Friedrich Daniel Ernst Schleiermacher
Encyclopedia
Friedrich Daniel Ernst Schleiermacher (ˈʃlaɪɐmaxɐ) (November 21, 1768 – February 12, 1834) was a German theologian
and philosopher known for his attempt to reconcile the criticisms of the Enlightenment
with traditional Protestant
orthodoxy. He also became influential in the evolution of Higher Criticism, and his work forms part of the foundation of the modern field of hermeneutics. Because of his profound impact on subsequent Christian thought, he is often called the "Father of Modern Liberal Theology." The Neo-Orthodoxy
movement of the twentieth century, typically (though not without challenge) seen to be spearheaded by Karl Barth
, was in many ways an attempt to challenge his influence.
Province of Silesia
as the son of a Reformed Church chaplain in the Prussian army, Schleiermacher started his formal education in a Moravian school at Niesky
in Upper Lusatia
, and at Barby
near Halle
. However, pietistic
Moravian theology failed to satisfy his increasing doubts, and his father reluctantly gave him permission to enter the University of Halle, which had already abandoned pietism and adopted the rationalist
spirit of Friedrich August Wolf
and Johann Salomo Semler
. As a theology
student Schleiermacher pursued an independent course of reading and neglected the study of the Old Testament
and of Oriental languages. However, he did attend the lectures of Semler, where he became acquainted with the techniques of historical criticism
of the New Testament
, and of Johann Augustus Eberhard
, from whom he acquired a love of the philosophy of Plato
and Aristotle
. At the same time he studied the writings of Immanuel Kant
and Friedrich Heinrich Jacobi
, and began to apply ideas from the Greek philosophers to a reconstruction of Kant's system.
Schleiermacher developed a deep-rooted skepticism as a student, and soon he rejected orthodox Christianity.
Brian Gerrish, a scholar of the works of Schleiermacher writes:
Schleiermacher confessed: "Faith is the regalia of the Godhead, you say. Alas! dearest father, if you believe that without this faith no one can attain to salvation in the next world, nor to tranquility in this — and such, I know, is your belief — oh! then pray to God to grant it to me, for to me it is now lost. I cannot believe that he who called himself the Son of Man was the true, eternal God; I cannot believe that his death was a vicarious atonement."
, developing in a cultivated and aristocratic household his deep love of family and social life. Two years later, in 1796, he became chaplain to the Charité
Hospital in Berlin. Lacking scope for the development of his preaching skills, he sought mental and spiritual satisfaction in the city's cultivated society and in intensive philosophical studies, beginning to construct the framework of his philosophical and religious system. Here Schleiermacher became acquainted with art, literature, science and general culture. He was strongly influenced by German Romanticism
, as represented by his friend Karl Wilhelm Friedrich von Schlegel
. This interest is borne out by his Confidential Letters on Schlegel's Lucinde, as well as his relationship with Eleonore Grunow, wife of a Berlin clergyman.
Though his ultimate principles remained unchanged, Romanticism led Schleiermacher to place more emphasis on human emotion and the imagination. Meanwhile he studied Spinoza
and Plato
, both of whom were important influences. He became more indebted to Kant
, though they differed on fundamental points. He sympathised with some of Jacobi's positions, and took some ideas from Fichte
and Schelling
. The literary product of this period of rapid development was his influential book, Reden über die Religion (On Religion: Speeches to Its Cultured Despisers) (1799, ed. Göttingen, 1906; Eng. trans., 1893) and his "new year's gift" to the new century, the Monologen (Soliloquies) (1800; ed. 1902).
In the first book Schleiermacher gave religion an unchanging place among the divine mysteries of human nature, distinguished it from what he regarded as current caricatures of religion, and described the perennial forms of its manifestation. This established the programme of his subsequent theological system. In the Monologen he revealed his ethical manifesto, in which he proclaimed his ideas on the freedom and independence of the spirit, and on the relationship of the mind to the sensual world, and sketched his ideal of the future of the individual and of society.
to the University of Halle, where he remained until 1807, quickly obtaining a reputation as professor and preacher; he exercised a powerful influence in spite of contradictory charges which accused him of atheism, Spinozism and pietism. In this period he wrote his dialogue the Weihnachtsfeier (Christmas Eve: Dialogue on the Incarnation) (1806), which represents a midway point between his Speeches and his great dogmatic work, Der christliche Glaube (The Christian Faith); the speakers represent phases of his growing appreciation of Christianity as well as the conflicting elements of the theology of the period. After the Battle of Jena he returned to Berlin (1807), was soon appointed pastor of the Trinity Church
, and the next year married Henriette von Willich, the widow of his friend.
At the foundation of the University of Berlin (1810), in which he took a prominent part, Schleiermacher obtained a theological chair, and soon became secretary to the Prussian Academy of Sciences
. He took a prominent part in the reorganization of the Prussian church, and became the most powerful advocate of the union of the Lutheran
and Reformed divisions of German Protestantism, paving the way for the Prussian Union
of Churches (1817). The twenty-four years of his professional career in Berlin began with his short outline of theological study (Kurze Darstellung des theologischen Studiums, 1811), in which he sought to do for theology what he had done for religion in his Speeches.
While he preached every Sunday, Schleiermacher also gradually took up in his lectures in the university almost every branch of theology and philosophy — New Testament
exegesis, introduction to and interpretation of the New Testament, ethics
(both philosophic and Christian), dogma
tic and practical theology, church history, history of philosophy, psychology
, dialectics (logic
and metaphysics
), politics
, pedagogy
, translation
and aesthetics
.
In politics Schleiermacher supported liberty and progress, and in the period of reaction which followed the overthrow of Napoleon he was charged by the Prussian government with "demagogic agitation" in conjunction with the patriot Ernst Moritz Arndt
.
At the same time Schleiermacher prepared his chief theological work Der christliche Glaube nach den Grundsätzen der evangelischen Kirche (1821–1822; 2nd ed., greatly altered, 1830–1831; 6th ed., 1884). The fundamental principle is that religious feeling, the sense of absolute dependence on God as communicated by Jesus
through the church, and not the creeds or the letter of Scripture or the rationalistic understanding, is the source and basis of dogmatic theology. The work is therefore simply a description of the facts of religious feeling, or of the inner life of the soul in its relations to God, and these inward facts are looked at in the various stages of their development and presented in their systematic connection. The aim of the work was to reform Protestant theology, to put an end to the unreason and superficiality of both supernaturalism and rationalism, and to deliver religion
and theology
from dependence on perpetually changing systems of philosophy
.
Though the work added to the reputation of its author, it aroused the increased opposition of the theological schools it was intended to overthrow, and at the same time Schleiermacher's defence of the right of the church to frame its own liturgy in opposition to the arbitrary dictation of the monarch or his ministers brought him fresh troubles. He felt isolated, although his church and his lecture-room continued to be crowded.
Schleiermacher continued with his translation of Plato and prepared a new and greatly altered edition of his Christlicher Glaube, anticipating the latter in two letters to his friend Lucke (in the Studien und Kritiken, 1829), in which he defended his theological position generally and his book in particular against opponents on the right and the left.
