Windelband, Wilhelm
Windelband, Wilhelm
Wmdelband (1848-1915) was preeminently an outstanding historian of philosophy. He has nowhere given a systematic presentation of his own views, but has expressed them only in unconnected essays and discourses. But in these he made some suggestions of great import on account of which he has been termed the founder and head of the “South-Western German School.” He felt that he belonged to the tradition of German Idealism without definitely styling himself a Neo-Kantian, Neo-Fichtean or Neo-Hegelian. His fundamental position is that whereas it is for science to determine facts, it is for philosophy to determine values. Facts may be gathered from experience, but values, i.e., what “ought” to be thought, felt and done, cannot and hence must in some sense be a priori. Of particular significance was his effort — later worked out by H. Rickert — to point out a fundamental distinction between natural and historical sciencethe former aims at establishing general laws and considers particular facts only insofar as they are like others. In contrast to this “nomothetic” type of science, history is “idiographic”, i.e., it is interested in the particular as such, but, of course, not equally in all particulars, but in such only as have some significance from the point of view of value. — H.G.
Main worksGeschichte u. Naturwissenschaft, 1894; Prludien, 1924 (9th ed. ); History of Modem Philosophy (Eng. tr.).