The collapse of historicism was not merely the demise of an academic tradition but signified a shift in the understanding of hermeneutics and metaphysics. Whereas earlier books have explored the rise and dominance of historicism within academic history, this is the first to trace its collapse and to show how it was shaped by larger philosophical and scientific concerns. Charles R. Bambach's lucid account of the demise of historicism within the context of German metaphysics provides a rich new perspective on (...) the development of the young Heidegger's concept of "historicity" and on the origins of postmodern thought. Bambach reconstructs the methodological debates arising from a pervasive sense of crisis among German philosophers in the late nineteenth century. He details the divergent attempts by the Neo-Kantians, Nietzsche, and Dilthey to overcome the limitations of historical relativism. Heidegger's view of "historicity," Bambach shows, radically transforms the problematic of historicism into a discourse concerning the crisis of philosophical modernity. (shrink)

PDF includes the introduction. Abstract: In this wide-ranging and authoritative volume, leading scholars engage with the philosophy and writings of Wilhelm Dilthey, a key figure in nineteenth-century thought. Their chapters cover his innovative philosophical strategies and explore how they can be understood in relation to their historical situation, as well as presenting incisive interpretations of Dilthey's arguments, including their development, their content, and their influence on later thought. A key focus is on how Dilthey's work remains relevant (...) to current debates around art and literature, the biographical and autobiographical self, knowledge, language, science, culture, history, society, and psychology and the embodied mind. The volume will be important for researchers in hermeneutics, aesthetics, practical philosophy, and the history of German philosophy, providing a valuable introduction to Dilthey's work as well as detailed critical analysis of its ongoing significance. (shrink)

ABSTRACTThis paper elaborates a conception of the unity of science that emerges in the context of Dilthey’s well-known treatment of the distinction between the Naturwissenschaften and the Geisteswissenschaften. Dilthey’s account of the epistemological foundations of the Geisteswissenschaften presupposes, this paper argues, their continuity with the natural sciences. The unity of the two domains has both a psychological and a biological basis. Whereas the psychological functions at work in scientific thinking, the articulation of which is the task of (...) class='Hi'>Dilthey’s proposed science of ‘descriptive and analytic psychology’, are common to both kinds of sciences, their ontological ground consists in the embodied and environmentally situated context of human beings, and is expressed in Dilthey’s central concept of ‘life’. Accordingly, this paper develops the shared biopsychological foundations of the epistemology of the natural and human sciences from Dilthey’s writings in the 1880s and 1890s. Dilthey’s conception of unity, furthermore, has implications for philosophy’s orientation towards the special sciences. Thus, in conclusion, this paper applies the biopsychological account to sketch an outline of Dilthey’s historicist method in the philosophy of science, and considers its similarities and differences with a contemporary approach in ‘historical epistemology’. (shrink)

Wilhelm Dilthey (1833-1911) fut directement impliqué dans presque tous les grands débats philosophiques en Allemagne au tournant du XIXe et du XXe siècle : sur le rapport entre psychologie et logique, sur les conditions transcendantales de la conscience de soi, sur l'historicité de l'existence humaine, sur l'herméneutique et la question du sens, sur la philosophie de la compréhension ou encore sur la signification philosophique de la vie (de l'existence) et des valeurs. Certains de ces débats, notamment celui sur l'autonomie (...) cognitive des sciences humaines, ont été inaugurés par Dilthey lui-même. L'une des problématiques où un nouveau dialogue avec sa pensée pourrait se nouer aujourd'hui serait sans aucun doute, précisément, la question de la possibilité de la réconciliation des études objectives de l'histoire avec l'expérience que l'homme fait de l'historicité radicale de sa compréhension. En effet, Dilthey n'accepte pas que l'homme puisse se dérober à sa responsabilité face à l'histoire sous prétexte que l'histoire, elle, s'est déjà dérobée à sa compréhension. Tout au contraire : c'est parce qu'il en est responsable que l'homme ne peut se dérober à la compréhension de l'histoire, même si le chemin de la compréhension est long et pénible. (shrink)

This paper focuses on a neglected part of Dilthey’s œuvre that consists of papers on 16th–17th century philosophical issues. These papers are closer to interpretive articles than to original works, and so they are neither considered Dilthey’s original contributions to his own philosophy nor studied as part of the secondary literature. One of the most characteristic features of Dilthey’s philosophic style is the historical-systematic method mostly repudiated as concealing the real statement of the author “between the lines,” (...) i.e. behind historical analyses. Therefore these papers are not reckoned among Dilthey’s great works of enduring significance. This paper aims to make the reader more sensitive to the world and claims of these papers by way of an intermediary approach to them that acknowledges their intermediary position between a historical description and a systematic analysis. This is to be accomplished by having a look at the “pantheism” of Georg Misch, Dilthey’s largely forgotten pupil and son-in-law. (shrink)

Betr. Diltheys Professur an der Universität Basel 1867-1868.

