philosophical anthropology: revolt against the division of intellectual labor

Philosophical Anthropology: Revolt against the Division of Intellectual LaborAuthor(s): Osborne WigginsSource: Human Studies, Vol. 7, No. 3/4 (1984), pp. 285-299Published by: SpringerStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/20008921 .

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Human Studies 7:285-299 (1984).

? Martinus Nijhoff Publishers, Dordrecht. Printed in the Netherlands.

PHILOSOPHICAL ANTHROPOLOGY: REVOLT AGAINST THE DIVISION OF INTELLECTUAL LABOR

OSBORNE WIGGINS

New School for Social Research

The special task of philosophy must always be to oppose the intellectual division of labor, no matter how useful and even in?

dispensable it may be to the progress of science. Philosophy can never deny its own

universal character, and if it yields to the spirit of mere facts, if it ceases to be system? atic and "encyclopedic," it will really have renounced itself.

Ernst Cassirer, writing on A. Comte

(1950)

The novelty of Marx is not to have reduced

philosophy...to economics; it is rather to have sought in economic problems the exact

equivalent and visible figure of philosophical ones.

Maurice Merleau-Ponty (1969)

From the first, philosophical anthropology has been linked with the modern human sciences.1 Wilhelm Dilthey (1976), a central figure in

philosophical anthropology, was also a prominent historian. Georg Simmel (1918), a forceful spur to this philosophy, was, of course, one

of the shapers of theoretical sociology. It is less widely known that Max Scheler (1961, 1980), the founding father of philosophical an?

thropology, played a formative role in the birth of the sociology of

knowledge. The tie between this philosophical discipline and the hu? man sciences was twofold. (1) The human sciences from the outset

developed different and even incompatible conceptions of human



286

existence. This clashing of views seemed to call for philosophical media?

tion and integration. And (2) it appeared that philosophical reflection on human life - as old as philosophy itself - could now be extended

and tested by benefitting from the wealth of details and facts supplied by empirical inquiries. The growing body of factual discoveries could henceforth inform and enrich philosophy.

The wedding of philosophy and human science seemed advantageous to both: the sciences would gain consistency and unity through a

philosophical reflection on their formulations, and philosophy would transcend its own traditional limitations by learning from empirical research into the human. But, like most marriages in our century, this

one proved rocky. If there were divergencies and inconsistencies in the

scientific image of man, these faults, it was argued, could best be

remedied by the sure development of empirical science itself. Why, after all, should science appeal to philosophy to settle its quarrels? Such discrepancies as there were could be safely resolved only through a recasting of scientific theory in direct contact with the factual givens. In the understanding of human life, in other words, the empirical sciences could claim autonomy and render philosophy superfluous.

In order to prove its indispensability, philosophy then scrambled to

locate some privileged domain of being which it alone could illuminate.

Thus we see philosophers mark out territories which remain purported?

ly off-limits to empirical investigators: transcendental consciousness,

Being qua Being, value as opposed to fact, invariant truth and validity as opposed to culturally relative world-views, or even the methods of

the human sciences themselves which, it was said, those disciplines could only presuppose but never justify. If the human sciences could

declare their independence from philosophy, then philosophy would

reply by asserting its own separateness and autonomy. In this cold war of mutual isolation, the human sciences have tended

to win. Jean Piaget (1971), for example, posits a closed circle of the

sciences in which mathematics, logic, physics, chemistry, and biology

ground the human disciplines; and the latter, in turn, explain the men?

tal genesis of the physical and formal sciences. I call this circle "closed"

because it assigns no role to philosophy, its traditional problems having been absorbed by empirical psychology. Claude Levi-Strauss (1970), too, imagines that the day is near when science "will be strong enough to replace philosophy." Levi-Strauss' anthropology is prepared to take

over from transcendental philosophy the duty of explaining the uni?

versality of reason.

Yet if the human sciences are eager to inherit the traditional prob



287

lems of philosophy, they only reveal their continuing bond with it. For

philosophy and the human sciences have exchanged and shared prob? lems from the start. This overlap between the two is rooted in modern

consciousness itself. I would like to return briefly to the decisive event

for modernity, Descartes' separation of mind from extended matter, in order to re-situate philosophy and the human sciences. This will

permit me to explore some differences among the sciences themselves.

