬁcance (Bedeutung) an additional conclusion is possible: Genesis 1 has no (scientiﬁc) signiﬁcance, yet it does have (religious) meaning. The evolutionists will agree with the ﬁrst conclusion, but cannot possibly prove scientiﬁcally that the second conclusion is nonsensical. Likewise, Homer’s Odyssee carries (poetic) meaning, but has, of course, no (scientiﬁc) signiﬁcance.

Rickert then asks the question what it is that allows us to call a value and its believed validity ‘religious’. What is the meaningful act (Aktsinn) by which a value and its validity is rendered ‘religious’? Human beings, Rickert argues, experience their imperfection and incompleteness continuously. In particular human institutions (menschliche Güter) suﬀer from this lack of perfection and completeness. It then stands to reason that people search for and believe in values which are perfect and complete, incorporated in a super-human being. This being is deﬁned either in terms of a super-human person (e.g. God), or of a super-human but impersonal force (e.g. the Sacred, or the Divine). In fact, one could, as a believer, heterologically argue the other way about: the experience of imperfection and incompleteness has emerged because human beings compare themselves and their institutions with this super-human, perfect and complete divinity. But one should heed Rickert’s reminder: ‘it is unimportant, whether we are religious believers or not.’103 And now that we are at it, he repeats also once more that he wants to abstain from metaphysics as a doctrine which argues in terms of metaphysically religious values. Not an alleged immanent or transcendent existence of these values is the issue, but their validity which carries the meaning (Sinn) of the believer’s life. The domain of religious values occupies an interesting place between the ethic and aesthetic domains. As we saw, morality is predominantly social, personal and active, whereas art is a non-social, factual (sachlich) and contemplative. In religion we ﬁnd both sets of characteristics mixed. There are expressedly contemplative religions which profess a total merger of the personality and the divinity, and abstain from activities in the social world. In this case, religious life— ’if we still can call it “life”’, Rickert interjects104—has a contemplative,

103 ‘Ob wir selbst religiös sind oder nicht, ist dabei gleichgültig.’ Rickert, o.c., p. 341. 104 Idem.

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impersonal (sachlich), and non-social meaning. In mysticism, for example, one merely wants to observe (schauen) God passively and be absorbed by contemplation. It is believed to be the only way to get rid of human imperfection as one merges, as it were, with divine perfection. In the end, even the personality may disappear, being totally absorbed by the deity. Such a non-social, impersonal and contemplative religious life resembles art and artistic life. However, in religion the human being can also be oriented to his fellow human beings and be active in the world. This activity is often interpreted as a task imposed by the divinity. Religious life resembles in that case the moral activities, and is likewise social, personal and active. In fact, God is viewed as a social, personal and active force which gives society, when it identiﬁes with this religious view, an active, personal and social character. So we have two opposite types of religion here. On the one hand, there is withdrawal from the world and depersonalization, on the other hand there is working in and upon the world and the formation of a personal individuality. Rickert could have referred here to Max Weber’s ideal typical distinction of an ‘outer-worldly asceticism’ (ausserweltliche Askese) and an ‘inner-worldly asceticism’ (innerweltliche Askese). The most telling example of the latter type is in Weber’s view the protestant (in particular puritanical) ethics.105 It exempliﬁes the coalescence of Rickert’s concepts of mores/morality and active religion/deity, and demonstrates the very similar Aktsinn which Weber would call ‘the subjectively intended meaning’.106 Rickert ﬁnally points at an important feature of religion. It is inclined, he argues, to refuse to accept a co-coordinative position with the other sectors of life. It rather attempts to superimpose its values on other parts of culture, in particular when a speciﬁc religious conviction is absent and the ethical and aesthetic values acquire a vaguely religious color. In that case, religious values often exhibit

105 Max Weber, Die protestantische Ethik und der Geist des Kapitalismus, 1904, in: Gesammelte Aufsätze zurReligionssoziologie, vol. one, (Tübingen: Mohr-Siebeck, 1963), pp. 84–163. 106 Hannah Arendt’s discussion of the Ancient Greek and medieval ideas concerning the vita contemplativa vis-à-vis the vita activa (‘bios theoretikos’ vis-vis ‘bios politikos’ in Aristotle) and the traditional primacy of contemplation over activity, which in modernity is just the other way around, comes to mind here. See Hannah Arendt, The Human Condition, 1958, (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday Anchor Books, 1959), in particular pp. 9–18.

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a tendency to spread over all of human existence as what the sociologist of religion Peter L. Berger called a ‘sacred canopy’. Thomas Luckmann caught the force of this embracing kind of religion by his notion of the ‘invisible religion’ which, in a secularized society, penetrates into such sectors as politics, the arts and sometimes even the sciences.107 Sciences and truth.108 From the standpoint of cultural philosophy the true statements (wahre Sätze) of science, to which theoretical values (e.g. truth, reality) are attached, are empirical cultural goods that exist in the First Realm. As we have seen before, Truth is just like Beauty or Morality a value concept (Wertbegrif ). True sentences can be understood in all their pluriformity with regard to the validity of their theoretical values. We can next interpret the acts of the theoretical subject (i.e. the scientiﬁc researcher) and explain them in terms of their immanent meaning. This then results in what is called theory of science (Wissenschaftslehre) which should be understood as part of the general cultural philosophy, alongside ethics, aesthetics, and philosophy of religion. Its main task is to acknowledge impartially all attempts by which people seek truth for the sake of truth. Indeed, it should do so impartially, because just as aesthetics should not speak up for a special artistic direction or taste, or religious philosophy for one speciﬁc religion or conviction, the philosopher of sciences should avoid any scientiﬁc partisanship. As we shall see in more detail in the next chapter, representatives of cultural science (Kulturwissenschaft ) are related to the values of their environment, yet should abstain from normative value-judgments for the duration of their scientiﬁc activities. It is the ﬁne, yet important diﬀerence between valuerelatedness (Wertverbundenheit) and abstaining from value-judgments (Wertungsfreiheit). Partisanship with its unavoidable value-judgments is quite common among philosophers of science, Rickert warns. He refers to those who claim that natural science (Naturwissenschaft) or mathematics

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Cf. Thomas Luckmann, The Invisible Religion. The Transformation of Symbols in Industrial Society, (New York, London: Macmillan, 1967). Peter L. Berger, The Sacred Canopy, (Garden City, NY: Doubleday & Company, 1967). 108 Cf. Rickert, o.c., pp. 344–347. This is a brief section as its main theme is dealt with extensively in Rickert’s Die Grenzen der naturwissenschaftlichen Begriﬀsbildung which we will discuss in the next chapter.

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present the true and only ‘scientiﬁc’ science.109 Of course, he adds, the philosopher is inclined to favor those sciences that in their formal structure are closest to his own endeavors and, he adds, ‘without doubt philosophy is in terms of logic closer to the natural sciences and mathematics than to the historical cultural sciences.’110 But that is one more reason to be very careful, if it comes to a philosophical understanding of the inner meaning of scientiﬁc life and work. The philosopher is a theoretical person111 who is inclined to prefer the theoretical values (truth, reality) above the non-theoretical values (beauty, deity, erotic lust, etc.). Yet, such a preference is and remains theoretically incorrect. The philosopher would restrict his philosophical horizons irresponsibly, if he only focused on those scientiﬁc enterprises that come closest to his own theoretical conceptualizations and evaluative preferences. ‘He will, however, only avoid such partialities, when he stays in touch with the full breadth of historical cultural life.’112 Rickert, in other words, criticizes the scientiﬁc specialist who can only view the world in terms of his narrowly demarcated ﬁeld of expertise. Finally, Rickert argues that the philosopher of science should at all times keep in mind that there are truths outside the theoretical 109

In the social sciences this partisanship is usually labeled ‘neo-positivism’. It was in the 1960’s and 1970’s opposed by a neo-Marxist partisanship which has led to not very fruitful debates. Cf. Theodor W. Adorno c.s. (eds.), Der Positivismusstreit in der deutschen Soziologie, (‘The Positivist Conﬂict in German Sociology’), 1969, (Neuwied, Berlin: Luchterhand, 1979). In accordance with his heterology Rickert could have mentioned the fact that many cultural philosophers too are rather inclined to put the humanities (Kulturwissenschaften) on a pedestal and applaud them as the essence of science and scientiﬁc culture (Bildung). This was argued critically by C. P. Snow in his well known essay The Two Cultures, 1959, (Cambridge, UK: At the University Press, 1978). He added in 1963 A Second Look in which he mentioned the rise of ‘a third culture’ which is mainly represented by the social sciences. Ibid., pp. 53–100. 110 ‘. . . zweifellos steht die Philosophie in logischer Hinsicht den Naturwissenschaften und der Mathematik näher als den historischen Kulturwissenschaften.’ Rickert, o.c., p. 345. 111 Needless to say once more that Rickert means by ‘theoretical’ scientiﬁc and logical. It stands heterologically over against ‘atheoretical’ which refers to ethics, religion, the arts, sexuality. Truth and reality are ‘theoretical’ values, morality, divinity, beauty, erotic lust are ‘atheoretical’ values. We saw before that Rickert viewed philosophy as a scientiﬁc discipline, which however, unlike the various (naturalscientiﬁc and cultural-scientiﬁc) disciplines which operate in the First Realm, operates in and from the Third Realm, connecting by meaning bestowing acts the First Realm of real facts and objects with the Second Realm of unreal values. 112 ‘Vermeiden aber wird er solche Einseitigkeiten mit Sicherheit nur wo er Fühlung mit der ganzen Breite des geschichtlichen Kulturlebens sucht.’ Idem.

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world of the sciences. They are in a sense pre-scientiﬁc, and although Rickert does not use this concept, we could call it ‘common sense’. The philosopher of science should realize that people outside the world of science constantly relate their experiences to theoretical forms, albeit in primitive appearances. The substance of these experiences is being formed, put into shape, structured by theoretical forms such as truth and reality, as is testiﬁed by the abundant use of phrases like ‘this is true/false’ and ‘this is real/unreal’. In view of his critique of vitalism and phenomenology, this conclusion is, of course, quite remarkable.113 The systematic philosophy of values Until now, we have discussed values, value-judgments and cultural goods at random. We must now place them in a systematic framework. But a warning is in order here. The search for a philosophical system, Rickert warns,114 is often driven by the desire to end philosophy once and for all. Hegel, and certainly many Hegelians, for example, believed that the Hegelian system meant the conclusion of all philosophical endeavors. After Hegel there was supposedly no need anymore for a systematic philosophy because his philosophy incorporated the deﬁnitive System. From then on it was only the history of philosophy that could be legitimately studied. Moreover, since it was believed that Hegel’s dialectical system caught and represented the dialectics of history, it was also believed that with his philosophical system history itself had come to its conclusion.115 Rickert ﬁnds all this a vast exaggeration and reiterates his conviction that history and culture can never be concluded and 113 If Rickert had continued this thought he would have come close to the phenomenological methodology of Alfred Schutz. See my essay ‘The Problem of Adequacy. Reﬂections on Alfred Schutz’s Contribution to the Methodology of the Social Sciences’, in: Archives Européennes de la Sociologie, 13:1 (1972), pp. 176–190. 114 This section is based on the ﬁrst section of the ﬁrst chapter and on the concluding, seventh chapter of Rickert’s Allgemeine Grundlegung der Philosophie, pp. 1–14; 348–412. These sections go back to an earlier essay of Rickert, ‘Vom System der Werte’, (On the System of Values’), 1913, in: Heinrich Rickert, Philosophische Aufsätze, R. A. Bast, ed., (Tübingen: Mohr-Siebeck, 1999), pp. 73–106. 115 A recent, popularized version of this Hegelian notion is Francis Fukuyama, The End of History and the Last Man, (New York: The Free Press, 1992). A Marxist specimen of this idea was formulated by the Hungarian philosopher Georg Lukács, Geschichte und Klassenbewusstsein, 1923, o.c.

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closed, but will always remain open to change and development. He points out also that the closely related idea that the future can be spelled out by means of ‘laws of development’, is equally false. The laws of nature can be discovered but there are no laws of history and culture which enable us to ﬁx future developments and changes. Without mentioning the name of its author he castigates the bestseller of his days, The Decline of the West, in which Spengler claims to be able to predict the future by means of a morphology of world history. He calls it ‘a book borne by the mood of an old man’.116 But in his days there was, of course, a more serious opponent to systematic philosophy: vitalism (Lebensphilosophie). It adheres strongly, as we saw, to the evolutionist idea that nature and culture are in perpetual change and development. Particularly ‘life’ in all its manifestations should, according to this philosophical current, not be kept hostage in allegedly rigid systematic frames of reference. Philosophical systems, vitalists believe, are by deﬁnition closed systems which do not allow for change and development. According to this vitalistic belief ideas in systems resemble fossils stuck in ancient rock-formations. As we saw before, Rickert rejects this idea. Philosophy, from his point of view, is systematic or is nothing, which is not to say that a philosophical system need be closed and rigid. He is proponent of an open system in which the past is viewed as being unﬁnished and the future as being open. Yet, he realizes at the same time that the very idea of a system cannot be radically open, since it needs some degree of identity in the sense of demarcation (Begrenztheit) and rounding oﬀ (Abrundung). In a system the component parts are functionally related to each other, and do so in some sort of hierarchical structure. In this respect, as I have said earlier, Rickert adheres to a functionalist point of view. He escapes this dilemma of a system which is nevertheless open and ﬂexible by distinguishing once more between form and substance. He does so, however, in an argument which must strike one on ﬁrst sight as being rather odd. Of course, he argues, culture is

116 ‘ein von greisenhafter Stimmung getragenes Buch über den Untergang des Abendlandes’, Rickert, o.c., p. 349. Oswald Spengler, Der Untergang des Abendlandes, 2 vols., 1922, (München: Oskar Beck Verlag, 1923, 44th ed.). As to Rickert’s rejection of historicism, the contemporary reader is, of course, reminded of Karl R. Popper, The Poverty of Historicism, 1957, (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1969) with the main argument of which Rickert would have agreed.

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perennially subjected to substantial changes and developments. In this respect he can adopt the idea of evolution and its endemic change without hesitation. Yet, everything may be subjected to development, except development itself. It is senseless to say that development-as-form did once upon a time not exist, and then, gradually, i.e. developmentally, emerged and then evolved into what it apparently is today. Everything and everyone develops, except development itself. Historical substances perennially change according to a development as form, but development itself as form to which substances comply, remains ﬁxed, unchanged, stable, and rather ‘lifeless’. ‘We acknowledge’, he concludes, ‘substantial evolutionism unconditionally. The evolutionism of form is rejected by us equally decidedly.’117 It stands to reason that his system of values will also be formal, not substantial. Substantially, values as they ﬁnd expression (are ‘objectiﬁed’) in human value-judgments and in cultural goods like institutions, are non-systematic, always changing and developing and thus rather chaotic. In this respect vitalism is correct. However, there are meta-historical forms or structures according to which these cultural substances are molded, put into shape. These formal (transcendent) value-structures are systematic, and Rickert sets out to reconstruct these systematic structures. They present a kind of ahistorical, systematic matrix which puts the non-systematic, historical, chaotic values in a formal order. True to his heterological method he formulates this systematic structure in terms of three pairs of conceptual alternatives: (a) objects (Sachen) and persons, (b) activity and contemplation, (c) sociality and a sociality. However, as we shall see instantly, this is still not systematic enough since an overarching concept which puts these forms in a hierarchy and enables us to classify the values, value-judgments and cultural goods, is still missing. This concept, according to Rickert, is the idea of full-ﬁllment (VollEndung). It is the concept which encompasses the three realms discussed above, as well as the formal conceptual alternatives (a), (b) and (c). As we shall see, we have then ﬁnally left the theoretical world of scientiﬁc philosophy and entered the super-real, yes sur-real, world of metaphysics. All this, of course, needs further explanation.

117 ‘Den inhaltlichen Evolutionismus erkennen wir unbedingt an. Den Evolutionismus der Form lehnen wir ebenso entschieden ab.’ Ibid., p. 352.

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The formal matrix of value development Irrespective of its historical substance each geographically and historically determined culture,118 which emerged once upon a time and eventually will perish again, consists of three elements: (1) non-empirical, ‘unreal’ values which are or are not valid; (2) empirical, ‘real’ goods in which these unreal values are tangibly embodied; (3) living subjects (human beings) who actively evaluate in value-judgments the goods and the values. The juxtaposition of (3) vis-à-vis (1) and (2), i.e. the evaluating subject vis-à-vis the evaluated object, is a pivotal form in all cultures, irrespective of their substance and substantial evolution. Historical cultures change and diﬀer among themselves, yet there will always be subjects who evaluate objective goods and values. In this relationship between subjects, objects and values, Rickert then distinguishes three alternatives which together represent a formal and systematic matrix: (a) objects (Sachen) and persons; (b) contemplation and activity; (c) the social and the non-social. We must brieﬂy discuss them since they are the very nucleus of his philosophical system. (a) Objects and persons Rickert then discusses ﬁrst the complex relationship between an evaluating subject and the evaluated objects. He starts by saying that the relationship between a subject and scientiﬁc or aesthetic objects diﬀers logically from the relationship between a personality and an ethical ‘object’. In the latter case, as we shall see, there actually is no ‘object’. He proposes to start with the relationship of the subject who makes a theoretical statement, or better: a theoretical judgment (Urteil ). The crucial value is truth, or, for that matter, reality: is the statement true, does it cover reality adequately? In other words, a statement

118 Rickert uses the concept of culture in this section in a dual manner. In this sentence culture is similar to civilization. Cf. the idea of civilizations that come and go in world history. But culture is also used in terms of the totality of values and meanings in a given period of time. In the next chapter in which we discuss his idea of a Kulturwissenschaft (cultural science) vis-à-vis Naturwissenschaft (natural science) culture (Kultur) is employed as a non-psychological alternative for mind (Geist as in Geisteswissenschaft). Incidentally, the idea expressed by Rickert that civilizations will eventually perish comes close to the historicism of Spengler which he had just rejected. However, it does not play a pivotal role in his theory of value systems.

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made in the First Realm is a theoretical and objective, empirical good, if it carries the value of truth/reality. But more important still, the act of the subject—the judgment he makes—is only true or theoretically valuable, if he has the intention to make (or to understand) a true statement. But this should not be interpreted psychologically. That is, the objective good (the statement made) radiates its theoretical (scientiﬁc) value, i.e. truth/reality, into the subject. The logical center, Rickert argues, lies in all circumstances in the statement as an objective good which in view of the subject contains a transcendent logical value, and constitutes a transcendent value-structure (Wertgebilde). It does not reside in the subject from where it would presumably radiate to the object. Although he does not say so expressedly, Rickert obviously rejects here Brentano’s psychological focus on the intentionality of human behavior.119 Things are rather similar in the world of atheoretical, aesthetic goods, values and value-judgments. There is, on the one hand, the work of art, an aesthetic good which carries as its form an aesthetic, unreal value, comparable to the true sentence with its transcendent, formal, logical value. But there is, on the other hand, the evaluating behavior of the subject with his immanent aesthetic sense of beauty which, however, as in the case of the theoretical, logical judgment, is determined by the transcendent meaning of the object of art. Thus, in the worlds of science and the arts the objects are crucial as contents to which the values (truth, beauty) are attached as their forms. True sentences and beautiful pieces of art, i.e. scientiﬁc and aesthetic goods, are objects which carry their values (truth, beauty) as their forms, irrespective of the subjective experiences of the subjects. In fact, the truth of a sentence or the beauty of a work of art exists even if there were no persons to understand the sentence or behold the art object. They are indeed objects, things, Sachen which carry their transcendent meaning, while the subjects receive their immanent meaning from these objects. This is, of course, a remarkable ‘objectivism’ on the part of Rickert. He would now reject the well-known cliché that beauty is in the eye of the beholder, as an unacceptable relativism, comparable to the statement that truth is dependent on the mind and the moods of the individual who hears or reads the scientiﬁc statement. After all, the objective goods (true statements,

119 This is remarkable because we saw earlier that he adopted Brentano’s intentionality.

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beautiful objects of arts) radiate their meaning (truth, beauty) to the subjects concerned. However, it then remains unclear what precisely the role of these subjects is. It seems obvious that there must be subjects who in meaning bestowing acts (Aktsinn) in the Third Realm impose these (‘positive’ as well as ‘negative’) theoretical and aesthetic values of the Second Realm as forms on the objects in the First Realm as contents, rendering the latter into true statements and beautiful objects of art. Consequently, the subjective sense of truth or beauty radiates from these meaning bestowing acts by the subject ﬁrst, and from the true statement or beautiful art object next. Beauty may not be initially in the eye of the beholder, but it is, to begin with, in the act of beholding in terms of the a priori form ‘beautiful’ that there is beauty at all. And after this act the good, i.e. the object of art beheld, may then radiate its beauty to the beholder—and we may add sociologically, to people who follow the taste of this beholder. In any case, it is the beholder who initially ‘imposes’ the a priori form ‘beauty’ on the content beheld, transforming the latter into a beautiful and then also beauty-radiating piece of art. Rickert’s fallacious ‘objectivism’ is, it seems to me, caused by his emphasis on aesthetic contemplation which will be discussed shortly. There is, in other words, an unsolved tension between his notion of Aktsinn and his emphasis upon contemplation.

The theoretical and aesthetic values and goods are compared next with the ethical values. Rickert sees an important diﬀerence here. To begin with, in ethics subjects ought to be autonomous and active subjects, i.e. personalities with a free will (free in the Kantian sense) who unlike the contemplative attitude of the theoretical or aesthetic subjects, are active. In fact, subjective action is the essence of ethics. (Once more, action is the essence also of the Aktsinn in the case of theoretical and aesthetic values!) In the case of a scientiﬁc statement or a piece of art, truth or beauty radiates to the subjects from these goods. However, the predicate ‘moral’ or ‘ethical’ refers at all times to the actions taken by the actor, and do not ‘radiate’ from his actions. The ethical good cannot be separated from the ethically acting subject, in contrast to the theoretical and aesthetic goods which could be and should be separated from the theoretical or aesthetic subjects. The will of a person is not called ‘ethical’ or ‘moral’, because he produces ethical goods, but it is the subjective intention (Gesinnung) that counts, irrespective of the outcome of the actions taken. This is, Rickert argues, the opposite of an ‘ethic of results’ (Erfolgsethik). It is an ‘ethic of subjective intention’ (Gesinnungsethik).120 When a person, Rickert claims, tries to save someone’s life, his action will not

120

Rickert, o.c., p. 361.

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become more moral, when he succeeds, or less moral, when he fails. Not the result of an action is morally good, but the result willed is. He quotes Goethe’s Mephistopheles who calls himself part of the power that always wants the bad and creates the good.121 He even formulates the diﬀerence in terms of a general ‘law’: ‘Everywhere the value must be part of a good and must from here radiate into the behavior of the evaluating subject, or, the other way around, the value must be found in the behavior of the subject and from there transfer itself to the object or the good.’122 Max Weber has a rather diﬀerent view on both types of ethic which he labels Gesinnungsethik, usually translated as ‘ethic of ultimate ends’, and Verantwortungsethik, ‘ethic of responsibility’. He sees an ‘abysmal contrast’ between the two. The German Gesinnung is hard to translate. It is an emotional cast of mind, or fundamental attitude which in the end is rather irrational. Someone who acts in terms of ultimate ends, Weber argues, will always blame others: the world, the stupidity of other people, or the will of God who created him such. The person who acts in terms of an ethic of responsibility will take the average deﬁciencies of mankind and the world into account, and assume the full responsibility for the results of his own actions. The world and the others are not to be blamed when things go wrong. The only responsibility the Gesinnungsethiker feels is, according to Weber, to prevent the ﬂame of his pure conviction from going out—the ﬂame, for instance, Weber adds, of the protest against the injustice of the social order. It is his ultimate aim to light the ﬂame time and again which is, if looked at from the perspective of its possible results, quite irrational. Weber continues with the observation that no ethic can avoid the fact that for the realization of morally good ends often morally precarious or dangerous means have to be employed, or the fact that evil side eﬀects may and often will occur. No ethic can determine, when and to which degree a morally good end would justify morally hazardous or dangerous means. Rickert refers here to Gesinnung: when an autonomous person acts in accordance with his will to perform his duty in life, he acts in a morally good way, irrespective of the means that are employed. Weber would not agree. It depends on the situation what the moral balance between ends and means ought to be. In politics the use of violence is such an ethical dilemma. In times of war or revolution the use of force or violence is a morally diﬀerent act than in times of peace and tranquility. Weber observes incidentally that it often happens that adherents of the ethic of ultimate

121

Rickert, ibid., p. 359. ‘Überall muss der Wert entweder am Gut haften und von hier aus in das Verhalten des wertenden Subjekts hineinstrahlen, oder es muss umgekehrt der Wert im Verhalten des Subjekts zu ﬁnden sein und sich von da auf das Objekt oder das Gut übertragen.’ Ibid., p. 360. 122

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ends ﬁrst propagate their ‘love against violence’ and next call for violence as the last violence which will end all violence.123 Rickert who did not discuss the morally crucial distinction between ends and means, did at one point brieﬂy touch on Weber’s position. People, he argues, should of course always tell the truth. The ethical duty of veracity is an essential personal value. However, it is possible that a conscientious person may in certain circumstances be morally urged to lie, for instance when he, in doing so, serves a socio-ethical objective, the realization of which he feels to be his duty or obligation. A theoretical ‘non-truth’ is not the same as a morally objectionable lie. A scientiﬁcally proven truth can never enlarge the value of a moral personality, nor can an untrue sentence degrade it. There is a distinct diﬀerence between a real theoretical truth and personal moral veracity.124

What is the hallmark of a moral person? Of what, Rickert asks, ought the person to be conscious in order to be rightfully called a moral person? He gives a simple answer which comes close to the (incidentally often misinterpreted) ‘ethics of duty’ of Kant: we value a person as a moral person, when he wills and does what he deems to be correct, i.e. when he believes that he ought to do what he does. ‘Ought to’—that is in German Sollen, i.e. Pﬂicht, duty. The notion of Sollen is thus a precondition for the moral Wollen, the moral Will. But he adds immediately, as he did before, that this is not Nietzschean Slave Morality, because the truly moral person is not a slave. He is autonomous. His will is free. In fact, freedom of the will is comparable to truth and beauty as formal values. Not the psychological act of willing which only carries it, but autonomy of the personality is the true object of ethics and its validity is the central problem of ethics. Thus, in the perennial philosophical dilemma between ‘determinism’ and ‘voluntarism’ Rickert opts for the latter.125 The remarkably ‘subjectivistic’ conclusion is that it is impossible to speak of an objective ethical good, existing in the First Realm

123 Max Weber, ‘Politik als Beruf ’, 1920, in: Max Weber, Gesammelte Politische Schriften, (Tübingen: Mohr-Siebeck, 1958), pp. 549–554. 124 Rickert, o.c., p. 364. 125 In this he ﬁnds Isaiah Berlin on his side. See Isaiah Berlin, Four Essays on Liberty, (Oxford, New York: Oxford University Press, 1969), in particular the Introduction, pp. IX–LXIII. Ernest Nagel criticizes Berlin’s voluntarism in defense of a determinism which is based on a natural-scientiﬁcally oriented logic: Ernest Nagel, The Structure of Science. Problems in the Logic of Scientiﬁc Explanation, 1961, (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1974, 4th ed.), pp. 599–605. Nagel refers here to Berlin, Historical Inevitability, (London, New York: Oxford University Press, 1954).

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like the true statement or the beautiful work of art. The nature of ethics is exclusively dependent on the duty conscious will of the free, autonomous personality. Actually, Rickert continues, a moral person wills an autonomous, free will. In a sense, the free will itself, or rather its autonomy, is a moral good. This is a remarkable state of aﬀairs: ‘We want (wollen) [. . . .] subjectively ethically something that is objectively ethical; that is, a will, that wants autonomy autonomously, is moral in a dual manner, i.e. he is morally motivated, he wills because of duty, and what he wills, is itself morality, namely freedom realized in a duty conscious willing.’126 (b) Contemplation and activity Closely related, yet logically quite diﬀerent, is the next alternative in the relationship between subjects, objects and values. In contemplation as enacted in the theoretical spheres of science and logic as well as in the atheoretical, aesthetic spheres of the arts, the subject is distanced from the independent object. Mysticism may present an exception here, since the subject allegedly merges with the object. But then, Rickert remarks ironically, as the word indicates mysticism is a mystery and therefore philosophically not of any importance. Scientiﬁc research is a telling example of this distance between subject and object, because after all science renders everything it focuses on into an object!127 Also in the aesthetic contemplation there is no room for an identiﬁcation of the beholder of art and the object of art. One looks at a painting, or a sculpture, or a play on the stage, one listens to the performance of a piece of music.128

126 ‘Wir wollen [. . . .] subjektiv ethisch etwas objektiv Ethisches, oder eine Wille, der autonom die Autonomie will, ist zwiefach sittlich, d.h. einmal sittlich motiviert, er will aus Pﬂicht, und das, was er will, ist selbst das Sittliche: die Freiheit verwirklicht im pﬂichtbewusstsen Wollen.’ Ibid., p. 361. 127 Rickert does not refer at this point to intuitionist methodologies like Verstehen as empathy, as a kind of merging with the object of investigation. Phenomenological Wesensschau too comes close to such an obfuscation of the distance between the subject and the object. As we have seen in Chapter Two Rickert reckons all this to vitalism (Lebensphilosophie) and rejects it summarily. 128 Here again there have been opposite opinions. The Russian actor and stage director Konstantin Stanislavski (1863–1938) who staged several plays of Anton Chekhov, professed naturalism and realism on the stage which should lead to empathy and even catharsis in the audiences. This was contested radically by the Marxist playwright Bertolt Brecht (1898–1956) who called this ‘typically bourgeois’. In his plays he employed various ‘estrangement techniques’ (like banners above the stage

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Things are quite diﬀerent in human activity since it works upon and aﬀects objects. For instance, if we bestow meaning on objects we interfere with them, we in a sense draw them into our lives. That may even go so far that the distance between subject and object is altogether removed. This is deﬁnitely the case with ethical behavior. Before action is ethical, the demand ( das Gebot, or das Sollen) stands as it were opposite to the will (der Wille, or das Wollen) as something strange or alien. Rickert does not give the following example, but it may be helpful to understand his theory. Living in a strange culture one will at ﬁrst not understand its valid values and ruling norms. The demands will be alien and strange, cannot be absorbed into one’s own free will. But the moment one begins to act morally, i.e. the moment one begins to bestow meaning on the moral values and norms, and the moment one applies them to one’s actions as the autonomous personality one after all always is, the separation between will and demand is lifted. There is and always will be a tension between the will and the demand (between Wollen and Sollen), but the ultimate aim of moral behavior is the victory of the will over the demand, and next the fusion of the two. This is, as we have seen, diﬀerent in contemplation where the object maintains its distance towards the subject, where, in other words, the object remains a case (Sache), on which the (theoretical or aesthetic) values and meanings are bestowed. In moral behavior, on the contrary, the demand is being lifted up into the subject, into the moral personality. Rickert adds the logical distinction between form and substance. Also in this respect there are diﬀerences to be taken into account, when we construct a systematic theory of values. For example, in the case of theoretical and aesthetic contemplation there are substances which are, as it were, molded into forms. Rickert formulates it as follows: ‘the form can only encircle the substance as a vessel. There exists no work of art with an aesthetic meaning, in which

with provocative texts) in order to force the audience to reﬂect on what it saw, and to learn from it. He laid the foundations for the educational theatre of the 1960’s and 1970’s. See his manifesto Bertolt Brecht, Kleines Organon für das Theater, (‘Small Organon for the Theatre’), 1948, (Frankfurt a.M.: Suhrkamp Verlag, 1960). Incidentally, Rickert does not discuss the position of creative artists like painters, sculptors, composers, writers, which is the more remarkable since his wife was a professional sculptor. He would, it seems to me, categorize them in the active sphere where the subject acts upon the object and imposes forms on it.

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everything is form, and which at the same time possesses autonomous aesthetic signiﬁcance. A content shows itself always to be structured or formed in such a way that it works aesthetically also as a substance.’129 In other words, in the case of a painting or sculpture form and substance are beheld as an unquestionable unity. Of course, Rickert adds, one can object by saying that in art forms are essential, and that they can or should be discussed and studied independently of substance, but that is a theoretical statement about the aesthetic meaning of art. It is not an aesthetic beholding of art. Pure, formal art does exist only as jewelry, not as an autonomous aesthetic phenomenon.130 In logic and science, i.e. in the sphere of theoretical contemplation, form and substance are much more loosely connected. In the concepts and theories of the sciences there are, of course, substances which even in the case of mathematics are ‘irrational’, but they are encased by ‘rational’ forms which can be formulated and studied independently of the substance, as is done, for instance, in formal logic. This has led in mathematics to the opposition of ‘rationalists’ who think exclusively in terms of the rational forms, and ‘irrationalists’ (e.g. the ‘intuitionists’) who closely link the irrational substance to the rational forms.131 The relationship between form and substance is diﬀerent in the sphere of activity. In moral behavior, for example, it is diﬃcult to distinguish between the two, since the form is the Sollen, the demand, on the one hand, and the freedom, or autonomy of the person on the other hand. The demand ought to merge completely with the free will of the moral personality. If there is still resistance to this merger, the will is not yet completely moral, and we may add, although Rickert did not draw this conclusion, the will is not free either. As to the latter, if the demand is blindly obeyed as a command,

129 ‘die Form kann den Inhalt nur umschliessen wie ein Gefäss. Es gibt kein Kunstwerk mit ästhetischen Sinn, in dem alles Form ist, und das zugleich eine selbstständige ästhetische Bedeutung besitzt, sondern stets zeigt sich ein Inhalt so gestaltet oder geformt, dass er auch als Inhalt ästhetisch wirkt.’ Rickert, o.c., p. 366. 130 The remark about jewelry may have been inspired by the education of his youngest son Franz Rickert at the Munich academy for design. He, of course, could not have knowledge of so-called ‘conceptual art’. He probably would have denied its aesthetic signiﬁcance and meaning. 131 Rickert discussed this in more detail in his essay Das Eine, die Einheit und die Eins, o.c. He probably refers here to the intuitionist mathematics of the Dutch mathematician L. E. J. Brouwer. Cf. the Dutch biography by Dirk van Dalen, L. E. J. Brouwer, 1881–1966, (Amsterdam: Bert Bakker, 2002).

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as in the dictum Befehl ist Befehl (‘command is command’), it is imposed on the substance of the moral behavior, but the inner conviction, the Gesinnung, based on and formed by autonomy, is absent or forcefully silenced. Rickert then juxtaposes theoretical contemplation and moral activity as follows: the former is the sphere of the theoretical reason (theoretische Vernunft) in which an independent object (‘Sache’ ) is molded by abstract forms; the latter is the sphere of the practical reason ( praktische Vernunft) in which moral demands penetrate the actions and in which moral substance and moral forms merge within the autonomous, free personality. In a sense the Persönlichkeit (personality) is the Sache (object) here. Contemplation and activity diﬀer ﬁnally in one more aspect: the former is ‘monistic’, the latter ‘pluralistic’. As to contemplation, there is actually nothing which cannot be observed, and quietly considered. Its ‘material’ is therefore inexhaustible. That demands uniﬁcation, or even simpliﬁcation. Rickert is somewhat cryptic here, but one could think of science as an example. The essential characteristic of science, it has been observed often, is the reduction of complexity, or as Mach formulated it: ‘economy of thought’ (Denkökonomie). The power of mathematics, Mach argued, is the avoidance of all unnecessary thoughts, the frugal use of thought operations. Numerals, he adds, present a system of beautiful simplicity and frugality.132 Rickert realizes that the concept ‘monism’ is, like ‘pluralism’, misleading but he cannot think of a better one. In any case, as to the complexity of contemplative material he argues that contemplative forms, like scientiﬁc concepts, or mathematical numerals, unify the material and reduce its complexity. This is quite diﬀerent in activity, as is illustrated by moral behavior. In this case the moral personality is the center, but as we shall see in the next section, the moral personality is always embedded in a social context of other personalities and this plurality must be maintained, cannot be uniﬁed and reduced. Moral demands have to be absorbed by many individual personalities the individuality of whom may not be destroyed. Pluralism, in other words, is an essential hallmark of moral activity. 132 Ernst Mach, ‘Die ökonomische Natur der physikalischen Forschung’, a lecture held in Vienna May 25, 1882. I used a Dutch translation in a volume of Mach’s lectures: Natuurkunde, wetenschap en ﬁlosoﬁe, (‘Physics, Science and Philosophy’), (Amsterdam: Boom/Meppel, 1980), pp. 72–94.

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(c) The non-social and the social The subject of ethical behavior is at all times and in all cultures always a human being which as an I (Ich) is related to a Thou (Du) as in a necessary, heterological correlation. Just as each subject needs an object in order to be a subject at all, each individual I needs at least one Thou in order to be a moral being. As in the case of the other alternatives we have discussed ( contemplation-activity, object-personality, form-substance, monism-pluralism), the correlation I-Thou is metahistorical, universal, or in Kantian terminology ‘pure’ (rein). But there is more than one Thou. There are the others who together with the I constitute a social community. The concept social (and its heterological counterpart non-social) is meant in this broad sense. The moral I is in this respect a social personality, the bearer of social values. This stands in contrast to the objects or goods of the theoretical and aesthetic contemplation which in their purity are non-social, since social connections are, at least with respect to their values and intrinsic meanings, irrelevant. Art and science do, of course, have social signiﬁcance, but what is meant here is the fact that their respective theoretical and aesthetic signiﬁcances do not depend on the social connection of persons. They rather possess their intrinsic values which in their purity (i.e. not always in reality) can be viewed as being non-social which is, of course, not the same as anti-social. In the social relationship between the I and the Thou there is in fact no subject that stands vis-à-vis an independent and non-social object. The other is a subject too and in ethical behavior I do respect his individuality, yet view him as the other part of a ‘we’, of which I am a constitutive component also. Incidentally, this correlation between the I and the Thou is not exclusively one of friendship. Also a foe will come close to me and forge a social bond. In any case, I do not place the other as in a contemplative mood in front of me as an object, but we enter into a mutual (friendly or inimical) social bond. In fact, the moral form of personal autonomy and the moral form of the demand (Sollen) is implanted into this bond: I shall respect the other as an autonomous person, as an I, and I compel myself to meet and treat him as a Thou who is an intrinsic component of our social bond. If someone else, another I, just remains an object of contemplation with which I am not at all connected, not even in animosity, I will treat him with moral indiﬀerence, or even negation.133 133 Rickert comes close here to the social psychology of George Herbert Mead (1963–1931) who developed a theory of social interaction in which the I and the

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We now possess, Rickert claims, a ‘net of metahistorical concepts’134 which constitute the searched for system of goods and the values that are attached to them. He divided them in two groups which can be summarized as follows: A. Contemplation Non-social objects Forms which envelop objects Monism (Science, art)

B. Activity Social personalities Forms which penetrate into objects Pluralism (Ethical behavior)

Rickert believes to have thus caught the universal, metahistorical scheme for all expressions of human contemplation and activity and draws the following conclusion: ‘In this way we transit from the relativity of history into the absolute, i.e. into what is valid for every historical culture.’135 The conceptual system which we discussed in brief outlines above claims to oﬀer an interpretive scheme which covers theoretically, beyond the diﬀerent, specialized empirical sciences, the idea of reality-in-toto, i.e. the Weltall. Rickert admits that it is an empty scheme, but that is unavoidable since it consists of pure concepts, reine Begriﬀe. Only its application to distinct, substantial, empirical problems of historical cultures is able to demonstrate its fruitfulness and usefulness. ‘In the philosophical science of the world totality the road leads necessarily from the general and the formally empty gradually towards the particular and substantially ﬁlled.’136 Rickert’s philosophy of values professes to be systematic. The alternatives A and B provide an interpretive matrix, but is, of course, not yet systematic. What is lacking, is a successive order, a hierarchy of the values. The A–B matrix is in that respect not systematic enough. This leads us to the most abstract and diﬃcult part of Rickert’s general philosophy.

Other play mutually reinforcing roles. Cf. my Dutch introductory text De Theorie van het Symbolisch Interactionisme, (‘The Theory of Symbolic Interactionism’), (Amsterdam: Boom/Meppel, 1973), pp. 73–86. Also Herbert Blumer, Symbolic Interactionism. Perspective and Method, (Englewood Cliﬀs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1969). 134 Rickert, o.c., p. 372. 135 ‘So kommen wir überall aus dem Relativen der Geschichte ins Absolute, d.h. für alle geschichtliche Kultur Gültige.’ Idem. 136 ‘In der philosophischen Wissenschaft vom Weltganzen führt der Weg notwendig vom Allgemeinen und formal Leeren allmählich zum Besonderen und inhaltlich Erfüllten.’ Ibid., p. 374.

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chapter four The metaphysical principle of full-fillment137

Searching for a ranking order of values one runs into the obvious problem that they are ‘unreal’ and thus too abstract to be placed in such a ranking order. However, as we saw before, values become ‘concrete’ and empirical in the cultural goods and the evaluations or value-judgments. Now goods, like scientiﬁc theories, works of art, or cultural institutions, are also hard to classify in a hierarchy, since they exist in a complex and chaotic multitude of countless particularities. However, it is possible to construct a ranking order in the evaluations, or value-judgments of the value-relating subjects. But there is also an additional, though related, problem. Rickert’s systematic philosophy aims at the formation of a theory which enables us to grasp and understand reality-in-toto. The problem with the three realms is, of course, that it is an ontology which still compartmentalizes reality into three parts, the First, the Second and the Third Realm. Such an ontology does obviously not represent an encompassing, totalizing conceptualization! It is at this point that he introduces the concept of full-ﬁllment which is no longer theoretical (scientiﬁc) and ontological, but metaphysical. It also represents the ‘top’ of the scale of values. Naturally, this presents him with a formidable problem, because how can one speak of and about a metaphysical reality without theoretical (scientiﬁc) concepts? Let us follow Rickert’s argumentation. Of superior importance to us human beings are those values which are relevant to the explanation of the meaning of life (Deutung des Lebenssinnes). It is at this point that the concept of Leben which plays such a crucial (metaphysical) role in the philosophy of life, so much criticized by Rickert as we saw in Chapter Two, assumes an important position in his own philosophy of values. He adds immediately that the evaluating subject in search of the realization of ‘lively’ values 137 This section is a brief discussion of a chapter in which Rickert develops his ideas about a crucial concept in his philosophy, namely Voll-Endung. Cf. Rickert, Allgemeine Grundlegung der Philosophie I, o.c., pp. 375–385. The correct spelling of the German word is Vollendung, meaning consummation. The hyphen in Rickert’s concept underlines the deeper philosophical meaning of the word which literally translated would mean something like ‘bringing to a full or complete end’, but that is of course awkward. I chose for the literal translation ‘full-ﬁllment’ with the original hyphen. This, I think, comes closest to Voll-Endung. See also his Die Logik des Prädikats und das Problem der Ontologie, o.c., pp. 185–198: ‘Das logische Problem der Metaphysik’, (‘The logical problem of metaphysics’).

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(die “lebendige” Wertverwirklichung) is not the objectiﬁed I of psychology as a specialized, scientiﬁc discipline. It is the transcendental and thus metahistorical ideal I in the Third Realm who in the Aktsinn bestows meaning on values in the Second Realm, and relates them to goods and value-judgments in the First Realm. And it should be borne in mind also that the empirical, historical particularities of values and evaluations are disregarded here. The focus is on the general nature of the evaluating behavior that creates goods. Or, in other words, the focus is on the meaning of all evaluations and processes of goods creation. It is a universal, ahistorical, formal fact that the subject who bestows meaning on values and links values to goods and value-judgments does not do so at random, but sets himself an aim. In other words, the Aktsinn is not an aimless activity but it is a goal-oriented ambition (Streben), the goal or end being the realization of the value called ‘meaningful life’. This end, it is the ambition, should be realized fully, completely, without leaving empty spots—i.e. voll-endlich, ‘fullﬁlled’. After all, one does not want to have a life which is just a little bit meaningful. Yet, this ideal will never be completely realized, will always remain a tendency or ambition. If it were ever totally realized, all evaluation and all ambition of consummation would come to an end. (It would be, we may add, heaven-on-earth.) That is, of course, diﬃcult to fathom in this world. It must remain an ideal in the Kantian meaning of the concept, i.e. a pure (transcendental) possibility rather than an empirical reality. Now it is apparent that Voll-Endung, ‘full-ﬁllment’ is in itself a theoretical, namely philosophical value according to which the other values (of group A and of group B) can be ranked. However, in order to be truly systematic one needs to juxtapose heterologically voll-endlich, ‘full-ﬁlled’ and un-endlich, ‘endless’. There are, after all, goods which by deﬁnition can never reached the full-ﬁllment of a truly meaningful life. There is the ambition to reach a totality, but this is but an ‘endless’ totality, or in other words: a totality which is never completed. A telling example of such a cultural good is presented by the sciences. They focus on all the components and dimensions of empirical reality, set out to describe and analyze them as completely as possible, but they never come to rest, never reach the ﬁnal goal of a total totality. Likewise, the aim of explaining what the meaning of life is all about will never be fully reached. It is doomed to remain an endless totality.

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But there is the heterological counterpart of this endless totality in the ‘full-ﬁlled’ particularity in which the ambition of ‘full-ﬁllment’ focuses upon a ﬁnite part of the inexhaustible reality. In a sense, the full end is realized (e.g. the meaning of life is being experienced and expressed), yet this fulﬁllment remains restricted to a part or a component of reality only. As an empirical example of this domain of cultural goods one could refer to works of art which do represent ‘full-ﬁllment’, i.e. the perfect work of art, yet it is a ‘full-ﬁlled’ particularity.138 The thesis of ‘endless’ totality and the heterothesis of the ‘fullﬁlled particularity can be bridged by a third principle: the ‘full-ﬁlled’ totality. This then is ﬁnally the most complete, but radically transcendent, i.e. metaphysical totality. An obvious example is presented by religion. In most empirical, historical religions one ﬁnds the ambition to present values that provide the deﬁnitive answer to the quest for the meaning of life. In mysticism, we may add, it is claimed that a ‘full-ﬁlled’ totality can be reached in a radical contemplation of Nothingness which puts an end to all evaluations and all ambitions. We may add aesthetic or erotic experiences as well, but the problem is that these are atheoretical realms, whereas Rickert’s philosophy is in search for a theoretical (scientiﬁc) theory of reality-in-toto. In science we work with logically formal concepts and theories but they do not appertain to sur-reality of metaphysics. Science and metaphysics are two logically totally diﬀerent realities and there is no heterology that could bridge the two. Rickert then escapes the dilemma by introducing the notion that in metaphysics we rather think and theorize with symbols and symbolic theories which yield not a scientiﬁc but an allegorical knowledge. The meaning of life or the meaning of history belongs to a reality which lies beyond the three realms discussed. It is what in German is called das Jenseits, the Beyond which cannot be experienced by the senses and be known by means of rational concepts, categories and theories. The Beyond can only be suggested and intuitively, i.e. non-rationally, non-theoretically, be understood by means of symbols, allegories, similes. These metaphysical ‘concepts’ do yet 138 Fulﬁllment, it seems to me, is the equivalent of perfection. Perfection can never be reached in life in toto and in general, but a particular piece of art, or a particular scientiﬁc theory can in our evaluative judgment come close to it. We then exclaim: ‘It’s perfect!’.

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not ﬂoat around freely and arbitrarily. Metaphysics is always in need of an empirical reality which then is elevated symbolically to a Beyond which cannot be scientiﬁcally veriﬁed or falsiﬁed, but must be approached in faith or rejected in unbelief. This sur-reality is assumed as a philosophically (ontologically and epistemologically) unavoidable postulate. Finally, Rickert adds, the goods of the ‘endless’ totality, like the scientiﬁc search for an complete explanation of reality, can never reach their goal, remain in eternal development and expectation, and can therefore be labeled ‘future goods’ (Zukunftsgüter). In the case of particularity, however, goods like the temporary realization of aesthetic or erotic ambitions, may reach their aim for the moment. They are, as it were, islands of rest in the stream of developments. Rickert calls them ‘goods of the present’ (Gegenwartsgüter). The relation to time of the metaphysical ‘full-ﬁlled’ totality, is characterized by eternity while they can only be thought of as being timeless. Rickert calls them ‘goods of eternity’ (Ewigkeitsgüter), adds however that this concept is problematic since nothing can be said theoretically about their real existence. They can only be intimated by symbols, similes and allegories which do not yield knowledge but are to be embraced in faith, or rejected in unbelief. Conclusion This then completes Rickert’s theory of the system of values. We should add to the two groups A and B the matrix of the three tendencies towards a full-ﬁlled totality (endless totality; full-ﬁlled particularity; full-ﬁlled totality), and place them in the time dimensions of future, present and eternity. It is, Rickert acknowledges, an abstract and empty schematism which however has the advantage that it transcends the relativity of historical and empirical values, evaluations and goods, and presents a metahistorical, universal and systematic, admittedly very formal, structure of interpretation. This empty framework must then, of course, be ﬁlled with empirical applications which may derive their material from the scientiﬁc disciplines in the First Realm, yet should autonomously operate from the Third Realm, constantly ‘molding’ the substance of the objects and events in the First Realm by the forms of the values and meanings of the Second Realm.

