Friedrich Schleiermacher

Friedrich Daniel Ernst Schleiermacher ( born November 21, 1768 in Breslau, Silesia, † February 12, 1834 in Berlin) was a Protestant theologian, classical scholar, philosopher, publicist, political theorist, politician and educator church. In several of these fields of action, he is considered one of the most important writers of his time, and in some of the classics of discipline at all, the same applies as for sociology. He translated the works of Plato into German and is considered the founder of modern hermeneutics.

  • 5.1 Primary texts
  • 5.2 Biography
  • 5.3 interpretation
  • 5.4 Important anthologies

Life

Schleiermacher was the grandson of Daniel Zioniten Schleyermacher and was born as a son of the Reformed preacher field Gottlieb Schleiermacher ( a younger half-sister married in 1817 Ernst Moritz Arndt ), and educated from 1783 Pädagogium of the Moravian Brethren in Niesky. From 1785, he attended her seminar in Barby, he left again in 1787, after he had begun to distance themselves from the dogmatic- positive form of religiosity from 1786.

After the outer break with the Moravians, and against the will of his father, he studied then at Halle University Evangelical Theology, where he was contacted by the philosopher Johann August Eberhard with the Wolffian philosophy. Even his controversial employment with Immanuel Kant begins here. 1790-1793 he worked as a private tutor in the family of Count Dohna- Schlobitten and in 1794 assistant pastor in Landsberg / Warta. From 1796, he was a preacher at the Charité in Berlin, where he met Friedrich Schlegel and wrong especially in managed by women literary salons. He had to give up in 1802 but this position and went as court preacher to Stolp.

Even in Berlin, he was - drawn by the two Schlegel and Henriette Herz in the romantic circles - with his speeches On Religion (1799 ) and Monologues (1800) occurred as a writer. In the course of his friendship with Friedrich Schlegel, he wrote the familiar letters about Lucinda (1801 ) and created a five-volume translation of the works of Plato, which made particularly by the introductions to the dialogues era. At its basic lines of a critique of recent ethics ( 1803), which treatises on the scientific treatment of the virtue concept of duty concept, on the concept of what is permissible, about the difference between natural and moral law and the notion of the highest good joined.

1804 Schleiermacher could compete at the University of Halle in a position as associate professor of theology and philosophy; In 1806 he became a full professor there. During his work in hall he lived in the known as scholars Street Great Märkerstraße. Because of the war-related temporary closure of the University of Halle ( Battle of Jena and Auerstedt ) he went in 1807 to Berlin, where he worked from 1809 as a significant and influential preacher at Trinity Church (Berlin), and lived in one of the two presbyteries. He joined with his wife in the same year, Carl Friedrich Zelter in Sing-Akademie zu Berlin, which began to develop into a mentally cultural center of Berlin, where he remained until his death. Under the influence of Freiherr vom Stein and Wilhelm von Humboldt, he campaigned for the establishment of the Friedrich- Wilhelms- University, where he also taught as a professor of theology from 1810 until his death. During these years he published in 1806 The Christmas party, a conversation, 1807, critical writing about the so-called First Epistle of Paul to Timothy and 1808 Occasional Thoughts on Universities in the German sense. Schleiermacher was a member of numerous intellectuals clubs, such as the German Table Society and the outlaws Company No. 1 ( or "forced lots Society" ), whose chairman he was from 1829 to 1834.

On May 18, 1809 had Schleiermacher Henriette von Willich, the nineteen- year-old widow of his friend Pastor Ehrenfried of Willich, married. One of the two children she brought into the marriage with Schleiermacher, four children together were added. However, the connection suffered from the great diversity of partners and Henriette's tendency to occultism.

In the diversity of its flung in all directions activities, he was one of the most important intellectual sizes during the first and brilliant period of the Berlin University. The abundance of thoughts and shiny shape, especially the association of religiosity with the keenest dialectic and the freest, bound to no tradition criticism led him to enthusiastic students. His lectures included not only the entire circumference of theological science ( with the exception of the Old Testament specialist field ), but he was wearing since 1811 also a dialectic, which he summed up as a unit of logic and metaphysics.

