Epistemological distinctions and cultural politics

educational reform and the naturwissenschaft/geisteswissenschaft distinction in nineteenth-century Germany

Denise Phillips

pp. 15-35

in: Uljana Feest (ed), Historical perspectives on Erklären and Verstehen, Berlin, Springer, 2010

Abstract

The Erklären/Verstehen debates of the late nineteenth century were, as several essays in this collection point out, peculiar to German-speaking Europe. Even when French or British scholars dealt with similar philosophical arguments, an epistemological distinction between two kinds of knowledge - one about human beings and texts, the other about the natural world - never took on the ubiquity or importance that it held in the German context (see Smith and Schmaus, in this volume). Why was this the case? What about the German intellectual scene made the issue of methodological differences between the sciences such an important theme in the second half of the nineteenth century?