Wilhelm Dilthey's Philosophy of Life

The dominant impulse in W. Dilthey's philosophical thinking is "to understand life out of life itself". The characteristic of his philosophy then is that it always approaches life as manifested in the historical world and that it opens within itself the horizon of historical consciousness. Not only metaphysics but also positivism are rejected as merely onesided conceptual solidifications of the full living reality. His philosophy thus aims to grasp and scientifically analyze such "reality in pure experience" that is at once empirical and metaphysical, only to be internally awared of in our lived experience (Erleben). Life is gedan-kenmässig as well as unergründlich. Mental life is a structural system comprising in itself various psychical facts and consequently is manysided. Philosophy is one of the functions of life which is to solve main questions, i. e. riddles, of life and to elevate human mind to its autonomy ; and in this sense philosophy is the conceptual expression of a Weltanschauung or Lebensanschauung. Philosophic systems stand thus side by side against each other, each expressing one side of the reality of life. The philosophy of historical life, pursuing as it does the genetic law, the structure and the types of Weltanschauungen, becomes the "Weltanschauungslehre" or the "philosophy of philosophy", which also clears the way for the law of the historical development of philosophy to be made comprehensible