UNIVERSITY OF WALES L A M P E T E R 1-8-2-2I

PRIFYSGOLCYMRU LLANBEDR PONT STEFFAN

Masters in Systematic and Philosophical Theology

SCHLEIERMACHER, KIERKEGAARD AND THE PHILOSOPHY OF MIND

Tutor: Dr. Johannes Hoff

Module Aims
Schleiermacher is, beyond doubt, the most influential theologian of modernity, and his influence reaches far beyond the scope of protestant traditions: 'He was the one in whom the great struggle of Christianity with the strivings and achievements of the German spirit in 1750-1830 (...) took place (...). None of his contemporaries with the possible exception of Hegel took up that struggle so comprehensively or with such concern (...). But Schleiermacher is not dead for us and his theological work has not been transcended (...). We study Paul and the reformers, but we see with the eyes of Schleiermacher and think along the same lines as he did.'1 However, Schleiermacher's far reaching influence did not save him from becoming both the most criticized and the most ignored milestone of modern theology. Schleiermacher unwillingly became the founder of a modern theological movement, the tradition of 'liberal theology', and as a result the target of the influential neo-orthodox countermovements of the 20th century. Representatives of this movement are Emil Brunner and Karl Barth, and in more recent times George Lindbeck and the Ressourcement theologians of the Anglo-American language area. Eventually Schleiermacher's suspiciously 'modalistic' interpretation of the doctrine of the trinity became the trademark of the shipwreck of 'liberal theology', and his name the catchphrase for a failed theological project. However, it is just as questionable to read Schleiermacher as a typical representative of modern 'liberal theology' as it is to read Thomas Aquinas as a typical representative of neo-scholasticism. Furthermore it is most often arguable to accuse Schleiermacher for deficiencies in his theology of the trinity, given that he shares these deficiencies with the majority of modern interpretations of this doctrine wherever they try to avoid running into the trap of a tritheistic mythologisation of Christian doctrine such as Jurgen Moltmann's Neo-Hegelianism. Against this background we may pose the question Karl Barth asked in the above quote nearly one century ago: Why do we still tend to 'see with the eyes of Schleiermacher and think along the same lines as he did' as soon as we attempt to cultivate a style of theological thinking which does not ignore the challenges of modernity?
Karl Barth, The theology of Schleiermacher. Lectures at Gbttingen, winter semester of 1923/24. Ed. by Dietrich Ritschl; transl. by Geoffrey W. Bromiley (Grand Rapids, Mich, 1982), xiii.

This module will provide you with a guide to a revised reading of Schleiermacher, starting with an introduction into the philosophical foundations of his theology and their remaining significance in terms of contemporary philosophy of mind. In addition to this, it will shed some light on what we may call the 'family likenesses' of Schleiermacher's and Kierkegaard's philosophy, which are due to the shared philosophical background of their thinking. Finally this module will help you to read Kierkegaard as a philosopher whose approach to Christianity is arguably able to overcome the deficiencies of Schleiermacher's theology without losing his path breaking criticism of scientific and theological reason, and without resorting to a Barthian 'leap of faith' with regard to the challenge of modern secularism. The main parts of this module will focus on Schleiermacher. Kierkegaard will only feature in the two last units. On completion of this module, students should be able to: read theological and philosophical primary sources in their historical context read Schleiermacher against the background of modern philosophy (see the section A module on Philosophy and Theology). critically review the reading of Schleiermacher as a 'liberal theologian of feeling' distinguish between the rational language of scientific or philosophical speculation ('dialectic') and the narrative language of faith ('hermeneutic') discuss Schleiermacher's and Kierkegaard's approach to the problem of subjectivity against the background of the current philosophical 'mindbody' debate discuss the problems of Schleiermacher's theology in the light of later developments subsequent to Kierkegaard

Module Structure, Resources and Proceeding

The module is subdivided into seven units: 1. Basic Problems and Outline of Schleiermacher's Theology 2. Hermeneutics and Dialectics: The Philosophical Foundations of Schleiermacher's Theology

3. Language, Subjectivity, and Philosophy of Mind: The Actuality of Schleiermacher 4. The Christian Faith: Self-consciousness, Sin and Grace in Schleiermacher's theological Opus Magnum 5. Schleiermacher's Disciples and his Critics 6. Self-consciousness, Sin and Faith in Kierkegaard's Sickness unto Death 7. The Paradox of Faith and the Transgression of Philosophical Reason in Kierkegaard Each section includes one or two source texts. In the case of Schleiermacher these texts should be read together with the respectively indicated chapters of the following companion, which is provided with this module: Jacqueline Marina: The Cambridge companion to Friedrich Schleiermacher, Cambridge Companions to Religion, Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press 2005 In the case of Kierkegaard the pertinent chapters should be read together with a special selection of essays which is provided with this module in pdf-format. I also recommend that you read the following companion in order to familiarize yourself with the broader background of Kierkegaard's philosophy: Alastair Hannay; Gordon Daniel Marino (Ed.), The Cambridge companion to Kierkegaard (Cambridge 1998) The source texts on Schleiermacher (unit 1-5) do not aim to give a comprehensive overview on Schleiermacher's theology. Rather they are aligned to provide you with the guidelines of a philosophically grounded re-evaluation of his theological texts. For this reason they are to be read in close connection with the theologically more content-related essays of the companion. In accordance with this approach the module texts will draw attention to the following three problem areas: 1. the basic principles and rules of Schleiermacher's thinking, which are rooted in his reflection on the problem of self-consciousness (i.e. his discussion of the problem of subjectivity), his dialectic (i.e. his discussion of the principles of knowledge) and hermeneutic (i.e. his discussion of the problem of religious language) 2. the kinship between Schleiermacher's and Kierkegaard's discussion of the problem of the self-consciousness

3. the differences between Schleiermacher and Kierkegaard which may allow you to read Kierkegaard as the starting point of a more sophisticated response to the challenges Schleiermacher tried to cope with at the beginning of the 19th century. A crucial element in the study of this module will be to develop a critical understanding of these guiding questions. Similarly the questions at the end of the units are designed to guide your thoughts with regard to more specific topics of consideration. In some cases they are not related to my own introductory text, but to the above Schleiermacher companion or the accompanying essay selection about Kierkegaard's. Where applicable, this will be indicated by an asterisk (*). Naturally these introductory texts will not substitute the reading of further secondary literature, which should not be restricted to the readings suggested at the end of the respective units. Since the introductory texts of the units are only designed to provide a hermeneutical guide to the reading of primary sources, they will not include any further significant biographical information. For this reason I strongly recommend that you familiarise yourself with the biographies of Schleiermacher and Kierkegaard before reading the respective module units. To perform this task you may read at least the following articles about Schleiermacher and Kierkegaard in Routledge Reference Ressources online, which are accessible online via ATHENS Art. Schleiermacher, in: Encyclopaedia of Christian Theology Fifty Key Christian Thinkers

Art. Kierkegaard, in: The Encyclopaedia of Protestantism Fifty Key Christian Thinkers Encyclopaedia of Christian Theology See http://reference.routledge.com/subscriber/uid=9/titles): The same rule will be valid with respect to philosophical, theological or linguistic technical terms in the relevant texts, like 'schematisation', 'signifier/signified' or 'semantics/syntactics/paradigmatics'. Very useful dictionaries may found via ATHENS under the following links: Routledge Dictionaries: http://reference.routledge.com/subscriber/uid=9/subjects?&authstatuscode=2 02

Oxford Dictionaries: http://www.oxfordreference.com/views/SUBTECT SEARCH.html?subject=s2 2&authstatuscode=202 Stanford Encyclopaedia of Philosophy: http://plato.stanford.edu/ The British Academy Portal (philosophy): http://www.britac.ac.uk/portal/bysection.asp?section=H12 The British Academy Portal (theology): http://www.britac.ac.uk/portal/bysection.asp?section=H2 The Catholic Encyclopaedia http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/index.html

Further introductory literatures which will be in general of great value include: Ebeling, G.; Funk, R. W.: Schleiermacher as contemporary, Journal for Theology and the Church, New York, NY: Herder and Herder 1970. Clare Carlisle, Kierkegaard. A guide for the perplexed (London, 2006) Clements, K. W.: Friedrich Schleiermacher, Pioneer of modern theology, London: Collins 1987 (includes a selection of primary texts). Crouter, R.: Friedrich Schleiermacher. Between Enlightenment and romanticism, Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press 2005. Gardiner, P.: Kierkegaard. A very short introduction, Very short introductions, Oxford: Oxford University Press 2002. Gerrish, B. A.: A prince of the church. Schleiermacher and the beginnings of modern theology, The Rockwell lectures, Philadelphia: Fortress Press 1984. Gouwens, D. J.: Kierkegaard as religious thinker, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 1996. Tice, T. N.: Schleiermacher, Abingdon pillars of theology, Nashville, TN: Abingdon Press 2006. Thandeka, The embodied self. Friedrich Schleiermacher's solution to Kant's problem of the empirical self (Albany, 1995) Julia Watkin, Kierkegaard (London, 1997)

Eventually it may be helpful to provide you with a general rule concerning the reading of classical or continental philosophical texts. Philosophical texts which are understandable after the first reading are strictly speaking not worth to read. The experience of not "being able to make head or tail" of a text is part and parcel of the philosophical practice of thinking. Some authors are able to hide this confusing feature of philosophical texts so that you may read them without realising that you did not 'get it'. However, philosophical texts that spare the reader unreservedly from narcissistic injuries will never contain more than worn out thinking stances. If you do not know how to cope with this

problem you may recall a directive Schleiermacher gave with regard to Plato (though Plato was very good at hiding his injuries): 'Even within a single text the particular can only be understood from out of the whole, and a cursory reading to get an overview of the whole must therefore precede the more precise explication.' 1

Assessment
Assessment for this module is on the basis of one 5000 word essay. The essay should relate to particular units within the module and focus on the reading of primary texts. At the same time it should demonstrate the application of a broad range of knowledge and material gained throughout the study of the respective units. There are suggested essay questions at the end of each unit. However, you are not restricted to these questions but you must contact the tutor of this module before you begin writing either on a preset question or on your own title. According to the new quality assurance regulations tutors are no longer allowed to receive draft essays prior to the formal submission. This should not prevent you from communication with your tutor by writing, by email, or orally via Cloudemeeting/Skype or landline. Please contact your tutor by email if you want an oral appointment. A good working relationship will facilitate your understanding and enjoyment of the module.

Tutor
Dr. Johannes Hoff TRIS, University of Wales Lampeter, Ceredigion SA48 7ED, UK Phone: 0044 (0)1570 424954 Fax: 0044 (0)1570 424987 E-mail: j.hoff@lamp.ac.uk

CHRONOLOGY
Friedrich Schleiermacher, Uber die Philosophie Platons. Hrsg. und eingel. von Peter M. Steiner; mit Beitragen von Andreas Arndt und Jorg Jantzen (Hamburgl996, 27.

1768 1780 1781 1782 1783-5 1785 1787-90 1789 1790 1790-3 1793 1793-6 1794 1796-02 1797

1798-00 1798 1799 1800

1803-6 1804-28 1806 1809 1809-34 1810-34 1813 1814 1815 1818-32 1821

Schleiermacher born in Breslau in Lower Silesia at 21 November to family steeped in Moravian pietism Lessing publishes The Education of the Human Race Kant publishes The Critique of Pure Reason Herder publishes The Spirit of Hebrew Poetry Schleiermacher attends Moravian boarding schools Kant publishes Foundations of the Metaphysics of Morals Schleiermacher attends University of Halle Storming of the Bastille Schleiermacher passes theological examinations in Berlin Schleiermacher works as house tutor in Schlobitten in East Prussia King Louis XVI of France is executed; Kant publishes Religion Within the Limits of Reason Alone Schleiermacher serves as pastor in Landsberg Death of Schleiermacher's father, J. G. A. Schleiermacher, a Prussian army chaplain Schleiermacher among Romantic circle in Berlin with the brothers A. W. and Friedrich Schlegel, Dorothea Veit, Henriette Herz Wachenroder publishes Confessions from the Heart of an Art-loving Friar; Schelling publishes Ideas for a Philosophy of Nature; Fichte publishes The Science of Knowledge; Friedrich Wilhelm III accedes to throne of Prussia; Schleiermacher becomes reformed chaplain at the Charite hospital in Berlin Publication of the Athenaeum, vols. I-III, literary organ of the Berlin Romantics Schelling publishes On the World Soul Schleiermacher publishes first edition of On Religion: Speeches to its Cultured Despisers Friedrich Schlegel publishes Lucinde; Novalis (Friedrich von Hardenberg) publishes Hymns to the Night; Schleiermacher publishes Soliloquies and Confidential Letters Concerning Friedrich Schlegel's Lucinde Schleiermacher assumes post as university preacher at Halle Schleiermacher publishes German translation of Plato University of Halle overrun by Napoleon's troops; Schleiermacher publishes 2nd edition of On Religion and The Celebration of Christmas: A Conversation Founding of the University of Berlin by Wilhelm von Humboldt with Schleiermacher as secretary to the founding commission Schleiermacher at the University of Berlin as professor of theology, member of philosophical and historical sections of the Berlin Academy of Sciences Schleiermacher is preacher at the Holy Trinity Church in Berlin Birth of Kierkegaard in Copenhagen Death of Fichte at University of Berlin Congress of Vienna settles the Napoleonic wars Hegel at the University of Berlin Schleiermacher publishes 3rd edition of On Religion with 'Explanations' attached to each speech

1821-2 1830-1 1832 1834

Schleiermacher publishes 1st edition of his systematic theology, The Christian Faith [Glaubenslehre] Schleiermacher publishes 2nd edition of The Christian Faith Deaths of Goethe and Hegel Death of Schleiermacher, 6 February

UNIT ONE

Basic Problems and Outline of Schleiermacher's Theology

Concomitant reading: Marina, Introduction, ch. 6-8, ch. 16

The chain of Schleiermacher's admirers has never been broken. His Glaubenslehre (The Christian Faith) has been compared with Aquinas' Summa Theologia already fife years after his death (1834) by the catholic theologian Johann Evangelist Kuhn; 1 and even Karl Barth admired Schleiermacher's theological opus magnum all his life. However, the chain of his critics has never been broken either. One of the most early and most decisive links of this chain was Friedrich Hegel. Hegel had already attacked his later Berlin fellow in his early Belief and Knowledge (1802) and then, more explicitly, in his preface to Hindrich's Die Religion im inneren Verhaltnisse zur Wissenschaft (1822) by accusing him of being a 'subjectivist' thinker. In the wake Karl Barth and Wilhelm Dilthey's account of Schleiermacher's hermeneutics, this critique was finally reinforced by Hans Georg Gadamer in his famous 1960 volume Wahrheit und Methode and varied by George Lindbeck in his 1984 book The Nature of

See , William Madges, "Faith, Knowledge and Feeling. Towards an Understanding of Kuhn's Appraisal of Schleiermacher." In: The Heythrop Journal 37 (1996), pp.47-60.

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Doctrine which had a significant impact on the Anglo-Saxon 'post-liberal' movement. It was Gadamer's disciple Heinz Kimmerle who broke this interpretative tradition at least regarding Schleiermacher's philosophical reception. Kimmerle convincingly demonstrated that Schleiermacher's philosophy is much closer to the 'linguistic turn' of Gadamer's and Heidegger's hermeneutics than expected, thereby affirming his relevance for ongoing discussions on French poststructuralism which were at this time particulary advanced by Jacques Derrida. Gerhard Ebeling (together with Kimmerle, and Hans-Joachim Birkner co-editor of the Kritische Gesamtausgabe) supported this rereading from a theological point of view based on his interpretation of the word of God as Sprachgeschehen (event of language). Finally the German Philosopher Manfred Frank demonstrated in the late 70s how the basic insights of French post-structuralism opened the way to a fresh interpretation of Schleiermacher, which goes significantly beyond the scope of the 'linguistic turn' of Heidegger, Gadamer and Wittgenstein. 1 The following chapter will provide you with a first outline of Schleiermacher's thinking, starting with Gerhard Ebeling's interpretation of Schleiermacher's concept of religious language respectively and of his theological doctrine of the divine attributes (The Christian Faith 50-56). According to Ebeling, Schleiermacher's thinking is marked by the tentative attempt to reconstruct the anthropological and grammatical foundations of poetic expressions of Christian piety in a manner which is compatible with the prosaic language of scientific rationality, and which provides at once a platform for a critical reconsideration of the basic 'grammatical' rules of Christian orthodoxy (which are, according to Schleiermacher, the subject matter of dogmatics). As Ebeling points out, this task could only by performed by resisting a double temptation: the rationalist temptation of subsuming the poetical language of Christian orthodoxy into the theoretical language of modern philosophical or scientific rationality (thereby undermining the integrity of Christian orthodoxy); and the 'fideistic' or subjectivist temptation of fusing the reflexive language of theological dogmatics with the language of the pulpit (thereby undermining the scientific character of theological dogmatics). Consequently we have to distinguish between three modes of language use or 'language games', which are respectively governed by different 'grammars': poetics, dogmatics and (natural) philosophy (Schleiermacher does not use the technical term 'language game' but his considerations on the problem of 'grammar' justify this anachronistic terminology).++

See Manfred Frank, Das individuelle Allgemeine. Textstrukturierung und -interpretation nach Schleiermacher (Frankfurt/M., 1977).

