Die Transzendentale und die Psychologische Methode

Abstract

IN opposition to the positivism which avers that if we take care of facts method may be left to take care of itself, Dr. Scheler claims that the history of thought, its continuity notwithstanding, shows abundantly that each fresh conquest in knowledge is preceded by a definite, if often half-conscious, breach with outworn method. Kant's historic mission has been fulfilled, and, after a century's probation, the time has arrived to pass beyond him. Not, however, by the adoption in philosophy of that psychological method which, discredited in Condillac and Hume, has been encouraged by recent advances in technical psychology to essay rehabilitation in more plausible forms. Dr. Scheler is with contemporary psychology in its reaction in favour of real as against formal principles, development as against finality, the historical as against the mathematical temper. He is with the Kantian in his recognition of the quaestio juris and in his advocacy of an inverse or “reductive” method. In the result he accepts a formula from Eucken—that of a regress from “the well-founded phenomenon” of a culture embodied in a coherent aggregate of institutions to the real forces of which it is the living and still growing product. Arbeitswelt and Geistige Lebensform are the catchwords of this “noölogical” method.

Die Transzendentale und die Psychologische Methode.

Dr. Max F. Scheler. Pp. 181. (Leipzig: Dürr'schen Buchhandlung, 1900.) Mk. 4.