- Original
- Huneeus & Orrego
Original
5. Methodological Individualism. Heidegger follows Wilhelm Dilthey in emphasizing that the meaning and organization of a culture must be taken as the basic given in the social sciences and philosophy and cannot be traced back to the activity of individual subjects. Thus Heidegger rejects the methodological individualism that extends from Descartes to Husserl to existentialists such as the pre-Marxist Sartre and many contemporary American social philosophers. In his emphasis on the social context as the ultimate foundation of intelligibility, Heidegger is similar to that other twentieth-century critic of the philosophical tradition, Ludwig Wittgenstein. They share the view that most philosophical problems can be (dis) solved by a description of everyday social practices.