La vida entre conceptos abstractos y conceptos saturados. Dilthey y Husserl en torno a la naturaleza y el espíritu

Abstract

In opposition to both metaphysical construction and naturalistic reductionism, Dilthey takes the life of the spirit as a clue for distinguishing human from natural sciences. Life in this sense appears as nexus or connection of Erlebnisse, which stand to one another in a relationship of whole and part, and which the later Dilthey conceives in terms of meaning. He contrasts the abstract concepts of natural science with those of human science, which are “lived and saturated with life”. The task of the latter consists in taking the works in which life has fixed itself as signs or expressions which call for a hermeneutical understanding. In his later work, Husserl sees the life of the spirit in terms of experience of nature and spirit within the life-world. He discloses a stratification of constitutive levels founded one upon the other, such that nature is abstract in character and both persons and “things” have a spiritual meaning that is apprehended through expressions impressed in their corporeality. This allows us to sketch some parallel developments in Dilthey’s and Husserl’s late work.