  Rickert agrees that philosophy, unlike the specialized empirical sciences, must be oriented toward the world as a whole (Weltganze), and not merely toward this or that specific part of the world (Rickert 1910, 1; Rickert 1934, 1). However, he firmly rejects the view that, in order to grasp the world as a whole, philosophers ought to shun the ideal of scientificity and work as whole human beings merely expressing what their existential intuition of the world-whole suggests. In this regard, for Rickert, the phrase ‘worldview’ should designate the goal of philosophical work and not philosophy’s obscure existential origin. Furthermore, the goal of a comprehensive theory of worldview can only be achieved with the aid of concepts and logical thinking, that is, adopting a scientific standpoint. Contra Dilthey, Simmel, and the antirationalist life-philosophers Rickert points out that “only the one-sided, theoretically oriented man is able to reflect upon the world in its totality” (Rickert 1933, 50). On the contrary, “[t]he whole human being, precisely as ‘whole’ or ‘existing’ human being, will never transcend his ‘small’ world and this small world inevitably takes on different shapes for different people. For the pre-scientific man only that which stands in an essential connection with his own life can become ‘world’” (Rickert 1933, 49–50; see Staiti 2013b: 799–804). Rickert contends that the historical beginnings of philosophy in ancient Greece coincide with the birth of a purely ‘theoretical man’, that is, of a subject who pursues knowledge for knowledge’s sake and in so doing discloses a dimension of totality unknown to natural, practically oriented human subjects (Rickert 1923b).