Lebensphilosophie German term, translated as ‘philosophy of life’, that became current in a variety of popular and philosophical inflections during the second half of the nineteenth century. Such philosophers as Dilthey and Eucken (1846– 1926) frequently applied it to a general philosophical approach or attitude that distinguished itself, on the one hand, from the construction of comprehensive systems by Hegel and his followers and, on the other, from the tendency of empiricism and early positivism to reduce human experience to epistemological questions about sensations or impressions. Rather, a Lebensphilosophie should begin from a recognition of the variety and complexity of concrete and already meaningful human experience as it is ‘lived’; it should acknowledge that all human beings, including the philosopher, are always immersed in historical processes and forms of organization; and it should seek to understand, describe, and sometimes even alter these and their various patterns of interrelation without abstraction or reduction. Such ‘philosophies of life’ as those of Dilthey and Eucken provided much of the philosophical background for the conception of the social sciences as interpretive rather than explanatory disciplines. They also anticipated some central ideas of phenomenology, in particular the notion of the Life-World in Husserl, and certain closely related themes in Heidegger’s version of existentialism. See also DILTHEY , HUSSERL , VERSTEHE. J.P.Su.