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Rickert’s theory of values presents a vast panorama with quite original vistas on general philosophy, on epistemology in particular, but also on the various ontologies which were popular then and now. The most remarkable element in this theory is the pivotal role of the so-called Aktsinn, the meaning bestowing act by which the in itself chaotic and in that sense irrational objects and events in the First Realm are being transformed by the means of the formal values in the Second Realm into meaningful ‘sense-data’ (Russell). Scientiﬁc theories and statements, aesthetic works of art, moral acts and behavior, religious beliefs and rituals, etc.—they all are being transformed by the Aktsinn into meaningful components of culture, enabling us to formulate a general cultural philosophy in search of the contours of reality in toto beyond the compartmentalized realities of the various scientiﬁc disciplines. Two main questions remain open in my mind. As I observed above, there seems to be a conceptual rift and logical ﬂaw in the two notions of contemplation and Aktsinn. It is, to begin with, questionable whether contemplation is that crucial in the worlds of science and the arts, as they demand hard work, even labor, on the part of professional scientists and artists, but certainly also on the part of the students of scientiﬁc research or the amateur beholders of art (in particular of modern art). But also the very idea of Aktsinn, of meaning bestowing acts, stands in sharp contrast to the notion of contemplation. The meaning bestowing act which is as important in the theoretical and aesthetic worlds, as it is in the worlds of religion, erotic love and politics, is in the end an activity, not a contemplation. Rickert correctly views the Aktsinn as a crucial component of the sciences and the arts, yet sees contemplation as being crucial to them simultaneously. It is a remarkable contradiction. A second point of criticism refers to the fact that Rickert develops a rather comprehensive cultural philosophy which leaves the abstract abodes of his transcendental epistemology, but enters almost secretively into ontological and even metaphysical considerations and reﬂections. He enters into metaphysics even explicitly when he tries to complete his concept of reality-in-toto by the concept of full-ﬁllment as a postulate which can no longer be formulated theoretically and scientiﬁcally, but must be intimated by means of symbols, similes and allegories. Both transitions present, it seems to me, a logically illegitimate metabasis eis allo genos, a change-over to a logically altogether diﬀerent theoretical species, namely the world of what Rickert

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himself has deﬁned as being atheoretical. Symbolic allegories, after all, belong to the atheoretical reality of the arts or of religion and mythology. Moreover, the various sections of his general cultural philosophy come dangerously close to speciﬁc cultural sciences, such as history, sociology and in particular (social) psychology. That stands, of course, in contradiction to his thesis that philosophy should be an autonomous science alongside and distinguished from the specialized, natural and cultural sciences. This then leads to the question what precisely the conceptual and logical nature is of the natural and the cultural sciences. And more importantly, how can they be demarcated? It is the old, 19th century debate about the diﬀerences of the Naturwissenschaften and the Geisteswissenschaften and their alleged inherent opposition. Here too Rickert came up, as we shall see in the following chapter, with some original and noteworthy points of view.

CHAPTER FIVE

THE DEMARCATION OF NATURAL AND CULTURAL SCIENCE Nicht die “sachlichen” Zusammenhänge der“Dinge”, sondern die gedanklichen Zusammenhänge der Probleme liegen den Arbeitsgebieten der Wissenschaften zugrunde. Max Weber1

The Quarrel of the Ancients and the Moderns Rickert, we have seen recurrently, makes it a crucial point to reserve a special place for general philosophy as a science alongside to the empirical (natural and cultural) sciences. Philosophy, he once emphasized, is still the queen of the sciences but the days of her absolutist reign are over. She has been forced to reign in accordance with the parliament of the sciences—as a prima inter pares, we may add. There are, of course, the various philosophies of the diﬀerent scientiﬁc disciplines, as so many logical and methodological investigations of their respective disciplinary foundations, but it still has to be determined what it then is that render these investigations ‘philosophical’. As we have seen in the former chapters Rickert answers this question by laying out the basic structures of transcendental epistemology and the general philosophy of values and meanings. However, as to the empirical sciences, Rickert holds to the idea that the natural sciences, reigned by mathematics, are historically, ever since Copernicus, Galileo, Kepler and all the others, the model sciences. He was in fact quite positivistic about it. Yet, he also believes that these natural sciences run into serious logical problems of concept formation the moment values and meanings are to be taken

1 ‘Not the “real” connections of “things’, but the cognitive connections of problems, lie at the foundation of the working domains of the sciences.’ Max Weber, ‘Die “Objektivität” sozialwissenschaftlicher und sozialpolitischer Erkenntnis’, 1904, in: Gesammelte Aufsätze zur Wissenschaftslehre, (‘Collected Papers on the Logic of Science’), (Tübingen: Mohr-Siebeck, 1968, p. 166.

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into account. Natural scientists, he thinks, should not pretend to be the custodians of the only and exclusively correct approach to reality. This is scientism and Rickert rejects it as an inadequate, metaphysical ideology. In particular the study of the past, history as a scientiﬁc discipline, cannot be exercised adequately in exclusively natural-scientiﬁc terms. Obviously, the methodology and logic of history diﬀers from that of physics, or chemistry, or astronomy. This is the issue of the demarcation of Natural Science and Cultural Science as two (heterologically) related, yet diﬀerent approaches to reality. This is, of course, an old issue which began in the so-called ‘quarrel of the ancients and the moderns’ in the 18th century, continued in Germany in the debate on Naturwissenschaft versus Geisteswissenschaft and is, according to Rickert, solved in his heterological vision of a logical continuum between two constructed extremes, Naturwissenschaft (Natural Science) and Kulturwissenschaft (Cultural Science). They are to be seen as two correlated and mutually amplifying scientiﬁc methods. The conceptual limits of the former open the doors for the latter. Let us brieﬂy look in a few broad outlines at the history of this debate ﬁrst before we discuss Rickert’s quite original, yet often misinterpreted contribution to it. The Reformation and the Renaissance shared one fundamental objective: both searched for a renewal and transformation of postmedieval culture which allegedly had grown stale and abstract in scholasticism and ecclesiastic rituals. A return to the original texts of the Hebrew Old Testament and the Greek New Testament, and a close reading of Greek and Roman literature and philosophy in their original languages had to reinvigorate Christian faith and morals, as well as the arts, philosophy and the sciences. The art of printing made it possible for the laymen to read the Bible, printed sermons and theological treatises, and the emergence of urban, secular institutions of primary, middle and higher education improved the level of literacy, and thus the decline of intellectual dependence on the clerics on the part of the people. Meanwhile, the rapid growth of the capitalist economy in the trading cities, ﬁrst in Italy, later in Northern Europe, carried and broadened the Renaissance revitalization of post-medieval society economically. Educational institutions, formerly exclusively in the hands of the Roman Catholic clergy, Latin schools and universities, emerged and ﬂourished in this capi-

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talist, civic, and early-modern culture of the urban bourgeoisie which steadily grew in wealth and power.2 In this civic bourgeois culture it became a mark of distinction to be acquainted with the literature of the Ancients. One yearned for this distinction in view of the pretences and (gradually dwindling) power of the clergy and the nobility. The intellectual synthesis of this cultural consolidation through the Ancients was inaptly called philology. This was not the rather technical discipline which it has been since roughly the 19th century, but rather a general philosophy and ethos which put heavy emphasis upon the education of the young in letters and in rhetorical virtuosity. More an art and moral worldview than a science. To use an anachronistic expression, the aim of Renaissance philology was Bildung, i.e. the intellectual formation of a balanced personality. There was in this post-medieval, early-modern culture another force at work which gradually superseded this Renaissance focus on literary revitalization of culture. It was the spectacular emergence of the natural sciences and their successful applications in technology.3 It began roughly in the 16th century with the theory of solar centrism by Nicolaus Copernicus (1473–1543), and its further elaboration by astronomers like Tycho Brahe (1546–1601), Galileo Galilei (1564–1642) and Johannes Kepler (1571–1630). An early philosophical foundation was laid by Francis Bacon (1561–1626) who intended to open a new era of thought and research with his treatise Novum Organum (the new tools). It is in fact a methodological treatise, claiming that human progress will be served only, if man learns to master nature inductively

2 Cf. my monograph A Theory of Urbanity. The Economic and Civic Culture of Cities, (New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Publishers, 1998), in particular pp. 17–31: ‘Urbanity: Origins and Ramiﬁcations’. 3 It has become customary to speak of a ‘scientiﬁc revolution’, but it is historically questionable whether this is correct. The historian of science Steven Shapin, for instance, opens his book The Scientiﬁc Revolution, (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1996) with this clarion-call: ‘There was no such thing as the Scientiﬁc Revolution, and this is a book about it.’ He then deﬁnes the alleged revolution as ‘a coherent, cataclysmic, and climactic event that fundamentally and irrevocably changed what people knew about the natural world and how they secured proper knowledge of that world. It was the moment at which the world was made modern, it was a Good Thing, and it happened sometime during the period from the late sixteenth to the early eighteenth century.’ Ibid., p. 1. With fellow historians Shapin doubts ‘that there was any single coherent cultural entity called “science” in the seventeenth century to undergo revolutionary change. There was, rather, a diverse array of cultural practices aimed at understanding, explaining, and controlling the natural world, each with diﬀerent characteristics and each experiencing diﬀerent modes of change. (. . . .) The continuity of seventeenth-century natural philosophy with its medieval past is now routinely asserted.’ Ibid., p. 3f.

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through knowledge acquired by observations and experiments, and not by philosophical deductions in the train of medieval scholastic philosophers and theologians. Human knowledge has to be cleaned from prejudices which he called idola, mental fallacies. Science developed rapidly into a truly modern worldview and ethos which were no longer ruled by tradition and theology, but by mathematics and geometry, as is, for instance, testiﬁed by Benedict de Spinoza (1632–1677) in his Ethica more geometrico demonstranda (1677) and Isaac Newton (1642–1727) in his epoch-making book Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica, ﬁrst published in 1687. The literati of the Renaissance were called ‘Ancients’, the representatives of the rapidly growing natural sciences and their theorists were labeled ‘Moderns’. The growingly ﬁerce debate between them was seen as a true querelle, a Quarrel of the Ancients and the Moderns. Two philosophers were the leading spokesmen in this quarrel which Isaiah Berlin in a somewhat exaggerated fashion once called a battle.4 René Descartes (1596–1650) represented the Moderns, Giambattista Vico (1668–1744) the Ancients. Yet, this is too simple an opposition, because Vico held the French philosopher whom he in his writings endearingly addressed as ‘Renato’, in high esteem.5 He certainly did not reject science and the scientiﬁc method Descartes outlined in his celebrated Discours de la méthode (1637).6 He also sympathized with the Cartesian idea of the unity of sciences. He was in fact rather critical of Cartesianism, in particular where it became radicalized by Cartesians like Malebranche, Lamy, Arnauld and others.7 Vico saw in Cartesianism a new dogmatism and in that sense

4 Isaiah Berlin, ‘Giambattista Vico and Cultural History”, in: Isaiah Berlin, The Crooked Timber of Humanity, 1959, (New York: Vintage Books, 1990), p. 66: ‘the famous Battle of the Ancients and Moderns’. 5 See Elio Gianturco’s Introduction to his translation of De nostri temporis studiorum ratione, 1709, On the Study Methods of Our Time, (New York: The Library of Liberal Arts; The Bobbs-Merrill Company, 1965), p. XIII. Wilhelm Windelband called Vico ‘the lonely brooding Neapolitan’, in whom we should see the ﬁrst Romanic opponent of the mathematical natural sciences and of the rationalistic metaphysics of the era of Enlightenment. Wilhelm Windelband, Geschichtsphilosophie. Eine Kriegsvorlesung, (‘Philosophy of History. A War-Time Lecture’), in: Kantstudien, Ergänzungsheft, No. 38, 1916, p. 17. 6 ‘(Vico) did not impugn the validity of mathematical knowledge, but he did impugn the Cartesian theory of knowledge with its implication that no other kind of knowledge was possible.’ R. G. Collingwood, The Idea of History, 1946, (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1978), p. 64. For Collingwood’s discussion of Vico see ibid., pp. 63–71. 7 Gianturco, ibid., p. XXXII. He quotes a colleague, Maria Goretti, who concluded correctly: ‘Thus, Vico, the opponent of the geometric spirit, who is not, however, deaf to the powerful voices of the modern achievements of science and technique, appears to us, not so much the adversary of the Cartesian spirit, as, rather, the enemy of the intellectualistic schema: a schema which forces tumultuous, contradictory human nature into the straightjacket of an absolute truth, of a truth excogitated, dreamt of, but never to be actually met with in reality.’ Idem.

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a return to the Middle Ages. In his estimation the Cartesian Moderns were not really modern. Vico was, according to many, mistaken in defending Euclidian, ‘synthetic’ geometry as being superior to Cartesian ‘analytic’ geometry. However, in view of the discussions of the intuitionist mathematics in the ﬁrst half of the former century, he might, according to others, have had a point there.8 In any case, he was correct in rejecting Descartes’ and the Cartesians’ scientism, i.e. their belief that the Cartesian scientiﬁc method, based upon mathematics and geometry, could cover all of reality, not only nature but history and human beings as well. Nature can be objectiﬁed in this manner, Vico counters, but it is highly questionable, if not simply fallacious, to believe that history and the socio-cultural world of man can thus be adequately investigated and understood. Nature is created by God and lies open for man’s labor and research, but history and the socio-cultural world is constructed by human beings and must be approached by a diﬀerent method than the mathematically and geometrically founded method of Descartes and the Cartesians.9 Because the human socio-cultural world now and in the past is made up of and constructed by fellow human beings we are able to understand it adequately, unlike the sun, the rocks, the animals, in short ‘nature’, of which we can acquire knowledge but which we cannot really intuitively understand. This is what he meant by the often misinterpreted formula verum factum: ‘man can understand correctly only what he himself has made’. This understanding (Berlin calls it Verstehen which he opposed to Cartesian Wissen),10 Vico argues in his Scienza Nuova (1744), is a special epistemological gift—the phantasia puerilis, the youthful fantasy and curiosity which has been lost completely in Descartes’ rationalistic intellectus purus.11 The latter led to a disdain for the study of history and letters, to an anti-humanistic rejection of what later was going to be called humaniora, or moral sciences, or in Germany Geisteswissenschaften. With this emphasis upon youthful and imaginative fantasy Vico introduces in his historical epistemology an aesthetic, early romantic dimension which, of course, was totally alien to the adherents of the Enlightenment, whose view of man was thoroughly secularized and ‘naturalized’—i.e. God’s role as a deus ex machina in history was ﬁnished and man was an inalienable part of nature, sharing the uniformity which natural science imposed on nature.12 In Germany Johann Gottfried Herder (1744–1803), without 8

Gianturco, ibid., p. XXVI f. Berlin, l.c., p. 63. 10 Berlin, l.c., p. 62. 11 Gianturco, l.c., p. XXIX. Giambattista Vico, The New Science, transl. by T. G. Bergin, M. H. Fisch, (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1948). 12 Cf. Cliﬀord Geertz, ‘The Impact of the Concept of Culture on the Concept of Man’, in: Cliﬀord Geertz, The Interpretation of Cultures, (New York: Basic Books, 1973), pp. 33–54: ‘The Enlightenment view of man was, of course, that he was wholly of a piece with nature and shared in the general uniformity of composition which natural science, under Bacon’s urging and Newton’ guidance, had discovered there.’ Ibid., p. 34. 9

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probably possessing any detailed knowledge of Vico’s work, elaborated on this aesthetic approach.13 In his view it is the possession of language which enables us to understand other human beings and their social and cultural creations. By means of an emotional empathy (Hineinfühlen) into folksongs, folklore and literary traditions which in the end are creations of language, the historian can arrive at an understanding of historical individuals. Such individuals can be individual human beings, but also, and preferably from a scientiﬁc point of view, collectivities of individuals such as nations or Völker. Relying exclusively on observations the natural scientist can only conjecture about external causal processes, whereas the historian can get access to inner causes, such as motives, attitudes and cherished ends through empathic introspection. It is only through such a psychological introspection that the historian can ‘enter into’ the spirit of the time—the Zeitgeist— within which particular events occur. There is ‘objective’ historical material, but that has to be ordered by ‘subjective’ interventions which enable the historian to produce a coherent narrative.14 Herder was not only a protestant minister and a philosopher, but also an in his days well known and respected poet, friend and colleague of Goethe and Schiller. His aesthetic view of narrative history came close to an identiﬁcation of historical studies and historical novels, including the concomitant, typically romantic yearning for the past as a time with a value of its own, in many respects allegedly better than the civilization of the present.15

In this quarrel of the ancients and the moderns one issue stood out in particular as of special interest, i.e. the logical diﬀerence between 13 Cf. Isaiah Berlin, Vico and Herder, (London: Hogarth Press, 1976). In this section I relied heavily on F. M. Barnard, ‘Humanity and History: Causation and Continuity”, in: F. M. Barnard, Herder on Nationality, Humanity and History, (Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2003), pp. 105–131. Barnard, it seems to me, underexposes Herder’s theological belief that the continuity in history is due to God’s providence, whereas within this grand metaphysical framework particular histories of men and nations are divergent and characterized by contingency and discontinuity. Unlike and also against Voltaire and the Enlightenment philosophes, Herder thus maintained the traditional idea of God’s hand in history. See the Nachwort (Postscript) of Hans Dietrich Irmscher in his edition of Johan Gottfried Herder, Auch eine Philosophie der Geschichte zur Bildung der Menschheit, (‘Also a Philosophy of History for the Education of Humanity’), 1771, (Stuttgart: Philipp Reclam, 1990), pp. 140–159. 14 Barnard, l.c., p. 108. 15 Cf. Collingwood, o.c., p. 87. Needless to add that there is today a resurgence in the interest in narrative history. The social psychologist and philosopher George Herbert Mead (1863–1931) added an interesting dimension to this romantic looking back to the past: the romantic historian or the historical novelist identiﬁes with a distinct period of time in the past, identifying oneself with the heroes and heroines of the past and looking back from there at himself in the present in order to receive a better understanding of himself. It is a ‘journey of the self into the past’. Mead gives the novels of Sir Walter Scott and the interest of people in Gothic architecture as examples. George Herbert Mead, Movements of Thought in the Nineteenth Century, 1934, (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1962), p. 62.

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the natural sciences as generalizing disciplines in search of objective knowledge of causal laws, and the humaniora or moral sciences as particularizing disciplines, focusing upon individuals (either humans or collectivities like nations) and in search of a subjective understanding of such ‘particulars’ which are not based upon causality but on contingency. Most of the philosophers adhering to the humanistic approach were in favor of a balance between these two methods and worldviews (because that is what they in the end really were: worldviews with a speciﬁc ethos). But none of them came to a really satisfying solution of this old dilemma. Benedetto Croce (1866–1952) though came up with a radical answer: he severed the two, claiming that the individualizing focus upon the particular was the essential feature of art, whereas the generalizing approach on species of phenomena was typical of science.16 History to him was not a science but an art form. It has the task to narrate facts, he stated in an early paper, entitled ‘History subsumed under the Concept of Art’ (1919). Science cannot be descriptive, it tries to understand facts as instances of general laws. History, on the contrary, is essentially descriptive, aims at understanding historical facts but this understanding is not cognitive but rather empathic and emotional as in art. There is, however, a diﬀerence between history and art. The historian aims at narrating what really has happened and in that sense is true, whereas the artist narrates or represents what might have happened, focuses on the possible and the imaginary rather than on the real and the true. Needless to add that Croce was heavily inﬂuenced by Vico’s approach, and came close methodologically to Dilthey’s conception of Verstehen and Bergson’s theory of intuition.17

16 Cf. Collingwood’s extensive discussion of Croce’s philosophy of history in his The Idea of History, o.c., pp. 190–204. See also H. Wilson Carr, The Philosophy of Benedetto Croce. The Problem of Art and History, 1917, (New York: Russell & Russell, 1969). This is probably the ﬁrst English reproduction of Croce’s aesthetic philosophy, consisting of mostly very long, literal quotations. 17 Cf. Henri Bergson, ‘L’intuition philosophique’, 1911, in: Henri Bergson, La pensée et le mouvant. Essais et conférences, (‘Thought and the Moving. Essays and Speeches’), (Paris: Presses Universitaire de France, 1966, 63rd ed.), pp. 117–143. In the essay ‘Introduction à la métaphysique’ Bergson deﬁnes intuition as ‘la sympathie par laquelle on se transporte à l’intérieur d’un objet pour coincider avec ce qu’il a d’unique et par conséquent d’inexprimable.’ (‘The sympathy by which one transfers oneself to the interior of an object in order to coincide with what it has that is unique and consequently inexpressible.’) Ibid., p. 181.

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However, his radical separation of history as an art form from science as the generalizing search for causal laws put him at a distance from the neo-Kantian approach to the quarrel of the ancients and the moderns. Windelband rejected Croce’s aesthetic deﬁnition of history emphatically, while Rickert radicalized Windelband’s approach and came, as we shall see presently, close to a satisfactory solution of the quarrel which resembled Vico’s position but was the opposite of Croce’s. As we shall see, Rickert viewed Natural Science and Cultural Science in terms of a heterological dynamics within a continuum, of which both are the extreme ends and between which the various scientiﬁc disciplines ‘move’, sometimes close to the pole of generalizing Natural Science, then again closer to the pole of individualizing Cultural Science. The continuum of sciences For the so-called social sciences, such as psychology, sociology, history, economics, political science, etc., Rickert’s ideas and theories about the methodological dynamics of the natural and the cultural sciences are of special relevance. If one sets out to model them onesidedly and exclusively after the traditional natural sciences, such as physics, chemistry, geology, astronomy, biology, etc. in order to render their research results ‘exact’, ‘calculable’ and thus ‘predictable’— a methodological position which is usually called neo-positivism, but Rickert labels naturalism—one will ﬁnd Rickert in opposition. If one claims, on the other hand, that these social sciences diﬀer from the natural sciences ‘essentially’, since they after all deal with human beings and their conscious actions and interactions, and thus not with mindless atoms and aimless, in the sense of mindless, processes which allegedly would need an approach diﬀerent from that of the natural sciences—a methodological position which is usually called anti-positivism—one will also ﬁnd Rickert as an opponent. Rickert prefers the concept of Kulturwissenschaft (cultural science) above Geisteswissenschaft for methodological reasons. In his days, Geist was primarily viewed as ‘mind’ and ‘psyche’ which would put psychology in the center or even at the very foundations of the alleged humaniora, as was actually the case in Dilthey’s conception of Geisteswissenschaft. Yet, Rickert, as we have repeatedly seen, views the psychological discipline, certainly when operating as an experimen-

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tal psychology, as a (generalizing) science rather than an (individualizing) humanity. This will be explained in more detail later. In any case, we shall see how Rickert views Natural Science and Cultural Science as two heterologically related methods and as two abstract, logically constructed extremes on a continuum. In what follows I shall, therefore, employ the concepts of Natural Science and Cultural Science as equivalents of Rickert’s concepts Naturwissenschaft and Kulturwissenschaft. They must be seen as constructed types in the sense of Max Weber’s reine Typen (ideal types, ‘ideal’ meaning logically constructed and in that sense unreal, or non-empirical). When I use the capitals I refer to Cultural Science and Natural Science as such ideal typical extremes on a continuum. Without capitals I refer to the empirical and specialized natural and social sciences, like physics or chemistry, and history or cultural (historical) sociology. Epistemologically and methodologically the empirical sciences, whether natural or social, operate somewhere between these extremes, sometimes moving closely towards the pole of Natural Science, as in the case of most natural sciences, like chemistry, physics, or astronomy, sometimes operating very close to the opposite pole, that of Cultural Science, as in the case of history or cultural (historical) sociology or (institutional) economics. In reality, i.e. empirically, most sciences operate epistemologically and methodologically between these extremes. In an address delivered in 1899, the contents of which lay at the foundation of his Kulturwissenschaft und Naturwissenschaft (1926), Rickert phrases this continuum and its two extreme poles as follows: ‘In this lecture I want to restrict myself to the exposition of both extremes, in the middle of which in a sense almost all empirical sciences are located. And in order to make the distinctions (of Natural Science, Cultural Science and their respective methodologies, ACZ) clear, I have to separate what is mutually closely connected in reality.’18 He also

18 ‘Ich will mich in meinem Vortrag auf die Darlegung der beiden Extreme beschränken, zwischen denen in gewisser Hinsicht fast alle empirische Wissenschaft in der Mitte liegt, und ich muss zur Klarlegung der Unterscheide begriﬄich trennen, was in Wirklichkeit eng miteinander verknüpft ist.’ Italics by HR. Quoted by Rickert in ‘Nachwort 1928’, (‘Postscript 1928’), at the end of his opus magnum Die Grenzen der naturwissenschaftlichen Begriﬀsbildung, (‘The Limits of Natural-Scientiﬁc Concept Formation’), 1902, (Tübingen: Mohr-Siebeck, 1929, 5th ed.), p. 764f. Due to the many additions and improvements one should only use the ﬁfth edition of Die Grenzen. For a contemporary extensive critique of Windelband’s and Rickert’s demarcations of the natural and cultural sciences see: Erich Becher, Geisteswissenschaften und Naturwissenschaften.

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adds: ‘Between the extremes lie a wealth of connecting transitions. One can detect a series of stages which gradually lead from the most or absolute general to the most or absolute individual.’19 The result of this logical approach to the methodologies of the various natural and cultural sciences is the intriguing fact that the so-called ﬁrst Methodenstreit, the quarrel between the ancients and the moderns, usually phrased in terms of ‘science versus humanity (or humaniora, or moral science)’, is meaningless. Once again, there are in Rickert’s view two abstract, pure and constructed (i.e. ‘ideal’) extremes on a continuum between which the empirical natural and social sciences operate. As long as one does not ‘ontologize’ Natural Science and Cultural Science, but view and treat them strictly epistemologically and methodologically as correlated points of view and as correlated approaches to reality, there will not be any logical and methodological quarrel between them. They are mutually, heterologically complementary. This, of course, has to be explained in more detail and is the main focus of the present chapter. However, there has been a second Methodenstreit still which led to heated debates in the 1960’s and 1970’s, in particular in the social sciences.20 It was claimed that the social sciences could not operate in a value-free manner as the natural sciences generally do, because unlike atoms and molecules human beings live, think, feel, and act in a historical context of values and meanings. These values were then deﬁned in political and ideological terms, which were often akin to so-called historical materialism, and in many cases additionally embellished with a touch of psychoanalysis. The unity of (scientiﬁc)

Untersuchungen zur Theorie und Einteilung der Realwissenchaften, (‘Spiritual Sciences and Natural Sciences. Investigations about the Theory and Grouping of the Empirical Sciences’), (München: Duncker & Humblot, 1921). By maintaining the concept of ‘Geisteswissenschaft’ instead of ‘Kulturwissenschaft’ Becher demonstrates that he fails to understand a crucial component of Rickert’s anti-psychologistic logic and methodology. Begriﬀsbildung, ‘concept formation’, is a technical-logical concept which plays a crucial role in Rickert’s doctoral dissertation Zur Lehre von der Deﬁnition, (‘On the Theory of the Deﬁnition’), 1888, (Tübingen: Mohr-Siebeck, 1929, 3rd improved ed.), p. 21, 46. 19 ‘Zwischen den Extremen liegt eine Fülle von verbindenden Übergängen. Es lässt sich eine Reihe von Stufen konstatieren, die vom Allgemeinsten oder absolut Allgemeinen bis zum Besondersten oder absolut Individuellen allmählich hinüberführen.’ Italics by HR. Ibid., p. 765. 20 Cf. Th. W. Adorno et al., Der Positivismusstreit in der deutschen Soziologie, (‘The Positivism Conﬂict in German Sociology’), 1969, (Neuwied-Berlin: Luchterhand, 1972).

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theory and (political) practice was proclaimed, as in the Critical Theory of the so-called ‘Frankfurt School’ (Frankfurter Schule).21 In this second methodological quarrel Max Weber’s alleged position of a ‘value-free sociology’ functioned as the main target. However, Weber was in this issue strongly inﬂuenced by Rickert who distinguishes logically between theoretical value-relatedness (Wertverbundenheit), practical evaluation ( praktische Wertung), and theoretical abstaining from evaluations (theoretische Wertungsfreiheit). It needs a thorough understanding of the nature of values and considerable subtlety in logical thinking in order to distinguish between these three concepts. Without it, one gets lost in a quagmire of ideological, political and usually thoroughly metaphysical sentiments, as the debates of the 1960’s and 1970’s in the social sciences have demonstrated. They may have warmed the hearts and souls of many students in the social sciences, but they rarely enlightened their minds, let alone rendered their actions rational. In this respect, it is worthwhile to pay closer attention to Rickert’s ideas and theories regarding the intricate relationships between values, meanings, judgments, theoretical thinking and practical acting. They render the second Methodenstreit superﬂuous. It is essential to realize from the start that Rickert’s concepts of nature and culture, and in particular those of Natural Science and Cultural Science, are meant logically and formally, not ontologically and metaphysically. As a neo-Kantian he persists in distinguishing heterologically between form and content, between concept and reality, between theory and practice. Reality is to him, just as the phenomenologists always claim, ﬁrst and foremost the experienced reality of everyday life—the Lebenswelt, as Husserl, or the world-taken-for-granted as a paramount reality as Schutz phrased it.22 Yet, if one sets out to acquire rational knowledge of this life-world, as one does in philosophy and the various specialized (natural and cultural) sciences, one distances oneself from this experienced reality by means of concepts which are in a sense artiﬁcial constructs. Concepts are forms which mold the matter of reality, putting it into a rational order which is

21

Cf. In particular Jürgen Habermas, Erkenntnis und Interesse, (‘Knowledge and Interest’), 1968, (Frankfurt a.M.: Suhrkamp, 1973) and his Zur Logik der Sozialwissenschaften. Materialien, (‘On the Logic of the Social Sciences. Materials.’), (Frankfurt a.M.: Suhrkamp, 1970). 22 Alfred Schutz, Collected Papers, vol. I, The Problem of Social Reality, edited by M. Natanson, (The Hague: Nijhoﬀ, 1962).

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not a representation or reproduction (Abbild ) of this overwhelmingly complex and always changing reality but, on the contrary, a conscious distortion of it. Not ‘representation’ (Abbildung) of reality and its irrational complexity but, on the contrary, ‘transformation’ (Umformung) of reality and reduction of its complexity by means of concepts, theories and models is the proper aim of the sciences. Philosophical and scientiﬁc attempts to grasp irrational reality rationally should not and actually cannot be vitalistic (lebendig), as is professed by philosophers within the so-called Lebensphilosophie, because one would in the end get lost in scores of irrationalities which could perhaps gratify the emotions, but would certainly not contribute to any sound empirical knowledge. This was discussed in the foregoing chapters, in particular in Chapter Two, but must once more be dealt with presently. One should bear in mind—and it cannot be repeated often enough—that the concepts of Natural Science and Cultural Science are epistemological and methodological forms which do not refer to the actual, empirical sciences as they operate inside and outside universities and laboratories. In other words, Rickert’s concepts of Natural Science (Naturwissenschaft) and Cultural Science (Kulturwissenschaft) as two diﬀerent approaches to reality are not ‘real’ in the sense of empirical and ontological, but ‘ideal’ and logically constructed! In his discussions of the Natural-Scientiﬁc logic Rickert refers, of course, to the actual natural sciences as they operated in his days, i.e. to physics, chemistry, biology, astronomy, etc. But they are only used as illustrations of what he means by the ‘typically’ Natural-Scientiﬁc approach which he deﬁnes, as we will see, as a generalizing approach aiming at general concepts and laws which on purpose neglect individual diﬀerences and distinctions. This approach can also be applied to objects which Dilthey would range exclusively under Geisteswissenschaft. Obviously, since the days of Rickert the empirical natural sciences have developed and changed signiﬁcantly, and so have philosophy and logic. Although he kept abreast with these paradigmatic changes and developments up till his death in 1936, he has persistently argued that logically and methodologically, that is, from an abstract and formal point of view, the Natural-Scientiﬁc ways of concept formation are and remain the same. General and particular relativity theory, or quantum mechanics, which incidentally he was acquainted with, did of course alter our view of the natural sciences and of the universe, dramatically. Yet, Rickert’s main point, namely that the natural

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sciences predominantly, yet not exclusively tend to generalize, while the cultural, or historical sciences predominantly, yet not exclusively tend to individualize still stands up. Einstein’s approach to reality diﬀers from that of Huizinga in that the one searched for general concepts in the logical form of species and laws, whereas the other tried to grasp persons, institutions and events as individual and unrepeatable phenomena, i.e. as logical individua. There is an ontological dimension to it: natural-scientiﬁc objects are ahistorical and not related to values, whereas cultural-scientiﬁc objects, on the contrary, are always embedded in historical contexts of human values and evaluations. Sciences, whether Natural or Cultural, are always in search of regularities, but here again there is a distinct diﬀerence. The laws of nature are ahistorical and generalized regularities which are true as long as further research has not falsiﬁed them. But it is hazardous to speak of cultural-scientiﬁc laws of development, since these developments are couched in historical contingencies. The alleged ‘general laws of history’, for example, as presented by the author of The Decline of the West, a very popular book in Rickert’s days, are according to him not logical-rational but metaphysical-irrational constructions which may satisfy the conservative, if not reactionary sentiments of the day, but do not contribute anything to a sound, scientiﬁc understanding of history or society.23 Yet, Rickert’s arguments are more subtle and complex than that. He claims, for instance, that individualization does occur in natural sciences, particularly in evolutionary, phylogenetic biology,24 while the social sciences, in particular psychology and sociology, could never function satisfactorily without generalizations. This will be discussed presently. At this point, however, it is essential to bear in mind from the start that Natural Science and Cultural Science are

23

Oswald Spengler, Der Untergang des Abendlandes. Umrisse einer Morphologie der Weltgeschichte, (‘The Decline of the West. Outline of a Morphology of World History), 1922, (München: Oskar Beck, 1923; 33rd–47th ed.). 24 Cf. Rickert, Die Grenzen, pp. 462ﬀ. Rickert, referring to Ernst Haeckel, calls phylogenetic biology an historical biology. Elsewhere, however, he acknowledges that the interest of biologists turns away from the phylogenetic approach in favor of a more natural-scientiﬁc ‘ontogenetic’ evolutionary theory. Cf. Rickert, ‘Über die Aufgaben einer Logik der Geschichte’, (‘On the Tasks of a Logic of History’), in: Archiv für Philosophie, II. Abteilung: Archiv für systematische Philosophie, Neue Folge, VIII. Band, 2. Heft, (‘Archive for Philosophy, Section II: Archive for Systematic Philosophy. New Series, Vol. VIII, Book 2), 1902, p. 149f.

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artiﬁcial, formal, logical constructs, not ontological reproductions of actually existing natural and cultural or social sciences! His methodological and logical application of the individualizing, historical approach to evolutionary biology, and his steadfast refusal to apply the generalizing, Natural-Scientiﬁc approach to the historical discipline remain, in my view, not very convincing. In his essay ‘On the Tasks of a Logic of History’, quoted a moment ago, he starts by opposing the generalizing and individualizing methods radically by comparing the description of the development of a chicken in a fertilized egg by the biologist Karl Ernst von Baer (1792–1876) with the description of the popes in Rome of the 16th and 17th centuries by the historian Leopold von Ranke (1795–1886). The embryologist ranges a species of objects under a system of concepts (i.e. ‘natural laws’) which intends to be valid for each arbitrary specimen. The historian, on the other hand, presents a certain range of realities in such a manner that the particularity and individuality of each reality is being highlighted. These are not just two diﬀerent methods, but also diﬀerent aims of knowledge are at work here. Baer wants to gather up what diﬀerent objects have in common, in order to arrive at general species-concepts (Gattungsbegriﬀe), whereas Ranke intends to range each single object under a particular concept, forming concepts with an individual content.25 So far so good, but Rickert then argues that phylogenetic, evolutionary biology is an example of an individualizing approach within an otherwise generalizing (natural-scientiﬁc) discipline. As long as the theory of descendence demonstrates how each species has emerged and as long as it presents the transition of one species into the next, evolutionary biology is still a solidly generalizing natural science. However, Rickert claims, the moment the biologist tries to relate which living creature emerged ﬁrst, which followed next and how eventually in a particular development gradually man came into being (about which, Rickert adds, the theory of descendence remains tacit), his presentation is, looked at from a logical point of view, historical—and value-related to boot, because Man is the ﬁnal aim of an evolution which is normatively viewed as not just development but progress.26 This chain of thought is, in my view, scientiﬁcally and normatively quite hazardous. Its anthropocentrism is metaphysical and it is hard to understand why these various stages in the process of evolution would present history as a process which can only be grasped cognitively in an individualizing manner. We must also question Rickert’s conviction that the historical discipline could logically never apply the generalizing, Natural-Scientiﬁc method. It is not only logically possible, as in a kind of thought experiment, but has also been realized in actual fact, namely in so-called cliometrics. We shall discuss that presently.

25 26

Rickert, ibid., p. 141f. Ibid., p. 149.

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One will not encounter in Rickert’s logic and methodology any antinatural scientiﬁc animus, as was exhibited often by the contemporary proponents of so-called Geisteswissenschaft. He rather searches for the logical limitations of the Natural-Scientiﬁc formation of concepts which to him become apparent, if one focuses one’s scientiﬁc investigations on meanings, values and norms.27 In view of meanings, values and norms the generalizing approach of Natural Science fails signiﬁcantly. In fact, if one adhered mono-methodologically to the natural-scientiﬁc approach, which Rickert, as we saw before, calls ‘naturalism’, one would have to disregard meanings, values and norms which, of course, is nonsensical. Language is more than and quite diﬀerent from movements of the larynx: ‘Each word that we observe by the senses, possesses if we understand it, simultaneously a nonsensorial meaning. (. . . .) A scientiﬁc sentence which we hear or read and then understand as being true or perhaps also false, possesses a meaning which must be fundamentally diﬀerent from the words to which it is attached, because the words as real conﬁgurations can be neither true nor false. They become true or false always exclusively as bearers of a meaningful conﬁguration.’28 Or, to phrase it diﬀerently, the performance of a violin or cello concerto is more than the scratching of cat entrails (the strings) by the hairs of a horsetail (the bow). All these sound waves carry meanings, even values and norms which cannot be ‘covered’ adequately by naturalscientiﬁc concepts. In 1872 the German physiologist Emil du Bois-Reymond read a paper to an audience of natural scientists. The lecture was entitled On the Limits of the Knowledge of Nature.29 In it he criticized the philosophical materialism,

27 This is the gist of the title of Rickert’s voluminous study on the methodology of the cultural sciences: Die Grenzen der naturwissenschaftlichen Begriﬀsbildung, (“The Limits of the Natural-Scientiﬁc Concept Formation’), o.c. 28 ‘Jedes Wort, das wir sinnlich wahrnehmen, besitzt, falls wir es verstehen zugleich eine unsinnliche Bedeutung. (. . .) Ein wissenschaftlicher Satz, den wir hören oder lesen und dabei als wahr oder eventuell auch als falsch verstehen, hat einen Sinn, der sich grundsätzlich von den Worten, an denen er haftet, unterscheiden muss, da die Worte als reale Gebilde weder wahr noch falsch sein können. Sie werden das eine oder das andere immer erst als Träger eines Sinngebildes.’ Heinrich Rickert, Die Probleme der Geschichtsphilosophie, (Heidelberg: Carl Winters Universitätstbuchhandlung, 1924, 3rd, renewed edition), p. 20—from now on quoted as Problems. 29 Emil du Bois-Reymond, Über die Grenzen des Naturerkennens, (Leipzig: Verlag von Veit, 1872).

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quite popular in his day among natural scientists, by discussing two riddles which, according to him, could not be solved philosophically in a satisfactory manner. The ﬁrst riddle concerns the universal changes in nature due to a relation between material atoms and force or energy like gravitational attraction. It would, he argued, need a super scientist with a ‘universal spirit’ to combine all the laws of force into one single universal formula. This is inconceivable and thus it remains unexplained how and why changes do occur in the material world. The second riddle concerns the relationship between the human body and brain on the one hand and the phenomenon of human consciousness on the other. He refers to a ‘saucy expression’ (der kecke Ausspruch) of a physiologist which caused ‘a kind of contest about the soul’ (eine Art von Turnier um die Seele). The physiologist in question claimed ‘ that all those capabilities which we understand as activities of the so-called soul, are but functions of the brain, or, to phrase it somewhat grossly, that the thoughts entertain approximately the same relationship to the brain as bile to the liver or urine to the kidneys.’30 These two riddles, Du Bois-Reymond concludes, are mutually closely connected and will never be solved. The last word of his address is Ignorabimus! 31 Rickert’s reaction to this resignation would be that Du Bois-Reymond remained caught in naturalism and thus failed to locate consciousness in a transcendent ‘space’, where it is confronted with unreal but valid (or invalid) values. One of the consequences of this naturalism or neo-positivism is the relapse to psychology, as was testiﬁed, for instance, by Carl G. Hempel (1905–1997) who in an essay on the limits of science referred favorably to Du Bois-Reymond.32 W. V. Quine (1908–2000) is even more radical than Hempel. In contrast to the Vienna School of logical positivism (Carnap, Neurath, etc.) which intended to do away with metaphysics ﬁrst and epistemology next, Quine believes there is still room for epistemology, but ‘in a new setting and a clariﬁed status. Epistemology, or something like it (sic!, ACZ), simply falls into place as a chapter of psychology and hence of natural science. It studies a natural phenomenon, viz., a physical human subject. This human subject is accorded a certain experimentally controlled input—certain patterns of irradiation in assorted frequencies, for instance— and in the fullness of time the subject delivers as output a description of the three-dimensional external world and its history.’33

30 ‘dass alle jene Fähigkeiten, die wir unter dem Namen Seelenthätigkeiten begreifen, nur Functionen des Gehirns sind, oder, um es einigermassen grob auszudrücken, dass die Gedanken etwas in demselben Verhältnisse zum Gehirn stehen, wie die Galle zu der Leber oder der Urin zu den Nieren.’ Du Bois-Reymond, o.c., p. 31. 31 Ibid., p. 33. 32 Carl G. Hempel, ‘Science Unlimited?’, in: James H. Feitzer (ed.), The Philosophy of Carl G. Hempel. Studies in Science, Explanation, and Rationality, (Oxford: The Oxford University Press, 2001), pp. 276–297. 33 Willard Van Orman Quine, ‘Epistemology Naturalized’, in: W. V. Quine, Ontological Relativity and Other Essays, New York: Columbia University Press, 1969), 69–90, quotation: p. 82f.

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It is interesting to notice that Quine, without calling it such, also introduces sociology as an inherent component of epistemology. Speaking about ‘observation sentences’, or what the Vienna School called Protokollsätze, i.e. simple statements about the external world, such as ‘A red cube is standing on the table’, Quine claims that their truth, contained in the meanings of the constituting words, depends on a community-wide, social acceptance: ‘a sentence that is true by mere meanings of words should be expected, at least if it is simple, to be subscribed to by all ﬂuent speakers in the community.’34 He even calls it a ‘straightforward attribute of community-wide acceptance’, and distinguishes sociologically diﬀerent communities: ‘What count as observation sentences for a community of specialists would not always so count for a larger community.’35 This is, of course, not epistemology but empirical sociology of knowledge. However, psychologism and sociologism and their inherent scientism are based upon a rather ideological petitio principii. It is, in fact, the end of epistemology (if not of philosophy altogether). Quine calls this psychologistic and sociologistic epistemology ‘new’, contrasting it to an allegedly ‘old’ epistemology as it was traditionally exercised in philosophy. However, in view of Brentano, Dilthey, or Meinong, epistemological psychologism is in fact quite old and traditionally stale, whereas a sociologistic theory of knowledge occurred in the sociology of knowledge, particularly in the sociologically focused epistemology of Karl Mannheim.36 This protracted debate on the demarcations of history and natural science and on the role of psychology, or sociology in the theory of knowledge demonstrates the importance and originality of Rickert’s approach as laid down in his Die Grenzen der naturwissenschaftlischen Begriﬀsbildung and in Kulturwissenschaft und Naturwissenschaft. It needs more than one close reading to fully understand the weight of his ideas concerned.

Analytical matrix Empirical reality, i.e. reality as it is experienced in daily life, Rickert argues, is in and of itself extremely complex and in that sense ‘irrational’.37 He coined the ontological concept of a heterogeneous continuum 34

Quine, l.c., p. 86. Ibid., p. 86 and 87. 36 Cf. e.g. Karl Mannheim, ‘Das Problem einer Soziologie des Wissens’, (The Problem of a Sociology of Knowledge’)’, in: Karl Mannheim, Wissenssoziologie. Auswahl aus dem Werk, (Sociology of Knowledge. Selection from the Oeuvre), (Berlin, Neuwied: Hermann Luchterhand, 1964), pp. 308–388. For a sociological critique of Mannheim’s epistemological deﬁnition of knowledge see Peter L. Berger, Thomas Luckmann, The Social Construction of Reality.A Treatise in the Sociology of Knowledge, (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1966), pp. 8–11, 183f. 37 Rickert, like Weber, uses the concept ‘irrational’ when referring to the transcendent reality of everyday experience—or, for that matter, to Kant’s Ding-an-sich. 35

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for this irrational reality:38 there is this continuous ﬂow of changes and developments, but there is, at the same time, also this overwhelming heterogeneity (pluriformity) of facts and events. If one focuses on a particular fact or event, one discovers soon that there are no sharp and absolute limits but only gradual transitions between it and another fact or event. This is the continuity of empirical reality—reality as a continuum. However, there is not one thing or event in the world that resembles another thing or event completely. Each thing or event has in this sense its own identity and particularity. That is, empirical reality is in this sense particularistic and individualistic. Things and events are only more or less alike. And within each thing or event there are again parts which diﬀer from each other, as close as they may appear to be in space or time. In fact, one will never bump into two things or events which are absolutely homogeneous. Not only does everything ﬂow and change continuously, everything is also intrinsically diﬀerent. This Rickert calls the heterogeneity of all of reality.39 The combination of heterogeneity and continuity renders empirical reality highly complex. In everyday life human beings reduce this complexity through language by giving names to processes, facts and events—proper names and generic names. These common-sense concepts are not forged in any logical and systematic manner, but they develop, as it were organically, within various cultural contexts which harbor their own languages and dialects. Rickert calls it a pre-scientiﬁc concept formation (vorwissenschaftliche Begriﬀsbildung), which each scientist runs into, when he starts his scientiﬁc investigation. Unlike the common-sense concept formation of everyday life, however, scientiﬁc conceptualization is strictly rational, i.e. systematic and ruled by logic.40 Philosophical and scientiﬁc approaches of reality employ words and names as well, but they are logical and methodological concepts It seems to me that ‘non-rational’ would have been more appropriate, since it refers to ‘absence of rationality’, whereas ‘irrationality’ refers to ‘anti-rationality’. But I shall for clarity’s sake not constantly substitute ‘non-rational’ for ‘irrational’. 38 The concept ‘heterogeneous continuum’ is equivalent to the phenomenological concept Lebenswelt. Naturally, Rickert would reject the latter as it contains strong vitalistic and ontological connotations. His concept is also ontological but clearly forged from an epistemological and logical point of view. 39 Kulturwissenschaft und Naturwissenschaftt, 1898, (Stuttgart: Reclam, 1986), p. 51. 40 Heinrich Rickert, Probleme, p. 31. Cf. also his distinction of words and concepts (Worte and Begriﬀe), and the role he adjudicates to language and concepts in deﬁnitions in Zur Lehre von der Deﬁnition, o.c., pp. 16–22.