Wilhelm Dilthey's late nineteenth-century doctrine of `re-experiencing' the thoughts and feelings of the actors whose lives the social scientist seeks to understand has been criticized by several commentators as entailing a `naïve empathy view of understanding' in which social scientists are said to transport themselves into other cultural contexts in a wholly uncritical, unreflective manner. This article challenges such criticisms by arguing that Dilthey's writings on hermeneutics amount to a highly sophisticated defence of the role of psychological feeling (...) in understanding that should still be of interest to contemporary social theorists. Beginning with a review of the reception of Dilthey's work by Max Weber and the Neo-Kantians, the article goes on to enumerate a number of significant parallels between Dilthey's insights and more recent approaches in social and cultural theory. (shrink)

The purpose of this article was to examine the historical contribution of Wilhelm Dilthey's approach to the philosophy and methodology of hermeneutics in the demarcated context of nursing science. Dilthey's work made a fundamentally significant, yet ancillary, contribution to nursing science. Organically born from a need to deduce Biblical texts, hermeneutics later developed as a means to understand the truth of another's experience, in literal German language referred to as verstehen. A German‐born empiricist and devout hermeneutic scholar, (...) class='Hi'>Dilthey extended the philosophy of hermeneutics to a methodological approach as a way to recapture expressed meaning of human experiences. His directive work paved a procedural pathway to probe the science of human nature while bound to the appropriate sociohistorical context. Hermeneutic methodology provides a phenomenological‐like way to more keenly understand and interpret the whole person. This methodological approach steers a truth‐seeking strategy fixed in meticulous and rigorous inquiry. Dilthey transparently recognized the humble fact that there is no true way to wholly grasp another's experience, an inherent limitation of our human abilities. The current paper posits that hermeneutical understanding verstehen can be paralleled to the concept of empathy in nursing. Understanding and empathy are foundational components to the field of nursing as a caring science. The complex yet invaluable philosophy and methodology of Wilhelm Dilthey's hermeneutics is notably relevant and applicable to nursing science as we strive to care for, treat, and heal patients as whole beings. (shrink)

Wilhelm Dilthey's contributions to hermeneutics go back to 1860 when he wrote a long manuscript entitled “Schleiermacher's Hermeneutical System in Relation to Earlier Protestant Hermeneutics”. Because of the long hold that theology had over hermeneutics as the theory of interpretation, the important theoretical writings that contribute to Dilthey's life project of a Critique of Historical Reason before 1900 refer less to the problems of interpretation and more to the nature of understanding. Dilthey prefers the term lived experience (...) (Erlebnis) and increasingly focuses on the capacity of lived experience to encompass both inner and outer sense. Dilthey's last essay on hermeneutics entitled “The Understanding of Other Persons and Their Manifestations of Life”, he reiterates the three levels of understanding: the elementary understanding that derives from the commonalities that nurture us from birth, the higher conceptual understanding contributed by the sciences, and, finally, re‐experiencing as reflective assessment. (shrink)

Diltheys Denken wird seit der zweiten H?lfte des 20. Jahrhunderts aus einer hermeneutischen, durch Gadamer bestimmten Perspektive beurteilt. Dilthey am Ma?stab der Hermeneutik zu messen bedeutet aber, seine grundlegend handlungstheoretische Einstellung auszublenden. Denn die?innere Erfahrung?, auf die bei der erkenntnistheoretischen Grundlegung der Geisteswissenschaften zur?ckgegangen wird, hat die Struktur von Handlung. Sie wird von Dilthey als?Zweckzusammenhang? bzw. auf einen Zweck gerichteter Funktionszusammenhang beschrieben, schlie?lich geht es dem Menschen schon auf der biologischen Ebene darum, triebhaft gesteuerte Bed?rfnisse durch entsprechende Handlungen (...) zu befriedigen. Das Erlebnis des zweckgerichteten psychischen Zusammenhangs gibt uns das Muster f?r das Verst?ndnis der Welt vor.?Verstehen? wird dem entsprechend von Dilthey als?Nacherleben? konzipiert. Naturalismus und Hermeneutik werden in diesem Konzept einander angen?hert. nema. (shrink)

Wilhelm Dilthey in WrocławThe article above discusses 11 years of Wilhelm Dilthey’s creative presence in Wrocław, a philosopher whose contribution to the European culture has been never questioned. Dilthey was appointed to the University of Wrocław in March 1871. Same year in October, he moved to Wrocław, took over the department of philosophy from Christlieb Julius Braniβ and started academic lectures in autumn. Acclimatizing in the Silesian capital was dif ficult for the philosopher, in his letters he (...) complained about the climate and provinciality of the city. It has changed over time, so that Dilthey finally adjusted to the environment. It happened because of numerous connections with the people from the university, among others with Graf Yorck von Wartenburg, but not only. In Dilthey’s biography, years in Wrocław were extremely prolific. In Wrocław Dilthey matured to the work of his life: Introduction to the Human Sciences, called in the subject literature the “crowning of the period in Wrocław”. He presented the concept of his work in a letter, among others, to Theodor Althof f, an of ficial from the Prussian Ministry of Culture. The preserved sketch of the letter is interesting because of its concept, but also because it shows a certain dependence of onetime philosophers on the state system. The article above contains an annex—a translation of this letter into Polish. Dilthey was a lecturer at the University of Wrocław until the end of the summer semester in 1882, after that he was appointed to Berlin in July 1882. (shrink)

