Verstehen

Pädagogisches Handeln vollzieht sich immer als eine ambivalente, komplexe Aushandlungspraxis (siehe u.a. Helsper 1996). Äußere Rahmenbedingungen, beteiligte Personen, Besonderheiten des Feldes und stets unterschiedliche Handlungsoptionen gilt es dabei auszutarieren. Dies setzt in allererster Linie ein Verstehen und eine ‚begründete Reflexion‘ der Situation voraus. Um der Komplexität pädagogischen Handelns gerecht zu werden, wurde ein methodisch geweiteter Verstehensansatz entwickelt, der versucht, (pädagogische) Situationen aus drei Perspektiven zu betrachten. Dabei wird zunächst ein „subjektiv-intentionaler“ Verstehenszugang gewählt (Weber 1984), woraufhin eine auf den „objektiven“ Sinn referierende Perspektive eingenommen wird (u.a. Oevermann 2002a). Schließlich wird ein „subjektiv-affektiver“ Verstehenszugang eröffnet (u.a. Lorenzer 1983). Entlang der Entfaltung dieser drei Verstehenszugänge zu (pädagogischer) Praxis wird gezeigt, inwiefern (a) Ambivalenzen pädagogischen Handelns methodisch offengelegt und (b) PädagogInnen dabei unterstützt werden können, ihr Handeln zu reflektieren. Dies wird anhand von Ausschnitten aus Beobachtungsprotokollen, die in pädagogischen Einrichtungen erhoben wurden, diskutiert, wobei sowohl Strukturen (Fallbeispiel 1) als auch pädagogisches Handeln (Fallbeispiel 2) reflektiert werden.

When, in 1999, this journal changed its name from Scandinavian Housing and Planning Research to Housing, Theory and Society (HTS), it explicitly put theory in the centre of the academic field of housing studies. The comma between “housing” and “theory” is also telling: the editors’ goal, from the start on, was not so much to develop a theory of housing, but to provide space for social theories applied to the field of housing. Now, in respective Focus articles in the journal’s 20th year of publication, a past and the current editor of HTS revisit the debate on the need for a theory of/about/from and one could add in and for housing. Clapham chiefly picks up on Kemeny’s plea for theoretically-based and – he adds – policy-relevant research. In the second Focus article, Ruonavaara discusses different relations between theory and housing research and concludes that a general theory of housing is not possible, but that we should strengthen our efforts in constructing theory about housing and making sure this feeds back into the different disciplines whose theories we “borrow”, so we can pay back with interest, to use a housing metaphor. Basically, both papers revolve around the question: what kind of theory for what kind of housing research? As both authors acknowledge, it is hard to define “theory” as there are many possible conceptualizations of theory. I would add that not only one’s preference for and use of theory is influenced by an ontological and epistemological position, but that, indeed, one’s conceptualization or definition of what constitutes theory depends on an ontological and epistemological position. However, even within a single philosophy of science, for instance the positivist tradition, it is possible to find many different conceptualizations of theory. For some positivists it is a mathematical model, for others it is simply a generalized outcome of previous research, although the latter should really be labelled “empiricism” rather than “positivism”. In economics, these generalizations are often referred to as “stylised facts” – a concept that I like, despite my general discomfort with mainstream economics. For economists, the stylized facts can be refined or falsified, but the assumptions underlying them are rarely up for grabs. Yet, it is this set of assumptions that forms the core of mainstream economics, that most economists unfortunately take for granted – that is, outside of the debate – while it is here that neoclassical economic theory is really at work, often affecting those beyond the confines of neoclassical economics.