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According to this approach to the grammar of faith, the poetical language of piety is to be guarded by the scientific rationality of theological dogmatics, based on the principles of hermeneutics and philosophical dialectic; and the grammar of Christian piety is to be protected against the assaults of scientific or philosophical rationality by carefully distinguishing between Christian doctrine and the speculative language of metaphysics (in the modern sense of this word), 'natural theology' or para-scientific language games (like creationism). However, the necessity to distinguish between the heterogeneous 'grammars' of piety, dogmatic, philosophy does not justify a strict separations between their territories. The poetical language of the biblical tradition (piety) is neither separable from the hermeneutics of this language in terms of Christian doctrine (dogmatics), nor from the detached abstractions of philosophical dialectic (philosophy). The hermeneutical reflection of pre-reflexive expressions of piety, which is never neutral with regard to its language use, has to be accompanied by the philosophical reflection on the principles of religious language in general. For, though this philosophical reflection may not be neutral either, it is designed to facilitate the translation between different religious or cultural traditions, and this is essential if we are to justify the universal validity of Christian faith. This subtle distinction between different levels of abstraction led Schleiermacher to remarkable formal differentiations, like the distinction between the doctrinal reflection on divine attributes (which is based on the theological hermeneutics of the history of salvation) and philosophical rules or reservations in terms of the understanding of these attributes (which are based on dialectics and expressed in attributes like 'unity', 'simplicity', 'infinity', 'immutability'; see Ebeling 156f.). Up to a certain point, these formal distinctions are comparable with the Cappadocian distinction between the apophatic use of natural theology (philosophy) and the dogmatic reflection on biblical doctrines (see the Theology and Philosophy module) and subsequent grammatical distinctions in terms of the divine attributes in Aquinas. 1 Thus they shed some like on the deep affinity of Schleiermacher's thinking to the tradition of Christian orthodoxy. Similarly, Schleiermacher's analysis of grammar of faith is anything but unnameable to 'post-liberal', Wittgensteinian approaches to religious language. It only resists the inclination of this 20th century tradition to over-accentuate the significance of grammatical rules. The idea of rule guided language games is not sufficient to explain the creative potential of our real language use. There is always space for the unpredictable power of intuitions and divinations, and this is the reason why borderlines between different rule guided language games

See David B. Burrell, Aquinas. God and action (Scranton - London, 2008).

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are essentially fluent. It is never possible do draw draw sharp distinction between heterogeneous language games, be it in the sense of non-realist readings of Wittgenstein; be it in the sense of Barth's delimitation of revelation from natural reason; and precisely this marks the point where considerations on the problems of subjectivity and religious feeling become important to Schleiermacher. The significance of these considerations is to be assessed in the light Schleiermacher's age, which was for the first time faced with the phenomenon of reflexive modernisation and the accompanying philosophical revolution of Immanuel Kant (see the Theology and Philosophy module). Briefly speaking, this revolution enforced the experience of detachment from traditional habits and narratives, and this is why it had an impact on the survival conditions of religious traditions which has retrospectively turned out to be much more serious than the impact of the scientific revolutions of the 17th century. One of the most characteristic features of this revolution is connected with, what sociologists call, the processes of 'social fragmentation' and 'functional differentiation'. This social phenomenon is reflected by the threefold architecture of Kant's critical transformation of early modern learning: his distinction between a Critique of Pure Reason (scientific theories), a Critique of Practical Reason (law and morals), and a Critique of Judgement (aesthetics and art). For the first time in history, we discover in this 'critical' distinction a radical disconnection between different 'language games'. The grammar of a scientific language is different from the grammar of a jurisprudence or ethics, and it may be even argued that they have nothing in common. However, this does not prevent me from participating simultaneously in both of these language games. There is something which mediates between these different worlds, and this is the reason why considerations on the Cartesian T remain significant in Kant and his Early Romantic successors - despite the scorching early romantic criticism of Descartes foundationalism. In the case of Kant the Cartesian T is not significant because of some ontological primacy (its reality turns out to be rather precarious). It is of irreducible significance only because of its characteristic function as an empty variable which is suitable to cross the borderlines between theoretical and practical reason. It is, as it were, irreducible because of its functions as a shifter between heterogenous 'language games'. We may compare Kant's functional considerations on this empty variable with the psychological phenomenon of modern and especially post-modern 'patchwork identities'. I may play the rule of a white male priest in the British high church who is married with a Bubbhist wife, and the role of the devoted son of a Jewish father, and at the same time I may collaborate with agnostic friends in an NGO, and adopt the virtual identity of a single parent black

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lesbian in 'Second life'. The only link which ineluctably recurs in this different 'language games' is the Cartesian T . However heterogeneous or even schizoid I may act in these different worlds, it's always me who is involved in their heterogeneous grammar. Similarly, I may become an atheist tomorrow and an Islamic jihadist the day after tomorrow, and this may cause significant changes in my self-perception, but at least one thing will always remain the same: It will be always me who 'plays' these 'games'. Precisely this is what sociologist call social fragmentation: the experience that I may adopt different 'identities', not only in the long run of biographical changes, but even at the synchronic level of my everyday communication. One of the most farreaching consequences of this modern 'patchwork' reality is that it destabilizes our attachment to traditional narratives and habits, or to use a sociological expression, it is accompanied by the shift from a 'traditional' to 'post-traditional' attitude. My biography may appear as relatively stable (thought this is less and less the case in late modern societies). I may, for example, remain attached to the Roman Catholic tradition for all my life. But this attachment will no longer appear as self-evident. Even if I keep the bonds of my inherited roots, I will perceive this is as the outcome of a decision which I have made in the light of alternative possibilities as soon as I have become a grown up inhabitant of the 'global village'. Even in the case of a deep rooted conservatism, our fidelity to our roots is mediated by a sense of 'subjective freedom' in the nominalist sense of this word (which includes always a certain connotation of arbitrariness). Everything may change, though this will never bereave me of a certain sense of continuity: It will always be me who suffers or creates these changes. I am, as it were, 'always and never the same' everything may change but I will never lose the intuition that I am who I am. This characteristic feature of modern everyday experience may encourage the subjectivist attitudes of modern existentialism or the popular conviction that identity-establishing symbolic habits and narratives (like religious traditions) are reducible to a matter of private experience or subjective self-fashioning. However, Schleiermacher would not have agreed with this response to challenge of modernisation. His philosophical hermeneutics of religious feeling is rather essentially connected with the attachment to communities, like the community of characteristic culture or nation, and especially the community of the church. The trajectory of our live may have become unpredictable, but it is never completely detachable from our communitarian roots. Given that Schleiermacher's hermeneutics leaves not the slightest doubt that 'identity ascriptions' are never stable, this anti-subjectivist attitude may appear as surprising. I am always and never the same; and this means, according to Schleiermacher, my unique identity will never fit in the framework of semantic stable attributions - e.g. 'He is a committed evangelical, and thus is expected to

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do be against abortion and homosexuality', or similar fundamentalist identity ascriptions. Communities shape our identity, but this does not mean that the outcome of this process is definable in terms of a finite set of attributes. The attachment to a community can never provide me with a stable response to the question 'Who I am?'; and if it pretended to provide me with a univocal response this would be a true sign of distorted, idolatrous and immature habits. If, according to Schleiermacher, the community of the church provides access to a stabilizing ground of my being in the world, this is not because it offers me an ideological or moral set of identity-establishing attributes. Quite the opposite, it provides access to an identity-stabilising ground because it is communion relating to piety (Christian Faith 3), which means it is based on the veneration of a mystery which evades the grasp of finite predications. The following essay of Gerhard Ebeling on Schleiermacher's doctrine of the divine attributes is to be read against this background; and this means it is to be read against the backdrop of a decided apophatic approach to the existence of God. Since it is impossible to provide a univocal response to the question 'Who I am' it is all the more impossible to define the identity of the mystery of orthodox piety. We may compare this approach to the doctrine of divine attributes with the apophaticism of Thomas Aquinas (see unit four of the Theology and Philosophy module). Similar to Aquinas, Schleiermacher's doctrine of good is strictly apophatic. God is not a 'big thing'. His essence transcends the finite knowledge of his creatures. For this reason Schleiermacher's doctrine of the divine attributes is, like in Aquinas, not isolable from considerations about divine 'causation'. It is not possible to speak about God without considering the divine causality which 'moves' my soul and provides it with an intuition of cause of the universe. Every positive attribution to God is based on, what medieval theologians called, the 'way of causality' (via causalitatis). However, other than in Aquinas Schleiermacher's concept of divine 'motion' seems to be exclusively focused on a special kind of causation and motion; namely a kind of motion which is revealed to us via, what he calls, the 'feeling of absolute dependence'. We "arrive at ideas of divine attributes only by combining the content of our self-consciousness with the absolute divine causality that corresponds to our feeling of absolute dependence" (Christian Faith 167,2). This new focus of Schleiermacher's apophaticism may, again, encourage a subjectivist reading: The pre-modern, cosmological concept of 'motion' becomes, as it were, substituted by a kind of subjective 'e-motion'. But Schleiermacher's use of this concept is neither subjectivist in terms of its ineffable content, nor in terms of the characteristic mode of being which reveals this content.

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In terms of content, the feeling of absolute dependence is tantamount with, what Schleiermacher calls in his earlier speeches On Religion, 'the intuition of the universe'; and in terms of its mode of being it is to be considered as neither objective nor subjective. Consequently, Schleiermacher's concepts of subjectivity and feeling are neither reducible to a private matter, nor to the characteristic feature of a specific 'language game'. Rather these concepts are be located on the same level as the Kantian T ; namely on the level of a shifter which mediates between different language games, including the scientific language games which allow us to objectify our intuition of the world. To summarize, Schleiermacher's concept of feeling is derivative of a deconstructed (i.e. non-foundationalist) mode of Cartesianism, which uses the Cartesian T as a hermeneutical shifter - namely as the indicator of a universal 'cause' which gathers everything together in the contemplation of an inexpressible unity. Consequently his considerations on the 'feeling of absolute dependence' are concerned with an intuition of the universum in the literal sense of this word (which means 'turned in to one'): with the intuition of something which transcends the heterogeneity of the world, including the heterogeneity between subject and objects, and including the heterogeneity between different language games. Seen from this point of view, Schleiermacher's theological hermeneutics is not that far from the analogical universe of Aquinas as it may have appeared in the time of Wilhelm Dilthey or Karl Barth; at least not if we interpret Aquinas' concept of analogy in accordance with his most recent interpreters as a mode of analogy of attribution and not (as Schleiermacher and Ebeling did, see ibid. 144) as a kind of analogy of proportionality in the sense Immanuel Kant (see unite four in the Theology and Philosophy module). To be sure, there are significant differences between Aquinas and Schleiermacher, but these differences are to be interpreted against the background of the epochal difference which separates the 13th from the early 19th century. Following Kant, Schleiermacher took seriously the modern experience of social and functional fragmentation; the experience that modern individuals are inhibiting at the same time 'different worlds'. Yet, he did not affirm this experience as an unquestionable fact. Rather he noticed that it includes a disquieting challenge to the human strive for unity and wisdom, which has been expressed by oracle of Delphi trough the infamous aphorism: Know yourself (yvcoQi aeauxov). We may inhabit simultaneously different worlds. And we may accept the reality of 'patchwork personalities' which do not fit in the semantic framework of unified identity ascriptions. But this does not undermine the truth of the oracle that we are always in quest for the unity of ourselves - even if we concede that no response to this quest will ever be satisfactory. At precisely this

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point Schleiermacher relates the call of the oracle with the question of God in developing a hermeneutics of the human strive to express something essentially inexpressible. The ambiguity of this response to the challenge of modernity may be summarized as follows: On the one side Schleiermacher leaves no doubt that religion is not to be reduced to a matter of subjective experience or 'emotion' (it is concerned with 'motion' of the universe as a whole); on the other hand he leaves no doubt that, after the break of modernity, only the subjective 'first person perspective' can give access to this universalist attitude (there is not access to the 'motion' of the universe as a whole without paying attention to the 'emotions' of human subjects). We are, so to say, forced to navigate between the Skylla of subjective emotions and the Charybdis of the fragmented diversity of heterogeneous 'motions' in reductionist natural-scientific, sociologist or psychologist sense of this word. This ambiguity explains why Schleiermacher's basic concepts are so easy to be misread. Concepts like Affekt (affect), Gemutsbewegung (movement of disposition) or Gefiihl (feeling / attunement) have nothing in common with the concepts of 'subjective emotion' we may discover in the writings of religious thinkers of the late 19th or early 20th century, like William James or Carl Gustav Jung. Rather they are to be located at the interface between the 'subjective' and the 'objective'. They are at once designed to transcend this distinction, and to provide us with a hermeneutical pre-understanding of a mysterious unity which precedes this distinction (in the Kantian sense of a transcendental condition of the possibility of human reason and culture).

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FURTHER READING
Primary Literature Ebeling, Gerhard, Schleiermachers Doctrine of the Divine Attributes. In: Ebeling, G.; Funk, R. W. (Ed.), Schleiermacher as contemporary, Journal for Theology and the Church, New York, N.Y: Herder and Herder 1970,125-162. Schleiermacher, F.: The Christian Faith. English translation of the second German edition, edited by H. R. Mackintosh and J. S. Stewart, Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark 1928, especially 50-56; 79-85, and 165-169; see also The Christian Faith in outline, for an overview on the architecture and the skeleton of paragraphs of this book in:
http://www.archive.org/details/christianfaithinOOschluoft)

Schleiermacher, Friedrich, Brief outline of theology as afield of study. By Terrence N. Tice. Translation of the 1811 and 1830 editions, with essays and notes, Schleiermacher studies and translations, Lewiston, N.Y., USA: E. Mellen Press 1990 Schleiermacher, F.: On The Glaubenslehre: Two Letters to Dr. Lucke. Transl. by James O. Duke and Francis Fiorenza. American Academy of Religion Texts and Translations Series, vol. 3, Chico, C.A.: Scholars Press, 1981. General Introductions Clements, K. W.: Friedrich Schleiermacher, Pioneer of modern theology, London: Collins 1987, 7-65. Gerrish, B. A.: A prince of the church. Schleiermacher and the beginnings of modern theology, The Rockwell lectures, Philadelphia: Fortress Press 1984 Marina, Jacqueline, Transformation of the Self in the thought of Schleiermacher, Oxford: Oxford Scholarship Online 2008 (electronically available via Ingenta) Niebuhr, Richard Reinhold, Schleiermacher on Christ and religion, Library of philosophy and theology, New York: Charles Scribner's 1965,1964 Sykes, Stephen Whitefield, Friedrich Schleiermacher, Makers of contemporary theology, Woking: Lutterworth Press 1971 Brent W. Sockness, Brent W., "The Forgotten Moralist: Friedrich Schleiermacher and the Science of the Spirit'. In: Havard Theological Review 96 (2003) Lamm, Julia A., "The Early Philosophical Roots of Schleiermacher's Notion ofGefuhl, 1788-1794'. In: Havard Theological Review 87.1 (1994), 67-105 Schleiermacher and Christian Doctrine Schussler-Fiorenza, F.: Schleiermacher and the Construction of a Contemporary Roman Catholic Foundational Theology, in: The Harvard Theological Review 89/2 (1996), 175-194 (includes a critique of Lindbeck's critique of Schleiermacher) B. Gerrish: The Nature of Doctrine: Religion and Theology in a Postliberal Age by George A. Lindbeck. In: The Journal of Religion 68 (1988), 87-92 Lindbeck, George A., The Nature of Doctrine. Religion and Theology in a Postliberal Age The Westminster Press 1984

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Tice, Terrence N.; Richardson, Ruth; Lawler, Edwina G. (Ed.), Understanding Schleiermacher. Schleiermacher studies and translations, Schleiermacher studies and translations, Lewiston, N.Y: Edwin Mellen Press 1998, ch. IV. 1. Williams, Robert R., Schleiermacher the theologian. The construction of the doctrine of God, Philadelphia: Fortress Press 1978

QUESTIONS FOR CONSIDERATION

1. What is, according to S., the difference between philosophy, dogmatics, and the language of preaching and poetry? 2. According to George Lindbeck, theology is to be based on 'cultural linguistics', i.e. a Wittgensteinian analysis of religious language which focuses on its essential connection with religious forms of religious life, as opposed to the 'subjectivism' of liberal theology. Is this dichotomy applicable to Schleiermacher? 3. What is the point of S. criticism of early modern theology, and to what extent does this criticism apply to premodern orthodoxy? (cf. the relevant units in the Theology and Philosophy module)

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UNIT TWO

Hermeneutics and Dialectics: The Philosophical Foundations of Schleiermacher7 s Theology

Concomitant reading: Marina, ch. 1-5 In the last 30 years it has become increasingly clear that Schleiermacher's Dialectic is to be considered as his philosophical foundational work, though the theological significance of this new perspective on Schleiermacher is still underrated. The centrality of this work would have been obvious from the beginning, had Schleiermacher not died in February 1834, just when he was preparing an edited version of his Dialectic. He was only able to complete his 'Introduction' in 1833. Given these editorial circumstances, all we know about the rest of this work is based on student notes and the handwritten manuscripts of his lectures. Moreover, though these manuscripts have meanwhile attracted the requisite attention, it is still a nearly unmanageable undertaking do provide a consistent philosophical interpretation of their content. Theses unfortunate editorial circumstances with regard to Schleiermacher's most fundamental philosophical writing shed some light on the problematic effective history of his complete work. For a long time, Schleiermacher was primarily known for his pioneering contributions to the art of interpretation (i.e. hermeneutics) and especially the hermeneutics of religious traditions (i.e. religious studies). It is out of question that Schleiermacher is to be ranked as the founder of these modern disciplines. However, in order to get access to the according parts of his work, it is indispensable to read them against the background of his dialectics. Only this saves us from confusing his contributions to the hermeneutics of written texts as an immature form of interpretative subjectivism, which is focused on the empathic decryption to the 'inner space' of authors or poets; or his contributions to the comparative study of religions as the outcome of a of philosophy of feeling, which focuses on the 'inner space' of pious subjects. Schleiermacher's hermeneutics was not concerned with the grammar-school question: 'What was the intention the author wanted to convey by this text?'; nor was his philosophy of religion focused on some kind of experiential expressionism. The similarity of these misreadings draws the attention to the respective relationships between Schleiermacher's philosophy and hermeneutics, and his

