Dilthey's late thought shifted from a psychological approach to an hermeneutic approach

Otto Friedrich Bollnow, a disciple of Dilthey's retransmission and one of the representatives of the Diltai school, portrayed him as a philosopher of life and a hermeneuticist of life in his monograph Introduction to The Philosophy of Diltai (1936). To some extent, this book laid the paradigm for diltheistic philosophical research. Philosophical hermeneutics, which originated from Heidegger and was further refined by Gadamer, also honored Dilthey as the source of his ideas. Traditional hermeneutic theories first emphasize textual interpretation, but Dilthey expands the scope of interpretation. Not only can the text be called the object of understanding, but rather, understanding is oriented to all expressions of life. Further, in Dilthey, the main function of hermeneutics was to establish a methodology for laying the foundation for the spiritual sciences. It is worth pointing out that Dilthey has two different approaches to the construction of spiritual science: the psychological approach and the hermeneutic approach. Diltai's students, such as Georg Misch and Bernhard Groethuysen, argue that Dilthey's late thought underwent a "hermeneutic turn", that is, a shift from a psychological approach to an hermeneutic approach. To some extent, this determines the division and cognitive framework of Dilthey's philosophy.

　　The basis for the establishment of the psychological approach is that although the object of study of spiritual science is social and historical people, its foundation lies in the mental activity and mental state of the individual. Of course, this is not an explanatory psychology (erkl? Illustrative psychology is based on the natural science-style method of illustration, the main method of which is analysis and synthesis. Although it understands the mental life as a whole, this whole is a composite whole, a whole that is reorganized according to individual mental facts and modes of behavior. Dilthey was clearly opposed to the whole in this sense, arguing that mental activity itself was a whole at its inception, i.e., the experience of association as a whole (Erlebnis). The basic object of describing psychology is life as an experience as a whole, and the method is the contemplation of life itself (Selbstbesinnung). Descriptive psychology is also a psychology of understanding (verstehende Psychologie), that is, in its structural associations, the experience of life in terms of life as a whole. In this sense, psychology is the foundation of hermeneutics.

　　The late Dilthey 'hermeneutic approach' broadened the early approach to psychology. The central question is, how exactly is understanding possible? Or rather, how to ensure the objectivity of understanding? This question is even more pronounced when it comes to understanding others: How do we understand others? Early approaches to psychology could only rely on some sort of "analogous reasoning." Our understanding of others is based on our own experiences. The other person is another "self", so the understanding of the other is achieved through the analogy of "self-understanding", the basic way of which is empathy. The question is, while emotional understanding can be achieved through empathy, can cognitive understanding rely solely on this "analogous reasoning"? Moreover, analogical reasoning presupposes that the mental structure of myself and others is the same, which is largely true, but not entirely plausible. For example, between people of different cultural backgrounds, there are aspects that cannot be understood by analogy. In short, the psychological approach limits understanding to purely psychological understanding, a certain narrowing of understanding.

　　The hermeneutic approach of late Dilthey provides another set of answers to this question. There, the interaction between experience and understanding is expanded into a threefold structure, the connection between experience, expression, and understanding. Here, the introduction of "expression" is the key. Expression is the externalization and objectification of experience, and it constitutes the carrier of meaning and the object of understanding. Moreover, expression is indispensable as an intermediary between experience and understanding. Dilthey argues that experience itself is incomprehensible, and that it is only through expression that we can understand experience. That is to say, the understanding of experience is the understanding of the expression of experience, and all understanding is the understanding of expression. If experience is still subjective, then "expression" as an objectification of experience already has a certain intersubjectivity or even objectivity. In this sense, with the help of expression, Dilthey guarantees the objectivity of understanding.

　　The spiritual world of "expression" is neither a purely subjective mental world nor an external object in nature, but a product of human creation. There are different kinds of expressions, and Dilthey roughly distinguishes between three different expressions: the expression of action, theory, and experience. Expressions as concepts, propositions, and theories are purely objective, such as mathematical axioms that do not change according to time and place; expressions as actions are completely contextualized, and it depends on specific circumstances. What Diltai attaches the most importance to is the expression of experience: it is neither completely objective nor completely contextual, but somewhere in between. It has certain characteristics of the situation, but it also transcends the specific situation and obtains a certain relative constancy. For example, a work of art, which is created by the artist, but once created, it is detached from the specific creative activity, and acquires relative constancy, as a fixture and becomes the object of later repeated interpretation. So, we tend to say, "We can understand its work better than the author." A work, once created, is divorced from the author and his spiritual activity. On the one hand, we can grasp its background premise better than the author, because this background knowledge is sometimes subtle and not known to the author himself; on the other hand, what the author wants to express and what is presented in its expression are often not the same thing, and great works have unlimited room for interpretation, which means that we can interpret things beyond the author's intention.

　　It was here that Dilthey introduced the concept of objective spirit. The objective spirit is an expression, but it is not an individual expression of life, but an intertwined state of multiple expressions and the overall association contained in it. In short, it is a cultural atmosphere, or cultural—a linguistic entity. The term "objective spirit" derives from Hegel, but it has a broader meaning than Hegel's use, encompassing not only law, morality, ethics, and the state, but also the things that Hegel endowed with an absolute spirit, such as art, religion, and philosophy. Hegel's objective spirit revolves around reason itself, while Dilthey believes that the starting point of the objective spirit is life, and thus it also includes the element of irrationality. All the continuous spiritual creations based on common life, the continuous objectification of the spirit in the products of society, constitute the objective spirit. In this sense, the objective spirit, as an expression of the historical-social process of life, constitutes the object of spiritual science.

　　On the one hand, the objective spirit, as some kind of historical expression, does not possess the characteristics of eternal truth. That is to say, the objective spirit is accompanied by the rise of historical consciousness, which is historical, accidental, and relative, depending on its particular association. But on the other hand, it has a universal validity to a certain extent. It can be seen that through the introduction of objective spirit, Dilthey showed that the object of spiritual science is not only the individual, but also the universal, the universal structure. For example, to understand a work of art, in addition to empathizing with the author's spiritual world and re-experiencing it, we must also understand the cultural context of the era in which the work of art was created. That is to say, the psychoscientist has to face the universal and come up with the universal proposition. It can be seen that the individual is incapable of dominating external cultural, social, and religious conditions, and the latter has a great influence on the individual. This means that the objective spirit is always embodied in a certain subjective expression, and at the same time there is a certain characteristic that transcends the subject, outside the subject's ability to control.

　　Through the introduction of "expression" and "objective spirit", Dilthey offers another answer to understanding others, namely through the mediation of objective spirit. The cultural context in which we are born and embedded constitutes our view of meaning, our "pre-understanding." This "pre-understanding" makes possible our understanding of individual expressions of life. Through the hermeneutic approach, Dilthey overcomes the limitations and problems of "analogous reasoning" in the psychological approach, thus providing an alternative answer to the objectivity of understanding.

Wang Hongjian