Examines Dilthey's hermeneutics, aesthetics, practical philosophy, and philosophy of history, showing how his work remains relevant for philosophers today.
Hermeneutics is the branch of knowledge that deals with interpretation, a behaviour that is intrinsic to our daily lives. As humans, we decipher the meaning of newspaper articles, books, legal matters, religious texts, political speeches, emails, and even dinner conversations every day . But how is knowledge mediated through these forms? What constitutes the process of interpretation? And how do we draw meaning from the world around us so that we might understand our position in it? In this Very Short Introduction Jens Zimmermann traces the history of hermeneutic theory, setting out its key elements, and demonstrating how they can be applied to a broad range of disciplines: theology; literature; law; and natural and social sciences. Demonstrating the longstanding and wide-ranging necessity of interpretation, Zimmermann reveals its significance in our current social and political landscape. ABOUT THE SERIES: The Very Short Introductions series from Oxford University Press contains hundreds of titles in almost every subject area. These pocket-sized books are the perfect way to get ahead in a new subject quickly. Our expert authors combine facts, analysis, perspective, new ideas, and enthusiasm to make interesting and challenging topics highly readable.
This volume provides Dilthey's most mature and best formulation of his Critique of Historical Reason. It begins with three "Studies Toward the Foundation of the Human Sciences," in which Dilthey refashions Husserlian concepts to describe the basic structures of consciousness relevant to historical understanding. The volume next presents the major 1910 work The Formation of the Historical World in the Human Sciences. Here Dilthey considers the degree to which carriers of history--individuals, cultures, institutions, and communities--can be articulated as productive systems capable of generating value and meaning and of realizing purposes. Hegel's idea of objective spirit is reconceived in a more empirical form to designate the medium of commonality in which historical beings are immersed. Any universal claims about history need to be framed within the specific productive systems analyzed by the various human sciences. Dilthey's drafts for the Continuation of the Formation contain extensive discussions of the categories most important for our knowledge of historical life: meaning, value, purpose, time, and development. He also examines the contributions of autobiography to historical understanding and of biography to scientific history. The finest summary of Dilthey's views on hermeneutics can be found in "The Understanding of Other Persons and Their Manifestations of Life." Here, Dilthey differentiates understanding relative to three kinds of manifestations of life. After giving his analysis of elementary understanding, he examines the role of induction in higher understanding and interpretation, and the relevance of transposition and re-experiencing for grasping individuality.
The author then elaborates a systematic reconstruction of Dilthey's ontology of life. In the final section of the book, Dilthey's hermeneutic ontology is confronted with the works of Heidegger, Gadamer, and Derrida, and its relevance in current philosophical debate is evaluated."--Jacket.
Wilhelm Dilthey was an influential German philosopher who was instrumental in reinstating hermeneutics as a viable foundation for the human sciences. This essay length guide covers all the important concepts including the distinction between the natural and human sciences, his historical epistemology, and his concepts of interest and 'exegesis'.
A Companion to Hermeneutics is a collection of original essays from leading international scholars that provide a definitive historical and critical compendium of philosophical hermeneutics. Offers a definitive historical, systematic, and critical compendium of hermeneutics Represents state-of-the-art thinking on the major themes, topics, concepts and figures of the hermeneutic tradition in philosophy and those who have influenced hermeneutic thought, including Kant, Hegel, Schleiermacher Dilthey, Heidegger, Gadamer, Ricoeur, Foucault, Habermas, and Rorty Explores the art and theory of interpretation as it intersects with a number of philosophical and inter-disciplinary areas, including humanism, theology, literature, politics, education and law Features contributions from an international cast of leading and upcoming scholars, who offer historically informed, philosophically comprehensive, and critically astute contributions in their individual fields of expertise Written to be accessible to interested non-specialists, as well asprofessional philosophers
For some two centuries, scholars have wrestled with questions regarding the nature and logic of history as a discipline and, more broadly, with the entire complex of the "human sciences, " with include theology, philosophy, history, literature, the fine arts, and languages. The fundamental issue is whether the human sciences are a special class of studies with a specifically distinct object and method or whether they must be subsumed under the natural sciences. German philosopher Wilhelm Dilthey dedicated the bulk of his long career to there and related questions. His Introduction to the Human Sciences is a pioneering effort to elaborate a general theory of the human sciences, especially history, and to distinguish these sciences radically from the field of natural sciences. Though the Introduction was never completed, it remains one of the major statements of the topic. Together with other works by Dilthey, it has had a substantial influence on the recognition and human sciences as a fundamental division of human knowledge and on their separation from the natural sciences in origin, nature, and method. As a contribution to the issue of the methodologies of the humanities and social sciences, the Introduction rightly claims a place. This is the first time the entire work is available in English. In his introductory essay, translator Ramon J. Betanzos surveys Dilthey's life and thought and hails his efforts to create a foundational science for the particular human sciences, and at the same time, takes serious issue with Dilthey's historical/critical evaluation of metaphysics.
This book provides an innovative approach to meeting the challenges faced by philosophical hermeneutics in interpreting an ever-changing and multicultural world. Rudolf A. Makkreel proposes an orientational and reflective conception of interpretation in which judgment plays a central role. Moving beyond the dialogical approaches found in much of contemporary hermeneutics, he focuses instead on the diagnostic use of reflective judgment, not only to discern the differentiating features of the phenomena to be understood, but also to orient us to the various meaning contexts that can frame their interpretation. Makkreel develops overlooked resources of Kant’s transcendental thought in order to reconceive hermeneutics as a critical inquiry into the appropriate contextual conditions of understanding and interpretation. He shows that a crucial task of hermeneutical critique is to establish priorities among the contexts that may be brought to bear on the interpretation of history and culture. The final chapter turns to the contemporary art scene and explores how orientational contexts can be reconfigured to respond to the ways in which media of communication are being transformed by digital technology. Altogether, Makkreel offers a promising way of thinking about the shifting contexts that we bring to bear on interpretations of all kinds, whether of texts, art works, or the world.