The same year Schleiermacher lost his only son — a blow which, he said, "drove the nails into his own coffin." But he continued to defend his theological position against Hengstenberg's party on the one hand and the rationalists von Cölln and D. Schulz on the other, protesting against both subscription to the ancient creeds and the imposition of a new rationalistic formulary.
takes as its basis the phenomenal dualism of the ego and the non-ego, and regards the life of man as the interaction of these elements with their interpenetration as its infinite destination. The dualism
is therefore not absolute, and, though present in man's own constitution as composed of body and soul, is relative only even there. The ego is itself both body and soul — the conjunction of both constitutes it. Our "organization" or sense nature has its intellectual element, and our "intellect" its organic element, and there is no such thing as "pure mind" or "pure body." The one general function of the ego, thought, becomes in relation to the non-ego either receptive or spontaneous action, and in both forms of action its organic, or sense, and its intellectual energies co-operate; and in relation to man, nature and the universe the ego gradually finds its true individuality by becoming a part of them, "every extension of consciousness being higher life." The specific functions of the ego, as determined by the relative predominance of sense or intellect, are either functions of the senses (or organism
) or functions of the intellect. The former fall into the two classes of feelings (subjective) and perceptions (objective); the latter, according as the receptive or the spontaneous element predominates, into cognition and volition. In cognition being is the object and in volition it is the purpose of thought: in the first case we receive (in our fashion) the object of thought into ourselves; in the latter we plant it out into the world. Both cognition and volition are functions of thought~ as well as forms of moral action. It is in those two functions that the real life of the ego is manifested, but behind them is self-consciousness permanently present, which is always both subjective and objective — consciousness of ourselves and of the non-ego. This self-consciousness is the third special form or function of thought — which is also called feeling and immediate knowledge. In it we cognize our own inner life as affected by the non-ego. As the non-ego helps or hinders, enlarges or limits, our inner life, we feel pleasure or pain. Aesthetic, moral and religious feelings are respectively produced by the reception into consciousness of large ideas — nature, mankind and the world; those feelings are the sense of being one with these vast objects. Religious feeling therefore is the highest form of thought and of life; in it we are conscious of our unity with the world and God; it is thus the sense of absolute dependence.
Schleiermacher's doctrine of knowledge accepts the fundamental principle of Kant that knowledge is bounded by experience, but it seeks to remove Kant's scepticism as to knowledge of the Ding an sich (the noumenon) or Sein, as Schleiermacher's term is. The idea of knowledge or scientific thought as distinguished from the passive form of thought — of aesthetics and religion — is thought which is produced by all thinkers in the same form and which corresponds to being. All knowledge takes the form of the concept (Begriff) or the judgment (Urteil), the former conceiving the variety of being as a definite unity and plurality, and the latter simply connecting the concept with certain individual objects. In the concept therefore the intellectual and in the judgment the organic or sense element predominates. The universal uniformity of the production of judgments presupposes the uniformity of our relations to the outward world, and the uniformity of concepts rests similarly on the likeness of our inward nature. This uniformity is not based on the sameness of either the intellectual or the organic functions alone, but on the correspondence of the forms of thought and sensation with the forms of being. The essential nature of the concept is that it combines the general and the special, and the same combination recurs in being; in being the system of substantial or permanent forms answers to the system of concepts and the relation of cause and effect to the system of judgments, the higher concept answering to "force" and the lower to the phenomena of force, and the judgment to the contingent interaction of things. The sum of being consists of the two systems of substantial forms and interactional relations, and it reappears in the form of concept and judgment, the concept representing being and the judgment being in action. Knowledge has under both forms the same object, the relative difference of the two being that when the conceptual form predominates we have speculative science and when the form of judgment prevails we have empirical or historical science. Throughout the domain of knowledge the two forms are found in constant mutual relations, another proof of the fundamental unity of thought and being or of the objectivity of knowledge. It is obvious that Plato, Spinoza and Kant had contributed characteristic elements of their thought to this system, and directly or indirectly it was largely indebted to Schelling for fundamental conceptions.
Schleiermacher's work has had a profound impact upon the philosophical field of Hermeneutics. His influence on the philosophical hermeneutics rests on the way in which he generalized hermeneutics. For Schleiermacher, sacred scripture was a special case of the more general problem of interpretation. The task of hermeneutics, then, was to avoid misunderstanding and to discover the author's intent. While Schleiermacher did not publish extensively on hermeneutics during his lifetime, he lectured widely on the field. His published and unpublished writings on hermeneutics were collected together after his death, albeit with some disagreement over ordering and placement of individual texts and lecture notes.
and Fichte
, with only Plato
and Spinoza finding favour in his eyes. He failed to discover in previous moral systems any necessary basis in thought, any completeness as regards the phenomena of moral action, any systematic arrangement of its parts and any clear and distinct treatment of specific moral acts and relations.
Schleiermacher's own moral system is an attempt to supply these deficiencies. It connects the moral world by a deductive process with the fundamental idea of knowledge and being; it offers a view of the entire world of human action which at all events aims at being exhaustive; it presents an arrangement of the matter of the science which tabulates its constituents after the model of the physical sciences; and it supplies a sharply defined treatment of specific moral phenomena in their relation to the fundamental idea of human life as a whole. Schleiermacher defines ethics as the theory of the nature of the reason, or as the scientific treatment of the effects produced by human reason in the world of nature and man.
As a theoretical or speculative science it is purely descriptive and not practical, being correlated on the one hand to physical science and on the other to history. Its method is the same as that of physical science, being distinguished from the latter only by its matter. The ontological basis of ethics is the unity of the real and the ideal, and the psychological and actual basis of the ethical process is the tendency of reason and nature to unite in the form of the complete organization of the latter by the former. The end of the ethical process is that nature (i.e. all that is not mind, the human body as well as external nature) may become the perfect symbol and organ of mind. Conscience, as the subjective expression of the presupposed identity of reason and nature in their bases, guarantees the practicability of our moral vocation. Nature is preordained or constituted to become the symbol and organ of mind, just as mind is endowed with the impulse to realize this end. But the moral law must not be conceived under the form of an "imperative" or a "Sollen"; it differs from a law of nature only as being descriptive of the fact that it ranks the mind as conscious will, or Zweckdenken, above nature. Strictly speaking, the antitheses of good and bad and of free and necessary have no place in an ethical system, but simply in history, which is obliged to compare the actual with the ideal, but as far as the terms "good" and "bad" are used in morals they express the rule or the contrary of reason, or the harmony or the contrary of the particular and the general. The idea of free as opposed to necessary expresses simply the fact that the mind can propose to itself ends, though a man cannot alter his own nature.
In contrast to Kant
and Fichte
and modern moral philosophers, Schleiermacher reintroduced and assigned pre-eminent importance to the doctrine of the summum bonum
, or highest good. It represents in his system the ideal and aim of the entire life of man, supplying the ethical view of the conduct of individuals in relation to society and the universe, and therewith constituting a philosophy of history at the same time. Starting with the idea of the highest good and of its constituent elements (Güter), or the chief forms of the union of mind and nature, Schleiermacher's system divides itself into the doctrine of moral ends, the doctrine of virtue and the doctrine of duties; in other words, as a development of the idea of the subjection of nature to reason it becomes a description of the actual forms of the triumphs of reason, of the moral power manifested therein and of the specific methods employed. Every moral good or product has a fourfold character: it is individual and' universal; it is an organ and symbol of the reason, that is, it is the product of the individual with relation to the community, and represents or manifests as well as classifies and rules nature.
The first two characteristics provide for the functions and rights of the individual as well as those of the community or race. Though a moral action may have these four characteristics at various degrees of strength, it ceases to be moral if one of them is quite absent. All moral products may be classified according to the predominance of one or the other of these characteristics. Universal organizing action produces the forms of intercourse, and universal symbolizing action produces the various forms of science; individual organizing action yields the forms of property and individual symbolizing action the various representations of feeling, all these constituting the relations, the productive spheres, or the social conditions of moral action. Moral functions cannot be performed by the individual in isolation but only in his relation to the family, the state, the school, the church, and society — all forms of human life which ethical science finds to its hand and leaves to the science of natural history to account for. The moral process is accomplished by the various sections of humanity in their individual spheres, and the doctrine of virtue deals with the reason as the moral power in each individual by which the totality of moral products is obtained.
Schleiermacher classifies the virtues under the two forms of Gesinnung and Fertigkeit, the first consisting of the pure ideal element in action and the second the form it assumes in relation to circumstances, each of the two classes falling respectively into the two divisions of wisdom and love and of intelligence and application. In his system the doctrine of duty is the description of the method of the attainment of ethical ends, the conception of duty as an imperative, or obligation, being excluded, as we have seen. No action fulfills the conditions of duty except as it combines the three following antitheses: reference to the moral idea in its whole extent and likewise to a definite moral sphere; connexion with existing conditions and at the same time absolute personal production; the fulfillment of the entire moral vocation every moment though it can only be done in a definite sphere. Duties are divided with reference to the principle that every man make his own the entire moral problem and act at the same time in an existing moral society. This condition gives four general classes of duty: duties of general association or duties with reference to the community (Rechtspflicht), and duties of vocation (Berufspflicht) — both with a universal reference, duties of the conscience (in which the individual is sole judge), and duties of love or of personal association.
