Methodological Individualism

78 Psychologism in early social sciencein the first instance, those that threaten philosophy. Thus, he rejected historicismand positivism in philosophy. Psychologism was also rejected, because it is anatural science and psychologism, therefore, a form of positivism. ‘In all of itsessential aspects, however, ours is a logical, or a methodological and epistemological,investigation’ ([1902] 1986: 19). Rickert’s main task, however, was to savehistory from being reduced to natural science, in the manner of Comte’s positivism(pp. 23ff). Hence, the project of identifying the limits to natural science,once again including psychology.Rickert’s distinction between history and natural science is similar to that ofWindelband, but much more elaborated and refined. History and naturalscience are based on different cognitive interests: ‘Empirical reality becomesnature when we conceive of it with reference to the general. It becomes historywhen we conceive it with reference to the distinctive and the individual’ (Rickert[1902] 1986: 54). For Windelband this distinction was absolute. Rickert,however, saw the difference as relative and preferred to talk about the method ofhistory as individualising and that of natural science as generalising ([1902] 1986:xii).Rickert’s point of departure was Kantian: there is an unbridgeable gapbetween concept and reality and the latter is inaccessible to our knowledge.Every form of epistemological realism, and especially the picture theory ofmeaning is therefore excluded from the outset. Reality is reality as perceived, orexperienced, and as constructed by means of concepts. ‘Reality itself, the infinitemanifold of which scorns every conception, can best be called “irrational,” andeven this designation could be applied to it only on the grounds that it resistsevery conception’ ([1902] 1986: 52). According to Rickert, then, empirical realityis indefinite and, therefore, practically infinite. It is extensively infinite, in the sensethat there are an infinite number of possible objects of knowledge and it is intensivelyinfinite, in the sense that there are infinitely many aspects of every singleobject of knowledge. In order to cognitively master this infinite manifold, we useabstraction. The procedure of the natural sciences is to go searching for similarities,while abstracting from the differences of objects, including their position inspace and time. Positivism assumes that this is the only scientific procedure. But,according to Rickert, there are limits to natural scientific concept formation,since it prevents us from seeing what is unique and individual about objects ofknowledge. But this is exactly the cognitive interest of the historical sciences.They are interested in individual events, languages, works of art, cultures, etc, inspace and time. The real problem that Rickert set out to solve was that ofconcept formation in history. If empirical reality is an infinite manifold and themethod individualising, what kind of abstraction is used in history?Obviously, history is only interested in some of the (extensively infinite) manifoldof individuals there are in empirical reality, and only in some aspects ofthese (intensively infinite) individuals. Rickert calls them ‘historical individuals’and they comprise, not only human individuals, or personalities, but all sorts ofhistorical particulars, such as the Renaissance, the French revolution and WorldWar I (Rickert [1902] 1986: 78–98). Rickert’s solution to this problem is the so-