In this essay I show that Dilthey does not merely supplement the natural sciences as he knew them with a theory of the human sciences. He also criticizes the natural sciences as part of a larger attack on Western metaphysics and the epistemological conception of science it has fostered. Both the natural and human sciences are rooted in a pre-scientific knowledge (Wissen) of life which is then transformed into mediated forms of conceptual knowledge (Erkenntnis). Whereas the natural sciences increasingly abstract from the reflexive awareness involved in Wissen, the human sciences should not. Instead, the human sciences must make what is immediately reflexive available for reflection.