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Wilhelm Dilthey
Sign in to saveAlso known as Wilhelm Christian Ludwig Dilthey
German historian, psychologist, sociologist, student of hermeneutics, and philosopher (1833–1911)
Wilhelm Dilthey was a German thinker of the 19th and early 20th centuries who worked across history, psychology, sociology, and philosophy, with a particular focus on how we interpret and understand human meanings and texts. His work matters because he developed influential ideas about interpretation (hermeneutics) that shaped how scholars approach understanding human culture, history, and behavior differently from how we study the natural world.
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Wikidata facts
- Instance of
- human
- Given name
- Wilhelm
- Gender
- male
- Citizenship
- Kingdom of Prussia
- Place of birth
- Biebrich
- Place of death
- Seis am Schlern
- Occupation
- theologian
- Educated at
- Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin
- Employer
- University of Basel
- Languages spoken
- German
- Religion
- Protestant church
- Academic degree
- Doctor of Sciences
- Doctoral student
- Georg Misch
- Movement
- Western philosophy
- Image
- Portrait Dilthey.jpg
Show 13 more facts
- Commons category
- Wilhelm Dilthey
- date of birth
- 1833-11-19
- date of death
- 1911-10-01
- Commons gallery
- Wilhelm Dilthey
- manner of death
- natural causes
- name in native language
- Wilhelm Dilthey
- topic's main category
- Category:Wilhelm Dilthey
- time period
- contemporary philosophy
- influenced by
- John Stuart Mill
- birth name
- Wilhelm Christian Ludwig Dilthey
- writing language
- German
- place of burial
- Biebrich
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Encyclopedic overview
Wilhelm Dilthey (/ˈdɪltaɪ/; German: [ˈvɪlhɛlm ˈdɪltaɪ]; 19 November 1833 – 1 October 1911) was a German historian, psychologist, sociologist, and hermeneutic philosopher, who held Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel's Chair in Philosophy at the University of Berlin. As a polymathic philosopher, working in a modern research university, Dilthey's research interests revolved around questions of scientific methodology, historical evidence and history's status as a science.
Dilthey has often been considered an empiricist, in contrast to the idealism prevalent in Germany at the time, but his account of what constitutes the empirical and experiential differs from British empiricism and positivism in its central epistemological and ontological assumptions, which are drawn from German literary and philosophical traditions.
Excerpted from Wikipedia’s “Wilhelm Dilthey” article, available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 licence.