Historical understanding in Dilthey, Collingwood and Popper

Abstract

This thesis is a study of the responses of Dilthey, Collingwood, and Popper to the questions associated with the understanding of history. There seem to be three major, although by no means unrelated, questions to which the writers address themselves. First, how historical understanding is to be possible, or in modern terms, to indicate the presuppositions of historical understanding. Second, what, more precisely, historical understanding involves. In other words, the elaboration of what it is that we do when we understand, involving questions of aim of enquiry, methods of study; whether we are 'reconstructing', 'imagining', 'making pragmatic use of', 'telling a story of what really happened', and so on. Third, why, exactly, historical understanding is of any importance or value. This is the question of the role and place of historical understanding in daily existence. The main theme is that of the necessity to understand, and the importance of categories that are inapplicable to the natural sciences, in pursuing this end. This emerges in discussing Dilthey and Collingwood. It is Collingwood's achievement to have rendered the notion of understanding (as opposed to distortion) intelligible and, I think, coherent. This theme is clarified in confrontation with Popper. His addiction to the 'covering law' and the formal notion of prediction/falsification are seen to be implicity manipulative and, consistently adhered to, represent an undermining of the effort to, genuinely, understand. Against this, it is argued, we need to develop a sensitivity to alternative forms of 'universality'. These we find in Dilthey and Collingwood. There are 'structural' or 'typological' similarities between narratives, and we can relate seemingly disparate viewpoints by means of the presence of these resemblances. Indeed, the vital talent to be obtained from historical thought is the development of this trained 'eye' for typical relationships. The failure to develop this faculty, it is argued, represents the loss of the sole means of understanding large areas of our subjective and experiential lives. There are three major implications. First, in terms of education, there is no way to obtain this 'eye' other than immersion in the tradition itself. It is akin to learning a language, in the sense that there is an inherent idiom to be obtained. Second, in seeking this idiom, we will recognise that the most urgent enterprise is to seek to relate the members of these historical series to one another, so that the process of clarification and elaboration of our ideas can be continued. Third, this enterprise is not merely of antiquarian interest, but of utmost importance. All continuity of thought depends on a prior understanding of earlier contributors. In this way, historical understanding is the presupposition of rational discussion. Moreover, our rationality is not self-contained and abstractly valid. It exists only in a tradition. To lose access to the idiom of that tradition (by; either, failing to bother to understand as a priority, or, forcing ourselves to seek instrumental goals only, and treating thought as 'engineering' new socio-political institutions) is to lose a grip of rationality per, se. Historical understanding, therefore, is the means necessary to the development of minds trained to detect the nuances, rhythms and intimations of human activity.