Dilthey apontou primeiro a psicologia e depois a hermenêutica como tendo papel fundamental para sua filosofia da vida, cujo principal objetivo prático é desenvolver a pedagogia ou teoria geral da educação. A pedagogia necessita da ajuda da ética para estabelecer seus fins e da psicologia para indicar seus meios. Este texto tem por objetivo mostrar a relação entre hermenêutica da vida e pedagogia, para Dilthey. A filosofia da vida do autor, ao adotar procedimento hermenêutico, exercita a compreensão ou (...) busca de significado das criações humanas histórico-sociais por um tipo especial de relação entre as partes e o todo. É justamente dentro desse balanço hermenêutico que propomos apagar qualquer vestígio de ruptura, brecha ou contradição entre a busca de princípios universais da ação humana e a impossibilidade de construção da tarefa humana moral, por meio de princípios universais. Só em 1890 Dilthey deu início às conhecidas conferências sobre ética, na Universidade de Berlim. Tais conferências, publicadas em 1958 por Herman Nohl, no volume X das Obras Completas, apontam as diretrizes do caminho que deverá consolidar a ética formativa ou social, enquanto solução histórica para o alcance de princípios universais de orientação para a conduta humana. Essa trajetória efetiva-se graças ao exercício distintivamente humano da autorreflexão. Por meio dela, é possível cumprir nosso destino de manifestar, exteriorizar no tempo a energia do espírito absoluto que nos é imanente. Diante desse panorama, este texto procura sublinhar como é possível que tal pedagogia possa respeitar sua tarefa universal de orientar historicamente o desenvolvimento das novas gerações, sem dirigir o processo por meio de fins rígida e fixamente estabelecidos. (shrink)

Dilthey's overall goal of a Critic of Historical Reason Will require a progression from an immediate kind of knowledge of life to the conceptual cognition of the human sciences, to a reflective knowledge that constitutes mature understanding. This paper intends to show, which are the difficulties and the limits of Dilthey's theoretical enterprise.O propósito sistemático-filosófico da crítica diltheiana da razão histórica traduz-se na busca de apoio do conhecimento objetivo para sua apreensão intuitiva da vida. O presente artigo busca (...) mostrar não só aspectos da trajetória teórica do autor, mas também suas dificuldades e limites. (shrink)

Dilthey claimed that first psychology and then hermeneutics played the foundational role for his philosophy of life, whose main practical goal is to develop a pedagogy or theory of education. Pedagogy needs help from ethics to establish its ends, and from psychology to indicate its means. This paper intends to show the relationship between Dilthey's hermeneutics of life and his pedagogy. Dilthey's philosophy of life, in so far it adopts the hermeneutical procedure, engages in the understanding of, (...) or the search for the meaning of, human socio-historical creations, by adopting a special type of relationship between parts and whole. It is exactly within this hermeneutical balance that we propose to extinguish any indication of a rupture, breach, or contradiction between the quest for universal principles of human behavior and Dilthey's defense of the impossibility of constructing human moral tasks by means of universal principles. Dilthey began his ethics lectures at the University of Berlin in 1890. These lectures, published in 1958 by Herman Nohl in volume X of Dilthey's collected works, indicate the direction of the trajectory by which formative or social ethics are consolidated as a historical solution for reaching universal principles that can guide human purposes. This trajectory is a result of the distinctively human exercise of self-reflection, by means of which we can fulfill our destiny of manifesting and exteriorizing in time the immanent energy of the absolute spirit. We wish to show that it is possible that such a pedagogy can respect its universal task of orienting the historical development of the younger generation without directing this process by means of fixed and rigid aims.Dilthey apontou primeiro a psicologia e depois a hermenêutica como tendo papel fundamental para sua filosofia da vida, cujo principal objetivo prático é desenvolver a pedagogia ou teoria geral da educação. A pedagogia necessita da ajuda da ética para estabelecer seus fins e da psicologia para indicar seus meios. Este texto tem por objetivo mostrar a relação entre hermenêutica da vida e pedagogia, para Dilthey. A filosofia da vida do autor, ao adotar procedimento hermenêutico, exercita a compreensão ou busca de significado das criações humanas histórico-sociais por um tipo especial de relação entre as partes e o todo. É justamente dentro desse balanço hermenêutico que propomos apagar qualquer vestígio de ruptura, brecha ou contradição entre a busca de princípios universais da ação humana e a impossibilidade de construção da tarefa humana moral, por meio de princípios universais. Só em 1890 Dilthey deu início às conhecidas conferências sobre ética, na Universidade de Berlim. Tais conferências, publicadas em 1958 por Herman Nohl, no volume X das Obras Completas, apontam as diretrizes do caminho que deverá consolidar a ética formativa ou social, enquanto solução histórica para o alcance de princípios universais de orientação para a conduta humana. Essa trajetória efetiva-se graças ao exercício distintivamente humano da autorreflexão. Por meio dela, é possível cumprir nosso destino de manifestar, exteriorizar no tempo a energia do espírito absoluto que nos é imanente. Diante desse panorama, este texto procura sublinhar como é possível que tal pedagogia possa respeitar sua tarefa universal de orientar historicamente o desenvolvimento das novas gerações, sem dirigir o processo por meio de fins rígida e fixamente estabelecidos. (shrink)

This volume provides a unique overview and analysis of the philosophy and thought of Wilhelm Dilthey, and examines his writings in terms of their contemporary relevance. Rickman contends that the hub of Dilthey's work was his philosophy of the human studies, and that his ideas were directly relevant to the future of the social sciences. The book focuses on Dilthey's contribution not only to philosophy but also to history, psychology, sociology, anthropology, literary criticism, and the methodology of (...) human studies in general; his bearing on present-day concepts is documented by quotations from modern authors in these various fields. This incisive study also includes a critical assessment of the ambiquities and tensions in Dilthey's writing, which have been underscored by the recent first publication of some of his important manuscripts, and examine how contemporary thought has been stimulated by these ambiguities and by his resolute attempts to confront reality in all its complexities. (shrink)

Die Dilthey-Forschung der letzten Jahre hat Dilthey tendenziell von dem Bild einer rein 'kontinentalen' Philosophie der Hermeneutik des Lebens weggerückt. Vielmehr war sein Wissenschaftsverständnis holistisch und einem umfassenden Erfahrungsbegriff verpflichtet. Statt Geistes- und Naturwissenschaften einander entgegenzusetzen, brachte er eine empiristisch eingestellte akademische Philosophie auf den Weg.

