Wilhelm Windelband

Wilhelm Windelband (/ˈvɪndəlbænd/; German: [ˈvɪndl̩bant]; 11 May 1848 – 22 October 1915) was a German philosopher of the Baden School.

Wilhelm Windelband
Wilhelm Windelband, prior to 1905
Born	(1848-05-11)11 May 1848 Potsdam, Brandenburg, Kingdom of Prussia
Died	22 October 1915(1915-10-22) (aged 67) Heidelberg, Grand Duchy of Baden, Germany
Alma mater	University of Jena University of Berlin University of Göttingen (Dr. phil., 1870)
Era	19th-century philosophy
Region	Western philosophy
School	Neo-Kantianism (Baden School) Foundationalism
Thesis	Die Lehren vom Zufall (The Theories of Chance) (1870)
Doctoral advisor	Hermann Lotze
Doctoral students	Heinrich Rickert
Main interests	Metaphysics, philosophical logic
Notable ideas	The nomothetic–idiographic distinction

His grave in Heidelberg

Biography

Windelband was born the son of a Prussian official in Potsdam. He studied at Jena, Berlin, and Göttingen.

Philosophical work

Windelband is now mainly remembered for the terms nomothetic and idiographic, which he introduced. These have currency in psychology and other areas, though not necessarily in line with his original meanings. Windelband was a neo-Kantian who argued against other contemporary neo-Kantians, maintaining that "to understand Kant rightly means to go beyond him". Against his positivist contemporaries, Windelband argued that philosophy should engage in humanistic dialogue with the natural sciences rather than uncritically appropriating its methodologies. His interests in psychology and cultural sciences represented an opposition to psychologism and historicism schools by a critical philosophic system.

Windelband relied in his effort to reach beyond Kant on such philosophers as Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, Johann Friedrich Herbart and Hermann Lotze. Closely associated with Windelband was Heinrich Rickert. Windelband's disciples were not only noted philosophers, but sociologists like Max Weber and theologians like Ernst Troeltsch and Albert Schweitzer.

Bibliography

The following works by Windelband are available in English translations:

Books

• History of Philosophy (1893) (two volumes) reprinted 1901, 1938 and 1979 by Macmillan
• History of Ancient Philosophy (1899)
• An Introduction to Philosophy (1895)
• Theories in Logic (1912)

Articles

• "History and Natural Science" (J. T. Lamiell, transl.). Theory and Psychology 8, 1998, 6–22.

See also

• Heinz Heimsoeth

Further reading

• Rickert, Heinrich (1929) [1915]. Wilhelm Windelband (2nd ed.). Tübingen: J.C.B. Mohr.
• Mayeda, Graham (2008). "Is there a Method to Chance? Contrasting Kuki Shūzō's Phenomenological Methodology in The Problem of Contingency with that of his Contemporaries Wilhelm Windelband and Heinrich Rickert". In Hori, Victor S; Curley, Melissa Anne-Marie (eds.). Frontiers of Japanese Philosophy II: Neglected Themes and Hidden Variations. Nagoya, Japan: Nanzan Institute for Religion and Culture.

External links

• A History of Philosophy—With especial reference to the formation and development of its problems and conceptions (1901) on archive.org
• An Introduction to Philosophy on archive.org