[Xmca-l] Re: Perezhivanie of perezhivanie

[Martin John Packer]

On Dec 18, 2017, at 7:43 PM, David Kellogg <dkellogg60@gmail.com<mailto:dkellogg60@gmail.com>> wrote:

For example, when Wolff-Michael says that Vygotsky rejected
both "scientific" and "interpretive" psychology, he doesn't mention the
context, which is "History of the Crisis in Psychology". Vygotsky's talking
about reflexology on the one hand and Dilthey's "interpretive" psychology
on the other. It's not about "quantitative" and "qualitative" research at
all.

If this is what Michael was referring to, then yes Vygotsky does reject Dilthey’s approach to social science, and he rejects Dilthey’s division of the natural sciences and the human sciences — sciences of spirit — as yet another version of dualism. It’s not quite true that this has nothing to do with contemporary conceptions of ‘quantitative’ and ‘qualitative’ research, in so far as people on both sides of this divide today continue to accept Dilthey’s proposal that the natural sciences can provide ‘explanation’ whereas the human sciences, using interpretive investigation, can provide only ‘description.’ I reject this proposal.

There are other problems with Dilthey’s version of interpretive inquiry. I write in SQR that on the one hand "hermeneutics, for Dilthey, is the theory of how life discloses and expresses itself in cultural works.... Interpretation aims to go beyond subjectivity to the 'thought-constituting work' of life itself. For Dilthey, understanding is not a purely cognitive matter, but life grasping life in and through a full and rich contact that escapes rational theorizing.”

This remains a powerful idea. However, on the other hand:

“[Dilthey] recognized that the objects of inquiry in the human sciences are historical phenomena, but he could not fully accept the implications of his own belief that the inquirer, the interpreter, is also always historically situated. It is ironic that someone who emphasized the historical character of our experience wanted to provide interpretations that would transcend history.... If we are thoroughly involved in history it is difficult to see how we can achieve an objective viewpoint on human phenomena, yet this was the goal that Dilthey struggled all his life to achieve. He had accepted the dominant ideology of science as an activity that provides objective knowledge, but he could not identify a solid foundation for objective knowledge in the human sciences, whose legitimacy he sought to define.”

Martin