ABSTRACT

This chapter builds on a neglected philosophical idea, Evidenz. Max Weber used it in his discussion of Verstehen, as the goal of understanding either action or such things as logic. The discussion of empathy has changed radically in recent years as a result of the discovery of mirror neurons and subsequent discoveries of their extensive and special roles in various forms of human interaction. Self-evidence has had a bad press in twentieth century philosophy as a result of Gottlob Frege's and Edmund Husserl's critiques of psychologism. In the language of the neo-Kantians of Brentano's time, a language that is very much still with us, this shared hidden structure was made of 'presuppositions', which could be revealed by transcendental reasoning. Structuralist arguments are typically transcendental arguments or arguments that have properties in common with transcendental arguments with the circularity concealed. The normative structuralists also have to deal with the fact that some people fail to grasp.