The Search for a Foundation of the Human Sciences and the Social Sciences in Neo-Kantianism and Dilthey, and Husserl’s Exploration of Consciousness

Abstract

This chapter begins with a discussion of Neo-Kantianism. It then covers the works of Wilhelm Windelband (1848–1915) and Heinrich Rickert (1863–1936), the most important representatives of the second branch of Neo-Kantianism, the Baden School, which is concerned with the philosophical grounding of the human sciences and the social sciences as distinct from the natural sciences. It also looks at the work of Wilhelm Dilthey (1833–1911) who had, before Neo-Kantianism, attempted to ground the human sciences in an “understanding psychology” that was not based on laboratory work but guided by a philosophy focused on the meaning of life; and that of Edmund Husserl (1859–1938), the most important critic and stimulator of Dilthey, and probably the twentieth-century thinker who remained most loyal to the traditional concept of reason.