Philosophy: Wissenschaft or Weltanschauung?

Towards a Prehistory of the Analytic/Continental Rift

Andreas Staiti, 2013

ABSTRACT

In this paper I argue that new light can be shed on analytic/Continental divide by looking at the
controversy on the nature of philosophy in late 19th Century/early 20th Century Germany. The
controversy is between those thinkers who understand philosophy primarily as a world-view
(Weltanschauung) and those who insist that it should be understood as a science (Wissenschaft.)
The positions of the two main representatives of the two camps, Wilhelm Dilthey and Heinrich
Rickert, are presented and assessed. Their mutual disagreement on what philosophy ought to be
reflects in a striking way some of the major tensions existing between the analytic and the
Continental camp today. At the end of the paper I formulate a historical hypothesis about how
the Wissenschaft/Weltanschauung controversy petrified into the analytic/Continental divide.

You know that something must have gone wrong when you realize that the discipline you

devoted your life to shares important features with your breakfast. Now that the label analytic

has been almost officially replaced by the label Anglo-American, the analogy is fully rounded:

both philosophy and breakfast can be served either Anglo-American or Continental style.

Interestingly, the analogy is not just nominal. The attitude of Continentalists and Anglo-

Americanists towards one another is strikingly similar in both the sphere of breakfast and that of

philosophy. In places like Italy the idea of eating bacon and eggs in the morning tends to

nauseate people. They have nothing against bacon and eggs per se, which they otherwise enjoy

in a variety of ways. They simply refuse to accept that a meal including bacon and eggs can

qualify as breakfast. It might be a legitimate Italian lunch. On the American side of the Atlantic,

people certainly do not disdain tiny croissants and espresso shots. Only, they refuse to accept that

a meal consisting of one espresso shot and a tiny croissant can qualify as breakfast. It might be a

legitimate American snack. Analogously, not all self-styled analytical philosophers necessarily

1
despise debates over the impossibility of interpretation or the face of the other. They simply

refuse to accept that they can qualify as philosophy. On the opposite side, Continental

philosophers tend to think that most topics currently discussed among analysts, on top of being

fundamentally insipid, might be better accommodated in a math or in a linguistics department.

They are simply not ready to accept that they qualify as philosophy.

Now, whereas all will agree that in the domain of breakfast, cultural habit and personal

taste may have the last word about what ought to be, it is legitimate to hope for more reflected

and cogent criteria when it comes to demarcations in the most long-standing discipline of

Western culture. And still, as the most recent scholarly work on the subject reveals, a clear-cut

philosophical distinction between the two camps is rendered practically impossible by the

overwhelming variety of work accomplished under both labels.

In his informative book What is Analytic Philosophy?i Hans-Johann Glock considers and

dismisses a large number of concepts that have customarily been used to pinpoint the allegedly

distinctive traits of analytic philosophy. On his convincing account, there simply is nothing like a

common feature that identifies all and only analytic philosophers: What holds analytic

philosophers together is not a single set of necessary and sufficient conditions, but a thread of

overlapping similarities (doctrinal, methodological and stylistic.)ii Moreover, analytic

philosophy is first and foremost a historical sequence of individuals and schools that influenced,

and engaged in debate with, each other, without sharing any single doctrine, problem, method or

style.iii Simon Glendinning proposes a similar and equally convincing argument pertaining to

the Continental camp: [there] is simply no category that would begin to cover the diversity of

work produced by thinkers as methodologically and thematically opposed as those who are held

within the Continental one.iv

2
 This impasse faced by scholars attempting to pin down the Analytic/Continental divide to

a clear philosophical distinction, however, is not a merely negative result. It has the positive

effect of liberating us from the belief that insuperable theoretical disagreements are responsible

for the divide and it reveals the divide as what it is: a through and through historical contingency.

As Peter Simons argues in a very fine paper on this issue: the divide was never absolute, never

purely geographical, and above all [] it was not inevitable, but was largely the product of

accidental historical circumstances.v This should not be understood as if there were nothing

philosophically interesting about the divide and therefore the whole issue should be better left for

investigation by historians and sociologists of knowledge. Rather, what is historically contingent

is that a certain cluster of philosophemes crystallized into what is known as the

Analytic/Continental divide. It is thus advisable for the discontents of the divide to invest their

intellectual energies not so much on the divide as such, but rather on the historical path that made

certain per se neutral theoretical constituents petrify into the divide. Knowers of Husserlian

phenomenology will recognize in this proposal the method of reactivation of sedimented

meaning through transcendental-historical analysis employed by the founder of phenomenology

in the Crisis. In this paper I will rely on Husserls method. However, I will not focus on Husserl

but rather on the controversy between scientific philosophy and Weltanschauung philosophy,

which dominated the intellectual scene in Germany between the end of the 19th Century up until

the fall of the Weimar republic.

Scholars who have been trying to trace the historical roots of the Analytic/Continental

divide often addressed early 20th Century German-speaking philosophy. In particular, it has

become customary to consider the 1929 Davos conference on Kant featuring Martin Heidegger

and Ernst Cassirer as a watershed in the history of philosophy, where the future divide was

3
somehow foreshadowed.vi Without diminishing the importance of the Davos conference, I would

like to suggest thatas further reading in late 19th Century and early 20th Century Germany

philosophy quickly revealsthis episode is embedded in a much broader philosophical

controversy which had been going on for decades and in which issues relevant to the later

Analytic/Continental divide were often addressed much more explicitly than Heidegger and

Cassirer did in their debate.

