Wilhelm Windelband (W. Windelband) (May 11, 1848 – October
22, 1915) was a German philosopher of the Baden School.
Born in Potsdam, he is now mainly remembered for the
terms nomothetic and idiographic, which he introduced. These
have currency in psychology and other areas, though not
necessarily in line with his original meanings. Windelband
was a neo-Kantian who protested other neo-Kantians of his
time and maintained 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 Hegel, Herbart and Lotze. Closely
associated with Windelband was Heinrich Rickert.
Windelband's disciples were not only noted philosophers, but
sociologists like Max Weber and theologians like Ernst
Troeltsch and Albert Schweitzer.
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