Perhaps then I can assign a needful role to philosophical anthropology. In the entire Modern period, philosophy has been exploiting the im?

plications of Cartesian dualism. The precarious connection which Des?

cartes tried to re-establish between res cogitans and res extensa after

first dividing them convinced only a few. The metaphysical division remained because the advance of modern natural science bore it out.

There really existed, as Descartes had promised, a nature which could

be described in mathematical terms as matter in motion. And this na?

ture, which every scientific breakthrough only confirmed, proved vast?

ly different from the world of ordinary experience. Nature could be

grasped by a science which was invariant, exact, univocal, and clear; the world of everyday perception, however, remained variable, dif?

fuse, relative, ambiguous, and obscure. Thus nature exhibited all the

virtues of objectivity while the ordinary world embodied the weak? nesses of subjectivity. By the middle of the nineteenth century, Des?

cartes' dualism seemed to have been corroborated by the two centu?

ries of steady progress since Descartes first proclaimed it.

If the progress of natural science proved Descartes correct, then

only three options remained for subsequent philosophy. (1) It could embrace the Cartesian dualism. This entailed that consciousness be

viewed as residing within an organism described by the science of

biology, and this organism was in turn located within a natural envi? ronment described by physics and chemistry. Mental events then

proved causally dependent upon organic and inorganic ones. Mind ?

although perhaps not itself natural ? lives within nature and is

causally bound to natural events. I shall call this position "naturalism."

(2) The nature described by the physical sciences is a closed and exclu? sive realm, harboring no alien spirits. Natural science exhaustively explains all there is. Consciousness does not exist. This I term "mate?

rialism." And (3) Consciousness is all there is. Natural science resem? bles political institutions, language, and moral codes in being a product of mind, an objectification of consciousness. In subjectivity we find the origin and genesis of all objectivity. This last position I label "idealism."

Philosophy bequeathed these options to the human sciences. A dual



288

is tic and naturalistic science can explain human actions as adaptations of a mind/body to its environment. This position can both speak freely of mental events and at the same time seek a neurophysiological basis

for them. The monism of materialism, however, restricts the student

of human affairs to the language of physics, chemistry, and biology. Idealistic social science traces all of culture, society, and science itself

back to the workings of human consciousness, both individual and col

lective. Modern science, for idealism, becomes just another interpreta? tion of the world; and all world-views are historical creations of con?

sciousness. Among these three options, human science itself seems un?

able to ajudicate. For each alternative claims comprehensiveness; each

claims to provide an adequate account of the manifold facts.

Of these three options naturalism eventually became the most promi nent and persuasive because it was adopted by experimental psycholo?

gy. Apart from a few flirtations with materialist denials of mind, psy?

chology has practiced a naturalistic dualism (Gurwitsch, 1966, pp. 89

106). Mental events do occur, but their occurrence is strictly con?

ditioned by neurophysiological ones. Mind and its workings are de?

pendent upon organic and inorganic matter. The universe which con?

sciousness inhabits is thus a world properties are enumerated by the

physical sciences. Psychology refers to physics, chemistry and biology for concepts and models.

An especially clear case of this is to be found in the current employ? ment of models2 of artificial intelligence. We know how artificial intel?

ligence works; physics can supply those theories. We do not know how

human intelligence works. Thus those physicalistic laws which account

for artificial intelligence can perhaps function as models for the human.

Structures of computer processes are compared with the more elusive

structures of mental processes. As with all modeling, only time, i.e., further research, will tell whether such isomorphisms exist. What I

wish to emphasize is that psychology reveals its naturalistic commit

ments through its searchings in the physical for clues to the mental.

I hasten to add that nothing is amiss here. We have every reason ? and

more and more reasons daily ? to believe that mental affairs depend,

for their existence and organization, on physical ones. Concentrating on this, however, does tie psychology closely to the physical sciences.

Yet in the first decades of our century many human scientists re?

mained uneasy with dualism, and accordingly they longed for the

unity of monism: materialism and idealism continued to attract de?

fenders. It was into this fray among dualists, idealists, and materialists

that the original philosophical anthropologists stepped. These philoso



289

phers defined their projects as one of reconciliation and integration.

