Dilthey, Wilhelm (vĭl`hĕlm dĭl`tī), 1833–1911, German philosopher. He taught at the universities of Basel, Kiel, Breslau, and Berlin. He was one of the first to claim the independence of the human sciences as distinct from the natural sciences. Dilthey laid down a foundation of descriptive and analytic psychology on which to base a study of philosophy. One of his principal works is Einleitung in die Geisteswissenschaften [introduction to the human studies] (1883).

Bibliography

See his monograph, The Essence of Philosophy (tr. 1954); study by R. A. Makkreel (1975).

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 the model of natural science, Dilthey tried to establish these fields as interpretive sciences in their own right. Their subject matter, according to him, is the human mind, not as it is enjoyed in immediate experience nor as it is analyzed in psychological theory, but as it manifests or “objectifies” itself in languages and literatures, actions, and institutions. Dilthey emphasized that the essence of human beings cannot be grasped by introspection but only from a knowledge of all of history; this understanding, however, can never be final because history itself never is. His major work is Introduction to Human Science (1883); two influential essays are “Ideas Concerning a Descriptive and Analytical Psychology” (1894) and “The Structure of the Historical World in the Human Sciences” (1910).