Dilthey, Wilhelm (1833–1911)

Author(s):  
Rudolf A. Makkreel

Wilhelm Dilthey saw his work as contributing to a ‘Critique of Historical Reason’ which would expand the scope of Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason by examining the epistemological conditions of the human sciences as well as of the natural sciences. Both kinds of science take their departure from ordinary life and experience, but whereas the natural sciences seek to focus on the way things behave independently of human involvement, the human sciences take account of this very involvement. The natural sciences use external observation and measurement to construct an objective domain of nature that is abstracted from the fullness of lived experience. The human sciences (humanities and social sciences), by contrast, help to define what Dilthey calls the historical world. By making use of inner as well as outer experience, the human sciences preserve a more direct link with our original sense of life than do the natural sciences. Whereas the natural sciences seek explanations of nature, connecting the discrete representations of outer experience through hypothetical generalizations and causal laws, the human sciences aim at an understanding that articulates the fundamental structures of historical life given in lived experience. Finding lived experience to be inherently connected and meaningful, Dilthey opposed traditional atomistic and associationist psychologies and developed a descriptive psychology that has been recognized as anticipating phenomenology. Dilthey first thought that this descriptive psychology could provide a neutral foundation for the other human sciences, but in his later hermeneutical writings he rejected the idea of a foundational discipline or method. Thus he ends by claiming that all the human sciences are interpretive and mutually dependent. Hermeneutically conceived, understanding is a process of interpreting the ‘objectifications of life’, the external expressions or manifestations of human thought and action. Interpersonal understanding is attained through these common objectifications and not, as is widely believed, through empathy. Moreover, to fully understand myself I must analyse the expressions of my life in the same way that I analyse the expressions of others. Not every aspect of life can be captured within the respective limits of the natural and the human sciences. Dilthey’s philosophy of life also leaves room for a kind of anthropological reflection whereby we attempt to do justice to the ultimate riddles of life and death. Such reflection receives its fullest expression in worldviews, which are overall perspectives on life encompassing the way we perceive and conceive the world, evaluate it aesthetically and respond to it in action. Dilthey discerned many typical worldviews in art and religion, but in Western philosophy he distinguished three recurrent types: the worldviews of naturalism, the idealism of freedom and objective idealism.

Author(s):  
Jin Y. Park

Chapter 7 aims to identify the nature of women’s Buddhist philosophy. Iryŏp’s approach to Buddhism also directs us to different dimensions in which women encounter Buddhist philosophy, which is identified as narrative philosophy, philosophy of life, based on lived experience. By examining Kim Iryŏp’s life and philosophy as a paradigmatic example of women’s philosophy in connection with Buddhism, this chapter brings attention to the way women engage with Buddhism and philosophy and offers a way of philosophizing that challenges the male dominated and Western philosophy based mode of philosophizing.


Author(s):  
Andrus Tool

Wilhelm Dilthey initially studied theology in Germany but later shifted to philosophy and history. He tackled the specific nature of human sciences in relation to natural sciences and initiated a debate on the connection between understanding and explanation in scientific knowledge. In addition to his own school, he exerted influence on fellow philosophers Martin Heidegger, Helmuth Plessner, and Hans-Georg Gadamer. This chapter explores the formation of Dilthey’s philosophical views, including the principle of phenomenality, the theory of human sciences, and the role of inner experience as the main source of cognition in human sciences. It also discusses his later work and his arguments concerning empirical factuality, congealed objectivity, and processual reality. Finally, the chapter examines how ideas similar to those of Dilthey have influenced organizational culture and dynamics.


2020 ◽  
Vol 26 (Especial) ◽  
pp. 408-415
Author(s):  
Camila MUHL

Wilhelm Dilthey was a fundamental author so that the human sciences had their autonomy of method and object in relation to the natural sciences, however, their work is still little known by psychologists in Brazil, so, this article aims to disclose and discuss the work of the author, having as a cut the reverberations of his propositions for phenomenology and psychology.. The theoretical analysis, which is not intended to be an exhaustive review of the author's work, will be centered on themes: historical world, experience and a comprehensive method of research. To conclude, an imaginative exercise of what psychology would be doing today if Dilthey's position had become hegemonic in the field.


