Dilthey and categories of life
Fagniez, Guillaume
Dilthey and categories of life - 2017.
80
This paper aims to highlight the doctrine of categories developed by Dilthey within his foundation of the human sciences, focusing in particular on the way this doctrine deals with its own initial challenge to root categories in life without succumbing to the peril of psychologism. To this end, I follow the main steps of its development, the first of which is the critique of the Kantian doctrine and its Aristotelian background. Dilthey’s historical-psychological genealogy of the metaphysical system of categories brings to light its original separation with “lived experience.” As a counterpoint to such “formal” categories, Dilthey aims to emphasize the possibility of “concrete” categories. Drawn from the very source of experience, these “life-categories” avoid theoretical reductions as well as the divide between the logical and the ontological as it is inherited from the metaphysical tradition. Nevertheless, I highlight the precariousness of such categories, which are primarily deployed on a psychological level. Thus, I examine how Dilthey finally tackles this problem by undertaking a hermeneutical foundation of “life-categories,” by way of a detour through the “expression” of lived experience and by assigning a central place to “meaning” within a completely renewed categorial system.
Dilthey and categories of life - 2017.
80
This paper aims to highlight the doctrine of categories developed by Dilthey within his foundation of the human sciences, focusing in particular on the way this doctrine deals with its own initial challenge to root categories in life without succumbing to the peril of psychologism. To this end, I follow the main steps of its development, the first of which is the critique of the Kantian doctrine and its Aristotelian background. Dilthey’s historical-psychological genealogy of the metaphysical system of categories brings to light its original separation with “lived experience.” As a counterpoint to such “formal” categories, Dilthey aims to emphasize the possibility of “concrete” categories. Drawn from the very source of experience, these “life-categories” avoid theoretical reductions as well as the divide between the logical and the ontological as it is inherited from the metaphysical tradition. Nevertheless, I highlight the precariousness of such categories, which are primarily deployed on a psychological level. Thus, I examine how Dilthey finally tackles this problem by undertaking a hermeneutical foundation of “life-categories,” by way of a detour through the “expression” of lived experience and by assigning a central place to “meaning” within a completely renewed categorial system.
Réseaux sociaux