ABSTRACT
Dilthey (1883/1989) distinguished between the physical sciences and the cognitive sciences, including history and literary criticism (the Geisteswis-senchaften). The physical sciences approach things objectively, determining what objects are made of, how they work, and what their function is. The physical sciences aim to describe laws and other regularities involving things and their parts, in this way achieving an understanding of things, as we might say, “from the outside.” But, according to Dilthey, cognitive phenomena admit also of a different sort of understanding from the inside. Cognitive phenomena have content or meaning of a sort that cannot be appreciated within an entirely objective approach. Reasons, purposes, feelings, and experiences can only be understood “from within,” via sympathy or empathy.