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philosophy and theology. Both of these relations are to be assessed in the light of his dialectic, given that this discipline is basically concerned with the interconnection between different scientific and philosophical disciplines, respectively different fields of language use. Comparable with Ferdinand de Saussure's 'general linguistics' or the platonic holism of Nicholas of Cusa, these dialectical considerations are based on a sophisticated form of semantic holism; namely the insight that every semantic unit is to be determined by its interrelation to the complex whole. To use a more traditional expression, every particular concept is to be defined trough its interrelation to the totality of differing concepts - in accordance with Spinoza's principle that 'every determination is a negation' (omnis determinatio est negatio). Schleiermacher leaves no doubt that the investigation of this holistic interrelationship is to be located on the most fundamental level of philosophical research, namely on the level of, what the philosophical tradition called, 'first philosophy' or 'metaphysics'. However, as distinct from early modern metaphysics (like Descartes and Leibniz), Schleiermacher's Dialectic does not elaborate the foundationalist architecture of a rationalistic system of distinctive disciplines and concepts. To the contrary, it is designed from the outset to demonstrate, that such an undertaking is necessarily bound to fail. Given that every conceptual representation of the whole is part of the system of concepts it is designed to represent, Schleiermacher's Dialectics demonstrates that our understanding of the whole is always incomplete. In trying to conceptualize the unifying (holistic) horizon which allows us to relate differing concepts to each other, we are introducing, deliberately or undeliberately, a new difference into the presupposed system of conceptual distinctions, which in turn changes the meaning of the whole. Consequently reflexive attempts to conceive the whole provide us with an idea of this whole only at cost of an intervention into this whole, and this is tantamount with the insight that every representation of its holistic features is by definition insufficient. Against this backdrop, Schleiermacher's Dialectic undermines any attempt to provide us with a foundationalist outline of a conceptual totality, or to provide us with a univocal systematic delimitation of grammatically heterogeneous fields of scientific research like theoretical and practical reason, theology and philosophy, etc. The remaining significance of this sceptical approach to the problem of preliminary distinctions may be illustrated retrospectively by the example of the post-liberal tradition in the wake of Karl Barth, which is almost always derivative to the tacit presupposition that it is possible to draw a clear demarcation line between 'theology and philosophy', 'faith and reason', or 'nature and revelation'. Dichotomies like these are, according to Schleiermacher's dialectic, at best approximately justifiable. They can never be

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strict, for, if we wanted to protect the 'inner space' of Christian faith against the invasion of secular philosophical language games, we would have to base this delimitation on some kind of rationalist foundationalism. Consequently, the problematic point of theological attempts to draw a strict demarcation line between faith and reason is not that they finally require a voluntaristic 'leap of faith' in order to bridge the gap they have introduced at the beginning (the infamous 'salto mortale' of Friedrich Heinrich Jacobi's 'Unphilosophie', which made already Schleiermacher wonder). The neo-orthodox approach to the problem of faith and reason is problematic not merely because of his irrational outcome, but rather because of his rationalist starting point: the conviction that there is a gap which needs to be bridged - as if it were possible to draw a clear cut borderline between different disciplines or language games without presupposing a rationalist concept of the totality of scientific concepts. This skeptical attitude with regard to systematic preliminary decisions converges with the contemporary discussions on, what the deconstructivist architect Peter Eisenman called, the Western 'metaphysics of space'. 1 Given that conceptual basic distinctions like the anthropological or architectural distinction between an (privileged) 'inner space' and an (extrinsic) 'outer space', are involuntarily part of the whole they are aiming to demarcate, they can never be fundamental or strict. As simple as this argument may appear, it suffices to deconstruct - as Schleiermacher's Dialectic demonstrates - the allegedly 'clear and distinct' basic demarcations of classical modern philosophy. It undermines dualist preliminary distinctions like the semantic oppositions between 'subject' and 'object', 'receptivity' and 'spontaneity', the 'organic' (sensual) and the 'formal' (intellectual), 'nature' and 'spirit', 'willing' and 'knowing', or 'practice' and 'theory'; and nothing prevents us from expanding this skeptical argument to the foundationalist demarcations of later times, like the neo-orthodox distinction between 'secular' and 'Christian language games'. Similar to modern quantum physics, we are in all this cases forced to accept a certain indeterminacy with regard to the borderlines between divergent eras of concern. The dialectical necessity to deal with blurred and indeterminate borderlines leads us to the second focus of this unit. The art of distinguishing indeterminate, imprecise and vague concepts is governed by the same rules and skills like the art of reading signs or interpreting words or texts. This is why, according to Schleiermacher, hermeneutics is to be considered as a fundamental
This was an crucial point in Jacques Derridas debate with Peter Eisenman which dissolved in the architectural design of the 'Pare de la Vilette' in Paris. See Jacques Derrida; Peter Eisenman, Choral works. Jacques Derrida and Peter Eisenman. Ed. by Jeffrey Kipnis and Thomas Leeser (New York, 1997).

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discipline as well. Hermeneutics is not an exclusive feature of 'soft sciences' like the humanities; it is of fundamental significance for scientific reason as such. But what is the difference between dialectics and hermeneutics, given that they are both to be considered as fundamental disciplines? As might be expected, it is not possible to draw a sharp demarcation line between these disciplines. Both are dealing with a lack of determination. However, it is possible to draw at least a gradual distinction between their different perspectives on the problem of indeterminacy. Dialectics may be defined as 'the art of conversation in pure thinking'. 1 But the expression 'pure' is not to be confused with the synonym expression in Kant's Critique of Pure Reason. It refers to a theoretical practice or attitude, namely the art of leading a philosophical conversation without being constrained by the practical pressure of acting, confessional commitments or aesthetic preferences. Like in Kant's first critique or in Aristotle's prima philosophia, Dialectic is concerned with the presuppositions and methods of all sciences and human activities. But in so far as it is tantamount to a theoretical attitude, and not a kind of foundationalist theory, it is simultaneously committed to an ethics of conversation, or - as we may put it in the wake of late modern philosophers like Derrida - and ethos of hospitality toward conflicting philosophical opinions. As distinct from this universalizing perspective of different opinions, hermeneutics is focused on the particular. However, this does not prevent the universalizing practice of dialectics from beeing always embedded in particular historical or cultural traditions. It is not possible to develop a 'neutral' first philosophy, or to uncover invariable 'a priori' rules of human rationality like in Kant. Instead of referring on something 'neutral' or 'unshakable', the expression 'pure' simply indicates a conversational attitude, something which may be exercised (or even 'purified' through the light of revelation), though it will never be perfectly actualised. It is not possible to attain a universal language of 'pure reason'. The only thing which can be attained is the insight that the lack of 'pure reason' is necessary. The last point distinguishes the universalizing perspective of Schleiermacher's dialectic from the post-modern narrative turn of philosophers or theologians like Alasdair Maclntyre, Stanley Hauerwas or John Milbank. As indicated above, dialectics is always embedded in the hermeneutics of particular narratives; but it is least possible to have a universal valid insight to the aporetic character of human reason. We know that we have no access to the foundations of human language, and this 'learned ignorance' is not the outcome of the hermeneutics of contingent narratives; rather it is to be located on the

See: Friedrich Schleiermacher, Dialektik. Hrsg. u. eingel. v. Manfred Frank (Frankfurt a. Main, 2001), Vol II, p. 5ff.

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level of a priory insights in the sense of Immanuel Kant. Kant's transcendental philosophical approach to the foundations of human reason is not to be dismissed tout court; though it provides us strictly speaking with nothing but a negative a priory. Comparable with the tradition of apophatic theology we know that we do not know the foundations of human reason; but at least this knowledge is demonstrable in accordance with the universal principles of human reason. On the other hand, Schleiermacher leaves no doubt that this universal knowledge is not to be confused with some kind of absolute knowledge. Other than in Hegel, Dialectics in the sense of Schleiermacher is based on imprecise expressions which are never definitely determinably; they always require the exercise of interpretational skills. The borderline between dialectics and hermeneutic is as fluent as the borderline between hermeneutics and dialectics, and this is also valid with regard to latter developments - including the 'linguistic turn' of modern analytic philosophy. On the one hand, Schleiermacher already anticipated the flaws of Gottlob Frege's attempt to develop an analytical semantic which abstracts from the contingent conditions of our language use. According to Schleiermacher, even formal logical abstractions, like the tautology 'a is a', presuppose some kind of abstractive hermeneutics in order to isolate their professed univocal meaning. Representatives of the Fregean strand of modern analytic philosophy neglect this necessity, and thus they overstretch the range of philosophical dialectics. On the other hand, Schleiermacher anticipated that the ordinary language approach of analytical philosophy is unsatisfying as well. Wittgensteinian attempts to explain the meaning of 'language games' by analysing their contingent everyday rules ('grammar'), fail to provide us with an appropriate understanding of the possibility of innovation and individual style; they fail, for example, to provide us with an understanding of our capacity of synthesising expressions never used before, or our capacity of understanding metaphors never heard before. Representatives of this analytic strand of modern philosophy underestimate the universal capacity of human subjects to transcend finite borderlines - they underestimate the range of philosophical dialectics. This is the background of Schleiermacher's decidedly Platonic considerations on hermeneutics as an interpretative and dialectics as a conversational art. The interpretation of texts is not reducible to the application of rules; it rather requires the creative invention of new viewpoints and perspectives, based on the universal gift of 'divination' which is never to be learned by simply applying contingent 'grammatical rules', though it presupposes interpretative exercises. For similar reasons Schleiermacher dialectics as not reducible to a formal logical theory; it is indissoluble from the exercise of hermeneutical skills.

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Dialectics presupposes hermeneutics and contrariwise: my individual attempts to interpret the unmistakable stylistic features of other persons, foreign languages or alien cultural and religious traditions presupposes a universal 'truth', the dialectical idea of something ('x') I can share with other persons despite the differences which separate me from them. Since I have to encounter other persons with an attitude of benevolence in order to understand the characteristic style of their approach to the 'truth', the inseparability of dialectis and hermeneutics finally includes the inseparability of the dialectical quest for the universal truth from ethical considerations about matters of subjective responsibility. The art of hermeneutics requires an ethos of hospitality with regard to the unique and distinctive, which resists the grasp of conceptual determinations. Strictly speaking individuals have nothing in common but this: they are always ineffably different in terms of character and style, and this requires us to acknowledge that they are resistant against scientific attempts to reduce their existence to the special cases of generic principles. Their 'being there' calls upon to our liability towards the deviating and alien in appealing at once to our theoretical and our ethical capacity of 'being understanding'. In his eponymous 1977 monograph on Schleiermacher's hermeneutics, Manfred Frank summarised this coincidence of heterogeneous aspects in our individual use of language by the shortcut Das individuelle Allgemeine (The Individual General). Our collective use of language connects the quest for a general truth with the practical relationship of concrete individuals which claim the right to be listened to against the collective. Schleiermacher's Hermeneutics is consequently not only indissoluble entangled with his Dialectics (the quest for the truth) but also with his Ethics (the quest for the good). His 'first philosophy' is to be conceived as a scientific 'art of knowledge' which transcends the difference between theory and praxis to the same extent as it transcends the difference between the individual and the general. Considered against this background, it may appear as surprising that this (at least compared with the classical hermeneutics of Dilthey) doubtlessly superior approach to the art of interpretation could have been fallen into oblivion. However, the explication for this second conundrum of Schleiermacher's unfortunate effective history is again rather simple. The fate of Schleiermacher's Hermeneutics is not only deeply connected with the unfortunate fate of his Dialectics; it is affected by editorial issues as well. Like in the case of his Dialectic, there exists no work on hermeneutics approved by Schleiermacher himself. His most relevant work on this topic, Hermeneutics and Criticism, containing texts from 1819 onwards, was only published posthumously and significantly not in the philosophical but in the theological division of Schleiermacher's complete works. Up to a certain point,

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this editorial decision was justified, since many parts of Schleiermacher's Hermeneutics are concerned with the interpretation of the New Testament. However, it deals at the same time with the problem of language in general, and this is not surprising, given that Schleiermacher always insisted that the principles of interpreting secular and religious texts are basically the same. Thus it is evident that his hermeneutics plays a crucial part in his philosophy as a whole. It is not reducible to manuals of textual criticism and the praxis of interpretation. Rather we have to read it in the light of his dialectics, and the new views on history, culture and the philosophy of language which emerged in the 18th and early 19th century following Jean Jacques Rousseau (1712-78), Johann Georg Hamann (1730-88), Johann Gottfried Herder (1744-1803), and Schleiermacher's friend August Wilhelm Schlegel (1867-1845). Manfred Frank's 1977 monograph was the first book which elaborated a reading of Schleiermacher based on a comprehensive account of this historical and philosophical background of Schleiermacher's hermeneutics, starting from a new, selected edition of Schleiermacher's Hermeneutics which included nothing but the philosophically relevant passages of the original text. Because of all this difficulties, the following unit will focus not on primary but on basic secondary literature, and particularly on Manfred Frank's text Metaphysical foundations: a look at Schleiermacher's Dialectic, which is included in your companion (Marina, 15ff.). This philosophical text also contains theological remarkable observations concerning the weak points of Schleiermacher's philosophy, which are connected with the philosophical monism of Leibniz, Spinoza and the early Schelling, and at least to some extent responsible for Schleiermacher's trinitarian 'modalism' (see unit four). Thus, Frank's text may also be read as a significant contribution to the systematic theological discussion on Schleiermacher- despite the fact that questions of Christian doctrine are not of interest for agnostic philosophers like Frank. Admittedly, Frank's text is quite challenging to read. Thus it will be indispensable first to read the two introductory texts provided in this unit. Besides this I strongly recommend you to make yourself familiar with the two most relevant primary texts accessible in English translation, the smart Dialectics of 1811 and the small book Hermeneutics and Criticism which is translated and edited by Andrew Bowie in accordance with the criteria of selection of Manfred Frank's 1977 edition of Hermeneutik und Kritik. Finally it is recommendable to read some general literature about the philosophical foundations of German Idealism and early Romanticism in order to acquire a deeper understanding of the historical and philosophical background of Schleiermacher's philosophy.

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FURTHER READING
Primary Literature Schleiermacher, Friedrich, Hermeneutics and criticism and other writings. Translated and edited by Andrew Bowie, Cambridge texts in the history of philosophy, Cambridge, U.K: Cambridge University Press 1998 Schleiermacher, Friedrich, Hermeneutics. The handwritten manuscripts. Ed. by Heinz Kimmerle ; translated by James Duke and Jack Forstman, Texts and translations series (American Academy of Religion), Missoula, Mont: Published by Scholars Press for the American Academy of Religion 1977 Schleiermacher, Friedrich, Dialectic, or, The art of doing philosophy. A study edition of the 1811 notes. Translated, with introduction and notes, by Terrence N. Tice, Texts and translations series (American Academy of Religion), Atlanta, Ga: Scholars Press 1996 Schleiermacher, Friedrich, Lectures on philosophical ethics. Edited by Robert B. Louden, translated by Louise Adey Huish, Cambridge texts in the history of philosophy, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 2002 Secondary Literature German Idealism and Early Romanticism Bowie, Andrew, From romanticism to critical theory. The philosophy of German literary theory, London: Routledge 1997 Bowie, Andrew, Aesthetics and subjectivity from Kant to Nietzsche, Manchester England: Manchester University Press 1990 Frank, Manfred, The philosophical foundations of early German romanticism. Translated by Elizabeth Millaan-Zaibert, Intersections (Albany, N.Y.), Albany, NY: State University of New York Press 2004 Beiser, Frederick C , German idealism. The struggle against subjectivism, 1781-1801, Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press 2002 Beiser, Frederick C , The romantic imperative. The concept of early German romanticism, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press 2003 Lacoue-Labarthe, Philippe; Nancy, Jean Luc, The literary absolute. The theory of literature in German romanticism. Translated with an introduction and additional notes by Philip Barnard and Cheryl Lester, Intersections (Albany, N.Y.), Albany: State University of New York Press 1988 (challenging) Patsch, Hermann; Dierkes, Hans; Tice, Terrence N.; Virmond, Wolfgang (Ed.), Schleiermacher, romanticism, and the critical arts. A festschrift in honor of Hermann Patsch, Lewiston, NY: Edwin Mellen Press 2008 On Hermeneutics Frank, Manfred, The subject and the text. Essays on literary theory and philosophy. Edited, with an introduction by Andrew Bowie; translated by Helen Atkins, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 1997

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Grondin, Jean, Introduction to philosophical hermeneutics. Forweord by HansGeorg Gadamer ; transl. by Joel Weinsheimer, Yale studies in hermeneutics, New Haven: Yale University Press 1994 (useful introduction into the history and theory of hermeneutics including Schleiermacher) Gadamer, Hans Georg, Truth and method, London: Sheed & Ward 1975 (part 2 includes an influential but very problematic reading of Schleiermacher) Rajan, Tilottama, The supplement of reading. Figures of understanding in romantic theory and practice, Ithaca: Cornell University Press 1990 (relates Schleiermacher to contemporary discussions) Ricoeur, Paul, 'Schleiermacher's Hermeneutics'. In: The Monist 60 (1977), 181-197

