On Dilthey’s "Stream Of Life"

Wilhelm Dilthey, a significant German philosopher, centered his study,which are descriptive and analytical psychology in the earlier stage andhermeneutics in his later stage, around one single subject: life. Life, thecornerstone of his ideas, becomes the only subject of Wilhelm Dilthey in hisphilosophical pursuit.In the first two parts of this thesis, the author attempts to marshalDilthey’s massive and diffuse philosophical thoughts, build and showcase aconstruct or a system from the perspective of the flow of life, which mayoffer a better understanding of Dilthey in both epistemological andmethodological level. Starting from the definition of life, the first chapterattempts to describe the major characteristics of life, such as relevance, timeand history, and then comes to explain the ways in which the flow of life isexpressed through language, action, and experience. The second chapterprovides a detailed explanation of the three methods to understand Dilthey’sflow of life: experience, understanding and the category of life. The part ofexperience deals with relations between experience, life and time and withfurther discussion about its directiveness and relevance. The part ofunderstanding explains the objective spiritual concept, the form ofunderstanding, the relations between experience and understanding and thepredicament of understanding. The third part classifies the manners tounderstand life into meaning, value and aims from the perspective of time.The third part attempts to explore how the flow of life broughtenlightenment to Martin Heidegger’s existentialism in his early days,displaying Dilthey’s marvelous prevision and creativity in philosophy. Byexplaining how Hermenutics of life provides a theoretical direction for thedevelopment of internal logic of modern hermenutics, that is to say, howhermenutics of life changes the focus from methodolgy to ontology, thisthesis attempts to reveal the far-reaching impact of life hermenutics on thedevelopment of philosophy as a turning point of the history ofhermenutics.Finally, Dilthey has always believed that philosophy should provide guidance for the individual and society, thus stepping down from themetaphysical alar to the most authentic human "life", with an ultimatepurpose to understand the human spirit, which is, the author argues, themanifestation of a metaphysical pursuit for a non-metaphysical philosophy.