Hermeneutics and the Study of History

by Wilhelm Dilthey, Rudolf A. Makkreel (Editor), Frithjof Rodi (Editor)

The philosopher and historian of culture Wilhelm Dilthey (1833-1911) has had a significant and continuing influence on twentieth-century Continental philosophy and in a broad range of scholarly disciplines. This volume is the third to be published in Princeton University Press's projected six-volume series of his most important works. Part One makes available three of his works on hermeneutics and its history: ""Schleiermacher's Hermeneutical System in Relation to Earlier Protestant Hermeneutics"" (The Prize Essay of 1860); "On Understanding and Hermeneutics" (1867-68), based on student lecture notes, and the "The Rise of Hermeneutics" (1900), which traces the history of hermeneutics back to Hellenistic Greece. All the addenda to this well-known essay are translated here, some for the first time. In them Dilthey articulates three philosophical aporias concerning hermeneutics and projects an ultimate convergence between understanding and explanation.

Part Two provides translations of review essays by Dilthey on Buckle's use of statistical history and on Burckhardt's cultural history; an essay "Friedrich Schlosser and the Problem of Universal History;" and a talk recalling his early years as a student of Boeckh, Jakob Grimm, Mommsen, Ranke, and Ritter. It also contains the important historical essay "The Eighteenth Century and the Historical World," in which Dilthey reexamines the Enlightenment to show its significant contributions to the rise of historical consciousness.

Genres: Philosophy, History, Anthropology, Sociology

424 pages, Paperback

First published July 1, 1996

About the author

Wilhelm Dilthey (German: [ˈdɪltaɪ]) was a German historian, psychologist, sociologist, and hermeneutic philosopher, who held G. W. F. Hegel's Chair in Philosophy at the University of Berlin. As a polymathic philosopher, working in a modern research university, Dilthey's research interests revolved around questions of scientific methodology, historical evidence and history's status as a science. He could be considered an empiricist, in contrast to the idealism prevalent in Germany at the time, but his account of what constitutes the empirical and experiential differs from British empiricism and positivism in its central epistemological and ontological assumptions, which are drawn from German literary and philosophical traditions.

Reviews

[Halilcan · Rating 5 out of 5]

Çok fazla şey demeye gerek yok adam yazmış

[Uğur · Rating 4 out of 5]

The work of Dilthey, who has made himself known to the world with his remarkable thoughts by claiming the philosophy of history against the method philosophy of Positivism, bases these claims on.

Dilthey has made an assessment of people and society in the ongoing phenomenology of history, and has created a new philosophy based on the cultural phenomenon created by society. For this reason, I can say that he is one of the names that make up the method followed by modern sociology. it will probably be noticed by humanity a century from now. because a person who can read his age is not alive. because it wasn't taught that way. it is also behind the point that it should be in terms of cultural accumulation in every era. Dilthey has also carried out his studies to reveal the way of thinking that will develop a person through philosophy with the bridge (culture) created exactly in the context of history and sociology.

in this work, Dilthey's philosophy of history, especially the historical method, which he describes as the essence of the spiritual sciences, is largely discussed together with his epistemology and some of the terms he uses. but while providing solutions, Dilthey creates problems with it. especially about objectivity. i think the theory he has created at the point of language, history and hermemeutics is like a kind of patchwork on what exists. there are quite intelligent assessments and objections, but their accuracy varies according to ideas. from the point of view of intellectualism, I think it is absolutely but absolutely necessary to read.

[Mark Munson-Warnken · Rating 5 out of 5]

Took about a week to finish. Very dense. Lots of discussion of hermeneutical concepts and critiques of historians of the time. Excited to read Schleiermacher

[SirriCan · Rating 5 out of 5]

ilkin 2006 yılında ablacığımın kitaplığından çormuştum. Şimdi bir yanda Dilthey bir yanda rakı. Homeros yaşasa ne olur yaşamasa ne. Herkesten biraz kaldı Homerostan da. Ama hermeneutik ikin vuu süper metod dediğimiz bir olay olsa da sonuçları yine birer tehlikeye çıktı. Mesela din ve atom bombası, hadi buyrun. yatıyom ben.