Dilthey

The hermeneutical tradition represented by Yorck, Heidegger, and Gadamer has distrusted Dilthey as suffering from the two sins of modernism: scientific “positivism” and individualistic and aesthetic “romanticism.” On the one hand, Dilthey’s epistemology is deemed scientistic in accepting the priority of the empirical, the ontic, and consequently scientific inquiry into the physical, biological, and human worlds; on the other hand, his personalist ethos and Goethean humanism, and his pluralistic life- and worldview philosophy are considered excessively aesthetic, culturally liberal, relativistic, and subjective. This essay involves two tasks in response to this negative evaluation of Dilthey that has shaped our current understanding of his philosophical project; first, an interpretation of the issues at stake in Heidegger’s reception of and struggles with Dilthey. These issues touch upon language, historicity, and the nature of hermeneutics. Second, by pursuing this task in light of Guignon’s interpretation of Dilthey and Heidegger, I hope to question and challenge the “overcoming” of Dilthey’s epistemic and life-philosophical hermeneutics in the “ontological” or “philosophical” hermeneutics of Heidegger.

On the Miracle of Understanding. Hermeneutical Investigations II ‒ This book of studies is the second volume of my series entitled Hermeneutical Investigations, focusing on the hermeneutic problems of understanding.
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Ez a tanulmánykötet a filozófiai hermeneutika tárgykörében keletkezett tanulmányaimat egybegyűjtő Hermeneutikai vizsgálódások kötetsorozat második kötete; a megértés hermeneutikai kérdéseire összpontosít.

his study compares Husserl’s transcendental phenomenology to Dilthey’s
methodological hermeneutics in context of the problems of the consciousness and
the meaning. In this context, it's tried to show that Husserl has hermeneutical
dilemmas like that Dilthey has phenomenological ones. In this respect, it tries to
answer the following problems. What is the hermeneutical and phenomenological
dilemma of the transcendental phenomenology and methodological hermeneutics?
Where are the limits of Husserl’s and Dilthey’s epistemological attempts? Can
these attempts answer the problem of relation between language and world? This study, which has two basic headings, firstly claims that Husserl's notions of the consciousness and the meaning have lack of the categories of the historicity and the individuality. Thus he cannot explain that the understanding has hermeneutical conditions. Secondly, it tries to show that Dilthey’s concepts of the consciousness and the meanings have lack of the phenomenological intentionality. Thus he
cannot see that appearing the meaning in expression has the phenomenological conditions. Eventually, this study asserts that Gadamer and Heidegger surpass the both of Husserl’s and Dilthey’s dilemmas. In this regard, it indicates that the crisis, which put on the agenda by two thinkers, is actually belonging to the life
not to the scientific methodology.

Este volumen incluye los artículos y reseñas publicados por Herbert Marcuse entre 1929 y 1931. Son textos que corresponden a su periodo como asistente de Heidegger en Friburgo, con quien pretendió realizar su tesis de habilitación. Se trata de textos de gran originalidad y ambición teóricas, al pretender poner en diálogo la hermenéutica filosófica y el materialismo histórico.

Die Stoßrichtung von Gadamers Antwort auf den Historismus bleibt in der Forschung ein umstrittenes Thema: Während seine philosophische Hermeneutik einerseits beschuldigt wird, lediglich die Aporien des Historismus zu radikalisieren, sehen andere in ihr die endgültige Überwindung der Problematik. Dieses Essay zeichnet die Linien von Gadamers Kritik anhand einer konkreten, aber heute weitgehend vergessenen Auseinandersetzung mit einer zeitgenössischen Gestalt des Historismus nach. Die sogenannte Problemgeschichte des Neukantianismus diente Gadamer nämlich schon in den 1920er Jahren, aber auch in Wahrheit und Methode (1960) als Folie, um sein Verhältnis zum Historismus zu klären. In einem ersten Schritt wird mit Nicolai Hartmann der meist ungenannte Gegner Gadamers identifiziert. In einem zweiten Schritt wird Gadamers Kritik an Hartmann rekonstruiert, die seine Position als einen Historismus zweiten Grades verständlich macht.