It was only the first of the three sections of the science of ethics — the doctrine of moral ends — that Schleiermacher handled with approximate completeness; the other two sections were treated very summarily. In his Christian Ethics he dealt with the subject from the basis of the Christian consciousness instead of from that of reason generally; the ethical phenomena dealt with are the same in both systems, and they throw light on each other, while the Christian system treats more at length and less aphoristically the principal ethical realities — church, state, family, art, science and society. Rothe
, amongst other moral philosophers, bases his system substantially, with important departures, on Schleiermacher's. In Beneke
's moral system his fundamental idea was worked out in its psychological relations.
Schleiermacher, like John Hick
, held that an eternal hell
was not compatible with the love of God. Divine punishment was rehabilitative, not penal, and designed to reform the person. He was one of the first major theologians of modern times to teach Christian Universalism
.
, Fichte
, Jacobi
and the Romantic
school Schleiermacher had imbibed a profound and mystical view of the inner depths of the human personality. His religious thought found its expression most notably in his magisterial The Christian Faith, a systematic effort considered by many to be one of the true classics of Christian theology.
The ego, the person, is an individualization of universal reason
; and the primary act of self-consciousness
is the first conjunction of universal and individual life, the immediate union or marriage of the universe with incarnated reason. Thus every person becomes a specific and original representation of the universe and a compendium of humanity, a microcosmos in which the world is immediately reflected. While therefore we cannot, as we have seen, attain the idea of the supreme unity of thought and being by either cognition or volition, we can find it in our own personality, in immediate self-consciousness or (which is the same in Schleiermacher's terminology) feeling. Feeling in this higher sense (as distinguished from "organic" sensibility, Empfindung), which is the minimum of distinct antithetic consciousness, the cessation of the antithesis of subject and object, constitutes likewise the unity of our being, in which the opposite functions of cognition
and volition
have their fundamental and permanent background of personality and their transitional link. Having its seat in this central point of our being, or indeed consisting in the essential fact of self-consciousness, religion lies at the basis of all thought and action.
At various periods of his life Schleiermacher used different terms to represent the character and relation of religious feeling. In his earlier days he called it a feeling or intuition of the universe, consciousness of the unity of reason and nature, of the infinite and the eternal within the finite and the temporal. In later life he described it as the feeling of absolute dependence, or, as meaning the same thing, the consciousness of being in relation to God. In his Addresses on Religion (1799), he wrote:
His concept of church has been contrasted with J.S. Semler's
.
is named for this German theologian. See also Freimut Börngen
, German astronomer.
See also Sämmtliche Werke (Berlin, 1834f.), and Werke: mit einem Bildnis Schleiermachers (Leipzig, 1910) in four volumes.
Other works include:
Modern editions:
in French
Theology
Theology is the systematic and rational study of religion and its influences and of the nature of religious truths, or the learned profession acquired by completing specialized training in religious studies, usually at a university or school of divinity or seminary.-Definition:Augustine of Hippo...
and philosopher known for his attempt to reconcile the criticisms of the Enlightenment
Age of Enlightenment
The Age of Enlightenment was an elite cultural movement of intellectuals in 18th century Europe that sought to mobilize the power of reason in order to reform society and advance knowledge. It promoted intellectual interchange and opposed intolerance and abuses in church and state...
with traditional Protestant
Protestantism
Protestantism is one of the three major groupings within Christianity. It is a movement that began in Germany in the early 16th century as a reaction against medieval Roman Catholic doctrines and practices, especially in regards to salvation, justification, and ecclesiology.The doctrines of the...
orthodoxy. He also became influential in the evolution of Higher Criticism, and his work forms part of the foundation of the modern field of hermeneutics. Because of his profound impact on subsequent Christian thought, he is often called the "Father of Modern Liberal Theology." The Neo-Orthodoxy
Neo-orthodoxy
Neo-orthodoxy, in Europe also known as theology of crisis and dialectical theology,is an approach to theology in Protestantism that was developed in the aftermath of the First World War...
movement of the twentieth century, typically (though not without challenge) seen to be spearheaded by Karl Barth
Karl Barth
Karl Barth was a Swiss Reformed theologian whom critics hold to be among the most important Christian thinkers of the 20th century; Pope Pius XII described him as the most important theologian since Thomas Aquinas...
, was in many ways an attempt to challenge his influence.
Early life and development
Born in Breslau in the PrussianKingdom of Prussia
The Kingdom of Prussia was a German kingdom from 1701 to 1918. Until the defeat of Germany in World War I, it comprised almost two-thirds of the area of the German Empire...
Province of Silesia
Province of Silesia
The Province of Silesia was a province of the Kingdom of Prussia from 1815 to 1919.-Geography:The territory comprised the bulk of the former Bohemian crown land of Silesia and the County of Kladsko, which King Frederick the Great had conquered from the Austrian Habsburg Monarchy in the 18th...
as the son of a Reformed Church chaplain in the Prussian army, Schleiermacher started his formal education in a Moravian school at Niesky
Niesky
Niesky is a small town in Upper Lusatia in eastern the Free State of Saxony, Germany. It has a population of about 11,000 and is part of the district of Görlitz....
in Upper Lusatia
Lusatia
Lusatia is a historical region in Central Europe. It stretches from the Bóbr and Kwisa rivers in the east to the Elbe valley in the west, today located within the German states of Saxony and Brandenburg as well as in the Lower Silesian and Lubusz voivodeships of western Poland...
, and at Barby
Barby, Germany
Barby is a town in the Salzlandkreis district, in Saxony-Anhalt, Germany. It is situated on the left bank of the Elbe river, near the confluence with the Saale, approx. southeast of Magdeburg...
near Halle
Halle, Saxony-Anhalt
Halle is the largest city in the German state of Saxony-Anhalt. It is also called Halle an der Saale in order to distinguish it from the town of Halle in North Rhine-Westphalia...
. However, pietistic
Pietism
Pietism was a movement within Lutheranism, lasting from the late 17th century to the mid-18th century and later. It proved to be very influential throughout Protestantism and Anabaptism, inspiring not only Anglican priest John Wesley to begin the Methodist movement, but also Alexander Mack to...
Moravian theology failed to satisfy his increasing doubts, and his father reluctantly gave him permission to enter the University of Halle, which had already abandoned pietism and adopted the rationalist
Rationalism
In epistemology and in its modern sense, rationalism is "any view appealing to reason as a source of knowledge or justification" . In more technical terms, it is a method or a theory "in which the criterion of the truth is not sensory but intellectual and deductive"...
spirit of Friedrich August Wolf
Friedrich August Wolf
Friedrich August Wolf was a German philologist and critic.He was born at Hainrode, a village not far from Nordhausen, Germany. His father was the village schoolmaster and organist...
and Johann Salomo Semler
Johann Salomo Semler
Johann Salomo Semler was a German church historian and biblical commentator.-Youth and education:He was born at Saalfeld in Electoral Saxony, the son of a poor clergyman. He grew up in pietistic surroundings, which powerfully influenced him his life through, though he never became a Pietist...
. As a theology
Theology
Theology is the systematic and rational study of religion and its influences and of the nature of religious truths, or the learned profession acquired by completing specialized training in religious studies, usually at a university or school of divinity or seminary.-Definition:Augustine of Hippo...
student Schleiermacher pursued an independent course of reading and neglected the study of the Old Testament
Old Testament
The Old Testament, of which Christians hold different views, is a Christian term for the religious writings of ancient Israel held sacred and inspired by Christians which overlaps with the 24-book canon of the Masoretic Text of Judaism...
and of Oriental languages. However, he did attend the lectures of Semler, where he became acquainted with the techniques of historical criticism
Historical criticism
Historical criticism, or historical-critical method, and also known as higher criticism, is a branch of literary criticism that investigates the origins of ancient text in order to understand "the world behind the text"....
of the New Testament
New Testament
The New Testament is the second major division of the Christian biblical canon, the first such division being the much longer Old Testament....