As I will show in what follows, most of the salient ingredients of the

Analytic/Continental divide are present and discussed in the Wissenschaft/Weltanschauung

dispute. I will first present Weltanschauung philosophy as articulated by the great humanist

Wilhelm Dilthey. Subsequently, I will consider some illuminating writings by the most strenuous

advocate of wissenschaftliche Philosophie, Heinrich Rickert. In so doing, I will point

tangentially at some overlaps between Rickerts metaphilosophical considerations and those of a

prominent analytic thinker such as Michael Dummet. Similarly, some of Diltheys key ideas can

be found almost literally in the work of a contemporary Continental thinker such as Simon

Critchley. This is meant to prove that indeed the forgotten Wissenschaft/Weltanschauung dispute

is somehow sedimented in the Analytic/Continental divide. In conclusion, I will attempt to

answer a crucial question, provided that the reactivation of meaning carried out in the previous

sections enables us to do so in a novel way: Why did the philosophemes characterizing the

Wissenschaft/Weltanschauung dispute in Germany petrify into the Analytic/Continental divide?

4
 1. Wilhelm Dilthey and the Welt- und Lebensrtsel

Perhaps no other Century in Western history raised the question about what philosophy is

as vigorously as the 19th Century. In fact, from the point of view of philosophy, this question

becomes paramount when some kind of knowledge presenting itself as other than philosophical

gains foothold and contests the right of philosophy in important fields of inquiry. Something

similar happened in late antiquity when Christianity and its nascent theology challenged the

truths on God and the soul delivered by Greek philosophy. A lot of intellectual work was

necessary in order for philosophy to redefine its status in a world where the most reliable source

of knowledge was increasingly believed to lie in divine Revelation. In 19th Century Germany, the

country hosting the most sophisticated and advanced scientific community of the time, the

impressive progress of natural science and the birth of the so-called human sciences, posed a

serious challenge to philosophy. While more and more areas traditionally explored by

philosophers progressively branched off and developed their own empirical methodsone has to

think about psychology and political economy, to mention but twoa pressing question was

asked both by and to philosophers: what does philosophy have to offer to an educated person that

empirical science can in principle not provide?vii

The answer to this question was common to most philosophers: the empirical sciences are

necessarily specialized, i.e., they offer insight solely on isolated parts of reality. A person trained

exclusively in the empirical sciences (both natural and humanistic) would thus be bound to have

an extremely fragmented picture of herself and the world. Unlike specialized research,

philosophy strives to understand reality as a whole. While the empirical sciences deal with parts

of the world (Weltteile), philosophy is geared towards the world as a whole (Weltganze.) As one

5
can imagine, divergences among philosophers arose when it came to define more precisely the

meaning of the world as a whole and clarify how such a grasp of totality had to be concretely

achieved. Positivistically-minded thinkers such as Wilhelm Wundt (one of the founding fathers

of experimental psychology) understood philosophys aspiration to grasp the totality of the world

simply in terms of systematizing and integrating into one coherent picture the scattered results

stemming from the various empirical disciplines. His position, however, was largely criticized by

pure philosophers (those not simultaneously engaged in empirical research) for hastily

confusing the totality of the world with the sum total of its parts. It is not hard to realize that the

world considered as a whole raises questions (about its meaning, its fundamental constituents, its

knowability) that cannot be likewise meaningfully asked about the sum total of its parts. If I ask

about the meaning of the world as a whole, for example, I am clearly not asking about the

meaning of stones + trees + cats + people + gods etc. I may argue that the world as a whole is

nothing but the sum total of its parts but then some argument should be construed to defend this

identity, which is far from intuitive and does not hold for most things that we normally consider

wholes (e.g. an organism is not merely the sum total of its limbs; a cake is not merely the sum

total of its ingredients.)

Wilhelm Dilthey devoted much of his philosophical work to shed light on the peculiar

function of philosophy in the world of human culture: the conceptual articulation of the world as

a whole. In this connection, towards the end of the 19th Century, he launched a term that quickly

gained currency: Weltanschauung.viii By Weltanschauung he means a comprehensive view of the

world, of its meaning and purpose that precedes and grounds all further particular stances and

opinions about single occurrences in the world itself. The concept of Weltanschauung was

introduced by Dilthey in order to solve or at least reformulate a dire problem springing from the

6
historical consciousnessix (GS VIII, 3; 75; passim) so widely spread in the intellectual life of

the 19th Century: the relationship between philosophy and its history. To a historically informed

eye, a contradiction or, in Diltheys words, an antinomy (GS VIII, 3) seems to haunt

philosophy: on the one hand we see a multiplicity of philosophical systems spread through

history, and on the other, the claim to universal validity laid forth by each one of them in contrast

to all others.

