ABSTRACT
In his paper on ‘Understanding and Explanation in the Geistes-Wissenschaften’ Charles Taylor is principally concerned to argue that if one is a non-relativist, and what I call a humanist, then one must adopt a realist position on values. Taylor takes his claim to be important in the philosophy of social science because he has a subsidiary argument to the effect that if one adopts a realist position on values then one must view social science, so far as it is concerned with explaining what people do and say, as valueladen. Being himself a non-relativist and a humanist he espouses a realism about values and embraces a conception of social science as evaluatively committed and critical.
