Talk:Verstehen

Votes for deletion results
This page was listed on votes for deletion. Please see Votes for deletion/Verstehen for the results of the debate. -- AllyUnion (talk) 12:42, 4 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Meaning
"Verstehen" means "understanding." It does not mean "interpretation." It is a general tendency to take a word that designates one legitimate concept and to make it designate other concepts as well. The result is ambiguity and confusion, which delights certain people, especially academics because it provides a topic for their professional writings. The Germans already have a word that signifies the concept of "interpretation." This word is "die Auslegung."Lestrade (talk) 12:14, 5 May 2009 (UTC)Lestrade


 * Verstehen doesn't directly translate from German in general, even if 'understanding' is a better translation than 'interpretation'. The opening pararaph is organised quite well now to acknowledge this point. --Tomsega (talk) 16:54, 10 October 2009 (UTC)


 * I removed the sentence "The word [Verstehen] is used as an attributive noun in phrases such as Interpretative Sociology (verstehende Soziologie)." 1. because it does NOT appear in the phrase "Interpretive Sociology"; and 2. because it does not even appear in the phrase "verstehende Soziologie", where "verstehende" is, in any case, no kind of noun but a present participle used adjectivally! --Picapica (talk) 19:29, 2 August 2012 (UTC)

Summary
Verstehen is a German word signifying the "understanding" and "interpretation" of meaning and human activities. It is pronounced [fərˈʃteːən], and is used as an attributive noun in phrases such as Interpretative Sociology (verstehende Soziologie). There is also a tendency in modern English not to follow the German-language practice of capitalizing nouns.

That first paragraph doesn't seem to be very useful to me as a summary or broad brush overview which is what I think it should be. Even reading the whole article, I'm not sure I understand what verstehen means in the context of sociology (or philosophy). But, it is far more than a word, right--I mean it is some kind of "social scientific concept" (in the words of the article).

It is also "the first-person participatory perspective that agents have on their individual experience as well as their culture, history, and society"

And:

it has come to mean a systematic interpretive process in which an outside observer of a culture (such as an anthropologist or sociologist) relates to an indigenous people or sub-cultural group on their own terms and from their own point-of-view, rather than interpreting them in terms of his or her own concepts. Verstehen can mean either a kind of empathic or participatory understanding of social phenomena. In anthropological terms this is sometimes described as cultural relativism.

I think the sentences about the word Verstehen (pronouciation and spelling in German) need to be moved elsewhere in the article, and some of the stuff I just quoted added to the summary. Now that I realize that, I'll make an attempt at changing the article.

Hmm, although thinking one more time, I'm not taking into account the comment under "Meaning" that says '"Verstehen" means "understanding." It does not mean "interpretation."'--I'm not sure if whoever made that comment is right or not--seems to me he'd need to be a German in that culture to fully understand what is meant by the word "verstehen". ;-) I understand what he is saying, but I don't know if he's right--if the word has been adopted by sociologists or philosophers to have the meaning described in the article, then I think that meaning needs to be covered in the article.

Ok, I'm back. I think I improved the summary, mostly by reorganizing and reusing sentences already on the page. In the sentence:

"Verstehen can mean either a kind of empathic or participatory understanding of social phenomena."

I deleted the word "either"--I don't think (the author) intended an either / or situation--I think the two "alternatives" are almost synonomous--he (the author) was (I think) trying to present the same concept with two slightly different words to help make it clear.

Rhkramer (talk) 11:05, 31 August 2009 (UTC)

Clarifications Needed
Obviously, this article needs some citations. Maybe, we can start with a compilation of resources. Here is one that I can suggest:

Rickman, H.P. (1960, Dec.). "The Reaction Against Positivism and Dilthey's Concept of Understanding". The British Journal of Sociology. 11(4). pp. 307-318. Edunoramus (talk) 18:39, 22 August 2010 (UTC)

"Loosely"??
This article says this German word does not directly translate, but only loosely corresponds to "understanding". I wonder if the truth is that the borrowed German word being used by English-speaking sociologists is not exactly synonymous with "understanding", but the actual German word when used in German by non-sociologists does mean the same thing? See this link. Michael Hardy (talk) 20:31, 26 December 2010 (UTC)

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