This antinomy cannot be solved by way of a purely theoretical inquiry but it can be

dissolved with the aid of psychological and comparative method. While it is impossible to decide

once for all times which philosophical system is really true, it is possible to make sense of the

historical manifold (and thus dissolve the antinomy) by way of leading back all philosophical

systems to a pre-philosophical stance towards the world as a whole (a Weltanschauung) which

they seek to express conceptually. The crucial innovation in Diltheys understanding of

philosophy as based on a Weltanschauung lies in a distinction that runs through virtually all his

work: the one between the theoretically oriented man [der theoretisch eingestellte Mensch] and

man as a whole [der ganze Mensch.] According to this distinction, the theoretically oriented

man, i.e. the man who engages in scientific research, chooses to inhibit some of his spiritual

energies and give room to his intellect alone. In so doing he precludes himself from being

receptive for all those elements in the world that do not correlate with the intellect alone. An

exclusively theoretically oriented man is thus unfit for philosophy, because philosophy is

directed towards the world as a whole and the latter only reveals itself to man as a whole. Unlike

a merely theoretical posture towards the world (which, on Diltheys account, is always an

abstractive impoverishment of the genuine stance of a human being towards the world) a

Weltanschauung allows man to catch hold of the world as a whole. Installing oneself firmly in a

7
Weltanschauung is thus the first move for the prospective philosopher. This, however, means

that by definition extra-theoretical elements always necessarily factor into philosophy.

Philosophy itself is thus no longer understood as a merely theoretical product springing forth

from the one-sidedly [einseitig] oriented theoretical man but rather as an achievement of the all-

sidedly [allseitig] receptive man as a whole. As Dilthey pointed out already in his first major

work, the Introduction to the Human Sciences (1884): A historical as well as a psychological

approach to whole human beings led me to explain even knowledge and its concepts [] in

terms of the manifold powers of a being that wills, feels and thinks.x

The intellectual part of the human mind is thus viewed as tightly, and even inextricably

linked to other, extra-theoretical parts which will inevitably factor into philosophy, if the

wholeness of the human being is to be preserved. To sum up, a Weltanschauung is for Dilthey a

unitary stance towards the world as a whole, in which all the components of the human mind are

at play. Genuine philosophy springs forth from a Weltanschauung and not from the abstractive

attitude of a merely theoretically oriented man.

Man as a whole, however, is not an unchangeable substance but rather a fluid,

historically conditioned life, which unfolds in a process of constant self-readjustment and self-

reconfiguration.xi As he states emphatically: the ultimate root of Weltanschauung is life. (GS

VIII, 78) The accent on life is meant to counterbalance what Dilthey considered to be a one-

sided focus on the intellect in the tradition of transcendental philosophy. His project of a Critique

of the Historical Reason was meant to show how the activity of the intellect is always

interwoven with emotivity and will, the two psychic components that steer all our conscious life

and in light of which all our achievements (including those of the intellect) are ultimately

assessed.

8
 Once philosophy is led back to Weltanschauung (and thus exposed to its necessary extra-

theoretical constituents) and Weltanschauung is led back to life (and thus exposed to its

historical, emotional and volitional sources) the kind of work that Dilthey envisions for the

student of philosophy assumes a distinctive trait: As the botanist classifies plants and

investigates the laws of their growth, so must the analyst of philosophy hunt for the types of

Weltanschauung and recognize the regularity in their formation. Such a comparative procedure

raises the human mind above the conviction, rooted in its finitude, that in one of these

Weltanschauungen it has grasped truth itself.xii (EP, 41) On Diltheys account all philosophical

concepts, even those that appear most dry and neutral at first glance, resemble a chemical

precipitate, in which life and its dramatic struggle for self-understanding are somehow

sedimented, often in disguised form. The really interesting philosophical work is not the one

done with philosophical concepts, combining them in novel variations in order to produce

seemingly original ideas that will inevitably follow the destiny of past ones. Rather, the work

should focus on philosophical concepts, or perhaps behind them, trying to lay bare the life

which endeavored to express itself in them and in so doing learn more about our innermost

human being, which Dilthey considered constant throughout its historical vicissitudes. The last

word of the mind which has surveyed all these Weltanschauungen is not the relativity of each but

the sovereignty of the mind over against every single one of them, and also the positive

consciousness of how in the various attitudes of the mind the one reality of the world exists for

us. (EP, 66) Dilthey firmly believed that a discrete set of Weltanschauungen could be detected

and in so doing all available fundamental human attitudes towards the world could be accessed.

In his studies he reduces the Weltanschauungen to three, which he saw variously articulated

throughout history: naturalism, idealism of freedom and objective idealism. The details of his

9
doctrine do not need occupy us further here. As announced above, it is rather interesting to notice

how the tenets of Diltheys Weltanschauung-based understanding of philosophy strikingly

coincide with what Simon Critchley presents as touchstones in Continental philosophy: One

might say that the gain of the Continental tradition is that it allows one to focus on the essential

historicity of philosophy as a practice and the essential historicity of the philosopher who

engages in this practice.xiii And furthermore: The touchstone of philosophy in the Continental

tradition might be said to be practice; that is to say, our historically and culturally embedded life

in the world as finite selves.xiv

Another important element in Diltheys Weltanschauung-based understanding of

philosophy is that philosophy is not the only way in which a Weltanschauung can articulate

itself. Philosophy shares its obscure, frightening object, (GS VIII, 141) i.e. the riddle of life

and the world, with religion and art: two other fundamental ways in which a Weltanschauung

comes to expression. Philosophys domain is thus considered co-extensive with that of religion

and art: Not cold intellectual questions, but rather each of these aspects of life [is] given in the

struggle of ones heart. For our vitality every aspect of the world is originally something moving,

a vital connection, which stands in relationship with life. It resounds in chants, it is experienced

in storytelling and pantomime, myth brings it to expression. And when thoughtlong before any

tradition of philosophy whatsoevertries to express in concepts what myth, gnomic poetry,

theology or religion already gazed upon, there lives in each of these concepts something more

than the mere concept. And as long as metaphysical systems intend to express a world-nexus, in

them will respire this vitality from which they sprang forth. (GS VIII, 141.)

