25 Quotes by Wilhelm Dilthey

Any theory intended to describe and analyze socio-historical reality cannot restrict itself to the human spirit and disregard the totality of human nature.

If we conceive all the changes in the physical world as reducible to the motion of atoms, motions generated by means of the fixed nuclear forces of those atoms, the whole of the world could thus be known by means of the natural sciences.

What is experienced from within cannot be categorized in concepts that have been developed for the external world of the senses.

On the other hand, for the whole human being who wills, feels, and represents, external reality is given simultaneously and with as much certitude as his own self.

The individual always realizes only one of the possibilities in its development, which could always have taken a different turning whenever it has to make an important decision.

The existence of inherent limits of experience in no way settles the question about the subordination of facts of the human world to our knowledge of matter.

The sciences which take socio-historical reality as their subject matter are seeking, more intensively than ever before, their systematic relations to one another and to their foundation.

The knife of historical relativism... which has cut to pieces all metaphysics and religion must also bring about healing.

The lived experiences which could not find adequate scientific expression in the substance doctrine of rational psychology were now validated in light of new and better methods.