Wilhelm Windelband 1848 – 1915
Wilhelm Windelband was a German philosopher and historian of philosophy and the founder, with Heinrich Rickert, of the Southwest German School of neo-Kantianism. Holding chairs at Strassburg and Heidelberg, he produced an influential history of philosophy and a series of essays in which he distinguished between nomothetic disciplines, which seek general laws, and idiographic disciplines, which describe particular events. The distinction reshaped the methodology of the human and historical sciences. He saw values as the proper subject of philosophy, conceived as the science of universally valid claims.
Key facts
- Nationality
- German
- Era
- Modern
- Movements
- Continental
Selected quotes
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Attributed to Wilhelm Windelband:
“The natural sciences are nomothetic; the historical sciences are idiographic.”
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Attributed to Wilhelm Windelband:
“History deals with the singular and unique, science with the general and recurrent.”
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Attributed to Wilhelm Windelband:
“Philosophy is the science of the universally valid values.”
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Attributed to Wilhelm Windelband:
“To understand Kant is to go beyond him.”
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Attributed to Wilhelm Windelband:
“The ought, not the is, is the proper object of philosophy.”