When life is aware of itself as a whole and thus stands before the world as a whole, it

faces its own finitude and, correlatively, the impossibility to understand the mystery of reality.

10
From this unfathomableness of life it follows that life can only be expressed in a metaphorical

language [Bildersprache.] Acknowledging this, clarifying its reasons and developing its

consequences would be the beginning of a philosophy that would really do justice to the great

phenomena of poetry, religion and metaphysics, since it would grasp the ultimate unity at their

core. They all speak out the same life, one in images, the other in dogmas, the other in concepts

[]. (GS XIX, 307).xv

It is hard to overestimate how crucial this idea of a unity at the core of philosophy,

religion and art is for current continental philosophy.xvi The coordination between these three

areas of human culture had been already established by Hegel. However, whereas for Hegel

philosophy represents a culmination in the process of lifes striving for self-knowledge, Dilthey

believes that the relationship between philosophy, art and religion must be one of mutual

enlightenment among peers. The effort to articulate philosophy in dialogue with religion and art,

as well as the frequent reference to artistic work and religious language within philosophical

inquiry is one of the key points of contention in the A/C divide. Generally speaking, it is fair to

say that most analytic thinkers consider the blurring of the boundaries between philosophy, art

criticism and religious studies characterizing much Continental literature a drawback,

detrimental to the specificity of philosophical inquiry. Moreover, as is well known, the

pronounced emphasis on the intrinsic historicity of philosophical thought is another point of

contention, mostly rejected by analysts.

In the next section I will present and discuss the critique of Dilthey and Weltanschauung

philosophy presented by Heinrich Rickert. Most of his concerns overlap with those commonly

spread among self-styled analytic philosophers thus completing the picture I proposed to offer at

the outset.

11
 2. Heinrich Rickerts defense of Scientific Philosophy

Diltheys philosophy and more generally the notion of Weltanschauung had a tremendous

impact especially on the younger generations in Germany. It seemed to offer a vital chance to

philosophy to redefine its identity and find a new intellectual space alongside art and religion, at

safe distance from the ever-expanding empirical sciences. Sweeping enthusiasm for

Weltanschauung philosophy was however counterbalanced by the severe criticism of eminent

thinkers in the so-called Neo-Kantian tradition. In particular, the head of the Southwestern

school of Neo-Kantianism, Heinrich Rickert (1863-1936), devoted the last decades of his career

to combat what he considered a dangerous pitfall gaping in the midst of the German

philosophical scene. Interestingly, he is also the first to identify a lineage comprising Nietzsche,

Dilthey, Kierkegaard and Heidegger as the adversaries of systematic and scientific inquiry in

philosophy. Two of his essays from the early 30es address directly Diltheys understanding of

philosophy and make a strong argument in defense of the necessity for philosophy to remain a

scientific discipline: Geschichte und System der Philosophie (1931)xvii and Wissenschaftliche

Philosophie und Weltanschauung (1933.)xviii The link between early analytic philosophy and the

movement of Neo-Kantianism in Germany is a story largely untold and several topics could be

addressed to show the continuity here at play.xix For the purpose of this paper I will only address

some of Rickerts metaphilosophical reflections.

In the first of his essays, Rickert tackles what he presents as a widely spread concern in

his days: whether we do too much history of philosophy, or more precisely, whether historical

inquiry plays an all too prominent role in the totality of philosophical work. (GSP, 231) Rickert,

who was himself a fine interpreter of the history of philosophy, was by no means advocating an

12
outright rejection of it. As the title of his essay suggests, he sets out to strike a balance between

systematic and historical work in such a way as to preserve the non-negotiable value at the core

of his own brand of philosophy: scientificity.

Rickert is of one mind with Dilthey and most philosophers of his time that philosophy

should grapple with the world as a whole and therefore be significantly distinct from

specialized empirical research. However, he refuses the equation of science with specialized

empirical research, which functions as an unwarranted assumption in Diltheys entire work.

