Neo-Kantianism as hermeneutics? Heinrich Rickert on psychology, historical method, and understanding

Abstract

ABSTRACT This paper explores the Baden Neo-Kantian attempt to integrate hermeneutic ‘understanding’ (Verstehen) into the formal philosophy of the historical sciences. It focuses primarily on Heinrich Rickert’s account of history as an individuating science. It gives a systematic reconstruction of Rickert’s views on historical method, the relation between history and psychology, and the concept of culture, and it traces the development of Rickert’s encounter with Wilhelm Dilthey’s hermeneutics in the consecutive editions of The Limits of Concept Formation in Natural Science (1896/1902, 1913, 1921, 1929). The paper reveals that Rickert revised his views about the role of psychology for historical science quite fundamentally and that he did so in response to developments in Dilthey’s thinking: in 1896/1902, Rickert attacked Dilthey’s descriptive psychology and laid out the main contours of an anti-psychologistic account of historical science; but in 1921 he responded to Dilthey’s mature hermeneutic theory with a detailed account of ‘understanding’ and ‘re-experiencing’ that was in tension with his anti-psychologism about historical method.