Interpreting Dilthey Critical Essays

In this wide-ranging and authoritative volume, leading scholars engage with the philosophy and writings of Wilhelm Dilthey, a key figure in nineteenth-century thought. Their chapters cover his innovative philosophical strategies and explore how they can be understood in relation to their historical situation, as well as presenting incisive interpretations of Dilthey's arguments, including their development, their content, and their influence on later thought. A key focus is on how Dilthey's work remains relevant to current debates around art and literature, the biographical and autobiographical self, knowledge, language, science, culture, history, society, and psychology and the embodied mind. The volume will be important for researchers in hermeneutics, aesthetics, practical philosophy, and the history of German philosophy, providing a valuable introduction to Dilthey's work as well as detailed critical analysis of its ongoing significance.

Introduction: Wilhelm Dilthey in context Eric S. Nelson; Part I. Life, Hermeneutics, and Science: 1. Dilthey's conception of purposiveness: its Kantian basis and hermeneutical function Rudolf A. Makkreel; 2. Leben erfaßt hier Leben: Dilthey as a philosopher of (the) life (sciences) Jos de Mul; 3. Dilthey's importance for hermeneutics Michael N. Forster; 4. Hermeneutics and historicity: Dilthey's critique of historical reason Charles Bambach; 5. Dilthey's defense of historicism Frederick C. Beiser; 6. More than one 'kind' of science? Implications of Dilthey's hermeneutics for science studies Robert C. Scharff; Part II. Practical Philosophy, Aesthetics, and Interpretation: 7. Dilthey and empathy Shaun Gallagher; 8. Dilthey's ethical theory Benjamin Crowe; 9. Dilthey's dream and the struggle of world-views Nicolas de Warren; 10. A task most pressing: Dilthey's philosophy of the novel and his rewriting of modern aesthetics Kristin Gjesdal; 11. Experience and metaphysics: the anti-Hegelian aesthetics of Dilthey and Santayana Paul Guyer; 12. Dilthey and Wittgenstein: understanding understanding Lee Braver; 13. Dilthey's hermeneutics and philosophical hermeneutics Jean Grondin.

Eric S. Nelson is Associate Professor of Humanities at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology. He works on Chinese, German, and Jewish philosophy. He is the author of Chinese and Buddhist Philosophy in Early Twentieth-Century German Thought (2017) and Levinas, Adorno, and the Ethics of the Material Other (forthcoming). He co-edited with François Raffoul the Bloomsbury Companion to Heidegger (2013) and Rethinking Facticity (2008); with John Drabinski, Between Levinas and Heidegger (2014); with Giuseppe D'Anna and Helmut Johach, Anthropologie und Geschichte: Studien zu Wilhelm Dilthey aus Anlass seines 100. Todestages (2013); and with Antje Kapust and Kent Still, Addressing Levinas (2005). He has edited special topic issues of the journals Frontiers of Philosophy in China and the Journal of Chinese Philosophy.