tore nordenstam explanation and understanding in the history of art

3.1. A pragmatic perspective
The intentionalist pattern seems to take care of at least one important type of explanation
in the human sciences. Yet many philosophers have felt that the intentionalist pattern as
presented e.g. by Dray and von Wright is unsatisfactory. The dissatisfaction may in some
cases be explained by the critics’ commitment to another pattern of explanation, which
they tend to regard as the basic pattern of explanation. Their strategy will then be to try to
show that intentionalist explanations may be reduced to the deductive-nomological
pattern. More interesting from our point of view is the reaction of a philosopher like Karl-
Otto Apel, who feels dissatisfied with the existing presentations of the intentionalist
pattern without being committed to the view that deductive - nomological explanations
play a crucial role in all sciences. When von Wright proposes that the intentionalist
pattern of explanation plays the same key role in the human sciences as the deductivenomological
pattern does in the natural sciences, Apel suspects a hidden commitment to
ideals which belong properly to the natural sciences but not to the hermeneutic
disciplines (i.e. those human sciences in which understanding plays a central role). The
ideal which belongs properly to the natural sciences but not to the hermeneutical
disciplines is the production of theoretical explanations which constitute answers to
questions of the type “Why was x to he expected ?” The very attempt to find an
explanatory pattern which is to the human sciences what the deductive-nomological
pattern is to the natural sciences (according to the received view) “seems to involve the
hidden motive of a scientistic parallelism of theoretically explanatory arguments”,
according to Apel. 79
The tacit assumption which is made both by von Wright and his critics is (Apel suggests)
that all sciences are guided by the same leading question of research, viz. to answer
questions of the “why to be expected”-type. As against this, Apel wishes to stress that
“within the humanities we have an autonomous interest in understanding what kind of
79 K.-O. Apel, ”Causal Explanation, Motivational Explanation, and Hermeneutical Understanding.
(Remarks on the Recent Stage of the Explanation-Understanding Controversy)”, in G. Ryle, ed.,
Contemporary Aspects of Philosophy, Oriel Press, London 1977, p. 175. (A longer version of this paper
exists in mimeographed form, dated Autumn 1975.)