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

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 history of philosophy provides part of the history, or pre-history, of the social sciences. As they were struggling into being, or even before they existed, philosophy was hammering out some of the conceptual tools, lines of approach and basic hypotheses. One of the constantly recurring themes in the history of philosophy which has a direct bearing on the social sciences is the relationship between mind and matter.

'One may state Dilthey's significance in most general fashion by characterizing his work as the first thorough-going and sophisticated confrontation of history with positivism and natural science. Dilthey's sweep was universal: he strove to reduce to order the multifarious realms of knowledge, the conflicting traditions of cultural study, that he had embraced. Thus Dilthey laid out a program that no mortal - and certainly no one whose mind had been formed in the third quarter of the nineteenth century - could (...) hope to bring to completion. Yet despite its inconclusiveness, Dilthey's work exerted enormous influence. The distinction he had drawn between natural and cultural science became standard for historians and, to a lesser extent, for social scientists also. After Dilthey historians no longer needed to apologize for the "unscientific" character of their discipline: they understood why its methods could never be quite the same as those of natural science. And the contemporary tradition of intellectual history grew naturally out of Dilthey's teaching.' - H. Stuart Hughes. (shrink)

Philosophic anthropology, Pursuing philosophy's traditional search for reflective self-Knowledge seeks to crystallize the ideas of man underpinning empirical research and moral ideals. Neither the claim that pure speculation can produce factual knowledge nor the contention that a higher synthesis of empirical findings can become philosophy is acceptable. Philosophic anthropology is, Therefore, Most usefully conceived as a critique which traces the necessary presuppositions of the study of man in its various forms of the more rules we apply.

Philosophic anthropology, Pursuing philosophy's traditional search for reflective self-Knowledge seeks to crystallize the ideas of man underpinning empirical research and moral ideals. Neither the claim that pure speculation can produce factual knowledge nor the contention that a higher synthesis of empirical findings can become philosophy is acceptable. Philosophic anthropology is, Therefore, Most usefully conceived as a critique which traces the necessary presuppositions of the study of man in its various forms of the more rules we apply.

A methodology of the human studies needs to settle the conflict between the two long-established truth-seeking approaches. To be scientific, like physics, promises system, precision, and practical applicability but ignores the significant peculiarity of the subject matter: People talk. Hermeneutics, the methodology of interpretation, confronts the difficulties of understanding what people mean, but is suspected of lacking rigor. However, the two approaches are not exclusive alternatives. Sharing common procedures, such as classification and deduction, they also supplement each other: Interpretation depends (...) on factual evidence and scientific objectivity depends on reliable communication. Successful research needs to combine scientific study of facts with methodical interpretation of meaning. (shrink)

These comments on Professor Gallie's paper, ‘Kant's View of Reason in Politics’ are focused on a particular issue, and I shall explain at the outset what it is and why I have concentrated on it. Gallie's account of the details of Kant's political philosophy and his specific comments on them strike me as interesting and reasonable and I have, therefore, little to add. Instead I want to question Gallie's assumptions about, and dissatisfactions with, the philosophic framework on which Kant's political (...) philosophy rests. There is, firstly, his complaint that reason is insufficiently defined though he takes a somewhat more positive view later. There is, secondly, his claim that Kant's moral philosophy is inferior to his epistemology . On these points Gallie is, in my view, not convincing and not even completely clear. Without disagreeing totally with Gallie's assessments—still less claiming that Kant is invariably right—I want to argue that Kant's conclusions are formidably supported by, and can best be understood in terms of, his own arguments. To me the question about the cogency of his case is more interesting than the details of his political philosophy. How rational are, in fact, his conclusions? So, at the risk of covering some familiar ground, I want to stress some of the general features of Kant's philosophy and argue, in particular, that his political philosophy is based on and, in turn, supplements, his moral one. The latter seems to me to be as intricate, interesting and fruitful as his epistemology and exhibits a similar architectonic. .). (shrink)

A tendency towards diffuse and piecemeal linguistic analysis threatens to overwhelm Anglo-Saxon philosophy to-day. Stringent linguistic analysis can indeed be valuable, but much that has been written recently, for instance, in Mind , the stronghold of linguistic analysis, shows no trace of clearly grasped method and well understood aims. The result is meandering discursiveness, the collection of trivial anecdotes and the random mixing of linguistic, psychological and sociological reflections leading to no clear conclusions.

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)

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This book is an introduction to the philosophical ideas of Plato, Rene Descartes, Baruch Spinoza, and Immanuel Kant on the role of reason which have contributed to the evolution of sociological thought. Reason, according to Rickman, has a relevance to sociology that has not been explored. Because he is interested in the philosophical reflections which proved influential for understanding the social world, he deals systematically with the four philosophers' central arguments and one or more of their most important and easily (...) available texts. The book's bibliography lists books quoted and referred to in the text and offers suggestions for further reading in the philosophy of the social sciences. (shrink)

This volume presents a selection of Professor Rickman's essays published over a period of 40 years. They reflect his view of philosophy and defend it against attacks on two fronts. On one side the assault comes from a substantial proportion of professional philosophers particularly in the Anglo-Saxon world, who treat philosophy as a purely academic, highly technical subject, dealing merely with the clarification of concepts, the solving of logical puzzles and the refutation of similarly abstruse theories of fellow philosophers. On (...) the other side there is the widespread popular view of philosophy as dealing with abstract problems remote from everyday life and invented by philosophers in their ivory towers. Both sides share a common premise: the uselessness of philosophy. (shrink)