 As he develops his anthropologically based approach to ethics, Dilthey leads up to three main ethical incentives. One of them is the benevolence (Wohlwollen) that we just related to human solidarity. The other two incentives are to strive for what is right (Rechtschaffenheit) and to perfect oneself in a socially legitimate manner (Vollkommenheit). These three ethical incentives had already been predelineated as moral principles in Dilthey’s Habilitationsschrift of 1864 entitled “Versuch einer Analyse des moralischen Bewußtseins” (see 1864/GS.VI, 26–27). In fact, the concluding section THREE 12 of the System of Ethics is taken almost exclusively from this earlier work, where the ethical incentives were formulated as three moral oughts. This raises the question how it is possible to move from anthropologically derived ethical incentives that are a posteriori to ultimately arrive at moral oughts that are a priori. There is a crucial subsection THREE 9.3 that prepares us for this transition. It is entitled “The Feeling of Duty and Justice, the Consciousness of the Commitment that Inheres in the Duty to Do What is Right or Just  .” Here Dilthey is quite explicit that the commitment to do what is right demands a consciousness that cannot be conceived as a mere instinctive inner bond with others rooted in our sense of solidarity. The commitment to do what is right must now come from within on the basis of “respect for others as ends in themselves” (1890b/SW.VI, 128). The mere life-value of group solidarity is elevated to the spiritual value of respect for all others as individual ends-in-themselves. Having replaced Humean sympathy with benevolence, Dilthey now engages Kantian duty as part of his analysis of moral self-reflection. But instead of appealing to respect for the law to justify doing what is right, Dilthey derives moral duty from a commitment that is based on both a “fidelity to oneself and respect for the self-worth of other persons” (1890b/SW.VI,128). The sense of obligation (Verbindlichkeit) that comes with this commitment (Bindung) involves a recognition of a reciprocal human connectedness rather than a one-sided dependence on a higher law.