Verstehen und Religion im Werk Wilhelm Diltheys

In modernity, explaining, interpreting, construing, and understanding are no longer just crucial moments in a hermeneutics of written texts. In the course of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, a profound transformation took place in which hermeneutical reflections became the basis for all the humanities, cultural studies and social sciences in respect of both methodological as well as fundamental-theoretical terms. Wilhelm Dilthey played a key role in this process. Constantin Plaul devotes himself to the development of the philosopher's concept of understanding, focusing initially on his philological context of discovery. In addition, the author examines the systematic dimension in the whole of Dilthey's work. The line converges ultimately in the consequences for the problem of religion, apprehended by Dilthey not only as an object, but also as an instance of understanding.