This study seeks to provide a new resolution to an old controversy regarding Wilhelm Dilthey's methodological writings, written from 1880 to 1911. This controversy concentrates on the relations of Dilthey's early psychology and his late hermeneutics. On one side of this controversy stand interpreters who claim that the appearance of the late hermeneutics marks a dramatic change in Dilthey's thought, and even creates an internal paradox in his thinking. On the other side, stand interpreters who view his thought as a (...) unified whole, by claiming that these methods were meant to work in tandem and complement each other. I largely agree with the latter group of interpreters regarding the unity of Dilthey's writings; however, instead of basing my view on the methodological level of Dilthey’s writings, I will concentrate on the object of these two methods. According to my new answer to the question of the continuity of Dilthey’s thought, Dilthey did intend to replace his early psychology with his late hermeneutics; even so, his thought should still be viewed as consistent and stable because he continued to apply both different methods to the same object: inner-universal content, that is, the inner psychological source of outer human reality. In this way, I will try show that the consistency of Dilthey's thought is derived from the stable destination he aspired to reach with the help of the different methods. (shrink)

This study examines the sources of human divergence as arise from Wilhelm Dilthey’s writings. While Dilthey assigns a central role to the human subject, he never synthesizes his major ideas on subjectivity into a unified theory of subjective uniqueness. I will show that such a theory can be derived from his writings through the combination of three ideas that appear in them. These ideas are: (1) the thesis that human understanding is possible because of psychological content that is shared by (...) both the creator and the interpreter; (2) the belief that this shared content is the only content that exists within human beings, meaning that there is no unique psychological content; and (3) the perception of this inner universal content as an accumulation of life-possibilities. When joined together, these ideas create an inspiring theory of human divergence, according to which the uniqueness of an individual is determined through partial realization of universal possibilities. (shrink)