Dilthey's "Understanding(Verstehen)" And The Difficulty It Meets

In the situation of anarchy of sciences after the decline of metaphysics in the 19 th century,Wilhelm Dilthey investigated understanding(Verstehen)with the aim of "laying a philosophical foundation for human sciences(Geisteswissenschaften)" and "seeking a way to know oneself and improve oneself".From Einleitung in die Geisteswissenschaften to Der Aufbau der Geschichtlichen Welt in den Geisteswissenschaften,Dilthey continued studying understanding.Transformed by Dilthey's,understanding is no longer based on metaphysical settings,but comes from our actual life,and occurs in the flow of life.Dilthey put forward that in the experience of life,there exists an inner relationship that is different from causality,which is the relationship between the whole and the part,and is a hermeneutic cycle applied to life.Understanding is based on our lived experience(Erlebnis),and thus obtains certainty from the inner relationship of lived experience.In different forms of understanding,the basic form,senior form and the highest form,inner relationships are respectively characterized by different styles.According to these different styles of inner relationships,Dilthey uses different methods of understanding,such as analogical reasoning,inductive reasoning,deductive reasoning,transposition,re-experience and re-creating,etc,making understanding helpful to self knowing and self improvement.Dilthey,on the other hand,appeals to the certainty of the written words,and derives from the textual interpretation the universal validity of the activity of understanding,so that understanding could be used as the methodology of human sciences.This paper will point out that Dilthey's theory of understanding faces some difficulties due to his failure to distinguish between two kinds of certainty,but his thinking on understanding is still enlightening.