The Debate between Explanation and Understanding in von Wright and Apel. A Double Interpretation of the Leibnizian Proposals

Abstract

1. H. von Wright and Karl–Otto Apel have conducted a review of Leibniz's presence throughout the development of analytic philosophy after Russell and the first Wittgenstein. In both cases it was intended to solve the crisis of foundation generated by the initial positivist–logical proposals. Both Russell and the first Wittgenstein would have initially proposed some constitutive presuppositions of a dogmatic nature, which they would borrow from the Monadology of 1714 of the last Leibniz. However, these principles were in clear contradiction with respect to the unlimitedly revisionist regulatory ideal on which the elaboration of a truly universal mathematical language proposed by the young Leibniz was based. For von Wright the last Wittgenstein and the young Leibniz would have tried to legitimize the reciprocal semiotic understanding in the name of a previous experimental explanation, while for Apel both the last Wittgenstein and the young Leibniz would have tried to show the impossibility of explaining a fact of the experience if we do not have a previous language that allows us to understand it.