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Dilthey's interest in the study of history was motivated by his continuing search for guiding principles for human conduct. But how to find these principles? Historical study had shown him that human life had varied considerably during the ages. Thus, he realized that it did not make sense to search for human life's timeless structure. Moreover, because of the variability of life, he realized that no timeless principles existed upon which to base such a study. Dilthey therefore believed that the best way to understand life was to discover history's overall structure. For history, in Dilthey's eyes man's most significant product, could be expected to reveal something about its creator, man. But how, he wondered, could he, being himself a human being, know man's history objectively? How could historical knowledge, being a form of self-knowledge, be objective? The difficulty of knowing historical structures is, indeed, that their shapes cannot be directly perceived. A history is not given the way a material thing is given to visual perception: ready to be inspected from all sides. Histories have first to be recomposed as coherent structures by the historian. As Dilthey emphasized, in this process the historian has to decide which among the many facts constitutes a part of a history and which not. Facing the question how the historian can ever be sure that his reconstruction of the past's general structure is right, Dilthey found Hegel's thought on historical knowledge helpful.

DOI: 10.1007/978-94-009-8869-9_3

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