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Many passages in Dilthey leave the reader with the impression that Dilthey's critique of historical reason, and his general theory of understanding and the construction of the historical work, is as such not a contribution to methodical hermeneutics. He distinguishes between a general theory of understanding and methodical hermeneutics. It seems to be the case that he himself has nothing to add to the latter which has as its last outstanding theorist for Dilthey in Boeckh.¹ Dilthey's concern as the philosopher of the human sciences is rather to deliver the critical groundwork which shows that the claims made in the development of hermeneutics, beginning with Flacius and culminating in Schleiermacher and Boeckh, are valid claims. Likewise he seems to assume that Boeckh's own rudimentary reflections on the critical level and on the relation between philosophy and philology are consistent with his own approach.² A closer consideration can. however, show that Dilthey has made — in the period in which the development of methodical hermeneutics attracted his special attention³ — proposals which imply significant changes in the system of methodical hermeneutics which are connected with Dilthey's general theory of understanding, Dilthey has in these passages, and nowhere else, given an account of Boeckh's system and his understanding of that system.

DOI: 10.1007/978-94-009-5081-8_7

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