Handelnder Mensch und objektiver Geist: Zur Theorie der Geistes- und Sozialwissenschaften bei Wilhelm Dilthey (review)

BOOK REVIEWS 485 breaks down our illusions about why it was not just a simple matter of logic or morals to see, in 1770, that slavery was unnatural and immoral and had to be abolished. By taking us into the actual context, and out of the textbooks on political philosophy, Davis shows how the march of ideas goes on in terms of the interaction of social, cultural, and economic factors. Our own history becomes less of a mystery when seen in this perspective. Why did Jefferson not insist on freeing slaves (or women--who are not discussed in this volume)? Jefferson the man acting in history is far more complex than Jefferson the ideologist of the American Revolution, who wrote the glowing words of the Declaration of Independence. Davis's study is an excellent examination of one of the key moral problems that has haunted our history. By viewing slavery in terms of the actual arguments, political struggles, economic conditions, and legal developments, one is brought to realize that there was far more at issue than the logic of the situation. The abolitionists become real figures on a historical canvas struggling both to convince the learned and political world and to make it act. RICHARDH. POPKIN Washington University Handelnder Mensch und objektiver Geist: Zur Theorie der Geistes- und Sozialwissenschaften bei Wilhelm Dilthey. By Helmut Johach. (Meisenheim am Glan: Verlag Anton Hain, 1974. Pp. 203) It has been suggested by Jiirgen Habermas that Dilthey implicitly acknowledged the practical interests involved in the cognitive ideals of the human studies. In Handelnder Mensch und objektiver Geist Helmut Johach convincingly demonstrates that Dilthey not only notes that the progress of society has engendered an ever-increasing division of labor and professionalism ; he also shows how the technical theories that arise from the "practical needs of society" are too narrow and unreflective to satisfy the "interest of knowledge." This latter interest requires that technische Theorien be transformed in Wissenschaften, the aim of which is to study the interrelationshipsamong the different functions of man in sociey (see Dilthey, Gesammelte Schriften [GS], 1:38). Only with this transformation can the Geisteswissenschaften perform their ultimate task of setting norms for social life at large. Placing special stress on Dilthey's early writings to bring out his concern with man as an active participant in society, Johach cites extensively from the essay "Ueber das Studium der Geschichte der Wissenschaften vom Menschen, der Gesellschaft und dem Staat" (1875), where Dilthey focuses on what he calls the moral and political sciences. In order to undermine the accepted view that Dilthey's early writings describe the role of the individual in history and society in primarily psychological terms, Johach refers us to unpublished drafts for the 1875essay where it is claimed that the content of the life of the individual develops and transforms itself under the influence of his environment and his society (see Dilthey, Nachlass, C12, quoted on p. 17). Johach writes: "Kognitive Schemata, Bedeutungen, Werte, moralische LeitvorsteUungen des Handelns entspringen weder in der Tiefe der individuellenSeele, noch haben sie ein ideelles Ansichsein odergelten, sie sind vielmehr im historisch gewordenen Bewusstsein gesellschaftlicher Gruppen verankert..." (p. 17). Yet there is a danger of overemphasizing the role of social consciousness in Dilthey's theory of history. On the basis of Dilthey's assertion that "the moving forces of history are not at all the forces found in the psychology of the individual and its laws" (quoted on p. 17) we can conclude that he is critical of psychological explanations that ignore the ways in which the individual is conditioned by his context. But it would be illegitimate to argue that the unpublished statements cited by Johach contradict Dilthey 's published claims that the wills of individuals are the motive forces in history (GS, 1:53). Dilthey himself points to an essential tension in his position when he maintains that although the concept of the individual cannot be used as an "explanative ground" (Erkldrungsgrund) 486 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY for the effects of the will, nevertheless, the individual remains the locus where we can observe this efficacy (Schauplatz des Wirkens, GS, 5 :63n.). Thus Dilthey proposes a new psychology that will include the social dimension...