Naturalism, materialism, and idealism all embrace some truths. But

these truths remain partial and are mistaken for the whole. The whole

is neither natural organism, nor pure mind, nor an acknowledgement of the two as somehow conjoined. The whole is rather life (Jonas,

1966). And Cartesian dualism, as it stands, renders life unintelligible. This dualism must be surmounted so that life can be re-conceived as

integral. From this truly unified conception of human Ufe, we may then understand how it can be engaged in both metabolic exchanges

with the environment and symbolic formations of culture.

In order to achieve this re-integration, to re-conceive human Ufe

as a unified whole, philosophical anthropology sought to uncover a

region of human existence prior to any dualistic distinctions, prior to

any disjunctions between the mental and the physical, a region which, in Helmut Plessner's terms (1981), remained "psychophysically neu?

tral." That region Edmund Husserl (1970) had characterized as the "lifeworld." The Ufeworld, Husserl claimed, is the historical horizon of human existence, necessarily presupposed by all scientific distinc?

tions and thus prior to any such distinctions. In somewhat Kantian

terms, the Ufeworld acts as the a priori condition for the possibility of scientific knowledge.

In the return to the Ufeworld, however, the phenomenologists proved to be latecomers. For social scientists had arrived there decades earlier, and it was precisely this domain of human life that the several sciences had parceled out among themselves. The Ufeworld is indeed the socio?

historical miUeu of man prior to Cartesian-inspired separations of the mental from the physical. In the face of the facts, social sciences, such as anthropology, sociology, economics, and political science, were

forced to discard quasi-metaphysical disjunctions between conscious? ness and materiality. PoUtics, for example, cannot long be conceived as either exclusively mental or physical. FideUty to the subject matter therefore led the poUtical scientist away from Cartesian assumptions and toward political practices, institutions, and values which were

integraUy human and inseparably both mental and material. The social

sciences, in other words, found their data to be "psychophysicaUy neutral." Before Husserl they discovered and rather carefully explored the HusserUan Ufeworld.

This focus on the Ufeworld severs the social sciences from natural science. The world within which human life takes place exhibits none of the things and events described by physics, chemistry, or biology. It is rather a world replete with institutions, laws, social roles, com



290

petitive markets, marriages, and religious rituals. In short, it is the full?

blown region of social, poUtical, economic, and religious existence with

all of its meanings, values, needs, and actions. Physical science must

abstracts completely from these meanings, values, needs, and actions

in order to arrive at the material substratum which underlies them.

Social science avoids such high-level abstractions. That is why one can

find a precision, exactitude, and lawfulness in physical reality which

one cannot locate in the Ufeworld: the lifeworld is the human domain in its fullness, and there an ambiguity and multiplicity prevail which

escape sharp contrasts and predictable regularities. The definition of

social roles, for example, will never become exact; it will forever evade

strict laws. This is so because the notion refers to a reality in the social

world which is too rich in its concrete implications to be precisely separated from others. The concept of inertia in physics, on the other

hand, permits exact specification since it can be defined only after one

abstracts from that concrete miUeu in which human existence takes

place.

But here a decisive methodological difference between psychology and

the other human sciences becomes plain. The concepts and theories of

psychology tend to resemble those of the natural sciences because, as

I maintained earlier, psychology draws its orientation from those scien?

ces. Now, on the contrary, the other social sciences keep their distance

from the physical sciences. They rather stay close to the world in which

we already Uve as ordinary human beings (Gurwitsch, 1974). This is

why Husserl caUed it "the Ufeworld": It is the world we already know

because we ourselves inhabit it and make our practical way in it before

we become scientists who study it. Thus the scientific concepts and

propositions we employ to investigate this domain are drawn from the

knowledge we already possess as social participants in a particular cul?

ture. This pre-scientific knowledge is, of course, re-shaped, refined,

generaUzed, and systematized. But the rootedness of our social scien?

tific understanding in pre-scientific experience cannot be eUminated

without the entire edifice of science becoming unintelligible. Hence

the methods of social science are those of hermeneutics, critical theory, and descriptive phenomenology: these methods acknowledge and se?

cure the relations between scientific theory and everyday practice. The social sciences, I have said, refused to follow psychology with

its naturaUstic approach to mind and body. They took up their "psy?