The nature of Gadamer’s response to the challenge of historicism remains a controversial issue. While some scholars claim that his critique only leads deeper into the aporia of historicism, others credit him with overcoming the problem. This essay will elucidate Gadamer’s response to historicism by examining his nearly forgotten critique of a contemporary version of historicism, namely, neo-Kantian Problemgeschichte. As early as the 1920s and again in Truth and Method (1960), Problemgeschichte served as Gadamer’s counterexample by which his own response to historicism was discussed. First, this essay will identify the mostly anonymous addressee of Gadamer’s critique as Nicolai Hartmann. And second, it will give an account of Gadamer’s critique of Hartmann in order to reveal Gadamer’s position as a kind of second-degree historicism.

Table of Contents and Introduction (pre-publication draft version)

Eric S. Nelson (ed.), Interpreting Dilthey: Critical Essays (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2019).

Table of Contents
Introduction: Wilhelm Dilthey in Context Eric S. Nelson
Part I. Life, Hermeneutics, and Science:
1. Dilthey's Conception of Purposiveness: Its Kantian Basis and Hermeneutical Function Rudolf A. Makkreel
2. Leben erfaßt hier Leben: Dilthey as a Philosopher of (the) Life (Sciences) Jos de Mul
3. Dilthey's Importance for Hermeneutics Michael N. Forster
4. Hermeneutics and Historicity: Dilthey's Critique of Historical Reason Charles Bambach
5. Dilthey's Defense of Historicism Frederick C. Beiser
6. More Than One 'Kind' of Science? Implications of Dilthey's Hermeneutics for Science Studies Robert C. Scharff
Part II. Practical Philosophy, Aesthetics, and Interpretation:
7. Dilthey and Empathy Shaun Gallagher
8. Dilthey's Ethical Theory Benjamin Crowe
9. Dilthey's Dream and the Struggle of World-Views Nicolas de Warren
10. A Task Most Pressing: Dilthey's Philosophy of the Novel and His Rewriting of Modern Aesthetics Kristin Gjesdal
11. Experience and Metaphysics: The Anti-Hegelian Aesthetics of Dilthey and Santayana Paul Guyer
12. Dilthey and Wittgenstein: Understanding Understanding Lee Braver
13. Dilthey's Hermeneutics and Philosophical Hermeneutics Jean Grondin

For further Information, please see: http://admin.cambridge.org/academic/subjects/philosophy/nineteenth-century-philosophy/interpreting-dilthey-critical-essays

In this chapter, I propose taking a historical step back in order to reconsider neglected possibilities for contemporary thinking “after Heidegger.” It is no doubt appropriate to interpret Martin Heidegger’s early lecture courses and lectures from 1919 to 1925 in light of his relation to life-philosophy (Lebensphilosophie) and as unfolding a “philosophy of life.” As the works of Theodore Kisiel, John van Buren, and Scott M. Campbell have shown, Heidegger appropriated life-philosophical tendencies during this crucial early phase of his thought in ways that remain pertinent to his later philosophy and our own contemporary hermeneutical situation...

Introduction to Hermeneutics ‒ Monographic reference volume, which can also be used as a university textbook; an outline and exposition of the antecedents, formation process, and content of philosophical hermeneutics, based on the interpretive hermeneutic procedure.
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Egyetemi tankönyvként is használható, monografikus igénnyel megírt szakkönyv; a filozófiai hermeneutika előzményeinek, kialakulási folyamatának és tartalmának az értelmező hermeneutikai eljárás alkalmazásával történő felvázolása és kifejtése.

This chapter offers a systematically oriented and historically informed examination of the notions of “life,” “world,” and “worldview” as they are articulated in classical hermeneutical thinking, particularly in relation to its intellectual context in the works of Wilhelm Dilthey, Edmund Husserl, and Martin Heidegger.

(Title in English: CONTINENTAL PHILOSOPHY--A CRITIQUE OF A PHILOSOPHICAL TRADITION THAT SEEKS TO OPPOSE SCIENCE AND RATIONALITY) The hostility it exhibits towards rationality, science and technology is one most prominent characteristic of continental philosophy.  The basic strategy of continental philosophers is this: invent some “truths” that are “impenetrable” by science and by the rational ways of thinking science relies on, and while despising and sometimes outright insulting science, claim that those supposed truths can only be uncovered by philosophy—the kind of philosophy they do.  In this paper I present examples of this attitude taken from some renowned continental philosophers, and criticize it.  Continental philosophers widely hold the condescending view that science only serves some pragmatic interests of humans, and yields merely technological benefits for us, without yielding knowledge of reality.