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which try to be as adequate as possible, if it comes to an understanding of reality. However, as we have seen time and again before, Rickert rejects the popular notion that such scientiﬁc concepts are only exact and true, if they represent or depict, as faithfully as possible, the facts and events in reality. It is the so-called Abbildlogik, the logic of reproduction, which, as we saw in the second chapter, lies at the foundation of the Lebensphilosophie and its belief in the adequacy of emotional and psychological empathy. Rickert is decisively critical of this approach and repeats his emphatic rejection of it repeatedly. To him, it is a simple and evident fact that our mind is far too limited to encompass, store up and grasp the intensive and extensive complexity of the heterogeneous continuum in its totality. The mind must reduce complexity through the formation of concepts and theories. But even if we were able to do so—for instance by means of a computer, we could add today—we would not get what we in science and philosophy try to acquire, namely rational knowledge of an irrational reality. The irrationality of reality—its endemic heterogeneity and continuity—would be duplicated in our mind or in the computer, and thus not yield any true knowledge, since this duplication would in its turn beg for a rational explanation. There is an unbridgeable gap between our scientiﬁc, rational, abstract and steadfast concepts on the one hand, and the continuous stream of intrinsically heterogeneous reality on the other. Rickert compares metaphorically our scientiﬁc concepts with the piers of a bridge which overarches a river. We may try to build these piers as close to each other as possible, yet the ongoing stream with its continuous and therefore inexhaustibly diﬀerent qualities will still ﬂow between them without being grasped or understood. ‘Therefore, with our concepts we can only construct bridges over the stream of reality, as close to each other as the various arches of these bridges may be. That will not be changed by any science of empirical reality.’41 In this respect, one could speak of the powerlessness, if not impotence of scientiﬁc concepts.

41 ‘Wir können also mit den Begriﬀen nur Brücken über den Strom der Realität schlagen, mögen die einzelnen Brückenbogen auch noch so klein sein. Daran wird keine Wissenschaft vom realen Sein etwas ändern.’ Kulturwissenschaft und Naturwissenschaft, p. 53.

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This stands, of course, in strong contrast to the neo-positivistic belief in prediction and control as in the case of traditional behaviorism. The founder of this natural-scientiﬁc brand of psychology, John B. Watson (1878–1958), boasted: ‘Give me a dozen healthy infants, well-formed, and my own speciﬁed world to bring them up in and I’ll guarantee to take any one at random and train him to become any type of specialist I might select—doctor, lawyer, artist, merchant-chief, and, yes, even beggar-man and thief, regardless of his talents, penchants, tendencies, abilities, vocations, and race of his ancestors.’42 It is the idea of an applied social science for the betterment of man and society: ‘To answer any of the “whys” adequately about human activity we need to study man as the chemist needs to study some new organic compound. Psychologically, man is still a reacting piece of unanalyzed protoplasm.’43 Incidentally, Watson added the need for genetic experiments: ‘(. . .) only systematic long-sustained, genetic studies upon the human species begun in infancy and continued until past adolescence will ever give us the experimental control over human conduct so badly needed both for general social control and growth and for individual happiness.’44 Burrhus F. Skinner (1904–1990) designed a special ontology in order to be able to realize his behavioristic program of prediction and control. It is the precise opposite of Rickert’s ‘heterogeneous continuum’, while its normative and metaphysical content is obvious: ‘Science is more than a mere description of events as they occur. It is an attempt to discover order, to show that certain events stand in lawful relations to other events. No practical technology can be based upon science until such relations have been discovered. But order is not only a possible end product; it is a working assumption which must be adopted at the very start. We cannot apply the methods of science to a subject matter which is assumed to move about capriciously. (. . .) If we are to use the methods of science in the ﬁeld of human aﬀairs, we must assume that behavior is lawful and determined.’45 As is well known, Skinner, following the experiments on conditioned reﬂexes by Iwan Pawlow (1849–1936),46 rejected notions about ‘inner states’ like consciousness and mind, since they could allegedly not be analyzed scientiﬁcally and thus not be made socially functional: ‘The objection to inner states is not that they do not exist, but that they are not relevant in a functional analysis.’47 He focused on bodily functions, in particular those he named

42 John B. Watson, Psychology. From the Standpoint of a Behaviorist, 1919, (London, 1924), p. 9. 43 Ibid., p. 6. 44 Watson, o.c., p. 8. 45 Burrhus F. Skinner, Science and Human Behavior, (New York: Macmillan, 1953), p. 6. 46 Cf. Iwan P. Pawlow, ‘Vorlesungen über die Arbeit der Grosshirnhemisphären’, (‘Lectures on the Function of the Cerebral Cortex’), in: Augewählte Werke, (‘Selected Works’), (Berlin: Akademie Verlag, 1955), pp. 129–154. His famous experiment with the ticking metronome and the salivating dog: l.c., p. 149f. 47 Skinner, o.c., p. 35.

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‘reinforcements’, i.e. feed-back processes within the chain of stimulus and response. Like Watson, Skinner believed that his brand of behaviorism, particularly its technique of behavioral engineering through ‘operant conditioning’, could contribute to the improvement of man and society, because it would enable individuals to adjust to societal demands and thereby reduce various social conﬂicts.48 In this respect, Skinner’s behaviorism carried rather heavy ideological and even metaphysical presuppositions.49 Needless to add that Rickert’s neo-Kantianism stands in radical opposition to the ontology and metaphysics of this kind of behaviorism which, of course, has been criticized from the beginning also by psychologists and sociologists.50

Yet, Rickert’s standpoint does not entail intellectual passivity, nor false modesty. On the contrary, philosophy and science will not duplicate or depict reality, but in a sense they rather distort it by imposing on reality concepts and theories which have been constructed logically in terms of speciﬁc interests and perspectives. The natural scientist, for example, looks at the complexity of reality and subjects it to research in terms of the concept of ‘nature’, whereas an historian approaches reality in terms of the concept of ‘culture’. The various sciences are next divided in speciﬁc specialisms and sub-specialisms

48 Cf. his controversial Beyond Freedom and Dignity, (New York: Alfred Knopf, 1972). Skinner’s sociological colleague George A. Lundberg (1895–1966) formulated the behavioristic program of social science as follows: ‘Broadly speaking, it is the business of social scientists to be able to predict with high probability the social weather, just as meteorologists predict sunshine and storm.’ George A. Lundberg, Foundations of Sociology, (New York: David McKay, 1964), p. 32. In a behaviorist pamphlet Can Science Save Us?, (New York, 1947) Lundberg refers to a friend and colleague who proposed to erect a ‘Barometer of International Security’, manned by sociologists. As a kind of social-weather-station this ‘barometer’ should detect in an early stage international tensions that could cause the eruption of wars. Ibid., p. 40. 49 As Rickert would probably comment, such presuppositions are scientiﬁcally inadequate, if not simply false, but he would appreciate Skinner’s literary excursion in his novel Walden Two, 1948, (New York: Macmillan Publishing Co.; London: Collier Macmillan Publishers, 1976). The novel is a piece of social-science-ﬁction and describes a community of thousand people whose behavior is engineered by Skinnerite ‘operant conditioning’. It presents a utopian society which avoids the grave ills of urban life, in particular crime and pollution. Skinner enunciates his environmentalistic social philosophy in a preface to the reprint of the novel: ‘Walden Two Revisited’, January 1976, l.c. pp. V–VXI. 50 Cf. the satirical critique on Pawlow by Bernard Shaw, The Adventures of the Black Girl in her Search for God, 1932, in: Bernard Shaw, The Black Girl in Search of God and Some Lesser Tales, (London: Penguin Books, 1986), pp. 27–85. For an early psychological critique see L. Berman, The Religion Called Behaviorism, (New York, 1927). For a sociological analysis of American pragmatism and behaviorism see Ralph Dahrendorf, Die angewandte Aufklärung. Gesellschaft und Soziologie in Amerika, (‘The Applied Enlightenment. Sociology and Society in America’), (München: Piper Verlag, 1963).

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which again is a further reduction of the complexity of reality. It is then, of course, essential that these reductions are systematized logically and methodologically. And that is precisely what Rickert sets out to do in his Grenzen der naturwissenschaftlichen Begriﬀsbildung and in his Kulturwissenschaft und Naturwissenschaft.51 He works with a matrix which, it should be emphasized from the start, is not meant as a classiﬁcation of the various scientiﬁc disciplines.52 He is rather interested in an exposition of the logic of the sciences and in the methodological consequences of this logic. There is then a basic logical distinction, he claims in a typically neo-Kantian manner, between a material (ontological) distinction of the concepts of ‘nature’ and ‘culture’; and a formal (methodological) distinction between the generalizing approach of Natural Science and the individualizing approach of Cultural Science. This leads to four basic scientiﬁc disciplines: (1) the generalizing approach to ‘nature’; (2) the individualizing approach to ‘nature’; (3) the generalizing approach to ‘culture’; (4) the invidualizing approach to ‘culture’. Although he did not phrase it this way, we could see in this matrix a continuum of the various sciences between the two extremes of (1) and (4): the generalizing approach to ‘nature’ as exempliﬁed by the conventional natural sciences such as physics, chemistry, astronomy, etc. on the one extreme of the continuum, and the individualizing approach to ‘culture’ as exempliﬁed by history on the other end of the continuum. And then there are the disciplines in the middle, such as sociology and psychology which predominantly, Rickert argues, approach ‘culture’ in a generalizing manner, and evolutionary biology which, according to Rickert, approaches ‘nature’ in an individualizing manner.53 It becomes apparent once more that Rickert rejects the simple classiﬁcation of the sciences in terms of Naturwissenschaft and Geistes51 Rickert, I believe, would have sympathized with both Rudolf Carnap, The Logical Structure of the World, translated from the German edition of 1928, (California, 1967) and Alfred Schutz, Der sinnhafte Aufbau der sozialen Welt. Eine Einleitung in die verstehenden Soziologie, (‘The Meaningful Construction of the Social World. Introduction to an Understanding Sociology’), 1932, (Vienna: Julius Springer, 1960). Yet, he would reject the scientism of the ﬁrst and the phenomenological ontologism of the second. 52 For Rickert’s ideas about the classiﬁcation of sciences see his Grenzen, chapter 4.X, pp. 611–622. 53 Cf. ‘Die Mittelgebiete’ (‘The Middlegrounds’), in: Kulturwissenschaft und Naturwissenschaft, o.c., pp. 129–142.

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wissenschaft and the inherent inimical opposition between the two. If one deﬁnes Geist in metaphysical terms as something like ‘transcendent spirit’, as was done in German Idealism, it is, Rickert argues, worthless in terms of empirical science. If one deﬁnes the concept in terms of ‘mind’, ‘soul’, or ‘psyche’, one locates it within the specialized discipline of psychology and it is not at all clear why something like the ‘soul’ could not be dealt with in a generalizing (Natural-Scientiﬁc) manner in conjunction with the body. In fact, Rickert is convinced that psychology is methodologically a representative of generalizing Natural Science rather than of individualizing Cultural Science, although in terms of the analytical matrix it could as well operate methodologically in an individualizing manner. This also holds true of sociology. We return to this point later. We will now ﬁrst investigate Rickert’s ideas with regard to the material (ontological) distinction of ‘nature’ and ‘culture’, and next focus on his formal (methodological) distinction of Natural Science operating with a generalizing approach to reality and Cultural Science applying an individualizing methodology. Nature and culture distinguished ontologically Rickert thinks and writes in terms of so-called heterology, i.e. he deﬁned opposed concepts in terms of correlations between them.54 This often comes close to circular deﬁnitions as is quite obvious in the case of Rickert’s deﬁnition of the concepts of nature and culture. As we shall see, it is a rather problematic distinction. Nature is deﬁned in terms borrowed from Kant, as the reality which is left to its own design and development without interference of human beings. But nature is then deﬁned more speciﬁcally in a heterological distinction to culture: ‘The words nature and culture are not unambiguous, and in particular the concept of nature is always determined more precisely only through the concept to which one opposes it. (. . .) Natural products grow freely from the earth. Cultural products are produced by the ﬁeld, when man has tilled the soil and 54 Mannheim called Rickert’s idea of conceptual heterothesis, as for instance in form-content, a conceptual correlation. Cf. Karl Mannheim, ‘Die Strukturanalyse der Erkenntnistheorie’, (‘The Structural Analysis of the Theory of Knowledge’), in: Karl Mannheim, o.c., pp. 166–246. On heterothesis and conceptual correlation: p. 170 and 177.

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sown the seeds.’55 Rickert refers here to the original Latin connotation of culture as cultura agri, i.e. agriculture. Wild strawberries, to give an obvious example (not Rickert’s though), are natural products, growing without any interference of men, and as such not invested with value or meaning. Potatoes, on the other hand, are sown, cultivated and harvested, and are as such products of agriculture. In other words, culture is what man produces according to interests and valued goals, or, if it exists already, what is carefully attended to because of its inherent value and interest. Nature then is reality as far as it is value-free, i.e. not related to values and interests. This material (ontological) deﬁnition of nature is rather problematic. Rickert is obviously aware of this, since he acknowledges, as we just saw, that nature can only be determined more precisely through the concept to which one opposes it—i.e. culture. Nature is then non-culture which, of course, is redundant. But even then it remains a problematic material (ontological) concept, because in the end it appears to be formal (epistemological). Ontologically, there is very little nature because the moment humans approach nature it changes into a valued reality and thus into culture. In agriculture nature is in the end always ‘culturized’, as it is in ecology. Wild strawberries are natural products, but the moment children pick them and gather them in their buckets, take them home, wash and consume them they are valued and thus cultural goods. The atoms, molecules and genes of the natural scientist are as such not related to values, but the moment the physicist, chemist or geneticist starts to investigate them scientiﬁcally, they become objects of scientiﬁc interest and are then related to values— the values of the cultural good Science. Strictly speaking, nature exists ontologically only, when it cannot be observed, as in the case of particles or objects and phenomena in outer space. But even that shrinks increasingly due to the discoveries of nanotechnology and the detecting techniques of astrophysics. The conclusion is that material ontology is in the end always formal epistemology—as, incidentally, the second half of the concept ontology, referring to the Greek logos, indicates. Rickert sticks usually to the Kantian primacy of epistemology over ontology. Yet, his deﬁnition of nature is ontological. Rickert’s rejoinder would probably be that the ontological concept of a value-free nature is possible and meaningful, when one strips reality conceptually (as in a thought experiment) of meanings and values, when one ‘thinks away’ meanings and values. The concepts ‘wild’ and ‘strawberries’ carry meanings and values in 55 ‘Die Worte Natur und Kultur sind nicht eindeutig, und insbesondere wird der Begriﬀ der Natur immer erst durch den Begriﬀ näher bestimmt, zu dem man ihn in einen Gegensatz bringt. (. . .) Naturprodukte sind es, die frei aus der Erde wachsen. Kulturprodukte bringt das Feld hervor, wenn der Mensch geackert und gesät hat.’ Kulturwissenschaft und Naturwissenschaft, o.c., p. 35.

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our minds, but we are able to strip them away as in a thought experiment: after all, strawberries without any interest, meaning and value are conceivable, so are the value-free atoms, molecules, particles in the laboratories of natural scientists. But this rejoinder would not be convincing, because the thought experiment of ‘thinking away’ is, of course, an epistemological technique applied to empirical reality. Formal epistemology still precedes and overshadows (material) ontology. We may, therefore, hold on to the idea that the material distinction of nature and culture is epistemologically a weak one. In fact, in view of the formal distinction of Natural Science and Cultural Science as two diﬀerent, yet correlated, mutually amplifying approaches or methods, the ontological distinction is superﬂuous. But before we discuss this, we must ﬁrst look at Rickert’s material deﬁnition of culture in more detail.

Culture then is ontologically speaking reality invested with values which are acknowledged not just by a single human being, but by the majority of people within a community. As we saw before, culture becomes empirically concrete and scientiﬁcally researchable in cultural goods (Güter). A simple example (which is not Rickert’s) can clarify this. If I value my dog as my pet and companion, contributing to the quality of my personal existence, this particular dog cannot be considered to be a cultural good. But if a majority of people in society value dogs as pets and companions which contribute to human happiness and feelings of well-being and safety, it is possible to call ‘the dog’ a component of the culture of this community of dog loving people, i.e. a cultural good. Values do not ﬂoat in abstract air but adhere to the cultural goods of a society. Such cultural goods are, for instance, physical objects like houses, boats, books, musical instruments, tools, etc., or institutions (institutional sectors) like the church, the law, the state, language, literature, art, etc., or living ‘things’ like domestic pets, cattle, artists, scientists, etc. The various cultural sciences deal with and investigate these diﬀerent cultural goods. The focus is in particular on their institutional settings, such as laboratories, churches, schools and universities, hospitals, hostels, court-houses, etc. Such institutions or the broader institutional sectors to which they belong, can and are subjected to scientiﬁc research in specialized manners, such as comparative religion, legal studies, political science, veterinary science, linguistics, literary history, art history, etc. Values are, as we saw in the former chapter, unreal and non-empirical. They belong to the Second Realm. But the objects to which they are attributed and to which they adhere, rendering them into cultural goods, are real in the sense of empirical. They

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constitute the First Realm. Moreover, as we have also seen, values do not exist in terms of being, but are or are not valid to a multitude of people, i.e. a community that feels obligated to these valid values. This sense of obligation towards certain values and valued objects (goods) is not a matter of drive or instinct, nor instigated by individual moods, but the result of a normative commitment to values and goods which are deﬁned as being valid and thus worthy of compliance and care. Observable and understandable reality Thus, the primary, material (ontological) distinction Rickert imposes on ‘irrational’ reality is the heterological opposition of value-free and meaningless nature on the one hand, and value-related and meaningful culture on the other. But there is also still another dimension and distinction conceivable. Nature, Rickert argues, consists, ontologically speaking, of objects which are in and of themselves devoid of meanings and therefore, epistemologically speaking, only observable (wahrnehmbar) and not understandable (verstehbar), whereas culture consists, ontologically speaking, of objects which are meaningful and valuable, and thus, epistemologically speaking, not just observable but also understandable. Rickert realizes that the concept of Verstehen is a rather ambiguous one and in need of a precise circumscription. We return to his theory of understanding later, but must brieﬂy deal with it here, as it is crucial for his material (ontological) distinction of the concepts of nature and culture. Rickert thus juxtaposes the understanding (Verstehen) of reality and the observing (Wahrnehmen) of it. Empirical reality, i.e. reality as it is experienced through the senses (Sinnenwelt), consists of all the physical and psychic processes and objects which we observe. For instance, we hear the spoken words, register linguistic sounds and observe the movements of the lips. They can be isolated as objects and measured quantitatively. But we also understand the meaning (Sinn) and signiﬁcance (Bedeutung) of these words. Words are more than observable and quantiﬁable sounds, they are also understandable meaning complexes (Sinngebilde) which do not merely exist in reality as the observable and quantiﬁable objects do. Meanings and meaning complexes are non-sensual and in that sense unreal, yet they are not metaphysical as they do occur in concurrence with observable objects.

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The meaning of words is, of course, nothing without the observable spoken or written words. Signiﬁcance and meaning cannot be observed, but they are (or are not) understood. This pertains to the distinction of nature and culture: the former is the observable reality, the latter the correlated, yet very diﬀerent understandable reality. This distinction has consequences for the methodological distinction of Natural Science and Cultural Science: ‘For science there are objects, which, as in the case of culture, have a signiﬁcance or a meaning, and which we understand due to this signiﬁcance and meaning. On the other hand, there are objects which, like nature, are to us completely devoid of signiﬁcance and meaning, and which therefore remain incomprehensible. (. . .) Nature then would be all that is meaningless, only observable, but incomprehensible. Culture, on the other hand, would be the signiﬁcant and therefore understandable reality.’56 Rickert adds that value-relatedness (or value-relevance) is the crucial moment in the determination of objects as signiﬁcant, meaningful and thus understandable objects of Cultural Science. It is always in the ﬁrst place values which determine what is and what is not signiﬁcant and meaningful. Or in other words, understanding (Verstehen) of meaning and signiﬁcance remains scientiﬁcally vague without a consideration of values.57 We will see later how important this relating to values is for the methodology of Cultural Science. We encounter here the same problem as before: the distinction is strictly speaking not material (ontological) but formal (epistemological). This is even expressedly acknowledged by Rickert when he warns: ‘Logical division is not real separation.’58 Empirical reality, for example the speaking and writing of words, is ontologically one and undivided. But we can focus analytically on diﬀerent dimensions and set these dimensions apart artiﬁcially through our conceptualizations: on the one hand the observable reality of meaningless facts, events and objects, say the sound waves of our speaking, and on the other hand the understandable reality of meaningful facts

56 ‘Es gibt für die Wissenschaft einerseits Objekte, die wie die Kultur eine Bedeutung oder einen Sinn haben, und die wir um dieser Bedeutung und dieses Sinnes willen verstehen, und es gibt andererseits Objekte, die wie die Natur uns als völlig sinnund bedeutungsfrei gelten und daher unverständlich bleiben. (. . .) Natur wäre danach das bedeutungsfreie, nur wahrnehmbare, unverständliche, Kultur dagegen das bedeutungsvolle, verstehbare Sein.’ Ibid., p. 37f. 57 Ibid., p. 38. 58 Rickert, Probleme, p. 42.

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and events, such as the spoken or written words as expressions of meaningful conﬁgurations (Sinngebilde). As is obvious, these are two analytical interventions leading to the formal (epistemological) and not material (ontological) distinction of an observable reality vis-à-vis an understandable reality.

The generalizing and individualizing methods The problematic nature of Rickert’s material (ontological) distinctions demonstrates once more that not material ontology but formal epistemology ought to be the primary philosophical approach to empirical reality. In the end, ontology is epistemology. What then is more precisely the formal, epistemological approach, and more precisely the formal, epistemological distinction of Natural Science and Cultural Science? Ad medias res: generalization is, according to Rickert, the typical feature of the conceptualization of Natural Science and the conventional natural sciences such as chemistry, physics, astronomy, etc., whereas the conceptualization of Cultural Science and the cultural disciplines, such as history, historical sociology, historical (institutional) economics, etc., is rather characterized by individualization. Rickert prefers, as we have seen, these concepts over Windelband’s well-known distinction of the ‘nomothetic’ approach of Naturwissenschaft versus the ‘idiographic’ approach of history,59 since ‘idiography’ as description comes rather close to depiction (Abbildung) which Rickert rejects. However, if one reads Windelband’s exposition carefully, it becomes apparent that Rickert leans heavily on it, without actually acknowledging this explicitly, but also has some grave reservations about it. Wilhelm Windelband (1848–1915) acquired fame in particular through his phenomenal knowledge of the history of philosophy.60 But his Rektoratsrede of 1894 was one of the most quoted and debated publications in the history of 20th century philosophy. In particular his distinction between ‘idiographic’ and ‘nomothetic’ sciences acquired

59 Wilhelm Windelband, Geschichte und Naturwissenschaft. Strassburger Rektoratsrede, 1894, (‘History and Natural Science. Inaugural adress as President of the University of Strassburg’), in: Präludien. Aufsätze und Reden zur Philosophie und ihrer Geschichte, (‘Preludes. Essays and Speeches on Philosophy and its History’), Vol. 2, (Tübingen: Mohr-Siebeck, 1915, 5th enlarged ed.), pp. 136–160. 60 Cf. Wilhelm Windelband, Lehrbuch der Geschichte der Philosophie, (‘Textbook of the History of Philosophy’), 1891, (Tübingen: Mohr-Siebeck, 1957; 15th ed. by Heinz Heimsoeth).

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almost the status of a philosophical cliché. In view of Rickert’s similar distinction between individualizing Kulturwissenschaft and generalizing Naturwissenschaft we must brieﬂy discuss Windelband’s theory of the ‘idiographic’ and ‘nomothetic’ sciences. In this lecture Windelband admits right from the start that he is not happy with the opposition of Naturwissenschaft and Geisteswissenschaft, based on the opposition of Natur and Geist, which was already very popular in his day. The distinction of Natur and Geist, Windelband argues, is a survival of an ancient, material (ontological) opposition which became prominent at the end of Antiquity and at the beginning of medieval philosophical and theological thought. It was then prolonged with all of its coarseness in the newer metaphysics from Descartes and Spinoza till Schelling and Hegel. The opposition, however, is, Windelband continues, epistemologically very questionable, as is demonstrated by psychology as a scientiﬁc discipline. According to its object of investigation psychology would be a Geisteswissenschaft but according to its actual execution, i.e. methodologically, appears to be a Naturwissenschaft. What then is it that renders psychology methodologically a natural science? Obviously, psychology collects and processes facts, and tries to grasp the general, lawful regularities to which these facts are subjected. But that is precisely what the natural sciences are doing. However, the methodology of the sciences we call Geisteswissenchaften, history ﬁrst and foremost, does not focus on such general regularities, but is, on the contrary, oriented towards what is particular, unique (einmalig), and limited in time. In other words, there is a logical and methodological diﬀerence at work here: some sciences, like the traditional natural sciences, such as chemistry, physics, astronomy, etc. search for and analyze general and timeless laws of development. They are in that sense nomothetic. Others, like history, focus on and describe unique and particular events in time and are in that sense idiographic. The former are, Windelband adds, Gesetzeswissenschaften (law-oriented sciences), the latter Ereigniswissenschaften (eventful sciences). This is a formal, not a material distinction. One and the same object, Windelband warns, can be subjected to either a nomothetic or an idiographic investigation. A particular language, for example, can remain stable and alter minimally over a very long period of time. It thus lies open for a nomothetic analysis. Yet, this particular language is also a historical, transitory phenomenon within the linguistic life of humanity in its totality. It can thus be approached

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and described also idiographically. ‘The same applies to the physiology of the body, or for geology, and in a certain sense even to astronomy: and thereby the historical principle is transferred to the area of the natural sciences.’61 Yet, there are, Windelband notices, immense methodological diﬀerences between history and the natural sciences. Both depend on experiences, on facts of observation, but the natural scientist searches for general laws (Gesetze), the historian for individual ﬁgures (Gestalten), the one leans strongly on cognitive abstraction, the other on concrete graphicalness (Anschaulichkeit). The historian—and this reminds one of Croce’s aestheticism—paints a picture of the past in such a way that it begins to live in the present time in all of its individuality. ‘Therein roots the aﬃnity of the historical creation with the aesthetic creation and the aﬃnity of the historical disciplines with the belles lettres.’62 The historian paints pictures of people and of human life. Windelband emphasizes that all human interests and judgments, i.e. all human evaluations, are linked to the individual and the unique (das Einzelne und das Einmalige), because all our feelings of value are solidly rooted in uniqueness and incomparability.63 Value-relatedness is therefore the essence of the idiographic approach to reality. However, both methods, the nomothetic and the idiographic approach, should not be held in strict separation. Windelband gives an example. Nomothetically, the cause of an explosion is the composition of the explosive material whose chemical-physical laws can be reconstructed, but idiographically the cause is a particular move, a single spark, a shock or something similar. ‘Only the two together cause and explain the event, but neither one of the two is the result of the other.’64 Dilthey distinguishes within the psychological discipline a naturalscientiﬁc, explanatory approach which focuses on causal processes, on the one hand, and what he called descriptive psychology aiming at an understanding of inner, experienced processes, on the other. The

61 ‘Ähnliches gilt für die Physiologie des Leibes, für die Geologie, in gewissem Sinne sogar für die Astronomie: und damit wird das historische Prinzip auf das Gebiet der Naturwissenschaften hinübergetrieben.’ Windelband, l.c., p. 146. 62 ‘Darin wurzelt die Verwandtschaft des historischen Schaﬀens mit dem ästhetischen und die der historischen Disziplinen mit den belles lettres.’ Windelband, l.c., p. 150. 63 Ibid., p. 155. 64 ‘Erst beides zusammen verursacht und erklärt das Ereignis, aber keines von beiden ist eine Folge des anderen.’ Ibid., p. 158.

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latter was in his view constitutive for the so-called Geisteswissenschaften, the former for the so-called Naturwissenschaften. Initially, Dilthey views them as two separate realms—the ‘realm of nature’ ruled by ‘the empty and deserted repetition of the course of nature’ in contrast to the ‘realm of history’ dominated by the ‘sovereignty of the will’ and by the ‘capability to subject everything to thought’. The proper object of the latter was the ‘historical-societal reality’, albeit founded upon descriptive psychology.65 However, this was just an initial, preparatory distinction which he mitigates considerably in the further course of his argument. In fact, he sees the humaniora (Geisteswissenschaften), history in the ﬁrst place, and the natural sciences (Naturwissenschaften) metaphorically as the two halves of the globus intellectualis, but he does not radically separate them, nor does he demarcate the two exclusively in methodological and epistemological terms.66 The former focus on human beings who are viewed by Dilthey expressedly as psycho-physiological unities, that are anchored in historicity, yet also physiological by nature. They are thus objects of natural-scientiﬁc research, but also of historical investigation. Yet, there is an essential diﬀerence. Like Vico, Dilthey stipulates that human beings are both subject and object of the Geisteswissenschaften, being capable of understanding (Verstehen) themselves, the others, events, institutions, etc. subjectively. This is, of course, impossible in the natural sciences which aim at a causal explanation of their objects of research but are unable to understand them intuitively: ‘I understand the life of society. The individual is, on the one hand, an element in the interplays of the society, a crossing point of the diﬀerent systems of these interplays, reacting consciously, willfully and actively to their eﬀects. But the individual is, at the same time, the intelligence which observes and investigates all this.’67 Thus, the crucial

65 Wilhelm Dilthey, Einleitung in die Geisteswissenschaften. Erster Band, (‘Introduction to the Humaniora. Volume One’), 1883, B. Groethuysen ed., Gesammelte Schriften, Bd. I (‘Collected Publications’, vol. I), (Stuttgart: Teubner Verlag; Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1973) pp. 4–7. 66 Dilthey, o.c., pp. 14–21. See also Jos de Mul, De tragedie van de eindigheid. Diltheys hermeneutiek van het leven, (‘The Tragedy of Finiteness. Dilthey’s Hermeneutics of Life’), (Kampen: Kok Agora, 1993), p. 172. 67 ‘Ich verstehe das Leben der Gesellschaft. Das Individuum ist einerseits ein Element in den Wechselwirkungen der Gesellschaft, ein Kreuzungspunkt der verschiedenen Systeme dieser Wechselwirkungen, in bewusster Willensrichtung und Handlung auf die Einwirkungen derselben reagierend, und es ist zugleich die dieses alles anschauende und erforschende Intelligenz.’ Dilthey, o.c., p. 37.

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diﬀerence between the natural sciences and the humaniora is, according to Dilthey, the fact that the latter are able to understand their objects of investigation. This understanding (Verstehen) was viewed by him as the process by which the objects of ‘outer experience’ are being linked to the intuitive ‘inner experience’.68 (We return to this later.) Rickert follows Windelband’s arguments closely, but tacitly rejects his theory on mainly two points. First, he cannot accept the idea that the historical disciplines remain ‘graphic’ and ‘aesthetic’. Cultural Science does diﬀer from Natural Science in that it is, as Windelband also says, value-related and focused on the individual, the unique and particular, but it may not, as Windelband like Croce suggests, evaporate in ‘idiographic’ aestheticism. The historian engages in historical research and reports his ﬁndings scientiﬁcally. He is not supposed to tell nice stories. Cultural Science should remain scientiﬁc, should construct concepts, and not aspire to be some sort of art form. Second, Rickert also rejects Windelband’s distinction of natural-scientiﬁc abstraction vis-à-vis historical (‘idiographic’) Anschaulichkeit which were allegedly ‘concrete’ because it would produce ‘pictures of men and human life’ (Bilder von Menschen und Menschenleben). This smacks, of course, too much of Lebensphilosophie which, Rickert would argue, does not beﬁt a true student of Kant. He directs the same criticism to Dilthey and adds that his focus on ‘inner experience’ and the related processes of intuition and understanding end up in what Dilthey called ‘descriptive psychology’ and thus in a psychologistic methodology. Despite some remarks to the contrary, Dilthey’s abundantly used concepts Geist and Seele (soul, or psyche) carry the very same psychological meaning. There is indeed a lot of soul in his Geist. That may warm the hearts of vitalists, but will not much enlighten their minds. It is for these reasons that Rickert shies away from the concepts ‘nomothetic’ and ‘idiographic’, and exchanges them for ‘generalizing’ and ‘individualizing’, when he characterizes the distinct methodological and logical diﬀerences between Naturwissenschaft and Kulturwissenschaft.69 In order to avoid any suggestion of embracing vitalism 68

Cf. de Mul, o.c., p. 171, also pp. 319–331. See Heinrich Rickert, Wilhelm Windelband (Tübingen: Mohr-Siebeck, 1915), an In Memoriam of 43 pages. Rickert does not only discuss Windelband’s contribution to the philosophy of values, but uses the opportunity to explain also his own phi69

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and putting psychology on a methodological and philosophical pedestal, he replaces Geisteswissenschaft by Kulturwissenschaft. Moreover, it is a misconception to reserve so-called Geisteswissenschaft for the investigation of humans and human aﬀairs exclusively and to exclude the natural-scientiﬁc approach from this domain. As we shall see shortly, it is possible to apply a historical approach to a natural science, as for instance happens in biology, whereas a discipline like sociology can legitimately be studied in a generalizing, natural-scientiﬁc way. In fact, that has been done and still is being done. In other words, Rickert would not have been in favor of the idea of ‘two cultures’ as was pictured in the famous, often quoted (and wrongly applied) essay by C. P. Snow.70 Dilthey, and maybe also Windelband, would in all probability have less problems with this dichotomy. Natural Science then is ﬁrst and foremost characterized by Rickert formally and methodologically by the fact that its concept formation (Begriﬀsbildung) sets out to construct general concepts which as genus concepts, or generic concepts (Gattungsbegriﬀe), cover various singular phenomena as specimens (Exemplare) of the related genus. What is relevant or essential in the objects and events under natural-scientiﬁc scrutiny is only and exclusively what they have in common. These common elements are then grouped together into a genus concept,

losophy and methodology. His critique of ‘nomothesis’ and ‘idiography’ is on p. 26, where he presents his own individualizing Cultural Science as a valid alternative to the in his eyes fallacious notion of the ‘idiographic’ historical method. He regrets the fact that Windelband did not revise his theory after Rickert’s exposition of generalizing Natural Science and individualizing Cultural Science as two complementary methods had appeared in print. Windelband came, however, close to such a revision, inspired by Rickert, in his Geschichtsphilosophie, o.c., pp. 49ﬀ. 70 C. P. Snow, The Two Cultures and a Second Look, 1959, 1964, (Cambridge: At the University Press, 1964). In his Rede Lecture of 1959 Snow did not oppose natural scientists and representatives of the humaniora, as is often asserted, but scientists and literary writers. Speaking from experience (he was scientist and writer), Snow claimed scientists and writers had intellectually, morally and psychologically little in common, and lived in two totally diﬀerent worlds. Ibid., p. 2. However, in ‘A Second Look’ of 1964 he acknowledged after experiences in American universities that there was a Third Culture somewhere in the middle, consisting of ‘intellectual persons in a variety of ﬁelds—social history, sociology, demography, political science, economics, government (in the American academic sense), psychology, medicine, and social arts such as architecture. It seems a mixed bag: but there is an inner consistency. All of them are concerned with how human beings are living or have lived—and concerned, not in terms of legend, but fact.’ Ibid., p. 70. Logically and methodologically neither Snow’s ‘two cultures’ nor his ‘three cultures’ are relevant or heuristically helpful. His essay is sociological rather than philosophical and logical.

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whereas everything that is individual and particular in these objects remains irrelevant and is therefore not conceptualized. Rickert acknowledges that this kind of cognitive generalization occurs already prior to any scientiﬁc scrutiny, since we employ in our daily language scores of general concepts. If they are not proper names which always refer to individual and particular objects and events, words do cover usually general objects and events. This was, of course, realized by the Greek philosophers (Plato and Aristotle in the ﬁrst place) and also by the medieval scholastic philosophers (realism versus nominalism). Rickert elaborates on this further. His intentions can be illustrated by a simple example. The word dog is in a sense a generic concept which covers general features and characteristics common to all dogs. In veterinary science this concept is formalized into an abstract genus concept which not only contains natural-scientiﬁc laws but also covers all individual and empirical dogs. After the genus concept and its related laws are formulated and deﬁned scientiﬁcally in a systematic manner, there is no need to subject more particular, individual dogs to further scientiﬁc research. They are scientiﬁcally irrelevant. The particularities and unique character traits of Thomas Mann’s famous dog Bauschan, for instance, was and still is of no interest to any veterinarian scientist. However, this particular family dog of the 1920’s which is the main character in Mann’s novella Herr und Hund will be of interest to the literary historian or the biographer who investigates the life and works of the great German novelist.71 But he then operates conceptually and methodologically within a logically completely diﬀerent frame of reference, i.e. the individualizing context of Cultural Science to which we will turn shortly. Natural-Scientiﬁc concept formation is a sort of conscious and logically controlled continuation of the common-sense generalization of daily language. Moreover, Rickert argues, ‘it suﬃces to say that in this case the conceptual content consists of so-called laws, i.e. unconditionally general judgments about more or less encompassing sectors of reality—a reality which nobody has observed in its totality.’72

71

Thomas Mann, ‘Herr und Hund’, 1919, (Frankfurt a.M.: Fischer Verlag, 1981), in: Gesammelte Werke. Späte Erzählungen, (‘Collected Works. Late Short Stories’), pp. 7–101. 72 ‘Es genügt zu sagen, dass in diesem Falle der Begriﬀsinhalt aus sogenannten Gesetzen besteht, d.h. unbedingt allgemeinen Urteilen über mehr oder minder umfassende Gebiete der Wirklichkeit, die niemand in ihrer Totalität beobachtet hat.’ Ibid., p. 58f. Italics by HR.

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Generalizing natural-scientiﬁc concepts cover large quantities of objects and events by focusing quantitatively (e.g. statistically) on their similarities and regularities (laws), while disregarding their qualitative, individual particularities and unique, unrepeatable characteristics. It is, of course, possible to focus on a single object or event, but by means of experiments and comparisons with other objects and events the natural scientist will still search for general characteristics which ﬁt into general statements of law. The single objects and events are then deﬁned and treated as specimens (Exemplare) of the genus and forged theoretically in a genus concept (Gattungsbegriﬀ ). In fact, when one has formulated the genus concepts and their related regularities (laws), one need not investigate more specimens. The genus concepts and their relative laws are ‘true’ until changes occur which demand a revision of the generic concepts and their laws. Cultural Science will conceptualize in a diﬀerent and opposite manner. One will focus on what is individual, particular, unique and unrepeatable. The historian, for instance, whom Rickert views as the prime example of a Cultural Scientist, will investigate individual events, e.g. the Battle of Waterloo, and individual historical actors, e.g. Napoleon, Wellington, Blücher. Of course, he will in a sense generalize also since ‘battle’ and ‘historical actors’ are general concepts. We will discuss this point in greater detail later, yet it must be emphasized at this point that cultural-scientiﬁc (historical) generalizations are logically very diﬀerent from natural-scientiﬁc generalizations. The latter ‘move’ from ahistorical specimina to ahistorical genera, the former from historical parts to historical totalities. Both, parts and totalities are individual and time-bound, not general and timeless. Totalities are in their turn always individual, time-bound parts again of larger, encompassing totalities which again are parts of even larger and more abstract totalities, until one arrives at ‘humanity’ or ‘human civilization’ in toto—which, of course, most historians will preferably not take as their cultural-scientiﬁc object of investigation.73 Moreover, it always remains necessary to investigate individual, particular objects and events since in time points of view may 73

An example of such an encompassing, very general approach in history is H. G. Wells, The Outline of History. Being a Plain History of Life and Mankind, 1920, (London:, Toronto, Melbourne, Sydney: Cassell and Company, 1932, rev. ed.). Henry T. Buckle’s History of Civilization in England, 1865, in ﬁve volumes, as a prelude to Arnold J. Toynbee, A Study of History, 1934–1961, in twelve volumes. Rickert usually refers to Oswald Spengler’s Der Untergang des Abendlandes (1922), observing that

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change and throw new light on these particular objects. Unlike the research in Natural Science which comes to rest after the generic concepts and their natural-scientiﬁc laws have been formulated. Only when (usually) suddenly irregularities are being discovered—which, incidentally, often happens in terms of serendipity—that cannot be explained by the existing general concepts and laws, will further research and experiments on individual objects and processes be necessary. Here Rickert comes close to the idea of paradigmatic revolution, but he was not yet able to formulate it expressedly and clearly.74 A simple example can illustrate the methodological diﬀerence of NaturalScientiﬁc generalization and Cultural-Scientiﬁc individualization. Rickert would ﬁnd the example too simple to be useful, but it might be helpful for those who are not well introduced into his brand of neo-Kantian thinking. In everyday life we all know immediately what the word forest refers to. Now let us take as an example a speciﬁc forest, located in a speciﬁc province or region of a speciﬁc country. In this forest there is a hut in which an hermit dwells, prays and meditates. A botanist will be interested in the forest in so far as it may comprise some specimens of a rare genus of plants. He will roam through the forest, pass the hut of the hermit, and search for these specimens which can tell him more about the rare botanic genus. When he has found suﬃcient specimens which enable him to formulate the generic and regular (law like) features of these individual plants, there will be no need for him to return to the forest or any similar forest elsewhere in order to collect more individual specimens. In other words, there is no need for any further individualization. A sociologist will look at this very same forest in a completely diﬀerent manner, certainly if he follows in the methodological footsteps of Weber and

such very general historical studies (a) are unavoidably normative and metaphysical, and (b) claim to establish semi-natural-scientiﬁcally certain ‘laws of development’. Both points of critique apply also to Wells and Buckle and certainly to Toynbee. Toynbee has been criticized extensively by historians. See for a perceptive and sympathetic survey of his work: Harry Elmer Barnes, ‘Arnold Joseph Toynbee: Orosius and Augustine in Modern Dress’, in: Harry Elmer Barnes (ed.), An Introduction to the History of Sociology, 1948, (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1958, 5th ed.), pp. 717–736. Very general historical studies, focusing on large units of research, are still en vogue, albeit much less metaphysical and semi-natural-scientiﬁc than the above mentioned histories. See for example Paul Kennedy, The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers. Economic Change and Military Conﬂict from 1500 to 2000, 1988, (London: Fontana Press, 1989, 4th ed.). Cf. also the perceptive book review by the Dutch historian Jan Romein, ‘De graal der geschiedenis. De stand van het vraagstuk der historische wetten’, (‘The Grale of History. The State of the Issue of Historical Laws’), 1947, in: Jan Romein, Historische lijnen en patronen, (‘Historical Lines and Patterns’), (Amsterdam: Querido’s Uitgeverij, 1976), pp. 327–352. 74 Cf. Thomas S. Kuhn, The Structure of Scientiﬁc Revolutions, 1962, (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1970, 2nd and enlarged ed.).

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his verstehende Soziologie which is a historical and cultural sociology (interpreted methodologically as a sociology operating as a Cultural Science). This forest is to the cultural sociologist the particular biotopos of this individual hermit, whose lifestyle diﬀers so remarkably from most of his fellow men. The sociologist is not interested in the forest as the biotopos of rare plants, or insects, or birds, he will pass these specimens of various natural-scientiﬁc genus concepts (botany, entomology, ornithology) and enter the shack in order to interview this sociologically and psychologically interesting person. But he will also be interested in meeting and interviewing other individual hermits since he aspires at some degree of representative objectivity. If he is successful, he may eventually come up with an interpretive theory of hermitdom which is, of course, a form of generalization. But hermitdom is in its turn again an individual part of a larger, historical totality: renunciation of the world which again is an individual, historical phenomenon.

What then is the precise nature of generalization in Cultural Science, and how does it diﬀer from generalization in Natural Science? Cultural-Scientific generalization Rickert believes that, unlike psychology and sociology, history as a scientiﬁc discipline could in its conceptualization and methodology never employ the generalizing approach of Natural Science. The general concepts of Natural Science emerge systematically by the conceptual uniﬁcation of the similarities of a massive amount of particular objects and processes. The exercise is value-free since the similarities are not in any way related to values and meanings. The moment these similarities have been conceptualized and the similar processes of development have been ‘caught’ in law like statements (if-then propositions), further individual objects and occurrences are irrelevant. In history, on the contrary, the focus is rather on the very individuality and particularity of time-bound and value-related objects, persons, and events. In fact, their individuality and particularity originate in their value-related signiﬁcance. Historical conceptualization is thus, unlike its counterpart in Natural Science, based on actual value-relatedness (Wertbezogenheit) on the part of the historical objects as well as on the active, theoretical relating to values (Wertbeziehung) on the part of the historian.75 That is to say, according to Rickert,

75 Rickert’s ideas about value-freedom (Wertfreiheit), freedom-from-value-judgments (Wertungsfreiheit), value-relatedness (Wertbezogenheit) and the methodological relating of

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the historical discipline is methodologically located at the extreme, Cultural-Scientiﬁc (individualizing, or particularizing) end of the continuum of Natural Science and Cultural Science. At this point two critical interjections are called for. (a) When using the word ‘history’ (Geschichte) Rickert (like many historians) never clearly distinguishes between history as the ongoing process in time and history as the scientiﬁc study of this process. This is at times confusing. Usually he means the scientiﬁc discipline. (b) He was, moreover, determined to ﬁxate history on the extreme pole of (individualizing) Cultural Science. As we have seen, he believes that any attempt to come up with natural-scientiﬁc ‘laws of history’ has to end sooner or later in an unscientiﬁc (usually metaphysical) historicism, as was exempliﬁed by so-called historical materialism, and by the earlier mentioned Oswald Spengler. However, it is questionable whether this position is logically and methodologically tenable. For example, there have been so-called cliometric studies which tried to design a historical discipline which comes as close as possible to the quantitative, statistical methodology of the natural sciences. In terms of Rickert’s continuum this is legitimate, since it presents a methodological approach, not a metaphysical philosophy.76

Rickert realizes that radical individualization would be impossible and improbable, since all sciences, including the scientiﬁc study of

objects to values (Wertbeziehung) must, of course, be explained. That will happen in a later section of this chapter. 76 In Kulturwissenschaft und Naturwissenschaft Rickert at one point surmises that there may emerge in the future a Natural-Scientiﬁc approach in the historical discipline: o.c., p. 76. This has meanwhile happened. See Robert William Fogel, Stanley L. Engerman, Time on the Cross. The Economics of American Negro Slavery, (Boston-Toronto: Little, Brown and Company, 1974), ‘Prologue. Slavery and the Cliometric Revolution’, pp. 3–13. In an appendix both authors explain the nature and intentions of cliometry in terms Rickert could, and in all probability would approve of: ‘Appendix A. Science, Humanism, and Ideology in the Interpretation of Slavery’, in: Time on the Cross: Evidence and Methods —A Supplement, (Boston-Toronto: Little, Brown and Company, 1974), pp. 3–20. The authors acknowledge ‘that the writing of history cannot be reduced merely to science.’ And add ‘that the study of history will be advanced by combining the methods of science with the concerns of humanism’. L.c., p. 3. However, they continue to belittle the ‘vicars of humanism’ (l.c., p. 10) who are ‘bound together by their common emphasis on oral and aesthetic values’ and texture their language delicately ‘with metaphors and words of multiple connotation.’ L.c., p. 7. Within the group of social scientists, they continue somewhat haughtily, there is still ‘a group of scholars who work in the humanist tradition. But they are a minority, and have not fully been able to stem the scientiﬁc onslaught.’ L.c., p. 8. Obviously, these Americans were at the time they were writing not aware of the fact that their brand of positivism was very predominant in Europe at the end of the 19th century and that precisely neo-Kantian epistemology tried to escape its deadly embrace without stepping into the trap of Romantic humanism.

