A Methodological Inquiry on Compatibility of Droysen’s Understanding and Weber’s Counterfactuals

Abstract

Gustav Droysen introduced understanding as the method of history. Max Weber analyzed what-if statements or counterfactuals as a form of causal explanation. Both scholars had a common interest in understanding and explanation. However, Droysen’s explanation was defined as method of natural sciences and served no use in history, while Weber’s understanding was focused on social reality rather than historical one. Still, precisely Weber’s idea of difference-making counterfactuals was later reinterpreted as defining for historical counterfactuals. In this paper, I determine what their methodologies say about understanding and counterfactuals, whether their views are compatible and whether historical research can benefit from combination of understanding and counterfactuals. To do this, I reconstruct Gustav Droysen’s views on understanding in the first part. Understanding here is a method that allows us to grasp events that are distant in time as contemporary ones through historical material and criticism. In the second part I review the tradition of counterfactuals of analytic philosophers (from Roderick Chisholm and Nelson Goodman to Julian Reiss) and Max Weber. Counterfactuals are conditional statements that contradict existing historical facts by changing or removing the causes of certain events, so that they can demonstrate the significance of these causes for historical events in case the counterfactual causes make a difference for the events. In the third part of the paper, I argue for compatibility between the methodologies, maintaining that understanding and counterfactuals can be beneficial for historical research in the following way: counterfactuals pinpoint the causes and main figures of historical events; knowledge about the figures improves our understanding of them; this understanding helps to see more counterfactual possibilities that can bring to light new causes, deepening our view of history.