Thursday 28 November 2019

Explaining and Understanding

“It is not enough to EXPLAIN the Enlightenment; we must also UNDERSTAND it.
The distinction between explanation and understanding itself came to us from the Enlightenment. Vico hinted at it in his theory of history as did Kant in his moral philosophy..............................
A later Kantian philosopher, William Dilthey, extended (this) to the entire human world. We seek to understand human actions, he argued, not by explaining them in terms of external causes (as science does) but 'from within', by an act of rational self-projection that Dilthey called VERSTEHEN (to understand). In understanding human life and action we look for the concepts which inspire and guide it. Thus, I understand your fear of speaking in a certain place, once I conceptualise it as you do, as somewhere 'sacred.' This is not an act of scientific explanation, but an act of human sympathy, the outcome of an implied or actual dialogue."

Source? Scruton?

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