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history, try to transcend the mere experience of reality in order to gain plausible, if not true knowledge of this reality. Our pre-scientiﬁc experiences are indeed radically individual, particular and maybe even unique, but scientiﬁc knowledge wants more than that. It wants concepts and theories which are generally valid, plausible, and intersubjectively true. It therefore needs general concepts, and that holds true also for history, if it aspires to be part of the scientiﬁc universe. Rickert then seeks to determine what sorts of generalization could be distinguished within the historical discipline—and thus within Cultural Science—and to which extent and how these historical (Cultural-Scientiﬁc) generalizations diﬀer from those of Natural Science. In an appendix to the 5th edition of Die Grenzen der naturwissenschaftlichen Begriﬀsbildung he discusses four kinds of generalization in history as a Cultural Science.77 Since Rickert’s idea of ‘individualizing’ Cultural Science is usually dismissed by the argument that in history and the historical social sciences ‘generalization’ is unavoidable, it is necessary to discuss these four types of Cultural-Scientiﬁc generalization. To begin with, it is evident that science, whether Natural or Cultural, consists of judgments (Urteile), i.e. statements whose basic components must be general not individual because they must be intersubjectively meaningful and understandable. It is comparable to language which employs generally understandable, meaningful words, even if we talk about very individual things and occurrences. Words like ‘dog’ or ‘child’ are general and we need them as linguistic elements, if we want to talk about our particular dog or our individual child, both of whom we have given proper names, since proper names express individuality. In other words, generalization here is a means towards an end, and the end is the individual and particular, unique and unrepeatable object, person, event, etc. The same holds true of history: the elements of its statements are concepts like war, revolution, monarch, citizen, state, society, etc. These conceptual elements are indeed general, but they are elements of statements which aim at the understanding of individual or particular phenomena as signiﬁcant, value-related phenomena, such as the First World War, the French Revolution, King George III, the French

77 This appendix is a German translation of a French essay with the title ‘Les quatres modes de l’Universel en histoire’ which appeared in the Revue de synthèse historique, Paris, April 1901. Heinrich Rickert, ‘Anhang’ in: Grenzen, pp. 737–766.

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citoyen, the Dutch state, American society, etc. This is very diﬀerent in Natural Science, where the general is not a means but an end. Natural Science treats individual and particular objects as specimens (Exemplare) of general, generic concepts (Gattungsbegriﬀe). It may be objected that such concepts are employed for the sake of prediction of an individual event—e.g. an eclipse—but even then the generic concepts concerned constitute a general natural law about the occurrence of the eclipse without any values or norms involved. These general, generic concepts come about by the combination or uniﬁcation of all that is similar in the particular objects of Natural-Scientiﬁc research. There is no relating to values and thus no understandable meaning involved here, for the simple reason that the objects under scrutiny are not value-related. Secondly, the historian can, of course, not conceptually cover all the individual events and persons drawing his scientiﬁc curiosity and interest. Reality, past and present, consists of a vast and incalculable multitude of people, things and events. Even if the historian restricted himself to human events and beings, he would still have to deal conceptually with a pluriformity which is so complex and versatile that he could not possibly cover all of them adequately. He is in need of a criterion of selection by which he can determine which situations and events are essential and which are not. Historically essential then is what possesses in society a general signiﬁcance which can only be determined by general values—i.e. values that are signiﬁcant to a majority of people, not just to one or more single individuals. The historian will relate the many events, processes, persons and things which he encounters in reality to such general values and through this value-relation he will determine what is historically signiﬁcant and what is not. This, Rickert acknowledges, is, of course, not the objectivity and certainty with which the physicist formulates mathematical laws, but it still is far remote from the contingency of the value-relatedness of a particular individual human being. Meanwhile, after the historian has thus determined what is valuewise signiﬁcant, he is also able to determine what is particular and individual, in the sense of unique and unrepeatable. An example (which is not Rickert’s) may clarify this point: writing the biography of John Calvin a historian will focus on those particular details of his life only which relate to general values, like the values of the Reformation and the so-called Puritan Ethics. Petty details of Calvin’s life, such as the color of his eyes or the names of his grandchildren

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(if he had any), may have an entertainment value but are scientiﬁcally irrelevant.78 Thirdly, science is a systematic enterprise and history as a scientiﬁc endeavor will not be satisﬁed with an enumeration of individual facts and data, adding them all up to a mere bric-a-brac.79 There are in reality, as we experience it, no absolutely isolated objects and processes. Everything is related somehow—as we have seen, reality is a heterogeneous continuum. Each historical object stands in a coherent context and is particular and individual within this context. This too is something general. However, the nature of its generality is very diﬀerent from that of Natural Science. As we have seen before, in Natural Science individual and particular objects are specimens (Exemplare) of a generic concept (Gattungsbegriﬀ ), whereas in history (Cultural Science) they are parts of a totality which is more than just a composition of constituent parts, but in its turn a part of a larger totality. Or, in other words, the meaningful context of the historical object is a Sinngebilde which itself is a historical individuum. Robespierre, for instance (and this is again not Rickert’s example), is as a historical individual only understandable in the context of the terrorist phase of the French Revolution. Incidentally, Rickert emphasizes that the individual conceptualization of history does not automatically mean that, as is often said, single personalities ‘make’ history, and that therefore history is essentially the scientiﬁc study of ‘great personalities’. This is not what the concepts ‘individual’ and ‘individualization’ mean. The historian as the representative of Cultural Science par excellence focuses on objects, events, collectivities and single persons in so far as they are particular, speciﬁc and unique (unrepeatable) due to their relationship to values which are then and now held to be valid and relevant. Individual persons, and great personalities like Caesar or Napoleon are often the objects of historical research, but so are material objects, like the Kohinoor or the papal tiara, and historical events, such as the French Revolution or the Battle of Waterloo. They are in a sense the bearers of important, generally respected or acknowledged

78

Ibid., pp. 741–746. Historians often fall prey to a neo-positivist drive to be as exact as possible, if it comes to the registration of facts and data. This historiography usually ends up in a sort of ‘value-free’ book-keeping which does not contribute to any scientiﬁc understanding of what has actually happened in terms of signiﬁcance. 79

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values. (Incidentally, these can be morally objectionable values as is the case of individual dictators like Hitler or Stalin.) And, once more, these individua do not exist in the past or the present as a chaotic bric-a-brac but belong, due to their value-relatedness, to a general context, the generality of which, needless to say, is very diﬀerent from the generality Natural Science aspires to.80 There is still a fourth sort of generality in the historical discipline as a Cultural Science. Critics of Rickert’s methodological distinction of generalizing and individualizing sciences often claim that the historian often focuses on groups or even masses which are conceptualized in terms of similarities, not in terms of value-related signiﬁcance. The French citoyens storming the Bastille, for instance, constitute a class of people which are conceptualized generally according to (sociological) similarities, not according to what each individual citoyen signiﬁed in terms of the revolutionary values of those days. This is, of course, true, but Rickert hastens to add that this is being done not on logical principle, as in Natural Science, but for reasons of convenience. Indeed, there are many generalized concepts used by historians, such as Antiquity, Middle Ages, Renaissance, Modernity, or bourgeoisie, working class, urban culture, etc. Yet, these are generalizations for convenience’s sake, comparable to stenography. They are deﬁnitely not Natural-Scientiﬁc, logical generalizations on principle. Moreover, they are, unlike the value-free generalizations of Natural Science related and relating to values. In fact, if the historian focuses speciﬁcally on one of such general historical phenomena, as for example Jacob Burckhardt did in his celebrated study on The Culture of the Renaissance in Italy (1860), it becomes obvious that the methodology is one of Cultural-Scientiﬁc individualization, not of Natural-Scientiﬁc generalization.81

80 Rickert, Grenzen, pp. 746–749. Rickert states expressedly that this approach is not at all what is usually called ‘history of Great Men’. Allegedly ‘great’ men like Napoleon or Bismarck are logically and methodologically only relevant by their historical relationship to shared (general) values. History is ‘moved’ neither by individuals, nor by mass movements. Cf. Heinrich Rickert in his response to Ferdinand Toennies in his essay ‘Über die Aufgaben einer Logik der Geschichte’, (‘On the Tasks of a Logic of History’), in: Archiv für Philosophie, II. Abteilung: Archiv für systematische Philosophie, Neue Folge. VIII. Band, 2.Heft, (“Archive for Philosophy. Section II: Archive for Systematic Philosophy, New Series, Volume VIII, Book 2’), 1902, p. 151f. 81 Jacob Burckhardt, Die Kultur der Renaissance in Italien. Ein Versuch, 1860, (Stuttgart: Alfred Kröner Verlag, 1976). The sub-title ‘Ein Versuch’ (‘An Essay’, or ‘An Attempt’)

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Rickert continues the argument still one step further. Assume a historical study in which only concepts of groups of people occur, and in which these concepts only contain what all the constituent parts of the groups have in common. Take as an example—which, incidentally, was not given by Rickert—a historical-sociological study of ‘peasant culture in medieval France’. Would that be a NaturalScientiﬁc study? Hardly, because the object, although phrased by means of generalized concepts, is circumscribed in terms of time and space, and also quite unique (einmalig).82 ‘Peasant culture in medieval France’ is logically and methodologically a value-related individuum, not a value-free genus. The moment the historian sets out to investigate such an alleged peasant culture in medieval France, he must ‘descend’ to individual, particular, unique components. There are, as it were, stages of generality and individuality, but in Cultural Science each stage of generality is individual compared to the next stage. The ﬁnal stage is ‘humanity’ or ‘the universe’ which is still an individuum but, of course, hard to handle empirically and open to metaphysical fantasies which, according to Rickert, have no place in any kind of science. Empathic understanding83 In the opposition of Naturwissenschaft and Geisteswissenschaft the juxtaposition of explaining (Erklären) and understanding (Verstehen) plays a predominant, and a logically as well as methodologically rather questionable role. The proponents of Geisteswissenschaft usually claim in addition that understanding is only possible through introspection or empathy (Nacherleben). As this is allegedly a psychological exercise, it is believed that psychology constitutes the logical and methodological foundation of all sciences outside the natural sciences. Psychology

is interesting. A Natural-Scientiﬁc report would never be called ‘an attempt’, or ‘an essay’. Rickert would probably also reject this sub-title, since he always emphasized the need for objectivity and certainty in all sciences, including the Cultural-Scientiﬁc sciences. 82 Ibid., p. 751f. 83 Once more one is confronted here by the problem of translation. I chose for ‘explaining’ (Erklären) and ‘understanding’ (Verstehen) which is admittedly arbitrary. Rickert alternates Erklären with Begreifen which will be translated with ‘to grasp’ and ‘grasping’. The German verb has the same root as Begriﬀ (concept), but like Erklären, Begreifen is usually reserved by him for the Natural-Scientiﬁc mode of conceptualization.

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was thus put on a scientiﬁc and methodological pedestal. Wilhelm Dilthey was the most outspoken and best known representative of this position. Dilthey, as is well known, did not succeed in leaving a coherent, systematically organized philosophy. Although he put the systematic structure of the human mind (Geist) and soul (Seele) in the centre of his ‘descriptive psychology’, he failed to organize his thoughts and theorems in a coherent and structured system. This certainly added to the liveliness of his thinking and writing, but also hinders a satisfactory grasping of the often fragmentary theorems and theories. His theory of Verstehen is for that reason hard to grasp. He kept adding and changing it, without really rendering it more precise and understandable.84 Understanding (Verstehen) as the essential method of acquiring geisteswissenschaftliche knowledge is, according to Dilthey, not, as is often thought, subjectivist introspection, i.e. it is not an emotional turning into one’s own and private feelings which then are projected on objects, events, other human beings outside one’s own psyche or consciousness. It is, Dilthey stipulates, the other way around: man can only understand himself and the world outside him (the other human beings to begin with) by the detour of what is being expressed, through observable expressions (Ausdrücke). We possess memories of past experiences and can therefore, as in an emotional analogy, identify with what we observe. For instance, if someone stumbles, falls and contorts his face in pain, we can empathize with him which in German is called Nacherleben. Dilthey distinguishes three classes or types of such expressions which he also labeled ‘life expressions’ (Lebensäusserungen). There are, ﬁrst, the cognitive expressions such as concepts, judgments, theories. De Mul labels this aptly as a ‘logical understanding’ and adds that it is the simplest type of

84 Jos de Mul provides a helpful survey of the various developments and additions of Dilthey’s theory of Verstehen in his PhD-dissertation De tragedie van de eindigheid. Diltheys hermeneutiek van het leven, (‘The Tragedy of Finiteness. Dilthey’s Hermeneutics of Life’), (Kampen: Kok Agora, 1993), pp. 319–340. This is not the place to discuss all this in detail. For this brief excursus on Dilthey’s ideas of Verstehen I have, guided by De Mul’s dissertation, relied on the posthumously published fragments in the third chapter of Wilhelm Dilthey, Der Aufbau der geschichtlichen Welt in den Geisteswissenschaften, (‘The Construction of the Historical World in the Humaniora’), 1926, B. Groethuysen, ed., Gesammelte Schriften, Bd. VII, (‘Collected Publications, vol. VII’), 1958, (Stuttgart: Teubner Verlag; Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1973, 6th ed.). pp. 191–294; in particular pp. 205–220. Rickert, it should be noted, appreciated and incorporated parts of Dilthey’s historical psychology. Discussing, for example, Dilthey’s analysis of ancient Roman metaphysics of the will, exhibited in particular in Roman law, he called it ‘extraordinarily impressive’ (ungemein eindrucksvoll). Cf. Heinrich Rickert, Kant als Philosoph der modernen Kultur. Ein Geschichtsphilosophischer Versuch, (‘Kant as Philosopher of Modern Culture. An Essay in Historical Philosophy’), (Tübingen: Mohr-Siebeck, 1924), p. 65. But he then went on criticizing Dilthey’s alleged psychologism: ibid., p. 68ﬀ.

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understanding, since it is not embedded in complex socio-historical and psychic circumstances. The Pythagorean theorem can be understood without knowing the circumstances under which it was invented. The second type of understanding, called ‘technical’ by De Mul, refers to acts which express clear and obvious aims without verbal expressions of these aims. We understand, as it were immediately, without much reﬂection, the picking up of a knife and the cutting of a piece of meat. The emotions of the person who cuts the meat are irrelevant for the understanding of the observed action. The third type of expression is inﬁnitely more complex and the actual source of geisteswissenschaftliche understanding: the expression of an inner, emotional experience (Erlebnisausdruck). It can, Dilthey argues, tell us more about the psychic cohesion of a person than a subjective introspection could ever demonstrate. The facial expression, the look and the blush do not tell us cognitively, as in a judgment, about truth or falsehood, but tell us everything about mendacity and veracity. Dilthey adds to this theorem of understanding-through-expressions two diﬀerent forms of understanding: elementary forms and higher, more complex forms. As to the elementary forms, it should be realized that humans need mutual understanding in practical life. Understanding is functional in human communication. Dilthey once spoke of ‘the business of understanding’.85 In practical everyday life we are all accustomed to elementary forms of understanding, since we have learned while growing up certain elementary acts which are components of more complex actions for the sake of certain aims. For example, we understand immediately, without reﬂection, the picking up of a bucket or the pounding with a hammer, or the back and forth movement of a saw, indicating the collection of water, the driving in of a nail, the cutting of a piece of wood. These acts ﬁt within larger aims again, such as cleaning a ﬂoor, hanging up of a picture, wood paneling a wall, constructing a box, etc. Dilthey adds that in this elementary form of understanding the expression is not separated from the expressed—i.e. fear and its facial expression cannot be separated as cause and eﬀect, but are one integrated phenomenon. In addition, elementary understanding always occurs in commonalty, i.e. in an environment of common practices and customs, of organizations and institutions we grew accustomed to. It is, in short, the organized world of the ‘objective spirit’, or ‘culture’.86 The elementary forms are, as it were, the building blocks for the higher forms of understanding.87 The focus in this type of understanding is on the coherence within an object or a person. The person is understood as an individual with a coherent psychic structure, the work of art is understood as a coherent aesthetic structure—even if we have no personal knowledge of the individual and even if we have no knowledge of the artist who

85 86 87

‘das Geschäft des Verstehens’, Dilthey, o.c., p. 213. Ibid., pp. 208–210. Ibid., pp. 210–213.

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created the work of art. As to the latter, Dilthey gives the example of the performance of a play in a theatre. A spectator who is not trained in literature can still immerse in the action on stage without thinking of the playwright, but also the literary expert can live spell-bound during the performance. (Note Dilthey’s use of the verb ‘live through’!) It is in both cases an understanding Nacherleben—a living through subjectively of what happens on the stage. The beholder’s understanding focuses on the coherence of the actions on stage, the characters of the roles, the interconnecting of moments which determine the fatal turn of the performed drama. ‘Yes, only then will he enjoy the full reality of the exhibited extract from life. Only then will in him fully be realizes a process of understanding and experiencing as the poet intended to generate in him.’88 Dilthey then comes to the vitalist conclusion that Erleben, the life-experience, transcends the cognitive concepts of scientiﬁc thought. Life and living ﬁrst, thought and thinking next. Life—Leben, Erleben—is like a ﬂuïdum or aroma, functions, certainly in the case of the Geisteswissenschaften, as a sort of background music: ‘Erleben can never be solved in concepts, but its dark, deep tones accompany, if only softly, all the conceptual thinking in the Geisteswissenchaften.’89

In Rickert’s opinion such typically geisteswissenschaftliche ideas of understanding and empathy or introspection have caused much confusion—which, we may add, they still do up till this very day. Rickert phrases his critique with mild irony: ‘the theories of Verstehen are as diverse as the meaning of the word.’90 We should avoid ‘indulging in the abstruseness and the mysteries of the geisteswissenschaftlichen “Verstehen”.’91 He then develops his own intriguing theory of understanding (Verstehen), explaining (Erklären) and empathy or introspection (Nacherleben), while he acknowledges that this theory is not deﬁnitive but consists only of ‘but ﬁrst attempts to arrive at an understanding of understanding.’92 And, as we shall see, in the end his own conception of Verstehen is not really that diﬀerent from Dilthey’s! 88 ‘Ja nur dann wird er die volle Realität des hingestelleten Ausschnittes aus dem Leben geniessen. Nur dann wird sich in ihm voll ein Vorgang des Verstehens und Nacherlebens vollziehen, wie ihn der Dichter in ihm hervorbringen will.’ Ibid., p. 212. 89 ‘Nie kann Erleben in Begriﬀe aufgelöst werden, aber seine dunklen, tiefen Töne begleiten, wenn auch nur leise, alles begriﬄiche Denken in den Geisteswissenschaften.’ Ibid., p. 331. 90 ‘die Theorien des Verstehens sind so mannigfaltig wie der Sinn des Wortes.’ Rickert, o.c., p. 558. 91 ‘das Schwelgen in dem Tiefsinn und in den Geheimnissen des “geisteswissenschaftlichen Verstehens”.’ Ibid., p. 559. 92 ‘Nur um Ansätze zum Verstehen des “Verstehens” handelt es sich.’ Idem. Rickert develops his ideas about explaining, understanding and empathy in Ibid., pp. 557–611.

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Although Dilthey, as we saw, denied this himself, Rickert maintains that he and others after him saw and applied understanding in psychological terms, namely as empathy (Nacherleben) with regard to what other people in the present or the past experienced or felt inwardly. Rickert quotes Dilthey in a footnote, where he deﬁnes Verstehen as the knowledge of something inside (ein Inneres) which comes to us from outside signals—i.e. from expressions. ‘What is “something inside”?’, Rickert then asks. ‘After all, everything depends on that. We know how meaningless the concept “something inside” is.’93 When it comes to understanding, Rickert is, of course, particularly anxious to avoid metaphysics and psychologism, both of which were rather popular in his days, as we have seen in Chapter Two. He admits nevertheless that Cultural-Scientiﬁc understanding (Verstehen) does indeed stand in opposition to Natural-Scientiﬁc explaining (Erklären), and must somehow incorporate empathy (Nacherleben). It needs considerable logical and conceptual virtuosity to then avoid the trap of psychologism and to refuse to fall back on metaphysics. Rickert has, I think, not been altogether successful in this. Let us try to reconstruct the main line of his respective arguments. We must, to begin with, repeat a basic notion which we discussed earlier. Both the body and the psyche (Seele) belong to empirical (experienced) reality which is the proper domain of Natural-Science and its generalizing conceptualization. Psychology then is, according to Rickert, predominantly a representative of generalizing NaturalScience. There is, however, still another kind of reality which cannot be experienced and observed, and which is therefore not a sensual, empirical reality. It is the non-empirical world which is valid or not valid (Geltung). This is the non-sensual, non-empirical world (die unsinnliche Welt) of values and meanings. Our spoken words, for instance, can be heard and their sound waves can be measured natural-scientiﬁcally, but their meaning and signiﬁcance cannot be sensually experienced, nor scientiﬁcally measured. They make sense (are meaningful and thus valid) or they are senseless (meaningless, invalid). Now these non-empirical values and meanings are not psychological realities, since the psyche or soul belongs together with the body to the empirical world, nor are they metaphysical realities, ﬂoating

93 ‘Was ist ein “Inneres”? Darauf kommt doch alles an. Wir wissen, wie nichtssagend der Begriﬀ des Inneren ist.’ Ibid., p. 560, note 1.

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around, as in traditional Idealism, as a kind of metaphysical Geist. They are forms which through meaning bestowing acts (Aktsinn) are, as it were, attached to ‘substances’, i.e. to cultural goods (Kulturgüter), like value-judgments and institutions, organizations, social movements, and other sociological conﬁgurations. In addition, these objectiﬁed meanings hang together, constitute coherent conﬁgurations which Rickert called Sinngebilde, i.e. meaningful structures or conﬁgurations. Value-judgments, for example, constitute coherent ideologies, scientiﬁc values hang together in theoretical paradigms, religious values in organized and institutionalized belief systems, etc. Once again, Rickert is keen on emphasizing that the non-empirical world of values and meanings (the Second Realm) is neither metaphysical, nor psychological. In fact, as transcendent forms they ‘are’ not, but they are or are not valid. Validity, not being is their main characteristic. This has all been explained in the former chapter, but had to be repeated brieﬂy in order to grasp Rickert’s theory of understanding. Now Rickert argues that knowledge of the empirical reality of facts, objects and events, including those of the human psyche, is a typically Natural-Scientiﬁc explaining (Erklären), while knowledge of the unreal and non-empirical world of values and meanings, and their meaningful conﬁgurations, is a typically Cultural-Scientiﬁc understanding (Verstehen). For example, we can explain through experiments and measurements the psychological processes that go on in the psyche of a religious person. In that case, the psychologist will not be interested in the speciﬁc content of the religious values this person adheres to. He searches rather for a detection and explanation of general, psychological processes which may as well occur in aesthetic emotions or lust experiences. But we can, in any case, not explain in such a natural-scientiﬁc, generalizing way the values and meanings of the speciﬁc religious sect to which this person belongs. That would require a diﬀerent approach, the approach of Cultural Science in which understanding rather than explaining, and also historical, individualizing research, would be necessary. In the case of an individual religious believer within the context of an historically speciﬁc religious sect, we, of course, want to understand what is going on within his mind and soul: what is it that makes him believe the doctrines, observe the rituals and attend the ceremonies of this particular sect? That, it is obvious, must have something to do with values and meanings. We want to understand not the general psychological processes of true believers (that is the

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task of the psychological discipline), but the experience of values and meanings by persons who may be very diﬀerent from us, who may be even alien to us, as in the case of believers of a strange sect, or of members of a civilization far back in the past. For this kind of understanding, Rickert admits, we must indeed rely on empathy or introspection. This is a remarkable step! Although Rickert castigates Dilthey ironically, as we saw above, for his focus on ‘something inside’, he himself now needs to introduce the ‘inner’ psyche as the focus of empathetic understanding! Yet, he keeps denying that this is in fact psychology, mainly because he has, as it were, ‘ﬁxed’ psychology to the Natural-Scientiﬁc pole of the continuum. In any case, empathy or introspection, he argues now, is of special importance to history as the Cultural Science par excellence, because by investigating historical records (archives, archeological discoveries, etc.) historians try to understand how human beings in the past were related to values and meanings, how these values and meanings were experienced in the often distanced past.94 This can only be done through empathic introspection. Naturally, the historian will also study the cultural goods of the past (the institutions, organizations, movements, theories, etc.) since they are the empirical embodiments of the non-empirical values and meanings of those days. This understanding of the meanings, the values and the norms coincides with empathy or introspection regarding the psyche, mind or consciousness of the person or persons involved. This, of course, demands a further explanation. As to empathy, the essential question is how it could be possible to draw valid conclusions from the direct experience of our own psyche about the strange psyche of others (in the present or the past) that obviously cannot be experienced directly.95 Rickert distinguishes understanding (Verstehen) and empathy (Nacherleben). He gives a heuristically helpful example. Often someone expresses words which

94 It is interesting to remember once more the approach of so-called cliometrics which investigates archives natural-scientiﬁcally (statistically) and searches for general regularities (‘laws’) with the aim to explain rather than to understand the workings of a societal and economic conﬁguration like slavery. 95 Obviously, historians, archeologists in particular, will also often need to explain things in a Natural-Scientiﬁc manner, as for example in the case of the chemical compositions of food remnants, found in archeological sites, or, in these days, in the case of the genetic (DNA) composition of bones in human skeletons. This is the domain of explaining (Erklären) which for clarity’s sake is disregardedat the moment.

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we understand completely and immediately, and which for that reason are “familiar”. (This is similar to Dilthey’s elementary form of understanding.) Yet, at the same time, they may strike us as being “strange”, preventing any feeling of empathy. This paradox of “familiar” and “strange” is illustrated by Rickert with the help of the following example. After World War I a German expresses his satisfaction about the Peace of Versailles.96 One thing is clear, Germans in the 1920’s did understand immediately the unreal meaning (den irrealen Sinn) of these words. They knew, in particular, without any reﬂection the meaning of the “familiar” words “Peace of Versailles”. The reaction could indeed be: “I know what you mean.” But having experienced this war, most Germans in Rickert’s days, including, we may assume safely, Rickert himself, would at the same time ﬁnd the statement rather “strange”. They may respond by saying: “I know what you mean, but ﬁnd your statement strange.” We encounter here, Rickert argues, the distinction between the understanding of the unreal (non-empirical) meaning of the words and the empathy (or, in this case the lack of empathy) with the real (empirical) psychic processes within the other.97 Now, if they do not angrily dismiss the other and turn their back on him, his fellow-Germans could, of course, make an eﬀort to understand the psyche of the other who expressed these words. To him who expresses these words, they are not at all “strange” but on the contrary rather “lively” (lebendig), to his fellowGermans they are not, or in any case, not yet ”lively” at all. They had at least initially great troubles to empathize (Nacherleben) with what to him was “lively”. Now if they were historians, they might try to overcome this gap between their “own” psyche and the “strange” psyche of the other who expressed his satisfaction about the Peace of Versailles. However, it is only possible to know and understand directly one’s own psyche, whereas there is no direct road from one’s own psyche to that of another. There is only the indirect road via the understandable meanings and meaning conﬁgurations

96

In a subtle value-judgment Rickert places Peace between quotation marks: “Frieden”. Ibid., p. 575. In fact, the example given here is itself based upon a political value-judgment which, according to his own theory, is inadmissible, certainly in a logical exposition. The following quote is pregnant in this respect: ‘We may content ourselves with the statement that a German who expresses satisfaction with the Peace of Versailles, thinks like a Frenchman, and perhaps we try to “empathize” with that statement on the ground of the “psychological” knowledge that there are people everywhere who, because they have had little luck in their fatherland, rejoice when the others fare badly also.’ (‘Wir begnügen uns eventuell damit, zu sagen, ein Deutscher, der über den Frieden von Versailles Genugtuung empﬁndet, denkt wie ein Franzose, und das suchen wir vielleicht “nachzuerleben” auf Grund der “psychologischen” Kenntnis, dass es überall Menschen gibt, die, weil sie in ihrem Vaterland wenig Glück gehabt haben, sich freuen, wenn es den Anderen ebenfalls schlecht geht.’). Ibid., p. 579. 97 This, of course, reminds us of the earlier discussed distinction of Frege between Sinn and Bedeutung.

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of the expressed words. German historians in Rickert’s example will remind themselves of the unreal, but understandable meaning and value of the words “Peace of Versailles”, and next remember through introspection how the words of satisfaction regarding this peace may be “strange” to themselves, yet are apparently “familiar” to others. In other words, they will place themselves in the position of the other who expressed the words of satisfaction, and understand through their meanings and meaning conﬁgurations what has probably gone on in his mind and psyche, when he spoke such understandable, yet strange words. However, this is not to say that, in terms of value-judgments, they will agree and sympathize with the content of the words.98 Historians will not be satisﬁed with a mere understanding of meanings and meaning conﬁgurations of the past, but want to know also what is going on in the mind and psyche of the “strange” and “alien” persons under scientiﬁc scrutiny: what is driving them? They can only reach these “strange” and “alien” minds and psyches of the past indirectly by a combination of (a) the understanding of the values and meanings to which their objects of research have been related and (b) by realizing through introspection how he himself is related to values and meanings, and how they become “lively” (lebendig) in his own psyche and mind. Rickert calls this Nacherleben, i.e. living through what others experience or have experienced. The distance to Dilthey is now rather small. The diﬀerence is, of course, that Rickert focuses beyond the Diltheyean expression upon the general meaning and value conﬁgurations which form the understandable context of the historical object under investigation—in the case of the above example, the person who expressed his at ﬁrst sight “strange” opinion of being satisﬁed with the Peace of Versailles. And the other diﬀerence is, of course, that Dilthey views in this whole operation of empathic understanding the core of the psychological discipline, whereas Rickert sticks to his almost dogmatic conviction that psychology is and should be a generalizing, i.e. natural-scientiﬁc discipline.

As he does so often, Rickert tries to explain all this by entering into a critical discussion with a fellow-philosopher. In this case he does not address himself to Dilthey which is quite understandable since his ideas about empathy are in fact so similar to Dilthey’s hermeneutic psychology. He addresses himself critically to a theorem of Max Scheler who claims that it is incorrect to say that only one’s own

98

This is similar to George Herbert Mead’s theorem of the ‘taking the role or position of the other’. See my De theorie van het symbolisch interactionisme, (‘The Theory of Symbolic Interactionism’), (Amsterdam: Boom Meppel, 1973), pp. 73–85. As we saw also in Chapter Three there are, despite Rickert’s dislike of Pragmatism, distinct similarities between some basic theorems of Mead and Rickert’s epistemology and methodology.

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psyche could be known or understood directly, that however the psyche of others could not be understood without mediation.99 As diﬀerent as individual human beings may be, Scheler argues, they nevertheless all share the same kind of psychological constitution. But although corporeal sensations like erotic lust or physical pain are often similar, they are yet never identical. As to their kind and degree of intensity such bodily sensations are experienced by each of us personally and diﬀerently. However, psychological sensations like grief or sorrow, joy and happiness are not only similar but also identical. We can immediately empathize with the psychological sorrow or joy of someone else. Rickert questions this. Scheler’s argument, Rickert points out, suﬀers from the psychologistic error which fails to acknowledge that the human psyche and its processes are empirical and real phenomena which we cannot immediately, without mediation, ‘enter into’, just as we cannot directly get at the things and processes of the objective world around us. Psycho-physical sensations such as lust, or pain, or joy in others cannot directly be understood but only ‘reached at’ through the mediation of related meanings and meaning conﬁgurations which in their turn, as we saw before, are related to generally valid values. We do not feel precisely what someone else feels, when he is in grief, or experiences pain or joy. But we do know what grief, or lust, or joy, or pain means since such psychological processes are related to non-empirical values which are deemed to be valid. ‘Grief ’, ‘pain’ or ‘joy’ are value-laden phenomena with a position in our general culture. When it is said “it was one joy, one grief, one delight that got hold on the population”,100 we realize that each individual alone experiences his or her private joy, grief or delight, as far as these are psychological (empirical) realities. The experience is private and individual, but the understandable meaning of such a national joy, or grief, or delight is related to a objectively valid value (e.g. the nation), virtually shared by the entire population. Incidentally, Rickert, we saw in Chapter Three, is aware of the fact that there will always be dissidents who evaluate such national sentiments not positively, e.g. as a laudable patriotism, but negatively, e.g. as a

99

For this debate with Scheler see Grenzen, pp. 568–575. Quotation marks by Rickert: ‘“es war eine Freude, ein Leid, ein Entzücken das die Bevölkerung ergriﬀ.”’ ‘Ibid., p. 574. 100

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despicable nationalism, since in the realm of values each positive value has its opposite counterpart: true-false, good-evil, beautiful-ugly, lust-pain, divine-demonic, etc. In conclusion, understanding is, according to Rickert, empathy but not as a direct ‘feeling into’ the mind and psyche of others, either in the present or in the past. Verstehen is rather an ‘indirect’ process, a combination of (a) an understanding of the non-empirical, valuerelated meanings in the context of which people think, act and feel; and (b) the empathic introspection of the observer or investigator which teaches him how the values of his cultural environment and the connected meanings are “lively” at work within his own psyche and mind enabling him by analogy to grasp what is going on in the minds of others past and present. Verstehen is a combination of (a) and (b). Rickert calls it empathic understanding.101 Again, he admits that he is unable to present a satisfactory theory of the process of understanding and that much remains unclariﬁed. But he hopes to have presented some ﬁrst steps towards a sober understanding of understanding which is, he adds, ‘scientiﬁcally more valuable than the carousing in the abstruseness and secretiveness of the “geisteswissenschaftlichen” Verstehen.’102 It is questionable, if he has managed to exceed Dilthey who kept calling his psychological theory of understanding “geisteswissenschaftlich”, in clarity and lucidity. Value-relationship, relating to values and abstaining from value-judgments It need not to be repeated again: value-freedom is not possible in history, or in Cultural Science, since, as Vico and others after him have argued time and again, the objects of Cultural Science are like its subjects human: human beings, human artifacts, human events, etc. Unlike the animals and atoms, molecules, light waves and sound waves, etc. of the natural sciences, the people and their cultural goods are not and can not be free from values. Nor are the historians, or the researchers of Cultural Science, ever free from values

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‘nacherlebenes Verstehen’. Rickert, o.c., p. 582. ‘wissenschaftlich wertvoller als das Schwelgen in dem Tiefsinn und in den Geheimnissen des “geistewissenschaftlichen” Verstehens.’ Ibid., p. 559. 102

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and normative value-judgments with regard to the values and valuejudgments of their objects of research. Natural scientists too are, of course, not just in their personal lives but also in their research, related to values, truth in particular. Moreover, science and research are values too, objectiﬁed values, or in Rickert’s terminology, cultural goods. Scientists are related to these values, loyal to and dependent on these goods. They even in some cases believe in Science as in a kind of religious or ideological substitute. It is called scientism. But these values and value-judgments of the natural scientists do obviously not stand in any relationships to any values of their objects of research, as is the case in Cultural Science, since the objects of natural-scientiﬁc research are simply value-free, value-indiﬀerent. What is at stake here is the logical and methodological nature and diﬀerences of value-relatedness (value-relationship) as a fact, the relating to values as a practice and the abstaining from value-judgments as a methodological rule or norm. In the debates on the so-called value-freedom of the social sciences fact, practice and norm are usually mixed up. Cultural Science, we have seen before, in contrast to Natural Science is characterized methodologically by the fact that it not only focuses on what is individual, particular, or unique, but also reduces the complexity of reality as a heterogeneous continuum by constantly referring, or relating to values, because by means of this relating to values (Wertbeziehung) the essential and relevant is separated from the inessential and irrelevant. Moreover, as we also saw before, the historian as the representative par excellence of Cultural Science is enabled to focus on what is individual, particular or unique because he relates his objects of investigation to values. Only he who, or that which is related to values, can logically be singled out from the irrational chaos of facts, objects, and living beings as individual, particular, unique. There are, obviously, various kinds of value-relationship which, incidentally, Rickert does not always distinguish sharply enough. To begin with, there is the sociological fact that the objects of historical investigation—human beings, events, works of art, organizations or institutions—are always related to values. If the historian wants to investigate the life and works of Erasmus or Napoleon in order to write their biographies, he will have to study their cultural contexts, their contemporary sets of values, norms and meanings to which they are positively or negatively related. This is the value-

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relationship of the object of historical research. However, the historian himself is, of course, also related to his own contemporary values, norms and meanings which, needless to say, will diﬀer signiﬁcantly from those of Erasmus or Napoleon. This is in both cases the factual, sociologically determined, past and present value-relationship (Wertbezogenheit). To formulate it somewhat bluntly, value-relatedness (or value-relationship) is a fact like gravity. It is senseless to deny it, or to revolt against it. Secondly, there is the act of relating objects of investigation to values by the historian (Wertbeziehung) which Rickert deﬁnes as a theoretical act in contrast to the practical act of expressing a normative value-judgment (Wertung). The latter is not just a relating to values, but a practical (political, religious, aesthetic, etc.) evaluation of present or past realities. Rickert stresses the fact that the theoretical relating of objects to values remains within the domain of scientiﬁc determination of facts and it is for that reason that he calls relating to values ‘theoretical’. But the expression of normative valuejudgments (evaluations, Wertungen) in terms of praise and reproach departs from the domain of science, belongs rather to the atheoretical world of religious, political, artistic, etc. practice. It is for that reason that he calls value-judgments ‘practical’. Or, in other words, it is a fact that people acknowledge certain values as valid values and try to produce in relation to these values cultural goods. In his research the historian separates relevant facts from irrelevant ones in accordance with this relating to values of the people under investigation. Yet, he is not concerned with the question whether these values are objectively valid: ‘The value-relating procedure (. . .) must therefore be separated (. . .) as sharply as possible from the evaluating procedure. That means, values are only relevant for history in so far as they are de facto evaluated by subjects and in so far as, therefore, certain objects are to be considered de facto as cultural goods.’103 To give an example from after Rickert’s death, it is for an historian as a cultural scientist irrelevant what the validity of Hitler’s worldview

103 Rickert, ‘Das wertbeziehende Verfahren (. . .) ist also (. . .) auf das schärfste vom wertenden Verfahren zu trennen, und das heisst: für die Geschichte kommen die Werte nur insofern in Betracht, als sie faktisch von Subjekten gewertet und daher faktisch gewisse Objekte als Güter betrachtet werden.’ Kulturwissenschaft und Naturwissenschaft, p. 112. Italics by HR.

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and its values was or is. These values are only historically relevant in so far as they were evaluated positively or negatively, and deemed valid or invalid between 1933 and 1945 by Nazi’s and anti-Nazi’s, and in so far as the Nazi party NSDAP and the resistance movements had developed into cultural goods, i.e. objectiﬁed crystallizations of the Nazi and anti-Nazi values. All this is, of course, notwithstanding the possibility, or even the human obligation, to disclaim Hitler’s worldview morally in strong terms, and thus to judge it morally invalid. But one has then made a logical transition—a metabasis eis allo genos—from the scientiﬁc (theoretical) to the moral (atheoretical) realm. The historian ought to be conscious of such a logical transition. Even if in the eyes of the historian (i.e. in his own experience of values, norms and meanings) none of the values under investigation carry any validity, the fact remains that the practical relating to the values, expressed in value-judgments by the people under investigation, assists the historian to separate the scientiﬁcally relevant from the scientiﬁcally irrelevant. That is to say, without practical valuejudgments on his part, but by theoretically exhibiting the value-relatedness of his objects under investigation, the historian can determine what is and what is not relevant and signiﬁcant. Or, in other words still, it is through his theoretical relating to the values and the valuejudgments of the people under investigation that “historical individua” emerge.104 For example, historians will generally agree that the events called “French Revolution” have been signiﬁcant and important for the further political, social and cultural development of France and Europe, and that therefore these events are in their individuality, particularity and uniqueness historically essential and relevant. Yet, historians will not be able to prove scientiﬁcally that the French Revolution has fostered or injured the political, social and cultural developments of France and Europe in terms of progress or decline. Those are normative, practical value-judgments which ought to be kept out of any scientiﬁc enterprise.105 In fact, in the world of values and normative value-judgments there exists no objective validity but a permanent conﬂict about what is deemed to be positive or negative.106 104 105 106

Ibid., p. 113. Ibid., p. 114. Idem.

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Cultural-Scientific objectivity All this leads to a complex set of questions about the ‘objectivity’ of Cultural Science in general and history as a Cultural Science in particular. Does all this not end up in historicism and relativism?107 Although he criticizes him as ‘the journalist of science’ whose ‘thought displays a constant, restless ﬂuctuation, a crowding of questions upon questions, a dropping of problems once taken up and a failure to keep apart historical and systematic problems’, Karl Mannheim (1893–1947) sees the voluminous study Der Historismus und seine Probleme (1922) by Ernst Troeltsch (1865–1923) as the main source of inspiration for his own theory of historicism.108 In fact, he follows Troeltsch when he claims that historical knowledge can only be acquired, if the historian occupies ‘an ascertainable intellectual position (Standort) (. . . .) harboring deﬁnite aspirations regarding the future and actively striving to achieve them. Only out of interest which the presently acting subject has in the pattern of the future, does the observation of the past become possible. The trend of historical selection, the form of objectiﬁcation and representation becomes understandable only in terms of the orientation of present activity.’109 But also the objects of historical research must be seen in terms of their sociological ‘positional determination’ (Standortgebundenheit).110 Troeltsch, Mannheim relates with approval, rejected neo-Kantian epistemology because of its alleged formalistic conception of the knowing subject, but he obviously failed to notice Rickert’s theory of the value-relatedness of both the subject and the object of historical research which comes close to his own ‘positional determination’ . . . Mannheim broadens Troeltsch’s theories considerably, deﬁning historicism as something more than just a scientiﬁc methodology. Historicism in Mannheim’s view is a worldview (Weltanschauung), a way of life and a state of consciousness ‘which came into being’, he adds, ‘after the religiously determined medieval picture of the world had disintegrated and when the subsequent Enlightenment, with its dominant idea of a supra-temporal Reason, had destroyed itself.’111 Mannheim attacks neo-Kantian, allegedly formalistic epistemology in favor of a clearly vitalistic standpoint. Historicism

107 Cf. Guy Oakes, Weber and Rickert. Concept Formation in the Cultural Sciences, (Cambridge, Massachusetts, London, UK: The MIT Press, 1988). It discusses primarily the problem of the objectivity of the cultural sciences as analyzed and allegedly not at all solved by Rickert and Weber. 108 Karl Mannheim, ‘Historicism’, 1924, in: Karl Mannheim, Essays on the Sociology of Knowledge, transl and ed. By P. Keckskemeti, (New York: Oxford University Press, 1952), pp. 84–134; quotation: p. 98 (slightly altered by me in accordance with the German original text, ACZ). 109 Ibid., p. 102. 110 Ibid., p. 103. 111 Ibid., p. 85.

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does not only see and experience ‘every segment of the spiritual-intellectual world as in a state of ﬂux and growth’, it also seeks ‘to derive an ordering principle from this seeming anarchy of change—only by managing to penetrate the innermost structure of this all-pervading change.’112 Rickert, of course, would object to the vitalistic core of Mannheim’s historicism and would probably have joined Karl Popper who radically criticized the historicist’s faith in ‘historical laws’ and its ‘utopian social engineering’, both of which are scientiﬁcally unacceptable and indefensible.113 In Die Probleme der Geschichtsphilosophie (‘The Problems of the Philosophy of History’), 1924, Rickert devotes a small section to historicism which he labels ‘an absurdity’ (ein Unding) since it is couched in relativism and skepticism. That must end up in a radical nihilism which always dissolves itself, because it also has to annihilate itself.114 He is convinced that a philosophy of history which wants to avoid the nihilism of historicism needs the concept of progress. The past must not only be mediated and reconstructed but also critically evaluated in terms of what ought to be (‘was sein soll’). That, of course, comes close to metaphysics which, as he always has emphasized, has no place in a scientiﬁc philosophy oriented towards the empirical reality.

The historian is related to the values of his own cultural context and will approach the objects under investigation in terms of this valuerelationship. As a result, a historian will not and cannot be valuefree in the sense of Natural Science. In fact, Rickert admits, he will often subject his objects and their values and value-relationships to normative (positive and/or negative) value-judgments which are, of course, not his private opinions because those are not very interesting and relevant. They are rather judgments that relate to the leading cultural values of his days. Historians will often relate and refer to these leading values of their cultural environment in order to express the historical importance or signiﬁcance of historical events and processes. In other words, such judgments related to the shared 112

Ibid., p. 86. Karl Popper, The Poverty of Historicism, 1957, (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1969), pp. 64–71: ‘Piecemeal versus Utopian Engineering’. By his one-sided (very critical) focus on Karl Mannheim who identiﬁed historicism with a sociology of knowledge, Popper wrongly attacked and radically rejected this type of sociology. Cf. Peter L. Berger, Thomas Luckmann, The Social Construction of Reality. A Treatise in the Sociology of Knowledge, (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1966) which refutes from the start Mannheim’s approach and takes Alfred Schutz’s phenomenology as theoretical frame of reference. Being the positivist he was, Popper would probably also have rejected this type of sociology though, but could not have accused it of either historicism or holism. 114 Heinrich Rickert, Die Probleme der Geschichtsphilosophie, (Heidelberg: Carl Winters Universitätsbuchhandlung, 1924), pp. 129–132: ‘Der Historismus und seine Überwindung’. Quotation: p. 129. 113

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values of the historian’s cultural context will help to demarcate the ﬁeld of historical research. Yet, he should abstain from personal and private (positive or negative) value-judgments, nor is it his task to determine, whether the objects of his historical investigation are moral or immoral, beautiful or hideous, truthful or mendacious, lustful or painful, etc. This is, of course, not easy since human beings are intrinsically evaluating creatures. An example, not oﬀered by Rickert but in the spirit of his ideas, may illustrate this. A dictator responsible for genocide is scientiﬁcally relevant because of this abhorrent fact of mass murder. But a biographer should abstain from further value-judgments for the duration of his research, trying to collect as many objective facts about the dictator’s regime as possible. He should even try to understand empathically what inspired the dictator to commit or condone such abhorrent acts. What drove him, what caused his dictatorship, what were the values and anti-values he related to, what were and still are the meaning and signiﬁcance of his written and spoken words? Rickert admits further that historical investigations, or Cultural Science in general, are mutually diﬀerent according to diﬀerences of the cultural contexts to which they are value-related. He calls it ‘the variety of leading value-related points of view’ (die Verschiedenheit der leitenden Wertgesichtspunkte). A simple example, given by Rickert, illustrates his point. The rejection of the emperor’s crown by Friedrich Wilhelm IV is historically interesting, relevant, essential. After all, it is a bold act to refuse such an exalted oﬃce, certainly in those days. And the refusal had important political consequences to boot. However, it is historically completely irrelevant who this particular prince’s tailor has been. That is to say, it is irrelevant in terms of political history, because from the viewpoint of the history of fashion or of the dress-making craft, it may again be very relevant to know who this particular tailor has been.115 This has two methodologically far-reaching consequences. First there is obviously a shifting of historical relevances in line with the perennial changes and transformations of cultural contexts. This fact is expressed by the cliché dictum that each generation re-writes history and writes its own history. It entails, secondly, a pluriformity of historical perspectives which is, for instance, demonstrated by the co-existence of diﬀerent historical schools. The

115

Rickert, Kulturwissenschaft und Naturwissenschaft, p. 115f.

