Methodological Individualism

Psychologism in early social science 77istic than Giddens. Because of this dualism, Simmel is closer to the later Sartre,Berger and Luckmann and Pierre Bourdieu (see pp. 147f, 161ff, 186f ), perhapsalso to Roy Bhaskar.To conclude: Georg Simmel was not a psychologistic methodological individualistand probably not even an ontological individualist. It is still possible toclassify him as a less radical methodological individualist. Perhaps, it is possibleto conceive of him as a structural individualist (see chapter 10).Psychologism on trialDilthey’s move away from psychologism was, at least in part, a reaction to objectionsraised against this doctrine by the neo-Kantian philosophers WilhelmWindelband and Heinrich Rickert, and by the phenomenological philosopherEdmund Husserl. The most destructive critique, however, was directed atDilthey’s particular form of descriptive psychology, by the experimental psychologistHermann Ebbinghaus. Georg Simmel was influenced both by Dilthey andneo-Kantianism, but was not, himself, an object of much critique. Most critiquewas directed at experimental psychology, but this is not my business here. In thelast section of this chapter, I will focus on some reactions to Dilthey, and also onsome positive contributions to psychologism in social science.At the University of Strasbourg in 1894 in his famous Rectorial Address on‘History and Natural Science’, the leader of the Southwest School of neo-Kantian philosophy, Wilhelm Windelband, took issue with Dilthey’s way ofmaking a distinction between the natural and the human sciences ([1894] 1980:173). 30 The main problem with Dilthey’s dichotomy seems to be that psychologybelongs to both types of science (p. 174). Instead of making this distinction onthe basis of a substantive dichotomy of nature and mind, we should use an epistemologicaldistinction, in terms of cognitive interest. From this point of view,the empirical sciences can be divided into those that seek general laws and thosewhich are interested in specific historical facts. In the well-known terminologysuggested by Windelband, ‘scientific thought is nomothetic in the former case andideographic in the latter case’. In terms of this dichotomy, ‘psychology falls unambiguouslywithin the domain of the natural sciences’ (p. 174).With Windelband’s distinction between history and natural science, itbecomes necessary to reject also the positivist attempt to turn history into anatural science, seeking laws of historical development. Against this view, ‘it isnecessary to insist upon the following: every interest and judgement, everyascription of human value is based upon the singular and unique’ (p. 182). Therole of values was to become even more prominent in the constitution of the‘cultural sciences’ by Windelband’s pupil Heinrich Rickert.Rickert’s much more ambitious attempt to establish a distinction betweenhistory and natural science can be found in his most important work, The Limitsof Concept Formation in the Natural Science (Die Grenzen der naturwissenschaftlichenBegriffsbildung, 1902) and in the shorter Science and History (also 1902). 31 LikeWindelband, Rickert was much concerned to combat various reductionisms and,