Abstract

This book is a philosophical delineation, analysis, and comparison of the historicality ("Geschichtlichkeit") of human existence in the thought of Wilhelm Dilthey (1833-1911), Martin Heidegger (1889-1976), and Jose Ortega y Gasset (1883-1955). Historicality is fundamental for the structure and content of their thought. These thinkers are interdependent and self-consciously interrelated. All of them presuppose that human existence in history requires a discursive thought form that is uniquely appropriate to it. The author labels the birth and development of this form as the dawn of historical reason."