Abstract

In this paper I develop a theory of Weltanschauungen. A judgment belongs to a Weltanschauung if it represents reality simultaneously in three dimensions: the descriptive- cognitive dimension, the ethical-practical dimension, and the esthetic-emotive dimension. It is a crucial anthropological function of Weltanschauungen that they coordinate human perception and action in all these three dimensions. Different Weltanschauungen differ from each other in the weight of importance which they attach to each of these three dimensions. Therefore I suggest to classify Weltanschauungen according to their position within a triangle, the so-called Weltanschauungsdreieck, whose vertices represent these three dimensions. In sections 1-3 my analysis of Weltanschauungen is based on general epistemological and anthropological reections, drawing on the philosophical and scientific literature. My sections 4-6 make use of Robert Musil's impressing novel \The man without qualities", in which Musil explores Weltanschauungen by literary methods: at hand of the major figures of his novel he brings Weltanschauungen into being, lets them develop, reconstructs them, parodises them and finally deconstructs them. In the final section I show how a variety of typical bipolarities of Weltanschauungen can be analyzed within the Weltanschauungsdreieck.