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question then emerges, of course, if there is any historical objectivity. Or re-phrased negatively, do these two consequences not imply that history, or Cultural Science, is at the end of the day hopelessly arbitrary, if not totally subjective, and beyond that turned over to relativism? If that were true, if Cultural Science were couched in arbitrariness and subjectivism, Rickert argues, it would no longer be scientiﬁc. Unlike common-sense and everyday-life experience, science wants to be systematic and is always in search of objective, i.e. absolute and timeless truth. What then is the objectivity of history, or Cultural Science? And what is its systematic nature? The concepts of the empirical generalizing natural sciences, Rickert reminds us, are forged by one generation of researchers, and modiﬁed or radically overhauled again by the next generation, which in its turn will have to accept the fact that their concepts and theories will be succeeded by often quite diﬀerent ones in the following generation. In fact, Rickert points out, Natural Science and empirical natural-scientiﬁc research are themselves historical inventions, cultural goods, which in time have emerged in the European cultural context and which, as is the case with all cultural goods, are taken care of sedulously in universities and laboratories.116 In the recent history of science the leading focus is no longer exclusively on scientiﬁc concepts and theories of the past, but rather on scientiﬁc practices, on science in action.117 The historians Steven Shapin and Simon Schaﬀer engaged in a detailed historical reconstruction and interpretation of the controversy between Boyle and Hobbes over the scientiﬁc, societal and political importance of experiments and experimental life. It is a commonly accepted wisdom that with the invention of the air-pump Robert Boyle established himself in the world of science as the father and founder of the experimental method and of the experimental life of scientists (experimentalism) beyond that. Thomas Hobbes was from the start a ﬁerce opponent of Boyle, but was immediately put aside and even ridiculed as an ignoramus by the Royal Academy ﬁrst and the larger scientiﬁc community of his and later days next. Thus emerged what Shapin and Schaﬀer call “member’s accounts” versus “stranger’s accounts”, i.e. positions taken by the insiders of experimentalism and positions of outsiders and contenders of experimentalism. Shapin and Schaﬀer did not intend to prove that Hobbes

116

Ibid., p. 173. Cf. Bruno Latour, Science in Action, (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1987). It is a detailed study of what goes on in laboratories and other centers of scientiﬁc research. 117

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was in fact right and Boyle wrong, or the other way around, but rather assumed the role of strangers vis-à-vis the community of Boyle followers, and next studied the debate and in particular the arguments and actions of the Boyle camp from this assumed standpoint: ‘We have said that we shall be setting out by pretending to adopt a “stranger’s perspective” with respect to the experimental program; we shall do this because we have set ourselves the historical task of inquiring into why experimental practices were accounted proper and how such practices were considered to yield reliable knowledge. As part of the same exercise we shall be adopting something close to a “member’s account” of Hobbes’s anti-experimentalism. That is to say, we want to put ourselves in a position where objections to the experimental programme seem plausible, sensible, and rational.’118 (Rickert would have applauded such a heterological approach!) The interesting part of this contrary methodology is the fact that the mechanisms of power of an established and authoritative in-group like the Boyle experimentalists, are being demonstrated, while the belief in the selfevident nature of the experimentalist truth is being questioned. Both historians set out ‘to break down the aura of self-evidence surrounding the experimental way of producing knowledge. (. . . .) Of course, our ambition is not to rewrite the clear judgment of history: Hobbes’s views found little support in the English natural philosophical community. (. . . .) Giving other circumstances bearing upon that philosophical community, Hobbes’s views might well have found a diﬀerent reception.’119 This gives an important clue of what objectivity is all about in the cultural-scientiﬁc context of history—in this case the history of science. As in a thought experiment both historians assume the position of a stranger to the experimentalist community, then the texts and facts of the debate are carefully studied from an outsider’s point of view. That yields fruitful insights and knowledge of the working of power and authority within an in-group that is certain of the self-evidence of its ‘truth’. Boyle was wrong, Hobbes was right? That is not what these historians set out to prove. All they did was to question the taken-for-granted assumption that Hobbes was an ignoramus in respect to the experimentalist issue, and beyond that to lay bare the mechanisms of power and authoritarianism of an in-group of believers. Actually, Shapin and Shaﬀer apply to historical research the principle of democratic justice formulated as “hearing the other side”. They hope in this way to come closer to an objective evaluation of the past. That the accounts of a stranger entail epistemological objectivity was argued convincingly by Georg Simmel in his short essay on ‘The Stranger’. Simmel claimed that the stranger ‘s outsider-position entails both objectivity

118 Steven Shapin, Simon Schaﬀer, Leviathan and the Air-Pump. Hobbes, Boyle, and Experimental Life, (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1985, p. 12f. 119 Ibid., p. 13. The Latin text of Hobbes’s attack on Boyle Dialogus Physicus de Natura Aeris was, according to Shapin and Schaﬀer, never translated and read by his critics. Simon Schaﬀer translated it and added it to his and Shapin’s book.

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and freedom: ‘Objectivity may also be deﬁned as freedom: the objective individual is bound by no commitments which could prejudice his perception, understanding, and evaluation of the given.’ It provides the stranger with critical ‘a bird’s-eye view’.120

The main diﬀerence between the objectivity of Natural Science and that of Cultural Science is that the natural laws and the concepts of generalizing Natural Science are unconditionally valid, even if we did not possess any knowledge of them. That is, the various naturalscientiﬁc concepts come more or less close to an absolutely valid truth, while the historical expositions lack such a relationship to an absolutely valid truth, as long as the leading principles of their conceptualizations consist of actual evaluations which, Rickert adds, ‘come and go like the waves in the sea’.121 The objectivity of a specialized historical investigation, say of the dress making craft in 17th century Germany, is in a sense assured by the relationship to the leading contextual values of the historical specialist in question. There is a forum of historical specialists who deem this topic relevant and the majority of whom is devoted to such a kind of historical research. In a sense, this forum of fellow historians and the interested readers of the subsequent publications on the dress making craft in 17th century Germany will acknowledge the value of his scientiﬁc endeavor and thus constitute the objective (intersubjective)122 validity of the results of his research. A problem arises, when one transcends this level of empirical specialization and operates at a higher level of generality, usually called universal history (Universalgeschichte). At this level, Rickert argues, we need an objective and systematic concept of culture consisting of a system of objectively valid values. Such a concept of an objectively valid and systematic culture which is the logical and methodological equivalent of the absolutely valid concepts and laws of Natural Science, does not exist in reality, Rickert asserts. It must remain a hypothesis, or—and these are not Rickert’s words—a kind of dream or

120 Georg Simmel, ‘The Stranger’, in: Kurt H. Wolﬀ (ed. and transl.): The Sociology of Georg Simmel, (London: The Free Press of Glencoe; Collier-Macmillan, 1964), pp. 402–408; quotation: p. 405. 121 ‘die kommen und gehen wie die Wellen im Meer.’ Kulturwissenschaft und Naturwissenschaft, p. 165. 122 Rickert does not use the concepts intersubjectivity and intersubjective but I think they do adequately cover what he meant to say about cultural-scientiﬁc objectivity.

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utopia, which the empirical, specialized historical investigations try to approach as closely as possible.123 It is, one may add, not the utopian dream of the historicist which Popper castigated. One is rather reminded of Kant’s concept of a transcendental Idea which is a possibility, a postulate, not a reality. In this concept of a hypothetical, objectively valid and systematic culture we ﬁnd an equivalent of the objectivity and systematic nature of Natural Science: ’The unconditionally, generally valid value which is more or less realized by our cultural goods, must correspond with the unconditionally, generally valid law of nature which the generalizing sciences search for.’124 Rickert is, however, quite honest, when he sighs that he might not have given satisfactory answers to the many reservations this theory will evoke. But then, he says as an excuse, ‘the relationship of science to the validity and the systematic nature of values contains diﬃcult problems’, which he has addressed previously, he adds, in his epistemological treatise Gegenstand der Erkenntnis (cf. Chapter Three).125 However, it is possible and legitimate to speculate about the absolute objectivity of values beyond the mere hypotheses to which the empirical, specialized, cultural sciences have to restrict themselves. At this point we, of course, remember Rickert’s concept of the full-ﬁlled reality as the coping stone of his conceptualization of the reality-intoto. It was discussed at the end of the former chapter where there was this remarkable shift from the realm of science to that of metaphysics. In that realm the normal concepts of science could not be used anymore. The metaphysical concepts are rather symbols or allegories, referring to virtual, sur-real realities. In his search for an absolute objectivity of Cultural Science, Rickert again leaves the scientiﬁc, empirical domain and transfers to the metaphysical, non-empirical domain, which is theoretically no longer covered by scientiﬁc history but by philosophy of history (Geschichtsphilosophie). It is presented as the heterological counterpart of natural philosophy

123 See his monograph Probleme, chapter 3: ‘Die Geschichtsphilosophie als Universalgeschichte’, o.c., pp. 121–156. 124 ‘Dem unbedingt allgemeingültigen Gesetz der Natur, das die generalisierenden Wissenschaften suchen, muss dann der unbedingt allgemeingültige Wert entsprechen, den unsere Kulturgüter mehr oder weniger realisieren.’ Ibid., 169f. 125 ‘das Verhältnis der Wissenschaft zur Geltung und Systematik der Werte enthält schwierige Probleme.’ Ibid., p. 169.

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(Naturphilosophie).126 Sciences always operate empirically, never metaphysically. However, the scientiﬁc disciplines adhering to the methods of Cultural Science are permanently in danger of falling back on ‘naturalism’ (or neo-positivism) which is, as we saw before, the belief that Natural Science is the only legitimate scientiﬁc approach to reality. It entails, of course, a radical denial of the world of meanings, values and norms which is in itself rather ideological, metaphysical and thus unscientiﬁc. But Rickert also wanted to avoid the opposite error which claims that social reality cannot be investigated in a generalizing, natural-scientiﬁc manner because human beings are not only value-related, but also ‘conscious’ and ‘free’. They are individuals whose thoughts, emotions and acts ought not to be explained in terms of natural-scientiﬁc laws of causality (Erklären), but can allegedly only be understood (Verstehen) in an empathic manner. We have seen how Rickert accepts the notion of empathic understanding (of the values of the subjects under historical investigation), but rejects any metaphysical connotations, since metaphysics can never be part of empirical and specialized, scientiﬁc investigations. All that belongs to the domain of philosophy, or the philosophy of history. Since we focus in this chapter on the logic and methodology of history and related cultural sciences, we will not deal with Rickert’s endeavors in the domains of metaphysics. Much of it has been covered already by the former chapter. There is one ﬁnal issue we still must discuss: Rickert’s dealing with the idea of causality in Cultural Science. Causality in Cultural Science Rickert, we saw in the Introduction and in the second chapter, is often in opposition to fashionable ideas and theories, and discusses them, as it were e contrario, in order to be able to clarify his own thinking. Causality in history, or in Cultural Science is, in his day particularly, a hotly debated issue giving rise to conceptualizations and methodological propositions which he takes apart analytically

126 See the last part of Die Grenzen der naturwissenschaftlichen Begriﬀsbildung, entitled ‘Naturphilosophie und Geschichtsphilosophie”, ibid., pp. 624–736.

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without compromises, often operating on the sharp edge of his logical raiser blade. So, in the tradition of Geisteswissenschaft it has been popular to claim that causality has no place in it, since human beings are ‘free’ and therefore not caught in the webs of cause and eﬀect.127 Consequently, its approach is allegedly not causal, i.e. its focus is not causally on origins, but teleologically on ends. In this teleogical focus man is deﬁned as being essentially free. Needless to say that Rickert rejects such metaphysical juxtapositions. Often, he argues, the concept of freedom is, together with that of casualness (Zufälligkeit), dished up as the opposing counterpart of causality. Freedom is then reduced to something like ‘causelessness’ (Ursachlosigkeit) which is philosophically not very helpful. One may believe in freedom as a kind of ‘transcendent’ freedom of the will, but it is logically very hazardous to apply such a concept to an empirical science like history, let alone to found its methodology upon it. History as a specialized cultural science can admittedly not apply the generalizing concepts and methods of Natural Science, but that is the case not because its objects of investigation, human beings, are allegedly free creatures, but because these creatures must be investigated and understood in their individuality, particularity and uniqueness. Causality is logically not the issue, the generalizing method is! As we saw before, history as a Cultural Science is characterized by the individualizing approach, not by the alleged fact that it focuses on human freedom. Thus, the idea that history is concerned with free individuals which is then contrasted to Natural Science whose objects and processes are causally conditioned, does logically and methodologically not make sense.128 It is not an empirical but a metaphysical idea. Much confusion around the idea of the ‘causal method’ which he calls ‘a meaningless catchword’,129 are caused, according to Rickert, by the erroneous identiﬁcation of the concept of empirical causality with that of conceptual, law like regularity (Gesetzmässigkeit). There is an

127 This is not the place to discuss in depth Max Weber’s theory of culturalscientiﬁc causality which he interprets in terms of ‘causal imputation’ which he links to rational ‘ideal types’. See e.g. Max Weber, ‘Knies und das Irrationalitätsproblem’, in: Gesammelte Aufsätze zur Wissenschaftslehre, o.c., pp. 42–145, particularly pp. 127ﬀ. Rickert’s echo, as discussed in more detail in Chapter Six, is loud and clear in these logical considerations of Weber. 128 Rickert, Grenzen, p. 378. 129 Rickert, Probleme, p. 48.

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important, often overlooked diﬀerence between them: in order to be real, empirically causal relations are individual, particular and nonrepeatable realities, whereas the laws of Natural Science are not real but conceptual, not individual but general. So we ought to speak of ‘individual’ causal connections as empirical realities and of ‘general’, natural laws as abstract concepts.130 This holds true for both Natural Science and Cultural Science. Max Weber follows Rickert in this logical distinction closely, but re-phrases it as follows. Discussing the duality of cause and eﬀect he introduces the two concepts ‘real origin’ (Realgrund) and ‘epistemic origin’ (Erkenntnisgrund) and warns never to confuse them. He gives two examples to clarify the distinction. There was in his days an anthropologist who had studied the relationships between the sexes in two American-Indian tribes. He then concluded that these relationships caused the formation of a state and he, in addition, claimed that this case was ‘typical’ for all state formations and thus possessed universally historical relevance. Now, Weber argues, it is obvious that the alleged state formation among these Indian tribes did not have any real, empirical impact on state formations elsewhere in the world. In that respect—that is, as ‘real origin’—this historical and empirical case of state building has been of no importance whatsoever. However, Weber continues, it is possible that the anthropologist’s analysis of this speciﬁc case of state building may be heuristically eﬀective in that it provides knowledge about how states are generally being formed. This speciﬁc case of state formation may well be, heuristically useful, and thus present an ‘epistemological origin’. The second example stems from the world of ‘nature’, as Weber phrases it. The concrete X-rays that Röntgen saw ﬂash from his screen, left concrete eﬀects in his environment which, according to the law of the conservation of energy, must still be eﬀective in the cosmos. However, it is not this real, cosmic cause-and-eﬀect that render these discovered X-rays important and relevant, but the fact that they and Röntgen’s experiments increased our knowledge about the laws of these rays in particular and of energy in general.131 Logically this distinction, as phrased by Weber, remains, I ﬁnd, questionable. The ‘real origin’ can, of course, never be ‘detected’ without the intervention of concepts and is thus, in the end ‘epistemological’ as well. That is proven by Weber’s own theory of ‘causal imputation’ by means of ideal types.132 Moreover, he tries to connect this logical distinction of Realgrund and Erkenntnisgrund with Windelband’s and Rickert’s methodological distinction of the idiographic/individualizing and nomothetic/generalizing

130 131 132

Idem. Weber, Wissenschaftslehre, pp. 234–238. Ibid., pp. 190–214.

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approaches to reality, but gets, in my opinion, quite confused in the process.133 Rickert avoids such confusions by sticking to his diﬀerentiation of the individualizing and generalizing methods as two heterological, correlated modes of scientiﬁc knowledge of reality.

Historical facts—persons, things, events, institutions, etc.—are never isolated realities as they are always constitutive parts of larger totalities, and they continuously act upon each other in terms of cause and eﬀect. Cultural Science searches for causal origins and causal eﬀects just as Natural Science does, and it is senseless to claim, as often happened in Rickert’s days, that there were two alternatives: causality (reserved for Natural Science) and teleology (reserved for Cultural Science, or history). It is false, Rickert says time and again, to think in terms of two opposed realities, causally conditioned nature and causeless historical development: ‘we only know one empirical reality which constitutes the only material of the natural-scientiﬁc as well as the historical disciplines. And the general forms of this reality, for instance causality, must be relevant to the generalizing as well as the individualizing sciences.’134 Systematic coherence is one of the hallmarks of science. In Natural Science this coherence consists of generic concepts (Gattungsbegriﬀe) which constitute lawful regularities (Naturgesetze). There are, according to Rickert, in history as a Cultural Science two dimensions which constitute systematic coherence. There are, to begin with, the synchronic relationships of the objects investigated or events with their surrounding environment (Umwelt). These connections can in principle be extended well-nigh endlessly. There must be a limit to them, but it is hard to determine what that limit is and where it should be drawn. Theoretically, each particular object of investigation relates to a vast network of connected objects which in the end is reality-in-toto, the last and ﬁnal totality which, of course, is hard to deal with empirically. In a specialized, historical investigation one will not stretch these synchronic connections to the utter limit of such an unfathomable total reality. Depending on the main issue or theme

133

Ibid., p. 237. ‘wir kennen nur eine empirische Wirklichkeit, die das einzige Material der naturwissenschaftlichen sowohl als auch der historischen Disziplinen bildet, und die allgemeinen Formen dieser Wirklichkeit, z.B. die Kausalität, müssen für die generalisierenden ebenso wie für die individualisierenden Wissenschaften von Bedeutung sein.’ Rickert, Grenzen, p. 373. 134

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of the specialized investigation, the historian will impose certain limits on his investigation of the synchronic connections. But there are, secondly, also and at the same time, the diachronic developments of the investigated historical objects which were caused by former objects that in their turn were again caused by previous objects. Here too, one could in principle continue the causal lines of development ad inﬁnitum, as in an endless regression, moving from stage to stage of development, until one hits the absolute origin of all these developing objects. This will also not make much sense in an empirical, specialized historical investigation. Historical regressions in time will also be limited in accordance with the main issues and themes under investigation.135 There is, of course, a formidable problem here: what precisely are the limits of the synchronic extension and the diachronic regression? Where does, for instance, the historian who investigates the Russian October Revolution, end his scrupulous investigations of all the synchronic and diachronic facts and processes which bear causally upon this particular object of research? Rickert argues that it depends on the main issue or theme of his specialized investigation. But that is still rather arbitrary, since in that case the limits were in the end rather individually determined, as it is the historian himself who decides that certain facts do no longer contribute heuristically to his investigation of this particular issue or theme under investigation. It would be more in the line of his main course of argumentation, if Rickert referred here also to the dominant, intersubjectively valid values of the historian’s time and society. It is, after all, this set of values which assists him in separating the relevant from the irrelevant data. It is simultaneously this set of values which will determine where the heuristically fruitful limits of the synchronic and diachronic network of causal strings lie. In the case of the October Revolution, for example, the historian of the 1970’s, operating in what then was called the Cold War, will focus on diﬀerent individual facts and diﬀerent causal (synchronic and diachronic) networks of facts than the historian of today. Likewise a German historian of today will investigate the fateful years 1933–1945 with a diﬀerent focus than his colleagues from the 1950’s and 1960’s—apart from the fact that there were and still are diﬀerences in view between historians from West- and historians from East-Germany. Today, German historians will (and do) pay more attention to the suﬀering of the German people after 1943, than their predecessors would do (or dared to do) thirty or twenty years ago.

Historical developments are not undiﬀerentiated ﬂows in time, but usually exhibit certain stages which, in order to be individual and

135

Rickert, Probleme, p. 44.

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mutually diﬀerent, must contain, according to Rickert, some innovation, i.e. something new and not yet existing.136 They are thus only individual, particular, and unique—that is, historically interesting and signiﬁcant facts. This shows once more that history cannot be molded by the generalizing concepts and laws of Natural Science. As we have seen before, Rickert dismisses theories about ‘the laws of history’, as the cultural-scientiﬁc equivalents of the ‘laws of nature’, as unscientiﬁc, metaphysical constructions which are usually not free from ideological, political value-judgments. Yet, this is not to say that Cultural Science could not conceptually construct lawful regularities of historical developments. At this point Rickert’s arguments become very complex and admittedly rather abstract, if not vague, which is, of course, due to the fact that he apparently introduces now in the logical realm of history as the prime example of individualizing Cultural Science a clearly generalizing concept like ‘the laws of development’. He has argued up till now that, unlike such disciplines as psychology or sociology, history could not apply conceptual generalizations. History, he claimed earlier, is a radically individualizing kind of Cultural Science. How does he solve the apparent contradictions which emerge, when he introduces the notion of ‘laws of development’? The following theorem of Weber is, I think, quite enlightening. Arguments of cause and eﬀect in the cultural sciences, he argues, appertain to rules and regularities. There are ﬁve logically diﬀerent, yet corresponding historical facts which have relevance with regard to causality. He takes Goethe’s love letters addressed to Frau von Stein as example. (1) To begin with, the objectively observable fact of the paper Goethe used is, of course, historically irrelevant. But there is another fact which is historically important, namely the content of these letters, i.e. the expressions of Goethe’s feelings towards the lady, i.e. the actual meaning (Sinn) of these letters which can be analyzed and interpreted scientiﬁcally. These sentiments must have had a tremendous impact on Goethe’s literary personality and it is scientiﬁcally relevant to reconstruct the eﬀect of this on the poet’s creations. Weber does not formulate it thus, but he refers, of course, to the Realgrund which the literary historian will try to uncover. (2) Let us assume, Weber continues, that there is no such impact on Goethe’s creations. In that case, these intimate letters still bear historical relevance, because they will provide a unique insight into his way of life and into his particular view of life. In other words, these letters are historically relevant as Erkenntnisgrund, as a means

136

Ibid., p. 46.

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to acquire knowledge of Goethe’s view of life and the world. (3) But, given Goethe’s status and position, the contents of these letters may also throw light on the typical way of living in certain circles of the German society of those days. They then function as an epistemological means to acquire knowledge about the characteristic cultural habitude of those circles in those days, distinct from the ways of life in other times and in other societies. The letters are then placed, as it were, in a cultural-historical causal conﬁguration. (4) However, it is possible that these letters reveal cultural characteristics which go beyond the particular features of Goethe’s time and society, which are actually quite generally relevant and can be used as material for a cultural psychology or social psychology which, being sciences, aim at analytical, abstract and generalizing regularities (‘laws’). In this approach the individual and unique sentiments and experiences of Goethe are in themselves irrelevant. They are only relevant as a means for the acquisition of scientiﬁc ‘generic concepts’ (Gattungsbegriﬀe). (5) Finally, if all of these four instances are irrelevant it is still possible that a psychiatrist, interested in the psychology of eroticism, subjects these letters to his brand of investigation. Goethe’s letters to Frau von Stein may function in that case as an ‘ideal typical’ example of a type of erotic behavior which, Weber adds, can without doubt be compared to Rousseau’s Confessions.137 In view of Rickert’s theory of cultural objectivity, causality and generalization these ﬁve constructed stages from the highly historically-individual to the very general-natural-scientiﬁc is, I think, quite enlightening.

Rickert follows Kant who argued that causality is a transcendental category by means of which we are able to think about reality, if we want to consider it as ‘nature’. But he adds that Kant did not restrict this idea of categorical causal imputation to the natural sciences, as has often be claimed, but applied it to each specialized, natural and cultural science. History in particular, Rickert claims, was according to Kant in need of such a categorical imputation of causality, if it wanted to understand the course of events in time.138 However, this should not lead to the false conclusion that history then needs to determine, what the causal laws of historical developments are, because in that case one would again fall back upon the naturalistic fallacy which claims that the generalizing method of Natural Science is the only legitimate scientiﬁc method. The concept of causality is then falsely identiﬁed with that of natural law.

137

Ibid., pp. 241–244. Rickert, Grenzen, p. 374f. This is an interesting interpretation of Kant’s theory of causality, because it is usually believed that Kant restricted the idea of causality, as most of the other categories, to the natural sciences. 138

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Speaking about causality in the case of Cultural Science, Rickert distinguishes three diﬀerent concepts. First there is the basic principle that every event or happening in time has a cause. It is, so to say, the categorical causality principle. (This is, of course, a typically Kantian, transcendental, a priori concept of causality.) Second, there are historical, thus speciﬁc and particular conﬁgurations which we may deﬁne as distinct (synchronic and diachronic) relationships of cause and eﬀect and which are particular, individual and unique parts of reality. Third, there are causal laws which in a generalizing manner group together what various historical conﬁgurations have in common in the manner of causes and eﬀects. They constitute general judgments (allgemeine Urteile) whose content consists of what various individual causal conﬁgurations repeat and have in common This is surprising because it constitutes clearly the introduction of a generalizing conceptualization in history as a Cultural Science which Rickert previously expressedly called impossible and thus inadmissible.139 These repetitive and similar regularities in history resemble strongly the laws of Natural Science. Apparently, there are, as Rickert sums it up, in history as a specialized cultural-scientiﬁc discipline (a) individual, or historical and (b) general or natural-scientiﬁc causal conﬁgurations, both of which must be distinguished from (c) the basic (transcendental, a priori) principle or category of causality.140 It is (b) that is surprising! Naturally, this needs further explanation. Why and how are ‘causal laws’ employed in a historical analysis of a particular chain of cause and eﬀect? The reason is that the historian is not just interested in the merely accidental sequence of cause and eﬀect in time, but as a scientist he also wants to understand the necessity by which this individual, unique, never recurring eﬀect emerged from this individual, unique, never recurring cause or origin. ‘The historian namely not only wants to indicate the temporal succession of cause and eﬀect, but wants to receive insight also in the necessity with which this individual, never recurring eﬀect emerges from this individual, never recurring cause. In doing so a detour alongside general concepts

139 In Grenzen Rickert was still very explicit about this. Cf. ibid., pp. 376–384. In Probleme (1924), as we will see later, he apparently changed his mind on this issue. It is interesting to observe that he did not incorporate this change in the revised 5th edition of Grenzen, which came out ﬁve years after publication of Probleme. 140 Ibid., p. 376.

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of causal relationships and maybe causal laws is unavoidable.’141 In other words, the causes and eﬀects are empirical realities and therefore individual, particular and unique, but that what bridges these causes and eﬀects are often molded in ‘a spatial and time bound “scheme” of everywhere and always.’142 Let me illustrate what Rickert means by the following example. The Glorious Revolution is a shorthand concept for a complex conﬁguration of very individual, particular and unique (diachronic and synchronic) processes of cause and eﬀect, so are the French Revolution, and the Russian Revolution. Now, if the historian wants to demonstrate why it is logically legitimate to label these three diﬀerent historical conﬁgurations by the general concept of ‘revolution’, he must search for regularities in the individual cause-andeﬀect developments constituting the three historical conﬁgurations. Individual eﬀects are, so to say, grouped together in generalizing concepts and then connected with individual causes which are also grouped together in generalizing concepts, and these generalizing concepts of cause and eﬀect are then, as it were, tied together in a schematic development which carries the character of necessity. In order to be legitimately called ‘revolution’ the three conﬁgurations, and similar ones in history, must be molded by these general, law like processes of cause and eﬀect. Needless to add, that they also carry the character of an if-then proposition or ‘natural law’. Rickert adds that this exercise will not always be possible in the neat manner just formulated. Often there are not suﬃcient historical data to reconstruct such schematic and generalizing connections of individual causes and individual eﬀects. In that case causal necessity cannot be demonstrated, or if so only hypothetically. Often, Rickert sneers, historians then speak of the apparent ‘freedom’ of the historical subjects.143 141 ‘Der Historiker will nämlich nicht nur die zeitliche Folge von Ursache und Wirkung angeben, sondern auch einen Einblick in die Notwendigkeit gewinnen, mit der aus dieser individuellen, nie wiederkehrenden Ursache diese individuelle, nie wiederkehrende Wirkung hervorgeht, und dabei ist ein Umweg über allgemeine Begriﬀe von Kausalverhältnissen und eventuell Kausalgesetzen nicht zu vermeiden.’ Rickert, Probleme, p. 49. 142 ‘das räumliche und zeitliche “Schema” des überall und immer.’ Idem. 143 Ibid. p. 50. Rickert’s argument in question is, as I said, abstract and rather vague. The example of the three revolutions was not given by him, but illustrates suﬃciently, I believe, what he meant to say. I think that whereas Natural Science operates with if-then-propositions (and only-if!), the schematic and causal regularities of Cultural Science, and history in particular, are better formulated by whenthen-propositions. It does not make sense to add ‘and only when’ to these propositions,

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Conclusion Generalizing, value-free Natural Science and individualizing, valuerelating Cultural Science are the ‘ideal typical’, logically constructed extreme ends of a continuum on which the empirical natural and social sciences operate. Sometimes they come very close to the one extreme, as in the case of history which Rickert well-nigh identiﬁed with Cultural Science, although it too carried generalizing elements as we just saw when we discussed the ‘laws’ of historical development. Most empirical, specialized natural sciences, on the other hand, operate close to the other extreme, Natural Science, but here too there are exceptions, as in the case of evolutionary biology which, according to Rickert, works with individualizing, historical concepts. Contrary to the advocates of a Geisteswissenschaft he positioned psychology close to the Natural Science pole of the continuum, arguing that ‘materially’ the human being is a psycho-physical unity of mind-and-body and that ‘formally’, i.e. logically, nothing stood in the way of psychologists approaching this mind-and-body in a generalizing, natural-scientiﬁc manner. Modern psychologists do not have to adhere to behaviorism and similar exact schools in psychology, to agree with him wholeheartedly. Yet, it remains questionable within the terms of Rickert’s own continuum of sciences to pin down one single discipline to one of the two logical extremes, as he does in the case of history as an almost exclusively Cultural Science and psychology as an almost exclusively Natural Science. As to the empirical natural sciences, developments since Einstein, Bohr and Heisenberg have indicated that Rickert’s deﬁnition of the ‘material’ object of natural-scientiﬁc research in terms of mechanically moving ‘things’ is old-fashioned, while his exclusive positioning of the contemporary natural sciences on the logical extreme of Natural Science is no longer possible. The extremes are, maybe more than he was aware of, indeed non-empirical ‘ideal types’, formal and abstract limes concepts. Historians can legitimately try to move from the one end of Cultural Science to as is for instance illustrated by the so-called unintended consequences and the elective aﬃnities (Wahlverwandtschaften) which played such a big role in Max Weber’s cultural sociology. See my De relativiteit van kennis en werkelijkheid. Inleiding tot de kennissociologie, (‘The Relativity of Knowledge and Reality. Introduction to the Sociology of Knowledge’), (Amsterdam: Boom Meppel, 1974), on the logic of elective aﬃnity: pp. 137–142.

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the other end of Natural Science, as has been tried by the proponents of so-called cliometrics.144 Likewise, psychologists can legitimately develop their discipline as an historically and culturally oriented discipline. There are, of course, scores of historical-psychological studies belonging to the Cultural Science pole of Rickert’s continuum. Let me give just one, rather unconventional example. Although admittedly strongly criticized by most psychologists and historians, an interesting case is presented by the Dutch psychologist J. H. van den Berg in his Metabletica or Theory of Changes (1956) which bore the telling sub-title: ‘Principles of a Historical Psychology’. It is an unconventional, at times rather fanciful and capricious study of often very subtle changes in the consciousness of Western men and women— changes which Van den Berg connects with societal transformations.145 This leads to another point of possible criticism. Rickert warns against generalizing historical studies which tried to demonstrate the existence of long-term regularities as the equivalents of naturalscientiﬁc laws. They would inevitably end up in metaphysical and ideologically normative visions which would not have any scientiﬁc value and validity. As we saw, he refers to Oswald Spengler’s Decline of the West as a telling example, and could have added Arnold Toynbee’s A Study of History as well. History in particular, he emphasizes time and again, is an individualizing discipline and should not try to imitate the generalizations of Natural Science, lest it drifts oﬀ into muddy metaphysics. Yet, his friend and colleague Max Weber, for instance, did also design a grand sociological theory of socio-economic change, in which he deﬁned the modernization of the Western world as a process of increasing rationalization—a process which he viewed as an ever broadening and deepening ‘disenchantment’.146 As the 144

Cf. Robert W. Fogel, Stanley L. Engerman, o.c. J. H. van den Berg, Metabletica of de Leer der Veranderingen, 1956, translated as The Changing Nature of Man. Introduction to a Historical Psychology, (New York: Delta Books, 1983) An application of this theory to the changes in our attitudes towards the human body is J. H. van den Berg, Het menselijk lichaam. Een metabletisch onderzoek, (‘The Human Body. A Study in Metabletica’), (Nijkerk: Callenbach, 1959). The theory was also applied to socio-psychological and sociological transformations in J. H. van den Berg, Leven in meervoud. Een metabletisch onderzoek, 1963, translated as Divided Existence and Complex Society, (Pittsburgh: Duquesne University, 1974). The neologism ‘metabletica’ which Van den Berg coined for his brand of historical research, is derived from the Greek verb ‘metaballein’ which means to change, to transform. 146 Cf. Max Weber, Wirtschaftsgeschichte. Abriss der universalen Sozial- und Wirtschaftsgeschichte, (‘Economic History. Outline of the Universal Social and Economic 145

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encompassing and generalizing approach of Weber clearly demonstrates, attempts to arrive at a universal history do not necessarily have to end up in unscientiﬁc metaphysical vistas. The fascinating aspect of Weber’s methodology is indeed that he moves back and forth on the continuum of the generalizing and the individualizing approaches to reality. Another interesting example of a historical, cultural-scientiﬁc sociology which tries to demonstrate a long-term development in a generalizing manner without drifting oﬀ into metaphysics is Norbert Elias’s celebrated study of the process of civilization which he published prior to World War II but with which he gained fame only several decades later. Starting at the end of the Middle Ages in the courtly society of absolutism but then developing further into the circles of the urban bourgeoisie, a process got hold of men and women in which they increasingly learned to curb bodily and psychical impulses. Burping, defecating, urinating, making love, etc. were gradually and ever intensively banned from public life, the threshold of shame was heightened, children were imbued with a ‘constraint from outside’ (Fremdzwang) which had to grow into an ‘inner constraint’ (Selbstzwang) behind the heightened threshold of shame. Beyond these psychological transformations, Elias demonstrates in two volumes packed with often minute historical (quite individual) data, how also fundamental sociological and political-scientiﬁc changes occurred. The social relationships between human beings became long, thin and abstract chains of interdependence—from clans, to villages, to cities, to regions, to nations, to nation-states, to continents. Likewise, organizations and institutions transformed radically in the direction of multinational and supranational bodies in which communication and power relations altered in proportion. In short, Elias combines the individualizing historical approach with a generalizing approach without ending up in metaphysical and ideological quicksand.147

History’), reconstructed from posthumous lectures by S. Hellmann and M. Palyi, J. F. Winckelmann, ed. (Berlin: Duncker & Humblot, 1958). 147 Norbert Elias, Über den Prozess der Zivilisation. Soziogenetische und Psychogenetische Untersuchungen, (‘On the Process of Civilisation. Sociogenetic and Psychogenetic Investigations’), 2 volumes, 1936, (Bern, München: Francke Verlag, 1969, 2nd ed.). Also Norbert Elias, Die höﬁsche Gesellschaft, (‘The Courtly Society’), 1969, (Darmstadt, Neuwied: Luchterhand Verlag, 1975, 2nd ed.). In a brief autobiographical essay Elias (1897–1990) relates that he attended Rickert’s seminars when he studied at the University of Heidelberg in the 1920’s. He was, however, not inﬂuenced by Rickert’s epistemology, or for that matter by Max Weber’s methodology, since he had obviously no antenna for philosophical issues. Norbert Elias, ‘Notities bij mijn levensloop’, (‘Notes regarding my Course of Life’), Dutch translation from a German text by R. Knijﬀ, in: A. de Swaan c.s. (eds.), De geschiedenis van Norbert Elias, (‘The History of Norbert Elias’), (Amsterdam: Meulenhoﬀ, 1987), pp. 93–164.

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This can also be applied to economics and sociology. It is legitimate to deﬁne both disciplines, as much as is possible, as representatives of Natural Science, as actually happens in the case of econometrics and neo-positivist sociology,148 but it is as legitimate to rather move more in the direction of the other logical extreme, that of Cultural Science, as happens in institutional economics and cultural sociology. They are then methodologically deﬁned as historical and comparative economics and historical and comparative sociology.149 As we have seen, Rickert once suggested that the continuum should indeed be seen as ﬂexible as this, but in general he stuck to the rather tenacious conviction that history is an individualizing discipline, whereas the social sciences are ‘typically’ Natural-Scientiﬁc, and thus generalizing sciences. Sociology is an interesting case. Rickert sees this discipline, like psychology, as a science which focuses materially on ‘culture’, not on ‘nature’, but operates formally (i.e. logically and methodologically), like psychology, as a representative of Natural Science. Even the verstehende Soziologie of Max Weber is mentioned several times by Rickert as an example of a social science which operates as a generalizing Natural Science. Max Weber who in his methodology was deeply inﬂuenced by Rickert, is indeed of special interest here, as he published widely in the logic of science (Wissenschaftslehre) and demonstrated in his sociological investigations and publications that he actually moved on the logical continuum of Rickert, sometimes very closely to Natural Science, as in the case of his posthumously published general (sic!) sociology, entitled Wirtschaft und Gesellschaft, and then again very closely to Cultural Science, as in the case of his historical and comparative essays in the sociology of religion. Weber, who was trained as a legal scholar, but developed great expertise in history, economics, sociology and comparative religion, is generally considered to be one of the great masters of the social 148 The concept sociometrics has never got hold of the sociological discipline. It remained restricted to the so-called small-groups research. 149 The classic study in institutional economics is, of course, Joseph A. Schumpeter, Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy, 1942, (London: Unwin University Books, 1974, 13th ed.). Institutional, historical economics is, of course, not the same as economic history, although the diﬀerence is at times very thin, as is exempliﬁed by a classic scholar like Werner Sombart. Cf. his six volumes history of capitalism Der moderne Kapitalismus, 1916, (München, Leipzig: Duncker & Humblot, 1921–1927). See also Werner Sombart, Warum gibt es in den Vereinigten Staaten keinen Sozialismus?, (‘Why is there no Socialism in the United States?’), 1906, (Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1969).

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sciences. As no one else, he demonstrated how inspiring and inﬂuential Rickert’s thinking and writing has been and still can be. He was indeed the most important but not the only scholar who was methodologically inspired and inﬂuenced by Rickert. The next and last chapter discusses what I like to call the echo of Rickert in the socio-cultural sciences. It is only a selection but, I trust, a representative one.

CHAPTER SIX

RICKERT’S ECHO: APPLICATIONS, AMPLIFICATIONS, AMENDMENTS Aus den Irrtümern sonst bedeutender Gelehrter lernt man oft mehr, als aus den Korrektheiten von Nullen. Max Weber1

Introduction If we try to determine what the eﬀect of Rickert’s philosophy has been on the thoughts and publications of fellow philosophers and philosophically interested social scientists, we run into considerable problems. In fact, due to reasons given in the Introduction, there was little if any eﬀect. However, it is also hard to ﬁnd out what the impact of his writings were in the days of his widespread fame, i.e. the decades around 1900. The reason is that in those days scholars were not supposed to burden their publications with quotes of and references to fellow scholars. Apparently, the reader was supposed to be well read and to know without such references who was actually being discussed and, more indicatively, who was intentionally ignored.2 1 ‘Often one learns more from the mistakes of important scholars, than from the correct ideas of nullities.’ Max Weber, ‘“Energetische” Kulturtheorien’ (‘ “Energetic” Cultural Theories’), in: Max Weber, Gesammelte Aufsätze zur Wissenschaftslehre, 1922, (Tübingen: Mohr-Siebeck, 1968), p. 425. 2 An exception is the previously mentioned, small study by Sergius Hessen, Individuelle Kausalität. Studien zum transzendentalen Empirismus, (‘Individual Causality. Studies on Transcendental Empirism’), (Berlin: Reuther & Reichard, 1909) which can be read as a helpful introduction to Rickert’s transcendentalism. As we have seen, Rickert was enamored by the label ‘transcendental empirism’ for his brand of philosophy. A more recent exception is presented by Guy Oakes, Weber and Rickert. Concept Formation in the Cultural Sciences, (Cambridge, Mass.: The MIT Press, 1988). This monograph is restricted though to the issue of ‘cultural objectivity’ and comes to the conclusion that both Rickert and Weber failed to present a sound theory of objectively valid values. Oakes in his turn, it seems to me, fails to understand the neo-Kantian distinction between absolute, formal, universal (‘objective’) values which in value-judgments are ‘imposed’ on contingent, concrete and particular contents. These judgments are ‘subjective’ but carry the relative objectivity of intersubjectivity. Incidentally, Oakes’ presentation of Rickert’s philosophy of values lacks lucidity and remains rather far removed from Rickert’s texts.

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Georg Simmel, for instance, does not refer to any fellow philosopher in his book on the logic and methodology of history in which he developed ideas which sometimes come very close to those of Windelband and Rickert, but also deviate from them signiﬁcantly.3 The ﬁrst edition was published in 1892, prior to Windelband’s famous inaugural address and to Rickert’s Die Grenzen der naturwissenschaftlichen Begriﬀsbildung. However, Simmel published a second edition of his book in 1905 after he had read Die Grenzen. Actually, he practically re-wrote the book, adjusting his ideas at several points to those of Rickert.4 But once more, Rickert is not mentioned at all, nor is Windelband. In this concluding chapter we shall discuss in some broad outlines Rickert’s impact on four disciplines: general philosophy (mainly Georg Simmel), legal philosophy (mainly Lask and Radbruch), history (mainly Huizinga) and sociology (mainly Weber and Mannheim). It is the purpose of this chapter to demonstrate the inﬂuence of Rickert’s theories of knowledge, values and natural-scientiﬁc and cultural-scientiﬁc methods. However, as we shall see, this inﬂuence did not consist of an uncritical adoption of Rickertean ideas and theorems, but was rather the inspirational factor of a critical debate with his neo-Kantian standpoints. Rickert, so much has hopefully become clear in the former chapters, was not a kind of guru, like Hegel or Heidegger, who was viewed and adored as the founder of a school which would attract crowds of admirers and followers, who would propagate almost religiously his ideas and doctrines. Upon his death in 1936 he did not leave an ideological worldview which would warm the hearts and inspire the moods of faithful followers. On the contrary, like his colleague and friend Max Weber, he was rather the Socratic type of intellectual that invites one to think critically about our thinking and our thoughts, about our values and value-judgments, about our collective constructions of reality. Neither was Rickert a teacher who educated his students and readers by means of orderly composed, yet in the end platitudinous textbooks. In his lectures and in his books which, as we saw in the Introduction, were actually also lec-

3 Georg Simmel, Die Probleme der Geschichtsphilosophie, (‘The Problems of the Philosophy of History’), 1892, (München, Leipzig: Duncker & Humblot, 1923, 3rd ed.). 4 Cf. Anton M. Bevers, Dynamik der Formen bei Georg Simmel, (‘Dynamics of Forms in Georg Simmel’s Work’), 1982, translated from the Dutch original by F. E. Schrader, (Berlin: Duncker & Humblot, 1985), p. 47f.

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tures, he confronted his audiences with an ongoing process of thinking in the hope that they would join him in what he himself experienced as the demand and the joy of thinking. In philosophy, the social sciences, and the study of law, as we shall see in this chapter, his impact was often indirect. It had the character of an echo, rather than that of a loudspeaker. He triggered critical debates, rarely called forth emotional and thus uncritical cries of adulation and admiration. The fact remains though that ever since roughly the First World War it has apparently not been fashionable to mention his name. If it comes to issues like the logical demarcations of the natural and the cultural sciences, or the logical diﬀerences of facts and values, Sein and Sollen, etc., philosophers and social scientists either disregard them, due to a neo-positivist, or an existentialist, or any other anti-epistemological worldview, or refer to Windelband and Weber rather than to Rickert. In any case, in the remainder of this chapter I shall try to indicate in some main outlines what Rickert’s echo has been in various debates on epistemology, logic of the social sciences, and legal philosophy. It may be superﬂuous to remind the reader that the following sections will discuss the various theorists exclusively with respect to the impact Rickert had on their thinking and writing. This discussion will therefore not even come close to a true insight into their work. General philosophy Georg Simmel (1858–1918) was a personal friend of both Rickert and Max Weber, and admired by them for his intellectual brilliance and philosophical depth. It would be preposterous to assume an intellectual dependence of Simmel on the neo-Kantian philosophy of Windelband, Rickert, or on the methodological and sociological theories of Weber. In general philosophy, methodology, logic of the social sciences and sociology Simmel developed ideas and theories which were idiosyncratic and highly original.5 But he always

5 Simmel developed his methodology and logic mainly in his publications on the philosophy of history. See next to the previously quoted Die Probleme der Geschichtsphilosophie the following two essays: ‘Das Problem der historischen Zeit’ (‘The Problem of Historical Time’) and ‘Vom Wesen des historischen Verstehens’ (‘On the Essence

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maintained a close intellectual, though critical tie with the neoKantians of the South-West German School. Rickert and Weber in their turn were admirers of Simmel’s publications, but also quite critical as to his continual sliding oﬀ into metaphysical speculations. Rickert in particular rejected Simmel’s endeavor to reconcile neoKantian epistemology and logic on the one hand and vitalism (Lebensphilosophie) on the other.6 Indeed, the essence of Simmel’s thinking is an ongoing attempt to reconcile Kant’s critical epistemology, as it was elaborated in particular by Windelband and Rickert on the one hand, and the philosophy of life (vitalism), as it was formulated in particular by Nietzsche, Schopenhauer and Bergson.7 Or, more precisely, Simmel rejects the

of Historical Understanding’), in: Georg Simmel, Brücke und Tür (‘Bridge and Door’), essays on history, religion, art and society edited by M. Landmann, (Stuttgart: Koehler Verlag, 1957), pp. 43–59 and 59–86. I made gratefully use of Bevers previously quoted discussion and analysis of Simmel’s work, especially of the second chapter, o.c., pp. 47–77 which discusses Simmel’s theory of knowledge against the background of Windelband and Rickert (ibid., pp. 31–45). For Simmel’s ‘ahistorical sociology of forms’ see ibid., pp. 72–97 and his philosophy of life, ibid., pp. 141–174. In chapter 5 Bevers gives a comparative analysis of Simmel’s ‘sociology of forms’ and Weber’s ‘understanding sociology’, ibid., pp. 120–140. Rickert’s inﬂuence in the philosophy of his days was, of course, larger than just in Simmel’s publications. His thoughts and ideas penetrated often in special philosophical problems. An example is Sergius Hessen, Individuelle Kausalität, o.c. I restrict the present discussion to Simmel, since he was intellectually of the same stature as Rickert. 6 Simmel’s metaphysical vitalism was very obvious in his Lebensanschauung. Vier metaphysische Kapitel, (‘Vitalistic Worldview. Four Metaphysical Chapters’), (München, Leipzig: Duncker & Humblot, 1922). Rickert, as we shall see, did subject Simmel’s vitalistic ideas to a critical, yet rather sympathetic discussion in his Die Philosophie des Lebens. It is indicative though that he limited his discussion to this swan-song of Simmel which he wrote while he was dying of cancer of the liver. He ignored Simmel’s less metaphysically loaded publications, which was, I think, a bit unfair. Weber was reported to abstain from any critical publications since he feared this would impede Simmel’s professorial career in Germany. In fact, not only Simmel’s unconventional philosophy but also anti-Semitic forces prevented a regular professorship in one of the major universities. It was not before 1914, four years before his death and at the start of the First World War, that he was appointed regular professor at the university of Strasburg—notably, in the centre of the Western front of the war! See for the anti-Semitic, academic opposition to an appointment of Simmel in Heidelberg, to a second professorship next to the one of Rickert: K. Gassen, M. Landmann (eds.), Buch des Dankes an Georg Simmel. Briefe, Erinnerungen, Bibliographie, (‘Book of Gratitude. Letters, Recollections, Bibliography’), (Berlin: Duncker & Humblot, 1958), p. 26f. 7 Cf. Georg Simmel, Schopenhauer und Nietzsche. Ein Vortragszyklus (‘Schopenhauer and Nietzsche. A Cycle of Lectures’), (München and Leipzig: Duncker & Humblot, 1920). Schopenhauer, according to Simmel, is the philosopher of hopelessness, boredom, grey uniformity, aimlessness, whereas Nietzsche, on the contrary, represented

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realistic stance according to which concepts are allegedly ‘pictures’ (Abbildungen) of reality, emphasizing like Kant and the neo-Kantians the diﬀerence of and the distance between theory and reality. In his philosophy of history, for example, he emphatically rejects the ideology of historicism, as exempliﬁed by Ranke’s pretension that the historian ought to reconstruct the past ‘as it has been’. Historicism is, according to Simmel, the counterpart of the positivistic ideology which claims that the natural sciences could provide a precise ‘picture’ of what nature would be all about. Yet, Simmel rejects also the Kantian ‘construction of reality’ by concepts as an unattractive and even fallacious intellectualism. Concepts—everyday life as well as scientiﬁc and philosophical concepts—are not a priori, ‘pure’ components of the mind, but themselves components of life, conceived of not by an abstract mind or consciousness but by a total personality. Man is a thinking being, but he is so in conjunction with emotions and bodily experiences. In addition he re-formulates the Kantian distinction between form and content in such a way that both become beyond epistemological and logical categories, components of reality which he principally deﬁnes in terms of ‘life’. This is, for instance, elaborated impressively in his brand of sociology, called a ‘sociology of forms’. In Simmel’s sociology ‘forms’ are actually seen as functions in the ongoing process of society formation. Independent of their historical and actual diﬀerences of content, he analyzes phenomena like power relations as in super ordination and subordination, economic exchange relations, relations between man and wife, ‘dyadic’ and triadic’ relations, conﬂict relations. But he discusses also micro-sociological and psychological ‘forms’ like coquetry, loyalty and gratitude, the secret and the secret society, the repast, the stranger, and even yodelling (allegedly as the transitional form between speaking and singing), as various transhistorical forms of human behavior.8 a philosophy of meaninglessness, evolution of life, increasing inequality and vitalistic evolution as aim. Reading these four lectures it becomes clear why Simmel was such a successful lecturer. In the upper-class of Berlin the verb ‘simmeln’ was used for attending Simmel’s public lectures at the university. He taught without notes, improvising and thinking aloud. His audiences did not know what he confessed to Rickert in a letter dated August 15, 1898. He was not happy that the percentage of women in his lecture hall had increased strongly since that disturbed the uniformity of the auditorium. ‘Since I actually do not at all address the audience but rather speak to myself , I love it when the auditorium is as colourless and indiﬀerent as possible.’ K. Gassen, M. Landmann (eds.), o.c., p. 96. 8 See Georg Simmel, Soziologie. Untersuchungen über die Formen der Vergesellschaftung

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These sociological and psychological ‘forms’ are, in his view, not cognitive, or better epistemic ‘forms’ imposed on reality in order to acquire knowledge of reality, but realities in themselves, components of the ongoing process of life. Likewise, the Kantian forms of Anschauung, time and space, are according to Simmel indeed forms which mold contents, but as transhistorical as these forms are, they yet are constitutive components of life. It is here that both Rickert and Weber, remaining faithful to Kant’s conceptual transcendentalism, object to Simmel’s philosophy. Rickert in particular sticks to the Kantian position that thinking and living are philosophically two diﬀerent realities, and should not be mashed into one, uniform reality, called ‘life’. A crucial element of Simmel’s logic is the idea of a mutual inﬂuencing of phenomena and concepts. He calls it Wechselwirkung, reciprocity, and combines it with an approach which is very much akin to (and may well have been inspired by) Rickert’s heterothesis and heterology. However, there is in this approach, which he called ‘relationism’, a strongly relativistic bias, since he cannot accept Rickert’s notion of universal, formalistic values in the non-empirical world of validity. As we have seen, truth is according to Rickert a formal, empty value which becomes empirical and substantial only in valuejudgments, in the imposing of this transcendental form on particular, historical contents. This is much too intellectualistic, Simmel believes. He views truth rather as an emerging quality in the juxtaposition of opposites. In his historical and sociological analyses Simmel argues consistently in terms of dualistic concepts referring to opposite phenomena, believing that truth is somewhere ‘in the middle’, somewhere between these opposites which in reality function in a perennial reciprocity. Truth, like the other values, is therefore never

(‘Sociology. Investigations on the Forms of Society Formation’), 1908, (Berlin: Duncker & Humblot, 1958), passim. For an English translation of portions of this book see Kurt H. Wolﬀ (ed. and transl.), The Sociology of Georg Simmel, 1950, (New York: The Free Press of Glencoe, 1964). Wolﬀ wrote a helpful introduction to this volume: pp. xvii–lxiv. See also Georg Simmel, Conﬂict and the Web of Group Aﬃliations, K. Wolﬀ, R. Bendix, translators, 1955, (New York: The Free Press of Glencoe, 1964). The most curious ‘form’ he analyzed was, I think, the handle: Georg Simmel, ‘The Handle’, in: Georg Simmel et al., Essays on Sociology, Philosophy & Aesthetics, ed. by Kurt H. Wolﬀ, 1959, (New York: Harper Torchbooks, 1965), pp. 267–275. Bevers relates in a footnote that Simmel designed a simple questionnaire for his research on yodelling as the source of music which was published in the yearbook of a Swiss Alpine club in 1878/79. Cf. Bevers, o.c., p. 220.