On Schleiermacher's Dialectic Bowie, Andrew, 'Schleiermacher and Post-Metaphysical Thinking'. In: Critical Horizons 5.1 (2004), 165-236 Klemm, David E., The Desire to Know God in Schleiermacher's Dialektik. In: Summerell, O. F. (Ed.), Otherness of God, Charlottesville: Univ Pr of Virginia 1998, 92-110. Thandeka, 'Dialectic: The Discovery of the Self that Kant has Lost'. In: Havard Theological Review 85 (1992) Thiel, John E., God and world in Schleiermacher's Dialektik and Glaubenslehre. Criticism and the methodology of dogmatics, Basler und Berner Studien zur historischen und systematischen Theologie, Bern: P. Lang 1981, 9-30, 71-80 Williams, Robert R., 'Schleiermacher, Hegel, and the Problem of Concrete Universality'. In: JAAR (1988), 473-496

QUESTIONS FOR CONSIDERATION

1. Why is, according to Schleiermacher, a 'pure reason' (in the Kantian sense of the Word) impossible? 2. Why did hermeneutics become important in Schleiermacher's overcoming of the foundationalist epistemology of the 18th century? 3. What are the limits on the discourse about God placed by dialectic, and how does this affect the relation of philosophy and theology? 4. To what extent does Schleiermacher's correspondence theory of truth?* philosophy depend on a

5. What is the rule of the ethical in Schleiermacher's hermeneutics and dialectics?

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UNIT THREE

Language, Subjectivity, and Philosophy of Mind: The Actuality of Schleiermacher

Concomitant reading: Marina, ch. 1-5;

As we have learned in the last unit, the basic problem of Schleiermacher's Dialectics and Hermeneutics is related to the philosophical conundrum of identity and difference. This conundrum may be considered as the most fundamental problem of philosophical learning since Parmenides and Heraclitus, and Plato's late dialogues Theaitetos, Parmenides and Sophistes. In Schleiermacher the problem of identity and difference is particularly related to the duality of the 'organic' (sensual) and the 'formal' (intellectual), respectively the capacity of human subjects to 'synthesize' differring sense impressions (the organic) in terms of their intellectually universalisable identity (the formal). The impact of this duality may be considered on different levels of abstraction, reaching from dialectical considerations on the interrelation (identity) between different scientific perspectives on the world (like natural sciences, ethics, etc.), via hermeneutical considerations regarding the identity between different subjective perspectives on our everyday experience, down to the most elementary conundrum of our being in the world, the question 'Who am I?' Every toddler is haunted by this question as soon as it discovers its mirror image. In terms of the philosophical problem of identity and difference, the focus of this question may be varied depending on whether we consider it (a) from a more immediate, spatio-temporal or (b) a temporally mediated, biographical point of view:

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a)

b)

What is the identity of myself in the difference between my immediate, self-consciousness (I) and my corporeal existence ('me') as a particular entity besides other entities in the world? We may call this the subjectobject-problem' or the phenomenon of self-consciousness. What it the identity of myself in the difference of variegating selfascriptions? We may call this the problem of personal identity.

The following unit focuses on this elementary, anthropological level of Schleiermacher's approach to the problem of identity and difference. It provides you with a basic understanding of how the question of the unity (identity) of God is to be located on this most elementary level of the human experience of indeterminacy and non-identity (difference), and how this question is related to Schleiermacher's fundamental theological considerations on religious feeling. Furthermore it will help you to read Schleiermacher's sophisticated approach to problems of human self-awareness and self-knowledge in the light of his immediate philosophical predecessors, and assess the significance of this approach in the light contemporary philosophical debates on the philosophy of mind. The problem of subjective self-consciousness Schleiermacher's approach to the classical modern subject-object problem (a), and the related problem of personal identity (b), is to be read in the light of a broader philosophical movement which leads from Immanuel Kant via Johann Gottlob Fichte (1762-1814) to the philosophy of Early Romanticism. Of particular importance is Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph Schelling's (1775-1854) criticism of Hegel's logic of self-reflection. Schleiermacher shared with Schelling and his early Romantic comrades-inarms the philosophical conviction that the phenomenon of self-consciousness is at the same time aporetic and fundamental. As soon as a human being starts to ask the question 'Who I am?' she will never find an unquestionable answer. However, the enigma of subjective self-consciousness is not only of existential significance; it is at once indicative for a philosophically fundamental aporia since it recalls an on-principle-limitation of human reason. On that account, Early Romantic philosophers criticized modern attempts to reduce the problem of human subjectivity to a theoretical or speculative problem. They resisted Descartes' early modern, foundationalist approach to this issue, which focused on substantial entities (res extensa and res cogitans, resp. body and soul), and they resisted Hegel's metaphysical logic of reflection, which focused on the dialectic between subject and object, departing from the

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mediating speculative principle of an 'autonomous negation'. 1 Instead of focusing on metaphysical principles, they rather argued that the seemingly banal everyday conundrum of the human self is of fundamental significance, i.e. something which is as little substitutable by theoretical explanations as a piece of art is substitutable by the elucidations of its interpreters. It will never be possibly simply to 'explain' exhaustively what subjectivity is. You have to be acquainted with the original phenomenon yourselves if you want to understand what philosophers try to illuminate when they speak about this topic. Why am I me, and not you? Is there any property that is essential for my being in the world? What makes me sure that I am always the same person, despite the observation that my self-images and self-ascriptions are continually changing? Childhood questions 2 like these did not only characterize the early Romantic criticism of Descartes and Hegel; they also marked the starting point of Kierkegaard's 'existentialist' considerations about the despairingly attempts of human individuals to be themselves. We will learn to know Kierkegaard's inventive response to these questions in unit six. However, since the basic problem of the following unit marks the systematic point of contact between Schleiermacher and Kierkegaard, it provides also an extensive introduction to this unit. Schleiermacher's contributions to the discussion on 'the self are less 'existentialistic' than Kierkegaard's (or Heidegger's), though he was deeply aware that the problem of the philosophical T is essentially connected with our 'beeing in the world'. It is no accident that Martin Heidegger inherited this infamous expression from Schleiermacher. Moreover, it is important to notice that Schleiermacher's reformulation of the problem of the philosophical T is essentially related to two further pivotal topics of this module: (I) the problem of dialectic and hermeneutics (unit two) and (II) the phenomenon of religious feeling, which will mark the starting point of the following, fourth unit about Schleiermacher's The Christian faith. The significance of the phenomenon of self-consciousness with regard to Schleiermacher's hermeneutics (I) Schleiermacher was, as far as we know, the first to draw conclusions from the aporiai of human self-awareness to the philosophy of language and
For a concise explication and critical discussion of the concept of 'autonomous negation' see Dieter Henrich, Between Kant and Hegel. Lectures on German idealism. Edited by David S. Pacini (Cambridge, Mass, 2003), 316-332. Frank has delivered a children lecture on this topic at the Tiibinger Kinder-Uni' in 2003, see: Manfred Frank, Warum bin ich Ich? Eine Fragefiir Kinder und Erwachsene (Frankfurt/M, 2007).

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philosophical hermeneutics. Like in the case of the indeterminacy principle of his Dialectics, the impossibility to provide an unshakable response to the question 'Who am I?' led him to consider the 'divinatory' practices of hermeneutics as a matter of fundamental scientific and anthropological significance. Other than in Descartes' or the philosophical naturalism of the 20th century, we have no access to an unequivocal principle of human identity which may be objectified as a material or immaterial substance (like the unextended soul of Descartes or the extended brain of neuro-philosophers). Schleiermacher shares Descartes conviction that the phenomenon of self-consciousness is of primordial significance. I am a thinking I (ego cogito), but this does not justify the conclusion that I am a substance sui generis. Subjectivity is not a 'thing' besides other things in the world. All I know about my subjective perspective on the world is that this perspective is not reducible to the totality of empirical things. Things are objectifiable only to the extent as they are an object for me; consequently they represent precisely what I am not (considered as the subject for whom they appear to be objectifiable). The subject is neither reducible to a physical thing (res extensa), nor is it another kind of thing (res cogitans). Rather it indicates an irreducible limitation of our attempts to reify the world. This is the reason why the relation between my subjective self-experience and objectifying self-ascriptions is aporetic. Objectifying self-ascriptions like 'I am a German Roman-Catholic with the qualities a, b, c ...' are never exhaustive. They are never sufficient to fix my unmistakable uniqueness, and this lack is, again, not only a matter of fact but a matter of principle. If I had the opportunity to accumulate an infinite set of predicates about my objective identity, this set would still lack at least one essential feature of myself: namely that I am not reducible to an object with determinable attributes, as long as I am at once a subject. For this reason I am always forced to oscillate between subjective and objective perspectives on my finite existence; and this means, in terms of hermeneutics, that I am always forced to counterbalance the extrinsic attributes other persons assign to me (third and second perspective) with my very own first person perspective on the world. I am, as it were, inescapable entangled in the triangle of interpreting the stories other people are telling me (second) or about me (third person perspective) in the light of my I-perspective on these matters. Thus I will never find a definitive response to the question 'Who am I?' Because of this dialogical dimension of human self-consciousness, we are always forced to trust in the hermeneutics of symbols, narratives and bodily manifestations of our being in the world. Only the hermeneutics of symbols allows us to mediate between immediate self-expressions, which are grammatically focused either on the first or on the second person perspective (like poetic expressions, prayers, confessions, etc.), and objectifying

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propositions, which are grammatically based on the third person perspective (like psychological or biological descriptions of a person). Only the hermeneutics of symbols can prevent us from reducing first or second person expressions to third person propositions. The quest for identity assurance can never be definitively stabilized. It can only be balanced based on signs and symbols which are apt to be shared with individuals who know what it is like to be an T from their own experience. Symbols are not objective - they do not provide us with descriptions of things. But they are not subjective either. They are suitable to be shared as a matter of 'inter-subjective' concern. However, not everything can be shared. Other than in the linguistic turn of the philosophy of the 20th century, which was focused on Husserl's and Peirce's concept of 'intersubjectivity' (e.g. in Habermas) or driven by Wittgenstein's suspicion against any kind of 'private language', Schleiermacher insisted that there is something unique which characterizes the 'signature' of every human being, and that this 'something' is not reducible to the 'grammar' of bodily symbolic or communicative interaction. Like in the case of a piece of art, we may illuminate or even imitate the unmistakable features of an individual, but these features will never be detachable from the 'original', the characteristic style of thinking, acting and being of a real existing unique being. Schleiermacher even argues, that there must be a mode of immediate consciousness with regard to this uniqueness of myself; some sort of selfknowledge which is not communicable through intersubjective expressions and consequently not reducible to the public available usage rules or 'grammar' of 'language games' - lest I would not be able to distinguish myself from other subjects. I have access to some mode of knowledge with regard to myself which is not accessible to other people, though Schleiermacher insists at once that this unique dimension of human self-consciousness is of universal significance. It is not only key for my relation to myself, but also key for our intersubjective understanding of the unity of the world of the whole. At first glance this coincidence between different kinds of unity (identity) may appear as confused. In the case of my characteristic uniqueness we are dealing the problem of in-dividuality in the literal sense of this word; the undividedness of myself as s single individual. In case of matters of intersubjective or uni-versal significance we are dealing, to the contrary, with what unites different individuals in abstract, generic sense of this word. However, Schleiermacher's thesis is precisely that our individuality reveals something universal, namely something which paradoxically transcends the difference between the general and the individual. Seen from this point of view, we may say that individuality is something 'in-dividual' in the sense of something which assures the temporal identity (unity) of a person which is

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nevertheless distinct from other individuals. However, individuality reveals at once that I have at least one thing in common with all individuals - namely that we are all different. I am identical with every other individual in that we have all unique features which are not reducible to the features of someone else. Consequently, the phenomenon of individuality is of prototypical significance. It provides us with a preliminary understanding of how the phenomenon of difference (to be distinct from others) is ultimately related to the problem of unity (to have something in common with others). Furthermore the phenomenon of individuality explains why the relation between identity and difference is essentially aporetic or paradox, which means, not explicable in terms of objectifying true or false propositions. Our respective uniqueness is never definable. At the most it may be indicated by paradoxical expressions, symbols, or images. If someone is crucified by the question 'Who am I?' we may send him to a neurologist, psychologist or a philosopher. But in the case of doubt it may be better to send him to a poet, a prophet, an artist or even a caricaturist, since they are better skilled in the task of catching the unique. They are skilled in using symbolic expression for the indefinable, and this is what is ultimately required when we face the conundrum of human identity. Now it is important to read Schleiermacher's approach to the problem of subjective identity against the background of the Kantian tradition of modern philosophy. As already Kant had argued, it is not possible to discover differences between temporarily variegating self-ascriptions or heterogeneous perspectives on the world without presupposing at least a formal unity which bridges the gap between these differences. The concept of 'difference' necessarily presupposes a prior understanding of some sort of identity, whatever this identity may be. To use the expression of Kant's Critique of Pure Reason, it presupposes a something = x (A 250). However, according to Schleiermacher this identity is simultaneously unique and universal, for it facilitates at the same time the temporal unity of myself as an individual and the intersubjective unity which connects me with other subjects as an individual representative of the human species. Like the monotheist concept of God (Deu 6:4), the Kantian 'x' it is simultaneously unique and generic. Following Manfred Frank's eponymous book, we may summarize this feature of myself again by the shortcut 'individual general'. The unity of myself is an individual general, and because of this paradox the Kantian 'x' evades every attempt of identity assurance which is based on generalisable scientific or philosophical concepts. All we can achieve, when we are asking for unity of ourselves, are symbolic makeshifts for something essentially inexpressible.

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The significance of the aporia of self-consciousness to Schleiermacher's hermeneutics of religious symbols and narratives (II) This leads us to Schleiermacher's second original contribution to the philosophical discussion on the problem of the self, his considerations on religious feeling. In order to understand Schleiermacher's approach to this issue, we have to keep in mind that the conundrum of human identity is aporetic in principle and scientific fundamental. Because of principle reasons, which will be outlined later, the conundrum of the human self is never to be solved in the long run of social progress, as it was claimed by 'left wing Hegelians' of the late 19th and the early 20th century like Karl Marx, who interpreted the human subject-object split as a sign of social self-estrangement which will be overcome in the communist society. Similarly the conundrum of the human self is never to be solved in the long run of scientific progress, as it is still claimed by 'naturalist' analytic philosophers who aspire to reduce first person perspective expressions or essentially subjective phenomena (like qualia) to propositions about objectifiable entities or natural data and facts. Following the scientific maxim of parsimony ('Occam's Razor') such a 'reduction' (i.e. substitution of one class of phenomena by another without any alteration in its truth-value) would be a real scientific progress. However, the human subject-object split resists exaggerated promises of scientific or social progress for the same reasons why it resists esoteric promises to overcome this split in favor of an intuitionist 'holism'. The phenomenon of 'being myself is neither reducible to an objectifiable matter of fact nor to a detached realm of subjectivist private intuitions. Our bodily experience is indissolubly entangled with the non-objectifiable individuality of a subjective perspective on the world, and our subjective intuitions are indissolubly entangled with our objectifiable 'being there' as an embodied self. This irreducible relational character of human self-consciousness is not least of crucial significance with regard to subjectivist misreadings of Schleiermacher's concept of 'religious feeling'. Other than in Wilhelm James or Rudolf Otto, religious feelings are not a matter of interest for their own sake, or something which is only relevant for 'religious musical' people; they are of interest because they are indicative of a matter of universal significance in the Kantian sense of this word: They illuminate the subjective and intersubjective 'conditions of the possibility' of human rationality. Up to a certain point, we may follow u p the line of psychological or phenomenological considerations in order to understand the experiential foundations of Schleiermacher's concept of feeling. Let us take for example Rudolf Otto's analysis of the 'feeling for the divine' (sensus numinis). According to Otto, our existential request to overcome the characteristic indeterminacy of

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human self-consciousness supports the religious conviction that our beeing there is depending on a ground which essentially transcends the limits of human thinking and acting - a ground which is not only gradually but qualitatively different from what I am able to do or to think. For this reason our sensitivity for the transcendent is only communicable by symbolic makeshifts. As Otto has put it in his essay on the sensus numinis in Schleiermacher, I am not only able to give a quantifiable, theoretical description of a clearing in the forest or the ruins of a cathedral (e.g. by calculating its length and breadth) or to have a practical eye on its condition (e.g. by considering how it could be used or restored); I am also able to sit at a tree stump or in a corner of the ruin, thereby quietly contemplating its mystery. There is a sense of the numinous dimension of things which reveals something incomparable and unique; a sense of 'something' which resists theoretically or practically reductionist attitudes with regard to the bodily manifestations of our being in the world (including the spatial extensions of our embodied self into ruins, clearings, or buildings, in so far as they manifest something about our 'dwelling' 1 in the world). This is the reason why our embodied self is not only of theoretical or practical, but also of symbolic significance. Every body has a symbolic dimension (and inversely, every concept or intuition has a bodily dimension which relates it to our dwelling in the world). However, and this marks the point where Schleiermacher moves beyond the margins of psychological or subjectivist approaches to the sensus numinis, my sensitivity for the numinous ground of my being in the world is neither a private matter nor reducible to a characteristic feature of people with religious or poetic dispositions. The religious 'intuition of the universe' does not only transcend the difference between theory and practice. It is at the same time of transcendental significance, i.e. a condition of the possibility of theory and practice. For it represents the only mode of knowledge which provides us access to the unifying 'something = x' of Kant's first critique, which is at once a presupposition of theoretical reason, practical reason and aesthetical judgments. Up to a certain point, we may rightly argue that ruins and clearings, or cathedrals and hymns on God or the beauty of his creation are 'only of aesthetical' or 'subjective' significance. They represent an area of concern which is distinct from the areas of scientific investigation or practical consideration. However, as Schleiermacher's dialectics demonstrates (see unit two), this
See: Heidegger, Martin, Building Dwelling Thinking. In: Poetry, Language, Thought. Transl. by A. Hofstadter, New York: Harper Colophon Books 1971, 143-161 (http://mysite.pratt.edu/~arch543p/readings/Heidegger.html) and Heidegger, Martin, 'Art and Space'. Transl. by C. H. Seibert. In: Man and World 6 (1973), 3-8 (http://pdflibrary.wordpress.com/2008/02/12/heidegger-art-and-space/). For a more scientific approach to this phenomenon see the below essay of Groen.

