Wilhelm Dilthey: Selected Works, Volume III: The Formation of the Historical World in the Human Sciences

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.

Table of Contents:
PREFACE TO ALL VOLUMES xi EDITORIAL NOTE TO VOLUME iii xv INTRODUCTION TO VOLUME iii 1 PART I STUDIES TOWARD THE FOUNDATION OF THE HUMAN SCIENCES Translated by Rudolf A. Makkreel and John Scanlon FIRST STUDY The Psychic Structural Nexus 23 I. Task, Method, and Outline of the Foundation 24 1. The Task 24 2. The Task of the Theory of Knowledge 27 3. The Foundational Method Used Here 28 4. Point of Departure for a Description of the Processes in which Knowledge Originates 29 5. The Place of this Description in the System of the Foundation 32 II. Descriptive Preliminary Concepts 34 1. Psychic Structure 34 2. The Apprehension of Psychic Structure 38 3. Structural Units 40 4. The Structural Nexus 42 5. The Kinds of Structural Relation 43 SECOND STUDY The Structural Nexus of Knowledge 45 I. Objective Apprehension 45 1. Delimitation of Objective Apprehension 45 2. The Relation between Lived Experience and Psychic Object 46 3. The Relation between Intuition and Sensory Objects 54 4. The Structure of the Lived Experiences of Apprehension 57 5. Lived Experiences of Apprehension as Structural Unities and Their Inner Relations to One Another 57 II. Objective Having 66 1. Feeling 66 1. Delimiting Lived Experiences of Feeling 67 2. The General Nature of the Attitude in the Lived Experience of Feeling 69 3. The Structural Unity of the Lived Experience of Feeling 71 4. Structural Relations between Feelings 75 5. The System of the Relations between Feelings as Delimited from the Systems of Objective Apprehension and of Willing 77 Supplement: Completion of the Inner Teleology of the Structural Nexus of Feelings in Objective Formations 79 2. Willing 82 First Fragment 82 1. The Scope of Its Lived Experiences 82 2. Analysis of Willing 84 Second Fragment 87 1. The Foundation of Willing in Objective Apprehension and in Feeling 87 2. Delimiting Willing from Feeling 87 3. The Structural Unity of the Volitional Attitude 89 4. The Levels of Structural Unity in Lived Experience and the Relations between Lived Experiences 89 5. The System of Lived Experiences in the Volitional Attitude 90 THIRD STUDY The Delimitation of the Human Sciences (Third Draft) 91 PART II THE FORMATION OF THE HISTORICAL WORLD IN THE HUMAN SCIENCES Translated by Rudolf A. Makkreel and John Scanlon I. Delimitation of the Human Sciences 101 II. Different Modes of Formation in the Natural Sciences and in the Human Sciences 109 Historical Orientation 109 III. General Theses about the System of the Human Sciences 142 Section One: Objective Apprehension 143 Section Two: The Structure of the Human Sciences 152 Chapter I: Life and the Human Sciences 152 Chapter II: The Procedural Modes in Which the World of the Human Spirit Is Given 160 Chapter III: The Objectifications of Life 168 Chapter IV: The World of Human Spirit as a Productive Nexus 174 PART III PLAN FOR THE CONTINUATION OF THE FORMATION OF THE HISTORICAL WORLD IN THE HUMAN SCIENCES Translated by Rudolf A. Makkreel and William H. Oman Drafts for a Critique of Historical Reason 213 Section One: Lived Experience, Expression, and Understanding 213 I. Lived Experience and Autobiography 213 1. The Task of a Critique of Historical Reason 213 2. Reflexive Awareness, Reality: Time 214 3. The Life-Nexus 218 4. Autobiography 221 Supplement to 3: The Life-Nexus 223 II. The Understanding of Other Persons and Their Manifestations of Life 226 1. Manifestations of Life 226 2. Elementary Forms of Understanding 228 3. Objective Spirit and Elementary Understanding 229 4. The Higher Forms of Understanding 231 5. Transposition, Re-Creating and Re-Experiencing 234 6. Exegesis