Social scientists like Clapham and Ruonavaara, whose work would not suggest a positivist ontology or epistemology, define theory as “collections of concepts about the real world that facilitate explaining, predicting or intervening” (Clapham, This issue, p. 172); and social theory as “a discourse that consists of a set of linked (a) concepts and (b) propositions to be used for hypothetical (i) re-description, (ii) explanation and (iii) interpretation of all or some subset of social entities, relations and processes” (Ruonavaara,  This issue, p. 181, my emphasis). What strikes me in both definitions is a positivist undertone and the lack of attention to “understanding” in the Weberian meaning of verstehen. Weber’s verstehen was explicitly stated as a rejection of sociological positivism and economic determinism. Verstehen instead focuses on understanding the meaning of action from the actor’s point of view. To Weber, the trick was to combine explanation and understanding. Bourdieu (1993) even argued that comprendre (understanding) is a necessary condition for explanation. Both were sceptical of testing hypotheses or using theories to predict or intervene. Yet, Bourdieu in particular was not necessarily sceptical of empirical work and of the great social theorists of the twentieth century he was arguably the one who was most invested in empirical research.

Clapham and Ruonavaara both appear to be choosing definitions of theory that are open to different traditions, but in their efforts to be inclusive they appear to be excluding more interpretative conceptualizations in favour of positivist-inspired ones. Perhaps the “positivist paradigm” is more common in the social sciences than Clapham leads us believe. Whereas positivists tend to work from a model of social science where research is linear and cumulative, and therefore, results in ever-greater knowledge of the social world, other philosophies of science deny the very possibility of ever getting close to knowing everything about the social world. What Ruonavaara calls a (grand) theory of housing, for Clapham is desirable and possibly even attainable.

I beg to differ, not simply because this is “questionable”, as Ruonavaara argues, but because I don’t believe that there is a finite amount of knowledge (a typical positivist assumption). I believe the more we know, the less we know we know.  More empirical research does not lead to getting closer to finite knowledge, nor is it useless, but it contributes to showing how we now know a little more about an even bigger unknown social world, even if this does not always result in turning unknown knowns into known knowns but rather into discovering new unknown knowns where previously these were unknown unknowns.

This essay discusses verstehen as an approach or methodology to scientific research, specifically to qualitative research. Verstehen, a German word which literally translated to "understanding" or "insight". In research, it can be defined as an approach of scientific research by taking the meanings people attached to their actions into account. Since introduced by Johann Gustavv Droysen, many, including Wilhelm Dilthey and Max Weber, have discussed this approach in their literatures. Weber, a pioneer of verstehen in Sociology, is noted for using this method into his works, and established two types of verstehen: direct observational and indirect explanatory. This essay also takes a look at some of the criticisms given to the approach, including renowned American sociologist, Theodore Abel. To him, verstehen isn’t scientific because a researcher will never fully understand another’s culture, and results followed from this method cannot be verified. But, the writer argued that verstehen is not to be
understood as an aimless speculation but a deeper probe concerning the various aspects of a problem.

Η παρούσα μελέτη επιδιώκει να εξετάσει την υφή και την συμβολή της εθνογραφίας και της σύλληψης του ‘εγκληματολογικού verstehen’ στην έρευνα πεδίου, όπως αναδείχθηκαν από την πολιτισμική εγκληματολογία για την μελέτη των υποπολιτισμών. Σε αυτό το πλαίσιο, η ‘εθνογραφική εμβύθιση’, η ‘συμπαθητική κατανόηση’, η ‘ενσυναίσθηση’ και η ‘υποκειμενική βίωση και ερμηνεία’ είναι έννοιες-κλειδιά που υφαίνουν την ‘εγκληματολογική κατανόηση’ (‘criminological verstehen).’

“Il mondo si trasforma in un completo dominio della tecnica. Di gran lunga più inquietante è che l’uomo non è affatto preparato a questo radicale mutamento del mondo”. Così si esprimeva Martin Heidegger in una lezione del 1955, L’abbandono (1959), che ci ricorda come il tema della tecnica sia centrale in tutta la sua opera, e non solo in questo cruciale saggio del 1953, La questione della tecnica (qui edito insieme a Scienza e meditazione). Il grande e controverso pensatore tedesco non è un tecnofobo come si tende, talvolta, a rappresentarlo.

La sua meditazione sulla tecnica non è una riflessione che può essere compresa nello schema tecnofobia vs. tecnofilia o tecnopessimisti vs. tecnottimisti. Quella di Heidegger, infatti, non è una critica alla tecnica, piuttosto una critica della tecnica, in quanto questa, insieme all’arte al linguaggio, è una via del disvelamento dell’Essere. Come tale è una questione eminentemente metafisica. Proprio per questo l’essenza della tecnica non è per niente tecnica. Un’affermazione densa di conseguenze.

