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Wilhelm Dilthey (1833–1911)

Author of Introduction to the Human Sciences

85+ Works 633 Members 3 Reviews 1 Favorited

About the Author

Born in Biebrich, Germany, the son of a Reformed clergyman, Wilhelm Dilthey studied theology in Wiesbaden and Heidelberg but then moved to Berlin, where he turned to history and philosophy. He held professorships at Basel (1866), Kiel (1868), and Breslau (1871) before becoming Lotze's successor in show more Berlin (1882), where he taught until 1905. Dilthey wrote many essays on history, the history of philosophy, and the foundation of the human sciences (or Geisteswissen schaften, "sciences of spirit"), his contribution to which is the main source of his lasting influence. He is associated with the idea of "philosophy of life" - that lived experience is both the source and the sole subject matter of philosophy. He argued that the human sciences have an aim and method that differs from the natural sciences because they are founded not on causal explanation but on "understanding," which leads to interpretation of the meaning of lived experience. Dilthey's approach to the human studies is holistic, and he is concerned about the problem of historicism, raised by incommensurability of the life experiences and understanding of different ages. (Bowker Author Biography) show less
Image credit: From Owen Barfield Website

Series

Works by Wilhelm Dilthey

Poetry and Experience (1921) 55 copies
The Essence of Philosophy (1954) 38 copies
Poética (2007) 6 copies
Historia de la pedagogía (1947) 4 copies
Schiller 2 copies
Gesammelte Schriften (1985) 2 copies
Schriften zur Pädagogik (1971) 2 copies
Ermeneutica e religione (1992) 2 copies
Vittorio Alfieri (1988) 1 copy
Estetica e poetica (2005) 1 copy
Pisma estetyczne (1982) 1 copy

Associated Works

The Philosophy of History in Our Time (1959) — Contributor — 217 copies

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Common Knowledge

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Reviews

This is a good little half-forgotten book in the history of philosophy. Dilthey's march through the formation of worldviews in the first chapters is tough going, but once he starts looking at particular formations- first religion, then poetry, then metaphysics, and then again at naturalism, subjective idealism, and objective idealism -things begin to flow beautifully. The final chapter that describes objective idealism as a sort of pantheistic sympathy that tries to see the unity in all things, is actually rather moving, though it's hard for me to see how he includes in this category both Hegel and Schopenhauer.

My only substantive complaint is that Dilthey has two chapters in the middle of the book which are very nearly identical. I'm not sure what happened, but on first impression it didn't seem like the second was a clarification on the first. Instead, it seemed like Dilthey accidentally slipped in a first draft copy in before a final draft copy of a chapter and didn't correct the error before publication.
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iwpoe | Jan 29, 2011 |

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Works
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