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distinction can never be strict. Only a foundationalist metaphysical outline of the totality of bodily and spiritual entities could provide us with a clear and distinct delimitation of areas of theoretical, practical and aesthetical concerns. As soon as we accept that the rationalist project to elaborate of totalizing foundationalist metaphysics has failed, we have to accept that the borderlines between different areas of cultural activity are blurred, and that our attempts to delineate these borderlines have to rely on symbolic representations for a missing whole. As already Plato has argued, our delimitation of differences is always related to an idea of the whole. But our expressions for this whole are never more than symbolic makeshifts for something we do not know. Our use of these makeshifts may vary in accordance with culturally contingent narratives and habits. But our reliance on these makeshifts is due to an aporia that necessarily crops up in every human being as soon as it tries to interpret its world, however scientific this interpretation may be. Consequently the aporia of human self-consciousness is of universal significance; it does not accidentally but necessarily accompany our intersubjective approach to the world. At this point we may ask some critical counter questions with regard to Schleiermacher's concept of religious feeling. Even if we concede that his rigorous scientific approach to the human self is immune to the suspicion of subjectivism: Does it not at least support a cultural relativist attitude with regard to different religious and cultural traditions? Given that religious symbols and habits are responding to a problem which necessarily crops up in every human being as soon as it tries to interpret its world, we are indeed well advised to take seriously the contingent material (vowels and consonants, gestures, sounds, images, bodies, spaces, etc) which expresses the human experience of something inexpressible. Only the mediatory force of contingent symbols allows us to bridge the gap between our subjective intuitions and our objective self-observations. Symbol practices are not reducible to something arbitrary, since they express something which mediates in between 'subjective' arbitrariness and 'objective' necessity. However, nothing prevents us from considering them as culturally contingent. From the cave paintings of Lascaux, via the poetic language of the Koran, to the Japanese tea ceremony, the Roman Catholic liturgy and the symbolism of Bach's St. Matthew Passion: In all these cases we are dealing with culturally relative symbol practices. We may consider Schleiermacher's analyses of religious 'feelings' as suitable to draw attention to the World Cultural Heritage and to convince at least the 'cultured' despisers of religion that they are exemplary for an essential and scientific irreducible feature of our being in the world. But this does not force us to privilege any religious or cultural tradition against others It not even forces us to privilege religious traditions against the agnostic symbolism of modern art and poetry. Is the

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plurality of individual expressions of the inexpressible not an inerrant sign that these cultural relative manifestations of the 'individual general' are all of equal value? In order to answer this question, we have to recall the problem religious symbols are, according to Schleiermacher, destined to deal with. Schleiermacher's 'feeling of absolute dependence' is to be considered as a mode of immediate self-consciousness which is at the same time of individual and universal significance. Given this paradoxical, 'individual general' focus of symbolic expressions we have, first of all, to avoid an interpretative extremism. If we try to reduce, for example, the symbolical expressions of religious feelings to a matter of abstract philosophical or pseudo-scientific speculations (as it is the case in Richard Swinburne's 'natural theology', American Creationism, or evolutionary biological theories about the significance of cultural symbolisms), we are privileging their objectifiable, general features at the cost of their individual significance. If, on the other hand, we consider symbolic expression of religious feelings as a matter of subjective convenience (as it is the case in post-modern esotericism), we are privileging heir individual (or subjective) features at the cost their universal significance. In both cases we fail to keep the balance between the individual and the general. This observation provides us with a hermeneutical criterion to distinguish between more or less suitable attitudes with regard to religious symbols. The grammar of religious 'language games' is designed to keep the balance between subjectivism and rationalism, and this allows us not only to identify 'dead ends' of the history of religion (esotericism, creationism, etc.). According to Schleiermacher, it allows as also to assess serious religious or cultural traditions in terms of their respective symbolic convenience with regard to their anthropological destination. Precisely this is the point where the Christian narrative of the incarnation becomes important in Schleiermacher (see unit four and Schleiermacher's introduction into The Christian Faith). According to Schleiermacher, the symbolism of the incarnation is not to be leveled with other symbolic expressions of the inexpressible, since it includes the only symbolic expression of a redemptory experience which allows definitely the overcoming of the indeterminateness and arbitrariness of our 'being in the world' without evading the experience of historical contingency in favor of abstract philosophical or pseudo-scientific speculations. Only the symbolic language of a tradition which intrinsically connects the use of contingent symbols with the unity of the absolute (in the philosophical sense of this word) can close the gap between the individual (i.e. contingent) and general (i.e. universal) features of our being in the world. To believe in Christ is, according to this hermeneutics of the Christian symbolism, tantamount with the attachment to an historic experience

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which is at once of historically contingent and universal. On the one hand Jesus of Nazareth was a historically contingent person like any other human person a carpenter who was born in a little village in Galilee and crucified together with other criminals. On the other hand he was a person of universal significance, since he provided his disciples with an immediate expression of the feeling of absolute dependence, which was rooted in a unique experience of unity with the divine. Seen from this dialectical point of view, the Christological doctrine of the unity between God and men in Jesus Christ (hypostatical union) provides us with an account of a mystery which transcends the level of culturally relative expressions of the inexpressible. Designed as a doctrinal interpretation rule, it locates the significance of Jesus of Nazareth neither in his teachings (theory) nor in his deeds (practice), nor in his prophetic use of symbols, but in his contingent fate as such. The contingency of Christ's fate is not reducible to mode of expression for a philosophical mystery; it is the historical actualization of what philosophical considerations on the absolute or the feeling of absolute dependence try to approximate. Consequently the fate of Jesus of Nazareth is not to be considered as a symbolism besides others, but as the proto-type of what every symbolic expression of the 'feeling of absolute dependence' tries to express: namely the paradoxical unity of a contingent individual biography on the one hand with the universal significance of the absolute on the other. - It is not accident, that the modern idea of the 'dignity of man', which considers the embodied self of every human person as a matter of absolute value, is derivative to the Christian concept of 'being an image of God' and not of the more naturalist doctrines of salvation of the eastern religions of wisdom (Buddhism, Hinduism, Taoism, etc.). Moreover, it is highly questionable whether agnostic traditions are able to preserve the symbolic legacy which provided the motivational resources to establish this indisputable achievement of human culture. 1 According to Schleiermacher, the prototype of the idea of an individual general, which governs and motivates the modern appreciation of the embodied self of every human person as a reality of unconditioned dignity, is to be traced back to a characteristic feature of the subjectivity of Jesus of Nazareth: Without being distracted trough the concupiscent attachment to finite entities, Jesus was in all its words and deeds unreservedly governed by the mysterious presence of the divine, which empowered him to interpret his contingent fate as an irreducible gift of grace. He received his life without

This was the point of contention of Josef Ratzinger's infamous Munich debate with the German agnostic philosopher Jiirgen Habermas. See Ratzinger, Joseph; Habermas, Jiirgen, The dialectic of secularization. On reason and religion, San Francisco, CA: Ignatius Press 2006.

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reason, and this destined him to become the religious symbol par excellence; namely a symbol which is immune against any kind of cultural relativism, not despite the modern achievements of respect and tolerance with regard to foreign cultures and tradition, but just because we are called to respect every culturally distinct, embodied self as an image of God. We will come back to this christocentric focus of Schleiermacher's theological hermeneutics in the next unit. With regard to the actual unit it may suffice to summarize Schleiermacher's hermeneutical approach to the uniqueness of Christianity in terms of its philosophical significance: Like in Descartes, Schleiermacher aims to establish his considerations on the finite dialectic of subject and object on an unshakable ground which allows us to transcend the experience of existential doubt or indeterminacy. But other than in Descartes, this ground is not demonstrable in terms of rational evidences. It is only available via the symbolic rationality of religious symbols and the human gift to trust in the evidence of 'things not seen' (Hebr. 11:1). Philosophical foundations of Schleiermacher's hermeneutics of the self: A. The phenomena of self- and external awareness The present unit focuses on the philosophical foundations of Schleiermacher's concept of religious feeling which are coincident with his philosophy of self-consciousness. As we will learn to know in the subsequent text of Manfred Frank, the contemporary resurgence of the post-Kantian discussion on this topic has two foci: The phenomenon of immediate self-awareness (A) and the aporiai of self-knowledge (B), which becomes manifest in our use of so called 'indexicals' (T, 'You', 'here', 'now', etc.). Following, I will use the expression self-consciousness as a generic expression for both aspects of the self, selfawareness and self-knowledge, but you should not rely on this terminological distinction when you are going to read the relevant primary or secondary sources, since the philosophical language use with regard to these issues is anything but homogeneous. (A) The problem of immediate self-awareness especially affects modern discussions about physicalism, namely the philosophical conviction that everything we know about the world can be reduced to a description of physical entities, including the subject (or 'brain') which gives this description. An important representative of this philosophical tradition was Thomas Nagel, who published a pathbreaking essay on physicalism already in 1965. In 1970, however, Nagel published another essay which, though it did not simply refute the worldview of physicalism, demonstrated the existence of phenomena which escape the descriptive realism of physicalism. This essay is notably titled What

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is it Like to Be a Bat? Already this title indicates where the limits of physicalist descriptions of the world are to be located. Though it is possible to make many critical objections against Nagel's argumentation, the crucial point of this classical text remains significant: I may imagine how it would be, if I would be able of perceiving things via an echosounder or if I could experience the world like a bat. But even in this case I would only imagine what it would be like for me (a human person) to be a bat. There is no possibility of experiencing what it really is to be a bat - as there is no possibility for another person to experience what it is like to be 'me'. The experience of being myself is not describable as a property or reducible to a predicate which is transferable to other beings without further ado. Rather it is something idiosyncratic; something which intransferably belongs to me (as opposed to you and, still more, as opposed to every other being in the world). Now it is important to notice that the 'what-it-is-likeness' (A) of a sensitive being is not necessarily idiosyncratic. Considered in a broader sense, this art term refers to a characteristic feature of states which I may share with other beings, like pain and love. Self-awareness is not to be confused with selfknowledge (B), since it is not necessarily connected with the knowledge of myself as the individual owner of a certain state. Animals can have pain as well, but most of them would not consider themselves as an T which has this feeling 'here and now' (as distinct from feelings T may have 'tomorrow', etc.). Be this as it may, Nagel's 'what-it-is-likeness' demonstrates that there is a kind of (self-)awareness which is not reducible to descriptive propositions about universal observable facts. I may share the 'what-it-is-likeness' of love with another person; but I must be a human person to share it, as I would have to be a bat if I wanted to share the 'what-it-is-likeness' of a bat with another bat. This does not necessarily mean that physicalism is wrong tout court (Nagel remained faithful to his physicalist starting point or at least kept sympathizing with this worldview). But even a strictly convicted physicalist has to concede that there are phenomena which are not (or at least, as Nagel maintains, 'not yet') satisfactorily explainable within the framework of physicalist descriptions of matters of fact. This observation underlines the remaining significance of the premodern distinctions between body and soul, though it does not necessarily support the Cartesian dualist alternative to modern physicalism. In the case of Descartes, the immediate self-evidence of the thinking T (cogito), which is to be distinguished from the fallible evidence of sense experiences, marked the point of departure of a dualist distinction between different substances, namely body and mind. But this distinction, which neglects to problem of vegetative or animal souls, turned out to have problematic or at least contra-intuitive consequences, since it immediately provoked the question how mental and

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physical 'substances' are correlated to each other. Am I a separated soul which plays piano on the 'modules' of its brain, as Sir Karl Popper and the neurologist Sir John Eccles suggested still in the 20th century? Or is the causal connection between theses substances only something illusionary, as Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz' concept of a perfectly programmed 'pre-established harmony' between the essentially different causal rows of physical and mental entities suggested? Modern attempts to overcome this contra-intuitive dualism tended to prefer materialist explanations or at least the less contra-intuitive position of 'functionalism'; a theory which was first elaborated by the American philosopher Hilary Putnam. According to this approach to the 'mind-body problem', the relation between 'mind and brain' is comparable with relation between hardware and software (though more futurist representatives of functionalism, like Ray Kurzweil, concede that the human 'hardware' is rather to be described as 'wetware', namely something quite dirty and error-prone which may be overcome in the long run by a more trustworthy and clean 'hardware'). It could be argued that this modern trend is due to the appeal of metaphorical fashions. Whereas the physicians of the Roman Empire tried to explain the dynamics of the brain by comparing it with a central heating system, it was quite fashionable to compare it with a pneumatic organ in the age of Leibniz and Johann Sebastian Bach. Thus it is not surprising, that the metaphors of the past became finally substituted by the more advanced metaphoric of the post-modern cyberspace. 1 Yet this does not necessarily disqualify the functionalist trend of the late twentieth century. The intelligent use of metaphors is a constitutive element of innovative research, and the postmodern computer metaphoric has turned out be an extraordinary inspiring tool of neuroscientific theory production. 2 However, techno-morph metaphors are never more than guiding models, designed to deepening our understanding of special aspects of human- or animal-bodies. Thus it is no surprising that the proposal to develop a theoretical solution of the mind body problem which is exclusively based on this functional model became already disputed in the 1960's. Ironically enough, it was Hilary Putnam himself who became one of the most influential critics of the functionalist turn of contemporary cognitive sciences. Putnam's philosophical externalism ('meanings' just ain't in the head') moved in the direction of Ludwig Wittgenstein philosophy of language, which is (as

For a quite illuminating history of ideas concerning the Brain: Ernst Florey; Olaf Breidbach (Ed.), Das Gehirn - Organ der Seek. Zur Ideengeschichte der Neurobiologie (Berlin 1993). For an extensive discussion of the scientific use of metaphors see: Janet Martin Soskice, Metaphor and religious language (Oxford, 1985), 97-141.

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Putnam explicitly points out) 1 much closer the Aristotelian tradition than to the modern dichotomy between dualist or functionalism 'theory options'. This 'hylemorphic' tradition dominated the orthodox strands of Western Christianity for more than one millennium, including the more Platonic strands of Christian orthodoxy. Moreover, it is important to realize that this more traditional approach to the problem of body and soul is as little reducible to a mere 'theory option', as my understanding of 'what it is like to be in pain or love' is reducible to the conclusiveness of theory hypothesis. The PlatonicAristotelian approach to the problem of body and soul is based on a realistic interpretation of our everyday experience, and this is the reason why it is incompatible with idealized theoretical preliminary distinctions like the classical modern (post-Humean) 'fact-value-distinction' or the related Kantian distinction between theory and practice. 2 Seen from an ontologically realist viewpoint (in the Aristotelian sense of this word), it would be awkward to speak about 'souled' entities without acknowledging their intrinsic value. I do not simply observe souls in the world, as I may observe a signpost or a jellyfish. As soon as I discover, for example, that this being, at the road junction, which I had nearly overrun with my car, is not a signpost but a human person, I immediately realize that there is not only something I should know but someone who's existences calls an attitude of ethical responsibility. A human body is not a thing, and this is the reason why I can't avoid adopting a value laden attitude as soon as I am faced with 'someone' (as distinct from 'something'). To use an expression of Wittgenstein's Philosophical investigations: 'My attitude towards him is an attitude towards a soul. I am not of the opinion that he has a soul, (part II, iv)' The point if this aphorism is, that my pre-theoretical attitude to a human person it not reducible to matter of propositional attitudes (like knowing, having an opinion about something, etc.). The distinction between persons and things or robots is not a matter of theoretical considerations about the objective properties of things. We may experiment with the borderlines between 'animated' and 'dead' entities, but at the end of the day this would not be a theoretical but a social experiment (as it is the case in Steven Spielberg's movie LA.). For it is our pre-theoretical (ethical and aesthetical) attitude towards entities which introduces the distinction between animated and dead bodies into our habits and life forms.

See the two essays "Aristotle after Wittgenstein" and "Changing Aristotle's Mind", in Hilary Putnam, World and Life, (Cambridge, MA 1994). See also Hilary Putnam, The collapse of the fact I value dichotomy and other essays (Cambridge, MA, 2002).

