Drawing upon Husserl and Merleau-Ponty’s phenomenological constitution of the Other through Einfülhung, I argue that the hierarchical distinction between higher and lower animals – which has been dismissed by Heidegger for being anthropocentric – must not be conceived as an objective distinction between “primitive” animals and “more evolved” ones, but rather corresponds to a phenomenological distinction between familiar and unfamiliar animals.

CHAPTER ONE INTRODUCTION Philosophy originates in man's amazement over the richness and complexity of reality. It attempts to articulate in words and ...

This book is a pioneering effort to elaborate a general theory of the human sciences, especially history, and to distinguish these sciences radically from the ...

Gadamer and Habermas both argue that some earlier theorists of interpretation in the human sciences, despite recognizing the meaningful character of social reality, still succumb to objectivism because they fail to conceive the relation of interpreters to their subjects in terms of cross-cultural normative "dialogue." In particular, Gadamer and Habermas claim that the most prominent nineteenth-century philosopher of the human sciences, Wilhelm Dilthey, fell prey to a misleading Cartesian outlook which sought to ground the objectivity of interpretation on complete transcendence (...) of the interpreter's present cultural and historical situation. This article challenges Gadamer's and Habermas's claim by arguing that new research on nineteenth-century hermeneutic thought reveals Dilthey to be much more aware of the reflexive, present-centered nature of historical research than they maintain and further that their own "dialogical" model of interpretation suffers from notable obscurities which Dilthey's work itself helps expose. Key Words: Dilthey • Gadamer • Habermas • hermeneutics. (shrink)

The philosopher and historian of culture Wilhelm Dilthey (1833-1911) has had a significant and continuing influence on twentieth-century Continental philosophy and in a broad range of scholarly disciplines. Rudolf Makkreel interprets Dilthey's philosophy and provides a guide to its complex development. Against the tendency to divorce Dilthey's early psychological writings from his later hermeneutical and historical works, Makkreel argues for their essential continuity.

Wilhelm Dilthey: Selected Works, Volume II: Understanding the Human World. Edited with Introduction by Rudolf A. Makkreel and Frithjof Rodi Content Type Journal Article Category Book Review Pages 471-474 DOI 10.1007/s10746-011-9197-6 Authors Eric S. Nelson, Department of Philosophy, University of Massachusetts, Lowell, MA, USA Journal Human Studies Online ISSN 1572-851X Print ISSN 0163-8548 Journal Volume Volume 34 Journal Issue Volume 34, Number 4.

Introduction Wilhelm Dilthey's name is most often linked with the title of a nonexistent book: Critique of Historical Reason. Although he never published a ...

Martin Heidegger, in a recently published group of essays, discusses the persistently ... was shattered by ED Hirsch's book Validity in Interpretation. ...

Both Kant and Dilthey distinguish between cognition and knowledge, but they do so differently in accordance with their respective theoretical interests. Kant's primary cognitive interest is in the natural sciences, and from this perspective the status of psychology is questioned because its phenomena are not mathematically measurable. Dilthey, by contrast, reconceives psychology as a human science.For Kant, knowledge is conceptual cognition that has attained certainty by being part of a rational system. Dilthey also links knowledge with certainty; however, he derives (...) the latter from life-experience rather than from reason. Dilthey's psychology begins with the self-certainty of lived experience and life-knowledge, but this turns out to fall short of cognitive understanding. In the final analysis, both Kant and Dilthey move beyond psychology to arrive at self-understanding. Because of his doubts about introspection, Kant replaces psychology with a pragmatic anthropology to provide a communal framework for self-understanding. Dilthey supplements psychology with other human sciences as part of a project of anthropological reflection. (shrink)

The importance of Dilthey Why read Dilthey today? Why study the ideas of a nineteenthcentury German philosopher some seventy years after his death? ...

A question of focus -- A unitary impulse : Husserl's confrontation with Dilthey -- The development of constitutive phenomenology -- The system of phenomenological philosophy -- Appendix 1: Husserl's publishing history -- Appendix 2: The Husserl Misch correspondence -- Appendix 3: Draft arrangements for Edmund Husserl's time investigations -- Appendix 4: Systems of phenomenological philosophy.

This essay examines continuities and transformations in Heidegger's appropriation of Dilthey's account of life and the accompanying picture of history between the end of World War One and Being and Time . The essay also judges the cogency of two conclusions that Heidegger draws in that book about history, viz, that historicity qua feature of Dasein's being both underlies objective history and makes the scholarly narration of history possible. Part one describes Dilthey's account of life, Heidegger's criticism that this account (...) objectifies life, and Heidegger's appropriation of those aspects of Dilthey's account - temporality, movement, and wholes - that do not result from objectification. Part two focuses on how Heidegger reworks the idea that life is movement by reconceptualizing movement as a happening (and not a stream) and by replacing Dilthey's lived experiences with actions. Part three examines how Heidegger takes over from Dilthey the idea that something is historical if and only if the past is part of its present, also attending to the type(s) of past that these thinkers consider to be part of life. A final section judges the cogency of the two aforementioned theses, defending the claim that the historicity of life is the condition of the objective nexus of actions and events called history and criticizing the thesis that the historicity of a historian's life makes the writing of history possible. (shrink)

Early in Aristotle’s terminology, and ever since, “essence” has been conceived as having two meanings, namely “universality” and “individuality”. According to the tradition of thought that has dominated throughout the history of Western philosophy, “essence” unequivocally refers to “universality”. As a matter of fact, however, “universality” cannot cover Aristotle’s definition and formulation of “essence”: Essence is what makes a thing “happen to be this thing.” “Individuality” should be the deep meaning of “essence”. By means of an analysis of some relevant (...) Western thoughts and a review of cultural realities, it can be concluded that the difference between the attitudes toward things of the natural sciences and the humane sciences mainly lies in the fact that the former focus on the pursuit of universal regularity, whereas the latter go after the value and significance of human life. The movement from natural things to cultural things is a process in which essence shifts from universality to individuality. It is the author’s contention that what should be stressed in the fields of human culture and society is the construction of an ideal society that is “harmonious yet not identical”, on the basis of respecting and developing individual peculiarity and otherness. (shrink)