Dilthey es uno de los autores que introducen el tema de la historia en el ámbito de la filosofía. Lo cual es un acierto, aunque haya encontrado multitud de problemas. Leonardo Polo procura encontrarles solución.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Wilhelm Dilthey, Selected Works, Volume IV: Hermeneutics and the Study of History ed. by Rudolf A. Makkreel, Frithjof RodiCharles BambachRudolf A. Makkreel and Frithjof Rodi, editors. Wilhelm Dilthey, Selected Works, Volume IV: Hermeneutics and the Study of History. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1996. Pp. xii + 409. Cloth, $59.50.Contemporary hermeneutics has been dominated by the work of Heidegger and Gadamer. Their phenomenological approach to the human (...) world has exerted such a powerful influence in recent years that one can hardly enter a discussion about the philosophical meaning of hermeneutics that is not already framed in the terms of their discourse. At the same time, there is less familiarity with the origins and sources of the hermeneutic method or with the thought of Wilhelm Dilthey. The editors of Dilthey’s Selected Works, Rudolf Makkreel and Frithjof Rodi, have set about trying to rectify this situation. They have sought to provide a richer context for the study of hermeneutics by bringing out a six-volume collection of writings from one of the major hermeneutical philosophers in the Western tradition. The publication of Volume Four in this series helps to accomplish this task by offering new translations of important Dilthey texts covering both the history and genesis of hermeneutics and a genealogical account of Dilthey’s own hermeneutical approach to history. Only one short essay in this volume, “The Rise of Hermeneutics” (1900), has been published before, and even this older translation has been revised and supplemented by material from the Nachlass. But what is the significance of this material and how does it help to achieve a fuller understanding of hermeneutics and its history?The selections in Volume Four cover the period from 1860 to 1903 with a heavy emphasis on the period from 1860 to 1868 (over two-thirds of the book focuses on Dilthey’s 1860 Preisschrift on “Schleiermacher’s Hermeneutical System in Relation to Earlier Protestant Hermeneutics,” notes from his 1867–68 lectures “On Understanding and Hermeneutics,” and three reviews from 1862 on historical literature from Buckle, Burckhardt, and F.C. Schlosser). The remaining essays from 1900–1903 provide a sense of Dilthey’s later reflections on hermeneutics and on the meaning of the eighteenth century for historiography and as a philosophical approach to history. The editors of this collection have chosen these texts carefully; the selections in Volume Four are organized around a specific theme. By culling significant early texts about hermeneutics and history and juxtaposing them with a number of later texts on the same topics, they hope to show the genesis of Dilthey’s own path of thought. What emerges from an attentive reading of these sources—especially when carried out within the context of the editors’ own principle of selection—is a highly persuasive view of Dilthey and his work. In the texts themselves we see Dilthey moving from his earlier role as the chronicler and historian of Protestant thought (who conceives of hermeneutics as an ancillary method of textual exegesis) to his later position as the philosopher of the historical world (who views hermeneutics as the epistemological method for the grounding of the human sciences). What we see here is a developmental account of Dilthey’s thought path: from the traditional scholar who conceives of hermeneutics as a method for interpreting texts to the philosopher who understands it as the fundamental science for interpreting historical life. This shift within Dilthey’s work from a hermeneutics of textuality to a hermeneutics of historicity marks an important turning point in the history of the hermeneutical [End Page 641] tradition, a turning point that helped to form the basis of all later philosophical hermeneutics.The five essays from Part Two—“Interpretations of History”—offer a smattering of Dilthey’s own writings on historiography, the theory of history, and the role of the eighteenth-century German tradition in forging an historicist understanding of “human affairs” (373) whose “organic nexus” and “inner purposiveness as a whole” opened up a radically new conception of historical being. Most contemporary continental philosophers will get lost in the textured details of Dilthey’s analyses because what passes for “philosophy” in our epoch pales by comparison with the rich... (shrink)

After the collapse of the Hegelian philosophy, many thinkers returned to the main principles of Kantian transcendentalism. In this way, they initiated the neo-kantian movement. Wilhelm Dilthey was among them. Nevertheless, only in spirit can his “Critique of the Historical Reason” be called neo-kantian. In fact, the core of Dilthey’s project, the “Categories of Life”, is a completely new gnoseological proposal, that mediates between transcendental philosophy and empiricism.

Following Gadamer, Dilthey’s philosophy of the social world is beset by an implicit subjectivism which puts into question the very possibility of shared understanding. This subjectivism is taken to lie behind Dilthey’s emphasis on empathy (or “re-experiencing”), which becomes a condition of our understanding of others and knowledge of the socio-historical world generally. I argue that Dilthey does not give primacy to subjectivity, particularly in his later works. Dilthey’s own notion of sociality, accounted for in terms (...) of the common realm of “objective spirit,” is akin to Gadamer’s own anti-subjectivist account of the human sciences and understanding. Through objective spirit, Dilthey shows that understanding cannot be conceived in terms of an aggregation of individual mental acts but is instead an irreducibly social accomplishment. (shrink)

Wilhelm Dilthey is one of the authors who introduces the topic of the history in philosophy. This is a good judgment, though he finds many more questions. We believe that Polo answers them in a suitable manner.

Introduction Wilhelm Dilthey's name is most often linked with the title of a nonexistent book: Critique of Historical Reason. Although he never published a ...