, and of Johann Augustus Eberhard
Johann Augustus Eberhard
Johann Augustus Eberhard was a German theologian and "popular philosopher".-Life and career:Eberhard was born at Halberstadt in the Principality of Halberstadt, where his father was a school-teacher and the singing-master at the church of St. Martin's...
, from whom he acquired a love of the philosophy of Plato
Plato
Plato , was a Classical Greek philosopher, mathematician, student of Socrates, writer of philosophical dialogues, and founder of the Academy in Athens, the first institution of higher learning in the Western world. Along with his mentor, Socrates, and his student, Aristotle, Plato helped to lay the...
and Aristotle
Aristotle
Aristotle was a Greek philosopher and polymath, a student of Plato and teacher of Alexander the Great. His writings cover many subjects, including physics, metaphysics, poetry, theater, music, logic, rhetoric, linguistics, politics, government, ethics, biology, and zoology...
. At the same time he studied the writings of Immanuel Kant
Immanuel Kant
Immanuel Kant was a German philosopher from Königsberg , researching, lecturing and writing on philosophy and anthropology at the end of the 18th Century Enlightenment....
and Friedrich Heinrich Jacobi
Friedrich Heinrich Jacobi
Friedrich Heinrich Jacobi was an influential German philosopher, literary figure, socialite and the younger brother of poet Johann Georg Jacobi...
, and began to apply ideas from the Greek philosophers to a reconstruction of Kant's system.
Schleiermacher developed a deep-rooted skepticism as a student, and soon he rejected orthodox Christianity.
Brian Gerrish, a scholar of the works of Schleiermacher writes:
In a letter to his father, Schleiermacher drops the mild hint that his teachers fail to deal with those widespread doubts that trouble so many young people of the present day. His father misses the hint. He has himself read some of the skeptical literature, he says, and can assure Schleiermacher that it is not worth wasting time on. For six whole months there is no further word from his son. Then comes the bombshell. In a moving letter of 21 January 1787, Schleiermacher admits that the doubts alluded to are his own. His father has said that faith is the "regalia of the Godhead," that is, God's royal due.
Schleiermacher confessed: "Faith is the regalia of the Godhead, you say. Alas! dearest father, if you believe that without this faith no one can attain to salvation in the next world, nor to tranquility in this — and such, I know, is your belief — oh! then pray to God to grant it to me, for to me it is now lost. I cannot believe that he who called himself the Son of Man was the true, eternal God; I cannot believe that his death was a vicarious atonement."
Tutoring, chaplaincy, first works
At the completion of his course at Halle, Schleiermacher became the private tutor to the family of Count Dohna-SchlobittenFriedrich Ferdinand Alexander zu Dohna-Schlobitten
Friedrich Ferdinand Alexander zu Dohna-Schlobitten was a Prussian politician.- Biography :Dohna-Schlobitten was born at Finckenstein to Friedrich Alexander Burggraf und Graf zu Dohna-Schlobitten and Caroline née Finck von Finckenstein...
, developing in a cultivated and aristocratic household his deep love of family and social life. Two years later, in 1796, he became chaplain to the Charité
Charité
The Charité - Universitätsmedizin Berlin is the medical school for both the Humboldt University and the Free University of Berlin. After the merger with their fourth campus in 2003, the Charité is one of the largest university hospitals in Europe....
Hospital in Berlin. Lacking scope for the development of his preaching skills, he sought mental and spiritual satisfaction in the city's cultivated society and in intensive philosophical studies, beginning to construct the framework of his philosophical and religious system. Here Schleiermacher became acquainted with art, literature, science and general culture. He was strongly influenced by German Romanticism
German Romanticism
For the general context, see Romanticism.In the philosophy, art, and culture of German-speaking countries, German Romanticism was the dominant movement of the late 18th and early 19th centuries. German Romanticism developed relatively late compared to its English counterpart, coinciding in its...
, as represented by his friend Karl Wilhelm Friedrich von Schlegel
Karl Wilhelm Friedrich von Schlegel
Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel was a German poet, critic and scholar. With his older brother, August Wilhelm Schlegel, he was a critical leader of German Romanticism.-Life and work:...
. This interest is borne out by his Confidential Letters on Schlegel's Lucinde, as well as his relationship with Eleonore Grunow, wife of a Berlin clergyman.
Though his ultimate principles remained unchanged, Romanticism led Schleiermacher to place more emphasis on human emotion and the imagination. Meanwhile he studied Spinoza
Baruch Spinoza
Baruch de Spinoza and later Benedict de Spinoza was a Dutch Jewish philosopher. Revealing considerable scientific aptitude, the breadth and importance of Spinoza's work was not fully realized until years after his death...
and Plato
Plato
Plato , was a Classical Greek philosopher, mathematician, student of Socrates, writer of philosophical dialogues, and founder of the Academy in Athens, the first institution of higher learning in the Western world. Along with his mentor, Socrates, and his student, Aristotle, Plato helped to lay the...
, both of whom were important influences. He became more indebted to Kant
Immanuel Kant
Immanuel Kant was a German philosopher from Königsberg , researching, lecturing and writing on philosophy and anthropology at the end of the 18th Century Enlightenment....
, though they differed on fundamental points. He sympathised with some of Jacobi's positions, and took some ideas from Fichte
Johann Gottlieb Fichte
Johann Gottlieb Fichte was a German philosopher. He was one of the founding figures of the philosophical movement known as German idealism, a movement that developed from the theoretical and ethical writings of Immanuel Kant...
and Schelling
Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph Schelling
Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph Schelling , later von Schelling, was a German philosopher. Standard histories of philosophy make him the midpoint in the development of German idealism, situating him between Fichte, his mentor prior to 1800, and Hegel, his former university roommate and erstwhile friend...
. The literary product of this period of rapid development was his influential book, Reden über die Religion (On Religion: Speeches to Its Cultured Despisers) (1799, ed. Göttingen, 1906; Eng. trans., 1893) and his "new year's gift" to the new century, the Monologen (Soliloquies) (1800; ed. 1902).
In the first book Schleiermacher gave religion an unchanging place among the divine mysteries of human nature, distinguished it from what he regarded as current caricatures of religion, and described the perennial forms of its manifestation. This established the programme of his subsequent theological system. In the Monologen he revealed his ethical manifesto, in which he proclaimed his ideas on the freedom and independence of the spirit, and on the relationship of the mind to the sensual world, and sketched his ideal of the future of the individual and of society.
Pastorship
From 1802 to 1804, Schleiermacher served as a pastor in the Pomeranian town of Stolp. He relieved Friedrich Schlegel entirely of his nominal responsibility for the translation of Plato, which they had together undertaken (vols. 1–5, 1804–1810; vol. 6, Repub. 1828). Another work, Grundlinien einer Kritik der bisherigen Sittenlehre [Outlines of a Critique of the Doctrines of Morality to date] (1803), the first of his strictly critical and philosophical productions, occupied him; it is a criticism of all previous moral systems, including those of Kant and Fichte — Plato's and Spinoza's find most favour. It contends that the tests of the soundness of a moral system are the completeness of its view of the laws and ends of human life as a whole and the harmonious arrangement of its subject-matter under one fundamental principle. Although it is almost exclusively critical and negative, the book announces Schleiermacher's later view of moral science, attaching prime importance to a Güterlehre, or doctrine of the ends to be obtained by moral action. The obscurity of the book's style and its negative tone prevented immediate success.Professorship
In 1804, Schleiermacher moved as university preacher and professor of theologyTheology
Theology is the systematic and rational study of religion and its influences and of the nature of religious truths, or the learned profession acquired by completing specialized training in religious studies, usually at a university or school of divinity or seminary.-Definition:Augustine of Hippo...
to the University of Halle, where he remained until 1807, quickly obtaining a reputation as professor and preacher; he exercised a powerful influence in spite of contradictory charges which accused him of atheism, Spinozism and pietism. In this period he wrote his dialogue the Weihnachtsfeier (Christmas Eve: Dialogue on the Incarnation) (1806), which represents a midway point between his Speeches and his great dogmatic work, Der christliche Glaube (The Christian Faith); the speakers represent phases of his growing appreciation of Christianity as well as the conflicting elements of the theology of the period. After the Battle of Jena he returned to Berlin (1807), was soon appointed pastor of the Trinity Church
Holy Trinity Church (Berlin)
Trinity Church was a Baroque Protestant church in Berlin, eastern Germany, dedicated to the Holy Trinity. It was opened in August 1739 and destroyed in November 1943, with its rubble removed in 1947....