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This is the reason why Aristotle and Aquinas did not consider the difference between animate and inanimate 'substances' as a matter of empirical description but of intellectual intuition (a kind of pre-reflexive shape perception); and this is the reason why Aristotle's 'hylemorphism' used the sophisticated distinction between 'hyle' (matter) and 'morphe' (shape, form) to analyse the 'essence' of animate 'substances'. The concept of 'form' is neither reducible to a pre-modern circumscription for the interconnecting 'software' of a materialized 'hardware', nor is it exclusively concerned with the explanation of the human mind or the aporiai of human self-knowledge (like in Descartes). It rather refers to the value laden, teleological dynamic of animated entities in general, from the vegetative soul of plants, via the sensitive soul of animals, to the rational soul of 'rational animals' (i.e. humans). For the same reason, considerations on 'physical' entities (in the pre-modern sense of 'physis') were not focused on a reductionist Newtonian concept of causality, but on three distinctive aspects of 'causation'. The soul of an animate entity, for example, was to be considered as (secondary) cause of the dynamic 'movements' of the corresponding body (causa efficiens), as cause of its intrinsic value and 'end' (causa finalis), and as cause of its substantial shape or 'form' (causa formalis);1 and it goes without saying that this dynamical approach to the body-soul problem was incompatible with any kind of substance dualism. My soul is not something essentially different from my body. To the contrary, though it transcends my bodily reality, it constitutes at once the substantial essence of my body in imparting it with its shape, its intrinsic value and its characteristic beauty. Seen from this Platonic-Aristotelian point of view, the vexing modern question of how to explain the 'correlation' between body and soul is a typical example for the tortures philosophers catch when they get trapped by a misleading (or, as Aristotle would have said, unrealistic) presentation of a problem. However, there is at least one respect which justifies the Cartesian, anthropocentric approach to the conundrum of the human self, and this leads us the second part of my short introduction into the philosophical foundations of Schleiermacher's hermeneutics of the self: the problem of self-knowledge. Up to a certain point, the basic principles of Schleiermacher's 'first philosophy' (dialectic), and especially his distinction between the 'organic' and the 'formal' are comparable with the tradition of premodern hylemorphism. However, Schleiermacher does not simply neglect Descartes considerations on human self-consciousness. Despite his affinity to the pre-modern and especially Platonic tradition, Schleiermacher adopted, as it were, a third perspective on the problem of body and soul, which is neither simply pre-modern nor trapped in

See for example Aristotle: De anima, II 415b.

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the dichotomy of dualism and physicalist monism - a perspective which includes something new, or at least something not satisfactorily explicated in Aristotle or Aquinas. Exactly this leads us to the contemporary discussion about (quasi-)indexicals. Philosophical foundations of Schleiermacher's hermeneutics of the self: B. The problem of self-knowledge (B) Other than in Thomas Nagel's rediscovery of the 'what-it-is-likeness' of the self-awareness, the problem of self-knowledge is connected with basic problems of modern language analysis and Wittgenstein's so called 'private language argument'. According to this argument, it makes no sense to use language expressions which are only understandable by a single individual. I must always be able to share what I am speaking about with other persons, and there is no possibility to speak about 'feelings' or 'intuitions' without connecting them with an observable matter, gesture or action. Like in Aristotle (but other than in Plato) there is no possible knowledge of a form without the possibility of connecting it with an observable 'matter'. Already few years after Wittgenstein's dead, Hector Neri Castaheda (19241991) demonstrated that this position is at least problematic. There are irreplaceable expressions in our language, the use of which is not necessarily connected with a common observable 'matter'. Though we share these expressions among us, their essential meaning is in each case only accessable to a single individual, and this not only in the sense of the individual experience of a certain state of mind ('what-it-is-likeness'), but it in the sense of a knowledge which is detachable from my familiarity with specific mental states. The crucial argument of Castaheda is developed in his essay He, based on considerations on so called 'quasi-indexicals'. Indexicals are personal, local or temporal pronouns like T , 'there' or 'now'. Their common future is that they are always used in a unique manner, though we normally do not have any problems to use them appropriately. If I am saying, for example, 'I am here' you must say 'Ah, you are there' if you like to refer to the same place I am speaking about; and if I am saying 'you' to you, you must say T if you like to refer to the same person I am relating to by saying 'you'. This is why children always struggle to get to grips with our use of indexicals. Quasi-indexicals are derivative of these modes of language use. They are used to speak about a person who expresses themselves by indexicals. We say, for example, 'He is a liar', if we speak about what the person itself would express by 'I am a liar'. Starting from this terminological distinction, Castaheda's essay demonstrates that it is sometimes impossible to substitute the quasi-indicator he* by a general

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expression salva veritate, i.e. without changing its truth function. He exemplifies this impossibility by using the following sentence: (1) The editor of Psyche [a scientific journal] knows that he* is a millionaire. If we try to substitute the quasi-indexical he* in this sentence by a general description (like 'the editor of Psyche') we immediately discover that this is accompanied by a crucial change of meaning. We may say, for example: (2) The editor of Psyche knows that the editor of Psyche is a millionaire. But this sentence does obviously no longer have the same meaning than (1). The editor may, for example, know that he is a millionaire whithout knowing that he is the editor of Psyche (he does not know that the responsible board has just appointed him for this post in absentia). In this case (1) is true (he* knows that he is a millionaire), but (1) does not implicate that (2) is true as well (he does not necessarily know that the editor of Psyche is a millionaire). Or a person may know that the editor for Psyche is a millionaire, for he knows that the responsible board appointed a new editor, and he knows that the new editor will inherit a fortune after being appointed, but he does not yet know that the board appointed himself as editor. In this case sentence (2) is true, but it does not implicate that sentence (1) is true as well. To make a long story short, self-ascriptions are not simply substitutable by generalising predications which focus on the properties of a person (like 'the editor of psyche'). This does not necessarily mean that they refer to something hidden in the 'inner life' of the subject; based on quasi-indexicals it is even possible to speak about them in indirect speech. But they are irreducible and they are irreducibly connected with a characteristic asymmetry of usage: Though everyone says T to himself, no one can say T to another person; and though we do not have the slightest difficulty in understanding indexicals their manner of use is highly contingent ('I am now here' nearly always means something different). In knowing myself, I know 'something' of me which is at best comparable with the protagonist of Robert Musil's Man with out qualities; a dimension of myself which is detached from any stable property and any stable location in time or space. Exactly this leads us back to the second revolution of modernity, which is connected with the post-Kantian controversy about the transcendental Ego and the problem of self-knowledge. As the German philosopher Dieter Henrich (who was the teacher of Manfred Frank) has demonstrated in his pathbreaking essay Fichte's original intuition (Fichtes ursprungliche Einsicht, 1982), arguments which underline the irreducibility of the I-perspective recall the 'original

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intuition of Fichte'; namely Fichte's revolutionary observation that the phenomenon of self-consciousness is not reducible to a mode of reflexive knowledge or objectifying predication. In considering the problem of selfconsciousness we rather have to pay attention to two aspects of the self which are not reducible to each other. Following Manfred Frank, we may exemplify these two aspects by analysing my mirror image. How did I learn to know that this person, whom I meet every morning in the mirror of my bathroom, is 'myself? In order to answer this question, we will have to proceed in two steps. (I) Fichte argued that this knowledge cannot be the outcome of an act of 'mirroring' or 'reflection', or the outcome of an act of introspection or selfobservation, which he called 'reflection' as well. In the case of 'reflexive' modes of knowledge, I can only re-cognise myself, which means, I can only re-discover in my mirror image what I am already acquainted with. The aporia of knowing, which crops u p at this point, may be illustrated by a landscape painter who wants to paint a painting which includes the painter painting the landscape. Our painter may push back his easel to observe the point were he was staying when he began to paint the landscape. But he will never observe the point where he is actually painting his painting. He may always push back his easel a further step, but he will never catch the point where he is painting here and now (i.e. the point which is indicated by indexicals). As little as indexicals are reducible to descriptive predications as little is my 'knowing of myself reducible to reflexive observations. The deeper reason for this impossibility is connected with Kant's analysis on the transcendental ego; namely his demonstration that subjectivity is a 'condition of the possibility' of objectivity. There is a fundamental difference between the 'spontaneous' act of painting or observing (which Dieter Henrich calls T ) , and a passive object which may be observed by the painter (which Henrich calls 'person'). If I am looking in my mirror image, I only see an 'object' (person); and thus I do not see anything which informs me about the 'subject' (I) which is looking in the mirror. The only feature which characterises this 'I perspective' is that it is not an object 'observed' (= past participle) but a 'subject' which is actively 'observing' (= present participle). However, this is exactly what I do not see in the mirror. The subject (I perspective) is neither an object (person), nor is it circumscribable by predicates. However, I am nevertheless

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familiar with myself as subject, and according to Kant I even must be familiar with my subjectivity, for only this allows me to distinguish between 'objective' and 'subjective' perspectives on the reality (note that most animals are not able to draw this distinction; they are self-aware, but they do not know themselves). Consequently, my familiarity with myself as subject must be based on a form of pre-reflexive knowing - a mode of knowing which is irreducible to reflexive knowledge, and irreducible to every kind of knowledge which is passively 'given' (like the pain which I share with animals). Self-knowledge is neither reducible to a kind of 'what-is-it-likeness' (self-awareness) nor to a kind selfobservation or introspection. This was 'Fichte's original intuition': our reflexive self-knowledge presupposes some sort of pre-reflexive knowledge with regard to the spontaneous activity of ourselves as thinking subjects. However, as the Early Romantics argued, Fichte's conclusion included a crucial mistake. If we presuppose that there must be some sort of intuitive acquaintance of the T (subject perspective) with itself, this may be sufficient to explain why I am familiar with myself as a spontaneous subject. But this does not answer the question, why the 'person', I can observe in my mirror image, is me as well? Fichte's approach to the problem of the human self explains why selfknowledge presupposes a pre-reflexive familiarity with something which is neither reducible to the property of an object, nor to the what-is-it-likeness of a special kind of self-awareness. Self-knowledge presupposes a kind of familiarity with the mere 'me-ishness' of my spontaneous perspective on these phenomena (a familiarity with the T who has pain, or has knowledge of its mirror image). But this approach does not answer our starting question why I am simultaneously familiar with myself as an observable object in the world. In order to answer this question we have to make another step. (II) This second step leads us back to the Early Romantic conviction, that the phenomenon of self-consciousness is not derivable from a first principle (like the transcendental ego in Fichte) but essentially aporetic. Fichte acknowledged that the phenomenon of self-knowledge presupposes something like a prereflexive familiarity of myself with myself. But this familiarity cannot be reduced to the pre-reflexive intuition of a spontaneous T . Self-knowledge is neither to be reduced to an objectifying, reflexive knowledge, nor to an 'intellectual intuition' of my subjective spontaneity. Rather it must be based on a pre-reflexive familiarity with myself which transcends the dialectic of 'subject' and 'object' from the outset. - As Dieter Henrich has demonstrated in the above essay, Fichte tried to revise his concept of pre-reflexivity from about 1800, following a similar train of thought. The point of the Early Romantic criticism of Fichte may again be illustrated by our starting example. When I am looking in the mirror of my bathroom, I do

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not discover: 'Ah, this is the person I did already learn to know by a prereflexive intuition of my spontaneous acts of looking around when I cast up my eyes in the bedroom.' I am rather confronted with the confusing experience that this object, over there in the mirror, is something which essentially belongs to me even though it reminds me that there is something essentially missing. For I am seeing only an object, and every property of this object differs from the mode I know myself as a spontaneous subject for the simply reason that it is objectifiable and thus everything but not a subject. The point of the Early Romantic approach to the problem of the self is hidden in this gap between subject and object, since this gap reveals that my intuitive familiarity with myself is something prior to the distinction between the subjective and objective modes of my beeing in the world. Self-knowledge it is not based on a sort of subjective feeling, but on a kind of feeling which is connected with beeing as such. To observe my mirror image is not suitable to find out whom I am; my mirror image does not unveil the unity of myself. Rather it reminds me that I am not in unity with myself; it recalls the original split which embroils me in the finite dialectic of subject and object. Consequently it reminds me that the unity, which connects these poles together, becomes inaccessible as soon as I try to fix it as something subjective or objective. I am, indeed, justified to say: this person in the mirror is myself; and I am justified to say that the T which is looking in the mirror is myself as well. However, the 'self, which connects these two modes of beeing together, is neither an object nor a subject; rather it is to be considered as the relation, which links subject and object together based on the idea of a unity which is only present in the mode of lacking. To say it with Kierkegaard (see unit six), the self is a relation which is conscious of itself not because of a positive but because of a negative familiarity with the common ground of the relata of this relation. If I relate myself to myself as the subject which is looking around in the bedroom, or if I relate myself to the object which is reflected in the mirror image of my bathroom: in both cases I know that I am related to myself, since both cases make manifest that the unity of myself is missing. To be myself means, to be a negative unity, a mode of being

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which is only present in the mode of absence. Like in Fichte, this mode of presence presupposes a familiarity with the unity of myself. You need to be familiar with what is absent, in order to discover that its absence is present (no one would feel homesick with regard to a country he never learned to know). However, the ground of this familiarity is not accessible to my finite self. Like in Plato, I am only participating in the inconceivable perfection of this unique mode of beeing. Platonic theologians like Thomas Aquinas would call this 'beeing' God, and this leads us back to the connection between Schleiermacher's Early Romantic approach to the problem of self-consciousness and his theological hermeneutics. There are three modes of being myself which are not reducible to each other, two of which are constitutive for the subject object split (the above outlined split between self- and external-awareness is derivative of this split): The 'meishness' of myself, which constitutes myself as a spontaneous 'subject without properties', and the being of myself as an objectifiable person in the world. As far as I am a spontaneous subject (T), I am familiar with something unique: Seen from my point of view there is only one being the indexical T is applicable to - it indicates the possibility of a unique world. On the other hand, I am simultaneously aware of myself as an objectifiable object. I may have the impression that I am unique, but at the same time I will never escape the observation that I am nothing but a dust particle in the universe. However, these different perspectives on 'myself are only manifestations of the same paradox: the paradox that I am an 'individual general', 'something' which is simultaneously unique and universal. Moreover, my pre-reflexive attitude towards other persons reveals a second paradox. Just as I know that the non-replaceability of my I-perspective is indissolubly entangled with an objectifiable, contingent person, so I know (inversely) that the contingency of every observable person is indissolubly entangled with a unique I perspective. Briefly speaking, I am always faced with the paradox that every person is at once a contingent being and a matter of universal significance; and that the only thing I can essentially share with every other person is that it is unique and not exchangeable. The only thing, I have essentially in common with another person, is that it is essentially different from me - an 'individual general' which transcends the difference between the identical and the different, and reminds me in something inconceivable. This is why the divinatory practice of hermeneutics is so crucial for Schleiermacher's philosophical theology, and this is why this practice is at once a matter of theoretical sincerity, aesthetical sensitivity, and ethical responsibility. Since I have neither access to the unique universe of another person, nor to its perspective on my very own universe, all I can do in order to

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cope with the undeniable limitations of my subjective perspective on this world is, to respond to every voice which questions my hermeneutical prejudgements about what keeps this world together, and to strive for a unity which is coherent with the unpredictability of individual manifestations of the absolute. Schleiermacher's infamous 'feeling of absolute dependence' is to be located at precisely this point. It is the feeling of absolute dependence with regard to an inconceivable ground, which reveals to me the essential incompleteness of my subjective perspective on the world insofar as it I am called to trust in the evidence of things not seen.

The Text
The following two short text-extracts of Andrew Bowie (Introduction: Subversions of the Subject) and Manfred Frank (The Text and its style) are taken from Frank's book The Subject and the Text, and designed to deepen your understanding of the classical presentation of the problem of self-consciousness in the wake of Kant and Fichte. The very short second text will focus on how this discussion is related to Schleiermacher's considerations about Hermeneutics and Dialectics, and the relevant passages on self-consciousness in 3 of The Christian faith (see unit four). Eventually, the last essay of Manfred Frank, titled Self-awareness and Self-knowledge, will provide you with an introduction to the contemporary Anglo-American discussion about this topic.

FURTHER READING
Primary Literature Bowie, A.: Introduction, in: Frank, Manfred, The subject and the text. Essays on literary theory and philosophy. Edited, with an introduction by Andrew Bowie; translated by Helen Atkins, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 1997, XVI-XXVI Frank, Manfred, Can Subjectivity be Naturalized? (available on request) Frank, Manfred, 'Fragments of a History of the Theory of Self-Consciousness from Kant to Kierkegaard'. In: Critical Horizons 5 (2004), 53-136 Frank, Manfred, 'Non-objectal Subjectivity'. In: Journal of consciousness studies 14/5-7 (2007), 152-173 Frank, Manfred, Self-Awareness and Self-Knowledge. Mental Familiarity and Epistemic Self-Ascription. In: Reijen, W. v.; Weststeijn, W. G. (Ed.), Subjectivity, Avant garde critical studies, Amsterdam: Rodopi 2000,193217.