Author(s):  
Renato Coletto

Any discussion about transdisciplinarity presupposes some sort of recognition of the scientific disciplines and some agreement on how they are or should be grouped or classified. This article supplies a demarcation criterion to distinguish science from non- science and discusses the way the sciences should be grouped. The first issue can be summarized by the question: (how) can scientific disciplines be distinguished from non- scientific ones? To answer this question it is necessary to sketch what in philosophy of science is called a “demarcation criterion” to distinguish between scientific and non- scientific activities. Secondly, does it make sense to recognise groups of sciences and which disciplines should be placed in each group? Does it make sense to use categories like social, hard, soft, exact, applied sciences and so forth? To answer these questions it is necessary to assess the plausibility of some of the categories traditionally used to classify the sciences. The purpose of the article is to provide an initial (yet philosophically grounded) orientation in an area in which many academics seem to wander, and sometimes to accept simplistic answers.Keywords: Demarcation criterion, groups of sciences, natural sciences, social sciences, human sciences, groups of sciences, general sciences, special sciences, transdisciplinarity, 9Theory of) modal aspects, multi-modal sciencesDisciplines: Philosophy, Philosophy of science, (Basically, all sciences are interested)


Diogenes ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 29 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Georgi Belogashev ◽  
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The article examines the solutions provided by Wilhelm Dilthey, Wilhelm Windelband and Heinrich Rickert concerning the knowledge of society. Each of them speaks of two basic classes of science: of nature and of human, which have different starting points, and therefore different fields.


Author(s):  
Vittorio Hösle

This chapter begins with a discussion of Neo-Kantianism. It then covers the works of Wilhelm Windelband (1848–1915) and Heinrich Rickert (1863–1936), the most important representatives of the second branch of Neo-Kantianism, the Baden School, which is concerned with the philosophical grounding of the human sciences and the social sciences as distinct from the natural sciences. It also looks at the work of Wilhelm Dilthey (1833–1911) who had, before Neo-Kantianism, attempted to ground the human sciences in an “understanding psychology” that was not based on laboratory work but guided by a philosophy focused on the meaning of life; and that of Edmund Husserl (1859–1938), the most important critic and stimulator of Dilthey, and probably the twentieth-century thinker who remained most loyal to the traditional concept of reason.


2021 ◽  
Vol 12 (1) ◽  
pp. 165-194
Author(s):  
Thomas J. Spiegel

Abstract While Wittgenstein’s work has been extensively investigated in relation to many other important and influential philosophers, there is very little scholarly work that positively investigates the relationship between the work of Wittgenstein and Wilhelm Dilthey. To the contrary, some commentators like Hacker (2001a) suggest that Dilthey’s work (and that of other hermeneuticists) simply pales or is obsolete in comparison to Wittgenstein’s own insights. Against such assessments, this article posits that Wittgenstein’s and Dilthey’s thought most crucially intersects at the related topics of scientism on the one hand and scientific and philosophical method on the other. In reconstructing Dilthey’s conceptions of understanding versus explaining and central points of Wittgenstein’s Remarks on Frazer’s Golden Bough, it becomes apparent that they share a staunch rejection of scientism and use the notion of understanding as a means to prevent methodologies from the natural sciences encroaching onto the human sciences (in Dilthey’s case) and philosophy (in Wittgenstein’s case). Notwithstanding a number of central ways in which these thinkers differ, this article closes by suggesting that there is some evidence according to which Wittgenstein, like Dilthey, can reasonably be understood as championing some central tenets of the hermeneutical tradition.


Author(s):  
Anik Waldow

From within the philosophy of history and history of science alike, attention has been paid to Herder’s naturalist commitment and especially to the way in which his interest in medicine, anatomy, and biology facilitates philosophically significant notions of force, organism, and life. As such, Herder’s contribution is taken to be part of a wider eighteenth-century effort to move beyond Newtonian mechanism and the scientific models to which it gives rise. In this scholarship, Herder’s hermeneutic philosophy—as it grows out of his engagement with poetry, drama, and both literary translation and literary documentation projects—has received less attention. Taking as its point of departure Herder’s early work, this chapter proposes that, in his work on literature, Herder formulates an anthropologically sensitive approach to the human sciences that has still not received the attention it deserves.


2020 ◽  
Vol 19 (4) ◽  
pp. 330-334
Author(s):  
Octavio A. Chon Torres

AbstractThere is a record of the positive effects of astrobiological research for the natural sciences and eventually for their technological use on Earth. However, on the philosophical effects, this is not as visible as the other sciences, which is why it can be assumed that it is a waste of time speculating on astrobioethics or also on the philosophy of astrobiology. This is the reason why this work seeks to identify and sustain the philosophical utility of astrobioethics. To achieve this, this article focuses on three essential aspects: teloempathy, education and astrotheology. Russell's argument about the value of philosophy will be used as a fundamental basis for the usefulness of astrobioethics.


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