In contrast to their aversion to science, which they try to hide behind a veil of “opposition to scienticism,” continental philosophers often express great respect for and place an exaggerated emphasis on the philosophical importance of the arts.  It is a prevalent belief among them that art is capable of “more profound understanding of the world” than is science.  I argue that science not only can understand the world, but has the potential to unravel the artist—by discovering the brain mechanisms of art appreciation and artistic creation—and therefore the perspectives and the scope of understanding that science can provide about the world is far vaster than continental philosophers seem able to fathom.  While continental philosophers make conscious effort to ignore or discount the fact that human being is just a biological organism made out of atoms, science is acquiring a better understanding of that organism each passing day.  The ungrounded beliefs and hopes regarding the aspects of human being the continental philosopher alleges to be forever closed to scientific scrutiny are continually being undermined by science.

The criticisms I level against continental philosophy include those that target phenomenology, which some continental philosophers suppose to be a method that can reveal some highly important truths; the allegation of a “crisis” that rationality and modernity are going through in our age; the claim some make about Heidegger being “the greatest philosopher” of the 20th century; and the continental philosophers’ dishonest styles of writing, which abound with tactics that aim to appeal to the ears rather than to the minds of their readers.

Although in the philosophical community in Turkey continental philosophy has become more popular since 1980’s than analytic philosophy (contemptuously dubbed by the followers of the former as “anglophone philosophy”), in the world at large the analytic style of doing philosophy is much more popular than the “francophone-germanophone” continental philosophy.  I think one of the reasons for the situation in Turkey is the pervasive anti-Americanism in this country.

I do not think that continental philosophy, which is largely anthropocentric and psychocentric in nature, is going to stay with us for long ages.  This style of doing philosophy, which tries to stand against human rationality, science and technology, does not stand much chance unless humanity forsakes rationality, science and technology—which it shows no signs of willingness to do.  With the human intellect’s further uncovering the secrets of the human brain and of the cosmos, and other magnificent feats it will accomplish in the future, continental philosophy is certain to become passé and forgotten.

In the hundred years since his death, Wilhelm Dilthey’s works have evoked contradictory receptions. Dilthey’s epistemic project is to a large extent »naturalizing«, as his Neo-Kantian, phenomenological, and later hermeneutical critics have repeatedly noted. At the same time, it is »anti-naturalistic« according to his positivistic and scientistic reception.
In this paper, I reexamine the mediated nexus of nature and spirit articulated in Dilthey’s works, particularly the writings of the 1890’s that are closer to a naturalistic and positivistic perspective without embracing it. I argue that Dilthey’s project is more coherent than his naturalistic and anti-naturalistic critics have supposed. Such a reconsideration of Dilthey’s project offers an evocative alternative strategy for responding to the opposition between naturalism and anti-naturalism that continues to inform contemporary philosophy.
Beginning with the naturalistic perspective presupposed by and established in the modern natural sciences, Dilthey immanently unfolds its scope, possibilities, and limits in relation to the psychological, historical, and ethical life of concrete embodied individuals. He does so without relying on essentialist religious or metaphysical conceptions of being, ideal validity, or an unchanging self. Dilthey not only accepted the validity of the modern natural sciences, he justified them by historically and anthropologically contextualizing them. Nature and history do not necessarily indicate the elimination of knowledge and truth; they are its contexts and conditions. Without these life-processes, and the emergence of the cognitive from the non-cognitive, there would be no science as a practice of knowing and enactment of truth.

Diverging from the dominant Neo-Kantian and Positivist epistemologies of his era, Dilthey’s works engaged and articulated the import of the historical for reflection (Besinnung) and knowledge (Wissen). Pursuing a double strategy, Dilthey's writings enact historical research with a philosophical intent while interpreting philosophy in relation to its historical referential contexts. Philosophy is not historical in being lost in the plural, the particular, the relative, and the contingent, as Dilthey's critics contend, but by experientially and self-reflectively encountering and interpreting the present through its lived expressions and objectifications and in its practical interests and needs. Philosophy is both historical and systematic for Dilthey in being informed by and responding to its times, and the questions that concern a generation, and by reflectively proceeding from empirical and factical conditions to concepts.