, and the next year married Henriette von Willich, the widow of his friend.
At the foundation of the University of Berlin (1810), in which he took a prominent part, Schleiermacher obtained a theological chair, and soon became secretary to the Prussian Academy of Sciences
Prussian Academy of Sciences
The Prussian Academy of Sciences was an academy established in Berlin on 11 July 1700, four years after the Akademie der Künste or "Arts Academy", to which "Berlin Academy" may also refer.-Origins:...
. He took a prominent part in the reorganization of the Prussian church, and became the most powerful advocate of the union of the Lutheran
Lutheranism
Lutheranism is a major branch of Western Christianity that identifies with the theology of Martin Luther, a German reformer. Luther's efforts to reform the theology and practice of the church launched the Protestant Reformation...
and Reformed divisions of German Protestantism, paving the way for the Prussian Union
Prussian Union (Evangelical Christian Church)
The Prussian Union was the merger of the Lutheran Church and the Reformed Church in Prussia, by a series of decrees – among them the Unionsurkunde – by King Frederick William III...
of Churches (1817). The twenty-four years of his professional career in Berlin began with his short outline of theological study (Kurze Darstellung des theologischen Studiums, 1811), in which he sought to do for theology what he had done for religion in his Speeches.
While he preached every Sunday, Schleiermacher also gradually took up in his lectures in the university almost every branch of theology and philosophy — New Testament
New Testament
The New Testament is the second major division of the Christian biblical canon, the first such division being the much longer Old Testament....
exegesis, introduction to and interpretation of the New Testament, ethics
Ethics
Ethics, also known as moral philosophy, is a branch of philosophy that addresses questions about morality—that is, concepts such as good and evil, right and wrong, virtue and vice, justice and crime, etc.Major branches of ethics include:...
(both philosophic and Christian), dogma
Dogma
Dogma is the established belief or doctrine held by a religion, or a particular group or organization. It is authoritative and not to be disputed, doubted, or diverged from, by the practitioners or believers...
tic and practical theology, church history, history of philosophy, psychology
Psychology
Psychology is the study of the mind and behavior. Its immediate goal is to understand individuals and groups by both establishing general principles and researching specific cases. For many, the ultimate goal of psychology is to benefit society...
, dialectics (logic
Logic
In philosophy, Logic is the formal systematic study of the principles of valid inference and correct reasoning. Logic is used in most intellectual activities, but is studied primarily in the disciplines of philosophy, mathematics, semantics, and computer science...
and metaphysics
Metaphysics
Metaphysics is a branch of philosophy concerned with explaining the fundamental nature of being and the world, although the term is not easily defined. Traditionally, metaphysics attempts to answer two basic questions in the broadest possible terms:...
), politics
Politics
Politics is a process by which groups of people make collective decisions. The term is generally applied to the art or science of running governmental or state affairs, including behavior within civil governments, but also applies to institutions, fields, and special interest groups such as the...
, pedagogy
Pedagogy
Pedagogy is the study of being a teacher or the process of teaching. The term generally refers to strategies of instruction, or a style of instruction....
, translation
Translation
Translation is the communication of the meaning of a source-language text by means of an equivalent target-language text. Whereas interpreting undoubtedly antedates writing, translation began only after the appearance of written literature; there exist partial translations of the Sumerian Epic of...
and aesthetics
Aesthetics
Aesthetics is a branch of philosophy dealing with the nature of beauty, art, and taste, and with the creation and appreciation of beauty. It is more scientifically defined as the study of sensory or sensori-emotional values, sometimes called judgments of sentiment and taste...
.
In politics Schleiermacher supported liberty and progress, and in the period of reaction which followed the overthrow of Napoleon he was charged by the Prussian government with "demagogic agitation" in conjunction with the patriot Ernst Moritz Arndt
Ernst Moritz Arndt
Ernst Moritz Arndt was a German nationalistic and antisemitic author and poet. Early in his life, he fought for the abolition of serfdom, later against Napoleonic dominance over Germany, and had to flee to Sweden for some time due to his anti-French positions...
.
At the same time Schleiermacher prepared his chief theological work Der christliche Glaube nach den Grundsätzen der evangelischen Kirche (1821–1822; 2nd ed., greatly altered, 1830–1831; 6th ed., 1884). The fundamental principle is that religious feeling, the sense of absolute dependence on God as communicated by Jesus
Jesus
Jesus of Nazareth , commonly referred to as Jesus Christ or simply as Jesus or Christ, is the central figure of Christianity...
through the church, and not the creeds or the letter of Scripture or the rationalistic understanding, is the source and basis of dogmatic theology. The work is therefore simply a description of the facts of religious feeling, or of the inner life of the soul in its relations to God, and these inward facts are looked at in the various stages of their development and presented in their systematic connection. The aim of the work was to reform Protestant theology, to put an end to the unreason and superficiality of both supernaturalism and rationalism, and to deliver religion
Religion
Religion is a collection of cultural systems, belief systems, and worldviews that establishes symbols that relate humanity to spirituality and, sometimes, to moral values. Many religions have narratives, symbols, traditions and sacred histories that are intended to give meaning to life or to...
and theology
Theology
Theology is the systematic and rational study of religion and its influences and of the nature of religious truths, or the learned profession acquired by completing specialized training in religious studies, usually at a university or school of divinity or seminary.-Definition:Augustine of Hippo...
from dependence on perpetually changing systems of philosophy
Philosophy
Philosophy is the study of general and fundamental problems, such as those connected with existence, knowledge, values, reason, mind, and language. Philosophy is distinguished from other ways of addressing such problems by its critical, generally systematic approach and its reliance on rational...
.
Though the work added to the reputation of its author, it aroused the increased opposition of the theological schools it was intended to overthrow, and at the same time Schleiermacher's defence of the right of the church to frame its own liturgy in opposition to the arbitrary dictation of the monarch or his ministers brought him fresh troubles. He felt isolated, although his church and his lecture-room continued to be crowded.
Schleiermacher continued with his translation of Plato and prepared a new and greatly altered edition of his Christlicher Glaube, anticipating the latter in two letters to his friend Lucke (in the Studien und Kritiken, 1829), in which he defended his theological position generally and his book in particular against opponents on the right and the left.
The same year Schleiermacher lost his only son — a blow which, he said, "drove the nails into his own coffin." But he continued to defend his theological position against Hengstenberg's party on the one hand and the rationalists von Cölln and D. Schulz on the other, protesting against both subscription to the ancient creeds and the imposition of a new rationalistic formulary.
Death
Schleiermacher died of an inflammation of the lungs on February 12, 1834.Philosophical system
Schleiermacher's psychologyPsychology
Psychology is the study of the mind and behavior. Its immediate goal is to understand individuals and groups by both establishing general principles and researching specific cases. For many, the ultimate goal of psychology is to benefit society...
takes as its basis the phenomenal dualism of the ego and the non-ego, and regards the life of man as the interaction of these elements with their interpenetration as its infinite destination. The dualism
Dualism
Dualism denotes a state of two parts. The term 'dualism' was originally coined to denote co-eternal binary opposition, a meaning that is preserved in metaphysical and philosophical duality discourse but has been diluted in general or common usages. Dualism can refer to moral dualism, Dualism (from...
is therefore not absolute, and, though present in man's own constitution as composed of body and soul, is relative only even there. The ego is itself both body and soul — the conjunction of both constitutes it. Our "organization" or sense nature has its intellectual element, and our "intellect" its organic element, and there is no such thing as "pure mind" or "pure body." The one general function of the ego, thought, becomes in relation to the non-ego either receptive or spontaneous action, and in both forms of action its organic, or sense, and its intellectual energies co-operate; and in relation to man, nature and the universe the ego gradually finds its true individuality by becoming a part of them, "every extension of consciousness being higher life." The specific functions of the ego, as determined by the relative predominance of sense or intellect, are either functions of the senses (or organism
Organism
In biology, an organism is any contiguous living system . In at least some form, all organisms are capable of response to stimuli, reproduction, growth and development, and maintenance of homoeostasis as a stable whole.An organism may either be unicellular or, as in the case of humans, comprise...
