Verstehen and Humane Understanding

This new collection of essays addresses topics that are of crucial importance to the lives of us all. Is there a mode of thinking peculiar to human life and its concerns, which is different from and irreducible to scientific rationality? Is historical understanding different from scientific understanding? Do psychology, religion and aesthetics have their own forms of rationality? Can you be rational about human life without being scientific? The contributors address these and related questions, some focusing on the history of the development of the notion of Verstehen, others examining particular areas of discourse and practice.

• A topic rarely addressed in a non-partisan way • Will be of interest to a particularly broad range of readers

Preface; ‘Two Cultures’ revisited Anthony O’Hear; Rational and other animals John Haldane; Vico and metaphysical hermeneutics Leon Pompa; Three major originators of the concept of Verstehen: Vico, Herder and Schleirmacher Roger Hausheer; Weber’s ideal types as models in the social sciences Friedel Weinert; Verstehen, holism and fascism David Cooper; Interpretation in history: Collingwood and historical understanding Patrick Gardiner; The meaning of the hermeneutic tradition in contemporary philosophy Andrew Bowie; Science and psychology Ilham Dilman; To mental illness via a Rhyme for the Eye T. S. Champlin; Can there be an epistemology of moods? Stephen Mulhall; Feeling and cognition Barrie Falk; Believing in order to understand Cyril Barrett; Data and theory in aesthetics: philosophical understanding and misunderstanding Ronald Hepburn; Anti-meaning as ideology: the case of deconstruction Robert Grant; Perictione in colophon Roger Scruton; Index of names.