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absolute as in the case of Rickert’s transcendental philosophy of values, but always relative—i.e. in mutual relations, reciprocities, and opposites. Needless to add that Rickert sees the concept of ‘relationism’ as a sham play of words. In his view, Simmel has not avoided the logical mortal sin of relativism. It is as if Simmel’s conceptualization is in its essential elements a continuous and critical debate with Rickert’s logic and philosophy of values. There is, for example, Rickert’s typically Kantian distinction of values and reality with which Simmel expressedly disagrees. We saw in Chapter Four how Rickert tries to deﬁne the diﬀerence of facts and values. The negation of a fact, he argues, is nothingness, in the sense of non-existence, but the negation of a value is not nothingness but a counter-value. It can be proven that the unicorn does not exist. It may function as a symbol or a myth, but as an animal, a horse with a single pointed horn, the unicorn is nonexistent. The denial of truth, however, is falsehood, of honesty is dishonesty, of a god is a devil, of beauty is ugliness, of lust is pain, etc. Simmel ﬁnds this problematic and in three diﬀerent letters to Rickert he formulates his diﬃculty with this theorem which he labels ‘the negation problem’ (Negationsfrage). He repeats his objection formulated as a question three times with rather long intervals, which indicates that he did not receive a satisfactory answer while the issue keeps haunting him.9 In the ﬁrst letter he formulates the negation problem as follows: ‘The abrogation of something existing, you say, leaves behind a nothingness, but the negation of something valid, would result in a positive nonsense. Now if I did understand you correctly, the sentence “A does not exist”, means so much as “the sentence that A exists is false; the existence of A must not be acknowledged”. And indeed, how could a thought abrogate an existence? It can indeed only abrogate the thought of this existence, only the judgment that A exist.’10 In that case, Simmel continues, there are the following alternatives: (1) The judgment ‘A exists’ is indeed false. But

9 See K. Gassen. M. Landmann (eds.), o.c., 8.IV.10, pp. 104–106; 3.IV.16, p. 115f.; 15.IV.17, pp. 117–119. 10 ‘Die Aufhebung einer Existenz, sagen Sie, hinterlasse ein Nichts, die eines Gültigen hinterliesse positiven Unsinn. Wenn ich Sie nun richtig verstanden habe, so bedeutet der Satz: A existiert nicht—soviel wie: der Satz, dass A nicht existiert, ist falsch, die Existenz von A soll nicht anerkannt werden. Und in der Tat, wie sollte auch ein Gedanke eine Existenz aufheben? Er kann allerdings nur den Gedanken dieser Existenz, nur das Urteil, dass A existiert, aufheben.’ Ibid., p. 104f.

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then the only thing that happens is the simple fact that an error is corrected. If the judgment refers to something valid, i.e. to a value, the outcome is something non-valid and thus as non-existent as in the case of the judgment that A as a fact does not exist. (2) The judgment ‘A exists’ is in fact true. In that case its negation reaps the same nonsense as when we deny the truth of 2 + 2 = 4. The same holds true for a statement about the truth of validity, i.e. of a value: its denial is nonsensical. Simmel then asks Rickert, if he made an error in calculation, and elaborates his argument in greater detail.11 Rickert’s reaction, if he wrote one, is not known but we may assume that he has pointed out that the denial of a true statement about a value, or its validity, would not be nonsensical but reap a counter-value. In any case, six years later Simmel returns to the ‘problem of negation’. He had read Gegenstand der Erkenntnis and agrees now with Rickert, when he distinguishes being and value by saying that the abrogation of being results in nothingness, while the denial of value reaps a counter-value. Also that the abrogation of sense (Sinn), results not in nothingness but in nonsense (Unsinn). But then a new problem emerges: why would follow from this similarity of formal structure, that sense was a value? Could they not be two categories which act in an analogous manner without the one being subordinated to the other? Is it possible, Simmel asks, to draw conclusions about their mutual relationship, if two concepts demonstrate the same structure with regard to a third concept (in this case the denial, the abrogation)? Why would sense not be an autonomous phenomenon that has much in common with value, without being a kind of superior concept (Oberbegriﬀ ) which is superimposed on value? Please, he adds, enlighten me. Apparently Rickert did and Simmel refers to his answer one year later. He begins by saying that on the negation issue still a lot could be said back and forth, but he doubts if that would be very fruitful. He nevertheless goes on saying once more that he does agree on the distinction of being and validity. Yet, he confesses that some explanations Rickert gave in an answering letter are still not clear to him. Rickert has answered, and Simmel quotes him verbatim, that he had not doubted that the negation of sense could possibly

11

Ibid., pp. 104–106.

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lead to nothingness, but on the next page, Simmel goes on, he wrote that the connection with a meaningful conﬁguration (Sinngebilde) results never in a mere nothingness, but leads to another meaningful conﬁguration which does belong to something. Simmel does not want to engage in quibbling, but he is seized by the suspicion that Rickert is quite ambiguous in his use of the notion of negation (abrogation). It is as if the diﬀerence of the nothingness in the case of being and of something in the case of validity which the negation leaves behind in facts and values respectively, is not only determined by the negated (abrogated) content but also by the logical structure of the negation (abrogation) itself. It is as if negation (abrogation) in the one case is something else than in the other case. Regretfully, we do not know how Rickert responded to this question which, as abstract as it is, refers to a corner-stone of his philosophy of values. In fact, his deﬁnition of the diﬀerence of facts and values in terms of negation or abrogation, remains rather questionable. Like Windelband and Rickert, Simmel is not in favor of psychologism and shares their and Weber’s contempt of the historian and philosopher Karl Lamprecht who based the philosophy of history on psychology.12 This notwithstanding Simmel too has a distinctly psychological view of the philosophy of history. He claims right at the start of his Die Probleme der Geschichtswissenschaft that history is the history of psychic processes, i.e. of impulses, voluntaristic acts and emotional reﬂexes, otherwise it is just a play of puppets. The object of history as a scientiﬁc discipline consists of the imagination, the will and the feeling of personalities. That is, the objects of history are souls.13 Even such historical studies of seemingly material objects, like the building of the Saint Peter’s Cathedral or the construction of the Gotthard tunnel are only of interest to the historian as investments of psychic events, as passage points of human

12 In a letter to Rickert, dated April 25, 1913, Simmel refers to an essay by Lamprecht and exclaims: ‘One really puts one’s head in one’s hands and asks oneself, if such a thing is at all possible or just a bad dream.’ (‘Man fasst sich wirklich an den Kopf und fragt sich, ob so etwas überhaupt möglich oder ein böser Traum ist.’), K. Gassen, M. Landmann (eds.), o.c., p. 111. 13 Georg Simmel, Die Probleme der Geschichtsphilosophie (‘The Problems of the Philosophy of History’), o.c., p. 1. This book which he re-wrote many times is extremely hard to read and to understand due to its very condensed and abstract style of arguing. It is my experience that the book gets obscurer and abstruser the more intensively and closer one reads and re-reads it.

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will, intellect and emotion.14 Rickert and certainly Weber would reject this exclusive position of psychology within the domain of the historical discipline, since it strongly smacks of psychologism. The building of a cathedral and the construction of a tunnel are, of course, as much economic processes, but it would be an inadmissible ‘materialism’ to found the history of these phenomena exclusively on economics. It would be inadmissible because it would be an unscientiﬁc metaphysics, as is illustrated by Marxist ‘historical materialism’. Indeed, psychologism is as much metaphysical as is sociologism or economism. Simmel’s psychological predisposition is also illustrated by his theory of understanding (Verstehen).15 He distinguishes three kinds of understanding: psychological, factual and historical. Psychological understanding is, according to Simmel, not a direct kind of empathy by which one projects one’s own inner feelings and thoughts on the mind and soul of other human beings. This notion of understanding as projection is a variant of the representational logic (Abbildungslogik) which Simmel dismisses.16 Human beings are psychologically too complex and volatile, they are in addition too individually unique to be able to comprehend them adequately by means of such an empathic understanding. Moreover, experience learns that we are able to understand in others what we ourselves have not experienced. If this were not the case, history as a scientiﬁc discipline would not be possible. One does not have to be Caesar or Luther in order to understand Caesar and Luther.17 Simmel then argues that psychological understanding is only possible because we are able to experience ourselves and the others as coherent personalities. When we encounter someone else we are able to construct from fragmentary elements like a word, a gesture, an emotional expression, a coherent image of his or her personality. This image enables us to understand the other psychologically, although it may not be forgotten that the image is a construction, a type which does not cover 14

Simmel, ibid., p. 4f. On Simmel’s theory of Verstehen, see ibid., pp. 35ﬀ. I made use of Bever’s lucid treatment of Simmel’s theory of understanding: Bevers, o.c., pp. 56–62. 16 See Simmel, o.c., p. 39f., 53 where he dismisses the ‘naïve realism’ of representational epistemology. 17 Ibid., p. 84. Weber uses the same sentence in his Wissenschaftslehre, o.c., p. 100. Simmel, it seems to me, contradicts himself on this point when he claims earlier that someone who never loved someone, will never be able to understand a lover, that a choleric person will never understand a phlegmatic one, that a weakling will never understand a hero. Ibid., p. 39. 15

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the other as a unique individual. The interesting dimension of Simmel’s psychological understanding by means of constructed types is the combination of Rickert’s generalization and individualization, because the types represent general characteristics of personalities but enable the understanding of human beings as individuals. This also comes close to Weber’s ideal types, although Weber stays closer to Rickert’s logic than Simmel does, since he deﬁnes ‘individual’ not as ‘individual human being’ but as logical individuum. Rickert’s and Weber’s individua can be human beings, but are in principle all phenomena stripped of generality. Simmel’s individuals in his theory of psychological understanding are historical, individual human beings. But he adds collectivities like political parties which, like the individual personalities, must demonstrate a psychic unity comparable to the personal psychic unity. He calls it the ‘social soul’ (Sozialseele) of groups, but hastens to add that the historian will use them as constructed types, as ﬁctions which synthesize scattered realities. It is in this sense that Theodor Mommsen in his book on Roman history writes ‘a cry of disturbance went through all of Italy’, and ‘the parties caught their breath’.18 Simmel discusses next factual understanding (sachliches Verstehen) and historical understanding as follows. If a person speaks, we understand not only the speaker as a person, but also factually the words he speaks. This factual understanding is not bound to person, place or time. We can understand the law of gravity or the ‘chorus mysticus’ in Goethe’s ‘Faust II’ without having any knowledge or understanding of Newton, Goethe and the time and place they were living in. There is in this factual understanding a formidable complication, because there is an inﬁnite range of interpretations of the facts concerned. We would only understand a natural-scientiﬁc law or a theatre play completely, if we comprehended all their objectively existing possibilities of interpretation. Asking for their content of truth, a simple answer like true or false cannot be given. The answer to this question depends on the comprehensibility of the various interpretations. Once more, Simmel comes close to relativism. As to historical understanding, it occurs when we not only understand factually the words of a speaker, but also his motives, when we not only understand the content of Goethe’s ‘Faust’, but also the poet’s motives

18

Simmel, ibid., p. 32.

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which have led to the creation of this play. This comes close to psychological understanding. In historical understanding we search for certain psychological causes of historical phenomena. Or, in other words, we do not have to identify with Goethe as an individual in order to understand his ‘Faust’, but if we want to understand how this play came about we will have to arrive at an understanding of Goethe’s motives which, of course, are embedded in the cultural environment he lived and worked in. Thus, Simmel does not merely incorporate elements of Rickert’s logic, methodology and philosophy of values, but rather seems to engage in an ongoing, critical debate with his intellectual and personal friend. The main diﬀerences between the two are (a) Rickert’s dismissal of vitalism and its alleged irrationalism; Simmel’s incorporation of vitalism in his philosophy and dismissal of the alleged intellectualism of the neo-Kantian logic; (b) Rickert’s banishment of psychology from philosophy, deﬁning it as one of the empirical sciences, methodologically determined by the Natural-Scientiﬁc approach to boot; Simmel’s incorporation of psychology in his philosophy of history and theory of understanding; (c) both work with Kant’s distinction of form and content, but to Rickert forms are non-empirical, transcendent ‘realities’; to Simmel forms are empirical components of the content of ‘life’, as was demonstrated in his ‘sociology of forms’. But there are distinct similarities also, two of which stand out in particular: (a) both Rickert and Simmel stress the logical diﬀerence of theoretical concepts and empirical reality, of thought and experience, of facts and values, and reject representational logic (although it seems to return through the backdoor in Simmel’s philosophy); (b) there is a great similarity between Rickert’s heterothesis and heterology on the one hand and Simmel’s logic of reciprocity (Wechselwirkung) on the other. Legal philosophy The most gifted and in his days generally respected student of Windelband and Rickert was Emil Lask (1875–1915), who tragically fell in battle at the beginning of the First World War.19 He studied 19 Lask was Rickert’s favorite student, whom he acknowledged as an inspiring colleague. See his exceptionally personal commemoration in the Preface of the third

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initially law and then philosophy in Freiburg (Rickert), Strasburg (Windelband) and Heidelberg (Windelband). Upon his Habilitation (1903–1904), supervised by Windelband he joined the seminars and inner-circle of Max Weber and became a friend of Gustav Radbruch. Weber and Radbruch inspired him in his thinking and writing on the philosophy of law. Windelband and especially Rickert had a decisive inﬂuence on his proliﬁc writing. According to Lask, Rechtswissenschaft, i.e. the scientiﬁc study of law, emancipated itself in the 19th century from the metaphysical speculations of former centuries, focusing primarily, and as it turned out too one-sidedly, on the study of empirical legal practices and institutions. It led to an empiristic and positivistic philosophy of law which presented a general theory of law, composed by compiling empirical data into an incoherent and unsystematic whole. If one dares to reject this approach and calls for a philosophical grounding of law in its absolute signiﬁcance relating it to other absolute values, one is in danger of being accused of defending a metaphysical Natural Law position. Lask then claims that this accusation would be incorrect, if one were to base the philosophy of law upon the neo-Kantian, critical theory of values, in which the focus is on empirical and historical reality which at the same time is the scene or substratum of trans-empirical values and of generally valid signiﬁcances. This is not, Lask hastens to add, a return to the Platonic two-worldstheory. There is but one sort of law: the empirical, historically developing legal reality of legal practices and institutions. Yet, in view of the distinction of value and empirical value-substratum there is a two-dimensionality of perspectives, i.e. a dualism of a philosophical (value oriented) and an empirical (object oriented) method. There is, in other words, a duality of an empirical (if you want: empiristic) approach to the historical reality of law, which is free of philosophical

edition of Gegenstand der Erkenntnis, o.c., p. X f. Dated September 1915. In Lask, Rickert confesses, he had always seen his scientiﬁc heir apparent who would continue where he would have to leave oﬀ. He dedicates his book to the memory of his ‘dear friend’. For the ﬁrst of the three volumes of the collected works of Lask Rickert wrote a touching, yet not sentimental ‘Personal Preface’: Emil Lask, Gesammelte Schriften, (‘Collected Papers), vol. I, E. Herrigel, ed., (Tübingen: Mohr-Siebeck, 1923), pp. V–XVI. In a letter dated July 12, 1915 Georg Simmel oﬀers his condolances to Rickert, after he had learned that Lask had perished in the war. ‘You will have the experience’, he adds, ‘that a considerable part of your harvest has been burned in the barn.’ K. Gassen, M. Landmann (eds.), o.c., p. 113.

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speculation on the one hand, and a critical theory of legal values which does not engage in speculations about a trans-empirical (i.e. metaphysical) law, but focuses exclusively on the trans-empirical signiﬁcance of the empirical, historical law, on the other hand. Thus, philosophy of law investigates the Rechtswert (the value of law), whereas the empirical study of law studies the Rechtswirklichkeit (the reality of law). By embracing the neo-Kantian distinction between reality and value, Lask tries to avoid both a one-sided empiricism which neglects the trans-empirical reality of values and the metaphysics of Natural Law philosophies which hypostatizes (reiﬁes) the values into an autonomous reality which subjects empirical reality to an authoritarian rationalism.20 The inﬂuential Historical School that rejects onesided empiricism too, is in Lask’s view the exact opposite of Natural Law. It correctly castigated the adherents of Natural Law for their neglect of the inexhaustible richness of historical particularities with its contingencies and unpredictabilities, but it too slipped oﬀ into metaphysics, the metaphysics of Historicism: ‘Natural Law wants to juggle the empirical substratum from the value absoluteness, while Historicism wants to conjure up the value absoluteness from the empirical substratum.’21 It next pretends to be able to issue valuejudgments about empirical reality, allegedly presenting a true worldview (Weltanschauung). This, of course, Lask adds, is a misapprehension of the value-relevance and value-relatedness of law and lawyers. As Rickert pointed out, Lask argues, the focus on the values and cultural signiﬁcance of a reality like the law is philosophically not a normative value-judgment, but a theoretical value-relation, a theoretical relating of reality to values. Also, Lask could have added here, Rickert’s historical approach to reality is not a normative approach, belonging to a normative historicist worldview, but a (cultural-)scientiﬁc method in which there is no place for value-judgments. When he turns to the methodology of legal science, Lask starts with the statement that it is a branch of the cultural sciences and 20 This is, of course, not the place to discuss Lask’s analysis of Natural Law as a metaphysical approach rejected by neo-Kantian criticism. See Emil Lask, ‘Rechtsphilosophie’, 1905, in: Gesammelte Schriften, vol. I, o.c., pp. 277–331. Also in: H.-L. Ollig (ed.), o.c., pp. 186–189. 21 ‘Das Naturrecht will aus der Absolutheit des Wertes das empirische Substrat, der Historismus aus dem empirischen Substrat die Absolutheit des wertes hervorzaubern.’ Ibid., p. 197.

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follows Rickert by saying that the cultural-scientiﬁcally conceived world (to which law belongs) emerges by means of a purely theoretical relating of reality to values.22 He then expands on a theorem of Rickert, namely the fact that Kant’s Copernican turn in which reality is ‘constructed’ by means of our categories, is not just restricted to scientiﬁc concepts, but can be observed outside the world of science in everyday life knowledge. Rickert calls it a ‘pre-scientiﬁc conceptualization’ which prepares scientiﬁc conceptualization. (We saw this before, when we discussed Rickert’s ideas about the concepts of daily language.) Lask elaborates this idea, stating that the single cultural worlds in which we live can and should be seen as ‘congealed theoretical reason’ ( geronnene theoretische Vernunft), as incorporations of pre-scientiﬁc conceptualizations. This, Lask concludes, thereby going beyond Rickert’s methodological position, results in the fact that methodology may have a diﬀerent object of investigation than the forms of the sciences, such as Natural Science and Cultural Science. In the case of cultural sciences, methodology will also need to focus directly on cultural reality itself, e.g. on the world of law. In doing so it will, even if it focuses on the same object, say the practice of law, yet diﬀer from the empirical-scientiﬁc approach, say the sociology of law, since it is primarily interested in the problems of conceptualization, not in the results of empirical research. Lask then draws the interesting conclusion that one may not separate the methodology of the pre-scientiﬁc from that of the scientiﬁc legal concepts.23 However, he adds a further observation: nowhere does the pre-scientiﬁc conceptualization play such a dominant role as in the legal area, because the legal norms laid down in formal laws and enacted in jurisprudence are derived from societal demands, unlike the norms of philosophy which spring from the world of formal values. It is in this sense that one ought to conceive of jurisprudence as a ‘normative science’, i.e. not as the opposite of the purely

22

Ibid., p. 209. Ibid., p. 213. It is interesting to relate this view to the cognate theory of Josef Esser, Vorverständnis und Methodenwahl, (‘Pre-understanding and Choice of Methods’), 1970, (Frankfurt a.M.: Athenäum Fischer Taschenbuch Verlag, 1972). Lask’s view also reminds one of the phenomenological view of Alfred Schutz’s methodology. See e.g. Alfred Schutz, ‘Common-Sense and Scientiﬁc interpretation of Human Action, in: Alfred Schutz, Collected Papers I. The Problem of Social Reality, (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoﬀ, 1962), pp. 3–48. 23

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empirical sciences but as the science which derives its normative concepts from the pre-scientiﬁc norms of daily life.24 The echoes of Windelband and in particular Rickert are obvious by now. Lask would deserve more attention than this, but let us transfer to the neo-Kantian tones and colors of the philosophy of law of his friend Radbruch. The philosopher of law, state minister of justice during the Weimar Republic and university professor of criminal law and philosophy (twice at Heidelberg) Gustav Radbruch (1878–1946), was strongly inﬂuenced by the neo-Kantianism of the Baden School, in particular by Windelband, Rickert and Lask. He mentions these names in his posthumously reprinted Rechtsphilosophie (1950), but in particular Rickert’s philosophy of values has had a heavier imprint on his ideas than a brief footnote justiﬁes.25 Radbruch opens the ﬁrst chapter, headed ‘Reality and Value’, by the statement that in reality, i.e. the shapeless raw material of our experiences, reality and value are mixed up. We experience people and things that are tied to values or unvalues, but we are not aware of the fact that these values and unvalues stem from us the beholders, not from the things and people we behold. The ﬁrst act of our mind is to separate our I from reality, to confront it and to separate it from values. We are able to confront reality without relating it to values which then present the realm of nature, because nature is nothing else then reality stripped of values. Inversely, reality can be 24 Ibid., p. 217. Two critical annotations seem in order here. Lask should have added at this point religion and theology as phenomena which are very similar to jurisprudence and law in that they too derive their normative values (and thus their signiﬁcance) from empirical, pre-theological religious values and norms. Moreover, these pre-scientiﬁc legal and religious norms and values suggest strongly the existence of natural law and natural religion. 25 Gustav Radbruch, Rechtsphilosophie, (Stuttgart: Koehler Verlag, 1950). This 4th edition was edited by Erik Wolf who wrote an informative introductory essay on Radbruch’s life and work: ‘Gustav Radbruchs Leben und Werk’, ibid., pp. 17–78. In law and criminology adequate causal imputation is, of course, a crucial issue. Radbruch wrote a brief monograph about it which inﬂuenced Max Weber’s thinking about the subject. See Gustav Radbruch, Die Lehre von der adäquaten Verursachung, (‘The Doctrine of Adequate Causal Imputation’), (Berlin: J. Guttentag, Verlagsbuchhandlung, 1902). Cf. Max Weber, ‘Objektive Möglichkeit und adäquate Verursachung in der historischen Kausalbetrachtung’, (‘Objective Possibility and Adequate Causal Imputation in the Historical Observation of Causality’), in: Max Weber, Gesammelte Aufsätze zur Wissenschaftslehre, (‘Collected Papers on the Logic of the Sciences’), 1920, (Tübingen: Mohr-Siebeck, 1968, 3rd ed.), pp. 266–290.

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valued and confronted by norms, which renders it into a realm of values. If value-blind behavior is exerted methodically it is naturalscientiﬁc thought, if it is a valuating attitude it can be characterized as a philosophy of values which consists of three branches: logic, ethics and aesthetics.26 This is clearly an application of Rickert’s theory of value-free nature and evaluative culture. Radbruch adds two more ‘attitudes’ to these two (the value-blind and the valuating): the value-relating (wertbeziehende) and the value-superseding (wertüberwindende) attitudes. The former is still part of Rickert’s philosophy of values, but the latter is deﬁnitely not. As to the value-relating attitude, it is demonstrated by the scientist who searches for Truth, the artist who strives for Beauty, the moralist who aims at the Good, yet in reality this searching, striving and aiming will never be complete, because truth and error, taste and tastelessness, beauty and ugliness, moral humanitarianism and barbarism will be mixed. Culture, in other words, is a mixture of value-promotion and value-inhibition, value-realization and value-missing. Culture, Radbruch argues, is not the realization of culture, but the sort of reality which has the meaning, the sense to realize values. This is what the value-related attitude is all about. It is the methodical attitude of the cultural sciences. This is, albeit in a diﬀerent formulation, still very much akin to Rickert’s idea of value-relatedness. However, Radburch deviates from Rickert decisively, when he adds a fourth attitude which he calls the value-transcending or superseding attitude which is, he claims, the religious attitude. To Rickert, religion is one of the atheoretical forms of evaluation and value-relatedness, next to aestheticism, moralism and eroticism. It may be deﬁned as transcendence but one then leaves the realm of empirical philosophy and enters the world of metaphysics. Radbruch reserves a special, autonomous place for it and deﬁnes it as ‘the ﬁnal approval of all being, a smiling positivism which pronounces his yes and amen about all things, love without consideration of the value or unvalue of the loved one, bliss beyond happiness and unhappiness, grace beyond guilt and innocence.’27 He

26

Radbruch, Rechtsphilosophie, o.c., p. 91f. ‘letztendige Bejahung alles Seienden, lächelnder Positivismus, der über alle Dinge sein Ja und Amen spricht, Liebe ohne Rücksicht auf Wert oder Unwert des Geliebten, Seligkeit jenseits von Glück und Unglück, Gnade jenseits von Schuld und Unschuld.’ Ibid., p. 93. 27

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even claims that religion manages to surmount the unvalues and thereby also the values since they are intertwined. In religion everything is equally valuable or equally worthless. This means again that the distinction between reality and value disappears. In religion reality transforms from being into essence. This is, of course, theologically speaking quite a mystic, if not Gnostic, and therefore rather restricted conception of religion. Rickert would add that it is philosophically nonsensical, since it transforms the transcendental and a priori conception of religion into a metaphysical non-reality which is epistemologically useless. Meanwhile, Radbruch returns to his neo-Kantian brand of philosophy of law. He deﬁnes law as a cultural phenomenon, i.e. as a value-related fact. More precisely, law is the reality whose meaning and sense it is to realize the value of law, the Rechtsidee, i.e. the idea of law. This idea cannot be anything else, he claims, than justice.28 Methodologically, Radbruch employs in his philosophy of law two strategies which he called ‘methodical dualism’ and ‘relativism’. The former is the neo-Kantian distinction between Sein and Sollen which means that statements about what one should do or ought to do cannot be derived from statements about facts but only deductively from other statements of what one should do or ought to do. This, however, Radbruch warns in line with Rickert’s neo-Kantianism, is not an issue of causality but a logical issue. Of course, evaluations and value-judgments are inﬂuenced by facts. Radbruch refers to Karl Mannheim’s sociology of knowledge in which the ‘positional determination of knowledge (die soziale Standortgebundenheit des Erkennens) is explicated. Yes, knowledge, ideologies, value-judgments are embedded in and in this sense causally inﬂuenced by historically relative, social circumstances, but that is something else than being logically justiﬁed by them: ‘It is not claimed that value-judgments cannot be caused by empirical facts, rather that they cannot by them be justiﬁed.’29

28 Ibid., p. 123f. Although he claims to have constructed this theory in the spirit of Kant’s philosophy, John Rawls does not mention Radbruch’s crucial idea of justice in his A Theory of Justice, 1971, (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1977). 29 ‘Nicht dies wird behauptet, dass Wertungen nicht durch Seinstatsachen verursacht, vielmehr dass sie aus ihnen nicht begründet werden können.’ Ibid., p. 99. Karl Mannheim, ‘Historicism’, in: Karl Mannheim, Essays on the Sociology of Knowledge, translated by Paul Kecskemeti, (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1952), p. 125 and passim.

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It is at this point that Radbruch introduces the quite hazardous concept of relativism as a method rather than a worldview. The relativist method states that the correctness of a value-judgment is ascertained in relation to a certain view of the world and its values, but it is not the task of this method to ascertain the correctness of this worldview and its values. In a footnote Radbruch adds the alternative concept of perspectivism which is, I think better, than relativism which in the history of philosophy carries a too negatively loaded connotation.30 Relationism was coined by Mannheim as a felicitous alternative concept. A simple example—not given by Radbruch though—may illustrate this relativist (perspectivist, relationist) method. If a historian tries to reconstruct the ideology of a leading nationalsocialist in the 1930’s and early 1940’s he will locate his values and value-judgments within the context of National Socialism and draw conclusions as to their ‘correctness’. This, however, does not mean that he expresses a positive or negative value-judgment about the national-socialist ideology as a whole. If he were to do so, he would transfer his arguments from history as an empirical cultural-science within the university to politics as a normative practice within the arena of power. This is, of course, identical with Rickert’s vision. History The Dutch historian Johan Huizinga (1872–1945) studied initially Sanskrit and philology, wrote a PhD-thesis on the fool in classical Indian theatre,31 but transferred at the beginning of the 20th century to history. He was appointed professor of history at the University of Groningen in 1905 and ten years later into the same position at the University of Leiden. In his inaugural address of 1905, entitled ‘The Aesthetic Component of Historical Imaginations’,32 he presented his methodological view of the historical discipline. The neo-Kantian philosophies of history, as unfolded by Simmel, Windelband and in

30

Radbruch, o.c., p. 102. Johan Huizinga, De Vidusaka in het Indisch Tooneel, (Groningen: Noordhoﬀ, 1897). Cf. my Reality in a Looking-Glass. Rationality through an Analysis of Traditional Folly, (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1982), p. 151. 32 Johan Huizinga, ‘Het aesthetische bestanddeel van geschiedkundige voorstellingen’, in: Johan Huizinga, Verzamelde Werken VII, (‘Collected Works, vol. VII’), pp. 3–18. 31

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particular Rickert, functioned as a starting point. However, he used them in this lecture as well as in some other methodological treatises quite eclectically, adopting only those points of view that ﬁtted his aesthetic, and sometimes quite romantic opinions about the historian’s task. He is in total agreement with his three colleagues in the rejection of what he labeled ‘the suzerainty of natural science’33 which, upon the successful developments of the natural sciences in the 19th century, had a heavy impact on the humanities, the historical discipline in the ﬁrst place. He joins their criticism of Karl Lamprecht who, as we saw before, was the whipping boy of Simmel, Rickert and Weber. To their and Huizinga’s dismay Lamprecht believed that history should be modeled after the exact natural sciences and be transformed into an experimental social psychology. If historical research could not yield general concepts in which everything particular and individual is being neutralized, it would not be worthy, Lamprecht thought, to be called ‘science’ and rather be categorized as art.34 As the title of his inaugural address indicates, Huizinga is quite averse to abstract conceptualizations, and as a historian rather driven by a more aesthetic than logical preference for imaginations and expressive images. Rickert would strongly take exception to this aesthetic approach, but one must admit that his arguments in some instances did lead up to it. Huizinga is an illustration of that. He is particularly fond of the following passage from Rickert’s theory of historical concept formation which indeed seems to nourish aesthetic and even vitalistic desires: ‘The historian [therefore] tries to represent for us in a graphic manner the past in its individuality. He can only do so, if he enables us in a sense to re-live the unique event in its individual course. Sure enough, in his presentation he is, as is the case with all sciences, dependent on words with general meanings. Through them there will never emerge a direct, graphic picture of reality. But he will indeed sometimes call upon the listener

33 Johan Huizinga, ‘De taak der cultuurgeschiedenis’, (‘The Task of Cultural History’), ibid., pp. 35–95. Quotation on p. 69. 34 Cf. his short but very critical review of Karl Lamprecht, Einführung in das historische Denken, (‘Introduction to Historical Thought’), (Leipzig: Voigtländer, 1912), in: Ibid., p. 233f. He sees Lamprecht as the representative of the opinion that history ought to be vindicated by the suzerainty of natural science which claims that its norms of exactness represent the only test of true science. Ibid., p. 69.

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or the reader to imagine something by means of his power of imagination.’35 In quoting these sentences, Huizinga omits the two sentences about the words (i.e. concepts) which carry general meanings and are not suitable to forge aesthetic images of reality.36 He would probably range this under the concept of ‘concepticity’.37 Moreover, Huizinga does obviously not notice the little word bisweilen, i.e. at times, or sometimes. This indicates that it is sometimes unavoidable for the historian to call upon the power of imagination of his audience, but he should not make a habit out of it. Huizinga then elaborates his idea of imagination and calls it quite romantically ‘historical sensation’ or ‘historical contact’.38 It is a kind of emotional connection with the past, a sentiment which is similar to but not identical to the enjoyment of art, or a religious experience, or a shiveriness in nature, or a metaphysical sensation. The object of this historical sensation does not consist of human ﬁgures, or human lives, or human thoughts which one believes to perceive. There are no clear pictures, everything is vague. Streets, houses, ﬁelds, sounds and colors, moving and moved people—it can all be summoned in this historical sensation. This contact with the past is accompanied by an absolute conviction of truth and authenticity. It can be aroused ‘by a line from a charter or a chronicle, by an engraving, some sounds from an old song. It is not an element which the author deposits in his work by distinct words. It lies behind not within the history book. The reader carries it towards the author, it is his response to his call.’39 Huizinga then comes close to aesthetic impressionism when he concludes that the historical sensation is carried out ‘in the sphere of the dream, a seeing of elusive ﬁgures, a hearing of words half understood.’40 Rickert would label all this 35

‘Der Historiker sucht daher die Vergangenheit in ihrer Individualität uns anschaulich wieder zu vergegenwärtigen, und das kann er nur dadurch tun, dass er es uns ermöglicht, das einmalige Geschehen in seinem individuellen Verlauf gewissermassen nachzuerleben. Zwar ist er bei seiner Darstellung, wie alle Wissenschaft, auf Worte angewiesen, die allgemeine Bedeutungen haben, und durch die daher niemals direkt ein anschauliches Bild der Wirklichkeit entsteht. Aber er wird in der Tat den Hörer oder Leser bisweilen auﬀordern, durch seine Einbildungskraft sich etwas anschaulich vorzustellen.’ Rickert, Kulturwissenschaft und Naturwissenschaﬁ, o.c., p. 95. 36 Huizinga, l.c., p. 70. 37 This is also in Dutch a neologism: begrippelijkheid. Cf. Huizinga, ibid., p. 73. 38 Ibid., p. 71. 39 Ibid., p. 71f. 40 Ibid., p. 72.

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‘intuition’ and, as we have seen, he was not averse to it, but rather saw it as a precondition instead of, as Huizinga seems to view it, as an essential component of the historian’s methodology. But then, suddenly, Huizinga turns around and returns to a more Rickertian style and content of thinking and writing. He admits that historical imagination and sensation are just parts of historical understanding and knowing. The aim of the historian, he writes, is ‘not subjecting to moods, but making understandable connections.’41 He formulates it as in a programme: ‘Each work of history constructs connections, designs forms in which reality of the past can be understood. History creates the sense of understanding mainly through the meaningful arrangement of facticity, and only in a very restricted sense by the determination of strict causalities. The knowledge it brings about gives answer to questions as “what?” and “how?” and only exceptionally to questions as “through what?” and “why?”.’42 History then is, according to him, always the designing of the past, and at the same time a comprehending and understanding of a meaning which one searches in the past. But then, he adds, history itself is like philosophy, or literature, or law, or natural science a spiritual form by means of which we try to understand the world. The main diﬀerence with the other spiritual forms is its focus on the past. It tries to understand the world in and by the past.43 He then formulates his famous deﬁnition of history: ‘History is the spiritual form by which a culture takes stock of its past.’44 The distinction of form and content is constitutive to Kant’s philosophy and to the philosophy of Rickert. Without referring to this source, Huizinga too applies it to the study of history. In order to understand the past, he argues, the historian must try to see its forms and its functions.45 He does not refer to him at this point, but his theory of historical design by means of a continuous focus on forms and functions (which he not very felicitously calls ‘morphology’) reminds one strongly also of Georg Simmel. Each event, Huizinga argues, which is conceived of by the historian presupposes ‘a certain design of the material of the past, a cognitive summarizing of

41 42 43 44 45

Ibid., Idem. Ibid., Ibid., This

p. 73. p. 99. p. 102. is elaborated on ibid., pp. 75–78, 98–103.

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some data from the chaotic reality into a conception.’46 Just like Rickert, he grounds these conceptions in everyday life experience: ‘Historical thought is but a continuation of the general thought-life itself.’47 It leads him to an anti-nominalistic conclusion: each pristine reﬂection about history applies ideas which in fact shape the past. The historian can from the start possess vernacular concepts like ‘parliament’, ‘world war’, ‘capitalism’, ‘religious faith’, etc. Cultural history in particular is in possession of such formal concepts, and the great cultural historians have, often unconsciously, always been great historical ‘morphologists’. Huizinga mentions Burckhardt as an example. His celebrated study of Renaissance culture, Huizinga comments, may have been too vague, simply because Renaissance cannot be understood as a clear form, but the single forms which he discussed and analyzed, such as fame, mockery, wittiness, family life, etc. maintain the value of a masterpiece beyond praise. It testiﬁes to ‘an unequalled sense of Forms’.48 His own famous study of the waning of the Middle Ages has in the meantime equaled the fame of Burckhardt’s book on Renaissance culture. It testiﬁes to the very same sense of forms, which, incidentally, is expressed explicitly by its subtitle.49 Thus, there is not a direct and substantial impact of Rickert’s philosophy on Huizinga’s methodological reﬂections. Their aestheticism is alien to Rickert’s transcendentalism and reminds one more of Benedetto Croce’s philosophy of history than of Rickert’s highly rational ideas. Yet, Huizinga’s ideas do reverberate with several of Rickert’s methodological conceptions and of those of Windelband and Simmel as well. But then, Huizinga does not excel in logical and methodological virtuosity, to phrase it mildly, and at some points he distinctly misunderstands and misinterprets Rickert’s philosophy. This is the case, as we saw, when he injects vitalistic and romantic notions in Rickert’s texts. In a book review, to give another example, he remarks en passant, that Rickert defends a cleavage between the natural and the cultural sciences which in the mean time has allegedly

46

Ibid., p. 76. Idem. 48 Ibid., p. 77. 49 Johan Huizinga, The Waning of the Middle Ages. A study in the Forms of Life and Thought and Art in France and the Netherlands in the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Centuries, 1929, transl by F. Hopman, (Garden City, NY: Doubleday Anchor Books, 1954). 47

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been bridged.50 This misinterprets the logically constructed and reciprocal (heterological) nature of Natural Science and Cultural Science. As we have seen in the former chapter the two types of scientiﬁc conceptualization function in Rickert’s view as the heterologically correlated extremes of an analytic continuum. This is not a cleavage at all. On the contrary, Rickert opens a way out of the fruitless opposition of Naturwissenschaft and Geisteswissenschaft and its equally fruitless methodological quarrel. Sociology Karl Mannheim (1893–1947) acquired fame as one of the founders of the sociology of knowledge,51 but was, certainly in his younger days in Budapest, also a general philosopher who was mainly interested in the role of values and in epistemological, logical and methodological problems. As a young man he belonged to a group of philosophers around Georg Lukács (1885–1971) who to the surprise of his friends changed in December 1918 in one week from a rather conservative, Hegelian Saul into a radical Marxist Paul.52 He even served in 1919 as people’s commissar for education in the soviet republic of Bela Kun (1886–1939) which was only in power for three months. The group around Lukács met monthly before the Kunrevolution, discussing mainly issues of culture and cultural sciences. They were mockingly called Szellemkek which literally means ‘Spirits’. This referred to their focus on Geist and Geisteswissenschaft, in opposition to the neo-positivistic sociologists who rather put nature and the natural sciences on a pedestal.53 After all, Lukács studied in

50

Johan Huizinga, ‘Boekbesprekingen’ (‘Book Reviews’), ibid., p. 233. See for a systematic treatment of this part of Mannheim’s theories A. P. Simonds, Karl Mannheim’s Sociology of Knowledge, (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1978). It contains a helpful bibliography which registers the English translations of his publications: ibid., pp. 188–192. 52 See David Kettler, Marxismus und Kultur. Mannheim und Lukács in den ungarischen Revolutionen 1918/19, (‘Marxism and Culture. Mannheim and Lukács in the Hungarian Revolutions 1918/19’), (Neuwied, Berlin: Luchterhand, 1967), p. 64. 53 Lukács and his small band of followers, including Mannheim, founded the ‘Free School for the Humanities’ (‘Freie Schule für Geisteswissenschaften’) which provided free courses for students and laymen and functioned as a kind of Folk College (‘Volkshochschule’). See the concise but very informative account of David Kettler, o.c. The motto of Kettler’s book is a statement by Lukács: ‘Die Politik ist bloss Mittel, die Kultur ist das Ziel.’ (‘Politics ist just a means, culture is the aim.’), 51

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Heidelberg and belonged to the inner-circle of Max Weber. But also as a Marxist and politician Lukács believed that culture was the aim and politics its means of realization. In other words, he was and remained an avid defender of the autonomy of the super-structure (Ueberbau) and rejected the ‘vulgar-Marxist’ position of the causal predominance of the infra-structure (Unterbau).54 Although Mannheim was not a Marxist or member of the communist party, once in power Lukács saw to it that he, despite his youth of just 25 years, was appointed professor of philosophy at the university in Budapest. After the early end of the Bela Kun regime, on the ﬁrst day of August 1919, Lukács ﬂed to Vienna and from there to Moscow. Mannheim took oﬀ to Frankfurt a.M., where he engaged in further sociological studies and was appointed professor of philosophy ten years later.55 As a Jew he had to ﬂee again in 1933, ending his life in intellectual loneliness in London January 9, 1947. Although this has, as far as I know, not been documented, we may assume that Mannheim got thoroughly acquainted in Heidelberg with the neo-Kantian theories of Windelband and Rickert. In fact, the neo-Kantianism of Windelband and Rickert, and at times also the philosophy of Simmel, recur in his philosophical writings. However, as we shall see, he deviated strongly and argumentatively from

Kettler, ibid., p. 5 and p. 43. It explains, Kettler argues, Lukács’s on ﬁrst sight strange cross-over from a rather conservative Hegelian and partly neo-Kantian position to a radical Marxism. In their conservatism the ‘Spirits’ rejected the capitalist culture of the bourgeoisie they belonged to by origin. 54 This standpoint, remarkable for a politically rather orthodox Marxist, was in all probability inspired by Max Weber who in his Wissenschaftslehre once called Marx a ‘great thinker’ (‘den grossen Denker’), but the model of an infra-structure versus a dependent super-structure ‘this fundamentally wrong and scientiﬁcally completely worthless analogy’ (‘diese grundschiefe und wissenschaftlich ganz wertlose Analogie’). Max Weber, Wissenschaftslehre, p. 204 and p. 316. See also p. 253. Politically, this emphasis upon culture is not without danger, in particular when it is linked to the culture of an historical culture. As we have seen in the Introduction, Rickert claimed in 1934 that after World War I Germany’s entire culture was ‘once more’ in danger and that therefore no German who wanted to work within Germany’s culture, should resist the main direction of the ‘national-political cultural aims’. Cf. Heinrich Rickert, Grundprobleme der Philosophie, o.c., pp. 222–224. 55 In view of Mannheim’s rejection of the separation of science and value-judgments of the neo-Kantians and his project to unify socio-political, socio-ethical and sociological studies which he further elaborated in Frankfurt, it is safe to see him as one of the founding fathers of the ‘Frankfurt School’, next to Max Horkheimer and Theodor Adorno.

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Rickert’s methodological demand to abstain from normative, evaluative judgments. In a review of a book in which Rickert’s demarcation of the natural and cultural sciences was attacked ﬁercely, Mannheim discusses the question how the various sciences can be classiﬁed adequately.56 One always classiﬁes objects by means of a certain point of view, or perspective—a methodological standpoint which is, of course, in concordance with Rickert’s thesis of value-relevance or value-relatedness. But such a perspective, the reviewed author argues, is only adequate, if it is grounded ontologically in the inner structuring of the objective reality. There is, in other words, an inherent, ontological order in reality, a structured essence. This point, the author argues, is missed or consciously neglected by Kant and the neoKantians who stick to the idea that the thing-in-itself cannot be known and therefore is ‘irrational’ and ‘chaotic’. Order, the neoKantian epistemologists believe, is in the end imposed by human reason and its a priori categories. However, Mannheim’s reviewed philosopher admits, there is not just one but a plurality of perspectives and this must, of course, result in various conﬂicting classiﬁcations. These conﬂicts cannot be resolved epistemologically by formal logic. One must mentally enter into the objective reality, arrive at an inner understanding of its structured essence and from there determine which perspective is more and which is less adequately equipped to classify the objects. In short, as to classiﬁcation in general and to the demarcation of the natural sciences and the humanities in particular, ontology has a primacy over epistemology and logic. In other words, Mannheim summarizes, if one believes that the adequacy or inadequacy of various viewpoints is ontologically based in objective reality, one must necessarily also believe that the essence of the reality which one wants to classify is somehow given by a direct mental act (i.e. ‘intuition’) before we approach reality cognitively, logically and methodologically by means of abstract concepts. Mannheim then raises a question which Rickert would have formulated as a statement. If we allowed the idea that the essence of 56

Erich Becher, Geisteswissenschaften und Naturwissenschaften, (‘Sciences of the Mind and Natural Sciences’), (Münmchen, Leipzig: Duncker & Humblot, 1921). Karl Mannheim, ‘Zum Problem einer Klassiﬁkation der Wissenschaften’, (‘On the Problem of a Classiﬁcation of Sciences’), in: Karl Mannheim, Wissenssoziologie. Auswahl aus dem Werk, (‘Sociology of Knowledge. Selection from his Work’), Kurt. H. Wolﬀ, ed., (Berlin, Neuwied: Luchterhand, 1964, pp. 155–165.

