 If the first phase was characterized by a search for inner explanations and the second phase by direct understanding, the third phase can be characterized by the need for interpretation. This final phase can be said to span the last decade of Dilthey’s life until his death in 1911. It begins with the realization in the essay “The Rise of Hermeneutics” of 1900 that the inner intelligibility of lived experience does not yet constitute full understanding. Self-understanding must also be mediated from without. The way we express ourselves, whether in communication or in action, is a crucial intermediary in defining ourselves. Understanding can only be reliable if it proceeds through the interpretation of human objectifications. Thus we properly understand ourselves not through introspection but through historical contextualization. It is in this last phase of his thought that Dilthey, who now occupied the chair that Hegel had once held in Berlin, revives his predecessor’s theory of objective spirit as the medium relating us to the past. In 1906 Dilthey published a seminal work on the young Hegel – Die Jugendgeschichte Hegels – that made use of recently discovered theological and political fragments. These unknown early fragments disclosed Hegel’s historical geniality before it became constrained by the dialectical systematization that Dilthey had always objected to. Dilthey’s student Herman Nohl was helpful in deciphering some of these fragments and went on to publish them. Nohl also edited a volume of Dilthey’s writings on the history of German Idealism going back to Kant, Beck and Fichte and leading up to such contemporaries of Hegel as Schelling, Schleiermacher, Schopenhauer and Fries.