Torna finalmente disponibile, con un’approfondita introduzione di Federico Sollazzo, il più importante lavoro filosofico dedicato alla tecnologia, un testo ormai introvabile in lingua italiana.

Indice

Heidegger e la tecnica. Una introduzione
di Federico Sollazzo
Sulla questione della tecnica in Heidegger
Conclusioni
Appendice. Heidegger e la tecnica, oggi

Martin Heidegger – Riflessione sulla tecnica e sulla scienza
La questione della tecnica
Scienza e meditazione

Indice dei nomi

Epistemología de las teorías sociales. Comprensión y explicación de los fenómenos sociales. Odos, Metodéuticas, Metodologías y Metateorías.Tipos de explicación científica.Explicación genética. Historia de las ideas sociales. Fundamentación lógica, ontológica, gnoselógica, epistemológica, semática y sociológica de las teorías sociales. Programas de investigación social. Monismo, dualismo, pluralismo, anarquismo metodológicos. Positivismo, funcionalismo, sistemismo, fenomenología, materialismo histórico.
Epistemology of social theories. Understanding and explaining social phenomena. Methodologies and Metatheories. Scientific explanation. Genetic explanation. History of social ideas. Logical, ontological, gnoselogical, epistemological, semantic and sociological foundation of social theories. Social research programs. Methodological Monism, dualism, pluralism, and anarchism. Positivism, functionalism, systemism, phenomenology, historical materialism.

Recent scholarship on the nature of truth within Hans-Georg Gadamer’s and Martin Heidegger’s philosophies has focused primarily on identifying and explicating the commonality between their respective accounts of truth. However, this emphasis on commonality has overlooked Gadamer’s distinctive understanding of truth outside of and beyond a simple development of Heidegger’s consideration of truth as alētheia. This paper defends the claim that the specific manner in which Gadamer and Heidegger critique the correspondence theory of truth is indicative of their distinctive conceptions of truth more generally. While Heidegger understands truth as the unconcealment of beings through the disclosure of Dasein as Being-in-the-world as such, Gadamer concludes that truth is the disclosure of human being through hermeneutical understanding as realized in concrete dialogical engagement in particular.  These similar, but often conflicting, accounts of truth cannot be subsumed within one another without overlooking and thereby misunderstanding the philosophical insights found in Gadamer’s and Heidegger’s distinctive philosophies. More importantly, the inability or unwillingness to distinguish their conceptions of truth prevents any subsequent analysis of which thinker provides a more compelling critique of the correspondence theory of truth and which account is more plausible as an understanding of the phenomenon of truth broadly construed. This paper ends with a brief defense of Gadamer's understanding of truth.

The quest to provide a fundamental understanding and explanation of reality is an ambitious one. Perhaps it is too ambitious. The possible restrictions for such an enterprise to be successful must be inquired in order to determine the issue. Section 1 explores one’s understanding in reaching (scientific) conclusions: to what extent does a successful account testify to understanding? Section 2 focuses on the other side of such an account: does it provide an explanation in a more fundamental sense than pointing out causes of phenomena, or is it restricted to such a task? A critical stance vis-à-vis the (scientific) enterprise of unearthing reality’s structure remains necessary in order not to confuse a consistent and productive theory with one that demonstrates an understanding and explanation in the sense of this article.