chophysically neutral" positions within the lifeworld. Yet, for all that,

they have not refrained from carving up the lifeworld itself along other



291

conceptual lines. In order to delimit and secure their own separate

subject matters, the several social sciences have sought to cordon off

the lifeworld into different provinces. If sociology, for instance, is to demonstrate its independence from political science, on the one hand, and economics, on the other, it must isolate "the peculiarly social,"

i.e., a domain of phenomena, relatively separate from others, which

can be studied in its own right. And it does prove possible to detach certain clusters of phenomena from others - at least relatively so

and to investigate their intrinsic characteristics. Durkheim (1964), for example, was able to argue that the "social facts" of "collective

consciousness" could not be reduced to either biological or psycho?

logical realities because social facts exhibit their own special and inter?

connected properties. One can then abstract from biological, psycho?

logical, and other characteristics and thereby circumscribe an area of

human reality peculiar to sociology. The lifeworld is accordingly par? celed out into distinct series of data, each of which becomes the prov? ince of a different discipline.

Yet this division of labor bears troublesome offspring. The bounda? ries separating the various subject matters tend to be wide and all

encompassing. No sooner does each discipline circumscribe its own

domain than it begins to interpret other areas as sub-divisions within

that domain. Max Weber (1978, pp. 3-24), for example, defines the subject matter of sociology as "social action." But somewhat later he

treats political, economic, and religious behavior as sub-classes of

social action. Society, then, appears to include politics, religion, and

economics as its parts, and sociology becomes a "master discipline" comprehending diverse human activities. The boundaries between sub?

ject matters are overrun as each science tends to become totalitarian. Each science accounts for the whole.

But the logic of the problem soon becomes clear: if social action can be found everywhere, that is because it runs through everything.

Weberian sociology turns out, not to have isolated a certain province of human reality, but rather to have adopted a particular perspective on the whole. The terms which define social action and thereby delimit the subject matter of sociology thus apply to all human activities but not to all of their parts. To perceive other aspects of those same activi? ties one must adopt other perspectives. Similar remarks apply to the cluster of phenomena we call "economic class." These phenomena can

be unearthed throughout the human domain, in religious institutions and in political laws, in moral prohibitions and in family status. This does not mean, however, that a fully developed theory of class can



292

explain everything, that class structure constitutes an infrastructure

that determines all human behavior. What it rather shows is that once

we apply the notion of class interests, educational opportunities and

religious practices are cast in a different theoretical light. We can now

recognize some of their properties and causes which we previously overlooked.

Yet the temptation to mistake a particular scientific perspective for

the "truth" of human rea?ty is powerful. Such perspectives do not

know themselves to be merely one point of view among others. They rather deem themselves absolute; they believe that they are the only

legitimate perspective on reality. Such perspectives Piaget (1974, pp.

12-14) sees as "centered" on themselves: their point of view on the

world is identified with the world as it exists in-itself. This mistake is

avoided, Piaget maintains, when a perspective becomes "decentered";

i.e., when it acknowledges other valid points of view on the same world

which are, nonetheless, different from its own.

Sartre (1968, pp. 52-54) charges the French Marxism of his day with having succumbed to the myopia of a centered perspective. He shows how this Marxism fails to comprehend a concrete historical

figure Uke the writer, Paul Val?ry. In the Marxist analysis, Val?ry is

first located in his class: he is petit bourgeois. Having installed Val?ry within his class, the Marxists now historically situate this class itself in France at the end ofthe Nineteenth Century. The individual, Val?ry,

has been replaced by a collective entity, the French petit bourgeoise. This entity found itself besieged on two fronts: The capitalist concen?

tration of wealth pinched it from above, and popular demands from

below. The syUogism reads as foUows. The French petit bourgeois class is on the defensive. Paul Val?ry is petit bourgeois. Therefore,

Val?ry is on the defensive. It remains now for the Marxist merely to

fit Val?ry into the proper sub-class. Nothing could be simpler: Val?ry is an intellectual. The ideology of capitaUst intellectuals at this juncture in French history consists in a rationaUstic materialism. Accordingly, the intellectual, Val?ry

? already mobiUzed, we know, to defend the

petit bourgeois -

develops an ideaUstic philosophy, analytical, mathe?

matical, and imbued with pessimism. From this ideaUstic citadel Val?ry is empowered to attack the two very different materiaUsms of capital and labor. But, as Sartre points out, the individual, Paul Val?ry, has

vanished. In the Marxist picture we are left beholding a battle of the

giants: petit bourgeois ideology is at war with capitaUst ideology. Val?ry is just one of many soldiers. We comprehend the universals, the collectives, but where are the individuals? Has anyone seen Val?ry?