) or functions of the intellect. The former fall into the two classes of feelings (subjective) and perceptions (objective); the latter, according as the receptive or the spontaneous element predominates, into cognition and volition. In cognition being is the object and in volition it is the purpose of thought: in the first case we receive (in our fashion) the object of thought into ourselves; in the latter we plant it out into the world. Both cognition and volition are functions of thought~ as well as forms of moral action. It is in those two functions that the real life of the ego is manifested, but behind them is self-consciousness permanently present, which is always both subjective and objective — consciousness of ourselves and of the non-ego. This self-consciousness is the third special form or function of thought — which is also called feeling and immediate knowledge. In it we cognize our own inner life as affected by the non-ego. As the non-ego helps or hinders, enlarges or limits, our inner life, we feel pleasure or pain. Aesthetic, moral and religious feelings are respectively produced by the reception into consciousness of large ideas — nature, mankind and the world; those feelings are the sense of being one with these vast objects. Religious feeling therefore is the highest form of thought and of life; in it we are conscious of our unity with the world and God; it is thus the sense of absolute dependence.
Schleiermacher's doctrine of knowledge accepts the fundamental principle of Kant that knowledge is bounded by experience, but it seeks to remove Kant's scepticism as to knowledge of the Ding an sich (the noumenon) or Sein, as Schleiermacher's term is. The idea of knowledge or scientific thought as distinguished from the passive form of thought — of aesthetics and religion — is thought which is produced by all thinkers in the same form and which corresponds to being. All knowledge takes the form of the concept (Begriff) or the judgment (Urteil), the former conceiving the variety of being as a definite unity and plurality, and the latter simply connecting the concept with certain individual objects. In the concept therefore the intellectual and in the judgment the organic or sense element predominates. The universal uniformity of the production of judgments presupposes the uniformity of our relations to the outward world, and the uniformity of concepts rests similarly on the likeness of our inward nature. This uniformity is not based on the sameness of either the intellectual or the organic functions alone, but on the correspondence of the forms of thought and sensation with the forms of being. The essential nature of the concept is that it combines the general and the special, and the same combination recurs in being; in being the system of substantial or permanent forms answers to the system of concepts and the relation of cause and effect to the system of judgments, the higher concept answering to "force" and the lower to the phenomena of force, and the judgment to the contingent interaction of things. The sum of being consists of the two systems of substantial forms and interactional relations, and it reappears in the form of concept and judgment, the concept representing being and the judgment being in action. Knowledge has under both forms the same object, the relative difference of the two being that when the conceptual form predominates we have speculative science and when the form of judgment prevails we have empirical or historical science. Throughout the domain of knowledge the two forms are found in constant mutual relations, another proof of the fundamental unity of thought and being or of the objectivity of knowledge. It is obvious that Plato, Spinoza and Kant had contributed characteristic elements of their thought to this system, and directly or indirectly it was largely indebted to Schelling for fundamental conceptions.
Schleiermacher's work has had a profound impact upon the philosophical field of Hermeneutics. His influence on the philosophical hermeneutics rests on the way in which he generalized hermeneutics. For Schleiermacher, sacred scripture was a special case of the more general problem of interpretation. The task of hermeneutics, then, was to avoid misunderstanding and to discover the author's intent. While Schleiermacher did not publish extensively on hermeneutics during his lifetime, he lectured widely on the field. His published and unpublished writings on hermeneutics were collected together after his death, albeit with some disagreement over ordering and placement of individual texts and lecture notes.
Ethics
Next to religion and theology, Schleiermacher devoted himself to the moral world, of which the phenomena of religion and theology were, in his systems, only constituent elements. In his earlier essays he endeavoured to point out the defects of ancient and modern ethical thinkers, particularly of KantKANT
KANT is a computer algebra system for mathematicians interested in algebraic number theory, performing sophisticated computations in algebraic number fields, in global function fields, and in local fields. KASH is the associated command line interface...
and Fichte
Johann Gottlieb Fichte
Johann Gottlieb Fichte was a German philosopher. He was one of the founding figures of the philosophical movement known as German idealism, a movement that developed from the theoretical and ethical writings of Immanuel Kant...
, with only Plato
Plato
Plato , was a Classical Greek philosopher, mathematician, student of Socrates, writer of philosophical dialogues, and founder of the Academy in Athens, the first institution of higher learning in the Western world. Along with his mentor, Socrates, and his student, Aristotle, Plato helped to lay the...
and Spinoza finding favour in his eyes. He failed to discover in previous moral systems any necessary basis in thought, any completeness as regards the phenomena of moral action, any systematic arrangement of its parts and any clear and distinct treatment of specific moral acts and relations.
Schleiermacher's own moral system is an attempt to supply these deficiencies. It connects the moral world by a deductive process with the fundamental idea of knowledge and being; it offers a view of the entire world of human action which at all events aims at being exhaustive; it presents an arrangement of the matter of the science which tabulates its constituents after the model of the physical sciences; and it supplies a sharply defined treatment of specific moral phenomena in their relation to the fundamental idea of human life as a whole. Schleiermacher defines ethics as the theory of the nature of the reason, or as the scientific treatment of the effects produced by human reason in the world of nature and man.
As a theoretical or speculative science it is purely descriptive and not practical, being correlated on the one hand to physical science and on the other to history. Its method is the same as that of physical science, being distinguished from the latter only by its matter. The ontological basis of ethics is the unity of the real and the ideal, and the psychological and actual basis of the ethical process is the tendency of reason and nature to unite in the form of the complete organization of the latter by the former. The end of the ethical process is that nature (i.e. all that is not mind, the human body as well as external nature) may become the perfect symbol and organ of mind. Conscience, as the subjective expression of the presupposed identity of reason and nature in their bases, guarantees the practicability of our moral vocation. Nature is preordained or constituted to become the symbol and organ of mind, just as mind is endowed with the impulse to realize this end. But the moral law must not be conceived under the form of an "imperative" or a "Sollen"; it differs from a law of nature only as being descriptive of the fact that it ranks the mind as conscious will, or Zweckdenken, above nature. Strictly speaking, the antitheses of good and bad and of free and necessary have no place in an ethical system, but simply in history, which is obliged to compare the actual with the ideal, but as far as the terms "good" and "bad" are used in morals they express the rule or the contrary of reason, or the harmony or the contrary of the particular and the general. The idea of free as opposed to necessary expresses simply the fact that the mind can propose to itself ends, though a man cannot alter his own nature.
In contrast to Kant
KANT
KANT is a computer algebra system for mathematicians interested in algebraic number theory, performing sophisticated computations in algebraic number fields, in global function fields, and in local fields. KASH is the associated command line interface...
and Fichte
Johann Gottlieb Fichte
Johann Gottlieb Fichte was a German philosopher. He was one of the founding figures of the philosophical movement known as German idealism, a movement that developed from the theoretical and ethical writings of Immanuel Kant...
and modern moral philosophers, Schleiermacher reintroduced and assigned pre-eminent importance to the doctrine of the summum bonum
Summum bonum
Summum bonum is an expression used in philosophy, particularly in medieval philosophy and in the philosophy of Immanuel Kant, to describe the ultimate importance, the singular and most ultimate end which human beings ought to pursue. The summum bonum is generally thought of as being an end in...
