Wilhelm Dilthey on the Objectivity of Knowledge in Human Sciences

Wilhelm Dilthey was one of the first thinkers whose philosophy centred on the reflection of the nature of human sciences. These sciences had evolved into academic disciplines already within the context of the concept of scientificalness (Wissenschaftlichkeit) of German Idealism. They underwent a certain crisis of foundations in the nineteenth century in connection with the general rise of empiricism in the conception of science as such. Dilthey’s goal was to provide these sciences with philosophical-epistemological foundation as a specific domain of empirical research sciences. One of the aspects of his philosophical analyses along these lines was the grounding of the objectivity of the research results of the given sciences. The very success of human sciences in their inherent aspiration to exert counter influence on social life depended directly, as he saw it, on attaining this particular goal. Two focuses can be distinguished in Dilthey’s treatment of objectivity. On the one hand, he strives to demonstrate how justified is the pretension of the representations of human sciences to attain the genuine social-historical reality. On the other hand, he tries to prove that the particular representations of human sciences are justified in their pretensions to universal validity. Dilthey’s analyses face major difficulties in the process of attaining both these goals, which forces him to modify his understanding of the role of human sciences in human life.