Biography:Wilhelm Windelband

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Short description: German philosopher (1848–1915)
Wilhelm Windelband
Wilhelm Windelband, prior to 1905
Born(1848-05-11)11 May 1848
Potsdam, Brandenburg, Kingdom of Prussia
Died22 October 1915(1915-10-22) (aged 67)
Heidelberg, Grand Duchy of Baden, Germany
Era19th-century philosophy
RegionWestern philosophy
SchoolNeo-Kantianism (Baden School)
Foundationalism[1]
Main interests
Metaphysics, philosophical logic
Notable ideas
The nomothetic–idiographic distinction

Wilhelm Windelband (/ˈvɪndəlbɑːnd/; de; 11 May 1848 – 22 October 1915) was a German philosopher of the Baden School.

His grave in Heidelberg

Early life

Windelband was born the son of a Prussian state secretary for the Province of Brandenburg in Potsdam, Germany.[2] He studied at the University of Jena in which he attended lectures by Kuno Fischer.[2] He later studied in the university of Berlin and of Göttingen, under the direction of Hermann Lotze.[3][2] In 1870 he presented his D. Phil. dissertation, which was entitled 'Die Lehren vom Zufall' (The Theories of Chance)[4]. In the following year Windelband served as a soldier in the Franco-Prussian War.[2] In 1873 he returned to academia and obtained his Dr. Phil. Habil. at the University of Leipzig, which was entitled 'Die Gewissheit der Erkenntnis: eine psychologisch-erkenntnisstheoretische Studie' (On the certainty of knowledge: a psychological-epistemological study). In 1874 he married Martha Wichgraf, with whom he had four children.[2]

In 1876, Windelband became a professor of inductive philosophy at the University of Zurich in Switzerland.[2] In 1877, he returned to Germany, where became Professor of Philosophy at the University of Freiburg. In 1882 he accepted an offer of a post in the then-German University of Strasbourg, where in 1894/5 and 1897/98 he became its rector.

Philosophical work

Windelband is now mainly remembered for the terms nomothetic and idiographic, which he introduced during an address which he gave in 1894 upon his installation as the Rector of the University of Strasbourg, the Third Edition of which was subsequently published as a thirty-six page booklet.[5][6] The terms nomothetic and idiographic are used in psychology and elsewwhere. However, they are used differently to the ways that Windelband meant.[7]

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[8] Heinrich Rickert was closely associated with Windelband. Windelband's disciples were not only noted philosophers, but sociologists like Max Weber and theologians like Ernst Troeltsch and Albert Schweitzer.

Bibliography

Books[9]

Notes

  1. ↑ Windelband defended foundationalism in his book Über die Gewißheit der Erkenntniss (1873) - see Beiser 2014, p. 517.
  2. ↑ 2.0 2.1 2.2 2.3 2.4 2.5 Kinzel 2024.
  3. ↑ Kiernan 1961, p. vii.
  4. ↑ Windelband 1870.
  5. ↑ Windelband 1904, originally 1894.
  6. ↑ See Windelband 1980 and Windelband 1998 for English translations of his address.
  7. ↑ Lamiell 1998 and Robinson 2012 may be consulted about usages of both terms, while Smith 1995, p. 161 may be consulted about usages of the term idiographic.
  8. ↑ Milkov, retrieved 29 September 2025. Sullivan, retrieved 29 September 2025.
  9. ↑ A full list of Windelband's books in German is available at The Online Books Page online books by W. Windelband (Windelband, W. (Wilheim), 1848-1915).
  10. ↑ Volumes 1 and 11 were reprinted in 1938 and 1979 by Macmillan.

References

See also

  • Heinz Heimsoeth

Further reading

  • 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. Frontiers of Japanese Philosophy II: Neglected Themes and Hidden Variations. Nagoya, Japan: Nanzan Institute for Religion and Culture. 
  • Rickert, Heinrich (1929). Wilhelm Windelband (2nd ed.). Tübingen: J.C.B. Mohr. 




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