''Geisteswissenschaften'' (, "sciences of mind", "spirit science") is a set of
human sciences such as
philosophy
Philosophy (from , ) is the systematized study of general and fundamental questions, such as those about existence, reason, knowledge, values, mind, and language. Such questions are often posed as problems to be studied or resolved. ...
,
history
History (derived ) is the systematic study and the documentation of the human activity. The time period of event before the invention of writing systems is considered prehistory. "History" is an umbrella term comprising past events as well ...
,
philology
Philology () is the study of language in oral and written historical sources; it is the intersection of textual criticism, literary criticism, history, and linguistics (with especially strong ties to etymology). Philology is also defined as ...
,
musicology
Musicology (from Greek μουσική ''mousikē'' 'music' and -λογια ''-logia'', 'domain of study') is the scholarly analysis and research-based study of music. Musicology departments traditionally belong to the humanities, although some m ...
,
linguistics
Linguistics is the scientific study of human language. It is called a scientific study because it entails a comprehensive, systematic, objective, and precise analysis of all aspects of language, particularly its nature and structure. Ling ...
,
theater studies,
literary studies,
media studies
Media studies is a discipline and field of study that deals with the content, history, and effects of various media; in particular, the mass media. Media Studies may draw on traditions from both the social sciences and the humanities, but mostl ...
, and sometimes even
theology
Theology is the systematic study of the nature of the divine and, more broadly, of religious belief. It is taught as an academic discipline, typically in universities and seminaries. It occupies itself with the unique content of analyzing th ...
and
jurisprudence
Jurisprudence, or legal theory, is the theoretical study of the propriety of law. Scholars of jurisprudence seek to explain the nature of law in its most general form and they also seek to achieve a deeper understanding of legal reasoning ...
, that are traditional in German
universities
A university () is an institution of higher (or tertiary) education and research which awards academic degrees in several academic disciplines. Universities typically offer both undergraduate and postgraduate programs. In the United State ...
. Most of its subject matter would come under
Humanities
Humanities are academic disciplines that study aspects of human society and culture. In the Renaissance, the term contrasted with divinity and referred to what is now called classics, the main area of secular study in universities at t ...
in the typical English-speaking
university
A university () is an institution of higher (or tertiary) education and research which awards academic degrees in several academic disciplines. Universities typically offer both undergraduate and postgraduate programs. In the United Stat ...
.
History
The concept of ''
Geist
''Geist'' () is a German noun with a significant degree of importance in German philosophy. Its semantic field corresponds to English ghost, spirit, mind, intellect. Some English translators resort to using "spirit/mind" or "spirit (mind)" to ...
'' dates back to eighteenth- and nineteenth-century
German idealism
German idealism was a philosophical movement that emerged in Germany in the late 18th and early 19th centuries. It developed out of the work of Immanuel Kant in the 1780s and 1790s, and was closely linked both with Romanticism and the revolutiona ...
, in particular to
Herder's and
Hegel's concept of a ''
Volksgeist
''Geist'' () is a German noun with a significant degree of importance in German philosophy. Its semantic field corresponds to English ghost, spirit, mind, intellect. Some English translators resort to using "spirit/mind" or "spirit (mind)" to ...
'', the alleged common "spirit", or rather, mind, of a people. To understand the term ''Geisteswissenschaften'', one should bear in mind that the continental ''faculty of philosophy'' inherited the medieval ''faculty of arts''. Besides philosophy itself it encompassed the natural sciences with mathematics as well as the philological and historical disciplines and later on psychology and the social sciences. The term ''Geisteswissenschaften'' first was used as translation of
John Stuart Mill
John Stuart Mill (20 May 1806 – 7 May 1873) was an English philosopher, political economist, Member of Parliament (MP) and civil servant. One of the most influential thinkers in the history of classical liberalism, he contributed widely to ...
’s term “''
moral sciences''”. The historian, philosopher and sociologist
Wilhelm Dilthey popularised the term, arguing that
psychology
Psychology is the science, scientific study of mind and behavior. Psychology includes the study of consciousness, conscious and Unconscious mind, unconscious phenomena, including feelings and thoughts. It is an academic discipline of immens ...
and the emerging field of
sociology
Sociology is a social science that focuses on society, human social behavior, patterns of social relationships, social interaction, and aspects of culture associated with everyday life. It uses various methods of empirical investigation an ...
