Dilthey's Epistemology of the Geisteswissenschaften : Between Lebensphilosophie and Wissenschaftstheorie

A great part of my life's work has been devoted to formulating a universally valid science which should provide the human sciences with a firm foundation and a unified internal coherency. . . . I am neither an intuitionist, nor a historicist, nor a skeptic.

Dilthey to Husserl, 29 June 1911

To show life as it is, that is what we strive for. To describe life: that is our goal. . . . We want to make life visible in its unfathomable depths, and in its unfathomable nexus.

Dilthey, Gesammelte Schriften 19: 330

In the dedication of the first volume of the Einleitung in die Geisteswissenschaften to his friend and philosophical interlocutor Count Yorck, Dilthey famously named what would become his lifelong philosophical preoccupation a Kritik der historischen Vernunft, the overarching aim of which is to provide "an epistemological foundation for the human sciences" that would "determine the interconnections among the particular human sciences, the limits within which knowledge is possible in these sciences, and the relation of their truths to one another." ¹ For Dilthey, the liberation of historical consciousness from the "grey cobweb of abstract essences" spun by traditional metaphysics constituted one of the major intellectual achievements of the nineteenth century. ² However, as important as the concrete historical investigations of Ranke, Droysen, and Mommsen undoubtedly are, the Historical School nevertheless failed in Dilthey's eyes to grasp the essence of historical consciousness—its scope, limits and objective validity:

Its study and evaluation of historical phenomena remain unconnected with the analysis of facts of consciousness; consequently, it has no grounding in the only knowledge which is ultimately secure; it has in short no philosophical foundation. ³

A critique of historical reason, grasped as an epistemological analysis of "the capacity of man to know himself and the society and history which he has produced," is needed in order to provide for the Geisteswissenschaften a foundation equivalent to the one furnished by Kant for mathematical natural science in the Kritik der reinen Vernunft. ⁴

The epistemological dimension of Dilthey's project took shape as the elaboration of a basic science (Grundwissenschaft) identified, in the Einleitung at least, with descriptive psychology. ⁵ In an effort to delimit the province of the Geisteswissenschaften, Dilthey came to distinguish between outer experience and its objects and various levels of inner experience. Although Dilthey's thought developed considerably in the years after 1900, most notably in the direction of a refinement of the relation between inner and outer experience, the distinction between these two fundamental modes of givenness remained central to his conception of the structure and methodology of the human sciences. ⁶ In a number of manuscripts, some published in Dilthey's lifetime, others (by far the majority) published after his death by former students, Dilthey envisages a comprehensive theory of consciousness and its objectifications that would shed light on the origins and ultimate validity of our knowledge of the historical world.

As several commentators have pointed out, however, the epistemological dimension of Dilthey's project fails to capture the entire breadth of his achievement. ⁷ Dilthey's interest in the objective validity of historical investigation was subservient to broader concerns about the nature of human existence and its historicity, what Dilthey often referred to simply as Leben. ⁸ Life as it is revealed in the human sciences is the medium in which self-consciousness and self-knowledge, scientific and practical activity originate, and remains the abiding concern of the human sciences. At the most fundamental level of epistemological reflection, we encounter life as it is lived in pre-scientific and pre-reflective experience (Erlebnis). ⁹ Life, Dilthey consistently maintained, is the "prius" of thought:

Knowledge (Erkenntnis) cannot go behind life, of which it is a function. Life always remains the presupposition of knowledge, i.e., of the consciousness or knowledge (Wissen) contained in life. As a presupposition of knowledge (des Erkennens) itself, life is [End...