VII. Modern Man and His World Conception

To “common sense” such a thought development of a philosopher can appear as hairsplitting. The historical account must not be deflected by such judgment. It is important to gain an insight into the difficulty that modern philosophy had to create for itself in regard to a question that seems so simple and in fact superfluous to “common sense,” that is, if the world man sees, hears, etc., may rightly be called real. The “ego” that had, as shown above in our historical account of the development of philosophical world riddles, separated itself from the world, strives to find its way back into the world from what appears in its own consciousness as a state of loneliness. It is Dilthey's opinion that this way cannot be found back into the world by saying that the soul experiences pictures (thoughts, ideas, sensations), and since these pictures appear in our consciousness they must have their causes in a real external world. A conclusion of this kind would not, according to Dilthey, give us the right to speak of a real external world, for such a conclusion is drawn within the soul according to the needs of this soul, and there is no guarantee that there really is in the external world what the soul believes in following its own needs. Therefore, the soul cannot infer an external world; it would expose itself to the danger that its conclusion might have a life only within the soul but without any significance for an external world. Certainty concerning an outer world can be gained by the soul only if this external world penetrates into the inner life of the “ego,” so that within this “ego” not only the “ego” but also the external world itself unfolds its life. This happens, according to Dilthey, when the soul experiences in its will and its feeling something that does not spring from within. Dilthey attempts to decide from the most self-evident facts a question that is for him a fundamental problem of all world conception. A passage like the following may illustrate this: