Disenchanting the Fact/Value Dichotomy: A Critique of Felix Kaufmann’s Views on Value and Social Reality

What is at stake in philosophical debates on values is whether it is possible to accurately describe our moral, aesthetic, religious or otherwise evaluative experiences without entering an ontological commitment to values as independently existing objects that cannot be reduced to physical objects. As far as values emerge in Felix Kaufmann’s work this venerable debate is reduced to the question of how social scientists should deal with the fact/value dichotomy. The present essay aims at elaborating and challenging Kaufmann’s thoughts on values and their impact on his understanding of social reality. In order to approach this aim I introduce two methodological issues, called strata of experience and the philosopher’s fallacy, which offer a suitable framework for inquiring into Kaufmann’s Methodenlehre (1936), his Methodology (1944) and other relevant materials.