or Interpretation 237 Addenda 241 1. Musical Understanding 241 2. Lived Experience and Understanding 245 3. Methods of Understanding 245 4. The Limits of Understanding 246 III. The Categories of Life 248 Life 248 Lived Experience 249 Duration Apprehended in Understanding 251 Meaning 252 Meaning and Structure 256 Meaning, Significance, Value 258 Values 260 Whole and Parts 263 Development, Essence, and Other Categories 263 IV. Biography 265 1. The Scientific Character of Biography 265 2. Biography as a Work of Art 267 Section Two: Conceptual Cognition of the Nexus of Universal History 271 Introduction 271 1. History 271 2. The New Task 272 A First Projection of a Continuation of the Formation of the Historical World in the Human Sciences 273 1. Fundamental Relationship: The Structure of Historical Formations 273 2. The Structure of Every Historical Nexus or System 281 3. The Subjects of Historical Assertions 283 4. Race, People, etc. as Concrete-Historical Subjects 283 5. Cultural Systems 283 6. Economic Life 284 7. The Legal System and Its Organization in the Community 284 8. The Articulation of Society 284 9. Custom, Ethos, and the Ideals of Life 284 10. Religion and Its Organization 284 11. Art 286 12. The Sciences 286 13. World-View and Philosophy 286 14. The System of Organizations in the State 288 15. Nations as the Carriers of Power, Culture, Etc. 288 16. Humanity and Universal History 288 17. The Nature of System. The Goal of this Book 294 A Second Projection of a Continuation of the Formation of the Historical World in the Human Sciences 296 1. The Problem of History 296 2. Nations 302 3. Ages 305 4. Progress 306 5. The Nexus of Universal History 307 6. Conclusion of this Work 310 PART IV APPENDIX Translated by Rudolf A. Makkreel and William H. Oman I. Supplements to the Studies on the Foundation of the Human Sciences 315 On the Theory of Knowledge 315 The Task 315 The Delimitation of the Human Sciences 324 First Draft of Third Study 324 The Task 324 Second Draft of Third Study 330 First Chapter 330 The Task 330 Second Chapter 337 (How Is Conceptual Cognition in the Human Sciences Possible?) 337 Supplements to and Continuation of First Chapter 342 II. Additions to the Formation of the Historical World 344 1. The Logical System in the Human Sciences 344 Psychic Structure 344 2. Fragments toward a Theory of Structure 351 Psychic Life 351 Structure 352 External World 352 3. The Epistemological Problem 352 The Epistemological Problem of the Human Sciences 352 Kant and Fichte 353 Overcoming the Transcendence of Subjectivity 354 4. The Enlightenment as an Example 355 The Structure of the Age of Enlightenment 355 Political Life in the Age of Enlightenment 358 The Music of the Enlightenment 361 Pietism 362 5. Historical Development 365 GLOSSARY 369 INDEX 383

About the Author :
Rudolf A. Makkreel is Charles Howard Candler Professor and Chair of Philosophy at Emory University and the author of "Dilthey, Philosopher of the Human Studies" (Princeton). Frithjof Rodi is Professor Emeritus of Philosophy at Ruhr-Universitat, Bochum and one of the editors of "Dilthey's Gesammelte Schriften".

Review :
"The first complete English translation of Wilhelm Dilthey's most important mature work ... is to be greatly welcomed. This excellent translation conveys the subtlety and richness of Dilthey's German. Its innovative translations of key terms will provide renewed stimulus to interpreting Dilthey's works."--Eric Sean Nelson, Journal of the History of Philosophy "The third volume of his Selected Works affords us the opportunity to consider anew whether, post existentialist and post-humanist avant l'heure, Dilthey and his system-theoretic vitalism may have done Heidegger's own radicalism one better."--James D. Faubion, Review of Metaphysics