Wilhelm Dilthey Quotes

نحن نفسر الطبيعة, أما الإنسان فإن علينا أن نفهمه

What is experienced from within cannot be categorized in concepts that have been developed for the external world of the senses.

In the case of lived experience, there is no difference between an object that is perceived and the eye that perceives it.

Paradox is a characteristic of truth.

We explain by means of purely intellectual processes, but we understand by means of the cooperation of all the powers of the mind in comprehension. In understanding we start from the connection of the given, living whole, in order to make the past comprehensible in terms of it.

If there were a science of human beings it would be anthropology that aims at understanding the totality of experience through structural context.

The existence of inherent limits of experience in no way settles the question about the subordination of facts of the human world to our knowledge of matter.

No real blood flows in the veins of the knowing subject constructed by Locke, Hume, and Kant, but rather the diluted extract of reason as a mere activity of thought.

The lived experiences which could not find adequate scientific expression in the substance doctrine of rational psychology were now validated in light of new and better methods.

A knowledge of the forces that rule society, of the causes that have produced its upheavals, and of society's resources for promoting healthy progress has become of vital concern to our civilization.

If we conceive all the changes in the physical world as reducible to the motion of atoms, motions generated by means of the fixed nuclear forces of those atoms, the whole of the world could thus be known by means of the natural sciences.

In the real life-process, willing, feeling, and thinking are only different aspects.

On the other hand, for the whole human being who wills, feels, and represents, external reality is given simultaneously and with as much certitude as his own self.

The knife of historical relativism... which has cut to pieces all metaphysics and religion must also bring about healing.

Wilhelm Dilthey puts it rather starkly, "Jesus came announcing the Kingdom of God, but what appeared was the church.

Wilhelm Dilthey puts it rather starkly: “Jesus came announcing the Kingdom of God, but what appeared was the church.

Proslulý německý filozof Wilhelm Dilthey považoval biografii mimořádné osobnosti za klíč k pochopení historické etapy, v níž vynikající jedinec žil a kterou spoluvytvářel. Podle jeho přesvědčení nachází duch doby (Zeigeist) svůj nejvlastnější výraz právě v působení výjimečné individuality. Pokud jí badatel porozumí, pak pronikne i k určujícím souřadnicím dané dějinné epochy.

alluding to Lange’s pathography , which rejected all productive influence of mental illness and only underscored its destructive effects: “Catatonia on the other hand completely diminished or destroyed his abilities; Hölderlin’s ‘madness’ has nothing to do with his genius” (Lange 1909, p. 216 f). While Lange essentially sought to apply psychiatric categories to apprehend the formally and linguistically unusual nature of Hölderlin’s art as an expression of alterity, Jaspers wanted to learn from the philologists. He was inspired not only by Hellingrath but also by Wilhelm Dilthey, whose 1906 collected volume Poetry and Experience included an essay on Hölderlin (Dilthey 1916). Jaspers describes this as the “most brilliant” interpretation of Hölderlin he had encountered