Wittgenstein, Weber and Winch on Understanding Human Behaviour: A “Matter of Continuity”

The aim of this essay is to try to explain what "understanding" is – as a particular form of activity that conveys practical and moral consequences – in the philosophical and ethical conceptions of Ludwig Wittgenstein, Max Weber and Peter Winch. The key-words around which this paper is structured are "understanding human behaviour", and this topic is tackled by comparing and contrasting these three authors for two reasons. First, because the kind of "understanding" that is in question here plays a fundamental role within the context of their specific philosophical and epistemological investigations, and in relation to the contribution that each of them gave – directly and/or indirectly – to the evolution of contemporary social sciences, in particular, sociology and cultural anthropology. Second, because it is a notion which shows a special kind of philosophical continuity between theoretical interests and practical attitudes in their shared concern about the ethical consequences of the action. For Wittgenstein and Winch, as well for Weber, ethics seems to be the hidden side of philosophy and human knowledge, but also the most relevant aspect in order to make intelligible the sense of a life.