The Department of Philosophy is pleased to announce that Andrew Wilcox, BA student pursuing Honours in Philosophy and a Minor in Professional Writing, is among the recipients of a Concordia University Student Research Award (CUSRA).
His summer research project, "Dilthey on Historicity and Individuality in the Human Sciences" will be supervised by Dr. Nabeel Hamid.
Andrew Wilcox describes the research project:
"This project aims to understand Wilhelm Dilthey's (1833-1911) historicist approach to the notion of individuality in the human sciences (broadly, the social sciences and humanities taken together). Dilthey was among the most prominent thinkers of his age, and made important contributions to movements such as phenomenology, 'life-philosophy', and historicism. This project will examine Dilthey’s efforts in the 1880s and 1890s to articulate a theory of the aims, methods, and objects of inquiry in the human sciences as distinct from the natural sciences.
"A close study of Dilthey's two major treatises, Introduction to the Human Sciences (1883) and Formation of the Historical World in the Human Sciences (1910), and some of Dilthey's essays from the period between the two major works will be aimed at answering the following questions: 1) What is the individual's relation to the world, according to Dilthey? 2) How does Dilthey's historicism condition his concept of an individual? 3) How does Dilthey's account of humans as historical species inform his account of the epistemology of the human sciences (especially psychology)?"
The CUSRA program provides funding to undergraduate students in the fine arts, social sciences, humanities, engineering and computer science, business disciplines, and natural and health sciences. The goal of the awards is to stimulate interest in research, participatory research, or research-creation work that will complement coursework and enhance preparation for graduate studies or research-related careers.