Friedrich Schleiermacher

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

Religious System

From Leibniz, Lessing, Fichte, Jacobi and the Romantic school he had imbibed a profound and mystical view of the inner depths of the human personality. 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 ot 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.

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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 our consciousness of the world the feelings of relative dependence and relative independence are found; we are acted upon, but we also react. In our religious consciousness the latter element is excluded, and everything within and without us is referred to its absolute cause, that is, God. But, when we call this absolute cause God, the name stands solely as indicating the unknown source of our receptive and active existence; on the one hand it means that the world upon which we can react is not the source of the feeling, on the other, that the Absolute is not an object of thought or knowledge. This feeling of absolute dependence can arise only in combination with other forms of consciousness. We derive the idea of a totality by means of its parts, and the transcendental basis of being comes to us through the agency of individual phenomena. As in every affection of our being by individual phenomena we are brought into contact with the whole universe, we are brought into contact with God at the same time as its transcendental cause. This religious feeling is not knowledge in the strict sense, as it is purely subjective or immediate; but it lies at the basis of all knowledge. As immediate knowledge, however, it is no more than the consciousness of the unity of the world, a unity which can never be reached by human inquiry.

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Religious truths, such as the determination of all things by God, are simply the implications of the feeling of absolute dependence. While that feeling is the characteristic of religion generally, this assumes various forms as the religions of the world. The so-called natural as distinguished from positive religion, or the religion of reason, is a mere abstraction. All religions are positive, or their characteristics and value are mainly determined by the manner in which the world is conceived and imagined. But these varying conceptions with their religious meaning become religiously productive only in the souls of religious heroes, who are the authors of new religions, mediators of the religious life, founders of religious communities. For religion is essentially social. It everywhere forms churches, which are the necessary instruments and organs of its highest life.

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The specific feature of Christianity is its mediatorial element, its profound feeling of the striving of the finite individual to reach the unity of the infinite whole, and its conception of the way in which Deity deals with this effort by mediatorial agencies, which are both divine and human. It is the religion of mediatorial salvation, and, as Schleiermacher emphatically taught in his riper works, of salvation through the mediation of Christ; that is, its possessors are conscious of having been delivered by Jesus of Nazareth from a condition in which their religious consciousness was overridden by the sense-consciousness of the world and put into one in which it dominates, and everything is subordinated to it. The consciousness of being saved in this sense is now transmitted and mediated by the Christian church, but in the case of Jesus, its originator, it was an entirely new and original factor in the process of religious development, and in so far, like every new and higher stage of being, a supernatural revelation. It was at the same time a natural attainment, in as far as man's nature and the universe were so constituted as to involve its production. The appearance of the Saviour in human history is therefore as a divine revelation neither absolutely supernatural nor absolutely beyond reason, and the controversy of the 18th century between the rationalists and supernaturalists rests on false grounds, leads to wrong issues, and each party is right and wrong (see Rationalism).

Related Topics:
Jesus of Nazareth - 18th century - Rationalism

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As regards Christian theology, it is not its business to formulate and establish a system of objective truth, but simply to present in a clear and connected form a given body of Christian faith as the contents of the Christian consciousness. Dogmatic theology is a connected and accurate account of the doctrine held at a particular time in a given section of the Christian church. But such doctrines as constitute no integral part of the Christian consciousness — e.g. the doctrine of the Trinity — must be excluded from the theological system of the evangelical theologian. As regards the relation of theology and philosophy, it is not one of dependence or of opposition on either side, but of complete independence, equal authority, distinct functions and perfect harmony. Feeling is not a mental function subordinate to cognition or volition, but of equal rank and authority; yet feeling, cognition and volition alike conduct to faith in the unknown Absolute, though by different paths and processes.

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The marked feature of Schleiermacher's thought in every department is the effort to combine and reconcile in the unity of a system the antithetic conceptions of other thinkers. He is realistic and idealistic, individualistic and universalistic, monistic and dualistic, sensationalist and intellectualist, naturalist and supernaturalist, rationalist and mystic, gnostic and agnostic. He is the prince of the Vermittler in philosophy, ethics, religion and theology. But he does not seek to reconcile the antitheses of thought and 'being by weakening and hiding the points of difference; on the contrary, he brings them out in their sharpest outlines. His method is to distinctly define the opposing elements and then to seek their harmonious combination by the aid of a deeper conception. Apart from the positive and permanent value of the higher unities which he succeeds in establishing, the light and suggestiveness of his discussions and treatment of the great points at issue in all the principal fields of human thought, unsatisfactory as many of his positions may be considered, make him one of the most helpful and instructive of modern thinkers. And, since the focus of his almost universal thought and inquiry and of his rich culture and varied life was religion and theology, he must be regarded as the classical representative of modern effort to reconcile science and philosophy with religion and theology, and the modern world with the Christian church.

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Schleiermacher's collected works were published in three sections:

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• Theological (11 vols)
• Sermons (10 vols, ed. 1873-1874, 5 vols)
• Philosophical and Miscellaneous (9 vols., Berlin, 1835-1864).

His Pädagogische Schriften were separately published by Piatz (3rd ed., 1902). Of lives of him the best are his own correspondence. Aus Schleiermachers Leben in Briefen, published by W Dilthey (Berlin, 1858-1863, in 4 vols., Eng. trans. by Rowan); Leben Schleiermachers by Dilthey (vol. i., 1870, the period from 1768-1804); Friedrich Schleiermacher, ein Lebens- u. Charakterbild, by D. Schenkel (Elberfeld, 1868); a selection of the letters by M. Rade (Jena, 1906). See also E. von Willick, Aus Schielermachers Hause, Jugenderinnerungen seines Stiefsohnes (1909).

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The accounts and critiques of his philosophy, ethics and theology are numerous.

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