At that time he published his Outline of theological studies (1811 ). The Christian faith according to the principles of the Protestant Church represented in connexion of 1821/22 in dogmatic works Schleiermacher attempted to reconcile the traditional theology with the inwardness and freedom of the subject and to meet and religion in the sense of absolute ( " par excellence niger " ) due to dependence. As a companion piece to the Doctrine of the Faith, which was released from the estate work was The Christian custom (1843 ).

When the Royal Prussian Academy of Sciences, whose member Schleiermacher had since 1810, it 1814 elected secretary of the philosophical department, he who has been released by the Ministry of his teaching duties, as did he to ever experience growing disfavour from the government and a time long stood in danger of being pulled or discontinued for alleged demagogy under investigation. The Bavarian Academy of Sciences appointed him in 1805 to the corresponding foreign member of the philological and philosophical class.

The writings of the Prussian Academy, he enriched by a large number of speeches and essays, particularly about individual difficult points of the history of ancient philosophy. The same His participation in the general life of the Church and a clear insight into the needs he had already by the 1804 anonymously published two unvorgreiflichen opinion in matters of Protestant church being expressed in relation to the Prussian state, in which he explicitly on the disadvantages of the separation of the Protestant churches pointed. As 1817, the union between the Protestant churches of Prussia on a synod presided by him came about (Evangelical Church in the Royal Prussian lands ), and the calls for the formation of a Presbyterial and Synodal Constitution had appeared, he was looking for the work with the Council and indeed, although without success to promote. Nor could he fight the liturgy led by the king align. Under the name Pacificus Sincerus he wrote in 1824 a theological concerns about the right Protestant liturgical rulers, who encouraged the old dispute about the legal principles in the relationship between church and state again. As a preacher, Schleiermacher exerted on the formed part of the audience made ​​a significant impact.

His final resting place Schleiermacher on the Trinity Cemetery II at the Bergmann in Berlin- Kreuzberg ( Panel B). The design of the monument comes from Ludwig Ferdinand Hesse. A bust of Schleiermacher, which adorns the grave, Fritz Schaper made ​​to a design by Christian Daniel Rauch from the 1829. 's Grave will receive an honorary grave of Berlin ..

Theological works

The Enlightenment brought about the 18th century the Christian religion in distress. The historicity had become disreputable, the official church near the state was considered a sign of dependence. And the remains of religiosity came from two fronts: on the one side stood the rationalism, represented primarily by the school of Christian Wolff, who deduced the thinking as the action of a system of universal truths. On the other hand, the criticism of Immanuel Kant led to a moral philosophy that depended solely on the people who put him in the center and thus seemed to mock even the damage done in the name of humanity atrocities.

With the end of the 18th century but also seemed the (late) rationalism to have passed its peak. The Christian counter-movement now found in supernaturalism their starting point. The never disappeared pietism unfolded again its effect. The opening into the confessional Neuluthertum revival movement gradually gained profile. During this time, Schleiermacher took position, trying the positions of rationalism and supernaturalism, in the broader sense of culture and religion to teach at all and get out in it about them. His theological design made ​​him the " Father of the Church of the 19th century ," the " belongs to the top of a theology of the latest time [ ... ] and none beside Him" ( Barth ), and in him was the " antithesis of the romantic against Enlightenment education to full effect " (R. Haym ), he was for many" the birth [ ... ] of [their ] higher life " (Claus Harms ). They spoke the other hand, in abschätzigem meaning of " mediating theology ", " theology of feeling " and " cultural Protestantism ".

On Religion (1799 )

Schleiermacher's first approach to such a theology was found in 1799 in On Religion. Speeches to its cultured despisers. ( According to Wilhelm Dilthey came the first approaches from conversations with Henriette Herz, who had already taken place in the spring of 1798. In February 1799, the second speech was completed ). The anonymously published work should be Apology and polemic at the same time. In it, Schleiermacher wanted to show the need for religious reflection of the situation of the educated out: Should The rational thinker in its very reason the centrality of Christianity be proven.

