Wilhelm Dilthey

German historian, psychologist, sociologist, student of hermeneutics, and philosopher (1833–1911)

Geisteswissenschaft (; plural: Geisteswissenschaften ; "science of mind"; "spirit science") is a set of human sciences such as philosophy, history, philology, musicology, linguistics, theater studies, literary studies, media studies, religious studies and sometimes even jurisprudence, that are traditional in German universities. Most of its subject matter would come under Humanities in the typical English-speaking university.

process of understanding a text hermeneutically, in which one understands the text as a whole by reference to the parts and understands each part by reference to the whole

Verstehen (, ), in the context of German philosophy and social sciences in general, has been used since the late 19th century – in English as in German – with the particular sense of the "interpretive or participatory" examination of social phenomena. The term is closely associated with the work of the German sociologist Max Weber, whose antipositivism established an alternative to prior sociological positivism and economic determinism, rooted in the analysis of social action. In anthropology, Verstehen has come to mean a systematic interpretive process in which an outside observer of a cultur

Geistesgeschichte (from German Geist, "spirit" or "mind" [here connoting the metaphysical realm, in contradistinction to the material], and Geschichte, "history") is a concept in the history of ideas denoting the branch of study concerned with the undercurrents of cultural manifestations, within the history of a people, that are peculiar to a specific timeframe.