The sciences of the spirit are those that allow a human being to know himself better by studying what makes him unique. If all science is characterized by propositions that go from hypotheses to universal laws, the propositions of sciences of this type according to Dilthey are: facts (historical character), theorems, judgments and norms (practical element).
Wilhelm Dilthey, in his Introduction to the sciences of the spirit (1883), pursues the philosophical basis of the sciences of the spirit, including those whose object of study is history, politics, jurisprudence, theology, literature or the art. That is, they are the sciences that have as their object the historical- social reality.
Although it misses a discussion on the foundations of these sciences, similar to those that exist on the natural sciences, it determines that the origin of the sciences of the spirit is due to exercises of social functions; grammar, rhetoric, logic, aesthetics, ethics, jurisprudence and other disciplines have arisen because the individual becomes aware of and reflects on his own activity.
At the same time, he affirms that the understanding of human existence cannot be simplified to the enumeration of some intellectual representations. From this point of view, Dilthey as a defender of the sciences of the spirit, clearly opposes Kant's intellectualism in his Critique of Pure Reason.
The separation of the sciences of nature and of the spirit does not mean establishing a greater importance of one over the other, but rather applying the appropriate method to each field of study without distorting its essence. The sciences of the spirit are the human sciences through which this philosopher wants to base the analysis of the historical course and the entity of society.
For the sciences of the spirit to achieve validity, they have to be reconciled with tradition, admitting it as a source of truth, but without pretending to do so in a scientific way. The modes of knowledge that serve as models of the truth produced by the sciences of the spirit are, according to H.-G. Gadamer, the understanding of the past and the interpretation of the work of art, two processes that cannot be reduced to modern science.
