This book provides an innovative approach to meeting the challenges faced by philosophical hermeneutics in interpreting an ever-changing and multicultural world. Rudolf A. Makkreel proposes an orientational and reflective conception of interpretation in which judgment plays a central role. Moving beyond the dialogical approaches found in much of contemporary hermeneutics, he focuses instead on the diagnostic use of reflective judgment, not only to discern the differentiating features of the phenomena to be understood, but also to orient us to the various meaning contexts that can frame their interpretation. Makkreel develops overlooked resources of Kant's transcendental thought in order to reconceive hermeneutics as a critical inquiry into the appropriate contextual conditions of understanding and interpretation. He shows that a crucial task of hermeneutical critique is to establish priorities among the contexts that may be brought to bear on the interpretation of history and culture. The final chapter turns to the contemporary art scene and explores how orientational contexts can be reconfigured to respond to the ways in which media of communication are being transformed by digital technology. Altogether, Makkreel offers a promising way of thinking about the shifting contexts that we bring to bear on interpretations of all kinds, whether of texts, art works, or the world.

This book provides an innovative approach to meeting the challenges faced by philosophical hermeneutics in interpreting an ever-changing and multicultural world. Rudolf A Makkreel proposes an orientational and reflective conception of interpretation in which judgment plays a central role. Moving beyond the dialogical approaches found in much of contemporary hermeneutics, he focuses instead on the diagnostic use of reflective judgment, not only to discern the differentiating features of the phenomena to be understood, but also to orient us to the various contexts that can frame their interpretation. Makkreel develops overlooked resources of Kant's transcendental thought in order to reconceive hermeneutics as a critical inquiry into the appropriate contextual conditions of understanding and interpretation. He shows that a crucial task of hermeneutical critique is to establish priorities among the contexts that may be brought to bear on the interpretation of history and culture. The final chapter turns to the contemporary art scene and explores how orientational contexts can be reconfigured to respond to the ways in which media of communication are being transformed by digital technology. Altogether, Makkreel offers a promising way of thinking about the shifting contexts that we bring to bear on interpretations of all kinds, whether of texts, art works, or the world.

<div>In this illuminating study of Kant's theory of imagination and its role in interpretation, Rudolf A. Makkreel argues against the commonly held notion that Kant's transcendental philosophy is incompatible with hermeneutics. The charge that Kant's foundational philosophy is inadequate to the task of interpretation can be rebutted, explains Makkreel, if we fully understand the role of imagination in his work. In identifying this role, Makkreel also reevaluates the relationship among Kant's discussions of the feeling of life, common sense, and the purposiveness of history.</div>

This is the second volume in a six-volume translation of the major writings of Wilhelm Dilthey (1833-1911), a philosopher and historian of culture who continues to have a significant influence on Continental philosophy and a broad range of scholarly disciplines. In addition to his landmark works on the theories of history and the human sciences, Dilthey made important contributions to hermeneutics, phenomenology, aesthetics, psychology, and the methodology of the social sciences.

This volume presents Dilthey's main theoretical works from the 1890s, the period between the" Introduction to the Human Sciences" and "The Formation of the Historical World." A common thread of the writings included here is an interest in the relation between the self and the world.

In "The Origin of Our Belief in the Reality of the External World and Its Justification," Dilthey argues that our engagement with the world is rooted in our practical drives and the resistance they meet. The basic nexus of our beliefs about reality is volitional rather than representational. The next essay, "Life and Cognition," examines the main categories with which we organize our experience of life into an understanding of the human world: selfsameness; doing and undergoing; and essentiality.

These categorial relations are further articulated with the aid of Dilthey's structural psychology in ways that rival some of the insights of phenomenology. This occurs in "The Ideas for a Descriptive and Analytic Psychology." By focusing on how lived experience places everything in a temporal continuum that can be described and analyzed, Dilthey saw the opportunity to establish a structural psychology that could be of great use to the human sciences in general.

