Friedrich Schleiermacher

Friedrich Daniel Ernst Schleiermacher (November 21, 1768 - February 12, 1834) was a theologian and philosopher.

Philosophical System

A great antithesis lies at the basis of all thought and life — that of the real and the ideal, of organism, or sense, and intellect. But the antithesis is not absolute, for in life and being both elements are united — though without 'its presence life and thought would be impossible. In the actual world the antithesis appears as reason and nature, in each of which, however, there is a combination of its two elements — the ideal and the real — the reason having a preponderance of the first and nature a preponderance of the second. At the basis of nature lies universal reason as its organizing principle, and when reason becomes a conscious power in man it finds itself in conflict as well as in harmony with external nature. The whole effort and end of human thought and action is the gradual reduction of the realm and the power of this antithesis in the individual, the race and the world. Though the antithesis is real and deep, the human mind cannot admit its absolute nature; we are compelled to suppose a transcendental reality or entity in which the real and the ideal, being and thought, subject and object, are one. Consciousness itself involves the union of the antithetic elements, and prior to moral action nature is found organized and reason manifested or symbolized therein. We are ourselves proofs of the unity of the real and the ideal, of thought and being, for we are both, our self-consciousness supplying the expression of the fact. As we have in ourselves an instance of the identity of thought and being, we must suppose a universal identity of the ideal and real behind the rntithesis which constitutes the world.

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This supposition is the basis of all knowledge, for thought becomes knowledge only when it corresponds to being. The supposition may be called a belief, but it is so only in the sense in which belief appears in the religious department, where it is the ultimate ground of all action. The supposition is the basis of all ethics, for without the conviction of the correspondence of thought and reality action would be fruitless and in the end impossible. It is above all the substance of religious feeling, which is the immediate consciousness of the unity of the world, of the absolute oneness behind the infinite multiplicity of contrasts; indeed, it is the religious conviction of the unity which is the best guarantee of the truth of the suppositions of philosophy. It is "the religious consciousness of the unity of the intellectual and physical world in God" which is to overcome the scepticism of the critical philosophy. But, though this unity must be laid down as the basis of knowledge, it is absolute and transcendental. In contrast with the "world," as the totality of being in its differentiation, this absolute unity, or God, in whom the real as manifold, and the spirit as one, find their unifying base, by its very nature is unphenomenal, indefinable and inconceivable. The idea is outside the boundary of thought, though its necessar postulate, and it is no less inaccessible to religious feeling, thoug it is its life and soul. Neither member of the antithesis of the real and the ideal must be conceived as producing the other; they are both equally existent and equally constituent elements of the world; but in God they are one, ano therefore the world must not be identified with Him. The world and God are distinct, but correlative, and neither can be conceived without the other. The world without God would be "chaos," and God without the world an empty "phantasm." But though God is transcendent and unknowable He is immanent in the world. In self-consciousness God is present as the basis of the unity of our nature in every transition from an act of knowledge to an act of will, and vice versa. As far as man is the unity of the real and the ideal, God is in him. He is also in all things, inasmuch as in everything the totality of the world and its transcendental basis is presupposed by virtue of their being and correlation. The unity of our personal life amidst the multiplicity of its functions is the symbol of God's immanence in the world, though we may not conceive of the Absolute as a person.

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The idea of the world as the totality of being is, like the correlative idea of God, only of regulative value; it is transcendent, as we never do more than make approaches to a knowledge of the sum of being. The one idea is the transcendental terminus a quo and the other the transcendental terminus ad quem of all knowledge. But though the world cannot be exhaustively known it can be known very extensively, and though the positive idea of God must always remain unattainable we are able to reject those ideas which involve a contradiction of the postulate of the Absolute. Thus the pantheistic and the theistic conceptions of God as the supreme power, as the first cause, as a person, are alike unallowable, since they all bring God within the sphere of antithesis and preclude His absolute unity. On the other hand, the world can be known as the realm of antithesis, and it is the correlative of God. Though He may not be conceived as the absolute cause of the world, the idea of absolute causality as symbolized in it may be taken as the best approximate expression of the contents of the religious consciousness. The unbroken connexion of cause and effect throughout the world becomes thus a manifestation of God. God is to be sought only in ourselves and in the world. He is completely immanent in the universe. It is impossible that His causality should have any other sphere than the world, which is the totality of being. "No God without a world, and no world without God." The divine omnipotence is quantitatively represented by the sum of the forces of nature, and qualitatively distinguished from them only as the unity of infinite causality from the multiplicity of its finite phenomena. Throughout the world — not excepting the realm of mind — absolute necessity prevails. As a whole the world is as good and perfect as a world could possibly be, and everything in it, as occupying its necessary place in the whole, is also good, evil being only the necessary limitation of individual being.

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Schleiermacher's psychology 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. 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 i5 thus the sense of absolute dependence.

Related Topics:
Ego - Organism

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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 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 (Urtheil), 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.

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