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reality can be determined directly through an intrusive act of the mind, we would still have to acknowledge that this essence can only be caught theoretically from one or the other point of view. This, Mannheim points out, is not insigniﬁcant. After all, ‘if one realizes that the classiﬁcation must take place on the theoretical level, we can never comprehend theoretically the essence in its allegedly ontological directness and totality, but always only from a certain point of view.’57 What Mannheim says is, of course, that in the business of knowing reality epistemology has always a primacy over ontology, which is, of course, precisely Rickert’s position. However, Mannheim has a strong reservation with regard to Rickert’s epistemologically determined methodology and its, in his view, rather formalistic standpoint regarding the demarcation of the two main groups of sciences, the natural and the cultural ones. Rickert starts, Mannheim points out, this classiﬁcation on the level of conceptualization and methodology, and thereby transfers the essence of science from research and the comprehension of objective reality to the level of the methodical representation and formation of what has been epistemologically comprehended. Mannheim calls it an ‘extremely formalistic methodologism’ which must end up in relativism, since it is unable to establish a hierarchy of standpoints or perspectives.58 This invites one, he continues, to embrace again the pre-theoretical, ontological approach which he, however, dismissed before. It is, I think, indicative that he cannot solve this dilemma, and chooses for an acceptance of both. He proposes, namely, to reject the position which denies the importance of methodology by defending the intuitive connection to the essence of objective reality, yet to allow still for ‘a minimum of ontological relevance’, since we have to admit that in the end the adequacy of theoretical work, in particular that of classiﬁcation, depends on something nontheoretical, something ontological which stands over against us, outside us.59 This, of course, would be ﬁercely (and probably ironically)

57

‘wenn man bedenkt, dass die Klassiﬁkation sich in der theoretischen Ebene abzuspielen hat, dass wir also das Wesen niemals in seiner angenommenen ontischen Unmittelbarkeit und Totalität, sondern stets nur von einem gewissen Gesichtspunkte aus theoretisch erfasssen können.’ Mannheim, ibid., p. 157. 58 ‘extrem formalistische Methodologismus’, ibid., p. 159. 59 Ibid., p. 159f.

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criticized and rejected by Rickert. Indeed, does Mannheim not try to haver his cake and and yet eat it?60 How then does the philosopher under review classify the sciences and how does this classiﬁcation diﬀer from Rickert’s? He aspires, of course, to an ontological classiﬁcation, i.e. one that starts with alleged ontological essences, not as Rickert does with logical and methodological points of view. He too arrives at a dual classiﬁcation, namely ideal and real sciences, which actually concurs with the traditional distinction of Geistes- and Naturwissenschaften. Mannheim discusses the ontological deﬁnition of the humanities (Geisteswissenschaften). What is, from this point of view, the ontological foundation of the humanities? The author under review believes that the ontological ground of the humanities is the human soul (Seele) plus the spiritual content which is intended by the soul. This spiritual content is, the author explicates, intended meaning (Sinn). This leads, Mannheim argues, to a considerable problem because both Husserl and Rickert have demonstrated that any mental or spiritual content, e.g. the content of a theoretical statement which is its intended meaning, diﬀers essentially from the psychological act which intends it. In other words, Seele and Sinn are two diﬀerent phenomena. The psychological act of intention occurs in an experiential stream within a speciﬁc moment of time, but the result of this act, the intended content or meaning, is meta-psychological and transcends the experiential and temporal stream. Mannheim does not phrase it this way, but what he means is, of course, that the intended meaning is non-empirical and transcendent in the neo-Kantian sense of the word. The author under review, Mannheim notes with some irritation, tries to get out of this logical problem by simply stating that intended meaning is just the abstract side of the psyche and its processes. It is, he believes, an inherent component of the objective, psychic reality because it becomes 60 Mannheim, nevertheless, tries to defend Rickert’s methodological approach against the ﬁerce ontological attack of the philosopher under review. Even if the methodological classiﬁcation of sciences by Rickert is false, we should remember, he says, that also inadequate classiﬁcations can still have a positive function in the process of knowledge acquisition. In fact, he continues, this is true of all inadequate knowledge, as it can foster new insights. Moreover, is not the speciﬁc fullness of theoretical comprehension a constant circling around pre-theoretical objects from diﬀerent conceptual levels, a moving back-and-forth and transiting from one level to the other by the diﬀerent points of view? Consequently, Mannheim concludes, there cannot be any absolute cognitive adequacy, but only a larger of smaller kind of adequacy. Ibid., p. 160f. This, of course, is a return to Rickert’s alleged relativism!

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only empirically apparent in psychic realities. This ‘abstract side of ’, Mannheim counters, is a word play which the author uses in order to avoid the real ontological diﬀerences between ‘soul’ and ‘meaning’. Moreover, if content of meaning were just the abstract side of the soul, then one must conclude also that soul is an abstract side of the body which would demolish the ontological classiﬁcation of bodily and psychic objects which again is the basis for the classiﬁcation of the sciences in Natur- and Geisteswissenschaften. And indeed, Mannheim concludes, the leap which separates soul and body is not at all smaller than the one which separates the psychic act from the mental content, the meaning, intended by this act.61 He comes to the conclusion once more that the ontological primacy in matters of cognition in general and classiﬁcation in particular cannot be maintained as radically as the reviewed opponent of Rickert pretends. In general Mannheim’s theory of knowledge remains in accordance with Rickert’s philosophy. However, there is one component of Rickert’s philosophy of values and methodology of the cultural sciences with which Weber, as we shall see instantly, agrees but Mannheim strongly and expressedly disagrees. That is the doctrine of the freedom from normative value-judgments (Wertungsfreiheit) which is explicated in particular in his theory of ideology and utopia,62 but of course also in his social-political and social-ethical works, respectively the monumental Man and Society in an Age of Reconstruction (1935) and Diagnosis of Our Time (1943).63 In this normative approach to sociology Mannheim was deﬁnitely inﬂuenced by Lukács who in this respect exerted a greater and stronger inﬂuence on him than Max Weber or Heinrich Rickert whose thinking he had absorbed as a student in Heidelberg. However, it is my contention that the quality of his philosophical and in particular his epistemological and

61

Ibid., p. 153f. Karl Mannheim, Ideology and Utopia. An Introduction to the Sociology of Knowledge, translated and edited by Louis Wirth and Edward Shils, 1936, (New York: Harcourt, Brace & World. A Harvest Book, n.d.). The book was ﬁrst published in German in 1929, but the English edition of 1936 was substantially enlarged by Mannheim with the assistance of Wirth and Shils. 63 Karl Mannheim, Man and Society in an Age of Reconstruction. Studies in Modern Social Structure, 1940, transl. by Edward Shils, (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1960, 10th ed.). This is an enlarged edition of an earlier German one, published in Holland in 1935. It should be noted that the reconstruction referred to in the title pertains to the period after World War I. Karl Mannheim, Diagnosis of Our Time. Wartime Eassays of a Sociologist, 1943, (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1947). 62

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methodological thinking declined in inverse proportion to the rise of his socio-political and socio-ethical theories. In contrast to Max Weber who has emphasized the professional, non-political function of the sciences in general and sociology in particular,64 Mannheim assigned an almost prophetic task to this discipline. He phrased this lucidly in his introductory course of sociology at the London School of Economics, 1934–1935. What are values? he starts one lecture on ‘the philosophical and sociological interpretation of values’. Both the idealist philosopher and the man in the street believe values ‘present themselves as eternal qualities, as gifts or commands from Heaven, as transcendental forces.’65 But the sociologist sees them rather as functions of society, not as abstract entities which would exist independent of the valuating subject or the group in which they function. There is a deep resistance to this sociological view of values since we are used to believing that they are eternal, presented by some sort of superhuman or super historical power.’ We hesitate to leave this habitual attitude, Mannheim continues, because we fear ‘the relativism which may follow the realization that values are created by society and vary in diﬀerent societies, and that our own values are also dependent on our social system.’66 It is as in the Copernican change which had to break the thought habit that the sun turned around the earth, even though it endangered the religious and moral order of those days. We must today accept the sociological fact that values are socially generated which is not to say that their relevance is diminished. On the contrary, ‘they are not dictated by some transcendental command, but by our rational insight in the needs of our social order’. It sounds like an echo of Auguste Comte, when he states that ‘the theological and philosophical obligation will be replaced by a sociological one.’67 Mannheim adds a political dimension to this. The traditional theological and philosophical legitimations of values appealed to the thought habits of people who were accustomed to act under authority, whereas the sociological approach to values is a democratic one

64

See in particular his lecture ‘Wissenschaft als Beruf ’ (‘Science as a Profession’), 1919, in: Max Weber, Gesammelte Aufsätze zur Wissenschaftslehre, o.c., pp. 582–613. 65 Karl Mannheim, Systematic Sociology. An Introduction to the Study of Society, J. S. Erös, W. A. C. Stewart, eds., (New York: Grove Press, 1957), pp. 131–135. 66 Ibid., p. 132. 67 Idem.

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since the social obligation can now be reasonably tested. An additional advantage is that the sociological conception opens the door to reforms, while the traditional absolute and authoritarian conception hampers reform.68 It stands to reason that regarding social policy and social ethics Mannheim feels intellectually more at home in Marx’s philosophy than in Rickert’s and Weber’s neo-Kantian logic and methodology. In his view there is a double advantage to the Marxian view of man and society. First, it places knowledge and reality in historical dimensions, and second, it posits, as a methodological a priori, the unity of theory and praxis, i.e. of science and politics. Although Mannheim never ‘converted’ to Marxism and his political convictions gradually developed in the direction of a liberal type of social democracy, as is documented among others by Man and Society in an Age of Reconstruction, his sociology of knowledge departed gradually from a neo-Kantian to a Marxist position. This was apparent in particular in his wellknown doctrine of the Seinsverbundenheit des Wissens which meant the basing of all knowledge in the surrounding social circumstances and groups of men. They are, in a sense, the infra-structure to which the super-structure of knowledge is causally related.69 He added to this social determination of knowledge the ongoing inﬂuence of history, calling for a historicist interpretation of history and society.70

68

Idem. It is probably a remnant of the preoccupation with mind and culture of the Budapest group around Lukács, when Mannheim deﬁnes the infra-structure of knowledge, c.q. culture, primarily in sociological not in economic terms. 70 Cf. Karl Mannheim, ‘Historicism’, 1924, transl. by P. Keckskemeti, (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1952), pp. 84–133. Mannheim’s historicism was criticized by Karl R. Popper, The Poverty of Historicism, 1957, (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1969). He singled out Mannheim’s alleged holism regarding societal reform by means of utopian planning, opposing it by his own anti-holistic idea of ‘piecemeal engineering’. Cf. ‘Piecemeal versus Utopian Engineering’: ibid., pp. 64–70. For a sociological critique see Robert K. Merton, ‘Karl Mannheim and the Sociology of Knowledge’, in: Robert K. Merton, Social Theory and Social Structure, 1949, (New York: The Free Press of Glencoe; London: Collier-Macmillan, 1964, 9th ed.), pp. 489–508. He remarks with some latent irritation that Mannheim never clariﬁes how this determining relationship between ‘knowledge’ and ‘social structure’ ought to be conceived precisely. And he adds: ‘This lacuna leads to vagueness and obscurity at the very heart of his central thesis concerning the “existential determination of knowledge”.’ Merton, ibid., p. 498. This is, of course, not the place to elaborate all this in more details. See my De relativiteit van kennis en werkelijkheid, Inleiding tot de kennissociologie, (‘The Relativity of Knowledge and Reality. An Introduction to the Sociology of Knowledge’), (Amsterdam: Boom Meppel, 1974), pp. 145–150. 69

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Needless to add that it is a long way from Rickert’s methodological Wertverbundenheit to Mannheim’s sociological Seinsverbundenheit. A corner stone of his sociology of knowledge is the dynamics of two types of worldview which he labeled ideology and utopia. In (Western) history these two thought-systems which are not just methodological (ideal-typical) constructions but hypostasized (ontologized) ways of acting, thinking and feeling, function as in a reciprocal relationship. Both of them are conscious distortions of reality, of the facts, of an existing status quo, the former in order to maintain the existing power structure, the other, on the contrary, to ‘burst asunder the bonds of the existing order’. That is, ideology is ‘conservative’, if not reactionary, utopia is ‘progressive’ and the motor of reform or revolutionary change.71 This juxtaposition has a manicheistic, dualistic character: ideologies represent the dark sides of human knowledge, utopias the forces of light. In any case, the status quo is in Mannheim’s view ‘a functional social order, which does not exist only in the imagination of certain individuals but according to which people really act.’72 Rickert and Weber would observe that this is a remarkably positivistic and ontological, or even metaphysical point of view, because it seems to contend that there exists independent of common and sociological interpretations of human behavior and social reality an ‘objectively’ social reality ‘according to which people really act’. This opinion may well be true, the problem however is that it remains unclear how and what ‘objective’ reality, this socalled ‘functioning order’, is apart from interpretations which in the terms of Mannheim’s sociology of knowledge are in their turn historical and socially determined and thus non-objective in the positivistic and ontological/metaphysical sense of this word. Once more, Mannheim wavers between the epistemological and ontological primacy of common and scientiﬁc knowledge. What then is the role of sociology in the dynamics of ideology and utopia? Brieﬂy formulated, it is the separating of the wheat of utopias from the chaﬀ of ideologies. In historical and empirical reality, ideological and utopian ideas will be mixed and only rarely occur blatantly in the social and political structure. He singles out, for example the medieval chiliastic movements as an example of utopia,

71 72

Mannheim, Ideology and Utopia, o.c., p. 194. Ibid., p. 194.

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and the Nazi movement as a specimen of ideology, but emphasizes that elements of the opposite worldview are present in such movements. It is the task of the historically educated sociologist to search for the utopian components of knowledge systems, even in the case of authoritarian and dictatorial systems predominated by a totalitarian ideology, and to synthesize them into a progressive, future oriented new worldview. This task, Mannheim believes, is essential in an age of reconstruction in which there is a dire need for a utopian planning, which he deﬁned as a ‘planning for freedom’.73 This task can, of course, only be performed by people who themselves are not completely committed to a utopian or an ideological worldview. In his view the intelligentsia, consisting of academics, artists, journalists, and other people who are not directly bound by the political and economic interests of one or the other group, are the ideal persons to perform this critical role. He labeled them the relatively (!) socially and politically free intelligentsia. They embody an ethos which is, Mannheim believes, crucial for a democratic system because it contains rules of the socio-political game in which people act as ‘honnêtes hommes’ who are prepared to give way to reasonableness above private or collective interests.74 In conclusion, Mannheim drifts away from his initial philosophical position which is still inﬂuenced by the rational neo-Kantianism of Windelband and Rickert, to a rather irrational sociology of knowledge which aims at a merger and integration of science, politics and ethics. It is what logicians call a metabasis eis allo genos, a transition to a diﬀerent sort, namely an admittedly impressive social philosophy which is, however, based upon scores of ontological and metaphysical presuppositions. In the terms of Rickert’s philosophy, this type of sociology of knowledge remains strictly speaking—and Rickert’s

73 Mannheim, Man and Society in an Age of Reconstruction, Part V: ‘Planning for Freedom’, o.c., pp. 239–368. 74 See my De relativiteit van kennis en werkelijkheid, o.c., pp. 143–155, where I also discuss Theodor Geiger’s impressive critique as laid down in his Aufgaben und Stellung der Intelligenz in der Gesellschaft, (‘Tasks and Position of the Intelligentsia in Society’), (Stuttgart: Enke Verlag, 1949), chapter three: ‘The social task of the intelligentsia’. The Polish-American sociologist Florian Znaniecki takes exception to Mannheim’s ‘relatively socially free-ﬂoating intelligentsia’ by arguing that intellectuals are only freed from productive labor because they cater ideas and theoretical reﬂections to speciﬁc social circles which are willing to support them. In other words, they play social roles which in society are considered to be relevant. See his The Social Role of the Man of Knowledge, 1940, (New York: Harper Torchbooks, 1968).

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philosophy aims at a very strict way of arguing and judging—neither logically, nor epistemologically and methodologically sound. As we shall see below, Max Weber manages to avoid at least the metaphysical pitfall, and remains within the borders of science and scientiﬁc philosophy. His dependence on Rickert is, at least in his logic of the social sciences, strong, yet at decisive points, particularly in his celebrated theory of the ideal types, he testiﬁes to the power of his own philosophical imagination. Of the philosophers and social scientists discussed in this chapter Max Weber (1864–1920) was personally and intellectually closest to Rickert. The latter’s philosophy of values and his logical and methodological demarcation of Natural Science and Cultural Science exerted a decisive impact on Weber’s methodological essays, but also on his cultural-sociological studies in the area of the sociology of religion, the sociology of law, and economic history. At the same time, Weber deﬁnitely managed to both modify and amplify Rickert’s philosophy and methodology. He certainly was not a passive receptor of the ideas of his friend and colleague. It is not the intention of this last section to present an integral discussion of Weber’s methodology, substantial sociology and socioeconomic history. This has been done by others in an exemplary manner.75 It is not even the aim to analyze in details the similarities and diﬀerences of the theories of Rickert and Weber. This has also been done by others.76 Moreover, the literature on Weber has meanwhile grown into an ocean of books and articles which cannot be covered in a small section as the present one. However, Weber, a trained legal scholar, a dominant ﬁgure in economic history, an autodidact in philosophy and the comparative study of religion, and above all the inventor of an idiosyncratic sociology which he called verstehende Soziologie, was, as is well known, a

75 An early and well-nigh classic survey is Alexander von Schelting, Max Webers Wissenschaftslehre, (Tübingen: Mohr-Siebeck, 1934). Cf. Talcott Parsons’s ‘Review of Alexander von Schelting’s “Max Webers Wissenschaftslehre” ’, in: American Sociological Review, 1 (1936), pp. 675–681. Also Thomas Burger, Max Weber’s Theory of Concept Formation. History, Laws, and Ideal Types, (Durham, North Carolina: Duke University Press, 1976). 76 Cf. Guy Oakes, Weber and Rickert. Concept Formation in the Cultural Sciences, (Cambridge, Massachusetts: The MIT Press, 1988). Peter-Ulrich Merz, Max Weber und Heinrich Rickert, (Königshausen: Neumann, 1997).

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towering ﬁgure in the socio-cultural sciences of Germany at the end of the 19th and the beginning of the 20th century. It stands to reason that there is also an echo of his work in the thinking and writing of Rickert. Six years after Weber’s death, the ﬁrst publication of Weber’s collected works and Marianne Weber’s biography of her husband,77 Rickert publishes an article in which he ﬁrst tells about his personal and intellectual friendship with Weber, and then points out that Weber was not and never pretended to be a philosopher. Weber was both a scientiﬁc specialist and a politician, and never managed to unify the scientiﬁc theoretician and the political practitioner in his impressive personality. In fact, Rickert argues, he kept these two talents apart consciously and systematically. That would not have satisﬁed him, if he had been a philosopher, because a philosopher wants to arrive in the end at an integrated Weltanschauung, i.e. at an overall and systematic view of the world-in-toto. Weber, Rickert claims, never had any such truly philosophical urge. His emphasis on the combination of value-relevance and the conscious abstention from value-judgments was correct, but his solution to distinguish theoretical contemplation and political activity is philosophically unsatisfactory.78 In other words, Rickert is not prepared to acknowledge the philosophical status of his friend, despite his philosophically very profound and complex essays in the logic of the social sciences.79 He assigns to him the dual 77 Marianne Weber, Max Weber. Ein Lebensbild, (‘Max Weber. A Picture of his Life’), (Tübingen: Mohr-Siebeck, 1926). She relates that in Heildelberg she was Rickert’s ‘diligent student’ and kept her husband abreast of the things she had learned from Rickert: ibid., p. 216. 78 Heinrich Rickert, ‘Max Weber und seine Stellung zur Wissenschaft’, in: Logos, 15 (1926), pp. 222–237. 79 Rickert disagreed with Karl Jaspers who after Weber’s death had referred to him as a great philosopher. They had a rather unpleasant exchange of words about this over the phone. Jaspers allegedly concluded their squabble, which was not the ﬁrst nor the last one, by telling Rickert that he would in the future at the most be remembered in footnotes of studies on Weber’s work. Cf. Hermann Glockner, Heidelberger Bilderbuch, (Bonn: Bouvier Verlag, 1969), p. 103f.; Hans Saner, Jaspers, 1970, (Hamburg: Rowohlt Taschenbuch Verlag, 1984), p. 36f, 140f.; Guy Oakes, o.c., p. 9f. Oakes, American translator of (portions of ) the Grenzen, agrees with Jaspers’s harsh judgment which meanwhile may be quite wrong in view of the fact that the recently erected ‘Rickert Research Institute’ at the University of Düsseldorf is in the process of publishing Rickert’s collected works in ﬁfteen volumes. For Jasper’s view of Weber see his elegantly written Max Weber. Politiker. Forscher. Philosoph, (‘Max Weber. Politician. Researcher. Philosopher’), (München: Piper, 1958). See also Gustav Ramming, Karl Jaspers und Heinrich Rickert. Existenzialismus und Wertphilosophie, (Bern: Francke Verlag, 1948). See in particular Rickert’s sound and fair critique of Jasper’s book on the psychology of worldviews: Psychologie der Weltanschauungen und Philosophie der Werte, (‘Psychology of Worldviews and Philosophy of Values’), 1920, in: Hans Saner, ed., Karl Jaspers in der Diskussion, (‘The Discussion about Karl Jaspers’), (München: Piper Verlag, 1973), pp. 35–70.

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status of theoretical scientiﬁc specialist (legal scholar, social and economic historian, sociologist, researcher of comparative religion) and active politician. The latter is rather questionable. Weber was a political theoretician and commentator as is demonstrated by the collected political papers, but not at any time in his life a practicing politician.80 He engaged in normativepolitical value-judgments and participated as an adviser in the German delegation to the peace conference at Versailles after World War I. Yet, this was still not really political practice. After the war Weber was allegedly asked to be a candidate for the election of the national president of the Weimar Republic, but he refused because he felt he should stick to his scientiﬁc work at the university. One may also not forget that Weber was academically trained as a lawyer, law being of course a normative science. But his endeavors in the ﬁeld of law too were primarily theoretical and scientiﬁc. He only once practised as a barrister, helping a lady friend who had an extra-marital aﬀair with an anarchist from Northern Italy who was incarcerated in Zürich.81 That is, of course, not enough to call him a practicing lawyer. Yet he was an accomplished legal scholar and did make use of legal arguments, particularly in his political papers. Moreover, in two public lectures Weber used the concept Beruf, applying it to science and to politics.82 This concept—vocation—has a double meaning which Weber used consciously. It means profession but also calling. Weber emphasized a double precondition for both vocations: it demands training, hard, ascetic work, and the ability to obey what Goethe had called ‘the demand of the day’ (die Forderung des Tages). But it also needs passion and pathos, i.e. being driven by the irrational demon which for each of us holds the ﬁbers of our lives together.83 In view of this conception of vocation it is strange that Rickert criticizes Weber’s lecture for its allegedly rather gloomy vision of scientiﬁc work. He praises Weber when he decidedly dismissed contemporary fashionable follies, such as the preoccupation with sensation and personality and scores of romantic feelings. They are inimical to serious scientiﬁc work. In science only he has personality, Weber told his students in his last lecture ‘Science as a Vocation’, who serves the business of science, and he added that if one wants to experience visions, one should go to the cinema, not to the university. But he warned them

80 Max Weber, Gesammelte Politische Schriften, (‘Collected Political Papers’), 1958, (Tübingen: Mohr-Siebeck, 1971). 81 Marianne Weber, o.c., pp. 494–502. See also on this legal aﬀair Arthur Mitzman, The Iron Cage. An Historical Interpretation of Max Weber, (New York: Alfred Knopf, 1970), pp. 287–290 which is, however, based on Marianne Weber’s account. 82 Max Weber, ‘Politik als Beruf ’, 1918, ibid., pp. 505–560; ‘Wissenschaft als Beruf ’, Wissenschaftslehre, pp. 582–613. See ‘Politics as a Vocation’ and ‘Science as a Vocation’, in: H. H. Gerth, C. Wright Mills, translators and editors, From Max Weber. Essays in Sociology, 1946, (New York: Oxford University Press. A Galaxy Book, 1962), pp. 77–156. 83 This is a paraphrase of the exceptionally rare metaphysical exclamation in the last sentence of Weber’s swan-song ‘Science as a Vocation’, l.c., p. 613.

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in addition that engulﬁng oneself in science will have a disenchanting eﬀect. The enchantments of the past and the present lose their attraction and legitimacy. Disenchantment of the world is the fate of everyone who seriously sets out to do scientiﬁc research, to eat from the tree of knowledge. Rickert objects to this idea because it is, he thinks, cheerless and gloomy. What about the joy and, yes in a sense the enchantment too, of the Platonic mania, the Socratic Logosfreudigkeit, i.e. the joy of discovering concepts which help us to understand the world around us? Sure enough, Rickert admits, Weber knew this joy of discovering heuristic concepts and he was certainly driven by the Platonic mania which causes a restless search for truth. But he repressed them, framed them in the awareness of duty, of the demand of the day. Rickert does obviously not realize this, but we, of course, encounter here Weber’s Puritanical ethos, whose rationality stands intrinsically in opposition to any mania or joy. Rickert’s commemorative article on Weber’s position regarding science throws an interesting light on his own scientiﬁc ethos. As abstract and at times even warped as his ideas and theories have been, Rickert’s philosophy lacks indeed the melancholy of Weber’s writings of the period shortly before his death in 1920. In the mirror of Weber’s picture Rickert provides a rare insight into his own essence as a philosopher. Equally remarkable is the emotional tone with which he writes about their friendship. As the sons of befriended liberal politicians in Berlin they were friends in their early youth, although their encounters were rare due to the considerable distance between the two houses. But Rickert tells the touching story of ‘the young, healthy, cheerful Max Weber’84 who possessed a large collection of coins and exhibited such a comprehensive historical knowledge about them that it almost frightened him. Later, during their days together at the university, Weber impressed his friend with his extremely wide range of interests and knowledge. Rickert already realized then that Weber would achieve extraordinary things in the future, particularly in the ﬁeld of history. After an interval of several years, they met again as teachers at the University of Freiburg, where Weber, just thirty years old, was appointed professor of economics, and Rickert functioned as a philosophical Privatdozent, which is comparable to a guest professorship. Their contacts were then and later in Heidelberg regular and intensive. Rickert saw his friend primarily as researcher and politician, not as philosopher. Yet, he claims, this double talent compelled Weber to engage in logical issues and they brought him into the center of his own interests: the logical structure of the historical science.85 This is, of course, an interesting and very questionable conclusion: Weber was not a professional philosopher, but was compelled to engage in Wissenschaftslehre, resulting in a large volume of diﬀerent essays, because he had to clarify logically his double talent of being both a politician and a specialized, mainly historical researcher.

84 85

‘den jungen, gesunden und frohen Max Weber’, Rickert, ibid., p. 225. See ibid., p. 226.

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This is not a convincing explanation of Weber’s rather intensive exertions in the logic and methodology of the social sciences, nor does it explain the obvious duality in his substantive sociological studies. The essays in the sociology of religion, namely, are distinctively based on an individualizing Cultural-Scientiﬁc mode of conceptualization, whereas the chapters of the unﬁnished General Sociology, as compiled posthumously in the two volumes of Wirtschaft und Gesellschaft were intended as exercises in a generalizing, ahistorical Natural-Scientiﬁc mode of concept formation. Rickert misses this point, and refers recurrently to Weber as the representative of a generalizing Natural-Scientiﬁc sociology, as if he were a kind of German Comte. Moreover, as I shall argue below, Weber provides a considerable addition to Rickert’s logic, when he introduces the ideal types (Idealtypen) as generalizing (Natural-Scientiﬁc) concepts as a means to arrive at an understanding and causal explanation of historical, meaningful social interactions and institutions. That is, on Rickert’s continuum Weber operates not just at the Natural-Scientiﬁc, generalizing pole, but also at the Cultural-Scientiﬁc, individualizing one. In his sociology, Kulturwissenschaft and Naturwissenschaft, a heterological dualism which Weber adopted from Rickert, are successfully and impressively integrated.

Weber, as is well known, adopts Rickert’s distinction of value-relevance, or value-relatedness (Wertbeziehung, Wertbezogenheit) and the scientiﬁc norm to abstain from normative value-judgments (Werturteile). He puts it in position in his famous essay on the meaning of the so-called ‘value-freedom’ of sociology and economics, which actually means ‘abstaining from value-judgments’.86 Consequently, both Rickert and Weber do in their philosophy and methodology leave no room for a normative worldview (Weltanschauung). Rickert emphatically deﬁnes his own systemic philosophy of values, aiming at a theoretical (scientiﬁc) conceptualization of reality-in-toto, not as a worldview but rather as a worldview theory (Weltanschauungslehre). The equivalent of the latter is, in Weber’s methodology, the value-analysis (Wertanalyse) which is a theoretical analysis of the values to which the scientist is

86 Max Weber, ‘Der Sinn der “Wertfreiheit” der soziologischen und ökonomischen Wissenschaften’, (‘The Meaning of the “Value-freedom” of the Sociological and Economical Sciences’): Wissenschaftslehre, o.c., pp. 475–526. The concept Wertfreiheit (‘value-freedom’), which is put between quotation marks, means in fact Wertungsfreiheit, i.e. conscious abstaining from normative value-judgments. It is unfortunate that Weber used ‘value-freedom’ in the title of this essay, because it has led to numerous, yet unnecessary misunderstandings. Again, the cultural sciences are, due to the fact of value-relevance, never free from values. But given this fact it is, in Weber’s and Rickert’s view, a scientiﬁc norm (and thus value!) to abstain from normative value-judgments for the duration of one’s scientiﬁc research and teaching.

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related. Yet, both realize that human beings do live—think, feel and act—in terms of a normative worldview, or in vernacular terms ‘a personal philosophy of life’ (Lebensanschauung) which must have a prescientiﬁc impact on their thinking and writing. It is my contention that this implicit view of life and the world can be reconstructed more easily from Weber’s writings than from Rickert’s. The reason for that is that Rickert has, as we saw in Chapter Two, a stronger aversion to vitalism (Lebensphilosophie) than Max Weber. On the other hand, as we saw also, Rickert does object to vitalism philosophically, but obviously in a sense also sympathizes with it. He would, in all probability, have agreed with his friend’s implicit worldview, although he might have deemed it too gloomy in its tragic conception. Epistemologically, Weber is in many respects a neo-Kantian and is as averse to easy metaphysical reﬂections as Rickert. However, there is in Weber, stronger than in Rickert, an implicit inﬂuence of Nietzsche’s vitalistic and tragic worldview.87 As is well known, Nietzsche viewed life primarily as an irrational, directionless, absurd stream in which human beings try to create some sense and order by means of reason and consciousness. It is a tragic worldview which however is, unlike Schopenhauer’s view of life and the world, not gloomy and fatalistic, but light-hearted, though at times rather cynical. There is no hope in life since history and the universe are aimlessly driven by biologically-blind impulses which embody a fate which the ancient Greeks called Moira. Weber is too rational and level-headed to participate in Nietzsche’s pathos, but stands in closer connection to Nietzsche’s worldview than Rickert does. One Nietzschean element in particular recurs in his methodological and sociological theories: human history and life in all their complexities—i.e. culture—constitute, if measured by the standards of scientiﬁc rationality, an irrational chaos of convictions, emotions, subjective experiences of meaning, subjective values and norms. It is, as if he assigns to culture the characteristics of Kant’s thing-in-itself. But he combines it with Rickert’s deﬁnition of cultural signiﬁcance in terms of particularity, or better individuality. At times, he even slips oﬀ into quite dramatic reﬂections, for example when 87 In what follows now I make use of an earlier, Dutch publication: De relativiteit van kennis en werkelijkheid. Inleiding tot de kennissociologie, (‘The Relativity of Knowledge and Reality. Introduction to the Sociology of Knowledge’), (Amsterdam: Boom Meppel, 1973), pp. 120–126.

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he writes: ‘The stream of immeasurable events rolls endlessly towards eternity. The cultural problems which move men, form themselves always anew and in diﬀerent colors. Because of that, the area remains liquid which renders “historically individual” everything that acquires for us, from that always similarly endless stream, individual sense and meaning. The interrelations between thoughts by which this “historical individual” is being contemplated and scientiﬁcally conceived, alternate. The starting points of the cultural sciences remain thereby changeable into the limitless future, as long as Chinese petrifaction of intellectual life weans humanity from posing new questions to the always equally inexhaustible life.’88 Reading these words, Rickert must undoubtedly have wrinkled his brow! The echo of Rickert’s philosophy of values resounds in Weber’s accounts of ‘culture’, ‘meaning’, ‘evaluations’, etc. Yet, his implicit worldview is far more vitalistic and even romantic. Men search for ‘objective’ meaning, for existential truth and redemption. This is, according to him, an a priori for each cultural science, namely ‘not that we roughly deem a distinct or one or the other “culture” valuable, but that we are cultural men, gifted with the ability and desire to adopt a conscious position with regard to it and to provide it with meaning.’89 Rickert can agree with this, but then follows a relativistic reﬂection which he could not have accepted. Deﬁning ‘culture’ not just as valuable, but also in the light of values as meaningful is, according to Weber, in the end a tragic enterprise, because in the

88 ‘Endlos wälzt sich der Strom des unermesslichen Geschehens der Ewigkeit entgegen. Immer neu und anders gefärbt bilden sich die Kulturprobleme, welche die Menschen bewegen, ﬂüssig bleibt damit der Umkreis dessen, was aus jenem stets gleich unendlichen Strome des Individuellen Sinn und Bedeutung für uns enthält, “historisches Individuum” wird. Es wechseln die Gedankenzusammenhänge, unter denen es betrachtet und wissenschaftlich erfasst wird. Die Ausgangspunkte der Kulturwissenschaften bleiben damit wandelbar in die grenzenlose Zukunft hinein, solange nicht chinesische Erstarrung des Geistesleben die Menschheit entwöhnt neue Fragen an das immer gleich unerschöpﬂiche Leben zu stellen.’ Ibid., p. 184. English translation by E. A. Shils, H. A. Finch: Max Weber, The Methodology of the Social Sciences, (New York: The Free Press, 1949), p. 84f. This volume, which contains only three essays from Weber’s Wissenschaftslehre, should be used with care, as its translations are not always correct. In a few instances printing errors distort the arguments, as in those instances, where ‘causal’ is printed as ‘casual’. 89 ‘nicht etwas, dass wir eine bestimmte oder überhaupt irgend eine “Kultur” wertvoll ﬁnden, sondern dass wir Kulturmenschen sind, begabt mit der Fähigkeit und dem Willen, bewusst zur Welt Stellung zu nehmen und ihr einen Sinn zu verleihen.’ Weber, ibid., p. 180.

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realm of values the eternal ‘war of the gods’ reigns—a well-nigh Wagnerian Kampf der Götter, which could only be solved by a superior, absolute value, if at all. But such an absolute value, i.e. superior God, no longer exists. (Here we hear, of course, the echo of Nietzsche’s ‘death of God’.) We saw how Rickert too formulates the logical rule that the denial of a value would not result in nothingness but in a counter-value, and how he thinks to be able to avoid relativism by positing the formal, transcendent values, like Truth, Beauty, Justice, Lust, etc. They are ahistorical and eternal but become ‘real’, ‘empirical’ and ‘pluralistic’ in judgments which apply these forms to the contents (substances) of empirical, experienced reality. There is therefore no insoluble ‘war of the gods’ in the transcendent realm of absolute and formal values. But Weber cannot operate at this abstract level and sticks in his implicit worldview to the empirical disciplines of sociology and history. The tragedy of the ‘war of the gods’ is, Weber continues, the most apparent in Western culture where due to rationalization and ‘disenchantment’ each hierarchy of values is being debated and thereby rendered implausible. There is, in other words, in Weber’s implicit worldview no room for ‘objective’ truth or ‘objective’ meaning. There is only ‘subjectively intended meaning’ in a context of ‘subjectively’ adhered to values and norms. Beyond that there is only the ‘war of the gods’ in which men participate because they are consciously interpreting and searching individuals. But this ‘culture war’ can not be solved because ‘fate and deﬁnitely not science rules over these gods and in their war.’90 Rickert would never have surrendered in this relativistic manner to Moira. But Weber goes one step further still, when he argues that man chooses from all the possible values those he deems relevant in given circumstances and he does so from an inexplicable, irrational and subjective source—i.e. the demon which holds the threads of his life together.91 Equally ambiguous and even somewhat mysterious is what he says about scientiﬁc truth. It is applicable to each truth: ‘Scientiﬁc truth is just what wants to be valid for all, who want the truth.’92 Rickert, needless to add, would

90 ‘über diesen Götter und in ihrem Kampf waltet das Schicksal, aber ganz gewiss keine “Wissenschaft”.’ Ibid., p. 604. 91 Ibid., p. 613. 92 ‘Denn wissenschaftliche Wahrheit ist nur, was für alle gelten will, die Wahrheit wollen.’ Ibid., p. 184. Italics by MW.

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see in such a ‘deﬁnition’ of truth a clear evidence of his opinion that Weber is not really a philosopher. A true philosopher would never, he would say, come up with such a voluntaristic and relativistic description of the outstanding theoretical value Truth! Yet, Weber does not capitulate in this ‘war of the gods’, as Nietzsche in his nihilism and Schopenhauer in his pessimism have done. He must have realized, among other things, that the resigned acceptance of the absurdity of life may well end up in pathetic and unheroic lamentations. A distinct part of his worldview was an almost Prussian sense of honor and dignity which he apparently inherited from his father. It was closely connected to an equally deep-seated Protestant rationality which he probably adopted from his mother.93 Both elements of Weber’s view of life and the world keep him from embracing the Nietzschean or Schopenhauerean philosophy. Referring to Schopenhauer and Nietzsche William James once remarked: ‘The sallies of the two German authors remind one, half the time, of the sick shrieking of two dying rats.’94 Weber would have agreed with James, albeit that he probably would have remarked that James underestimated Nietzsche’s humor and heroic cynicism. But Weber realizes, as James did, that religion has in principle the ability to transcend the tragic worldview, although he knows that he himself has eaten too much of the tree of knowledge, and is as a result too much of a ‘disenchanted’ agnostic, to be able to surrender to one or the other religion of salvation. He calls himself ‘religiously unmusical’ but is fascinated by the phenomenon of religion, as is testiﬁed by his voluminous studies in the sociology of religion. Thus, although he objects to relativism as a worldview, in particular in its 19th century appearance as historicism, his view of life and values was, unlike Rickert’s, deeply relativistic. It is an heroic kind of relativism which dares to face the absurdity of life, the insoluble conﬂict of values, the subjectivity of sense and meaning, yet keeps trying to draw rational lines through irrationality by the help of constructed concepts, called ideal types. These rational conceptual lines or structures create

93

See for such ‘psychoanalytic’ conclusions which, of course, ought to be used with great care, Arthur Mitzman, The Iron Cage. An Historical Interpretation of Max Weber, (New York: Alfred Knopf, 1970). Mitzman’s arguments are in fact more psychological and psychoanalytical than historical. 94 William James, The Varieties of Religious Experience, 1900, (New York: Collier Books, 1961), p. 47.

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a conceptual order which cannot compete with metaphysical or religious orders, but remain strictly analytical and framed by scientiﬁc insights and theories. But as meager as this rationality may be, if one compares it to metaphysical worldviews like Marxism, or vitalism, or existentialism, it is in principle able to avoid both cynical resignation and religious surrender. It is on purpose a minimal worldview. This minimal worldview comes closest to scientism, although it lacks the self-conﬁdent attitude of most scientists. After all, Weber believes that science and scientiﬁc concept formation constitute the appropriate forms of knowledge for such a minimal worldview. Science is unable to provide ‘objective’ meaning and can never promise to arrive at the deﬁnitive truth about ‘objective’ reality. Actually science itself is not a worldview or prophecy, but a profession. It can not tell us how to live, what to think, what to do and what to feel. It can also not tell us, as for instance Marxism does, what the good direction of history could be. Weber would not believe in Mannheim’s utopia and planning for freedom. But science can help us to master irrationality by means of analytical concepts and empirical research, creating an analytical order and a logical meaning. What is needed are not utopian visions or prophetic statements but a pragmatic vocational ethos. It sounds like Kant’s kategorischer Imperativ, combined with the Puritanical Berufsethik and Goethe’s Forderung des Tages (‘Demand of the Day’): ‘We want to draw the following lesson: that yearning and awaiting alone leads to nothing, and that we do it diﬀerently: go to work and do justice to the ‘Demand of the Day’—humanly as well as vocationally.’95 Finally, in Weber’s concept formation the category of chance or possibility plays a dominant role. Sociological phenomena are often deﬁned in terms of ‘the chance that’. Power, for example, is the chance some person or group of persons can realize his or its own will, if need be against the will of others.96 It is not improbable that he applies such a probabilism also to his philosophical thought. There

95

Ibid., p. 613. Cf. Max Weber, Wirtschaft und Gesellschaft. Grundriss der verstehenden Soziologie, (‘Economy nad Society. Outline of the Understanding Sociology’), chapter III, ‘Typen der Herrschaft’ (‘Types of Rule’), 1956, J. Winckelmann, ed., (Köln. Berlin: Kiepenheuer & Witsch, 1964), vol. I, pp. 157–222. Deﬁnition ﬁrst sentence on p. 157. 96

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is no text which can prove this, but it is quite feasible that Weber consciously or unconsciously believes or hopes that the rational, scientiﬁc order imposed on the irrationality of reality—that is the order of the artiﬁcial, constructed ideal types—approaches possibly an ‘objective’ and ‘absolute’ order and truth. Or, is it, after all, not possible that there exists an ‘elective aﬃnity’ (Wahlverwandtschaft) between this transcendental Order and Truth on the one hand and the humanly constructed, rational, analytical order and truth of science? Weber, it must be noted, does not argue in Platonic terms and consequently will not view empirical truths and orders as emanations of a metaphysical Truth and Order. In any case, he remains loyal to the philosophy of Kant, who after all viewed the categories ‘God’, ‘freedom’ and ‘immortality of the soul’ as possibilities and chances, as ideas rather than metaphysical realities. Weber is in agreement with Rickert (and Simmel) when he rejects the realism (or naturalism) of the so-called representational logic (Abbildlogik) which measures the adequacy or truth of concepts and theories by their capacity to provide a picture which resembles reality. Weber in particular emphasizes the fact that it is the business of science to understand and explain reality by means of rational concepts. Scientiﬁc rationality stands in opposition to the irrationality of reality. If the scientiﬁc concepts represented irrational realities they would be irrational which is unscientiﬁc. However, it is obvious that common-sense experience indicates that reality—the thoughts, emotions, actions and interactions, the institutions and organizations—is not totally irrational. This piece of ontology is important in order to understand the logic of Weber’s ideal types. Reality is, ontologically speaking, a mixture of rationality and irrationality, a kind of ball of wool in which the rational and irrational threads are entangled. A simple introspection can illustrate this point: our thoughts and emotions are often indissolubly entangled. It is the purpose of science to disentangle the rational and the irrational threads. Weber introduces for that purpose his well-known (and often misunderstood) idea of the Idealtypen, the ideal types, or reine Typen, the pure types, which are ‘ideal’ in the Kantian sense of ‘pure’, i.e. analytic, rationally constructed, if one wants ‘artiﬁcial’. They are, to formulate it somewhat bluntly, not pictures of reality, but conscious distortions of it. Yet, they are not the ideological or utopian distortions of Mannheim because these are normative concepts, whereas Weber’s ideal types are analytical concepts. The basic idea of which is that

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ideal types are constructed by (over)emphasizing certain dimensions of empirical reality (human interactions, institutions) and omitting from the ideal types other dimensions. This is done with the help of the (Rickertean) value-relevance which assists in deciding what is relevant and what is irrelevant. Now the crux of this methodology is that empirical reality as it is experienced in daily life is to be compared with these ideal types. By doing this one can separate in reality the rational from the irrational. The rational elements of reality will, as it were, slide into the one-sidedly rational ideal types. This is a partial representation. But the epistemologically important thing is that the irrational components of reality, now being separated from the rational ones, become rationally understandable because of their deviation from the ideal types! Ideal types are therefore methodological means towards an epistemological end, namely rational understanding. In other words, Weber’s Verstehen as the result of the comparison of ideal types and reality is neither an irrational intuition, nor a method.97 The analytical ideal types and their comparison with empirical reality are the method, Verstehen is the hoped for result which due to this comparison may emerge as a sort of Aha-Erlebnis, i.e. as the sense that one suddenly understands reality. That leads to another conclusion still. The adequacy, let alone the truth of ideal types consists of their heuristic proﬁt, not by their eventual veriﬁcation or falsiﬁcation. If he had had intimate knowledge of Weber’s theory of ideal types, Karl Popper would certainly have castigated it on this point, since he sees falsiﬁcation as the proper test for the scientiﬁc content of a theory. But the interesting thing is that he comes quite close to Weber’s theory at the end of his book on the poverty of historicism. For instance when he says: ‘For in most social situations, if not in all, there is an element of rationality. Admittedly, human beings hardly ever act quite rationally (. . .), but they act, none the less, more or less rationally; and this makes it possible to construct comparatively simple models of their actions and inter-actions, and to use these models as approximations.’98 Despite his well-known emphasis

97 Weber distinguishes ‘rational evidential Verstehen’ (‘rational evidentes Verstehen’) and ‘intuitive experiential Verstehen’ (‘einfühlend nacherlebendes Verstehen’): ‘Begriﬀ der Soziologie und des “Sinns” sozialen Handelns’, (‘Concept of Sociology and of the “Meaning” of social action’), in: Wissenschaftslehre, o.c., p. 543f. This is not the place to elaborate more extensively on Weber’s conception of Verstehen. 98 Karl R. Popper, The Poverty of Historicism, 1957, (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1969), p. 140f. The last point, Popper continues without referring to Weber, indicates that there is, despite his emphasis upon ‘the unity of method’, a diﬀerence

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upon the unity of the scientiﬁc method which does not allow for a distinction between Natural Science and Cultural Science, Popper introduces surprisingly a methodological diﬀerence which is very similar to the one Rickert introduced and Weber adopted. There are important diﬀerences between the natural and the social sciences, Popper argues, such as the diﬃculty to conduct experiments or apply quantitative methods, but they are only diﬀerences of degree rather than of kind. He then suddenly introduces an important diﬀerence, referring ‘to the possibility of adopting, in the social sciences, what may be called the method of logical or rational construction, or perhaps the “zero method”. By this I mean the method of constructing a model on the assumption of complete rationality (. . . .) on the part of all the individuals concerned, and of estimating the deviation of the actual behavior of people from the model behavior, using the latter as a kind of zero co-ordinate.’99 Popper does not mention Weber, although his formulation would be identical to that of Weber, if one substituted ‘ideal type’ for ‘zero method’. Rickert and Weber would also be happy to learn that Popper emphasizes ‘that neither the principle of methodological individualism, nor that of the zero method of constructing rational models, implies in my opinion the adoption of a psychological method. On the contrary, I believe that these principles can be combined with the view that the social sciences are comparatively independent of psychological assumptions, and that psychology can be treated, not as the basis of all social sciences, but as one social science among others.’100 And: ‘The “zero method” of constructing rational models is not a psychological but rather a logical method.’101 Popper then also comes close to the neo-Kantian position of Windelband and Rickert regarding the diﬀerence between generalizing sciences and individualizing history, when he writes: “I wish to defend the view, so often attacked as old-fashioned by historicists, that history is characterized by its interests in actual, singular, or speciﬁc events, rather than in laws or generalizations. (. . . .) The situation is simply this: while the theoretical sciences (what are meant are sociology, economic theory, political theory as distinct from social, economic and political history, ACZ) are mainly interested in ﬁnding and testing universal laws, the historical sciences take all kinds of universal laws for granted and are mainly interested in ﬁnding and testing singular statements.’102 Like Rickert, but unlike Weber, Popper identiﬁes sociology and

between the natural and the social sciences. Popper apparently had read Weber’s Wissenschaftslehre, since he mentions the book in a footnote on p. 145. It is therefore the more remarkable that he does not refer to Weber’s theory of the idealtypes at all. 99 Ibid., p. 141. 100 Ibid., p. 142. 101 Ibid., p. 158. See for Popper’s anti-psychologism also his The Open Society and Its Enemies, 2 vols., 1945, (New York: Harper Torchbooks, 1966), vol. 2, chapter 14, ‘The Autonomy of Sociology’, pp. 89–99. 102 Ibid., p. 143f. Italics by KP. For a comparison of Popper, Rickert and Weber

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economics with ahistorical Natural Science, and fails to see that these and other social sciences can also be conducted historically as Cultural Sciences. Cultural sociology is not social history, nor is cultural (institutional) economics economic history.