In the final essay, "Contributions to the Study of Individuality," Dilthey attacks Windelband's thesis that the human sciences are idiographic. Many human sciences have systematic and structural aims that combine the study of uniformities with the examination of individuation. Applying the comparative method, Dilthey argues that living beings share many basic similarities within which typical variations tend to recur. For human individuation, however, the specification of the historical nexus is also essential.

This book completes a landmark six-volume translation of the major writings of Wilhelm Dilthey (1833-1911), a philosopher and historian of culture who continues to have a significant influence on philosophy, hermeneutics, and the theory of the human sciences. These volumes make available to English readers texts that represent the full range of Dilthey's work. The works in this volume present Dilthey's most deeply held views about philosophy and how it can guide human practices. System of Ethics (1890) argues that Humean sympathy motivates us only externally and must be replaced with the internally motivated fellow-feeling of solidarity that respects others as ends in themselves. The Essence of Philosophy (1907) demonstrates how philosophy has developed from its traditional metaphysical role to the epistemological and encyclopedic functions that ground and order the natural and human sciences. The work also discloses an orientational function of philosophy that is explored further in "The Types of World-View and Their Development" (1911). Philosophical world-views are important in that they address the existential needs and riddles that grow out of life experience and are not solved by any of the sciences. In addition, the book features three other significant essays. "Present Day Culture and Philosophy" (1898) concerns the challenges to philosophy posed by contemporary culture. "Dream" (1903) is about the thinkers portrayed in Raphael's School of Athens and Dilthey's worries about them breaking up into three divergent groups. Finally, "The Problem of Religion" (1911) considers how religiosity can still inform lived experience in secular times.

This volume provides Dilthey's most mature and best formulation of his Critique of Historical Reason. It begins with three "Studies Toward the Foundation of the Human Sciences," in which Dilthey refashions Husserlian concepts to describe the basic structures of consciousness relevant to historical understanding.

The volume next presents the major 1910 work "The Formation of the Historical World in the Human Sciences." Here Dilthey considers the degree to which carriers of history--individuals, cultures, institutions, and communities--can be articulated as productive systems capable of generating value and meaning and of realizing purposes. Hegel's idea of objective spirit is reconceived in a more empirical form to designate the medium of commonality in which historical beings are immersed. Any universal claims about history need to be framed within the specific productive systems analyzed by the various human sciences. Dilthey's drafts for the Continuation of the "Formation" contain extensive discussions of the categories most important for our knowledge of historical life: meaning, value, purpose, time, and development. He also examines the contributions of autobiography to historical understanding and of biography to scientific history.

The finest summary of Dilthey's views on hermeneutics can be found in "The Understanding of Other Persons and Their Manifestations of Life." Here, Dilthey differentiates understanding relative to three kinds of manifestations of life. After giving his analysis of elementary understanding, he examines the role of induction in higher understanding and interpretation, and the relevance of transposition and re-experiencing for grasping individuality.

The philosopher and historian of culture Wilhelm Dilthey (1833-1911) has had a significant and continuing influence on twentieth-century Continental philosophy and in a broad range of scholarly disciplines. Rudolf Makkreel interprets Dilthey's philosophy and provides a guide to its complex development. Against the tendency to divorce Dilthey's early psychological writings from his later hermeneutical and historical works, Makkreel argues for their essential continuity.

This comprehensive treatment of Neo-Kantianism discusses the main topics and key figures of the movement and their intersection with other 20th-century philosophers. With the advent of phenomenology, existentialism, and the Frankfurt School, Neo-Kantianism was deemed too narrowly academic and science-oriented to compete with new directions in philosophy. These essays bring Neo-Kantianism back into contemporary philosophical discourse. They expand current views of the Neo-Kantians and reassess the movement and the philosophical traditions emerging from it. This groundbreaking volume provides new and important insights into the history of philosophy, the scope of transcendental thought, and Neo-Kantian influence on the sciences and intellectual culture.