Historical Consciousness and Autobiography: The Problem of the Foundation of Historical Knowledge in Dilthey

Abstract

This article elucidates the role that autobiography assumes in Dilthey's thought as a paradigm for understanding the past in general and its particular relationship with historiography. His theory of historical writing cannot be identified, as Gadamer does, with a form of historical relativism. It shows the way in which Dilthey conceives the passage from the first to the third person and therefore from “experience” and “retrospective reflection”, from there to biography and from this to historical discourse in general. His philosophy does not deny the pretension of the scientific nature of historical research, while recognizing in art in general and in literature in particular a contribution to the knowledge of the past.