Der Ausdruck als die Lebendigkeit der Moral. Diltheys System der Ethik

This paper analyses Dilthey’s unpublished lecture from 1890. In the anthropological andethical reflections, a pre-predicative form of expression is pointed out as a dynamic fundamentof inner life. In the second part of the lecture, expression as this inner dynamic oflife is further connected with Dilthey’s “forming ethics”, i.e. with an approach that takesthe inner interplay of high- and low-level processes of consciousness as the essential basisof an integrated and solidary social life. In the context of such a social ethics, expressionplays a fundamental role thus gaining a broader meaning for a philosophy of life alsoconcerned with ethical issues.