ABSTRACT
The understanding of expressions is based on familiarity with the social and cultural context in which they occur. This context of institutions, traditions, rules and conventions which modern social anthropologists call the ‘culture pattern’ and which Wilhelm Dilthey called ‘the objective mind’ or the ‘objectifications of life’ can and must become the subject of sociological research. Dilthey rejected a metaphysics of history and a heaping up of disjointed and meaningless facts as the horns of an inescapable dilemma. Human life and history are meaningful. This is one of the cornerstones of his approach. The focal point of Dilthey’s theory of history—and his most original contribution—is his conception of understanding and interpretation, through which meaning is recaptured. Understanding, the process of grasping meaning, is a mental operation which can be defined in terms of other mental operations as little as can seeing or reasoning.
