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.
As the other reviewer remarked, this work can be repetitive with respect to both itself and his other works. In all his writings, there is a tendency toward a kind of dry technicality, which can be overwhelming at times—many impressive abstract nouns.
That being said, I think Dilthey is at his best—as I think of other Continental thinkers—when he is most concrete, when he speaks about what "life" is and means, how interpretation can be applied to the expressions of the human world, when he uses beautiful imagery and examples to demonstrate the richness of the human experience in all its feelings and ambitions.
If you ever wanted to know how objective spirit comes to be delimited through human activity in the human sciences this would be the book to read. A bit convoluted and at times repetitive.