Dilthey is a figure of real importance in European philosophy and social theory. He exerted a significant influence on Husserl, Heidegger and Weber through his work on the nature of philosophy and the methodology and epistemology of human and social studies. He was also a distinguished and original historian of ideas and, indeed, many of his philosophical interests arose from the insights and practical difficulties he encountered as a historian. He produced a monumental biography of Schleiermacher, and a series (...) of shorter, but no less striking studies of Hegel, Dickens, Shakespeare, Schiller and many others. (shrink)

The philosopher and historian of culture Wilhelm Dilthey (1833-1911) has had a significant and continuing influence on twentieth-century Continental philosophy and in a broad range of scholarly disciplines. Rudolf Makkreel interprets Dilthey's philosophy and provides a guide to its complex development. Against the tendency to divorce Dilthey's early psychological writings from his later hermeneutical and historical works, Makkreel argues for their essential continuity.

Since his death in 1911, Wilhelm Dilthey has, for many, loomed large as an important yet perennially underappreciated figure in German philosophy. As Jean Grondin says in his contribution to this volume, Dilthey's reputation was at once enhanced and compromised by the attention Heidegger paid him in the 1920s—enhanced by his indebtedness to Dilthey's account of the historicality of human existence; compromised by the trenchant criticism he deducted from that debt, charging Dilthey with uncritical reliance on (...) notions of subjectivity and expression of "inner experience" on one side, and of the validity and objectivity of scientific knowledge on the other. In a similar spirit, Gadamer criticized... (shrink)

Situado no campo da discussão entre a filosofia da vida e a fenomenologia, ou mais especificamente entre a escola diltheiana e o círculo fenomenológico, o artigo investiga em que esfera Dilthey é, de fato, relativista, e, no caso afirmativo, até que ponto é possível extrair, de sua posição diante da história, consequências céticas.

The importance of Dilthey Why read Dilthey today? Why study the ideas of a nineteenthcentury German philosopher some seventy years after his death? ...

For dilthey, poetry brings human life to a determinate focus through a present image. however, his view of the nature of the nexus being articulated undergoes significant changes. dilthey initially conceived of the life-nexus as the psychological nexus of the individual. so, poetic expression articulates the diverse strands of the poet's psychic life. in dilthey's later view, the life-nexus is a sociohistorical nexus which encompasses the life of the individual. thus, poetry reflects the ways in which an (...) individual is a crossing-point of concrete sociohistorical relations. (shrink)

Wilhelm Dilthey's epistemology is an attempt at a more cogent and non-reductionist version of empiricism. According to Dilthey the concepts and ideas of the human mind are empirical objects in their own right. Thus, philosophy as the study of these “facts of consciousness” turns out to be an empirical science; its methods are the methods of psychology, sociology, and history. These views of Dilthey are firstly described in the context of their competitive philosophical programs—“metaphysics”, empiricism and -Kantianism—, (...) then they are compared with recent developments of empirical philosophy, namely van Fraassens neo-empiricism, experimental philosophy, and the sociology of philosophical knowledge. (shrink)

The hermeneutical tradition represented by Yorck, Heidegger, and Gadamer has distrusted Dilthey as suffering from the two sins of modernism: scientific “positivism” and individualistic and aesthetic “romanticism.” On the one hand, Dilthey’s epistemology is deemed scientistic in accepting the priority of the empirical, the ontic, and consequently scientific inquiry into the physical, biological, and human worlds; on the other hand, his personalist ethos and Goethean humanism, and his pluralistic life- and worldview philosophy are considered excessively aesthetic, culturally liberal, (...) relativistic, and subjective. This essay involves two tasks in response to this negative evaluation of Dilthey that has shaped our current understanding of his philosophical project; first, an interpretation of the issues at stake in Heidegger’s reception of and struggles with Dilthey. These issues touch upon language, historicity, and the nature of hermeneutics. Second, by pursuing this task in light of Guignon’s interpretation of Dilthey and Heidegger, I hope to question and challenge the “overcoming” of Dilthey’s epistemic and life-philosophical hermeneutics in the “ontological” or “philosophical” hermeneutics of Heidegger. (shrink)

