VII. Modern Man and His World Conception

Why is such a reflection, which seems unimportant for many people, developed in connection with the highest problems of philosophy? It seems hopeless to gain an insight into man's position in the world as a whole from such points of departure. What is essential, however, is the fact that philosophy arrived at reflections of this kind on its way, to use Brentano's words once more, to “gain certainty for the hopes of Plato and Aristotle concerning the continued life of our better part after the dissolution of our body.” To attain sure knowledge of this kind seems to become more difficult the more the intellectual development advances. The “self-conscious ego” feels itself more and more ejected from the world; it seems to find in itself less and less the elements that connect it with the world in a way different from that of our “body,” which is subject to “dissolution.” While this “self-conscious ego” searched for a certain knowledge concerning its connection with an eternal world of the spirit, it lost the certainty of an insight in its connection with the world as revealed through the perception of the senses. In our discussion of Goethe's world conception, it was shown how Goethe searched for such experiences of the soul that carry it into a reality lying behind sense perception as a spiritual world. In this world conception the attempt is made to experience something within the soul through which it no longer lives exclusively within its own confines in spite of the fact that it feels the experienced content as its own. The soul searches for world experiences in itself through which it participates with its experience in an element that it cannot reach through the mediation of the mere physical organs. Although Dilthey's mode of reflection may appear to be quite unnecessary, his efforts must be considered as belonging to the same current of the philosophical development. He is intent on finding an element within the soul that does not spring from the soul but belongs to an independent realm. He would like to prove that the world enters the experience of the soul. Dilthey does not believe that such an entrance can be accomplished by the thought element. For him, the soul can assimilate in its entire life content, in will, striving and feeling, something that is not only soul but part of the real external world. We recognize a human being in our soul as real not by forming a representative thought picture of the person we see before us, but by allowing his will and his feeling to enter into our own will and sentiment. Thus, a human soul, in Dilthey's opinion, acknowledges a real external world not because this outer world conveys its reality through the thought element, but because the soul as a self-conscious ego, experiences inwardly in itself the external world. In this manner he is led to acknowledge the spiritual life as something of a higher significance than the mere natural existence. He produces a counterbalance to the natural scientific mode of conception with his view, and he even thinks that nature as a real external world can be acknowledged only because it can be experienced by the spiritual part of our soul. The experience of the natural is a subdivision of our general soul experience, which is of a spiritual nature, and spiritually our soul is part of a general spiritual development on earth. A great spiritual organism develops and unfolds in cultural systems in the spiritual experience and creative achievement of the various peoples and ages. What develops its forces in this spiritual organism permeates the individual human souls. They are embedded in the spiritual organism. What they experience, accomplish and produce receives its impulses not from the stimulation's of nature, but from the comprehensive spiritual life. Dilthey's mode of conception is full of understanding for that of natural science. He often speaks in his discussions of the results of the natural scientists, but, as a counterbalance to his recognition of natural development, he insists on the independent existence of a spiritual world. Dilthey finds the content of a science of the spiritual in the contemplation of the cultures of different peoples and ages.