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Dilthey, Empathy and Verstehen A Contemporary ReappraisalUNIVERSITY OF LEEDS, UK Wilhelm Dilthey's late nineteenth-century doctrine of `re-experiencing' the thoughts and feelings of the actors whose lives the social scientist seeks to understand has been criticized by several commentators as entailing a `naïve empathy view of understanding' in which social scientists are said to transport themselves into other cultural contexts in a wholly uncritical, unreflective manner. This article challenges such criticisms by arguing that Dilthey's writings on hermeneutics amount to a highly sophisticated defence of the role of psychological feeling in understanding that should still be of interest to contemporary social theorists. Beginning with a review of the reception of Dilthey's work by Max Weber and the Neo-Kantians, the article goes on to enumerate a number of significant parallels between Dilthey's insights and more recent approaches in social and cultural theory.
Key Words: Dilthey • empathy • hermeneutics • Neo-Kantianism • Verstehen
European Journal of Social Theory, Vol. 4, No. 3,
311-329 (2001) This article has been cited by other articles:
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