Le lettere di Goethe a Charlotte von Stein: sulla struttura polare dell’oggetto storico tra analisi di valore e spiegazione causale

Starting from the assumption that the philosophy of which the history of philosophy speaks is undoubtedly a historical object, the essay questions the general notion of the “historical object” by retracing some pages of the first of Max Weber’s Critical Studies in the Logic of the Cultural Sciences (1906) in which he uses the example of Goethe’s letters to Charlotte von Stein to discuss the problems inherent in Eduard Meyer’s definition that «historisch ist, was wirksam ist oder gewesen ist». Weber shows how, on closer inspection, the notion of the “historical object” in general necessarily refers to the relationship between two dimensions that also remain distinct from each other: that of value analysis and that of causal explanation. The first moment provides causal regression with a “tread” without which it could not even set out; the second moment transforms value analysis into a “real understanding” of the object being analyzed from a value point of view. This makes not only possible but inescapable a fruitful in- teraction between “theory” and “history”, and thus also between “philosophy” and “history of philosophy”.