Law and structure in Dilthey’s philosophy of history

Abstract

ABSTRACT This paper interprets Dilthey’s treatment of history and historical science through his engagement with Kantian and post-Kantian philosophy. It focuses on Dilthey’s account of the possibility of objectivity in the Geisteswissenschaften. It finds in Dilthey a view of history as a law-governed, dynamical structure expressing the totality of human life, cast in a reworked Hegelian notion of objective spirit. The aim of historical thought is to understand the unity of this structure to the greatest extent possible, and thereby to understand lived experience itself. Dilthey’s epistemological standpoint recommends beginning with concrete studies in the special human sciences, and working toward a more general representation of the regularities and patterns in the historical record.