Introduction to the Human Sciences

Introduction

Dilthey published the first volume in 1883, a year after taking up the Berlin chair; the promised second volume, which was to supply the systematic epistemological foundation, never appeared, though drafts survive. The subtitle describes the book as an attempt to lay a foundation for the study of society and history. Its first part argues that the human sciences form an independent whole, distinct from the natural sciences and from the sociology of Comte and Mill. The second part is a long history of metaphysics from the Greeks to the late Middle Ages, read as the prehistory of a historical self-understanding. The book opened a long debate about the method of the humanities.

Connections

Builds on

• Hermeneutics and Criticism1838 · Friedrich Schleiermacher

Criticizes

• Course in Positive Philosophy1830 · Auguste Comte
• A System of Logic1843 · John Stuart Mill

Taken up in

• Being and Time1927 · Martin Heidegger
• Knowledge and Human Interests1968 · Jürgen Habermas

Criticized in

• Truth and Method1960 · Hans-Georg Gadamer