Meaning as a category of social sciences and humanities

W. Dilthey argued that the main categories of humanities ("Geisteswissenschaften") are not cause and effect, but purpose, value and meaning. Indeed, we usually give teleological, rather than causal, explanations for human actions. Actions are from the beginning perceived as intentional. Intentions cannot be considered as the causes of human actions and historical events in the natural sciences’ sense. In intentional actions, we react not to objects and situations as such, but to their meaning. Meaning is a new side of phenomena that appears in the world of purposefully acting beings. Objects and phenomena acquire meaning in relation to our goals. Supporters of the naturalistic approach in social sciences and humanities strive to get rid of meanings, to reduce the material of humanitarian knowledge to what is accessible to external observation. Philosophical grounds for such an approach were given by logical positivism. And in sociology – by E. Durkheim and behaviorism. However, it is not possible to perform such an approach consistently. Each culture is a world of meanings. The ways of understanding meanings accepted in a given culture are assimilated by us in the process of socialization. Meanings are fixed and realized in language. But the world of meanings is internalized practically – in the course of the development of a child's activity and his mastery of the forms of activity characteristic of a given culture. The central character of the concept of meaning in humanitarian knowledge prevents the transfer of natural scientific methods into it. The scientistic interpretation of psychoanalysis is criticized, because it works entirely in the field of meanings. It is proved that it is impossible to analyze social and human life, ignoring the world of meanings.

meaning, humanities, causal explanation, teleological explanation, cause, goal, intentionality, interpretation, naturalistic approach, understanding sociology