Dilthey, Wilhelm

Dilthey, Wilhelm
(1833–1911)
German philosopher, literary critic, and historian. Dilthey taught at a variety of universities, and succeeded Lotze at the university of Berlin in 1882. He is especially remembered for his studies in the methodology of the social sciences, or Geisteswissenschaften . For Dilthey these are distinguished from natural science by the use of a method of understanding, or verstehen , whereby we comprehend the meaning of a human expression, such as words or actions. In his earlier writings verstehen is thought of as the reliving (nacherleben ) of the mental states of others, inferred by analogy and on the basis of a knowledge of our own experiences. However, the subjective and psychological basis of this process was replaced in later years, when verstehen becomes not the semi-scientific attempt to find the idea or mental modification that caused an expression, but rather the location of the expression in an objective framework of human meaning, to which context, language, and cultural climate all contribute. These are ‘objectifications of life’, and the object of study in the various human sciences. In this sense the process of verstehen is never complete, since different aspects of the way in which meanings ‘hang together’ (zusammenhängen ) can always be uncovered. Dilthey never completed a systematic treatise. His Einleitung in die Geisteswissenschaften (‘Introduction to the Social Sciences’) of 1883 was the first volume of an uncompleted work. His voluminous writings on many aspects of history, biography, the study of culture, and philosophy were collected as the Gesammelte Schriften (‘Collected Writings’) of which more than eighteen volumes exist. He was a major influence on methodological reflections in sociology, particularly through Weber, on subsequent hermeneutics, and latterly on discussions of the epistemology of ‘ folk psychology ’.

Philosophy dictionary. . 2011.

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  • Dilthey, Wilhelm — Dilthey Michael Lessnoff INTRODUCTION Wilhelm Dilthey was born in 1833 near Wiesbaden, and thus lived through the period of Bismarck’s creation of a unified German Empire by ‘blood and iron’. These turbulent events, however, scarcely perturbed… …   History of philosophy

  • Dilthey, Wilhelm — born Nov. 19, 1833, Biebrich, Nassau, Ger. died Oct. 1, 1911, Seis am Schlern, South Tirol, Austria Hungary German philosopher of history. Opposed to contemporary efforts to transform the methodology of the humanities and the social sciences on… …   Universalium

  • Dilthey, Wilhelm — ► (1833 1911) Filósofo alemán. Estableció una distinción rigurosa entre las ciencias naturales (conceptos generales) y las ciencias del espíritu (hechos singulares). Entre sus obras destaca Introducción a las ciencias del espíritu (1883). * * *… …   Enciclopedia Universal

  • Dilthey, Wilhelm — (1833 1911) A German philosopher, one of the great precursors of the interpretative tradition in sociology, Dilthey s central preoccupation was with the creation of an adequate philosophical foundation for knowledge in the human or historical… …   Dictionary of sociology

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  • Dilthey — Wilhelm Dilthey um 1910 Wilhelm Dilthey (* 19. November 1833 in Wiesbaden Biebrich; † 1. Oktober 1911 in Seis am Schlern, Südtirol) war ein deutscher Philosoph, Psychologe und Pädagoge. Entgegen dem zu seiner Zeit stark verbreiteten …   Deutsch Wikipedia

  • Wilhelm Dilthey — um 1910 Wilhelm Dilthey (* 19. November 1833 in Wiesbaden Biebrich; † 1. Oktober 1911 in Seis am Schlern, Südtirol) war ein deutscher Philosoph, Psychologe und Pädagoge. Entgegen dem zu seiner Zeit stark verbreiteten …   Deutsch Wikipedia

  • Dilthey — Wilhelm Dilthey Wilhelm Dilthey Wilhelm Dilthey (19 novembre 1833 1er octobre 1911) était un historien, psychologue, sociologue et philosophe allemand …   Wikipédia en Français

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