ABSTRACT
It is thus that those labeled “anti-positivists” or “humanists” (or, sometimes, “idealists”) have united around the centrality of verstehen in the social sciences. Despite any differences they might have regarding the nature of verstehen, they all agree that it consists in ferreting out the meanings of social behavior and mental states, and of cultural objects and social practices, and that such ferreting is essential to the study of the doings, relatings, and experiencings of human beings. But beyond this simple basic claim and bare-bones account, exactly of what verstehen consists is a difcult question that has prompted a rich tradition of reection and a contentious set of answers to it. These differences center around the questions of how meaning should be understood and how it is best ascertained-questions that have sparked quite different answers among those who insist on the importance of verstehen in the human sciences.