293

Sartre nicely expresses this Marxist absorption of the individual into the collective class. "To be sure, he writes, "Val?ry is a petit bourgeois in?

tellectual. But not every petit bourgeois intellectual is Val?ry" (Sartre, 1968, p. 56).

The problem with such an analysis is not that it is false; it may very well prove true. The problem lies in mistaking a part for the whole:

the particular thinker, Paul Val?ry, remains unexplained. Many other

perspectives must be brought to bear in order to account for this

writer in his particularity. And this requires that the Marxist perspec? tive be de-centered, that it be seen as merely one perspective among other equally valid ones.

When scientific perspectives remain centered on themselves, they

may tend to become monopolistic. This is rather clearly seen in the

case of Claude Levi-Strauss. In reflecting upon the question of where

to place anthropology within the present structure of the university, Levi-Strauss answers that the only "satisfactory solution is (an) insti?

tute or school (of anthropology)" completely separate from the other

schools of the university. Anthropology, in this view, "has, as it were, its feet planted on the natural sciences, its back resting against the

humanities, and its eyes directed toward the social sciences" (Levi

Strauss, 1967, p. 359). Thus anthropology is intimately related to all these disciplines, but it transcends them by synthesizing them at a

higher scientific level. By unifying and transcending these disciplines anthropology becomes "a super-rationalism in which sense perceptions

will be integrated into reasoning and yet lose none of their properties"

(Levi-Strauss, 1970, p. 61). Thus does Levi-Strauss conceive the "deep" or unconscious structures at work in all intellectual activity as the es? sence of the human and the source of all behavior, culture, and science. But the questions that we previously asked about Paul Val?ry can now

be posed regarding particular societies and cultures. And the additional

perspectives that we must adopt in order to account for the particulari? ty of a culture remain precisely that: other, equally legitimate scientific

perspectives on the human, perspectives which are necessary if the

cultural world is to become intelligible in its full scope. Levi-Strauss' universalism, even if true, must be supplemented by other perspectives, both diachronic and synchronie, which can explain human differences.

The task for philosophy, then, consists in demonstrating why this multiplicity of perspectives is both possible and necessary. The question of possibility: How does the human world lend itself to interpretations

which are divergent and scientific at the same time? The issue of neces?

sity: Why are manifold points of view required in order to penetrate to



294

all aspects of the human? In pursuing this philosophical task we can as?

sume the fact of the many human sciences; that is, we can assume that

several sciences, no matter how different and multifarious, can jointly illuminate the same human reaUty. The data ofthe human world, then, are composite individuals whose meanings can be constituted from

various points of view. Taking these composite individuals as our

transcendental clues, we can pose the transcendental question of how

this multip?city of scientific reason is both possible and necessary. We begin, accordingly, with the fact: different thinkers, employing

different orientations and conceptual schemes, seek to elucidate differ?

ent facets of the same human reality. The first fact, therefore, is the

variation and heterogenity of the human sciences. This multiplicity can

easily be viewed as signa?ng the failure of these disciphnes to be truly scientific. The diversity, in other words, could be seen as indicating

relativity and arbitrariness. This first fact of the human sciences, con?

sequently, seems to taint their status as sciences. For such a divergence of viewpoints and conceptual schemes does not appear to plague the

natural sciences.

The multipUcity does not betoken arbitrariness, however, because

each theoretical scheme must demonstrate its truth-value by referring to evidence. Piaget's interpretation of imitation are placed side-by-side

with the many observations that support them (1962). And Piaget repeatedly refers to particular aspects of these observations which

iUustrate and confirm his theoretical assertions. If such evidence were

lacking, we could readily doubt Piaget's theory. But much evidence

exists. And thus even if we still think Piaget's teachings suspect, we

must concede that he is following the rules of scientific procedure and

that, if we are to chaUenge him, we must adhere to the same rules.

If Piaget's explanations are faulty, it does arise from their indifference

to direct givens. The faultiness can consist only in the fact that the

same evidence could also mean something else, that alternative inter?

pretations of it are possible. The same evidence could thus be interpreted in manifold ways.

