O historicismo de Wilhelm Dilthey em contraponto à concepção positivista sobre o estudo da humanidade

Abstract

This paper points out the positivist and historicist visions of humanity, with the aim of showing how historicism, especially that of Wilhelm Dilthey, criticizes the positivist conception. For this thinker, it is impossible to study phenomena inside man by applying the same method used by the natural sciences, as was advocated by Auguste Comte's positivism. The positivist view prevents us from looking at an important factor when it comes to human beings, which is their experience, in other words, human life. This is because it is particular and influenced by the historical context. For Dilthey, the action of the abstract sciences on human elements makes them decomposed, with their horizons devastated, understanding this phenomenon as a process of "unlivification". Dilthey believes that human life must be understood differently from the way in which the objects of the natural sciences are explained. In this respect, we will see that the philosopher, in proposing a method specific to the human sciences or, as he calls them, the "sciences of the spirit" (Geisteswissenschaften), argues that this method must be based on the realization of historical reason. The concept of historical reason involves making a historical critique of reason itself, seeking to understand that there are no universal notions that can apply to all human beings and nations. Thus, since there are no a priori universal notions and values, this means that every historical phenomenon is finite, revealing the historical awareness of the finitude of every human or social situation. What Dilthey's historicism does is seek a balance between the contingency of the historical world and the consolidation of the universal and objective aspect of the method of the human sciences, a method based on hermeneutics. Obtaining knowledge through the hermeneutic method of understanding life is achieved by understanding the structure of the historical world, since historicity is nothing more than something characteristic of human life. Thus, all the experiences of consciousness, as well as worldviews, express the materializations of the objective spirit of each era.