, or highest good. It represents in his system the ideal and aim of the entire life of man, supplying the ethical view of the conduct of individuals in relation to society and the universe, and therewith constituting a philosophy of history at the same time. Starting with the idea of the highest good and of its constituent elements (Güter), or the chief forms of the union of mind and nature, Schleiermacher's system divides itself into the doctrine of moral ends, the doctrine of virtue and the doctrine of duties; in other words, as a development of the idea of the subjection of nature to reason it becomes a description of the actual forms of the triumphs of reason, of the moral power manifested therein and of the specific methods employed. Every moral good or product has a fourfold character: it is individual and' universal; it is an organ and symbol of the reason, that is, it is the product of the individual with relation to the community, and represents or manifests as well as classifies and rules nature.
The first two characteristics provide for the functions and rights of the individual as well as those of the community or race. Though a moral action may have these four characteristics at various degrees of strength, it ceases to be moral if one of them is quite absent. All moral products may be classified according to the predominance of one or the other of these characteristics. Universal organizing action produces the forms of intercourse, and universal symbolizing action produces the various forms of science; individual organizing action yields the forms of property and individual symbolizing action the various representations of feeling, all these constituting the relations, the productive spheres, or the social conditions of moral action. Moral functions cannot be performed by the individual in isolation but only in his relation to the family, the state, the school, the church, and society — all forms of human life which ethical science finds to its hand and leaves to the science of natural history to account for. The moral process is accomplished by the various sections of humanity in their individual spheres, and the doctrine of virtue deals with the reason as the moral power in each individual by which the totality of moral products is obtained.
Schleiermacher classifies the virtues under the two forms of Gesinnung and Fertigkeit, the first consisting of the pure ideal element in action and the second the form it assumes in relation to circumstances, each of the two classes falling respectively into the two divisions of wisdom and love and of intelligence and application. In his system the doctrine of duty is the description of the method of the attainment of ethical ends, the conception of duty as an imperative, or obligation, being excluded, as we have seen. No action fulfills the conditions of duty except as it combines the three following antitheses: reference to the moral idea in its whole extent and likewise to a definite moral sphere; connexion with existing conditions and at the same time absolute personal production; the fulfillment of the entire moral vocation every moment though it can only be done in a definite sphere. Duties are divided with reference to the principle that every man make his own the entire moral problem and act at the same time in an existing moral society. This condition gives four general classes of duty: duties of general association or duties with reference to the community (Rechtspflicht), and duties of vocation (Berufspflicht) — both with a universal reference, duties of the conscience (in which the individual is sole judge), and duties of love or of personal association.
It was only the first of the three sections of the science of ethics — the doctrine of moral ends — that Schleiermacher handled with approximate completeness; the other two sections were treated very summarily. In his Christian Ethics he dealt with the subject from the basis of the Christian consciousness instead of from that of reason generally; the ethical phenomena dealt with are the same in both systems, and they throw light on each other, while the Christian system treats more at length and less aphoristically the principal ethical realities — church, state, family, art, science and society. Rothe
Richard Rothe
Richard Rothe was a German Lutheran theologian.-Biography:Richard Rothe was born at Posen, then part of Prussia....
, amongst other moral philosophers, bases his system substantially, with important departures, on Schleiermacher's. In Beneke
Friedrich Eduard Beneke
Friedrich Eduard Beneke was a German psychologist.- Early life :Beneke was born in Berlin. He studied at the universities of Halle and Berlin, and served as a volunteer in the War of 1815...
's moral system his fundamental idea was worked out in its psychological relations.
Schleiermacher, like John Hick
John Hick
Professor John Harwood Hick is a philosopher of religion and theologian. In philosophical theology, he has made contributions in the areas of theodicy, eschatology, and Christology, and in the philosophy of religion he has contributed to the areas of epistemology of religion and religious...
, held that an eternal hell
Problem of Hell
The "Problem of Hell" is a possible ethical problem related to religions in which portrayals of Hell are ostensibly cruel, and are thus inconsistent with the concepts of a just, moral and omnibenevolent God...
was not compatible with the love of God. Divine punishment was rehabilitative, not penal, and designed to reform the person. He was one of the first major theologians of modern times to teach Christian Universalism
Christian Universalism
Christian Universalism is a school of Christian theology which includes the belief in the doctrine of universal reconciliation, the view that all human beings or all fallen creatures will ultimately be restored to right relationship with God....
.
Religious system
From Leibniz, LessingLessing
Lessing - German family of writers and artists*Johann Gottfried Lessing pastor primarus in Kamenz, well respected, published theologian, translator and father of Gotthold Ephraim Lessing and Karl Gotthelf Lessing...
, Fichte
Johann Gottlieb Fichte
Johann Gottlieb Fichte was a German philosopher. He was one of the founding figures of the philosophical movement known as German idealism, a movement that developed from the theoretical and ethical writings of Immanuel Kant...
, Jacobi
Friedrich Heinrich Jacobi
Friedrich Heinrich Jacobi was an influential German philosopher, literary figure, socialite and the younger brother of poet Johann Georg Jacobi...
and the Romantic
Romanticism
Romanticism was an artistic, literary and intellectual movement that originated in the second half of the 18th century in Europe, and gained strength in reaction to the Industrial Revolution...
school Schleiermacher had imbibed a profound and mystical view of the inner depths of the human personality. His religious thought found its expression most notably in his magisterial The Christian Faith, a systematic effort considered by many to be one of the true classics of Christian theology.
The ego, the person, is an individualization of universal reason
Universal reason
The idea of a Universal Reason implies an underpinning system of perception and conception of all forms of complexity. Many philosophers over the years have dealt with or relate to this idea in their writings...
; and the primary act of self-consciousness
Self-consciousness
Self-consciousness is an acute sense of self-awareness. It is a preoccupation with oneself, as opposed to the philosophical state of self-awareness, which is the awareness that one exists as an individual being; although some writers use both terms interchangeably or synonymously...
is the first conjunction of universal and individual life, the immediate union or marriage of the universe with incarnated reason. Thus every person becomes a specific and original representation of the universe and a compendium of humanity, a microcosmos in which the world is immediately reflected. While therefore we cannot, as we have seen, attain the idea of the supreme unity of thought and being by either cognition or volition, we can find it in our own personality, in immediate self-consciousness or (which is the same in Schleiermacher's terminology) feeling. Feeling in this higher sense (as distinguished from "organic" sensibility, Empfindung), which is the minimum of distinct antithetic consciousness, the cessation of the antithesis of subject and object, constitutes likewise the unity of our being, in which the opposite functions of cognition
Cognition
In science, cognition refers to mental processes. These processes include attention, remembering, producing and understanding language, solving problems, and making decisions. Cognition is studied in various disciplines such as psychology, philosophy, linguistics, and computer science...
and volition
Volition
Volition may refer to:*Volition , the cognitive process by which an individual decides on and commits to a particular course of action...
have their fundamental and permanent background of personality and their transitional link. Having its seat in this central point of our being, or indeed consisting in the essential fact of self-consciousness, religion lies at the basis of all thought and action.
At various periods of his life Schleiermacher used different terms to represent the character and relation of religious feeling. In his earlier days he called it a feeling or intuition of the universe, consciousness of the unity of reason and nature, of the infinite and the eternal within the finite and the temporal. In later life he described it as the feeling of absolute dependence, or, as meaning the same thing, the consciousness of being in relation to God. In his Addresses on Religion (1799), he wrote:
-
- "Religion is the outcome neither of the fear of death, nor of the fear of God. It answers a deep need in man. It is neither a metaphysic, nor a morality, but above all and essentially an intuition and a feeling. ... Dogmas are not, properly speaking, part of religion: rather it is that they are derived from it. Religion is the miracle of direct relationship with the infinite; and dogmas are the reflection of this miracle. Similarly belief in God, and in personal immortality, are not necessarily a part of religion; one can conceive of a religion without God, and it would be pure contemplation of the universe; the desire for personal immortality seems rather to show a lack of religion, since religion assumes a desire to lose oneself in the infinite, rather than to preserve one's own finite self."
His concept of church has been contrasted with J.S. Semler's
Johann Salomo Semler
Johann Salomo Semler was a German church historian and biblical commentator.-Youth and education:He was born at Saalfeld in Electoral Saxony, the son of a poor clergyman. He grew up in pietistic surroundings, which powerfully influenced him his life through, though he never became a Pietist...
