Wilhelm Dilthey (Dilthey Wilhelm)

(1833-1911)
Born November 19, 1833 in Bibrihe near Wiesbaden. Son of a pastor Reformed Church. He studied theology at Heidelberg, then at the University of Berlin, there is applied to the study of philosophy. He received a doctorate degree from the University of Berlin in 1864, and two years later became professor of philosophy at the University of Basel. In the future, was a professor at the University of Kiel (1868) and Breslau (now Wroclaw) (1871), as well as the University of Berlin, where he taught from 1882. Died in Dilthey Zeyse near Bolzano (Austria), October 3, 1911.
Dilthey had a sharp and insightful 'historical sense', which allowed him to see the relationship of cultural phenomena of society, united in each moment into an organic whole, growing and dying. His numerous works on the history of Western civilization and especially of German thought belong to the classic heritage of historiography and literary criticism. Dilthey suggested widely accepted notion of 'human sciences' (Geisteswissenschaften)

. The desire to understand the meaning of historical research led Dilthey to address the methodology of history, . particularly, . analysis of the special act of understanding (Verstehen), . which allows the historian to interpret all forms of cultural creativity as an expression of the underlying worldview (Weltanschauung),
. Method of interpretation has been called the hermeneutics of Dilthey. Kant could not give 'critique of historical reason', and Dilthey fill this gap in the introduction to the science of mind (Einleitung in die Geisteswissenschaften, 1883), the first part of the treatise on the principles of historical knowledge (never completed). He identified three types of outlook: naturalism (positivism), objective idealism (pantheism), and the idealism of freedom (theism).

From the methodology Dilthey went on to philosophy. In an effort to understand the studied events, the historian himself is steeped in history. How it works, . hence, . can not be explained through the abstract and timeless mind, . occupies a central place in the philosophy of Descartes and Kant, . but requires a more specific philosophical foundation - a holistic context of life, . determining the existence of man,
. Dilthey development of this idea led to the emergence of certain trends in modern psychology, . emphasize the integrity of mental life, . reducible to its individual elements and therefore requires an intuitive understanding, . as well as to the 'existential philosophy', . which reason is opposed to specific individual life,
. These ideas were also reflected in his unfinished work - structure of the historical world in the human sciences (Der Aufbau der geschichtlichen Welt in den Geisteswissenschaften, 1910).