Wilhelm Windelband

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Wilhelm Windelband
Wilhelm Windelband, prior to 1905
Born	May 11, 1848
Died	October 22, 1915
Nationality	German
Occupation	Philosopher

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". Windelband proposed that philosophy should dialogue with the contemporary sciences instead of evocating a sofist scientific statute, as his contemporaries positivists. His interests in psychology and cultural sciences represented an opposition to psycologism 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.