N.2/2023 Dalla teoria alla storia.  Attualità e metodi della Storia della Filosofia

Le lettere di Goethe a Charlotte von Stein:  sulla struttura polare dell’oggetto storico  sulla struttura polare dell’oggetto storico  tra analisi di valore e spiegazione causale

Edoardo Massimilla

Published in December, 2023

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Goethe’s letters to Charlotte von Stein: on the polar structure of the historical object between value analysis and causal explanation.

 Starting from the assumption that the philosophy of which the history of philosophy speaks is undoubtedly a historical object, the essay questions the general notion of the “historical object” by retracing some pages of the first of Max Weber’s Critical Studies in the Logic of the Cultural Sciences (1906) in which he uses the example of Goethe’s letters to Charlotte von Stein to discuss the problems inherent in Eduard Meyer’s definition that «historisch ist, was wirksam ist oder gewesen ist». Weber shows how, on closer inspection, the notion of the “historical object” in general necessarily refers to the relationship between two dimensions that also remain distinct from each other: that of value analysis and that of causal explanation. The first moment provides causal regression with a “tread” without which it could not even set out; the second moment transforms value analysis into a “real understanding” of the object being analyzed from a value point of view. This makes not only possible but inescapable a fruitful interaction between “theory” and “history”, and thus also between “philosophy” and “history of philosophy”.

 cultural-historical sciences; value relation; causal regression; history of philosophy.

DOI

10.53129/gcsi_02-2023-02