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March 1906
DOI link for March 1906
March 1906 book
March 1906
DOI link for March 1906
March 1906 book
ABSTRACT
Against your objection to the “Baden School” ‹430› (incidentally, you only find the essence of Rickert’s theory in his second volume, ‹431› not in the first volume by itself, and definitely not in Windelband[’s work]), I should like to start by referring to my article in Vol. XIX of the Archive (“The ‘Objectivity’ of Knowledge in Social Science”). The degree of frequency is [either] a “historical” fact (because it is of historical interest) or a “heuristic instrument”, depending on the “sense” of the cognitive aim, and the same is true of all other “statistical” products of knowledge. On the other hand, the sentence “bimetallism does not guarantee . . .” ‹432› has a character that belongs purely to “natural science”, as that term is understood in Rickert’s terminology (with which I am not in complete sympathy); that is to say: it is, logically speaking, in no way different from a “law of nature”, provided one does not demand that the concept be absolutely “rigorous”. Here, there is no “relation” to values, in the sense in which this is a precondition for history. On the other hand, it is completely correct, as you point out, that the concepts “heuristic instrument” and “generic specimen” are not congruent. ‹433› I assumed that I had disposed of possible objections of this kind by saying that I would later deal specifically with the case mentioned under (2) ‹434›. However, in reply to your argument, I must very strongly emphasize that logic has the duty strictly to distinguish between contradictory positions that may sometimes get blurred in practice in science. Without any doubt, “teleological” knowledge can be generalizing: all the examples that you cite show this, as does the everyday practice of our science. But “value relation”, in that sense in which it is invariably part of the historical approach (in the widest sense of the term), is the exact opposite of all generalization. I hope that when I enlarge on the subject – God knows when that will be ‹435› – I shall remove your objections in this respect. Eulenburg has simply not understood Rickert. ‹436›
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