Unless one is willing to dismiss science and scientificity as such, there seems to be no reason that

the ideal of logical or theoretical justification, (GSP, 247) which for Rickert is synonym with

science, should be invalid when it comes to an investigation of the world as a whole. Even if one

acknowledges the rights of extra-theoretical world-views (and Rickert is willing to do so), there

seems to be no cogent reason to reject the ideal of a theory of the world as a whole. As he states

emphatically: One may very well say: a Weltanschauung gives us more than mere science for

the totality of our life and is therefore better. However, doesnt the attempt to grasp the world as

a whole in a theoretical fashion remain likewise a worthwhile good? And does the better from

the point of view of the totality of life necessarily have to become the enemy of this good, which

is pursued by the theoretically oriented man? (WPW, 333)

Rickert thus advocates a distinction of Weltanschauung philosophy and scientific

philosophy, whereby both maintain their relative right, along the same line as Husserls in his

famous essay Philosophy as a Rigorous Science in 1911. However, Rickert goes on to suggest

that historically oriented Weltanschauung philosophy is unfit to investigate the world as a whole,

thus making a more sustained argument for the superiority of scientific philosophy than

Husserls. He gives two quite cogent reasons for this unfitness. (1) If historical interest alone

13
guides our philosophical inquiries, then we will be working with individualizing (also called

idiographic) concepts, i.e., concepts forged to grasp something individual and unrepeatable in

its unique value. This is for Rickert the distinctive trait of historical inquiry overall, as opposed

to the generalizing research of the natural sciences. If the world as a whole is what we are

shooting for in philosophy, we will not be able to grasp it by means of individualizing concepts,

which are designed to describe particulars.xx (2) If we do philosophy as whole human beings

and not as purely theoretically oriented human beings our stance will be co-determined by the

particularity of our emotions and desires and we will not be able to elevate ourselves to a

contemplation of the world as a whole. Only when man detaches himself from all a-theoretical

interests of life and existence and tries to think exclusively in theoretical or scientific terms does

he reach the freedom and autonomy required to take into view all that there is the world, i.e. the

world as a whole. Beforehand there is no occasion for man to raise questions that go beyond the

small world that he has built for himself and to which alone his pre-scientific Weltanschauung

refers. (WPW, 338)

Whereas for Dilthey only if the totality of our human energies are at play does the world

as a whole disclose itself to us, Rickert views the practical and emotional sides of our life as

restrictive rather than disclosive. The will and the heart bind us to particulars of the world that

are significant for us. The intellect alone, precisely because of its one-sidedness, teaches us to

leave these particulars behind as particulars and view them as part of a bigger world that

transcends our plans and expectations. On Rickerts account, Dilthey conflates the necessity of a

reflection on the totality of the human being with a reflection of the totality of the human being.

In other words, while the human being as a whole is definitely a legitimate philosophical theme,

this does not mean that philosophers should engage in their research as whole human beings. Of

14
course, a philosophy that aims at comprehensiveness as opposed to specialized empirical

research must by definition consider everything in its systematic account of the world, including

the emotional and practical dimensions of existence. However, this does not necessarily mean

that when we do philosophy we should let our prejudices, personal emotions and practical goals

co-determine and even provide justification for our philosophical claims. This is a conflation that

undermines not simply one way of doing philosophy as opposed to other but philosophy as a

discipline overall. Even if we want to maintain that our prejudices, personal emotions and goals

cannot (and perhaps even should not) be removed at one fell swoop when we start to

philosophize, this does not rule out the possibility to be constantly vigilant over them and do our

best to remove at some point along the way those that prove incompatible with rational insight. If

we go all the way to defend the strong version of this thesis and argue that prejudices, personal

emotions and goals are so engrained in our being that philosophical scrutiny can never uproot

them, even when they prove misleading, then it becomes unclear why we should engage in

philosophical scrutiny in the first place. Man as a whole is one of the subordinated topics

incorporated in a reflection on the world as a whole, a subject matter that can only be seized by

the theoretically oriented man and not by man as a whole.

Although he is very critical of the historical sense and he maintains that there is no

such thing as historical philosophy,xxi Rickert is by no means advocating a fully a-historical

approach to philosophy. Once the ill-suited temptation of dissolving philosophy into its history

has been dispelled and the intrinsically systematic character of philosophy has been reasserted,

the conditions are set to reformulate positively the relationship between philosophy and its

history. As a theoretical science, philosophy consists of a multiplicity of arguments and theories

(Rickert speaks of Sinngebilde) that lay claim to truth. Of course, these arguments and theories

15
were put forth but specific people in specific times. However, insofar as they lay claim to truth,

they solicit also a consideration purely from the point of view of their truth-value. Kant, for

instance, maintains that there are synthetic a priori judgments. We can ask historical questions

about this claim but then ultimately, if we want to take Kant seriously, we should attempt to say

whether this claim is legitimate or not, i.e., whether the statement there are synthetic a priori

judgments is true or false.

It is characteristic of specialized empirical research to look at its past exclusively from

the point of view of theoretical truth-value and in so doing to select and retain from the past only

those pieces of theory that prove correct. This attitude towards the past is the crucial condition to

construe a line of progress in empirical research. In order to be able to test the truth-value of a

piece of theory and eventually incorporate it in the systematic content of a certain discipline a

double particularization is necessary. First, the piece of theory must be isolated from the

theoretical nexus in which it was originally formulated without altering its meaning. Second, the

piece of theory must be isolated from the total personality of the researcher (GSP, 257) and

thus become entirely impersonal. Rickert gives the illuminating example of Keplers laws: they

are accepted as true, regardless of the largely outdated astronomical framework in which they

were originally formulated and regardless of Keplers own personality and philosophical agenda.

