Abstract

Dilthey's philosophy of history showed that in the same way that the individual's life is a structural coherence of the consciousness of present and past experiences, a period of history is a structurally unified whole, and history in general is a system of interlocking cultural structures. Structures rather than particulars are given in consciousness and the objectification of these is culture. The analogy between the psychic structure of the person and the collective mind of a culture extends also to the concept of development. The structure is influenced by circumstances but also forms its own character with potential for making some changes probable while precluding others. Dilthey's middle course between closed systems of development and pure contingency anticipates modern structural analysis and provides a resolution of the problem of assessing historical significance of events by making it a function of the cultural system being studied