ÖZET Çeviribilim, dilbilim, metindilbilim, erekbilim, kültürbilim, edebiyat, bilişsel psikoloji, sosyoloji, gibi pek çok alanla disiplinlerarası çalışan bir bilim dalıdır. Yorum ve anlama sanatı olarak tanımlanan hermeneutik de çeviribilimin iç içe olduğu diğer bir alandır. Hermeneutikte kullanılan çoğu kavram çeviribilimde de yer almaktadır. Her iki alan tarafından kullanılan kavramların incelenmesi ve farklıklar ile benzerliklerinin ortaya konması çeviribilim alanına katkı sağlayacaktır. Bu çalışmada anlama, tecrübe, tarihsellik, önyargı ve ufukların kaynaşması kavramları hermeneutik ve çeviribilim açısından karşılaştırılmıştır. GİRİŞ Yorum anlamına gelen hermeneutik kavramı 17. yüzyıldan beri kullanılıyor olmasına rağmen metinlerin yorumlanması açısından hermeneutik kavramının kökeni Antik çağlara kadar uzanmaktadır. Tarihsel süreç içerisinde öncelikle dini metinlerin anlaşılmasında etkin bir rol oynayan hermeneutik alanı, zaman içerisinde hukuk, tarih ve edebiyat gibi alanlarda metinlerin yorumlanmasında kullanılmaya başlanmıştır. Birçok alanda yer bulan hermeneutik, kapsamlı bir alan olduğu için zamanla çeviribilim içerisinde de önemli bir konuma sahip olarak araştırma konusu haline gelmiştir. Bu çalışmada hermeneutik alanının bütün detaylarını incelemek mümkün olmadığı için çalışmanın sınırını belirleyebilmek açısından hermeneutikte öne çıkan ve çeviribilim içerisinde yer bulan tarihsellik, deneyim, ön yargı, ufukların kaynaşması, anlama ve yorumlama gibi kavramlar ele alınarak bu kavramların öne çıkmasında etkin rol oynayan, klasik hermeneutiğin başlatıcısı olarak kabul edilen Schleiermacher ile Dilthey, Heidegger ve felsefi hermeneutiğin öncüsü olarak kabul edilen Gadamer'in görüşleri doğrultusunda mevcut kavramlar açıklanmaya çalışılacaktır.Bu kavramların ele alınmasındaki temel amaç, hermeneutikte bulunan kavramların çeviri süreçleri ve çevirmen açısından incelenerek çevirmenin, en son aşama olan yorumlama safhasına varmak için hangi süreçlerden geçtiğini gözlemleyebilmektir.

Two different meanings of "understanding" are central to the question, Can a computer understand? The traditions associated with these two meanings are briefly traced, focusing on the continental "verstehen" tradition. It is argued that a beneficial dialog can emerge between these traditions, and that the presentations herein selected contribute to such a dialog.

Dit is een hoofdstuk uit een boek van J. C.  Verhoeven

Schütz is een fenomenologisch georiënteerd socioloog. Hij vertrekt vanuit de alledaagse kennis van het gewone leven naar een wetenschappelijke kennis. De waarnemer is slechts in de ,Umwelt' in staat om het handelen van de ander op een direkte manier te vatten. Voor de socioloog is de ,Mitwelt' echter het waarnemingskader. Tot een direkt beleven van de ander komt hij niet, tenzij hij zijn wetenschappelijkheid laat varen. Dit kan hij voorkomen door beroep te doen op ideaaltypes, die typische patronen v an het handelen vormen. Het postulaat van de subjektieve interpretatie blijft hierdoor behouden.
Bij Schütz werd de aandacht gevestigd op het begrijpen en verklaren van het sociale handelen, zoals hij dit bij Max Weber had ontleend. Het ,verstehen' is echter geen algemeen aanvaarde metode. Door verscheidene sociologen wordt zij als onwetenschappelijk verworpen of als een bepaalde wijze van
hypotesevorming naar het vóór-wetenschappelijke werk verwezen. Voor Schutz is het een op zichzelf staande, waardevolle metode.

This essay addresses the historical and institutional aspects of Schumpeter's thought. It suggests that Schumpeter prepared a pluralist research agenda, formulated in accordance with the conceptual perspective of the German Historical School, as presented by major scholars such as Schmoller, Sombart, Spiethoff and Max Weber. Schumpeter's notion of development, with its emphasis on the correspondence of economic and socio-cultural evolution, is therefore to be viewed in the context of the comprehensive Schmollerian approach. Moreover the ethical-evolutionary components of Schmoller's ideas point at the vital role of the German Historical School in the elaboration of a modern evolutionary economics in Schumpeterian terms. The essay concludes that the Schmollerprogramm is going to inspire further developments in Schumpeterian economics, as the integration of theory and history continuously marks the research agenda of evolutionary approaches to economic development.

