A Study On Wilhelm Windelband’s Historiography Thought

Wilhelm Windelband (1848-1915), whose historical thoughts made a great contribution both to German philosophy and historiography between the end of 19th century and the beginning of 20 century, was acknowledged as the founder of neo-Kantianism Southwest German School. For a long while, scholars mostly put their focuses on Windelband’s relevant arguments on theoretical level, while largely ignoring his identity of historian of philosophy as well as the thought of historiography in his works of history of philosophy.The basic concerns of this thesis were orientated from history to text. The first section strives to portrait the whole of intellectual contexts Windelband was engaged in, in order to catch up the time question he needed to answer:how would philosophy make self-reforming to meet the challenges from the booming of the empirical sciences represented by natural and historical sciences. Guided by this question, the key concepts of Windelband’s will be analysed and expounded. Particularly, it will pay attention to the conflicts and interactions between Windelband and other intellectual forces (scientism and Historismus) during his time. In sum, these contexts act as an important role of problematic consciousness in Windelband’s history of philosophy.In the second section, by dealing with Lehrbuch der Geschichte der Philosophic as a historical work, this thesis will firstly interpretate Windelband’s concept of history of philosophy, and throw light on the connection between Windeband and the German tradition of history of philosophy as well as historical science in 19th century; after that, by looking into Windelband’s concrete historical narrative, the last part of this thesis will eventually reveal, in spite of the diversity and individuality in the real historical process, how did Windelband "make" the continuity and unity in the development of philosophy, by which he argued for the legitimacy and identity of philosophy.