The possibility of this double particularization of pieces of theoretical truth is what renders

possible the compilation of handbooks, whose function is to offer to the apprentice scientist

exclusively selected pieces of past knowledge. The very notion of handbook presupposes the

isolability of knowledge and is guided by an idea of progress in relation to the past. In this way,

the question about the relationship between philosophy and its history for Rickert can be

reformulated in these terms: Are handbooks possible in philosophy?

16
 The answer for Rickert has to be in the negative. He gives two reasons for this: (1) every

philosophical project is (by definition) an attempt to gain knowledge about the world as a whole.

Knowledge about the world as a whole, however, cannot be compressed in a single statement or

piece of theory in the same way as knowledge about parts of the world. We can only conceive of

scientific knowledge about the world as a whole as an infinite task in indefinite systematic

progression. Therefore, the isolation of a piece of philosophical theory from the whole

systematic project in which is belongs alters its meaning and makes it unphilosophical (i.e. no

longer directed towards the world as a whole.) This first kind of particularization is thus

impossible in philosophy. (2) A theory about the world as a whole will necessarily entail

references to all of the worlds parts. The removal of all historical, personal and contingent views

from the content of a philosophical system is thus not only unattainable but it also violates (by

definition) the task of producing knowledge about the world as a whole. The ideal of complete

impersonality and a-historicality in philosophy is not only unrealistic. To the extent that it

invokes the removal of some parts of the world it is at odds with what Rickert takes to be

philosophys genuine task.

It should be emphasized that Rickert is not hereby making a concession to

Weltanschauung philosophy as one might be tempted to think. On his account extra-theoretical

elements do factor into philosophy but not so much on the subjective side, as Dilthey would have

it. For Rickert the true philosopher strives to work as a theoretically oriented man and not as a

whole person. Historical contingencies, personal values and feelings enter into philosophy on the

objective side, i.e. they are and must be incorporated in the content of philosophical inquiry

alongside purely theoretical contents. In order to make sense of a philosophical project and

eventually decide about its tenability we thus have to consider it as a whole and relate it to the

17
extra-theoretical conditions in which it was conceived. These latter will all the more figure in its

content the tighter and more coherent the system is. In other words, if philosophy wants to relate

to its past systematically it has to relate to it historically at the same time. We need to appreciate

the history of a certain philosophical idea and the conceptual framework in which it is embedded

if we want to make a sound decision about its truth and retain it for future philosophizing. We

cannot rely on the strategy of isolation and de-personalization of truths typical of specialized

research and its handbooks. The philosopher cannotlike the specialized researcherpreserve

the truth-content of past philosophy in systematic handbooks. On the contrary, he has to be

knowledgeable about the past of philosophy also in terms of its history precisely if he wants to

ascertain its absolute truth-value and retain it in the present. (GSP, 268)

It is striking to read statements virtually identical to Rickerts in Michael Dummets last

work, The Nature and Future of Philosophy (2010): Philosophy produces explorations, which

may indeed generate theories; but great philosophical writing never yields all that it contains on a

single reading or to a single reader. It aims not to formulate theses detachable from their authors

expression of them, but to provide insight into very complex conceptual tangles; that is why we

cannot compose a resume of all that Plato or Kant had to say and encapsulate it in textbooks,

removing the need to go on reading their works. The concepts explored by philosophers are those

in terms of which we think and engage with one another: to describe them is to delineate their

roles within what Wittgenstein called our form of life.xxii Although this is widely spread

practice in todays academia, the production and use of handbooks only gives to philosophy an

air of scientificity. However, insofar as this practice fails to appreciate the disciplinary specificity

of philosophy and its difference from specialized research, it is an extremely unscientific

practice, at least if we accept Rickerts and Dummetts arguments.xxiii

18
 Another point of convergence of Rickerts understanding of philosophy and recent claims

by self-styled analytic philosophers concerns the issue of progress in philosophy. As Scott Soams

states: if progress [in philosophy] is to be made, there must at some point emerge a clear

demarcation between genuine accomplishments that need to be assimilated by later practitioners,

and other work that can be forgotten, disregarded, or left to those whose interest is not in the

subject itself, but in history for its own sake.xxiv Rickert would definitely agree on this point, as

well as with Dummetts statement that: Philosophical progress unquestionably occurs, but it is

exceedingly slow. The progress consists in establishing that certain lines of argument fail,

showing how they can be strengthened, drawing previously unperceived distinctions.xxv If

philosophy consists of theoretical statements, i.e., statements that lay claim to truth, the rejection

of false claims and the adoption of true claims necessarily result into an advancement of the

discipline as a whole. However, as Rickert aptly emphasizes: Scientific progress in philosophy

does not occur as is the case in specialized disciplines step by step or through the elaboration

of specific problems. Rather, [progress in philosophy] occurs only in totalities, which means

from system to system. Therefore not the history of individual problems but only the history of

entire systems can be made fruitful for systematic work. [] Philosophy does not deal with

problems that are entirely separable from one another and therefore it does not have a history of

problems [Problemgeschichte]. (GSP, 269)

With these statements, Rickert successfully mediates between the two extremes of a fully

a-historical and a hyper-historical understanding of philosophy. We should neither reject the

history of philosophy outright nor fall into its arms without further ado. Once history is put in its

right place and its relation to systematic work is understood correctly, it can be rendered fruitful

for the advancement of the discipline.

