Epistemology, Axiology, and Ideology in Sociology

by several different individuals entirely independent from one another, and more and more frequently it is only chance that determines the passionately con troversial matter of "who was first" (the only goal that comes in to consideration). The historians and others like them will be rather cool toward Ostwald's somewhat naive phillistinism, which is just how they must receive his work. But, e.g., Rickert, at any rate, could hardly have wished for a better paradigm of specifically "natural scientific" thinking (in a logical sense). Enough! Even through the incorporation of th e psychical in to the energetic dreadfully little would be established for a "foundations of the cultural sciences" (in Ostwald's sense). Admittedly, Ostwald only suggests the possibility of such an incorporation of the psychical in to the energetic in this book (70), while on the other hand he also again emphasizes that the limits of his inquiry lie precisely at that point where "psychological" factors become involved. But how should this incorporation be carried out? I have sought elsewhere in connection with the work of Kraeplin and others to bring home to the readers of the Archivs fUr Socialwissenschajt as well as a layman can, just how infinitely complicated, "energetically" considered, the intricate play of the "psychical" upon the "psycho-physics" of work takes shape. But Ostwald obviously does not have this aspect of the psycho-physical problem in mind. However, should he have something like Wundt's doctrine of the "law of the increase of psychical energy" in view, which has already been disposed of scientifically, and which confusedly conflates the "increase" of that which we call the "intellectual content" of a culturally relevant process (hence an evaluative designation) with the category of psychical existence, then the mischief that Lamprech t has caused with this confusion must be a warning to us. It is also worth noting that the Freudian doctrines, which seemed to ordain a kind of "law of the preservation of psychical (affect)-energy" in their first formulation, have in the meantime been reformulated by their own author in such a way that they have lost every bit of rigour in an "energetic" sense (which might even have consequences for their psychopathological value). At least the strict energeticist will at any rate no longer find them of any use. They would, of course, naturally in no case provide a legitimation for getting rid of all those approaches of the "sciences of culture" that migh t serve as a common denominator to the benefit of any sort of "psychology" but that were not comprehensible for "energetics"-just in case, given their peculiarity, they should ever be able to do this. But, again, enough of all this. For us the point was to determine in general the place where methodologically the author overstepped the region where his point of view has theoretical validity (we have already considered practical issues).