For some two centuries, scholars have wrestled with questions regarding the nature and logic of history as a discipline and, more broadly, with the entire complex of the "human sciences, " with include theology, philosophy, history, literature, the fine arts, and languages. The fundamental issue is whether the human sciences are a special class of studies with a specifically distinct object and method or whether they must be subsumed under the natural sciences. German philosopher Wilhelm Dilthey dedicated the bulk of his long career to there and related questions. His Introduction to the Human Sciences is a pioneering effort to elaborate a general theory of the human sciences, especially history, and to distinguish these sciences radically from the field of natural sciences. Though the Introduction was never completed, it remains one of the major statements of the topic. Together with other works by Dilthey, it has had a substantial influence on the recognition and human sciences as a fundamental division of human knowledge and on their separation from the natural sciences in origin, nature, and method. As a contribution to the issue of the methodologies of the humanities and social sciences, the Introduction rightly claims a place. This is the first time the entire work is available in English. In his introductory essay, translator Ramon J. Betanzos surveys Dilthey's life and thought and hails his efforts to create a foundational science for the particular human sciences, and at the same time, takes serious issue with Dilthey's historical/critical evaluation of metaphysics.

Examines Dilthey's hermeneutics, aesthetics, practical philosophy, and philosophy of history, showing how his work remains relevant for philosophers today.

First published in 1998.This is Volume VIII of twenty-two in the Sociology of Social Theory and Methodology series. Written in 1952, this book looks at the concepts behind the German philosopher Wilhelm Dilthey, whose ideas extend into several fields of learning, of which philosophy is only one. They include critical and historical studies of literature and music; studies in educational theory and in the history of educational practice, ancient and modern; researches into the history of religious and political as well as philosophical ideas, especially since the Renaissance and Reformation, which have shaped his thinking.

Bambach's account of the demise of historicism within the context of German metaphysics provides a new perspective on the development of Heidegger's concept of "historicity" and on the origins of postmodern thought.

Philosophy originates in man's amazement over the richness and complexity of reality. It attempts to articulate in words and con cepts what reality is. Starting from the recognition that this reality is experienced by all humans but experienced in many different ways, the philosopher tries to find reality's heart, its center, its hidden treasure - the tree in the middle connecting heaven and earth, the central point from which the stupendous intricacy of experience begins to make sense and from which order can become visible. To ask "what is reality?" is, indeed, to recognize that we have entered a maze. The hermeneutic philosophy of Wilhelm DiIthey (1833-1911) is the fruit of his own wanderings in this maze. Like many intellectuals of his age, he had lost faith in the Christian religion in which he was raised. In his college years, he turned from theology to philosophy, in particular, the history of philosophy and of human thought in general - wondering about the origin and value of the astounding variety of past belief systems. At the center of reality's maze he found the insight that reality as faced by man is comparable to a literary text: it "means" something to us. Reality is not a mute object, but an autonomous source of meaning, an act of self-disclosure; knowledge of reality is therefore not the product of actions per formed by an active subject upon a passive object, but a com municative interaction between two SUbjects.

This is the fifth volume in a six-volume translation of the major writings of Wilhelm Dilthey (1833-1911), a philosopher and historian of culture who has had a significant, and continuing, influence on twentieth-century Continental philosophy and in a broad range of scholarly disciplines. In addition to his landmark works on the theories of history and the human sciences, Dilthey made important contributions to hermeneutics and phenomenology, aesthetics, psychology, and the methodology of the social sciences. This volume presents Dilthey's principal writings on aesthetics and the philosophical understanding of poetry, as well as representative essays of literary criticism. The essay "The Imagination of the Poet" (also known as his Poetics) is his most sustained attempt to examine the philosophical bearings of literature in relation to psychological and historical theory. Also included are "The Three Epochs of Modern Aesthetics and its Present Task," "Fragments for a Poetics," and two final essays discussing Goethe and Hölderlin. The latter are drawn from Das Erlebnis und die Dichtung, a volume that was acclaimed on publication as a classic of literary criticism and that continues to be a model for the geistesgeschichtliche approach to literary history.

Although he never produced a comprehensive statement of his own theory of historical understanding, Wilhelm Dilthey (1833-1911) has played a crucial role in the development of modern phenomenology and philosophy of history. Drawing from Dilthey's reflections a systematic philosophy of history, Jacob Owensby offers a groundbreaking introduction to the full range of Dilthey's work. In his clear and accessible account, Owensby considers several vital but only recently published texts and many of Dilthey's writings that have never before been translated into English.

The author then elaborates a systematic reconstruction of Dilthey's ontology of life. In the final section of the book, Dilthey's hermeneutic ontology is confronted with the works of Heidegger, Gadamer, and Derrida, and its relevance in current philosophical debate is evaluated."--Jacket.

This book completes a landmark six-volume translation of the major writings of Wilhelm Dilthey (1833–1911), a philosopher and historian of culture who continues to have a significant influence on philosophy, hermeneutics, and the theory of the human sciences. These volumes make available to English readers texts that represent the full range of Dilthey's work. The works in this volume present Dilthey's most deeply held views about philosophy and how it can guide human practices. System of Ethics (1890) argues that Humean sympathy motivates us only externally and must be replaced with the internally motivated fellow-feeling of solidarity that respects others as ends in themselves. The Essence of Philosophy (1907) demonstrates how philosophy has developed from its traditional metaphysical role to the epistemological and encyclopedic functions that ground and order the natural and human sciences. The work also discloses an orientational function of philosophy that is explored further in "The Types of World-View and Their Development" (1911). Philosophical world-views are important in that they address the existential needs and riddles that grow out of life experience and are not solved by any of the sciences. In addition, the book features three other significant essays. "Present Day Culture and Philosophy" (1898) concerns the challenges to philosophy posed by contemporary culture. "Dream" (1903) is about the thinkers portrayed in Raphael's School of Athens and Dilthey's worries about them breaking up into three divergent groups. Finally, "The Problem of Religion" (1911) considers how religiosity can still inform lived experience in secular times.