19
 3. Conclusions

After our journey through the Wissenschaft/Weltanschauung dispute it is now time to

conclude by answering the question posed at the end of the introduction: Why did the

philosophemes characterizing the Wissenschaft/Weltanschauung dispute in Germany petrify into

the Analytic/Continental divide? The whole purpose of the above discussions was to reactivate

the sedimented meaning of certain philosophical motifs, in order to gain a better understanding

of the divide. I believe that at least two breaches must be mentioned which let the

Wissenschaft/Weltanschauung dispute petrify into the Analytic/Continental divide. Both

occurred over the course of two decades, i.e. between the late 20s and the early 40s: (1)

Scientific philosophy stopped speaking German and (2) Weltanschauung philosophy stopped

speaking Kantian.

As for the first point, it is well known that most defenders of a scientific view of the

philosophical enterprise emigrated from the German-speaking world and started thinking and

working in English. But this was only one step in the mutual estrangement of the two camps. The

other, even more significant, was the publication and rapid diffusion of Heideggers Being and

Time in 1927. With his groundbreaking work Heidegger marked a major turn in the history of

philosophy: he gave Weltanschauung philosophy a new language. Up until Being and Time both

scientific philosophers such as Rickert and Weltanschauung philosophers such as Dilthey shared

a common language and a common conceptual arsenal: the one inherited by Immanuel Kant.

Their standpoints are opposite but they are still articulated within the same semantic and

conceptual space: both Rickert and Dilthey talk about the intellect, emotivity, the will, the

20
validity of knowledge and its limits, the relationship between intuition and cognition and

virtually all the items that constitute the Kantian galaxy.

The common space for the dispute provided by Kantian philosophy was no longer

available once Weltanschauung philosophy found in Heideggers a completely novel (and more

powerful) language to articulate its own standpoint. I do not mean to infuriate Heidegger

scholars by suggesting that his philosophy is simply reducible to Weltanschauung philosophy.

There is certainly more to his work, but I think it is undeniable that most of his key ideas such as

the primacy of Zuhandenheit over Vorhandenheit, the critique of the ideal of standpointlessness

in philosophy, his emphasis on factic life as opposed to abstract subjectivity and many other

overlap with the philosophical agenda of Weltanschauung thinkers like Dilthey. His great

achievement was to create a novel language, which allowed the theoretical motifs of

Weltanschauung philosophy to come to full fruition. This however, came with an entry fee: the

loss of communication with scientific philosophers, whose language and thought remained

largely Kantian while at the same time migrating from German to English.

A rapid glance at key figures in the early analytic tradition would quickly reveal that their

philosophical DNA is still Kantian. They still discuss issues such as a priori knowledge, the

impossibility of metaphysics, the validity of science and the role of logic for scientific thought.

However, their progressive estrangement from Weltanschauung philosophy (due to this latters

shift to the Heideggerian idiom) rendered them oblivious to positions that the previous

generation of scientifically-minded thinkers (such as Rickert) did not approve but nonetheless

understood.

More could be said about this historical watershed, and further developments in

scientific philosophy could be pursued. Most importantly, the temptation of specialization

21
widely spread in Anglo-American philosophy and amply testified by the diffusion of handbooks

should be addressed. Contemporary Continental philosophy is itself not immune from this

temptation and perhaps the next challenge in both camps will be (or ought to be?) to recover the

genuine sense of philosophy as a discipline geared towards understanding the world as a whole.

These considerations, however, would probably lead away from specific philosophical inquiry

and require treatment in the sociology of knowledge and education. However, it is encouraging

to see that people of good will are not lacking on both sides of the divide and that the current

situation is much more fluid and open than it was just a few decades ago. In this sense, and to

conclude this paper, probably the best recommendation for discontents in both camps is the old

Latin adage: age quod agis.

i Glock 2008.
ii Glock 2008: 19.
iii Glock 2008: 19.
iv Glendinning 2006: 115.
v Simons 2001: 295.
vi See Friedman 2000 and Gordon 2010.
vii This question had a tremendous impact not only among theoreticians but also among the administrators and

politicians working at a wide-ranging school and University reform. For an informative discussion of this issue see
Phillips 2010.
viii Dilthey is not the first philosopher to use the word Weltanschauung, whose first (non-technical) occurrence dates

back to Kants Critique of Judgment. Diltheys (and Brentanos) teacher Adolf Trendelenburg included a theory of
Weltanschauungen in his philosophical system. Dilthey, however, is the first to place the notion of Weltanschauung
at the core of philosophy and in so doing he inaugurates the dispute around this term. For an informative discussion
of the history of the term see Naugle 2002: 55-67; Kreiter 2007.
ix Dilthey 1960. Hereafter GS VIII. Unless otherwise specified all translations are my own.
x Dilthey 1989: 50.
xi
Analytic thinkers should think here about the second Wittgensteins notion of life-forms, a term that, incidentally,
he seems to have taken from Dilthey.
xii Dilthey 1955. Hereafter EP.
xiii Critchley 1997: 355.
xiv
Critchley 1997: 357.
xv Dilthey 1982. Hereafter GS XIX.
xvi For an instructive discussion of this point see Chase/Reynolds 2010: 153-162.
xvii H. Rickert, Geschichte und System der Philosophie in Rickert 1999: 231-317. Hereafter GSP.
xviii H. Rickert, Wissenschaftliche Philosophie und Weltanschauung in Rickert 1999: 325-346. Hereafter WPW.
xix For example, Rickert articulated in great detail a distinction between Kennen and Erkennen, the very same

distinction that undergirds Moritz Schlicks Allgemeine Erkenntnistheorie and was later recast by Russell in terms of
knowledge by acquaintance versus knowledge by description.