In this chapter I propose a reinterpretation of the early Vienna Circle’s project of radical empiricism by reconsidering it in light of its under-appreciated Continental sources. After briefly discussing recent challenges to the standard view of logical positivism, such as its social-political context in “Red Vienna,” I examine the impact of “life-philosophical” thinkers such as Nietzsche and—in particular—Dilthey on the thought of Rudolf Carnap. Dilthey’s modernistic advocacy for
empirical scientific inquiry and his far-reaching critique of metaphysics as reflecting a conceptually unjustifiable and indemonstrable perspective expressing a “feeling of life” and interpretively (affectively, pragmatically) articulated in a “worldview” was embraced, via Dilthey’s student and Carnap’s teacher Herman Nohl (1879-1960), in Carnap’s pre-physicalist writings of the 1920s and the Vienna Circle’s 1929 manifesto. Such works announced the task of overcoming metaphysics and defending the
scientific life-stance (Lebenshaltung) against its authoritarian, metaphysical, and religious detractors.

Wilhelm Dilthey (1833–1911) is well-known as a philosopher and intellectual historian who prioritized the force and significance of the imagination in his popular and philosophical writings, such that he is accordingly identified as an heir to German Idealism and romanticism in a naturalistic and scientistic epoch. Dilthey‘s philosophical works on the nature and limits of the human sciences, descriptive and analytic (interpretive) psychology, and hermeneutics gave the imagination a central role in how subjects understand themselves and one another in ordinary common life as well as how individuals and groups are interpreted in human scientific constructions. His popular writings in intellectual and literary history, and particularly his widely read biographical sketches of eminent German poets, depict and praise—to the point of exaggeration—the heightened imagination and feeling of life of philosophers such as Leibniz and Schleiermacher and poets such as Lessing, Goethe, Novalis, and Hölderlin. Although Dilthey only addresses the concept of the “productive imagination” in historical discussions of German Idealism, the imagination is given across Dilthey’s works a generative role in human life and understanding as providing the “sense of the whole.” It is the imagination, after all, which shapes how human beings understand themselves, human others, and their sense of nature itself in its silence (GS 1: 36). The imagination does not only play a constitutive role in interpreting art and poetry, as Dilthey’s aesthetics is oriented toward disclosing the imaginative processes of the artist and the audience. The imagination is also crucial to understanding the modes of inquiry found in history and the human sciences, the rethinking of paradigms and radical epoch-changing transformations of thought evident in the natural sciences, and the elementary processes of understanding and interpretation in the midst of ordinary everyday human life.

Dilthey’s middle works offer alternative strategies for interpreting the debate between naturalism and anti-naturalism. These works traced the limits of natural scientific methods in the face of the felt reflexivity of the subject, the singular nexus of the individual’s life, and the epistemic inability to comprehend life as a universally valid whole. Dilthey naturalistically critiques claims appealing to an uninterpreted immediate givenness and the direct self-access and self-evidence of uninterpreted “inner experience,” while minimalistically confronting naturalism with the reflexively felt, interpretively processed, and reflectively conceptualized and mediated character of the given. Lived-experiences are complex relational wholes, involving purposiveness, which cannot be reduced to discrete “natural” elements abstracted from the life-nexus. Naturalism is the primary orientation of modern science; yet the contents of life and the objects themselves call us to methodological differentiation and the articulation of reality in more complex and multifaceted ways.

In diesem Aufsatz, werde ich die Frage des Naturalismus in Plessners Philosophie des organischen Lebens und seiner amerikanischen Rezeption, in besonders die philosophischen-biologischen Schriften von Marjorie Grene, untersuchen. Die amerikanische Philosophin Grene war die Hauptvertreterin Plessners im Englischen Sprachraum in 20sten Jahrhundert, die Plessners anthropologischen Argumentation in ihren Schriften zur Philosophie der Biologie aufgenommen und verwendet hat. Grene kritisierte in ihren frühen Schriften Heidegger, Sartre, und die Existenzphilosophie, die das menschliche Dasein von der Natur radikal absondert und die negative Affekte wie Angst hervorhebt, in Vergleich mit Plessners weiterem Blick der Leibhaften, Sinnlichen, Tierischen Entwicklung des menschlichen Lebens. Die menschliche Existenz kann nicht dualistisch,  wo „keine Brücke über den Abgrund zwischen Mensch und Tier führt,“ sondern nur biologisch-lebensphilosophisch oder ökologisch verstanden werden. Plessner und Grene setzen sich mit dem Reduktionismus des modernen Naturalismus auseinander und zeigen, wie das Natürliche weiter und ergänzt gedacht werden muss, weil der Naturalismus keine ausreichenden Begriffe für die Auslegung der Erscheinungen und Ausdrucksformen des organischen Lebens besitzt. Die Unterscheidung zwischen der "zentrischen Positionalität" des Tiers und der "exzentrischen Positionalität" des menschlichen Tiers ermöglicht eine holistisch aber differenzierte Beschreibung der Natur und Kultur, insbesondere die natürlichen Künstlichkeit, die der Kultur und das des gesellschaftlichen Lebens. Diese sind Grundlage für  die geschichtliche und soziale Bildung, Aufbau, und Strukturierung der natürlichen Spontaneität, Produktivität, und Expressivität des Lebens und ermöglichen die dezentrierte, utopische, und persönliche Individuation der einzelnen Menschen im Lebenszusammenhang, was wichtige soziologische und auch ethische und politische Konsequenzen für Plessner und Grene hat: Der Mensch ist ein natürliches biologisches Individuum, das durchaus fähig ist, eine verantwortliche Person zu werden , und zwar durch die umfassende Beteiligung an (oder als ein einzigartiger Ausdruck) einer Kultur.