In Diltheys Philosophie heißt ‘Kultur’ jedes geistige Leben, das durch eine Struktur gestaltet ist und auf gemeinsame Zwecke abzielt. Jede Kultur beruht auf biologischen und anthropologischen Tatsachen und bringt Stetigkeit in das menschliche Leben. Der historische Fortschritt bringt verschiedene Formen der Kultur als Zusammenfassung der geistigen Tatsachen hervor. Solche Kulturen, an denen die Individuen Anteil haben, sind Wissenschaft, Kunst, Philosophie, Religion, Recht und jeder konstante Lebens- und Kommunikationsstil. „Kulturelle Systeme“ sind die äußeren Verbindungen und Institutionen der Kultur, z.B. ist die (...) Kirche das System der Religion, der Staat das System des Rechts und der Gesellschaft. Natürlich lebt das Individuum in je verschiedenen kulturellen Systemen, die voneinander unabhängig sind. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:From Dilthey to Mead and Heidegger: Systematic and Historical Relations MATTHIASJUNG FOR TODAY'S READER, G. H. Mead's lectures on Movements of Thought in the Nineteenth Century offer a surprise: Mead, despite having attended his lectures from 1889 to 1891, does not mention the name of Wilhelm Dilthey, who nowadays is regarded as one of the classical authors of nineteenth-century philosophy. Mead's lectures lack any sign of awareness (...) concerning the hermeneutic tradition, represented by such names as Friedrich Schlegel, Schleiermacher, Droysen and, of course, Dilthey. Nevertheless it is, as I would like to show in the following pages, quite obvious that Mead's own philosophical conception shows some striking parallels with Dilthey's thought, which can be explained partly through direct influence, partly through the similarity of the questions both tried to answer. For Mead's missing reference to the mentioned tradition, I see two complementary explanations. Firstly, the philosophical importance of the hermeneutic tradition in nineteenth-century philosophy was mainly a retrospective matter. Only after 1927, when Martin Heidegger published Being and Time, did philosophical interest in hermeneutics begin; and then it took thirty-three years more till Hans-Georg Gadamer's Truth and Method brought about a historical interest in the development of hermeneutic thought. Secondly, Mead's own passion for the development of science may have forced him to neglect these philosophical movements, which seemed to resist the autocracy of (natural) science. Wilhelm Dilthey's thought, especially around the year 189o, can systematically be interpreted as a common starting-point for two of the most important directions of contemporary philosophy: pragmatism and hermeneutics. It is but a small exaggeration to say that G. H. Mead drew out the pragmatic, Martin Heidegger the hermeneutic consequences of Dilthey's concept of [661 ] 662 JOURNAL OF THE HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY 33:4 OCTOBER ~995 Seelenleben, understood as a "best~indige Wechselwirkung zwischen unserem Eigenleben und dem Milieu. ''1 Mead's phase-model of acting, his whole idea of understanding meaning as the result of a social process, are paralleled and partly anticipated by Dilthey, as is Heidegger's conception of Dasein as "beingin -the-world" and his attempt to understand the inner historicity of life.2 In pointing this out, I do not want to claim that Mead was conscious of the systematic relation of his theories to Dilthey's work; nevertheless I will argue that Dilthey's ideas may have served as a source of inspiration and, furthermore, that this inspiration was made possible through some important similarities in the systematic architecture of both hermeneutics and pragmatism.3 I begin by working out the historical dimension, which Hans Joas characterized as "Meads biographische Abkunft von Dilthey"4 (section l). After that, I will sketch Dilthey's philosophical position around 189o in order to show how he works to transform the German tradition of "philosophy of consciousness" into a new concept of interaction between the life-processes of detranscendentalized subjects and their environment (section 2). Having done this, I will be ready to discuss the parallels between Mead's pragmatic approach to the life-process and Dilthey's work (section 3). Finally, the early Heidegger's and Mead's transformations of "philosophy of consciousness" will briefly be interpreted as different ways of overcoming the inherent problems of Dilthey 's attempt (section 4). Between April 23, 1889 and October ~4, 1891 G. H. Mead was registered at the Humboldt-University of Berlin.5 During this period Wilhelm Dilthey, who had come from Breslau to Berlin in 1882, gave the following lectures: "Geschichte der neueren Philosophie"; "Geschichte und System der P/idagogik "; "Logik und Erkenntnistheorie"; "Psychologie als Erfahrungswissen- ' Wilhelm Dilthey, DichterischeEinbildungskraft und Wahnsinn, in GesammelteSchriften, Bd. VI (Stuttgart/G6ttingen: Teubner/Vandenhoeck &Ruprecht, 1962),95. 9In Sein und Zeit (cited from the 15th edition, Tfibingen: Niemeyer, 1979),Heidegger refers frequently to Dilthey: 46, 47, 2o5, 2~ 249, 376f-, 385, 397-4o4 9The two most important sources concerning his early reception of Dilthey'swork are the lecture from the summer semester of 192o,Phi~nomenologieder Anschauung und des Ausdrucks, ed. C. Strube (Frankfurt: Klostermann, 1993) and the "Kasseler Vortr~ge," given in 1925 under the title "Wilhelm Diltheys Forschungsarbeit und der... (shrink)