– like the
philological and historical disciplines – should be considered as ''Geisteswissenschaft'' rather than as ''Naturwissenschaft'' (
natural science
Natural science is one of the branches of science concerned with the description, understanding and prediction of natural phenomena, based on empirical evidence from observation and experimentation. Mechanisms such as peer review and repeatab ...
), and that their
methodology
In its most common sense, methodology is the study of research methods. However, the term can also refer to the methods themselves or to the philosophical discussion of associated background assumptions. A method is a structured procedure for br ...
should reflect this classification. His arguments were very influential in the theories of the prominent German sociologist
Max Weber
Maximilian Karl Emil Weber (; ; 21 April 186414 June 1920) was a German sociologist, historian, jurist and political economist, who is regarded as among the most important theorists of the development of modern Western society. His ideas p ...
, though Weber preferred the term ''Kulturwissenschaft'', which has been promoted by his
neokantian
In late modern continental philosophy, neo-Kantianism (german: Neukantianismus) was a revival of the 18th-century philosophy of Immanuel Kant. The Neo-Kantians sought to develop and clarify Kant's theories, particularly his concept of the "thing ...
colleagues (
Wilhelm Windelband
Wilhelm Windelband (; ; 11 May 1848 – 22 October 1915) was a German philosopher of the Baden School.
Biography
Windelband was born the son of a Prussian official in Potsdam. He studied at Jena, Berlin, and Göttingen.
Philosophical work
Win ...
and
Heinrich Rickert).
Current use
Since the times of Dilthey it became common to speak of the ''Naturwissenschaften'' on the one hand and the ''Geisteswissenschaften'' on the other – not particularly considering the status of mathematics and of philosophy itself. After the separation of the natural sciences and mathematics into a particular faculty (in some universities not until the 1950s), the ''Geisteswissenschaften'' were left alone in the philosophical faculty and even philosophy often was subsumed under the term ''Geisteswissenschaften''. Meanwhile, many of the German universities have split up these faculties in smaller departments, so that the old common interests and the old borders are less visible.
The term is now used irregularly. In administrative contexts it is used broadly to discuss how to organise the academic institutions and describe the culture of academic discussions, so that the faculties of Theology and Law are added to the Geisteswissenschaften. In some contexts of science policy the ''Geisteswissenschaften'' are described as non-empirical sciences, drawing them near philosophy and excluding the social sciences from their area.
In the context of methodology on the contrary it has been emphasised, that ''Geisteswissenschaften'' such as ''history'' and the ''philological'' disciplines, relying on empirical data (documents, books and utterances), along with ''psychology'' and the ''social sciences'', have a common ''empirical character'', which is essentially based on comprehension (''
Verstehen
''Verstehen'' (, ), in the context of German philosophy and social sciences in general, has been used since the late 19th century – in English as in German – with the particular sense of the "interpretive or participatory" examination of soci ...
'') or understanding of expressions of meaning.
Other authors, like
Rudolf Steiner, used the term ''Geisteswissenschaft'' in a historically quite distinct sense to refer to a proposed "Science of Spirit".
Example usage
From ''Kulturgeschichte Frankreichs'', Suchanek-Fröhlich, p. 633:
[''Kulturgeschichte Frankreichs'' Suchanek-Fröhlich, Stefan Kröner Verlag, Stuttgart, 1966]
Man hat Taine vorgeworfen, dass er, dessen Hauptziel die Einführung naturwissenschaftlicher Methoden in die Geisteswissenschaften war, selbst nicht induktiv, sondern deduktiv vorging.
Translation:
Some reproach Taine in that he himself, whose goal was the introduction of the methods of natural science into the ''Geisteswissenschaften'', proceeded from methods which were not inductive but rather deductive.
References
Bibliography
* Gunter Scholz, ''Zwischen Wissenschaftsanspruch und Orientierungsbedürfnis. Zu Grundlage und Wandel der Geisteswissenschaften'' Frankfurt am Main, Suhrkamp 1991,
* Bernward Grünewald, ''Geist – Kultur – Gesellschaft. Versuch einer Prinzipientheorie der Geisteswissenschaften auf transzendentalphilosophischer Grundlage'', Berlin, Duncker & Humblot, 2009, .
*
Albrecht Behmel
Albrecht Behmel (; born 24 March 1971) is a German artist, novelist, historian, non-fiction writer and award-winning playwright.
Surname and family history
Son of geologist Hermann Behmel and grandson of architect Paul Behmel. The uncommon famil ...
, ''Erfolgreich im Studium der Geisteswissenschaften'', Francke, Tübingen 2005,
{{Authority control
Humanities education
Education in Germany
Wilhelm Dilthey