Deconstruction has hardly ever been applied as a method to the analysis of Orhan Pamuk’s Snow, which is surprising because the novel itself is deconstructive to some extent. The following article addresses this issue by providing a deconstructive view of the text according to the approach of Jacques Derrida. The paper starts with a short account of Derrida’s understanding of texts as universal "differences and traces of traces“. This perspective is exemplified with the aid of the metaphor for snow and Franz Kafka’s Castle. In connection with the latter, Derrida’s thoughts about "différance“, which thwarts the presence of meaning, are explained as well. The following section addresses Pamuk’s depiction of a "suicide epidemic“ which is combined with the complex issue of headscarf. The attempts of the protagonist Ka to discover the reasons of the suicides are futile because, as will be shown, individual cases are affected by postponements of meaning, which are related with the notion of "différance“. Understanding is also a problem for the narrator Orhan. The hypothesis developed in the concluding section of the analysis is that he is in fact narrating a deconstructive genesis of a lost manuscript. The collection of Ka’s poems titled Snow, which Pamuk’s novel is about for the most part, has disappeared. Meanwhile, the replacement of the poems with informations about the circumstances of their creation makes the contextual socio-cultural problematics apparent.

ABSTRAK Islamophobia merupakan gejala yang muncul di Masyarakat karena munculnya gerakan radikal dan kekerasan yang dilakukan oleh kelompok Islam tertentu.sehingga masyarakat merasa takut dan anti terhadap islam. Dampak islamophobia sering dikaitkan dengan keberadaan kelompok islam tertentu yang dianggap menjadi cikal bakal dan memiliki kaitan dengan gerakan terorisme, akibat sikap dan perilaku serta tindakan kelompok islam tersebut dalam memaknai ajaran agama islam, yang pada dasarnya sangat relative dan harus dimaklumi sebagai bagian dari upaya menjalankan nilai-nilai islam dan tidak memiliki kaitan dengan gerakan radikalis dan teorisme. Dalam memahami pola perilaku dan tindakan kelompok Islam ini, perlu dikaitkan dengan teori tindakan sosial Max Weber maupun analisis interpretasi dan pemahaman (Verstehen).

Karl Jaspers' phenomenology remains important today, not solely because of its continuing influence in some areas of psychiatry, but because, if fully understood, it can provide a method and set of concepts for making new progress in the science of psychopathology. In order to understand this method and set of concepts, it helps to recognize the significant influence that Edmund Husserl's early work, Logical investigations, exercised on Jaspers' formulation of them. We trace the Husserlian influence while clarifying the main components of Jaspers' method. Jaspers adopted Husserl's notions of intuition, description, and presuppositionlessness, transforming them when necessary in order to serve the investigations of the psychopathologist. Jaspers also took over from Wilhelm Dilthey and others the tools of understanding (Verstehen) and self-transposal. The Diltheyian procedures were integrated into the Husserlian ones to produce a method that enables psychiatrists to define the basic kinds of psychopathological mental states.

Ich werde mich im Folgenden zunächst mit dem Begriff der phänomenologischen Methode näher befassen, indem ich die Phänomenologie in zweierlei Weise als Empirie aus der erlebten Innenperspektive charakterisiere. Im Anschluss daran werde ich versuchen, die Methode der intentionalgenetischen Analyse für die Neudeutung des Verstehensbegriffs, so wie sie für die Psychoanalyse von Bedeutung sein kann, anzuwenden.

Ce mémoire est une analyse interprétative des facteurs endogènes et exogènes qui peuvent expliquer l'échec de la politique d'extension de la révolution (PER) menée dans le Golfe Persique entre 1979 et 1989 par certains acteurs politique iraniens. Il entend montrer, à l'aide d'une méthodologie wébérienne, la difficulté d'établir de solides relations causales entre ces facteurs et l'échec de la PER, en fonction de sources premières limitées et sans la compréhension nécessaires des langues arabe et iranienne.