The human world must accordingly harbor an ambiguity that leaves

it open to several readings. Max Weber was already cognizant of this

ambiguity. Weber wrote,

...as soon as we attempt to reflect about the way in which life confronts us in immediate concrete situations, it presents an in? finite multip?city of successively and coexistently emerging and

disappearing events, both 'within' and 'outside' ourselves. The



295

absolute infinitude of this multiplicity is seen to remain undimin ished even when our attention is focused on a single 'object,' for

instance, a concrete act of exchange, as soon as we seriously at?

tempt an exhaustive description of all the individual components of this 'individual phenomenon,' to say nothing of explaining it

causally. (Brodbeck, 1968, 85)

This infinite multiplicity of data becomes scientifically knowable, then, only through a process of selection and omission. This process is con?

ceptual. Hence Weber's conviction that all concepts are abstract: each

concept ignores certain data in order to subsume others. And those data

ignored by some conceptual schemes can in principle be grasped by others. As a result, scientific points of view proliferate and multiply. And yet these points of view remain "scientific" insofar as each is able

to refer to the data that support it.

We notice, accordingly, a second fact of the human sciences: their

evidence is ambiguous. But however ambiguous, it remains evidence,

i.e., direct givens which alone render claims to knowledge genuine. Without such evidence, science is impossible. But with such ambiguous

evidence, the sciences are necessarily many and diverse. The fact that

many orientations and theories lay claim to the same province of reali?

ty thus shows that Merleau-Ponty was right about the ambiguity of

everything human. But the fact that any of these orientations and

theories can lose its hold on us when the evidence fails to support it also shows that Husserl was right about the rationality of science and

the possible grounding of concepts in direct givens. (Husserl, 1969) Nothing guarantees us, however, that these many perspectives on

the human world, although well grounded in evidence, can be syn? thesized together into some unified framework. The different views

may prove to be, not only conceptually different, but also ill-matched,

incommensurable, and irreoncilable. Although both Piaget and Levi

Strauss speak of "structure" when they describe imitation, their no?

tions of structure clash and stubbornly remain at cross-purposes. And

yet these mismatched notions of structure may each reveal an impor? tant facet of imitation. Neither can be discarded, but they refuse to accord with one another. If we continue to take our cues from Kant, then, we should not set the philosopher the task of discovering some

universal law of synthesis. We ought rather to pose the critical-Kantian

question of demarcating the limits of any employment of concepts. Any system of concepts, any interpretative scheme, in order to ap? prehend certain components of the human world, must abstract from



296

and ignore others. Hence a philosophical account of concept forma?

tion could specify the nature of such abstractions. Starting from the

lifeworld as the most concrete level of experience, the philosopher could show how increasingly abstract notions are constructed and

refined (Gurwitsch, 1974; Husserl, 1970). Many of the notions of the human sciences remain relatively close to the concrete level of

the lifeworld; that is to say, these notions are relatively low-level ab?

stractions. Other scientific concepts, however, require abstractive and

idealing processes that move far beyond the lifeworld. The most ab?

stract conceptions are those of the natural sciences because these have

abstracted from the socio-cultural ufeworld altogether. Different con?

ceptual systems, then, occupy different levels of abstraction. The

philosopher can demarcate these different strata by tracing the "mean?

ing-genesis" or the "history of sense" required for the construction of

these systems (Husserl, 1970). To situate different interpretive schemes

at different levels of abstraction is to determine their conceptual limits:

a particular scheme illuminates reaUty at its own proper level of abstrac?

tion while another scheme discloses another facet of reality at a differ?

ent level. The various conceptual systems need not clash or conflict

with one another; each may simply operate at a different stratum of

abstraction. The ambiguity of human reality requires necessarily a

multiplicity of theoretical schemes in order to reveal its many different

meanings. No single approach covers the entire domain of human life.

Each is Umited to its own level of abstraction. Hence the various theo?

ries at their different levels can readily supplement one another without

displacing one another. The critical-Kantian project of marking the

limits of conceptual systems here assumes the shape of a phenomenol?

ogical unearthing of the genesis of concepts out of the lifeworld.

And there remains a further task for philosophy which links it in

seprably to the human sciences. Philosophical anthropology learns

from the human sciences, as I said at the beginning, through availing itself of their factual discoveries. The plethora of data gathered by science need not be only scientifically sifted; philosophy, too, can

utilize it. Through philosophical examination the data can come to

serve as examples ofthe essentially human. The philosopher can discern

in them those features and possibiUties without which human life would necessarily fail to be human. In any single economic exchange, for example, the voluntary and the involuntary manifest themselves.

