Schleiermacher
Friedrich Schleiermacher (1768-1834), German Reformed theologian, philosopher and biblical scholar who attempted to reconcile the Enlightenment with Protestant Christianity.
Friedrich Schleiermacher is known for his attempt to reconcile the criticisms of the Enlightenment with traditional Protestant Christianity.
He was influential in the evolution of higher criticism.
His work forms part of the foundation of modern hermeneutics.
He is often called the “Father of Modern Liberal Theology” and is considered an early leader in liberal Christianity.
As a philosophy he was a leader of German Romanticism.
Epistemology
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.
Hermeneutics
Schleiermacher’s writings on hermeneutics were published in 1838 as Hermeneutik und Kritik mit besonderer Beziehung auf das Neue Testament.
Schleiermacher wanted to shift hermeneutics away from specific methods of biblical and Classical interpretation toward a focus on how people understand texts in general. He called this process “the art of understanding”, with the ultimate goal being “understanding in the highest sense”.
Religious Thought
From Leibniz, Lessing, Fichte, Jacobi and the Romantics, Schleiermacher imbibed a profound and mystical view of the inner depths of the human personality.
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.
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Addresses on Religion (1799)
Works
- On Religion: Speeches to its Cultured Despisers
- Addresses on Religion (1799)