Understanding and Explanation in France: From Maine de Biran’s Méthode Psychologique to Durkheim’s Les Formes Élémentaires de la vie Religieuse

Abstract

My task here is to compare the ways in which the relations between the human and the natural sciences were conceived in late nineteenth and early twentieth century France and Germany. Historical generalization may be a mug’s game. But if I had to generalize, I would say that the French distinguished the human or cultural sciences from the natural sciences only in terms of their subject matters, while the Germans were more likely to try to distinguish them in terms of their goals, methods, foundations, and normative content as well. Although we may be able to find many philosophical positions among the French that resemble certain aspects of the thought of Wilhelm Dilthey, Wilhelm Windelband, or Heinrich Rickert, no one in France held exactly the same combination of philosophical views concerning the human sciences as that held by any of these German thinkers. In particular, no one in France tried to distinguish the human from the natural sciences in terms of understanding versus explanation in the way that Dilthey did. Thus, although there were other disputes in France in regard to the human sciences, such as that between Emile Durkheim and Gabriel Tarde over the role of psychology in sociological explanation, or that between sociologists and philosophers over the methods of ethics, there was no controversy analogous to the conflict among Dilthey, Windelband, and Rickert over the best way to distinguish the human from the natural sciences.