Wilhelm Windelband
Windelband held that the sciences differ by their aim rather than their objects: the natural sciences seek general laws, the historical sciences describe singular events, and philosophy is the critical science of the values that claim validity for everyone.
Placement
Southwest German neo-Kantian and historian of philosophy: he separated sciences that seek laws from sciences that describe singular events, and made philosophy the critical science of universally valid values.
Key ideas
- Nomothetic and idiographic sciences
- Philosophy as the critical science of universally valid values
Teachers: Hermann Lotze, Kuno Fischer
Students: Heinrich Rickert, Emil Lask
Influence
Influenced by 2
Hermann Lotze studied with
studied with
Windelband studied with Lotze in Göttingen and wrote his 1870 dissertation under Lotze’s supervision. SEP “Wilhelm Windelband” (K. Kinzel), §1; SEP “Hermann Lotze” (D. Sullivan)
Evidence: AI draft
Hermann Lotze › 1817–1881
Kuno Fischer studied with
studied with
Windelband attended Fischer’s lectures in Jena, and Fischer’s Kant scholarship shaped his work as a historian of philosophy. SEP “Wilhelm Windelband” (K. Kinzel), §1 and §2
Evidence: AI draft
Kuno Fischer › 1824–1907
Influenced 3
Heinrich Rickert taught
taught
Rickert wrote his dissertation under Windelband in Strasbourg (1888), later succeeded him in Heidelberg and drew on Windelband’s essay on history and natural science for his theory of science. SEP “Heinrich Rickert” (A. Staiti, L. Oliva), introduction; SEP “Neo-Kantianism” (J. Heis), §3
Evidence: AI draft
Heinrich Rickert › 1863–1936
Max Weber
influenced
Weber followed Windelband in holding that historical and cultural knowledge differs in kind from natural-scientific knowledge. SEP “Max Weber” (S. H. Kim), §2.1 and §5.1
Evidence: AI draft
Max Weber › 1864–1920
Emil Lask taught
taught
Lask studied under Windelband in Heidelberg and later habilitated there. SEP “Neo-Kantianism” (J. Heis), §3
Evidence: AI draft
Emil Lask › 1875–1915
Criticism
Mutual critique 1
Wilhelm Dilthey ⇄ mutual
criticised
In his Strasbourg rector’s address of 1894 Windelband rejected Dilthey’s way of marking off the human sciences by a distinct kind of experience and by descriptive psychology. SEP “Wilhelm Windelband” (K. Kinzel), §5; SEP “Wilhelm Dilthey” (R. Makkreel), §2.2
Evidence: AI draft
criticised by
Dilthey replied that many natural sciences have idiographic parts and many human sciences nomothetic aims, so Windelband’s division does not hold. SEP “Wilhelm Dilthey” (R. Makkreel), §2.2
Evidence: AI draft
Wilhelm Dilthey › 1833–1911
Works
Windelband’s one-volume history of philosophy, arranged by the problems and concepts of philosophy rather than by biographies; reissued many times.
Rectoral address at Strasbourg that introduced the contrast between nomothetic sciences, which seek general laws, and idiographic sciences, which describe singular events; it was disputed by Dilthey and became the starting point of Rickert’s theory of science.
Position
Windelband is on the map as a founder of the Southwest German School of neo-Kantianism and as a historian of philosophy. He understood philosophy as a critical science of the norms and values that claim validity, and read Kant against psychologism; in the essay Critical or Genetic Method? (1883) he set the critical method against the genetic one. In his Strasbourg rector’s address History and Natural Science (1894) he separated the nomothetic sciences, which seek general laws, from the idiographic sciences, which describe singular events, and made values the guide of historical knowledge. In the same address he rejected Dilthey’s way of marking off the human sciences by a distinct kind of experience and by descriptive psychology; Dilthey replied that many natural sciences have idiographic parts and many human sciences nomothetic aims, so that the division does not hold. His students Heinrich Rickert and Emil Lask carried the school on, and Max Weber followed him on the difference in kind between historical and natural-scientific knowledge.
Life & context
Wilhelm Windelband was born in 1848 in Potsdam. He studied in Jena, Berlin and Göttingen; in Jena he attended the lectures of Kuno Fischer, in Göttingen he studied with Hermann Lotze, under whom he wrote his dissertation On the Doctrines of Chance (1870). He habilitated in Leipzig in 1873 and became professor in Zurich in 1876 and in Freiburg in 1877. From 1882 he taught in Strasbourg, where he was rector in 1894–95 and 1897–98, and later in Heidelberg, where he remained until his death in 1915.
Further main works
- Preludes (Präludien, 1883)
- On the Doctrines of Chance (Die Lehren vom Zufall, 1870)
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