This paper investigates the various ways in which Rudolf Carnap incorporated contemporary epistemological problems concerning the Geisteswissenschaften in Der logische Aufbau der Welt. I argue that Carnap defends a non-reductive incorporation of the Geisteswissenschaften within the unity of science. To this end Carnap aims to solve the problem of individuality, which was the focus of attention for important philosophers of the Geisteswissenschaften, like Dilthey, Rickert and Windelband. At the same time, Carnap also argues that his constitutional method, which transforms cultural objects to psychological or physical objects, does not imply a loss of autonomy for the Geisteswissenschaften. Besides this defense of autonomy, Carnap also incorporates several central notions of contemporary theory of the Geisteswissenschaften into his theory of the Aufbau: cultural manifestation, phenomenology of cultural experience, and the method of Verstehen.

ÖZET Bu çalışmada çeviride anlamın ne olduğu, anlama sürecinin nasıl gerçekleştiği, anlamayı etkileyen faktörler, çeviride anlam ve orijinal metni anlamaktan kaynaklanan farklı çevirilerin ortaya çıkması ile ilgili bir takım noktalara değinilmiştir. Bu çalışmanın erek kitlesi özellikle de çeviribilim öğrencileridir. İnsan, anlama eylemini gerçekleştirirken hafızaya kaydedilen bilgileri kullanmaktadır. Okuma anlama sürecinde dilbilimsel ve zihinsel süreçler etkileşim halinde işleyiş görmektedir. Bu etkileşim sayesinde metnin anlamı ortaya çıkar. Okuma anlama, sadece metindeki bilgiyle sınırlandırılmaz, metindeki bilginin ötesine geçerek, daha önceden edinilmiş bilgiyle karşılıklı etkileşimini gerektirir. Çevirmen, genel kültür, alan ve konu bilgisi, güncel konular ve dünyada olup bitenlere olan ilgisi sayesinde yazarla ortak payda da buluşur ve anlama süreci devreye girer. İkinci aşama olan anladığını anlatmak, yani çevirmek ancak birinci aşama başarılı geçtikten sonra mümkün olmaktadır. ABSTRACT The aim of this study is to mention about what the role of understanding in translation is, how the process of understanding in translation takes place and

Der Beitrag konkretisiert den Begriff der Kommunikation zunächst aus der Perspektive verschiedener Teildisziplinen, leitet ihn auf dieser Basis her und berücksichtigt dabei kommunikationswissenschaftliche, psychologische und soziologische Erkenntnisse und Ansätze. Die theoretischen Konzeptionen von Kommunikation dienen als Grundgerüst für die näheren Fundierungen des Kommunikationsbegriffes, dessen Veränderungen im Zuge des Medienwandels diskutiert werden. Die kultursoziologische Perspektive stellt dabei den grundsätzlichen Rahmen dar, der das Verständnis von Kommunikation als komplexem reflexivem Prozess symbolischer Interaktion verortet.

The purpose of this paper is to critically discuss the extent of interpretivism to understand the contemporary social world. This paper firstly highlights the roots of interpretivism which can be traced back in the ancient history of philosophy. It then discusses the concept of interpretivism and gives a critical commentary on the Weber’s construction of ideal types to help explore the contemporary social world. The paper then further discusses the concept of “verstehen” and explains how it can add to our understanding of the social world phenomena. Following this analysis and tackling some philosophical debate, finally, this theoretical paper confirms that interpretivism has influenced the development of the social science and has helped our understanding of the contemporary social world to a great extent.

Asked to edit and critically review the exchange between philosopher Rafael Capurro and Linda Treude on the concept of information, the below linked document presents the final version of the exchange, including my contributions to copy and content editing as well as bibliographic suggestions from my review. The final version of the document can be accessed at http://www.capurro.de/moraes.html

- Jared Bielby


"The term information is omnipresent in academic research as well as in everyday life. Buzz words such as information society, information age or information overload are floating around everywhere. But what do we mean exactly with 'information' in different contexts?

The philosopher Rafael Capurro dealt with this question in the late 1970's in his PhD thesis on the concept of information. Especially the philosophical community was suffering at that time from a lack of reflection thereupon. Capurro tried to fill this gap. The following remark by the physicist and philosopher Carl Friedrich von Weizsäcker (1912-2007) had a particular impact on him.

