ДИЛЬТЕЙ ВИЛЬГЕЛЬМ

Dilthey Wilhelm (1833–1911)

German idealist philosopher, professor at Berlin University, exponent of the so-called philosophy of life. Dilthey's ideas pivoted on the notion of a living spirit, which develops in historical forms. Dilthey rejected the knowability of the laws of the historical process, claiming that philosophy could not be cognition of super-sensory essences and could only be a "science of sciences", that is, a "teaching on science". Dilthey divides the world of science into sciences of nature and sciences of the spirit, the subject of the latter being social reality.

Philosophy should set out to analyse consciousness, because consciousness alone offers the means by which we can proceed from the immediate experiences of the "ego" and arrive at the substance of natural and spiritual life. Psychology, Dilthey averred, is the most fundamental of all the sciences of the spirit; he meant descriptive, not explanatory psychology, which is based on causality. In his study of the imaginative arts, Dilthey stressed the role of fantasy, with whose assistance the poet elevates the accidental to the level of the substantial and by which he depicts the typical as the basis of the individual. According to Dilthey, the "science of interpretation", or "hermeneutics", comprises the link between philosophy and the science of history.