Wilhelm Dilthey (November 19th 1833 - October 1st 1911) was a Historien, Psychologue, Sociologue and German Philosophe .

Biographical elements

Dilthey was inspired in particular by work of Friedrich Schleiermacher on the Herméneutique, which until had remained there in the lapse of memory. They can both be attached to the German Romantisme. Dilthey is generally regarded as a empirist, even if its empiricism differs from the empiricism of the English school in these presupposed epistemological fundamental. In fact, it belongs more to the current known as " vitaliste" that one generally associates with Nietzsche and Bergson.

A reflection on sciences of the spirit

It was interested much in what is the Sociologie today, even if of alive sound it always refused to be attached to the principal representatives of the sociology of his time like Auguste Count and Herbert Spencer. It rejected indeed to them evolutionism about the changes necessary that any social entity was - according to them - to cross; it also found that the term of " sociologie" was employed as folding screen for disparate research which missed analytical clearness. Far from the Positivism of Count, it was on the other hand closer to the version of the sociology suggested by his colleague Georg Simmel of the University of Berlin.

Dilthey also gave a name to the process of Recherche put at the day by Schleiermacher, which it indicated by the expression of " ring herméneutique". The general Herméneutique proposed by Schleiermacher was a combination between the hermeneutics used to interpret the Writings and that used by the traditional philosophers. This research led Dilthey to an epistemological reflection on the Compréhension and the Explication. Of these concepts is also resulting the cut between Sciences from the Nature and sciences of the Esprit ( Geisteswissenschaft ) which largely influenced the development of social sciences to the turning of the 20th century. These designs also fed the " quarrel of the méthodes" ( Methodenstreit ) which occupied a big part of the speech on the social sciences in the Germany of the beginning of the century.

Posterity and influence

If Dilthey is little known today, it does not remain about it less one essential frontier runner between a design positivist of social sciences and an approach known as " compréhensive". Its work, often associated with the Relativisme and the current Historiciste, gave place and inspired by many methodological approaches of which that of Georg Simmel, max Weber and Karl Mannheim; the sociological tradition asserts its epistemological distinctions still today and regards its work as precursors of a still alive interpretative step in current research. Dimension hermeneutics of its reflection was discussed and made profitable by many philosophers of which Martin Heidegger and Hans-Georg Gadamer.

Principal works

Original titles

  • Leben Schleiermachers , T. 1 (" Life of Schleiermacher") (1870)

  • Einleitung in die Geisteswissenschaften (" Introduction to sciences of the esprit") (1883)
  • Bausteine zur eine Poetik (" Elements for a poétique") (1887)
  • Über die Möglichkeit einer allgemein gütlichen Pädagogik (1888)
  • Ideen über eine beschreibende a zergliernde Psychology (1894)
  • Beiträge zu Studien der Individualität (" Contribution to the studies on the individualité") (1896)
  • Studien zur Grundlegung der Geisteswissenschaften (" Studies on the base of sciences of the esprit") (1905)
  • Die Jugendgeschichte Hegels (" History of the youth of Hegel") (1905)
  • Das Erlebnis und die Dichtung (" The experiment and the poésie") (1905)
  • Der Aufbau DER geschichtlichen Welt in den Geisteswissenschaften (" The construction of the historical world in sciences of the esprit") (1910)
  • Die Typen der Weltanschauung (" Types of visions of the monde") (1911)

French translations

Works published in the Editions of the Stag :

  • Works 1: Critical of the historical reason. Introduction to sciences of the spirit and other texts

  • Works 3: the construction of the historical world in sciences of the spirit
  • Works 4: Design of the World and analyzes of the Man since the Rebirth and the Reform
  • Œuvres 5: Leibniz and Hegel
  • Works 7: Written of esthetics followed birth of the hermeneutics

On Dilthey

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