This is what Marx knew. That is why he could bridge the gap between

philosophy and economics by pointing to real economic struggles as

evidence for philosophical assertions.



297

Or take a second example, from Merleau-Ponty (1969). The entire

drama of moral choice and responsibility is played out scene-by-de?

tailed-scene in the Moscow purge trials. A factual story supplied by history, if considered deeply enough, can tell all the secrets of ethics.

Merleau-Ponty finds that action in history forfeits its human quality if it shirks responsibility for either the intentions which prompted it or the real consequences which flowed from it. Essential to moral

responsibility, in other words, is the weight of both the subjective purposes and the objective results. Bukharin's Stalinist accuser wants

to ascribe all responsibility to the actual consequences of what Bukha

rin did. Stalinist doctrine, then, would turn the human actor into some?

thing less than human, a material cause in history which merely inter?

acts with other equally material causes. Western liberals, on the other

hand, would hold a defendant guilty solely for his subjective intentions, thus viewing him as pure res cogitans whose only action could be acts

of thinking. From the midst of this East West quarrel Merleau-Ponty extracts the essentially human: our deeds in history carry the double

burden of responsibility for what we planned to do and what we actual

ly did. And if this doubleness of subjective intention and objective con?

sequences did not pervade our choices, we and the history we make

would fall short of the human. By carefully varying the many facets

of the Moscow purge trials, Merleau-Ponty arrives at a universal in?

variant of moral responsibility: because we are embodied subjects whose deeds impinge on the lives of others, we are responsible for

both the world we first envision and the world we finally help to create. Hence Merleau-Ponty can philosophize only by starting from actual facts. And what else can the philosopher consider? Pure con?

cepts? If he deserves to be heard, it is because his concepts are not

pure. Whether he admits it or not, the philosopher is also a researcher

of facts. The difference between the scientist and the philosopher lies

in the difference between empirical theories and essential ones. The

scientist seeks to determine what holds for human life as a matter of

fact. The philosopher, what holds necessarily, essentially: What are

those components of human existence without which it could not be

human?

This re-thinking of scientific data leads to a virtual re-building of

philosophy. Philosophy has always reflected on the givens of human life. But now such experiences are immensely extended and deepened by drawing on the human sciences. Thus, as Helmut Plessner puts it, the goal of philosophical anthropology is "the re-creation of philoso? phy through a grounding of life-experiences in the human sciences and



298

world-history" (1981, p. 68). Philosophy must, accordingly, pursue the

sciences into whatever provinces they may lead. This means that

philosophy must follow psychology and biology in a vertical direction: it must clarify man's psycho-organic being and man's place in the na?

ture described by physical science. And it must follow the social

sciences in their horizontal direction: it must account for the human

conditions which make possible cultures, institutions, laws, symbolic

systems, etc. Yet both of these directions prove fruitful only because

at each step the philosopher inquires into the sources of culture in nature and the shaping of nature through culture. This dependence of

philosophy on the human sciences renders its claims just as provisional and tentative as those of science. It is remarkable that philosophy ever

thought it could do more.

NOTES

1. I employ the term "human sciences" throughout this paper, not because it is

currently fashionable, but because the customary distinction between the social and the natural sciences renders the phrase "social science" misleading.

If we are to attain an adequate conception of human existence, we must draw

on, not only the social sciences, but also the natural sciences, such as biology and chemistry, insofar as they clarify aspects of human life. Accordingly, I use the term "human science" to cut across the usual boundaries between the

social and natural sciences: with this name I am referring to all of those disci?

plines which illuminate features of human reality. Later in the paper I shall

have a reason to distinguish between psychology, on the one hand, and so?

ciology, anthropology, political science, history, and economics, on the other.

At that point I shall employ the phrase "social sciences" to designate the latter group.

2. I am here using the word "model" in the strict sense which has been given to

it by philosophers of science such as May Brodbeck ("Models, Meaning, and

Theories," in Readings in the Philosophy of the Social Sciences, edited by M. Brodbeck, New York: The Macmillan Company, 1968, pp. 579-600.)

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