"Today we are getting accustomed [...] to understand information as something different from matter and consciousness. What we have discovered is an old truth in a new place. It is the Platonic eidos, the Aristotelian form, expressed in words such that also a human being in the 20th century can learn about them."

Weizsäcker’s step back to the history of ideas motivated Capurro also to deal with ethical issues of the information society particularly since the rise of the internet. The handling of digital information requires new cultural skills that are addressed with the term 'information literacy.' In the last ten years many projects in the Library and Information Science field (LIS) include or are even focused on information literacy (IL). In many of these projects there is a pre-understanding that IL has to do with the ability to find, filter, and process digital information. At the same time, there is a gap between this pre-understanding and an the ongoing academic discussion on the concept of information. The following dialogue deals particularly with this gap."

~ Linda Treude

A traditional social scientific divide concerns the centrality of the interpretation of local understandings as opposed to attending to relatively general factors in understanding human individual and group differences. We consider one of the most common social scientific variables, race, and ask how to conceive of its causal power. We suggest that any plausible attempt to model the causal effects of such constructed social roles will involve close interplay between interpretationist and more general elements. Thus, we offer a case study that one cannot offer a comprehensive model of the causal power of racial categories as social constructions without careful attention both to local meanings and more general mechanisms.

Sociology is sometimes reproached with the fact that it is still engaged in a search for its object so that as a science it has not achieved any coherent picture of society, nor can it achieve this In addition to this there is the quarrel over methods which was perhaps formerly more violent than it is now, but it has still not entirely disappeared from the scene. Attempts at reconciliation have been made but have not always found a sufficient following. It is, nevertheless, worthwhile continuing the dialogue if a more generally accepted picture of sociology is to be arrived at. In this discussion there is a confrontation between dialectic and « understanding » ("ver-stehen "). The necessity with which the sociologist is confronted of defining his object does not imply that he can do this completely independently of all social-scientific tradition. On the contrary, the sociologist must take the intersubjectivity of his science just as much into account as the researcher into any other scientific discipline. We shall thus begin this study with the confrontation of several recent investigations into the various definitions of the object and their methodological consequences in order, by so doing, not to break the link with the past. In fact the most recent discussions have been about a question which is very old and which already occupied a central position in social philosophy, namely « from which angle must the relationship of the individual to the community be approached » 2).In sociological writings various solutions have been put forward to this problem. One school considers the group as a reality which can be studied in se. Another tendency does not allow the group any existential value and considers that the individual is the only existing reality. Now there is a tendency to accept neither the first nor the second solution but to place both in a dialectical relationship. G. Gurvitch is one of the pioneers of this.

On the background of characteristic anti‑psychiatric tendencies
in existential‑humanistic philosophical and psycho[patho]logical
thought, the fidelity of K. Jaspers, one of its founders, to nosological
approach in psychiatry is reviewed. A review in a broader context of
“psychological crisis” at the transition from XIX to XX century allows to
ascertain that the concept of “mental illness” makes the necessary theoretical element in “understanding” (Verstehen) psychopathology.

In this paper I argue that understanding is an indispensable epistemic procedure when historians use texts as evidence. On my account understanding installs a norm that determines what kind of event or object a texts is evidence of. Historians can debate which norms should govern over a body of texts, and if they reach consensus, they can use those texts as an empirical constraint over their historical claims. I argue that texts cannot perform this constraining function without understanding – it is thus indispensable. In order to argue for this position I first discuss two available accounts of textual evidence in analytic philosophy of science by Kosso and Hurst. Both defend a coherentist position. I show that their coherentist position is flawed by applying it to the famous case of Lucien Febvre's argument that François Rabelais was not an atheist. Through my description of the case I point out that a coherence between texts leaves the debate concerning Rabelais' religious beliefs underdetermined, even though this should not be necessary. I argue that my account of understanding better captures the actual reasoning with texts by Febvre. In the final section of the paper I show that the two most famous accounts of understanding in analytic philosophy by Hempel and Taylor either ignore the epistemic indispensability of understanding, or the actual success of evidentiary reasoning in the historical sciences that was enabled by understanding.