Dilthey and Phenomenology (review)

318 JOURNAL OF THE HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY 97:2 APRIL 198 9 understanding of the metaphysics of both the theologies and cosmologies considered. Philosophers unfortunately usually ignore the context of the history of actual science and the living religions of the time. Here the historians of science and religion tend to minimize the role of metaphysical developments. A work like that of Amos Funkenstein would be helpful as an addition. Perhaps such cross-disciplinary conferences as the one that produced this volume should cross more disciplines, and include historians of philosophy as well. We would all benefit thereby. RICHARD H. POPKIN Washington University Rudolf A. Makkreel and John Scanlon, editors. Dilthey and Phenomenology. Current Continental Research, oo6, Washington, D.C.: Center for Advanced Research in Phenomenology and University Press of America, 1987. Pp. xi + 167. Cloth, $23.5~. Paper, $11.75. Ten commemorative essays celebrating the 15oth anniversary of Wilhelm Dilthey's birth (Nov. 19, 1833) and the centennial of the publication of the Introduction to the Human Sciences (1883), along with a short preface, constitute Dilthey and Phenomenology. This collection of essays also represents the recent North American contribution to the ever increasing amount of literature in Dilthey scholarship? The primary aim of this text--also what binds the various essays together--is, in the words of the editors, Makkreel and Scanlon, to assist in the re-establishment of "Dilthey's proper role in the history of philosophy" (x). What this means is that what is sought is a clarification of Dilthey's original contribution to the dominant Continental movements of phenomenology, existential and hermeneutic philosophy. This, of course, is no mean task. Therefore, it is not surprising that we actually find Dilthey's philosophical thought discussed primarily in relation to the field of phenomenology in general and to Husserlian phenomenology in particular--hence the title Dilthey and Phenomenology. Accordingly, this collection of essays taken as a whole might also have been appropriately entitled "Dilthey, Husserl, and Phenomenology." Be that as it may, within the restricted context of Dilthey's research in phenomenology and its relation to Husserl's work, the essays contained in this collection do achieve the expressed aim of allowing Dilthey to be seen as more than just "a step on the path to something that surpasses him" (vii). Dilthey's relation to existential and hermeneutic philosophy, however , is not given much attention. The most illuminating essays are by Ernst Wolfgang Orth, John Scanlon, Michael Ermarth, Frithjof Rodi, and Rudolf Makkreel. Of these, Michael Ermarth's contribution is of central importance: it pinpoints the reason why Dihhey's philosophical thought has been and continues to be relegated to a minor role in the history of ' For a fuller account of recent Dihhey scholarship in the United States, see Rudolf Makkreel's report in Dilthey-Jahrbuchfiir Philosophieund Geschichteder Geisteswissenschaflen,vol. ~, edited by Frithjof Rodi et al. (G6ttingen: Vandenhoeck &Ruprecht, 1984), 346-47 . BOOK REVIEWS 319 philosophy and it provides us with a most useful principle of Dilthey interpretation. It is worth quoting Ermarth at length: One of the big problems in Dilthey's interpretation has been the disregard of his crucial subdistinctions, mediating concepts, modalities, levels, and valences in favor of the "catchier" primary distinctions and dichotomies. This neglect of qualifications is then compounded by overriding and collapsing his subsidiary distinctions and taking his primary ones further or more "absolutely" then he did. The result is a simplistic caricature, which is sometimes denied the very title of genuine and serious philosophy, as Husserl came close to saying.... These distinctions are crucial and critical refinements of his "system"; if overlooked, they make Dilthey seem silly, banal, or obtuse. (76) We need only look to Charles Taylor ~and Richard Rorty3 to see that this in fact still is a major problem in the interpretation of Dilthey. The authors of the majority of the essays in Dilthey and Phenomenology do not commit this error; rather they clarify Dilthey's thought from the "inside," as it were, allowing its intricacy, subtlety, and systemic nature to appear. Thus, Orth is able to clarify "the floating sense which seems to be characteristic of his [Dilthey's] concept of philosophy" (7) by way of...