 Carnap acknowledges the independent nature of spiritual (geistigen) or intersubjective objects such as political states and social customs. They differ from psychical and physical objects in that they can “survive” even as the original subjects that generated them “perish and other subjects take their place” (Carnap 1928: 23). It is not clear why Dilthey’s reflective analysis of the distinctive methods of the various sciences and his empirical approach to lived experience did not earn him more serious consideration by the Vienna Circle as a whole and other analytically oriented philosophers. But what is evident is that his theory of understanding (Verstehen) came to be widely misinterpreted as a kind of empathy. Although Dilthey had sharply differentiated between understanding as a judgmental process and empathy as a mere feeling, Carnap suggested that the understanding of others is an intuitive act that involves a measure of empathy, but which can be cognitively vetted in part through the analysis of objective manifestations ranging from gestures, linguistic expressions to practical actions (Carnap 1928: 55, 143). This suggestion by Carnap may have negatively influenced subsequent discussions of Dilthey’s theory of Verstehen by analytic philosophers, leading Theodor Abel, Ernest Nagel, and Arthur Danto to go even further by reducing it to “empathic identification.” Later Danto recognized that this is not the case and acknowledged that “Verstehen is a very brilliant notion, utterly misconceived heretofore by crass philosophical critics, myself included” (Danto 1970: 215). Verstehen is not some immediate projection of ourselves into others, but stands for a deliberate process that finds the proper context to relate others and their objectifications to what is already familiar to us. It is a reflective mode of inquiry that provides the framework for more specific explanations, whether causal or rational.