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Henrich, Dieter, Fichte's original Insight. In: Christensen, D. E. (Ed.), Contemporary German philosophy 1982,15-54.* Nagel, Thomas, 'What is it like to be a bat?'. In: Philosophical Review 83/4 (1974), 435-450* Schleiermacher, Friedrich, The Christian faith. English translation of the second German edition, edited by H. R. Mackintosh and J. S. Stewart, Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark 1928, 3 (see unit 4) Schleiermacher, Friedrich, On religion. Speeches to its cultured despisers. Intr., transl., and notes by Richard Crouter, Texts in German philosophy, Cambridge England: Cambridge University Press 1988 Castaneda, H.-N.: He. The Logic of Self-Consciousness. In: Ratio 8 (1966), 117-142* Secondary Literature (19lh century) Beiser, Frederick C , German idealism. The struggle against subjectivism, 1781-1801, Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press 2002 Frank, Manfred, The philosophical foundations of early German romanticism. Translated by Elizabeth Millaan-Zaibert, Intersections (Albany, N.Y.), Albany, NY: State University of New York Press 2004 Otto, Rudolf, How Schleiermacher Re-discovered the Sensus Numinis. In: Religious essays. A supplement to "The idea of the Holy". Translated by Brian Lunn, Oxford bookshelf, Oxford University Press: London 1931, 68-77 Roy, Louis, 'Consciousness According to Schleiermacher '. In: The Journal of Religion 77/2 (1998), 217-231* Secondary Literature (contemporary philosophy) Chisholm, Roderick, The First Person. An Essay of Reference and Intentionality, Minneapolis: The University of Minnesota Press 1981 Groen, Arne, 'The Embodied Self: Reformulation of the Existential Difference in Kierkegaard'. In: Journal of consciousness studies 11 (Hidden resources) (2004), 26-43 (includes remarkable considerations about self-consciousness in contemporary cognitive science)* Lycan, William G. (Ed.), Mind and cognition. A reader, Cambridge, Mass., USA: Basil Blackwell 1990 Nagel, Thomas, The view from nowhere, New York - Oxford: Oxford University Press 1986 Rosenthal, David M. (Ed.), The Nature of mind, New York: Oxford University Press 1991 Shoemaker, Sydney; Swinburne, Richard, Personal identity, Great debates in philosophy, Oxford: Blackwell 1984 Thandeka, The embodied self. Friedrich Schleiermacher's solution to Kant's problem of the empirical self, SUNY series in philosophy, Albany: State University of New York Press 1995

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QUESTIONS FOR CONSIDERATION

1. What are the limits of physicalist or functionalist explanations of the 'mind-brain problem'? 2. What are the aporiai of attempts to explain the phenomenon of selfconsciousness by a theory of 'self-reflection'? 3. What are the problems of Wittgenstein's private language argument and subsequent discussion about quasi-indexicals? 4. What is the connection between dialectic, hermeneutic and the aporia of self-consciousness? 5. What is the connection between self-consciousness and religious considerations about the transcendence of God? 6. Does the post-Cartesian subject-object dialectic necessarily include a Cartesian dualism?

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UNIT FOUR

Self-consciousness, Sin and Grace in Schleiermacher's The Christian Faith

Concomitant reading: Marina ch. 2, ch. 7-8, ch. 10, ch. 12, ch. 15 We are now prepared to read Schleiermacher's theological opus magnum without ripping it out of its philosophical context, namely the context of Schleiermacher's dialectic and hermeneutic and the Early Romanic, decidedly anti-subjectivist concept of feeling and individuality. As outlined in the introduction of the last unit, the linkage between the (in accordance with Schleiermacher's dialectic only gradually distinguishable) fields of theology and philosophy is to be located in the aporia of the early romantic critic of Fichte, respectively the concept of reflexivity. This aporia is not reducible to a theoretical problem. The impossibility to give account of the ground of my identity as a human being is not only an essential feature of my pre-theoretical 'being in the world'; it is also essentially connected with the use of context relative intersubjective symbols. As soon as a human being discovers is own mirror image, it can no longer avoid realising that its existence is depending on a 'ground' which transcends the limits of its thinking and acting; and as soon as it tries to cope with this abyss rationally (instead of demonizing it as something spooky or irrational) it is forced to rely on symbolic makeshifts or narratives in order to express what transcends the limits of human understanding. Exactly this is the philosophical background of what Schleiermacher circumscribes, in 4 of the introduction of The Christian Faith, as 'the consciousness of being absolutely dependent'. In so far this consciousness or 'feeling' (Gefiihl in the early Romantic, non-subjectivist sense of the word) is based on a mode of 'immediate self-consciousness' ( 3) it may be considered as a necessary presupposition of human knowledge, though it is not simply to be reduced to an issue of theoretical or speculative reason. Rather it is to be located in the area of philosophical ethics, since it appeals to my responsibility to cultivate symbolic expressions for an inexpressible 'common good' which I can share with other people (ethical values, aesthetical values, religious traditions, etc.). At the same time, the range of this responsibility is not to be delimitated to matters of private concern. Its significance can be followed up from the most

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elementary level of everyday hermeneutics (How do I understand what other people try to convey to me?) up to the inter-subjective attempts of the community of scientists to elaborate universally valid rules of scientific knowledge (a problem which is particularly considered in Schleiermacher's dialectic). Given that our attempts to solve the problem of identity and difference in terms of a 'unified concept of (scientific) rationality' are necessarily bound to fail, even scientists cannot avoid the use of value laden, symbolic expressions for something they can not explain. Even more, given that scientific knowledge is necessarily based on a symbolic mediated preconception of the totality of facts in need of explanations, scientific rationality is always embedded in the use of symbolic makeshifts. The symbolism of art and religion is not a borderline phenomenon which may be overcome in the long run of scientific progress. It marks the foundation of scientific knowledge. As Martin Heidegger has put it in his opus magnum Being and Time, which was strongly influenced by the tradition early Romanticism, science is not primarily a mode of knowledge about the world; rather it is a mode of 'being in the world'. It participates in our symbolic mediated attempts to cope with our mortal 'being there'. Science is not a rationally organized system of propositions which is complemented by symbolic makeshifts. Rather it is an intersubjective mediated makeshift which may be complemented (and strategically perfected) by a rationally organized system of propositions. Exactly this marks the point where theological considerations about God become important in Schleiermacher. As distinct from the tradition of early modern enlightenment, the word 'God' is not a stopgap for a lack of our rational and moral capacities. Schleiermacher turns the tables. The word 'God' enciphers the human calling to deal rationally with the fact the every finite knowledge is a stopgap. Religious habits and narratives make explicit what every child knows as soon as it overcomes the narcissistic inclination do demonize her limitations; and it could be argued that naive atheists, like Daniel Dennett or Richard Dawkins, did never overcome the infantile stage of scientific narcissism (as distinct from of enlightened atheists, like Karl Marx, Friedrich Nietzsche, or Sigmund Freud). In the wake of Kierkegaard and Barth, we may ask at this point nevertheless the crunch question of post-liberal theology: Is this aporetic starting point of religious habits and narratives still to be located at the terrain of philosophical or scientific reason (in the modern sense of this word) or is it already infected by specific, tradition bound narratives and habits? To come to the head: Is the insight that modern attempts to develop a 'unified concept of science' are necessary bound to fail rationally uncircumventable, or is it already entangled with a typical Christian attitude towards boundaries - namely an attitude of

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humility which is rooted in the biblical narrative of creation and the Christian dialectic of grace and sin (hubris)? Given that the articulation of such questions is, like the distinction between 'liberal' and 'post-liberal theologians', the outcome later experiences, we have to take into consideration that they are only answerable indirectly in the light of later developments. Our contemporary perception of philosophical or scientific rationality is coined by the secularized eschatologies of the 19th and 20th century; social-political (Feuerbach, Marx, Spencer, etc.) or scientific narratives (Carnap, Quine, Nagel, Dennett, etc.) which tend to blur the qualitative difference between scientific aporiai 'not yet' solved, and aporia indissoluble 'in principle'. Based on the contra-factual promise of a future condition which may allow us to solve the 'seemingly indissoluble', they blunt our sensitivity for the inherent limitations of our being in the world. As Kierkegaard would have put it, they tend to make us 'narrow minded'. Seen from this vantage point, our readiness to concede that the problem of self-consciousness is indissoluble in principle seems to depend on our attachment to a distinctive Christian narrative; a narrative which provides us with the courage to change what can be changed and the serenity to accept what cannot be changed. Schleiermacher was still unaffected by the secular eschatologies of the 19th century, and in this sense he was much less secularized than his liberal or postliberal successors. He was convinced that the highest form of human rationality is necessarily related to the Christian narrative of salvation, and that every attempt to 'pass over' the awareness of the essential limitations of human reason is to be considered as a type of irrationality. The Christian narrative of grace and sin is, according to The Christian faith, aligned to sharpen the awareness of boundaries without discouraging the idea of progress (as it would be the case in what Schleiermacher calls, 'aesthetic forms of faith' like Buddhism, see 63); and this is what is rationally required should the idea of scientific and social progress not become self-deceptive. It could be argued that this conviction was to be confirmed dramatically in the wake of the political experiments of the 20th century, and that it may be confirmed even more dramatically by the forthcoming ecological crises. But this would go beyond the scope of Schleiermacher's approach to this problem, though it is difficult to imagine that he would not have adopted a similar 'post-liberal' attitude with regard to the modern myth of progress, had he been familiar with these later developments. For this reason it is as least questionable to isolate Schleiermacher's course setting philosophical considerations on the limitations of human knowledge from his Christ-centered theology. It may be a matter of dispute to what extent Schleiermacher was aware of the interference between his more theological and

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his more philosophical writings. But as a matter of fact his philosophy was rooted in the Christian narrative of sin and grace from the outset. Hence it could be argued that 'father of liberal theology' was not really liberal. Schleiermacher's philosophical introduction to his theological opus magnum is rather exemplary for his philosophy as a whole: It is aligned from the outset to consider the ethical and psychological conditions of the possibility of a 'truth' which is essentially connected with the memory of Jesus of Nazareth. Schleiermacher's philosophy was from the outset a 'Christ-centered' undertaking - or, to put it more precisely, it was Jesus-centered. Since we are reading Schleiermacher against the background of modern theology, the last specification may strike to us as trivial. We tend to associate the word 'Christocentrism' primarily with an historical person. However, seen against the background of his theological forerunners, this kind of Christocentrism is anything but self-evident. Schleiermacher's philosophical theology was as much based on Jesuscentered considerations about the conditions of the possibility of the historical event of incarnation, as Aquinas' philosophical theology was arguably based on Christ-centered ontological considerations about the conditions of the possibility of the liturgical event of transubstantiation. In order to understand the historical significance of Schleiermacher's theological opus magnum The Christian Faith, we have to take into consideration that this new approach to the foundations of Christian faith displays a significant shift in the awareness of the focus of Christian doctrine, and that it was not an autonomous invention of Schleiermacher. Rather it was part of an ingenious response to the theological challenge of modernity. What had changed with regard to the perception of Jesus Christ in modern times? In Goethes Wahlverwandtschaften, which appeared in 1809, the young lady Ottilie writes in her diary: 'To a valet, no man is a hero' (II, ch. 5). Hegel repeats this sentence about ten years later, thereby adding: 'Not because the former is not a hero, but because the latter is a valet.' 1 In both cases we are concerned with a typical modern experience - the experience of my grandma, who was ten years old when the German Kaiser Wilhelm II abdicated in 1918, and who told me secretly in the seventies of the last century that she could never imagine the Emperor sitting at the loo. My grandmother grew up in the rural Catholic region of southwest Germany. In this a region most people were not even able

Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, Lectures on the philosophy of world history. Introduction, reason in history. Transl. from the German edition of Johannes Hoffmeister by H.B. Nisbet; introduction by Duncan Forbes (Cambridge, 1980), 87f.

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to imagine a priest sitting at the loo when she was borne in 1908. But this did not prevent her from eventually imagining the unimaginable. The above citation of Hegel focuses on this difference of perception: the difference between the detached perspective of someone who considers the emperor as an emperor, and the attached perspective of someone who considers the emperor as man sitting at the loo. According to Hegel this difference is not primarily a matter of time, but a matter of perspective. The valet perspective is not 'more sober', 'more realist' or 'more enlightened' than its counterpart. The lesson, my grandma had to learn, was not that her former perception of public persons was delusive. She rather had to learn that it is possible to distinguish between different perspectives on the same person. The emperor remains an emperor (despite his valet) because it is the symbolism of the 'public space' which makes him appear as detached from the prose of private life. Seen from this angle, the public perceptibility of an emperor may be compared with an Egyptian Pyramid (see 26 of Kant's Critique of Judgement): To marvel its scale you have to keep some moderate distance - otherwise you will either see nothing significant at all (too large a distance) or a trivial heap of gray stones (too small a distance). To the valet the emperor is no emperor because his 'distanceless' perspective is incompatible with the significance of a public person. However, this does not prevent the emperor from displaying his historical or political significance as soon as we adopt the appropriate distanced perspective of the public space. The fact that this difference appeared as a matter of philosophical and artistic concern already at the turn of the 19th century indicates that the distinction between public and private space was becoming increasingly fragile in the aftermath of the French revolution (1789). Ottilie's sentence signifies a philosophical, aesthetical and political problem, and this problem did not stop to attract the attention of scholars and artists. The borderline between public and private space became increasingly blurred in the course of the nineteenth and early twentieth century, until it definitive broke down at the sight of, what Richard Sennett called, the late modern 'tyranny of intimacy' (which may be dated back to 1968).1 Seen against the background of this post-modern brake-down, one of the most significant marks of late-modernity is that it seems to be no longer possible to draw a self-evident distinction between matters of 'public' and 'private' concern. We may criticize the yellow press, which is primarily concerned with the royal loo, and adopt the meta-perspective of educated academics which, in resisting writing about these things, are all the more

See Richard Sennett, The fall of public man (New York, 1996).

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interested in writing about people who indulge writing about these issues. Eventually this only confirms the inescapability of the late modern levelling of the early modern distinctions between publicity and privacy. It is anything but easy to control the 'subconscious' dynamic of modern imagination which, voluntarily or involuntarily, seduces us to adopt Ottilie's 'valet perspective'. This is the reason why the suggestive logic of modern, historical-realist novels about Mohammed, Jesus or Mary Magdalene is at the same time subversive and irresistible. It is irresistible because it stages imaginations which are already 'in the air' - thereby leaving no realistic space to confront them by remitting a fatwa or praying the rosary; and they are subversive, because they undermine the spiritual reading of Holy Scriptures which is always accompanied by an attitude of caution, awe, and reticence with regard to 'holy persons'. Now it is important to notice that the modern 'valet perspective' did not only introduce a change of perception with regard to the early modern distinction between public and private space. It marks all the more a break with the religious symbolism of the Middle Ages. In pre-modernity religion was not a private matter or an issue of 'subjective narratives' distinguishable from the allegedly 'hard and fast' public domains of politics, science or medicine. The spiritual practice of 'discrimination of the spirits' was a matter of public significance; and because of this the basic attitude to Jesus Christ was not the attitude to an amiable personality but to an awesome authority. Exactly this leads us to the revolutionary change of focus between classical modern theology and the philosophical theology of the Early or High Middle Ages: the break between a sacramental-ontological and a historical realist interpretation of Jesus Christ. To become clear about the scope of this upheaval, we may remind the medieval distinction between the historical and the symbolic-spiritual meaning of the scriptures, as exposed in Thomas Aquinas' Summa theologica (la q. 1 a. 10 corp.): 'whereas in every other science things are signified by words, this science has the property, that the things signified by the words have themselves also a signification. Therefore that first signification whereby words signify things belongs to the first sense, the historical or literal. That signification whereby things signified by words have themselves also a signification is called the spiritual sense, which is based on the literal, and presupposes it.' Mediaeval theology appreciated the literal significance of the Holy Scriptures. It did not only 'presuppose' an historical background of the history of salvation (as Bultmann suggested in modern times), but took seriously that the sacramental practice of the church was the offspring of real historical events. However, as Henry de Lubac has demonstrated in his overwhelming monographs about the Mystical Body (Corpus mysticum) in the Middle Ages and

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Medieval exegesis, this historical realism was only the hotbed of a deeper, symbolic realism - the sacramental recollection and commemoration of an ongoing cosmic transfiguration or transubstantiation. According to this sacramental realism every historical or natural event is to be considered as the created sign of a universal process of deification (theosis). Every sign, and every entity which can be referred to by signs, refers directly or indirectly to the transubstantiating power of the 'subsistent beeing' of God which is mysteriously revealed in the 'sacramental body' of the Church. For this reason, theological sentences about Jesus Christ are not only referring to an historical event. Rather they figure as starting point of a multifaceted movement of references and relegations. As Thomas asserts, 'the (historical) things signified by the words have themselves also a signification'. More precisely, this means that historical and natural realities are to be read as the pre-figuration and pledge of a coming cosmic reality; and expressions for this ,cosmic reality' are not only not to be reduced to the shadow-world of 'merely symbolic' expressions of subjective experiences. Rather they are to be conceived as referring to a sacramental reality in comparison with which even what empirical sciences may call 'reality' to be appears as a shadow world. What a true symbol reveals is not less but more real than our empirical reality; and the paradigm of this 'true reality' is instantiated by the 'true body' of the Eucharistic - the only substantial reality which is beyond doubt. This inverted perspective on the relation between empirical and symbolical realities was especially relevant to the 'body of Christ'. Christ's body was not to be reduced to an empirical reality of the past; rather the historical body of Jesus was to be interpreted in the light of the ontological plenitude of his eschatological body, the glory of the Lord, which is incipiently actualised in the 'visible' reality of the church (as 'body of Christ'), and sacramentally present in the host (as 'body of Christ'). Because of this inverted perspective, which was not focused on theoretical hypotheses about historical events but on the meditation and contemplation of the 'transubstantiating' power of cosmic-sacramental signs, medieval theology resisted the tendency to overemphasize the 'first signification' (prima significatio) of the historia. The notion of historia (history) was associated with the 'spectacle', the 'gesticulation' of the theatre and the distraction of 'hysterical' gestures. 1 It denoted the disordered attitude of sin and disruption - something perverse and demonic which distracts the human spirit from contemplating the unchangeable truth of the divine 'substance' which was revealed through the tautological expression 'I am who I am' already in the second book of Moses. Even the edifying 'spectacles' of the Holy Scriptures raised the suspicion of

See Henri de Lubac, Exegese medievale. Les quatres sens de I 'Ecriture (Paris, 1980), II429.

