| Phi 109 Spring 2016 |
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Charles Taylor (1931-) is a philosopher with a strong interest in political theory (and practical politics—he ran for the Canadian parliament four times). He is probably best known for two earlier papers:
“Neutrality in Political Science,” in Philosophy, Politics, and Society, 3rd Ser., Laslett and Runciman, eds. (Oxfords: Blackwell, 1967), pp. 25-57.
“Interpretation and the Sciences of Man,” The Review of Metaphysics, vol. 25 (1971), pp. 3-51 (on JSTOR at 20125928).
The paper we’ll discuss updates the argument in the second of these. When Taylor says (on its last page) that he has argued for certain points elsewhere, he probably has these earlier papers (especially the second) in mind.
Taylor begins with a reference to Wilhelm Dilthey (1833-1911). Dilthey took the old idea of “hermeneutics” as the discipline focusing on interpretation of texts and saw it as a basis for the whole of the human sciences. Dilthey’s ideas had considerable influence on philosophers in the 20th century, and Taylor alludes to a long-standing dispute between those who would base the study of people and societies on the model of hermeneutics and those, like Hempel, who would base it on the model of the natural sciences.
Here are a few suggestions of points to notice in his discussion of this issue:
• In §I, Taylor sketches an alternative to Hempel’s view of natural science that he refers to as “realism.” The connection between this and hermeneutics is that both point to a grasp of things that is not exhausted by the sort of observable properties that might figure in the covering laws and determining conditions of Hempel’s explanations.
• Taylor goes on to argue, however, that the human sciences are different from the natural sciences even on this alternative understanding of the latter. In §§II and III, this difference is framed in terms of an idea of “absoluteness” that Taylor associates with the natural sciences (however they are understood) but takes to be in conflict with the “subject-related” language required for the human sciences. Many of his ways of talking about this are drawn together in the paragraph at the top of p. 36, so it is worth thinking through that passage carefully.
• At the end of §III and in §IV, Taylor points to reasons why someone might reject his view of the human sciences and how he might respond to such concerns.
Taylor uses the example of a mediaeval knight trying to understand the concept of integrity (pp. 36-7) to point to the difficulties hermeneutic human sciences would pose for agreement among researchers, but the example also points to the difficulties of understanding other cultures, and it’s worth thinking about it in that regard, too, since those difficulties will be our topic next week.