The place of Wilhelm Dilthey (1833–1911)in the history of hermeneutics has been subject to considerable misinterpretation. He is rightly regarded as having expanded the scope of hermeneutics by adding human actions to the kinds of texts that can be interpreted, but is wrongly dismissed as having overlooked the full significance of this move. His distinction between understanding and explanation has been stereotyped as a mere methodological distinction relevant for his theory of the human sciences. His reflections on interpretation have (...) been relegated to the domain of traditional philological hermeneutics and excluded from philosophical hermeneutics. Heidegger's ontical‐ontological distinction has been used to drive a wedge between the two and place Dilthey on the ontical side of a divide that cannot be fully justified. On the basis of newly available writings, a more adequate account dealing with the philosophical content of Dilthey's hermeneutic contributions can now be given. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Journal of the History of Philosophy 39.3 (2001) 407-436 [Access article in PDF] Dilthey's Epistemology of the Geisteswissenschaften: Between Lebensphilosophie and Wissenschaftstheorie James Reid A great part of my life's work has been devoted to formulating a universally valid science which should provide the human sciences with a firm foundation and a unified internal coherency.... I am neither an intuitionist, nor a historicist, nor a skeptic. Dilthey (...) to Husserl, 29 June 1911 To show life as it is, that is what we strive for. To describe life: that is our goal.... We want to make life visible in its unfathomable depths, and in its unfathomable nexus. Dilthey, Gesammelte Schriften 19: 330 In the dedication of the first volume of the Einleitung in die Geisteswissenschaften to his friend and philosophical interlocutor Count Yorck, Dilthey famously named what would become his lifelong philosophical preoccupation a Kritik der historischen Vernunft, the overarching aim of which is to provide "an epistemological foundation for the human sciences" that would "determine the interconnections among the particular human sciences, the limits within which knowledge is possible in these sciences, and the relation of their truths to one another." 1 For Dilthey, the liberation of historical consciousness from the "grey cobweb of abstract essences" spun by traditional metaphysics constituted one of the [End Page 407] major intellectual achievements of the nineteenth century. 2 However, as important as the concrete historical investigations of Ranke, Droysen, and Mommsen undoubtedly are, the Historical School nevertheless failed in Dilthey's eyes to grasp the essence of historical consciousness—its scope, limits and objective validity: Its study and evaluation of historical phenomena remain unconnected with the analysis of facts of consciousness; consequently, it has no grounding in the only knowledge which is ultimately secure; it has in short no philosophical foundation. 3A critique of historical reason, grasped as an epistemological analysis of "the capacity of man to know himself and the society and history which he has produced," is needed in order to provide for the Geisteswissenschaften a foundation equivalent to the one furnished by Kant for mathematical natural science in the Kritik der reinen Vernunft. 4The epistemological dimension of Dilthey's project took shape as the elaboration of a basic science (Grundwissenschaft) identified, in the Einleitung at least, with descriptive psychology. 5 In an effort to delimit the province of the Geisteswissenschaften, Dilthey came to distinguish between outer experience and its objects and various levels of inner experience. Although Dilthey's thought developed considerably in the years after 1900, most notably in the direction [End Page 408] of a refinement of the relation between inner and outer experience, the distinction between these two fundamental modes of givenness remained central to his conception of the structure and methodology of the human sciences. 6 In a number of manuscripts, some published in Dilthey's lifetime, others (by far the majority) published after his death by former students, Dilthey envisages a comprehensive theory of consciousness and its objectifications that would shed light on the origins and ultimate validity of our knowledge of the historical world.As several commentators have pointed out, however, the epistemological dimension of Dilthey's project fails to capture the entire breadth of his achievement. 7 Dilthey's interest in the objective validity of historical investigation was subservient to broader concerns about the nature of human existence and its historicity, what Dilthey often referred to simply as Leben. 8 Life as it is revealed in the human sciences is the medium in which self-consciousness and self-knowledge, scientific and practical activity originate, and remains the abiding concern of the human sciences. At the most fundamental level of epistemological reflection, we encounter life as it is lived in pre-scientific and pre-reflective experience (Erlebnis). 9 Life, Dilthey consistently maintained, is the "prius" of thought: Knowledge (Erkenntnis) cannot go behind life, of which it is a function. Life always remains the presupposition of knowledge, i.e., of the consciousness or knowledge (Wissen) contained in life. As a presupposition of knowledge (des Erkennens) itself, life is [End... (shrink)

Cette étude vise à éclairer la doctrine des catégories que Wilhelm Dilthey met au service de son projet de fondation autonome des sciences de l’esprit, et notamment la manière dont elle relève son pari initial d’enraciner les catégories dans la vie sans pour autant succomber au péril du psychologisme. Nous suivons pour ce faire les principales étapes selon lesquelles cette doctrine se déploie. Elle soumet d’abord à la critique la doctrine kantienne et ses soubassements aristotéliciens : la généalogie historico-psychologique (...) de l’appareil catégorial hérité de la métaphysique à laquelle procède Dilthey met en évidence sa rupture originelle avec l’expérience. En contrepoint de telles catégories « formelles », Dilthey entend montrer la possibilité de catégories « concrètes » qui, puisées à la source même de l’expérience, sont des « catégories de la vie », soustraites aussi bien à la réduction théorique qu’au clivage du logique et de l’ontologique propres à la tradition métaphysique. Nous soulignons néanmoins la précarité qui affecte la validité de « catégories concrètes » déployées sur un plan essentiellement psychologique. Dès lors, il s’agit d’examiner comment Dilthey, se saisissant avec plus d’acuité de ce problème, tente finalement de procéder à une fondation herméneutique des « catégories de la vie », en recourant au détour de l’« expression » de l’expérience vécue et en attribuant à la signification une place centrale au sein d’un appareil catégorial entièrement renouvelé. (shrink)

Using Maya Angelou’s I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings as an example, this paper introduces Wilhlem Dilthey’s hermeneutics and pedagogical theory. Dilthey saw biographies as nothing less than “the highest and most instructive form of the understanding of life.” This, then, serves as the starting point for his hermeneutics or theory of understanding, which distinguishes humanistic understanding from scientific explanation, and sees any one moment or word as having meaning only in relation to a whole—the whole of (...) a sentence or text, or the whole of one’s life. It is also the starting point of his pedagogy, whose ultimate “duty” is “to develop the child as a person who carries their own purpose within themselves.” In introducing Dilthey’s hermeneutic pedagogy, this paper draws principally from his The Formation of the Historical World in the Human Sciences, a text that has been long neglected in hermeneutic and phenomenological studies of education. (shrink)

