 Anthropological reflection expects history to teach what life is and yet history is dependent on life as lived. There is a hermeneutical circularity here that could be escaped “if unconditioned norms, purposes, or values [could] set the standard for contemplating an apprehending history” (ca. 1910/SW.III, 281). Unlike his Neo-Kantian contemporaries such as Hermann Cohen and Heinrich Rickert, Dilthey is not willing to accept unconditional values that transcend life. The spiritual nexus of history “is that of life itself insofar as life produces connectedness under the conditions of its natural environment” (ca. 1910/SW.III, 280). Life is the ultimate context behind which we cannot go. It is the horizon of productivity which encompasses the organic and the mental, but cannot be defined by either. Since “life is intimately related to temporal fulfillment” (ca. 1910/SW.III, 249), historicity is part of its essence. Consequently, the objective validity that is to be attached to any value cannot be separated from our temporal engagement with life. Values are not simply given or imposed from on high, but are produced as part of the human process of explicating the meaning of history. In light of Dilthey’s skepticism about transcendent unconditional values, it may seem surprising that he presented an ethical system that expects human beings to make unconditional commitments that are self-binding.