Usually translated as ‘understanding’, it describes the relation of a part to its whole, or the understanding of something within its proper context; that is, the notion that the whole is partially determinative of the part. As Dilthey explains, ‘the whole only exists for us insofar as it becomes understandable on the basis of the parts. Understanding always hovers between these two approaches’, and ‘the parts receive meaning (
Bedeutung) from the whole, and the whole receives sense (
Sinn) from the parts’.
[1] My usage, therefore, is not that of modern sociology, which derives
Verstehen through Max Weber and is broadly conceived of as ‘[being] “in the same situation” as the actor’ (to see things from his perspective).
[2] In this sense
Verstehen is exactly reductionist, compared with Dilthey’s which is expressly not; a mistake which has resulted from a conflation of Dilthey’s epistemology with his emphasis of the importance of the individual mind (
seele) and perspective in history as opposed to the notion of the national spirit (
Volksgeist) then contemporary in Germany.
[1] W. Dilthey,
Plan der Fortsetzung zum Aufbau der geschichtlichen Welt in den Geisteswissenschaften, pp. 233, 265 cited in T. Plantinga,
Historical Understanding in the Thought of Wilhelm Dilthey (Toronto, 1980), pp. 106, 105.
[2] R. Boudon and F. Bourricaud,
A Critical Dictionary of Sociology, trans. P. Hamilton (New York, 1989), p. 15.
