Guarding the Horned Gates: History and Interpretation in the Early Poetry of T. S. Eliot

Abstract

Wilhelm Dilthey (1833-1911), German philosopher, historian, and literary critic, was one of first and most convincing theoreticians of modern existential historicism-a way of thinking about past that emphasizes interaction between historian's mind in present and a single moment in past, rather than encouraging construction of a linear or teleological model for history.' Dilthey criticized both Hegel and members of Rankean scientific historical school for their metaphysical systems that leave actualities of history behind. Today, wrote Dilthey, must start from reality of life. Dilthey believed that history could not be regarded as a science; historian's method is not empirical but hermeneutical, and his task is to breathe his own life into past, to reconstruct lived experience (Erlebnis) of past through empathy and intuition: History is not something separated from life or remote from life in present. Dilthey realized that after he had abandoned Hegel's metaphysical conception of historical process and concentrated on actual historical expressions as true foundation of historical knowledge, he needed to find a way to determine how universally knowledge of historical world can be based on what is thus given. Dilthey's existential historicism is open to threat of acute relativism. Kant had established categories which govern ways we acquire scientific knowledge in his Critique of Pure Reason. But Dilthey saw need for a Critique of Historical Reason which would establish theoretically, against the constant irruption of romantic whim and sceptical subjectivity, categories of historical knowledge that provide a foundation for valid interpretation on which all certainty in history rests.' Objective knowledge and truth were still possible for Dilthey, but specter of relativism haunted his work, as it has haunted work of historians and literary critics throughout our century.2