Ideal types are, of course, abstract, ahistorical generalizations and therefore in the terms of Rickert’s continuum Natural-Scientiﬁc concepts. But the interesting things is that according to Weber, the ideal typical concept formation enables the sociologist, or economist, or historian to separate not only the rational from the irrational, but also in socio-economic reality the general from the individual! To phrase it in a somewhat blunt manner, ideal types enable the social scientist to focus on the empirical and historical Cultural-Scientiﬁc dimensions of reality by means of artiﬁcial and ahistorical NaturalScientiﬁc concepts. In addition Weber thus integrates what remains separate in Rickert’s (and Simmel’s) methodology, namely meaningful understanding (sinnhaftes Verstehen) and causal explanation (kausales Erklären). Weber, for example, deﬁnes sociology as follows: ‘Sociology (. . .) should mean: a science which wants to understand social action interpretatively and thereby explain it causally in its course and workings.’103 All this demonstrates that Weber’s verstehende sociology does full justice to the Rickertean idea of the gliding scale or continuum between the two (ideal typical) poles of Natural Science and Cultural Science, because it moves back and forth on the continuum, sometimes closer to the Natural Scientiﬁc end of the continuum, as in the chapters of Wirtschaft und Gesellschaft, then closer to the Cultural Scientiﬁc pole, as in the essays on the sociology of religion, sometimes integrating the two as in his deﬁnition of sociology as an heuristically understanding and causally explaining discipline. This is in

see Malachi Haim Hacohen, Karl Popper. The Formative Years 1902–1945, 2000, (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2002), pp. 471–476. 103 Max Weber, o.c., p. 542. He continues this deﬁnition by deﬁning action as human behavior which carries a subjectively intended meaning. It is social action when it is related to the behavior of others. One may draw the conclusion that Weber views verstehende sociology as ‘Symbolic Interactionism’. There are indeed similarities between Weber and George-Herbert Mead. Cf. my De theorie van het Symbolisch Interactionisme, o.c., pp. 172–219. It is in this context also interesting to pay attention to the ‘humanistic coeﬃcient’ of Florian Znaniecki: On Humanistic Sociology. Selected Papers, edited by R. Bierstedt, (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1969), pp. 135–171. Rickert’s value-relevance also plays a dominant role in Znaniecki’s theorem of the ‘humanistic coeﬃcient’. See also my De theorie van het symbolisch interactionisme, o.c., pp. 96–98.

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agreement with Rickert who in his book on the demarcation of ahistorical Natural Science and historical Cultural Science writes: ‘Individualizing or historical social science is certainly also possible as generalizing or natural-scientiﬁc social science.’104 But he adds, as we have seen before, that a Natural-Scientiﬁc history (historical science) is impossible, which we criticized, since the continuum would logically leave room for such a history, as paradoxical as a ahistorical history may be. We mentioned cliometrics as an example of such a Natural-Scientiﬁc historical endeavor. Although Rickert mentioned Weber’s sociology several times as an example of a generalizing, natural-scientiﬁc discipline, he suddenly retreats from that position in a footnote and acknowledges the double logical nature of Weber’s approach. He sees Weber’s essays on the sociology of religion as examples of an individualizing, historical sociology which diﬀer logically from the generalizing, ahistorical chapters in Wirtschaft und Gesellschaft: The economy and the societal institutions and powers are presented (in ‘Economy and Society’, ACZ) on purpose not historically but in a generalizing manner. (. . . .) The same scholar thus presents scientiﬁcally the same material in logically diﬀerent ways. In that respect Max Weber’s sociological work demonstrates in its totality the conceivably best conﬁrmation of our methodology. Not only Weber’s methodological investigations which consciously link up with my book (i.e. die Grenzen, ACZ), but also the factual treatment of societal life demonstrates, why only along the road which we have followed, an insight into the logical structure of the really existing empirical sciences can be acquired. If one starts from factual distinctions in the material, or if one sticks to the distinction of ‘nature’ and ‘mind’, one will never come to terms with the logical problems of the social sciences.105

104

‘Individualisierende oder historische Gesellschaftswissenschaft ist um nichts weniger möglich wie generalisierende oder naturwissenschaftliche.’ Die Grenzen der naturwissenschaftlichen Begriﬀsbildung, o.c., p. 263. 105 ‘Die Wirtschaft und die gesellschaftlichen Ordnungen und Mächte werden darin, der Absicht nach, nicht geschichtlich, sondern generalisierend dargestellt. (. . . .) Derselbe Forscher bringt also denselben Stoﬀ in logisch verschiedener Weise zur wissenschaftlichen Darstellung. Insofern bildet das soziologische Werk Max Webers in seiner Gesamtheit die denkbar beste Bestätigung für unsere Wissenschaftslehre. Nicht allein die methodologischen Untersuchungen Webers, die sich bewusst an mein Buch anschliessen, sondern auch seine sachliche Behandlung des Gesellschaftslebens zeigt, warum allein auf dem von uns eingeschlagenen Wege ein Einblick in die logische Struktur der wirklich vorhandenen empirischen Wissenschaften zu gewinnen ist. Geht man von sachlichen Unterschieden im Material aus, oder bleibt man gar bei “Natur” und “Geist” stehen, so bekommt man die logischen Probleme

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Once more, the conclusion is clearly that there is no logical reason for a conﬂict of methods, a Methodenstreit in which natural sciences are played oﬀ against cultural sciences, and vice versa. There is indeed a unity of sciences, albeit in a logically dualistic manner. Rickert’s continuum presents a logical space in which scientists, social scientists in the ﬁrst place, can operate in an open and ﬂexible manner, sometimes closer to the Natural Scientiﬁc pole, at other times closer to the Cultural Scientiﬁc end of the continuum, depending on the problem at hand that needs investigation, interpretation and explanation. Max Weber’s substantive sociology was a perfect example of this logical and methodological ﬂexibility.

der Gesellschaftswissenschaft überhaupt nicht zu Gesicht.’ Ibid., p. 263. See also ibid., p. 267.

CONCLUSION Weber once distinguished two types of intellectuals: Stoﬀhuber and Sinnhuber, i.e. the collector of material data and the collector of meaning.1 The data collector is like an intellectual bookkeeper who collects and organizes data mindlessly, the meaning collector searches restlessly for understandable meaning and signiﬁcance. Rickert, remaining even in this respect loyal to his heterological habitude, is in a sense indeed a Stoﬀhuber, the data being primarily theoretical concepts, but one misreads and misinterprets his work, if one fails to discover that he certainly was also, and in my view predominantly, a Sinnhuber! He is indeed an at times irritating collector of concepts, in particular when he tries to catch intellectually the world-in-toto by means of a philosophical system built up diligently and consistently by logical, abstract, formal, and thus empty categories. His systematic philosophy ending in the metaphysics of an allegedly ‘full-ﬁlled totality’ does not carry the pretensions of the Hegelian grandiloquent philosophy which claimed to represent the end of history, and the fulﬁllment of the good direction of it. Rickert’s metaphysical end station is not much more than a postulate, a possibility, consisting of symbols, metaphors, or even allegories, not of solidly scientiﬁc concepts. It is actually just a philosophical dream with the features of a surrealistic painting. However, despite his emphasis upon the openness and ﬂexibility of his system, it still carries all the characteristics of a product of material collecting. But he is at the same time a Sinnhuber, and a virtuoso at that. He is permanently and restlessly in search of meaningful and signiﬁcant concepts which help us to grasp cognitively and to understand emotionally the world we live in. In fact he is driven by what he once called, as we have seen in the last chapter, the Socratic Logosfreudigkeit, the joy of rational thinking, the sheer pleasure of forging meaningful and signiﬁcant theories. And he does so in a playful, heterological manner. Paul Hazard once wrote about Pierre Bayle (1647–1706), ‘the play of pro and con was for him a supreme pleasure.’2 It takes 1 2

Weber, Wissenschaftslehre, o.c., p. 214. ‘Le jeu du pour et du contre était pour lui le suprême plaisir.’ Paul Hazard,

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a while, it is my experience, but sooner or later one begins to sense the same pleasure in Rickert’s often playful conceptualizations. Copernicus, it is asserted, introduced two criteria for the appraising of a scientiﬁc theory, and it is only the combination of these two, he claimed, which constituted the so-called ‘Copernican revolution’, which put an end to the medieval faith in tradition and dogmatic scholasticism: ﬁrst of all, theories should conform to empirical observations, and second, they should be “pleasing to the mind”, i.e. elegantly phrased.3 It has been my experience that, after one has become familiar with Rickert’s style of thinking and writing, one discovers his Logosfreudigkeit. Indeed, his theories which he keeps in touch with empirical experiences, i.e. with ‘reality’, are indeed pleasing to the mind. But Rickert would dismiss such appraisals as ‘atheoretical’, more pertaining to aesthetic than to scientiﬁc norms. His philosophical relevance must transcend the level of aesthetics. We must now try to come to an appraisal of his work which naturally consists of a set of value-judgments. In other words, in accordance with his philosophy we must now try to perform a meaning-bestowing act in which we confront Rickert’s concept formation, methodology and philosophy of values, with values. The two basic values, as far as the sciences and philosophy are concerned, are ‘reality’ and ‘truth’. Can we attribute reality and truth to Rickert’s philosophy? As to reality, since his philosophy is not meant to be a specialized, empirical science, it does not make sense to apply an empiricist conception of reality to his brand of philosophy. The question is rather how realistic, in the sense of understandable within the context of our present socio-cultural situation, his philosophy really is. Or phrased negatively as a question: is his neo-Kantian style and content of thinking and writing not hopelessly old-fashioned and outof-date? Should we not bury Rickert’s books and articles in the cellars of the history of philosophy, or, store them in the footnotes of the history of ideas? In fact, that has happened since his death, but the question is, whether that has been correct, legitimate and fair.4

La crise de la conscience européenne 1680–1715, (‘The Crisis of European Consciousness 1680–1715’), (Paris: Librairie Arthème Fayard, 1961), p. 103. 3 Cf. Jerzy Neyman, ed. Theories “More Pleasing to the Mind”, (Cambridge, Massachusetts, London, UK: The MIT Press, 1974), p. 9. 4 Raymond Aron is a telling example. After a rather sympathetic summary of

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As to the judgment that neo-Kantianism in general, and Rickert’s epistemology, philosophy of values and methodology in particular are old-fashioned and out-of-date, one should ask, if a discipline like philosophy should aspire to be up-to-date and fashionable. It is a sociological fact that, certainly in this day and age, fashions come and go in a rapid succession, not only in the world of consumer goods, but also in the cultural world of the arts, literature and music, and in the world of ideas, views and convictions as well. Weber always stressed the sociological fact that ideas and concepts, even his non-empirical, ahistorical and constructed ideal types, will change in accordance with the transformations of society and culture.5 Rickert has, as far as I know, not responded to this observation, but would certainly have emphasized that empirical (natural and cultural) sciences, necessarily caught in a naïve sort of empiricism, are indeed susceptible to such permanent changes. And indeed, they should always be up-to-date. However, he would add, although philosophy is a scientiﬁc (i.e. logically correct and empirically oriented) discipline, it is and ought to be diﬀerent from the (natural and cultural) sciences in one respect: it should argue relentlessly in terms of transcendental, a priori (non-empirical) categories and then impose its systematic view on reality, including the various sciences. This transcendental approach necessitates a ruthless transcending of fashions and dominant currents of thought. The human value-judgments, incorporated in goods like scientiﬁc statements and scores of sociocultural institutions, are indeed relative, because bound to time and (socio-cultural) space. They are subjected to changes and transformations. But the values, such as beauty, truth, justice, the ethical Rickert’s philosophy of history he sentences him to intellectual death: ‘his thought is dead, much more so than that of Dilthey or even Simmel. After having been the object of a long quarrel, his doctrine (sic! ACZ) is no longer discussed, and begins to be ignored.’ (‘sa pensée est morte, bien plus que celle de Dilthey ou même de Simmel. Après avoir été l’objet d’une longue querelle, sa doctrine n’est plus discutée, elle commence à être ignorée.’) Raymond Aron, La philosophie critique de l’histoire. Essai sur une théorie allemande de l’histoire, (‘The Critical Philosophy of History. Essay on a German Theory of History’), (Paris: Librairie philosophique, J. Vrin, 1969), p. 139. The book discusses Dilthey, Rickert, Simmel and Weber. 5 Cf. Weber, Gesammelte Aufsätze zur Wissenschaftslehre, o.c., p. 207, where he argues ‘that in the sciences of human culture the formation of concepts depends on the position of the problems, and that the latter is changeable with the content of culture.’ (‘dass in den Wissenschaften von der menschlichen Kultur die Bildung der Begriﬀe von der Stellung der Probleme abhängt, und dass diese letztere wandelbar ist mit dem Inhalt der Kultur.’)

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good (and their counterparts) are formal, abstract and absolute. They constitute the object, the Gegenstand, of knowledge and the proper aim of philosophical concept formation. If the verdict is that this is old-fashioned, so be it. Yet, the criterion should rather be, if it is realistic to deﬁne philosophy as a science which transcends the empirical (natural and cultural) sciences, and places them in a systematic conceptual order. This answers another critical question. Rickert, we have seen in the foregoing chapters, defends the statement that philosophy should be systematic. In the former century it has become fashionable to deny the possibility and even the need of a philosophical discipline which aims at an overarching, theoretical system. Particularly vitalism (Philosophie des Lebens) in all its variations has claimed that systems render thoughts and theories abstract and ‘lifeless’. The real reality, according to this view, is life, vitality—whatever that may be. This position is rather questionable, because it would be strange to call for a ‘lively’ mathematics or a ‘vitally relevant’ astrophysics, chemistry, or physics of particles. But the moment we focus on the socio-cultural sciences the call for vitalistic realism arises loudly and clearly. As we have seen in the second chapter, Rickert dismisses this rather irrational approach as being scientiﬁcally worthless. It may satisfy emotions, but does not enlighten our minds and contribute to our knowledge and understanding of socio-cultural reality. Vitalism, in other words, ‘feels realistic’ and may indeed be aesthetically relevant and gratifying, but in terms of a structured knowledge and rational understanding of reality, it is rather counterproductive and thus not at all ’realistic’. As to the argument that philosophy cannot and should not even try to be systematic, this has become a fashionable cliché with a doubtful content. In the former century we have witnessed the ‘linguistic turn’ in philosophy, which has admittedly brought an impressive innovation in the philosophical discipline. However, this Wittgensteinean innovation, which has been the main cause of the emergence and distribution of analytic philosophy, has by now grown rather stale and even dogmatic, which is, incidentally, the ultimate fate of most socio-cultural and intellectual innovations. Certainly in the Anglo-Saxon world analytic philosophy has deteriorated into a dominant paradigm which carries the features of a well-nigh medieval scholasticism, although the latter was highly systematic, whereas most analytic philosophers abhor the idea of a philosophical system.

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Wittgenstein was still the virtuoso of the condensed, aphoristic statements. But his followers generally lacked his virtuosity and often excelled in seemingly profound, yet in reality often superﬁcial observations. Nevertheless, analytic philosophy often determines paradigmatically, what is philosophically acceptable and sound, thus fashionable, and what is not. One thing in particular is characteristic of this philosophical current, namely its anti-systematic animus. The production consists predominantly of articles and, though hesitantly, of essays, not of systematic treatises. Meanwhile, however, many former adherents of analytic philosophy have turned away from its scholastic rationalism and embraced one or the other European philosophical trend, such as French deconstructionism, phenomenology, or the neo-vitalism of Heidegger’s ontology. Richard Rorty is a telling example. His often brilliantly formulated observations, made public in essays on, among others, Nietzsche, Heidegger, Wittgenstein, Derrida, Foucault and writers like Kundera and Dickens, are not meant any longer to enlighten our minds, but to gratify aesthetically our moods.6 In any case, there is now a bewildering array of currents and fashions which have one thing in common: the anti-systematic animus based on concept formations which are more aesthetic than cognitive, more ontological (if not metaphysical) than epistemological. It is often labeled loosely and therefore inadequately as ‘post-modernism’. This is actually a label for diﬀeremt currents of thought which have one thing in common: the aspiration to render philosophy ‘lively’, emotionally gratifying. In view of these currents of thought outside analytic philosophy, Rickert’s treatise on vitalism is still very much up-to-date. Nietzsche is once more the towering model-philosopher for many today. Rickert and certainly Weber admired this great thinker who excelled above all in intellectually sharp and often witty aphorisms. But Rickert in particular believes that philosophy should be more than an rhapsodic accumulation of aphorisms. It should try to formulate a systematic view of reality. As we have seen, he ﬁnds it the task of the (natural and cultural) sciences to analyze and scrutinize

6 Cf. Richard Rorty, Essays on Heidegger and Others. Philosophical Papers, (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1991). For his aesthetic approach in which irony plays a dominant role and literature is deemed more valuable than (traditional) philosophy: Contingency, irony, and solidarity, (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1989).

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specialized portions of reality, whereas philosophy should aim at a systematic knowledge of reality-in-toto. This cannot be realized by merely adding up rhapsodically all the compartmentalized philosophies and methodologies of the diﬀerent sciences. In the former century most philosophers abandoned this systematic task and almost slavishly followed the scientiﬁc compartmentalization of reality by the diﬀerent scientiﬁc disciplines. In their view philosophy is only possible as an accumulation of the methodologies of the diﬀerent scientiﬁc specializations: philosophy of (natural) science, philosophy of law, philosophy of art, philosophy of religion, philosophy of history, socio-economic philosophy, etc. Such philosophical specialisms are, of course, legitimate, useful and thus necessary, but the question still remains, what it is that justiﬁes their categorization as ‘philosophy’. What is the speciﬁc philosophical nature of all these specialized philosophies? Or, in logical terms, what is the generic concept of all these individual specimens? What is ‘general philosophy’? This question begs for a systematic answer. Is such an answer old-fashioned and out-of-date, or is it in view of the current, disintegrated position of philosophy still adequate and necessary? To ask the question is to answer it. As we have seen, Rickert wants to keep metaphysics out of his epistemology, ontology and philosophy of values. He does so up to the point where he ﬁnalizes his system by adding the Fourth Realm which is dominated by the concept of ‘full-ﬁllment’. As we remember, he distinguishes within reality-in-toto three correlated domains: the First Realm of empirical sense-data, the Second Realm of nonempirical (non-sensual) values, and the Third Realm of judgments which impose the (formal) values on the (material) sense-data in terms of the heterological concepts ethically good/evil, aesthetically beautiful/ugly, erotically lustful/painful, and scientiﬁcally real/unreal, true/false. But, as we have seen, this does not yet conclude his system since it still does not present a unitary vision of total reality. He adds a Fourth Realm which overarches, as it were, the mentioned three domains in terms of a metaphysical view of human life (Lebensanschauung). This domain, however, is not just unreal like the values are, but supra-real, i.e. metaphysical. It cannot be formulated by means of theoretical (scientiﬁc) concepts, since these pertain to empirical reality. This metaphysical domain can only be indicated, or surmised, by means of symbols, metaphors, or allegories, and its ‘theory’ is more of a tale of possibilities than a scientiﬁc theory of

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facts. Rickert sees it indeed as a virtual reality that has sur-real features. This surreal reality can only be thought as a postulate, or maybe even only be dreamed as a dream. It is, of course, hard to fathom, if one sticks to the empiricism which is natural and legitimate in the empirical (natural and cultural) sciences. But if one searches for a systematic philosophy that transcends the specialized compartmentalization of reality, it stands to reason, Rickert believes, to complete the system by such a virtual and surreal Fourth Realm. Can Rickert’s philosophy also be rendered meaningful by attributing the formal value of truth to it? Rickert, as we have seen, ties the value of truth to that of reality. A statement about reality is true, if it demonstrably pertains to reality—i.e. the reality of the experienced and perceived sense-data. This is, of course, a distinctly positivistic position. A statement about an allegedly existing unicorn is not true, because no human being has ever ‘experienced’ (seen, heared, smelled, touched) a unicorn. It simply is not a real sensedatum and thus is the statement about the existence of the unicorn false. This identiﬁcation of ‘reality’ and ‘truth’ poses a considerable problem, because it is correct in the case of theoretical (scientiﬁc) statements, but cannot be applied to atheoretical (non-scientiﬁc) statements, such as the statements of mythology or the doctrines of theology. In medieval legends and myths the unicorn did ‘exist’, and it did function in the medieval mythological view of the world. We may trust that those who narrated the unicorn myths, knew perfectly well that this mythological animal did not really exist, but it occupied a functional, heuristic position in the contemporary mythological view of the world. Or, to give another example, Socrates and Plato knew, of course, that Poseidon, god of the seas, did not really, in the ﬂesh, live and roam around in the surrounding seas. Poseidon was a mythological symbol, not an empirical fact. We encounter here Frege’s previously discussed distinction between meaning (Sinn) and signiﬁcance (Bedeutung). The medieval unicorn or the Greek god Poseidon were meaningful, but scientiﬁcally speaking insigniﬁcant. There is, in other words, a theoretical truth which ties the idea of truth to that of reality and renders statements about reality signiﬁcant. However, there is also an atheoretical truth as in the case of mythological or theological statements. The atheoretical truth is not signiﬁcant but it is meaningful. Theoretical truth can be proven or disproved empirically, and is a matter of rational knowledge. A-theoretical truth, on the other hand, is a matter of belief and not of rational knowledge.

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Genesis 1 which tells the story of creation, is scientiﬁcally insigniﬁcant but to the believing Jew and Christian it is highly meaningful. It tells the story of Yahweh’s dealings with history, man and the world. Darwin’s evolution theory, on the other hand, is signiﬁcant and scientiﬁcally true, but it is in the metaphysical terms of a view of history and the world meaningless. This then poses a problem to Rickert’s residual metaphysics of a virtual, ‘full-ﬁlled’ sur-reality. It cannot be true in the sense of signiﬁcance (Bedeutung). It can only be true in the sense of meaning (Sinn). But that conclusion leads necessarily to the next conclusion, namely that Rickert’s Fourth Realm as a philosophically insigniﬁcant surreality cannot occupy any place whatsoever in a philosophical system that claims to be theoretical and scientiﬁc. The Fourth Realm is a balloon which is too fully ﬁlled and must explode in the face of its author and of its readers. Yet, another, more graceful conclusion is also possible: by the conceptual formation of the Fourth Realm, Rickert’s philosophy changes rather radically from a theoretical (scientiﬁc) into an a-theoretical system, comparable to religion, literature and the arts. This ‘full-ﬁlled’, metaphysical reality reminds the religious reader of the phantasmagoric world of the Apocalypse in the New Testament, a world ﬁlled with symbolical, metaphorical and allegorical meaning. Still, theoretically (scientiﬁcally) it is a totally insigniﬁcant world. The more aesthetically inclined reader of Rickert’s metaphysical sur-reality will be reminded of surrealism, more speciﬁcally of the magical, fascinating paintings of Giorgio de Chirico, Salvador Dalí or Yves Tanguy. They are, so to say, loaded with symbols and allegories and present a phantasmagoric reality. However, strictly logically argued, this metaphysical turn to a ‘full-ﬁlled’ surreality at the conclusion of Rickert’s philosophical system is an inadmissible metabasis eis allo genos. Inadmissible, but not the less fascinating. Now, is there still any solid reason for a book like the present which makes an attempt to re-introduce as completely as possible Rickert’s transcendental philosophy, logic and methodology? To my mind there is, otherwise I would, of course, not have travailed for at least two decades in order to begin to understand what neoKantianism in general and Rickert’s thinking and writing in particular are all about. Why should we not leave this philosopher in the footnotes of the history of philosophy, why should we try to bring him back into the center of attention where he once, around the turn of the nineteenth and twentieth century, has been?

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There are several reasons for a renewed interest in Rickert’s brand of neo-Kantianism. The most important one is, in my mind, the ongoing attempt of Rickert to bridge the old and never really solved antitheses of philosophy without neutralizing them in an Hegelian, metaphysical synthesis—rationality versus irrationality, subjective concepts versus objective facts, non-empirical values versus empirical objects, culture versus nature, cultural science versus natural science, liberty versus causality, etc. He does not solve the tensions of these dilemmas by means of the dialectical method but tries to bridge them conceptually while maintaining their respective autonomies. He thereby rejects the rationalism of what he called ‘intellectualism’ which is an attempt to impose conceptual schemes on a reality which is in and of itself non-rational and often very irrational. Intellectualism usually ends up in metaphysics, as in the case of ‘scientism’ which is the normative belief that the rationality of (natural) science should and in the end does pervade all of reality, including our minds and actions. If there are realities which do not ﬁt this belief, as is the case of values and meanings, they must be discarded as scientiﬁcally irrelevant. However, Rickert, as we have seen in the second chapter, opposes vehemently also the irrationalism of the so-called ‘vitalists’ who deﬁne not reason (Vernunft) but life (Leben) as the leading concept of an encompassing worldview which normatively evaluates everything—human minds and actions, culture and even nature— in vitalistic terms. The problem with intellectualism is, to summarize and paraphrase Rickert’s position, its abstractness, its lack of intuitive understanding of the non-rational and irrational dimensions of reality. It is a basic misunderstanding of Kant and the neo-Kantians, if their fundamental thesis that the thing-in-itself (das Ding-an-sich), or, in Rickertean terms, the heterogeneous continuum, cannot be known, is declared to represent an hypertrophically rationalistic view of human reason (Vernunft). This autonomously (’objectively’) existing reality is experienced by means of the sense-organs in a non-rational and often irrational manner. And it is these non-rational or irrational sense-data which are the content being put into a rational shape by the a priori categories. Knowledge is not, as the intellectualists have it, a one-sidedly rational aﬀair of the Verstand and the Vernunft, but an intricate interplay of Verstand, Vernunft and Anschauung. After all, Kant claimed that it needs Einbildungskraft, imaginative power, to acquire rational knowledge of an in itself irrational reality.

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Rickert was worried in particular by the onslaught of the ‘irrationalists’ in philosophy, the ‘vitalists’ who following Kierkegaard and Nietzsche put Life on a metaphysical pedestal, or declared Being or Dasein as the prima causa of all that exists. Today he would certainly point at the intellectualism of analytic philosophy which elevated Language to a metaphysical level, where philosophers turn around and around in rather dogmatic and highly abstract circles. A closely related fashion, he certainly would add, is French deconstructionism which has lifted the Text to a well-nigh metaphysical status, from where it absorbs meanings, values, and the human subject into intellectual obscurantism. And there are, of course, also the structuralists which have proclaimed Structure as the deﬁnitive phenomenon absorbing and neutralizing in particular the changes and transformations of history and human culture. Life, Being, Language, Text, Structure—they embodied the fashions of philosophical thought in the twentieth century. But as is the fate of fashions, they come, they rule, they grow stale and they just fade away, leaving their true believers in confusion, despair, or ﬁts of ironic laughter. The most sensible reaction may be to bury oneself intellectually in one of the philosophical specializations, and to forget the original task of philosophy, formulated in Ancient Greece, namely to try to understand reality, i.e. the world as it is experienced by us human beings. It may be sensible, but it hardly testiﬁes to intellectual courage. It is also rather despondent, since it lacks what Rickert calls Logosfreudigkeit, the joy of rational thinking and concept formation. Most of such philosophical specialists are Stoﬀhuber, intellectual bookkeepers who may well be virtuoso’s in their craft, yet totally miss the features of the Sinnhuber, the philosopher who searches for meaningful knowledge of the world we live and work in. Maybe the most attractive element of Rickert’s philosophical endeavors is the heterological interplay within his mind and mood of the Stoﬀhuber and the Sinnhuber. Rickert’s philosophy has not been and will never become the core of a fashionable school of thought. He will not emotionally warm the moods of young people, and it needs hard work and concentration to catch his thoughts, concepts and theories cognitively. But it is my experience that a confrontation with Rickert does in the end enlighten the mind. He even warms one’s mood because of his Logosfreudigkeit. His joy of concentrated and consequent thinking, his pleasure in forging meaningful concepts and theories, has a

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catching impact on the one who seriously sets out to read and understand him. However, there remains one great fault in Rickert’s philosophical system. It is in a sense a magniﬁcently planned building with a solid, epistemological foundation and maybe a groundﬂoor and a ﬁrst ﬂoor, consisting of the formal values and the meaning bestowing acts. But after the completion of the ﬁrst volume of his General Philosophy, he got stuck. In the planned second and third volume he wanted to complete the system with a grand cultural philosophy. His death in 1936 prevented him from executing this plan. But reading the basic ideas which he published in a summarizing manner at the end of his life, it is questionable whether we miss much by this intellectual abortion. As we have seen before, at the end of his life Rickert’s philosophical thought drifted oﬀ in a rancunous and reactionary direction which was intensiﬁed upon the fateful events in Germany after 1933. This stands in sharp contrast to the transition from neoKantian transcendentalism to an interdisciplinary cultural philosophy by Ernst Cassirer who, as we have seen in the Introduction, designed an indeed grand and impressive cultural philosophy in his justly famous philosophy of symbolic forms and his essays on man and on the state. Cassirer’s twenty ﬁve volumes of collected works present a towering building of epistemological, cultural philosophical and even political thoughts and theories. Rickert’s books and articles which in the coming years will be re-published in ﬁfteen volumes by the Rickert Research Intstitute at the University of Duesseldorf, present an equally impressive, yet unﬁnished intellectual construction. However, the conclusion must be that in all probability Rickert has been unable to ﬁnish his philosophical system in an acceptable manner due to the reactionary and rancorous mood that sadly overshadowed his brilliant mind at the end of his life. In which direction should Rickert’s unﬁnished system have been completed? It should have been, I think, a combination of constructivism and institutionalism. In neo-Kantian philosophy in general and Rickert’s transcendental philosophy in particular there is the basic idea at work that the world we live in is not a reality-in-and-of-itself which reveals itself to us and next directs and controls our cognitive and active interventions. This reality is, on the contrary, in a sense made by us, constructed by our structured sensations and perceptions, by our formal concepts, and through them by our value-oriented

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and value-directed judgments. Moreover, these constructions are social and meaningful events, symbolic interactions which occur in a context of traditional, historical institutions, which, as we have seen, were labeled ‘cultural goods’ by Rickert. It is in this direction of institutional constructivism that Rickert’s philosophical system should have been completed—a completion, by the way, which in the end would resemble Cassirer’s system. This completion of transcendentalist philosophy in an interdisciplinary ontology has been initiated in and outside philosophy already, albeit without any reference to and knowledge of Rickert’s transcendental philosophy. In the sociology of knowledge, for example, the treatise The Social Construction of Reality (1966) by Peter L. Berger and Thomas Luckmann presents a systematic ontology of the world we live in. It was inspired by theorists like Emile Durkheim, Max Weber, Georg Simmel, George Herbert Mead and in particular Alfred Schutz.7 The pivotal concept in this essay is that of institutions which should not be interpreted in terms of ‘organizations’. An institution is a traditional, historical Sinngebilde (Rickert, Weber), a meaningful conﬁguration within which human beings interact in a meaningful manner, conducted by values and norms.8 It is but a small step to elaborate this trend of institutionalist and constructivist ontology into a more general and critical cultural philosophy which I have tried to do in my The Abstract Society (1970) and On Clichés (1979).9 In the frame of reference of analytic philosophy such a constructivist and institutionalist approach was elaborated by John R. Searle in his treatise The Construction of Social Reality (1995). Although he defends a rather traditional brand of realism and thus defends the correpondence theory of truth, he does argue in a Kantian vein, when he describes the world we live in as a social world which is constructed by interacting men within institutional contexts. As I argued before, Searle is mistaken when he claims in the introduction

7 Peter L. Berger, Thomas Luckmann, The Social Construction of Reality. A Treatise in the Sociology of Knowledge, (New York: Doubleday, 1966). 8 I elaborated these ideas in greater detail in my The Institutional Imperative. The Interface of Institutions and Networks, (Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2000). 9 Anton C. Zijderveld, The Abstract Society. A Cultural Analysis of Our Time, (New York: Doubleday, 1970; Harmondsworth, Middleses: Penguin Books, 1972); On Clichés. The Supersedure of Meaning by Function, (London, Boston: Routledge & kegan Paul, 1979). For a brief methodological explanation see: ‘Appendix’, ibid., pp. 106–113.

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of his book that ‘the great philosopher-sociologists of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries—one thinks especially of Weber, Simmel, and Durkheim—(. . .) lacked an adequate theory of speech acts, of performances, of intentionality, of collective intentionality, or rulegoverned behavior, etc.’10 All of these issues are at the heart of the theories of not just the three mentioned masters of sociological thought, but have been discussed broadly and intensively also by such ‘philosopher-sociologists’ as George Herbert Mead, Arnold Gehlen, Helmuth Plessner, e.t.q. It is possible, as I tried to demonstrate in my The Institutional Imperative (2000) to destill an adequate and coherent institutional and constructivist theory from these diﬀerent philosophical and sociological theories. Yet, the basic ideas of Searle’s treatise demonstrate in my view the still relevant dimensions of neo-Kantian ontology and epistemology to which Rickert has contributed a great deal. Finally, there is nowadays a strong resistance against the sincere study of ‘dead philosophers’. It is part of the contemporary vitalist prejudice that we should focus our attention on the lively here-andnow and on the immediate gratiﬁcation of our metaphysical yearnings.11 It is often believed also that progress of our knowledge can only be acquired through the specialized approach of a compartmentalized reality. I have always believed in the importance of the history of ideas. Particularly, the study of the great masters of philosophy and the socio-cultural sciences are intellectually edifying and gratifying. Yet, the sincere and intensive study of their texts should, of course, not end up in scholastic and doctrinarian exegeses of their texts. It does therefore make sense to remind one another of two quotes. The ﬁrst one is derived from Latin and has meanwhile acquired the status of a time-honored cliché: ‘Pigmies placed on the shoulders of giants see more than the giants themselves.’12 Compared

10 John R. Searle, The Construction of Social Reality, (New York: The Free Press, 1995), p. XII. 11 I have once called this our ‘staccato culture’, i.e. a culture which lacks an ongoing legato, and is caught in compartmentalizations, driven predominantly by emotions, moods, senses. Anton C. Zijderveld, Staccato cultuur, ﬂexibele maatschappij en verzorgende staat, (‘Staccato Culture, Flexible Society and Caring State’), (Utrecht: Lemma, 1991). 12 ‘Pigmei Gigantum humeris impositi plusquam ipsi Gigantes vident.’ Robert K. Merton, On the Shoulders of Giants. A Shandean Postscript, (New York: A Harbinger Book; Harcourt, Brace & World, 1965), p. 3.

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to the profound thinkers of the neo-Kantian schools, we may well be philosophical pygmies today. Yet, standing on their shoulders, we are able to see more and farther than they did. It makes sense to read and study their works intensively, yet we should not remain stuck in the exegesis of their writings but rather use them in order to look ahead. That after all is the essence of progress. This was phrased nicely by the second quote which allegedly stems from Guiseppe Verdi: ‘Back to the old masters and that will be progress!’13 Despite his faults and weaknesses, if read and studied carefully Rickert was and remains one of those philosophical masters to whom we should return in order to progress.

13 ‘Torniamo all’antiche e serà un progresso.’ I found this quote in a brochure about a contemporary Dutch composer: Emile Wennekes, Tristan Keuris, (Amsterdam: Donemus, 1995), p. 2.

INDEX OF NAMES Adorno, Theodor W. 8, 19,197, 228, 321 Angelelli, Ignazio 97 Anscombe, G. E. M. 19 Apollinaire, Guillaume 50f Arendt, Hannah 195 Aristotle, 88, 252 Aron, Raymond 348f Ayer, A. J. 92f, 135, 150 Baer, Karl E. von, 232 Bacon, Francis 221 Barnard, F. M. 224 Barnes, Harry 254 Barth, Karl 186 Bast, Rainer A. 10, 166, 198 Bauch, Bruno 8, 51 Bayle, Pierre 347 Becher, Erich 227f, 322 Bendix, Reinhard 302 Benjamin, Walter 8 Benn, Gottfried 45, 72, 85 Berg, J. H. van den 292 Berger, Peter L. 196, 235, 276, 358 Bergson, Henri 13, 15f, 36, 45, 49, 54, 65, 68f, 71, 79, 225, 300 Berkeley,George 88, 90f, 104, 109, 111 Berlin, Isaiah 205, 222–224 Berman, L. 239 Berns, E. 135 Bevers, Anton M. 59, 298, 300, 302, 306 Bierstedt, Robert 343 Bismarck, Otto von 3 Blackmore, Susan 62 Blücher, Gebhard L. von 253 Blumer, Herbert 211 Bohr, Niels 291 Bois-Reymond, Emil 233f Bos, T. 99 Bourdieu, Pierre 16 Boyle, Robert 88, 90, 278f Brahe, Tycho 221 Brecht, Bertolt 206f Brentano, Franz 23, 95, 128, 202, 235

Breton, André 50 Brouwer, L. E. J. 208 Buckle, Henry T. 253f Burckhardt, Jacob 260f, 319 Burger, Thomas 13, 330 Caesar, Julius 259, 306 Calvin, Jean 258 Carnap, Rudolf 18, 150f, 169–172, 181, 234, 240 Carr, H. Wilson 225 Cassirer, Ernst 24f, 93, 118f, 127, 357f Chekhov, Anton 206 Chirico, Giorgio de 354 Cioran, E. M. 176 Cohen, Hermann 24f Cohn, Jonas 9 Collingwood, R. G. 27, 222, 224f Copernicus, Nicolaus 88, 219, 221, 348 Coser, Lewis 60 Croce, Benedetto 225f, 248, 250, 319 Curtius, Ernst R. 12 Dahrendorf, Ralph 239 Dalen, Dirk van 208 Dalí, Salvador 354 Danto, A. 163 Darwin, Charles 16, 60–65, 67f, 79, 193, 354 Dawkins, Richard 62 Democritus 89 Denker, Alfred 17 Derrida, Jacques 135f, 351 Descartes, René 88f, 91, 99, 106, 222f, 247 Dickens, Charles 351 Dilthey, Wilhelm 13, 15, 23f, 45f, 47, 129, 181, 225f, 230, 235, 248–251, 262–265, 267f, 271, 349 Durkheim, Emile 358f Einstein, Albert 60, 79, 291 Eliade, Mircea 186 Elias, Norbert 188, 293 Engerman, Stanley L. 256, 292

362

index of names

Epicurus, 89 Erös, J. S. 326 Esser, Josef 311 Eucken, H. 8 Farias, Victor 16 Faust, August 7f, 12 Feitzer, James H. 234 Fetzer, J. H. 26 Fichte, Johann G. 1, 8 Finch, H. A. 336 Flach, W. 24 Fogel, Robert W. 256, 292 Foucault, Michel 135f, 351 Frege, Gottlob 8, 18, 23, 95, 97, 127, 147, 155, 161f, 164, 166, 168, 194, 353 Freud, Sigmund 16, 36, 152 Friedrich, Otto 9, 51 Fukuyama, Francis 198 Galilei, Galileo 88, 219, 221 Gassen, K. 300–303, 305, 309 Gay, Peter 50 Geertz, Cliﬀord 223 Gehlen, Arnold 82f, 103, 359 Geiger, Theodor 173, 329 George III, King 257 Gerth, H. H. 332 Gianturco, Elio 222f Gibbons, Julie 7 Glockner, Hermann 7–9, 12, 117, 331 Goethe, Johann W. 1, 147, 149, 204, 224, 287f, 332, 339 Goretti, Maria 222 Grevenstein-Kruse, Anne 152 Groethuysen, Bernhard 46, 249, 262 Habermas, Jürgen 17f, 229 Hacohen, Malachi H. 342 Haeckel, Ernst 231 Hahn, H. 150 Harnack, Adolf von 186 Hartmann, Nicolai 15, 85 Harvey, J. W. 186 Hazard, Paul 347f Hegel, G. W. F. 5, 21, 27, 58, 94, 147, 157, 166, 172, 182f, 198, 247, 298 Heidegger, Martin 6, 9, 16f, 27, 36, 47, 50, 58, 61, 82, 147–149, 298, 351 Heimsoeth, H. 26

Heisenberg, Werner 291 Held, M. and K. 164 Hellmann, S. 293 Hempel, Carl G. 26, 234 Herder, Johann G. 223f Herrigel, E. 309 Hessen, Sergius 157, 297, 300 Hinneberg, Paul 63 Hobbes, Thomas 278f Höﬀe, Otfried 99 Hofstadter, Richard 61 Holzhey, H. 24 Homer 194 Hopman, F. 319 Horkheimer, Max 321 Huizinga, Johan 29, 231, 298, 315–320 Humboldt, Wilhelm von 2f Hume, David 88f, 91–94, 103 Husserl, Edmund 23, 27, 89, 94, 107, 115, 133, 229, 324 Irmscher, Hans D. 224 Jaspers, Karl 6, 331 James, William 45, 338 Kant, Immanuel passim Keckskemeti, Paul 275, 327 Kennedy, Paul 64, 254 Kepler, Johannes 88, 219, 221 Kettler, David 320f Keuris, Tristan 360 Kierkegaard, Sören 35f, 49, 82, 356 Klibanski, R. 25 Knijﬀ, R. 293 Kohl, Helmuth 9 Köhler, Wolfgang 141f Krijnen, Christian 10, 21, 183 Kuhn, Thomas S. 254 Kun, Bela 320f Kundera, Milan 351 Lamprecht, Karl 305, 316 Landmann, M. 300–303, 305, 309 Lask, Emil 7, 14, 24, 29, 298, 308–312 Latour, Bruno 278 Leenmans, H. A. 23 Leeuw, Gerard van der 186 Lewin, Kurt 141f Litt, Theodor 3, 181 Locke, John 88–91, 109–111 Loen, A. E. 99

index of names Lotze, Hermann 147 Luckmann, Thomas 196, 235, 276, 358 Lundberg, George A. 239 Luther, Martin 306 Mach, Ernst 123, 209 Mahler, Gustav 76 Malthus, Thomas R. 61 Mandelbaum, Maurice 49 Mann, Golo 2, 6, 11, 13 Mann, Thomas 67, 252 Mannheim, Karl 14, 29, 160 235, 241, 275f, 298, 314, 320–330, 339f Marx, Karl 321 Matthiae, K. 162 Mead, George Herbert 114f, 210f, 224, 269, 343, 358f Meinong, Alexius 8, 180, 235 Merton, Robert K. 189, 327, 359 Merz, Peter-Ulrich 330 Mill, John Stuart 155f, 177 Mills, C. Wright 332 Mitzman, Arthur 332, 338 Mommsen, Theodor, 307 Mondrian, Piet, 191 Morgenbesser, S. 163 Morgenstern, Christian 59 Moyaert, P. 135 Mul, Jos de 23f, 249f, 262f Musil, Robert 139, 144 Nagel, Ernest 156, 205 Napoleon 253, 259f, 272f Natorp, Paul 8, 24f, 94 Neurath, Otto 18, 150 Newton, Isaac 88, 90, 222f Neyman, Jerzy 348 Nietzsche, Friedrich 9, 13, 15f, 35f, 45, 47f, 49, 55, 66–69, 76, 79f, 153, 157, 173, 183, 205, 300, 335, 337f, 351, 356 Oakes, Guy 10, 13, 27, 275, 297, 330f Ollig, H.-L. 24, 31, 310 Ostwald, Wilhelm 63 Otto, Rudolf 8f, 186 Paetzold, H. 25 Palyi, M. 293 Parsons, Talcott 330 Paton, H. J. 25 Pawlow, Iwan 238f

363

Pfeiﬀer, Frau 12 Philipse, Herman 95 Plato 7, 86–88, 147, 164, 172, 177, 252, 353 Plessner, Helmuth 82f, 359 Popkin, Richard H. 159 Popper, Karl R. 143, 151, 177, 199, 276, 281, 327, 341–343 Puccini, Giacomo 76 Pyrrhus of Elis 159 Quine, Willard Van Ormen 234f Radbruch, Gustav 8, 14, 29, 187, 298, 309, 312–315 Ramming, Gustav 331 Ranke, Leopold von 232 Rawls, John 314 Rehberg, K.-S. 82 Rickert, Franz 7–9, 11f, 208 Rickert, Heinrich J. passim Rickert Verburg, Marianne 8, 17, 58–69, 117, 180 Ristow, H. 162 Rodin, Gustave 76 Romein, Jan 254 Röntgen, Wilhelm C. 284 Rorty, Richard, 10, 17f, 135, 351 Rothacker, Ernst 8 Rousseau, Jean-Jacques 66 Ruiter, W. de 123 Russell, Bertrand 18, 163, 216 Safranski, Rüdiger 2, 16 Saner, Hans 331 Sasse, H. 45 Schaﬀer, Simon 278f Scheler, Max 8, 13, 15, 45, 59, 69, 82f, 269f Schelling, Friedrich W. J. von 1, 247 Schelsky, Helmuth 3 Schiller, Friedrich 1f, 224 Schleiermacher, Friedrich 1 Scholem, Gershom 8 Schönberg, Arnold 191 Schopenhauer, Arthur 9, 13, 15f, 54f, 62, 68f, 106, 155, 170, 176, 300, 335, 338 Schumpeter, Joseph A. 294 Schutz, Alfred 172, 198, 229, 240, 276, 311 Scruton, Roger 99 Searle, John R. 136, 358f Seidel, Hermann 10

364

index of names

Shapin, Steven 221, 278f Shaw, Bernard 239 Shils, Edward 325, 336 Sibelius, Jean 76 Silesius, Angelus 147f Simmel, Georg 7, 14, 29, 45, 47, 55, 59f, 68, 279f, 298–309, 315f, 318f, 320f, 340, 343, 349, 358f Skinner, Burrhus F. 238f Sluga, Hans 9, 50f Smuts, Jan C. 141f Snow, C. P. 197, 251 Socrates 353 Sombart, Werner 294 Spann, Othmar 8 Spencer, Herbert 61, 66f Spengler, Oswald 199, 201, 231, 253f, 256, 292 Spinoza, Benedict de 222, 247 Stammler, R. 8 Stanislawski, Konstantin 206 Stegmüller, W. 95, 128 Stein, Frau von 287f Stewart, W. A. P. 326 Strawinski, Igor 191 Sumner, William G. 187 Sutcliﬀ, F. E. 88 Swaan, Abram de 293 Tanguy, Yves 354 Taylor, Charles 58 Thomas, William Isaac 189 Tillich, Paul 186 Toennies, Ferdinand 3

Toynbee, Arnold J. 253f, 292 Trask, W. R. 186 Troeltsch, Ernst 275 Turner, J. E. 186 Urmson, J. O. 90f Verdi, Guiseppe 360 Vico, Giambattista 222–226, 249, 271 Vleeschauer, H. J. de 99 Warburg, Aby M. 25 Warnack, G. J. 90f Watson, J. B. 238f Weber, Marianne 331f Weber, Max passim Wellington, Arthur Wellesley Count of 253 Wells, H. G. 253f Wennekes, Emile 360 Wilde, Oscar 49, 173, 190, 192 Wilhelm IV, Friedrich 277 Winckelmann, J. F. 293, 339 Windelband, Wilhelm 7, 24–26, 222, 226f, 246–251, 284, 298–300, 305, 308f, 312, 315, 319, 321, 329, 342 Winkler, R. 45 Wittgenstein, Ludwig 18f, 83f, 134f, 351 Wolf, Erik 312 Wolﬀ, Kurt H. 280, 302 Wundt, Wilhelm 24 IJsseling, S. 135