At one of the fundamental assertions of Schleiermacher was the fact that the religion belonged to the same people as the ( deductive ) thinking and (moral ) action and thus both should be regarded as equivalent. The subject- object split between perceiver and the perceived religion was about to be overcome by the religion, according to Schleiermacher, in the overcoming of religion should have even more visible as such ( and prove as tertium ).

For religion, the " sense and taste for the Infinite " was for Schleiermacher, overcame the perception that he understood as a fusion of subject ( the religious people ) and object ( the divine infinity ), this cleavage. " The characteristic feature is thus a double", as Martin Kähler later put it: "It's a one with our items within us [ ... ] and also: It refers to the objects as carriers of the effect of the universe. " ( History of the Protestant dogmatics, 55).

Schleiermacher's piety as the subjective expression of religion, which was sharply refused later by many theologians, has its precursor in J. J. Hess with his work From kingdom of God. An attempt of the plan of divine institutions and revelations (2nd edition 1781) and Johann Albrecht Bengel and rooted in German Romanticism and its image of man as it is, with Johann Gottfried von Herder, Johann Georg Hamann, finally Schelling, Jakob Friedrich Fries Wilhelm Martin Leberecht de Wette found. Thus, if religion is output as a private matter, also failed egocentric arrogance or stale Privatize, but the coined in the Romantic individualism here, the demarcated against a functionally -understood human image of the late Enlightenment and mechanistic straight in the rediscovery of the emotional world of human images as they be found in Descartes, contrary stand.

In religion are, according to Schleiermacher then but intuition and feeling, receptive and spontaneous act of consciousness, the Affizierende and Affizierte coincide again. Both poles are overcome in religion, because " [ ... ] vision without feeling anything, and may have neither the right nor the origin of the right strength, sensation without perception is nothing: both are only slightly and therefore if and because they originally one and unseparated are. " (speeches, 73).

Brief description of theological studies

In his Brief [n ] representation of theological study for the sake introductory lectures (1811; Second, substantially revised edition 1830) - Hans -Joachim Birkner spoke of a " theological reform program " - took Schleiermacher the allocation of related to the church leadership " positive science " theology into three sub- disciplines: Philosophical theology, Historical Theology and Practical Theology. The latter founded Schleiermacher first time as a scientific discipline, which now went beyond the collection of pastoral prudence rules and the " theory of practice " bot.

The Doctrine of Faith

In the Doctrine of the Faith, the 1821/22 in two volumes ( second, much revised edition 1830/1831 ) was published, Schleiermacher will come forward with a representation of the Christian faith. In the introduction to this work he established the concept of religion in a theory of immediate self- consciousness or feeling. Religion is the feeling of absolute dependence. Man is always aware of partial freedom and partial dependence in all thoughts and actions, but just the partial dependence in all consciousness of freedom ultimately leads to a feeling of utter dependence. In the theological discussion of Schleiermacher's theory of religion is highly controversial.

Widely recognized, however, has become the central position, which Schleiermacher is the concept of religion within the theological description of Christian piety. Because both the concept of God and the concept of revelation, which carried the theological system in the older Protestant orthodoxy, had been subjected in the Age of Enlightenment sharp criticism. These essential doctrines of Christianity can therefore no longer justified by reference to the revelation of God in Scripture. Schleiermacher tried this problem by two religious-philosophical theory elements: namely, to solve by incorporating the concept of religion and by the determination of the essence of Christianity.

Satirical reception

Schleiermacher's works were often aroused controversy. Especially his apologetics of the religious sentiment in the speeches, his defense of scandal novel Lucinda and his dogmatic innovations attracted much ridicule on himself. It was like to be used " Meaningful Name". So titled August Wilhelm Schlegel his verses:

For " Schleiermacher Festival" in 1868 appeared a cartoon " What is now in Berlin under veil - maker understands" showing the concealment of reason with the garb of orthodoxy. Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph Schelling also saved in 1799 not to " Widerporstigkeit " va against the speeches, but also the tenor of an oriented at Spruce, Goethe and Spinoza 's philosophy of religion and their popularization in general:

" It is true, as they spoke of defiant, I Wurd a while aback, read as if I can understand what, why such speeches as a fragment. "

Remembrance

February 12 in the Protestant calendar name.

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