In this paper, I describe the hermeneutics of perceiving and picturing a world in Wilhelm Dilthey's works. I examine some of the issues facing Dilthey's approach to picturing a world [Weltbild] and the conflict [Streit] of world-pictures, contrasting Dilthey's interpretive strategies with those of the early Martin Heidegger who both borrows from and critiques Dilthey's conception of picturing the world.

This paper explores Dilthey's radical transformation of epistemology and the human sciences through his projects of a critique of historically embodied reason and his hermeneutics of historically mediated life. Answering criticisms that Dilthey overly depends on epistemology, I show how for Dilthey neither philosophy nor the human sciences should be reduced to their theoretical, epistemological, or cognitive dimensions. Dilthey approaches both immediate knowing (Wissen) and theoretical knowledge (Erkenntnis) in the context of a hermeneutical phenomenology of historical life. Knowing is not an isolated activity but an interpretive and self-interpretive practice oriented by situated reflexive awareness (Innewerden) and self-reflection (Selbstbesinnung). As embedded in an historical relational context, knowing does not only consist of epistemic validity claims about representational contents but is fundamentally practical, involving all of human existence. Empirically informed Besinnung, with its double reference to sense as meaning and bodily awareness, orients Dilthey's inquiry rather than the "irrationalism" of immediate intuition or the "rationalism" of abstract epistemological reasoning.

Dilthey’s moral writings have received scant attention over the years, perhaps due to his apparent tendency toward relativism. This essay offers a unified look at Dilthey’s moral writings in the context of his Kantian-styled “Critique of Historical Reason.” I present the Dilthey of the moral writings as an observer of reason in the spirit of Kant, watching practical reason devolve into error when it applies itself beyond the bounds of possible experience. Drawing on moral writings from across Dilthey’s corpus, I retrace Dilthey’s argument that moral theories from Kantianism and utilitarianism to natural law theory suffer significant motivational problems because of the way they transcend the “synthesis” of moral perception. Dilthey’s argument suggests that abstract moral theory is always bound to seem unmotivating and unreal from the standpoint of lived experience, and perhaps that, to avoid this, moral philosophy should confine itself to more situated, case-specific judgments.

Table of Contents: "Beiträge von K. Acham, Maria N. de C.P. Amaral, G. Cacciatore, G. Cantillo, D. Carr, G. Ciriello, U. Dierse, Fr. Donadio, J.-Cl. Gens, Kristin Gjesdal, J. Grondin, H. Johach, G. Kühne-Bertram, K.-H. Lembeck, H.-U. Lessing, M. Lombardo, G. Magnano San Lio, R. A. Makkreel, A. Marini, G. Matteucci, M. Mezzanzanica, J. de Mul, E. S. Nelson, E. W. Orth, St. Poggi, F. Rodi, G. Scholtz, Y. Takahashi, F. Tessitore.
Wilhelm Dilthey, der Begründer der Philosophie der Geisteswissenschaften, starb am 1. Oktober 1911 in Seis am Schlern (Südtirol). Zum Gedenken an seinen 100. Todestag trafen sich Hauptvertreter der internationalen Dilthey-Forschung zu einem Symposion „Anthropologie und Geschichte“ in Meran vom 26. September bis zum 1. Oktober 2011. Mit der Titelgebung verband sich die Idee zu überprüfen, wie weit Diltheys Denken für heutige anthropologische Fragestellungen und die aus der gesellschaftlichen Globalisierung resultierenden Probleme von Diversität und Universalität fruchtbar zu machen ist.

