From the perspective of mere representation, the external world always remains only a phenomenon.
Wilhelm DiltheyRead
Any theory intended to describe and analyze socio-historical reality cannot restrict itself to the human spirit and disregard the totality of human nature.
Interpretation
The quote emphasizes the importance of considering all aspects of human nature when analyzing historical and social realities.
Wilhelm Dilthey asserts that any theoretical framework aimed at understanding socio-historical conditions must encompass the entirety of human existence, including emotional, social, and cultural dimensions, rather than focusing solely on abstract, intellectual aspects. This holistic approach ensures a more comprehensive grasp of the complexities of human life and its historical contexts.
In practice
In a lecture on social theory, one could quote this to emphasize the need for a holistic understanding of human behavior.
From the perspective of mere representation, the external world always remains only a phenomenon.
The sciences which take socio-historical reality as their subject matter are seeking, more intensively than ever before, their systematic relations to one another and to their foundation.
The knife of historical relativism... which has cut to pieces all metaphysics and religion must also bring about healing.
All science is experiential; but all experience must be related back to and derives its its validity from the conditions and context of consciousness in which it arises, i.e., the totality of our nature.
If there were a science of human beings it would be anthropology that aims at understanding the totality of experience through structural context.
The individual always realizes only one of the possibilities in his development, which could always have taken a different turning whenever he had to make an important decision.
Nostalgia is inevitably a yearning for a past that never existed and when I'm writing, there are no bees to sting me out of my sentimentality. For me at least, fiction is the only way I can even begin to twist my lying memories into something true.
Understand now, I'm purely a fiction writer and do not profess to be an earnest student of political science, but I believe strongly that such a law as one prohibiting liquor is foolish, and all the writers, keenly interested in human welfare whom I know, laugh at the prohibition law.
The peoples of the Andes believe in the concept of 'living well' instead of wanting to 'live better' by consuming more, regardless of the cost to our neighbors and our environment.
Hence it demands the emptiness of all the faculties. And when the faculties are empty, then the whole being listens. There is then a direct grasp of what is right there before you that can never be heard with the ear or understood with the mind.
To be whole is to be part;_x000D_ true voyage is return.
Oh, God β the lives people try to lead. Oh, God β what a world they try to lead them in.
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