J. A. Barash. The History between Science and Art: Wilhelm Windelband and the Dilemma of the Neo-Kantian Theory of History

Abstract

This article examines the concept of substantiating the theory of history as a science, undertaken in the second half of the 19th century by representative of the Southwestern school of neo-Kantianism, W. Windelband, who creatively interprets Kant’s legacy. The founder of critical philosophy, Kant, gave scientific status only to various areas of natural science. From the point of view of the Koenigsberg thinker, the field of studying social events, culture and human life cannot be considered a science in the strict sense of the word, since it is limited to the description of social phenomena, and not the construction of laws that explain these processes. The law must correspond to the principle of universality, that is, it must have the ability to organize experience through a universal pure form, and not stem from experience. Windelband proposes to revise Kant’s teachings and develops his own concept of history. He introduces into the theory of knowledge, in addition to nomothetic concepts leading to the discovery of universal laws, ideographic concepts through which the history of cultures and worldviews of individual people are described with their personal ideas about values that are objectified in history. Thus, Windelband formulates a special scientific method for explaining causality in the interpretation of historical events, without resorting to the construction of universal laws. Explaining history using ideographic concepts allows us to rethink the very idea of science in relation to the sphere of freedom in which each person is a unique individual who creates values.