"""Die Begriffsbildungen Endlichkeit, Faktizität, Geschichtlichkeit und Hermeneutik, die sich alle auf das Verstehen des menschlichen Daseins beziehen, werden verständlicherweise in der gegenwärtigen Philosophie häufig in Verbindung mit Martin Heideggers frühem philosophischem Projekt gebracht und von hier aus auch gedeutet. Weniger wird jedoch darauf geachtet, wie stark Heidegger diese leitenden Grundbegriffe mit Bezug auf Wilhelm Diltheys Denken über die menschliche Existenz interpretiert und auf seine eigene Art und Weise umgewandelt hat.
Im Zusammenhang der wichtigen Auseinandersetzung des frühen Heideggers mit Dilthey in den 1920er Jahren hat Heidegger Edmund Husserls transzendentale Phänomenologie erst lebensphilosophisch und dann hermeneutisch umgedeutet. Heidegger hat in diesem Kontext die „kategoriale Anschauung” (die nach Husserl das Universale im Singularen wahrnimmt) als eine interpretative Hermeneutik und als „formal anzeigend“ gedeutet; eine Formalisierung, die auf das „auslegende Vorlaufen” der konkreten Faktizität des menschlichen Daseins in seiner Mannigfaltigkeit hinweist.
Nach Diltheys Begriff einer „modernen Lebensphilosophie” kann das Leben nur „aus ihm selbst gedeutet werden.”  Die eindrucksvollen, sehr frei ausgedrückten und gefühlsmäßigen Deutungen des Lebensbegriffs, die von den Lebensphilosophen stammen, sollen von einer in der Luft schwebenden Spekulation befreit werden und zu wahrer Erkenntnis führen. Das gelingt laut Dilthey, wenn diese Deutungen in der Selbstbesinnung und in der wissenschaftlichen Reflexion methodisch und begrifflich geklärt werden. Heidegger hat teilweise – und zwar in seinen früheren Vorlesungen nach dem Ersten Weltkrieg - in ähnlicher Weise die Philosophie als einen Versuch dargestellt, das faktische Leben aus sich selbst zu verstehen.  Aber das „Aus-sich-selbst Verstehen” ist beim früheren Heidegger gegen die erkenntnistheoretischen und psychologischen Tendenzen der neuzeitlichen Philosophie gewendet, die er immer noch im Neukantianismus sowie bei Husserl und Dilthey spürt und beklagt und die er besonders in der Mitte der 1920er Jahre im Rückgriff auf Aristotelus gedeutet hat."""

In this paper, I describe the hermeneutics of perceiving and picturing a world in Wilhelm Dilthey’s works. I examine some of the issues facing Dilthey’s approach to picturing a world [Weltbild] and the conflict [Streit] of world-pictures, contrasting Dilthey’s interpretive strategies with those of the early Martin Heidegger who both borrows from and critiques Dilthey’s conception of picturing the world.

O propósito deste artigo é explicitar o modo como Gadamer reformula a hermenêutica diltheiana (desenvolvida sobre o conceito moderno de vida utilizado como fundamento da noção de auto-consciência histórica), ao formular um novo modo de compreender a razão e a existência humanas, tomando como ponto de partida a experiência concreta da finitude da vida humana.

O trabalho pretende expor a apropriação da hermenêutica realizada por Heidegger no percurso dos anos 1920 até a obra Ser e Tempo. A exposição pretende marcar a contribuição de Dilthey e as transformações realizada por Heidegger a partir do redimensionamento da pergunta pelo sentido de ser.

I examine how Heidegger and his successors interpret philosophy as an exclusively Occidental venture based on a particular understanding of history. In contrast to the dominant monistic historical paradigm in continental philosophy, I return to the plural historical thinking of Dilthey and Misch, who interpret philosophy as both a European and a global phenomenon. This reflects Dilthey's anti-Hegelian and pluralistic understanding of forms of historical life and the role of reflection, critique, and change in them. Misch developed Dilthey's insight further in the 1920's by demonstrating the multiple origins of philosophy as critical life-reflection (Lebensbesinnung) in its Greek context and in other historical matrices such as those of ancient India and China. Misch's analyses of Confucius and Zhuangzi are particularly revealing of his project of a historically informed, interculturally sensitive, and critically oriented life-philosophy.