 Dilthey characterized his own expansive view of philosophy as one of establishing integral relations to all the theoretical disciplines and historical practices that attempt to make sense of the world. Instead of demarcating the boundaries that set philosophy apart from other ways of engaging life, Dilthey conceives its critical task as articulating the overall structures that define the human spirit in general. Relatively early in his career, philosophy is defined as “an experiential science of spiritual phenomena” that seeks to “cognize the laws governing social, intellectual and moral phenomena” (1867/GS.V, 27). Philosophy should aim to preserve the scope that idealists such as Fichte, Schelling and Hegel had given it, but it must do so by recapturing the Kantian rigor that had been lost and by proceeding empirically.