The paper tries to develop some of the main characteristics of Dilthey’s “phenomenology of metaphysics” in the second part of the Einleitung in die Geisteswissenschaften. It is argued that we have to understand this phenomenology as an attempt to go beyond both Kant’s and Comte’s criticism of metaphysics. According to Dilthey the core of all metaphysics is its ideal of a logical coherence of the world: in contrast to modern science, Dilthey says, metaphysics is based on the (...) conviction that there is an objective and internal coherence of reality behind the phenomena. Even if this coherence is reduced to its minimal form, that is to the combination of substantiality and causality, even then, Dilthey argues, it constitutes a projection of the living unity of human consciousness into extramental reality, and this prevents metaphysics from being science. Gradually the Christian metaphysics of the Middle Ages has been replaced by science, both in our knowledge of nature and in our knowledge of our spiritual self. Consequently metaphysics as a scientific project is for Dilthey a historical phenomenon, which irrevocably belongs to the past. The apparent completion of metaphysics in the ‘private metaphysical systems” of the Modern Age is in fact, Dilthey claims, the “euthanasia” of metaphysics, its unconscious noble and gentle suicide. For they conceive nature as a “colossal fantastic reflection of the metaphysician’s own self”, and in that way achieve a complete transformation of objective into subjective reality. By so doing, however, metaphysics destroys itself at the very moment of the complete fulfilment of its task. In the systems of Leibniz, Hegel etc. the old ideal of a total understanding of the world is apparently realised. But at the same time this means, according to Dilthey, that objective reality as such no longer exists. The total disclosure of the metaphysical secret is for Dilthey nothing else but the disclosure of the illusory nature of all metaphysics. (shrink)

One of the founders of modern hermeneutics, German philosopher Wilhelm Dilthey (1833-1911) confronted the question of how modern, postmetaphysical human beings can cope with the ambivalence, contingency, and finitude that fundamentally characterize their lives. This book offers a reevaluation and fresh analysis of Dilthey's hermeneutics of life against the background of the development of philosophy during the past two centuries. Jos de Mul relates Dilthey's work to other philosophers who influenced or were influenced by him, including Kant, (...) Schleiermacher, Hegel, Comte, Mill, Nietzsche, Husserl, Heidegger, Gadamer, and Derrida. Weaving together systematic analysis and historical investigation, de Mul begins the book with an account of the horizon on which Dilthey developed his unfinished masterwork, Critique of Historical Reason. The author then elaborates a systematic reconstruction of Dilthey's ontology of life, relates the ontology to the work of other twentieth-century philosophers, and positions Dilthey's thought within current philosophical debate. (shrink)

Universalismus und Relativismus sind Begriffe, die vorherrschend zur intensiven Debatte gehören, die sich in der politischen Philosophie und auf dem Gebiet der zeitgenössischen Ethik, Anthropologie und Soziologie entwickelt hat. Ich werde hier eine Neuinterpretation dieser Beziehung versuchen und dabei einige Schlüsselpunkte der Philosophie Diltheys, und im Besonderen einige Stellen aus Das Wesen der Philosophie von 1907 benutzen. Dieser Text und natürlich andere Texte des Philosophen aus dem Rheinland können uns meines Erachtens als philosophische Richtschnur in der Bestimmung und auch in (...) der Neuformulierung von einigen Schlüsselkategorien der postmetaphysischen Moderne, wie Individualität, Universalität, Historizität, Vermittelbarkeit und die möglichst weit reichende Verwendung des Wissens vom Menschen dienen. (shrink)

Este texto es un análisis crítico de la visión del ser humana contenida en la filosofía hermenéutica de la vida elaborada por Dilthey. Dilthey basó su temprana epistemonología de las humanidades en la, así llamada, psicología descriptiva que anticipaba la fenomenología husserliana. Intento mostrar que este concepto está explícitamente conectado con una antropología filosófica que intenta descubrir —sobre la base de una investigación histórica de la cultura humana— las categorías universales que describen la esencia del ser humano. Como (...) consecuencia de elaborar una reflexión sobre la corporalidad de la existencia humana, la filosofía de la vida de Dilthey tiene alguna ventaja sobre la fenomenología de Husserl y la ontología fundamental de Heidegger. La vida es para él algo más que un modo de autorrealización de la conciencia: las formas de vida espirituales y culturales tienen alguna base «im naturgebundenem Leben». (shrink)

This volume provides Dilthey's most mature and best formulation of his Critique of Historical Reason. It begins with three "Studies Toward the Foundation of the Human Sciences," in which Dilthey refashions Husserlian concepts to describe the basic structures of consciousness relevant to historical understanding.The volume next presents the major 1910 work The Formation of the Historical World in the Human Sciences. Here Dilthey considers the degree to which carriers of history--individuals, cultures, institutions, and communities--can be articulated as (...) productive systems capable of generating value and meaning and of realizing purposes. Hegel's idea of objective spirit is reconceived in a more empirical form to designate the medium of commonality in which historical beings are immersed. Any universal claims about history need to be framed within the specific productive systems analyzed by the various human sciences. Dilthey's drafts for the Continuation of the Formation contain extensive discussions of the categories most important for our knowledge of historical life: meaning, value, purpose, time, and development. He also examines the contributions of autobiography to historical understanding and of biography to scientific history. The finest summary of Dilthey's views on hermeneutics can be found in "The Understanding of Other Persons and Their Manifestations of Life." Here, Dilthey differentiates understanding relative to three kinds of manifestations of life. After giving his analysis of elementary understanding, he examines the role of induction in higher understanding and interpretation, and the relevance of transposition and re-experiencing for grasping individuality. (shrink)

ZusammenfassungIn der Philosophie hat das Interesse an Wilhelm Dilthey in jüngster Zeit wieder merklich zugenommen. Man könnte geradezu von einer kleinen Dilthey-Renaissance sprechen. In der Theologie indes beginnt man sich erst langsam wieder auf sein Werk zu besinnen. Dabei hält es auch für sie wichtige Einsichten bereit. Dilthey ist vor allem deshalb interessant, weil es ihm gelingt, die Religionsthematik konsequent auf dem Boden eines interpretativen Kulturmodells zu entwickeln.