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A Method for the Study of Human Life

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 April 2024

W. Kim Rogers
W. Kim Rogers*
Affiliation:
East Tennessee State University

Extract

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If within the borders of human life the truth is, as Vico has said, what is made, then the task of a student of human life can be and should be to find out from what human beings have made what manner of makers they are and what sorts of production their circumstance allows.

Type
Research Article
Information
Diogenes , Volume 34 , Issue 136 , December 1986 , pp. 46 - 57
Copyright
Copyright © 1986 Fédération Internationale des Sociétés de Philosophie / International Federation of Philosophical Societies (FISP)

References

1 W. Dilthey, "Entwürfe zur Kritik der historischen Vernunft", Gesammelte Schriften, Leipzig and Berlin, B.G. Teubner, 1927, Vol. VII, p. 101.

2 Though the following remarks express some of the reasons why I have developed a separate approach from that of Gurwitsch as well as other Husserlians, I must own that I will always be greatly indebted to him for making me aware of the importance of—and introducing me to—Hurt Goldstein, the relevance of whose work to the present study is made clear later in this essay.

3 A. Gurwitsch, Phenomenology and the Theory of Science, Evanston, Ill., Northwestern University Press, 1974, p. 11.

4 Ibid., pp. 24, 25.

5 Ibid., p. 12.

6 If an observer has before him another human being or an animal whose world he wishes to investigate, he must realize that the indications which he perceives as making up the world of this other sentient being are his own and do not originate in that other being's elation to its world, which he cannot directly know at all. He can understand the animal only by humanizing it in part. The observer's chief task consists in determining the number and character of his own indications appearing in the surrounding world of the other, and in what grouping they act as indications there, by noting those to which they react. The extent and variety of indications are fixed from the beginning by the bodily conformation of each sentient being. Cf. J. von Uexkull, Theoretical Biology, New York, Harcourt, Brace and Co., 1926, pp. 78-84.

7 J. Ortega y Gasset, Some Lessons in Metaphysics, New York, Norton, 1969, p. 36; History as System, New York, Norton, 1961, p. 14. Cf. What is Philosophy? New York, Norton, 1960, pp. 216-218.

8 J. Ortega y Gasset, Meditations on Quixote, New York, Norton, 1961, p. 45.

9 Of course, since Ortega's own thinking was spurred in part by Uexkull's works, to one of which he wrote an introduction [Obras Completas, Madrid, Revista de Occidente, 1966, vol. VI]. Cf. also his references to Uexkull's ideas in "El ‘Quijote on le escuela", Obras Completas, Vol. II.

10 J. von Uexkull, "World of Animals and Man", in Instinctive Behavior, C.H. Schiller, ed., New York, International University Press, 1957, p. 49.

11 As Ortega did not, since he seems to be of two opinions on this matter. Cf., Origin of Philosophy, New York, Norton, 1967, p. 39, Man and Crisis, New York, Norton, 1958, pp. 107-108 and Man and People, New York, Norton 1957, pp. 61-62.

12 Otto Friedrich, "What do babies know?" Time, vol. 122, No. 7, August 15, 1983, pp. 52-59.

13 Cf. K. Goldstein, The Organism, Boston, Beacon, 1963, pp. 35-48, 42-44; also, Human Nature in the Light of Psychopathology, New York, Schocken, 1963, pp. 85-87.

14 K. Goldstein, The Organism, pp. 340-366; Human Nature in the Light of Psychopathology, pp. 174-186.