It is probably the case that the German term Geist, as it was used in Hegelian philosophy and Hegelianism in the 19th century, is difficult to translate into other languages. The English "mind" contains only incompletely the dazzling background of meaning of "Geist", which then does not solve this problem in the concept of the "Geisteswissenschaften". I find very informative Wikipedia articles on this problem and would like to recommend to read them. getting further information.

Perhaps the following basic distinctions are helpful: You can compare "mind" with "body" in the individual as opposite things. Then mind means the sum of the cognitive abilities to perceive, think and feel the world.

But one can also see the term "Geist" as spirit, as an expression of a religious power, for instance as the "breath of God", so was the understanding of the people of Israel in the Bible. Then spirit is a transcendent concept which faces "nature" and "the world". But because man, according to the monotheistic religions (Judaism, Christianity, Islam), is a being created by God - and even possesses an imperfect similarity - man carries something of the Spirit of God in himself, thus stands opposite nature, the world, and the transience of life as a supertemporal principle.

In the narrowest sense one must see "Geist" in the sense of Hegel's idealistic philosophy: as self-realization, that means, as a general principle of development: the "coming to oneself" of everything that exists: God, world, cosmos, the human being.

The term "Geisteswissenschaften" already existed at the beginning of the 19th century, long before Dilthey's philosophy. But as a result of a methodically founded attempt to lead the very different areas of religion, law, languages, history, culture and art to a new form of unity and commonality through a common method, the concept of the "humanities" (=Geisteswissenschaften) gained new weight. The common method is interpretative, called "understanding hermeneutics".

I don't think much of letting this question lead into a dispute about the "nature" or the "being" of the humanities, but rather answer it pragmatically: as an orientation aid.

Seen in this way, the humanities comprise the subjects of the philosophical faculty (but not the subjects of the medical or natural sciences faculties): Languages, literature, philosophy, history, cultural geography, history, law, politics, religion, art. They are those sciences in which the interpretive aspect of their subject and their research results are particularly great - in contrast to the mathematical-scientific disciplines in which the finding and application of general laws of nature play a strong role. The fact that there are border areas that can be assigned more strongly to one side or the other does not interfere with the basic distinction.

In terms of science theory, this distinction does not play a role until the end of the 19th century, when the question of whether all other sciences should base their methods and working methods on the model of natural sciences (including aspects of math and inferential logic) was discussed with the triumph of the natural sciences.

In Germany, the question was posed by various philosophers, in particular Wilhelm Windelband, Heinrich Rickert and Wilhelm Dilthey, primarily with regard to a reformulation and an expanded understanding of Immanuel Kant's (1724-1804) empirical concept of science. It was not a question of separating metaphysics from empirical science, but of whether only one method is permitted for an empirical, i.e. "experiential science" understanding of sciences, all sciences, including philosophy, history, law, linguistics, etc., or whether sciences should be distinguished according to their methods.

This showed two things: For those sciences that have a lot to do with man and his cultural achievements, the application of mathematical-scientific methods alone is very unsatisfactory (although their application is by no means excluded). The finding and application of general laws, laws of nature, does not do justice to the wealth of individual human achievements in language, art, history, philosophy, etc.

Conversely, there are natural sciences that are centrally related to man, such as medicine or psychology. In addition to the application of general laws of nature, e.g. physiology, other aspects play a role here, such as individual empathy. Strict empirical research also requires interpretation that takes into account subjective aspects. In addition to differences between the humanities and the natural sciences, there are similarities such as efforts to achieve objectivity, reliability, differentiation between truth and false truth, etc.

Note: This discussion was stimulated by John St. Mill's "The Logic of the Moral Sciences"; Diltey translated "Moral Sciences" with "Geisteswissenschaften"

For instance in German they are used to say Gesisteswissenschaften and Naturwissenschaften.

See:

"Geisteswissenschaften and Naturwissenschaften German words used to denote respectively the human (or social) sciences and the natural sciences. For some three decades prior to the outbreak of the First World War, German academic life was dominated by a number of related disputes about methodology (the so-called Methodenstreit), the most general (and probably the most important) of which dealt with the relationship between the natural and the cultural (or historical) sciences. The philosopher Wilhelm Windelband, arguing from the premiss that reality is indivisible, proposed an a priori logical distinction between natural and social sciences on the basis of their methods. Natural sciences, according to Windelband, use a ‘nomothetic’ or generalizing method, since they seek to discover law-like and general relationships and properties, whereas social or cultural sciences employ an ideographic or individualizing procedure, since they are interested in the non-recurring events in reality and the particular or unique aspects of any phenomenon. Wilhelm Dilthey, on the other hand, contrasted Naturwissenschaften and Geisteswissenschaften in terms of their subject-matter, this criterion following logically from the alternative premiss that reality can be divided into autonomous sectors—a fundamental distinction being that between the realms of ‘nature’ and of ‘human spirit’—with each sector being the prerogative of a separate category of sciences.

The most interesting contribution to this debate, from the point of view of sociology, is probably that of Heinrich Rickert (1863–1936), the neo-Kantianprofessor of philosophy at Freiberg and then Heidelberg, a contemporary and friend of Max Weber. Rickert's theory of concept formation in the sciences (as described in Die Grenzen der naturwissenschaftlichen Begriffsbildung: Eine logische Einleitung in die historischen Wissenschaften, 1902, and Science and History: A Critique of Positivist Epistemology, 1898–1902) was a strong influence on Weber's methodological writings and substantive analyses (notably, for example, the ideal-typical methodology employed in the essays on The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism). The sociological significance of the Methodenstreit is explained in Werner J. Cahnman , ‘Max Weber and the Methodological Controversy in the Social Sciences’, in Cahnman (Boskoff) and and Alvin Boskoff ( eds.) , Sociology and History (1964)".

.

Geisteswissenschaften And Naturwissenschaften

A Dictionary of Sociology © A Dictionary of Sociology 1998, originally published by Oxford University Press 1998

It is probably the case that the German term Geist, as it was used in Hegelian philosophy and Hegelianism in the 19th century, is difficult to translate into other languages. The English "mind" contains only incompletely the dazzling background of meaning of "Geist", which then does not solve this problem in the concept of the "Geisteswissenschaften". I find very informative Wikipedia articles on this problem and would like to recommend to read them. getting further information.

Perhaps the following basic distinctions are helpful: You can compare "mind" with "body" in the individual as opposite things. Then mind means the sum of the cognitive abilities to perceive, think and feel the world.

But one can also see the term "Geist" as spirit, as an expression of a religious power, for instance as the "breath of God", so was the understanding of the people of Israel in the Bible. Then spirit is a transcendent concept which faces "nature" and "the world". But because man, according to the monotheistic religions (Judaism, Christianity, Islam), is a being created by God - and even possesses an imperfect similarity - man carries something of the Spirit of God in himself, thus stands opposite nature, the world, and the transience of life as a supertemporal principle.

In the narrowest sense one must see "Geist" in the sense of Hegel's idealistic philosophy: as self-realization, that means, as a general principle of development: the "coming to oneself" of everything that exists: God, world, cosmos, the human being.

The term "Geisteswissenschaften" already existed at the beginning of the 19th century, long before Dilthey's philosophy. But as a result of a methodically founded attempt to lead the very different areas of religion, law, languages, history, culture and art to a new form of unity and commonality through a common method, the concept of the "humanities" (=Geisteswissenschaften) gained new weight. The common method is interpretative, called "understanding hermeneutics".

Hein Retter defined it professionally