.
Related fact
Asteroid 12694 Schleiermacher12694 Schleiermacher
12694 Schleiermacher is an outer main-belt asteroid discovered on March 7, 1989, by Freimut Borngen at Tautenburg, Germany. See also the eponymic Friedrich Schleiermacher.- External links :*...
is named for this German theologian. See also Freimut Börngen
Freimut Börngen
Freimut Börngen is a German astronomer. A few sources give his first name wrongly as Freimuth.He has studied galaxies with the Schmidt telescope at the Karl Schwarzschild Observatory in Tautenburg, Germany. In 1995 he retired, but continues to work as a freelancer for the observatory...
, German astronomer.
Works
Under the title Gesamtausgabe der Werke Schleiermachers in drei Abteilungen, Schleiermacher's works were first published in three sections:- Theological (11 vols.)
- Sermons (10 vols., 1873–1874, 5 vols)
- Philosophical and Miscellaneous (9 vols., 1835–1864).
See also Sämmtliche Werke (Berlin, 1834f.), and Werke: mit einem Bildnis Schleiermachers (Leipzig, 1910) in four volumes.
Other works include:
- Pädagogische Schriften (3rd ed., 1902).
- Aus Schleiermachers Leben in Briefen (Berlin, 1858–1863, in 4 vols., correspondence)
- Leben Schleiermachers. Vol. 1. Ed. Wilhelm Dilthey. Berlin: Reimer, 1870.(Correspondence from 1768–1804)
- Friedrich Schleiermacher, ein Lebens- und Charakterbild. D. Schenkel, 1868 (based on selection of letters)
Modern editions:
- Brief Outline for the Study of Theology ( Kurze Darstellung des theologischen Studiums zum Behuf einleitender Vorlesungen, 1830).
- 1966 text tr. by Terrence Tice, Richmond, VA.
- 1850 text tr. by W. Farrer, Edinburgh.
- The Christian Faith in Outline (2nd ed. of Der Christliche Glaube, 1830–1).
- 1999 text tr. by H. R. MacKintosh, ed. J. S. Stewart. Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark. Paperback: ISBN 0-567-08709-3.
- 1922 outline tr. by D. Baillie, Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark.
- 1911 condensed presentation tr. and ed. by George Cross, The Theology of Friedrich Schleiermacher. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1911.
- Christmas Eve: A Dialogue on the Incarnation (Die Weihnachtsfeier: Ein Gespräch, 1826).
- 1967 text tr. by Terrence Tice, Richmond, VA: Scholars Press.
- 1890 text tr. by W. Hastie, Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark.
- Dialectic, or, The Art of Doing Philosophy: A Study Edition of the 1811 Notes ( Schleiermachers Dialektik, 1903). Tr. Terrence Tice. Atlanta, GA: Scholars Press, 2000. paperback: ISBN 0-7885-0293-X
- Fifteen Sermons of Friedrich Schleiermacher Delivered to Celebrate the Beginning of a New Year (Monologues, 1800), tr. Edwina G. Lawler, Edwin Mellen PressEdwin Mellen PressThe Edwin Mellen Press, based in Lewiston, New York is a niche publisher of scholarly material and advanced research in the humanities and social sciences. They publish a variety of tomes including monographs, bibliographies, concordances, dictionaries, conference proceedings, dissertations, and...
, 2003. hardcover: ISBN 0-7734-6628-2 - Selected Sermons of Schleiermacher. Tr. Mary F. Wilson. London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1890.
- Schleiermacher's Introductions to the Dialogues of Plato, trans. William Dobson. 1836; reprint, New York: Arno Press, 1973; reprint, Charleston, SC: BiblioBazaar, 2009. paperback: ISBN 1116555468.
- Lectures on Philosophical Ethics( Grundriss der philosophischen Ethik, 1841). Tr. Louise Adey Huish. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002. paperback: ISBN 0-521-00767-4
- The Life of Jesus, tr. S. Maclean Gilmour. Sigler Press 1997. Paperback: ISBN 1-888961-04-X
- A Critical Essay on the Gospel of Luke ( Űber die Schriften des Lukas: ein kritischer Versuch, 1817). London: Taylor, 1825.
- Hermeneutics and Criticism and Other Writings ( Hermeneutik und Kritik mit besonderer Beziehung auf das Neue Testament, 1838). Tr. Andrew Bowie. Cambridge University Press, 1998 paperback: ISBN 0-521-59848-6
- On Creeds, Confessions And Church Union: "That They May Be One", tr. Iain G. Nicol. Edwin Mellen Press 2004. hardcover: ISBN 0-7734-6464-6
- On Freedom, trans. A. L. Blackwell. Lewiston, NY: Edwin Mellen, 1992.
- On the Glaubenslehre: Two Letters to Dr. Lucke (Schleiermachers Sendschreiben über seine Glaubenslehre an Lücke). Tr. James Duke and Francis Fiorenza. Atlanta, GA: Scholars Press, 1981.
- On the Highest Good, trans. H. V. Froese. Lewiston, NY: Edwin Mellen Press, 1992.
- On Religion: Speeches to its Cultured Despisers ( Über die Religion: Reden an die Gebildeten unter ihren Verächtern, three editions: 1799, 1806, 1831)
- 1799 text tr. Richard Crouter, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996. paperback: ISBN 0-521-47975-4
- 1831 text tr. by J. Oman, Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 1994. paperback: ISBN 0-664-25556-6
- On the Worth of Life (Űber den Wert des Lebens), trans. E. Lawlor, T. N. Tice. Lewiston, NY: Edwin Mellen, 1995.
- Soliloquies, trans. Horace Friess. Chicago, 1957.
- Toward a Theory of Sociable Conduct and Essays in Its Intellectual-Cultural Context, tr. Ruth Drucilla Richardson. Edwin Mellen Press, 1996 hardcover: ISBN 0-7734-8938-X
- Selected Sermons of Schleiermacher, tr. Mary F. Wilson. Wipf & Stock Publishers, 2004. paperback: ISBN 1-59244-602-7
Secondary Sources
in English- Barth, Karl. The Theology of Schleiermacher. trans. Geoffrey Bromiley. Grand Rapids, Michigan: Eerdmans, 1982.
- Barth, Karl. "Schleiermacher," in Protestant Theology from Rousseau to Ritschl. New York: Harper, 1959. Ch. VIII, pp. 306–354.
- Brandt, R. B. The Philosophy of Schleiermacher: The Development of his Theory of Scientific and Religious Knowledge. Westport, CT: 1968.
- Crouter, Richard. Friedrich Schleiermacher: Between Enlightenment and Romanticism. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press: 2008.
- Gadamer, Hans-Georg. Truth and Method, 2nd revised ed. tr. Joel Weinsheimer and Donald . Marshall. New York: Continuum, 1994.
- Kirn, O. "Schleiermacher, Friedrich Daniel Ernst." The New Schaff-Herzog Encyclopedia of Religious Knowledge. Vol. X. New York: Funk and Wagnalls, 1911. pp. 240–246.
- Marina, Jacqueline, ed. The Cambridge Companion to Schleiermacher. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005.
- Munro, Robert. Schleiermacher: Personal and Speculative. Paisley: A. Gardner, 1903.
- Niehbuhr, Richard R. Schleiermacher on Christ and Religion: A New Introduction. New York: Scribners, 1964.
- Selbie, W. E. Schleiermacher: A Critical and Historical Study. New York: Dutton, 1913.
in French
- Berman, AntoineAntoine BermanAntoine Berman was a French translator, historian and theorist of translation.- Works :* L'épreuve de l'étranger: Culture et traduction dans l’Allemagne romantique: Herder, Goethe, Schlegel, Novalis, Humboldt, Schleiermacher, Hölderlin. Paris: Gallimard, 1984* Lettres à Fouad El-Etr sur le...
. L'épreuve de l'étranger. Culture et traduction dans l'Allemagne romantique: Herder, Goethe, Schlegel, Novalis, Humboldt, Schleiermacher, Hölderlin., Paris, Gallimard, Essais, 1984. ISBN 978-2070700769