22
xx Examples of individualizing concepts, for Rickert, would be The French revolution or the British trench poets.
These concepts are designed to encapsulate unique events in history and not regular occurrences in the natural
world. An extended presentation of individualizing versus generalizing concepts is offered in Rickerts opus
magnum Die Grenzen der naturwissenschaftlichen Begriffsbildung (abridged English translation: Rickert 1986.)
xxi Rickert 1922: 49.
xxii
Dummett 2010: 35-36.
xxiii The activity of isolating pieces of philosophical theory from the systematic context in which they were

formulated (which both Rickert and Dummett dismiss as bad philosophy) should not be conflated with the activity
of isolating forms of argument and assess their logical strength, which both Rickert and Dummett would welcome as
a perfectly sound thing to do. To give an example: trying to decide whether or not there are synthetic a priori
judgments without taking into consideration Kants whole project is a philosophically unacceptable move. We want
our decision on this issue to be informed by a decent knowledge of Kants system as a whole. Attempting to work
out the general structure of transcendental arguments and assessing their logical cogency like Austin famously did
is a different kind of activity and is perfectly acceptable. This, however, and very much in Austins spirit, cannot
be considered philosophical work yet. Rather, it can be seen as preliminary work of logical refinement that can
provide helpful tools for subsequent actual philosophizing.
xxiv Soames 2006: 655.
xxv
Dummett 2010: 22.

REFERENCES

Chase, J./Reynolds, J. (2010), Analytic versus Continental. Arguments on the Methods and Value
of Philosophy. Montreal: McGill-Queens University Press.

Critchley, S. (1997), What is Continental Philosophy?, International Journal of Philosophical

Studies, 5: 347-365.

Dilthey, W. (1955), The Essence of Philosophy. Translated by S.A. & W.T. Emery. Chapel Hill:
North Carolina University Press.

Dilthey, W. (1960), Weltanschauungslehre. Abhandlungen zur Philosophie der Philosophie.

Volume VIII of Gesammelte Schriften. Edited by B. Groethuysen. Gttingen: Vandenhoeck &
Ruprecht.

Dilthey, W. (1982), Grundlegung der Wissenschaften vom Menschen, der Gesellschaft und der
Geschichte. Ausarbeitungen und Entwrfe zum zweiten Band der Einleitung in die
Geisteswissenschaften (ca. 1870-1895). Volume XIX of Gesammelte Schriften. Edited by H.
Jonach & F. Rodi. Gttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht.

Dilthey, W. (1989), Introduction to the Human Sciences. Volume I of Selected Works. Edited
and translated by R.A. Makkreel & F. Rodi. Princeton NJ: Princeton University Press.

Dummett, M. (2010), The Nature and Future of Philosophy. New York: Columbia University
Press.

23
Friedman, M. (2000), A Parting of the Ways. Heidegger, Cassirer and Carnap. Chicago/La
Salle: Open Court.

Glendinning, S. (2006), The Idea of Continental Philosophy. A Philosophical Chronicle.

Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press 2006.

Glock, H.-J. (2008), What is Analytic Philosophy? Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Gordon, P. (2010), Continental Divide. Heidegger, Cassirer, Davos. Cambridge: Harvard

University Press.

Kreiter, D. (2007), Philosophy as Weltanschauung in Trendelenburg, Dilthey, and Windelband,

Online Resource: http://dare.ubvu.vu.nl/bitstream/1871/10750/1/dissertatie.CRC.19032007.pdf

Naugle, D. (2002), Worldview. The History of a Concept. Grand Rapids/Cambridge: Eerdmans.

Phillips, D. (2010), Epistemological Distinctions and Cultural Politics: Educational Reform and
the Naturwissenschaft/Geisteswissenschaft Distinction in Nineteenth-Century Germany, in U.
Feest (ed.), Historical Perspectives on Erklren and Verstehen. Dordrecht: Springer: 15-35.

Rickert, H. (1922), Die Philosophie des Lebens. Darstellung und Kritik der philosophischen
Modestrmungen unserer Zeit. Tbingen: Mohr Siebeck.

Rickert, H. (1986), The Limits of Concept Formation in Natural Science. Translated by G.

Oakes. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Rickert, H. (1999), Philosophische Aufstze. Edited by H.-R. Bast. Tbingen: Mohr Siebeck.

Simons, P. (2001), Whose Fault? The Origins and Evitability of the AnalyticContinental Rift,
International Journal of Philosophical Studies, 9: 295-311.

Soames, S. (2006), What is history for? Reply to Critics of the Dawn of Analysis,
Philosophical Studies, 129: 645-665.

24