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Tertullian and Augustine that every spectacle recovers the germ of idolatry in strengthening the attachment to finite entities. To come to the head: In the eyes of this orthodox tradition every unfractured veneration of a historical person would have been considered as idolatry - even in the case of Jesus of Nazareth. This cautious attitude toward the historia of the biblical scriptures should drastically change in modernity, beginning with the revaluation of historical narratives in Renaissance art (the historia in Leon Battista Alberti's Delia pittura (1436), and ending with the breakdown of public symbolism in modernity which leads in the worst case to the splatter film 'realism' of Mel Gibson's The Passion of Christ or to the royal tampon of the duchess of Cornwell. People like Schleiermacher, Goethe or Hegel did not only problematise quite early the ethical, political and aesthetical implications of the accelerating breakdown of the symbolic realism of earlier times. Schleiermacher was also the first scholar to develop a decidedly theological response to this challenge. Like in the case of his criticism of scientific rationality, which undermines the dualism between 'subjective (private) narratives' and 'objective sciences', this response was especially destined to preempt the looming privatization of religious symbols. However, to perform this task Schleiermacher had to take seriously the modern 'historicization' of the Christian narrative, and this is why he involuntarily became simultaneously the forerunner of what he tried to prevent (like it is was the case with the 19th centuries' reception of his antisubjectivist concept of subjectivity). Schleiermacher's hermeneutics of the biblical scriptures is, indeed, neither concerned with the 'four senses of the sacred scriptures', which characterised the sacramental ontology of the Middle Ages, nor with the authoritative revelation of divine propositions, which characterised the Biblicism of early modern protestant Orthodoxy. In the wake of Hermann Samuel Reimarus (1694-1768), Gotthold Ephraim Lessing (1729-1781), and the historical-critical research of German 'Neologists' like Johann Salomo Semler (1725-1791), his doctrinal Christocentrism is, on the contrary, unreservedly focused on the historical Jesus. The tradition of historical research on Jesus can be traced back to the English deists (John Locke, Matthew Tindal) and Thomas Cubb who's book The True Gospel of Jesus Christ Asserted appeared in London already in 1738. Hence Schleiermacher's cero offset happened not unprepared. But it was anything but self-evident nevertheless. Considered from the retrospective, it rather appears as the starting point of a systematic theological revolution. As from now the unity of the biblical canon seemed to be no longer based on the apostolic authority of the church as body of Christ (like in Irenaeus of Lyons) or on an authoritative divine act ob verbal inspiration (like in protestant Orthodoxy), but

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on a biographical unit in the historical sense of this word: the individuality (indivisibility) of an historical personality. However, this revolutionary venture was doomed to fail. Already in his 1835 volume Das Leben Jesus David Friedrich Straufi sharply attacked the historical reading of the Gospels, thereby kicking of a series of historical-critical studies which culminated in Albert Schweitzer's sweeping balance of the modern 'quest of the historical Jesus' in 1906.1 As from now the attempts of the 19th century to uncover the historical 'personality' of Jesus appeared as a dead end. To be sure, this does not at all mean that the historical research on Jesus did reach its end with the turn of the 20th century. Subsequent to Ernst Kasemann, and scholars like Pierre Benoit or W. D. Davies, a 'Second Quest' for the historical Jesus resurged in 1953, which was eventually followed by a more sober, younger generation of biblical Scholars in the 80th of the 20th century, namely the "Third Quest'. Scholars of this 'Third Quest' demonstrated convincingly that Schweitzer's and Bultmann's attempts to get rid of the tantalizing 'historical Jesus' quest once and for all were no less biased than the 'Live of Jesus' novels of the 19th century. A methodological disciplined approach to the historical, archaeological and literary context of the New Testament scriptures does not only allow us to uncover the social-historical, cultural and religious hotbed of Jesus teaching and live; giving the exciting discovery of the so called Dead Sea scrolls (nearly 1000 documents) in the Wadi Qumran in between 1947 and 1979, it allows us to do so even better than ever before, and it is worth to be noticed that (other than in Schleiermacher's 'first' and Kasemann's 'second quest') the research focus of the 'third quest' is largely disconnected from theological or Christological concerns; many leading scholars of this generation are Jews, atheists or agnostics. There can be no longer any doubt that it is at least possible to adumbrate a fragmented outline of the historical epicentre of the 'Palestinian Jesus movement'. 2 However, the recent 'third quest' is unequivocally focused on Jesus impact as a public acting person - his activities as a preacher, his relation to socio-cultural and religious movements in Second Temple Judaism (before AD 70), etc. It does no longer allow us to anchor the fragmentary achievements of historical-critical research in a reliable image of Jesus personality, let alone that it would allow us to anchor the authoritative unity of the biblical canon in the

Albert Schweitzer, The quest of the historical Jesus. A critical study of its progress from Reimarus to Wrede. Translated from the German by W.Montgomery (London, 31954). For an introduction into the more recent, social-historical,third search of Jesus of Nazareth', see: James H. Charlesworth, The historical Jesus. An essential guide (Nashville, TN, 2008); Gerd TheiSen; Annette Merz, The historical Jesus. A comprehensive guide (London, 1998); and from a distinguished critical point of view: Luke Timothy Johnson, The real Jesus. The misguided quest for the historical Jesus and the truth of the traditional Gospels (San Francisco, 1996).

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biographical unit of an individual. Jesus unmistakable face evades the grasp of scholarly research, and every theology erected on historical considerations about his individual personality is built on sand. No one can provide us with an authentic glance on the live of this man; we can only see him 'in a mirror, darkly' (1 Cor 13:12). As the German biblical scholar Gerd TheiSen has put it in his monograph The Shadow of the Galilean: We can only see the Galilean moving trough the shadows retained in the Gospels. Despite this disturbing outcome of the modern historical Jesus quests, modern theology kept supporting the post-Kantian conviction that the allegedly 'metaphysical' Christ-centrism of theologians like Aquinas should be replaced by some sort of anthropocentric (or existentialist) Christ- or Jesus-centrism. After Schweitzer's balance this was, however, only possible by assimilating David Straufi' distinction between the 'The Christ of Belief and the Jesus of History' 1 . Modern theology became focused on the non-realist, 'kerygmatic' (annunciating) narratives of preachers, and this change of focus remained valid even in the case of Bultmann's disciple Kasemann. Now it is no accident that Straufi' left-Hegelian distinction between the 'Jesus of history' and the 'Christ of Belief was the invention of an atheist. The theological assimilation of this distinction was initiated by Martin Kahler's book The So-Called Historical Jesus and the Historic, Biblical Christ not earlier than in 1892, though this did not prevent Kahler form causing a knock on effect in the wake of Schweizer's balance of the first historical Jesus quest. It initiated the 'kerygmatic' turn of modern theology, which was formative to theologians as different as Rudolf Bultmann, Karl Barth, Dietrich Bonheoffer, Paul Tillich, and Ernst Kasemann. Under the guise of the 'Christ of Belief, the focus of modern Jesus-centrism became something like a anthropocentric myth; a kerygmatic narrative of primarily existential or anthropological significance, and in the most uncompromising cases something like the 'Jesus' of Rudolph Bultmann (a mythological proclaimer of a time of 'existential decision'), Don Cupitt (an 'ethical teacher' which supports me in discovering my true 'selfhood'), or John Hick (a mythological 'metaphor' for God's action in the world). Introduced by an atheist, the 'Christ of Belief eventually evaporated to an imaginary fiction. Seen from the viewpoint of an intellectually more rigorous and spiritually more uncompromising, late modern approach to the centre of Christian faith, the 'third Jesus quest' may be interpreted as a first step beyond these disillusioning experiments. Inasmuch as the recent Jesus quest is based on the unbiased methodologies of secular scholarship, it encourages theologians more then ever before to take seriously the historical, socio-cultural and religious

'Der Christus des Glaubens und der Jesus der Geschichte' was also the title of Straufi' unconcealed materialist attack on Schleiermacher in 1865.

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hotbed which shaped the beginnings of Christianity. The 'historical sense' of the scriptures does again matter. However, scholarly attempts to uncover the multifaceted context of Jesus' preaching and live do not solve the problem of the unity of the biblical Kerygma. They do not expose the congregating focus of the 'Church' which arose from this historical hotbed. The disillusioning outcome of modern attempts to detach the 'body of Christ' from the 'body of his church' is rather indicative of a self-deconstruction of modern theology tout court. It recalls the remaining superiority to the symbolic realism of the premodern, spiritual reading of the scriptures, which was rooted in the unifying force of the devotion of Christ in worship and prayer. 1 We may leave this question open in order to focus in conclusion again on our starting question: How are we to evaluate Schleiermacher's anthropologically focused historical-hermeneutic turn in the light of these later developments? It is, first, again important to notice that Schleiermacher's theology is not reducible to its effective history. His quest for the historical Jesus is not reducible to the delusions of the later 19th century which culminated in Ernest Renan famous Vie de Jesus (1863). As indicated above, Schleiermacher's theology does not support the subjectivist tendencies of his successors. His historicization of Christ was rather destined to prevent modern theology from slipping into a privatization of religious symbols. In order to understand the significance of this point, it may be of help to disentangle the historiographic and the symbolic-imaginative dimension of the modern Jesus-quest. With regard to the first dimension, the historical Jesus quest in the strict sense of this word, we may argue that contemporary research has achieved a phase of serenity with regard to the classical modern fuss about Jesus. History does matter, but it does not provide us with a unifying foundation of Christian doctrine. However, with regard to the second dimension, the modern imagination with regard to the historical Jesus, Ottilie's 'valet perspective' has lost its disquieting potential not in slightest. The historical realism of the 19th century remains significant; if not because of historical reasons so at least in that it has become part and parcel of our everyday narratives. Is it really possible to base the Christian doctrine of the incarnation of God on the encounter with an historical person? Is it really possible to imagine a human person which speaks in the authority of God?

See Hoff, Johannes, Self-Revelation as Hermeneutic Principle? A Genealogical Analysis of the Rise and the Fall of the Kantian Paradigm of Modern Theology. In: Cunningham, C ; Candler, P. M. (Ed.), The Grandeur of Reason: Religion, Tradition and Universalism, London: SCM-Press 2009.

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We may consider the modern Jesus quest as misleading, but we cannot simply opt out of the historical realist imagination of modernity. 1 Rather, following Schleiermacher, we may argue instead: Yes, it is possible to imagine the dogma of the incarnation in a 'realist' manner - even if we are not able to proof how this event 'really' took place. Schleiermacher's anthropology was designed to recover the universal significance of the Christian symbolism of the incarnation departing from this historical-realist perspective; and that is what it still achieves, no matter how 'realist' his account Jesus was in terms of historical research. With regard to this continuity, the difference between classical- and postmodernity may be compared to the difference between the historical realism of the scholarly discussions of the 19th century and the imaginary free play of the postmodern cinema. Following Josef Ratzinger, we may argue that the surviving inclination of biblical scholars to design a biographical realist portrayal of Jesus of Nazareth provides us less with an insight into the historical 'life of Jesus' than with an imaginative self-portrait of the respective scholars; a more or less amateurish piece of art which expresses their private ideals and personal preferences. 2 However, there are more imaginative, artistic self-portraits in postmodern culture which support the 'hysterical realism' of modernity more efficacious, such as Martin Scorsese's portrait of Jesus of Nazareth or bestsellers like The Davinci Code (both focused on Maria Magdalene). It would be insufficient to engage in barren scholarly speculations about historical probabilities, if theologians wanted to succeed in exorcising the catchy attraction of postmodern spectacles. Following Aquinas' strategy of 'dissolving objections' (see: STh la q. 1 a. 8 Corp.), it may be more promising to nullify the distraction caused by hysterical phantasms without breaking the silence about the inaccessible 'historical truth'. An example of this approach to the imago of the 'historical Jesus' is Pierro Paolo Pasolini's II vangelo secondo (1964), a film which is, significantly, not based on historical speculations. Rather it presents an unpretentious 'literal' visualisation of the gospel of Matthew, created, ironically, by a disrooted Roman-Catholic atheist who had previously been sentenced to jail for his 'blasphemous and obscene' coproduction RoGoPaG (together with Rosselini, Godard and Goretti). To some extent Pasolini achieves the impossible by combining the historical 'realist' phantasm of the modern cinema-perspective on Jesus with a strategy of

For a post-modern attempt of ,opting out' see: John Behr, The mystery of Christ. Life in death (Crestwood, N.Y, 2006). See the introduction to: Benedict, Jesus of Nazareth. Translated from the German by Adrian J. Walker (New York, 2007).

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contextualisation, thereby allowing us to imagine the 'historical reality' of Jesus' life without loosing the distance which makes a personality of world historical significance perceptible as a person of historical significance. His film develops a realist but extremely minimalist and quiet depiction of Jesus of Nazareth; a fragmented mirror image of the man of Galilee which uses the faces of the surrounding poor people (a filmic realisation of the church, which is not accidentally played by lay actors) to provide us with an indirect glance at the protagonist of the gospel. Even the suffering of Christ is exhibited only indirectly. While he becomes crucified in a crowded scenario of mass crucifixions, only the suffering face of Mary reveals the unimaginable passion which is hidden behind the scenery of gambling soldiers. This proceeding is underlined by an extremely repetitive, fragmentary selection of music of different epochs and ecclesial traditions which resonates with the gospel (Bach, Mozart, Prokofiev, Webern, Ramirez, Gregorian and Byzantine chants, etc.). Pasolini uses, as it were, the cultural and ecclesial effective history of Jesus as the reflector of an event which, for the time being, can only be uncovered 'through a mirror, darkly'. In a nutshell, Pasolini provides us with an ingenious filmic realisation of 1 Cor 13:12. He takes seriously our historical-realist imagination without caving into the plush sofa perspective of Renan's The Life of Jesu', or the pornographic realism of Mel Gibson. Rather he tries to keep the tension between the intimacy of a private perspective on Jesus and the detachment of the public retrospective on Christ. His concise selection of literary citations of the gospel underlines this dramaturgic strategy. Though Pasolini engaged his revered Catholic mother, Susanna Pasolini, to play the virgin Mary, his text selection mercilessly underlines Jesus' foreignness to any form of private intimacy, as expressed in the rejection of the Nazarene by his home village and Jesus' own rejection of his mother and family ("Who is my mother?" Mt 12:48). Thus, Pasolini demonstrates in his own manner that it is still possible to fuse the realism of modernity with the first step of a spiritual ascent (the 'historical' level of the premodern fourfold reading of the scriptures). In terms of Pasolini's Marxist philosophy it is eventually remarkable that he was able to achieve this end without suppressing the revolutionary features of the fourth Gospel, revealed by the exchange of glances between Judas and Jesus and the final acceleration of Jesus' entry into Jerusalem. Pasolini's enactment of this 'end game' is revealing both in historical and in spiritual terms: It reveals the subversive potential of Jesus' human 'personality', and the selfwithdrawing spiritual attitude of the 'the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world'(Joh 1:29). The remaining theological significance of Schleiermacher's anthropologically founded hermeneutic may be located at exactly this level. Schleiermacher did

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not try to evade the increasing impact of the historical valet-perspective on 'heroes', kings and religious founders. Rather he deliberately adopted the only possible attitude toward this tendency; he 'traversed the phantasm'. He did not 'repress' the modern inclination of imagining Christ sitting on the loo, flirting with Maria Magdalena or (as Ernest Renan put it in his Vie de Jesus) weeping in the Garden of Gethsemane because of 'the young maidens who, perhaps, would have consented to love him' (ch. 23) Rather, he directly cut across the imaginings of modern realism, thereby developing an image of Jesus which is comparable with Pasolini's image even in the sense that it was, ironically, only the outcome of his creative imagination. Schleiermacher did not anticipate that the decision to historicise the gospel was only the first step of a more complex movement. Unwittingly he kicked off a discussion which became consummated in the self-deconstruction of the modern realist myths of biblical scholars. Seen from this angle, his attempt to uncover the historical secret of the Nazarene is, indeed, only of historical interest. But his psychological realism was at once part of the creative experiment to develop an anthropology which is compatible with the modern imagination. With regard to this dimension his psychological realism remains important. It takes seriously the irresistible modern scruple concerning the sheer possibility of a human person who speaks in the authority of God, and it allows for a response to this challenge which keeps the 'leeway of historical ignorance'. It is exactly this last point which connects Schleiermacher's christocentric theological considerations on the remaining significance of the Christian symbolism with his philosophically path-breaking considerations on the problem of self-consciousness. Schleiermacher was, indeed, able to realistically imagine a human person who is more than a prophet; a person who is (in the Christian sense of the word) 'free from sin'. Namely, the only person whose selfconsciousness was unreservedly rooted in the 'feeling of absolute dependence', and thus able to pray, act, and preach undaunted (without hysterical distraction) out of the presence of the divine 'love, wisdom and power'. As a result, by detouring through the 'hysterical' phantasm of the 'historical Jesus', Schleiermacher exemplarily recovered the premodern ideal of contemplative detachment; a spiritual attitude which overcomes the idolatrous attachment to graspable, finite entities based on the commitment to the inconceivability of God. This is what connects Schleiermacher's philosophical theology, despite the historical chasm which separates us from his time, with the theology to come.

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The Text
The following extract of Schleiermacher's The Christina Faith will give you an introduction to Schleiermacher's dogmatic focused on his philosophically and theologically crucial considerations on the phenomenon of self-consciousness and the 'feeling of absolute dependence'. For this reason it will primarily contain the crucial parts of his Introduction. However, besides 33 which is concerned with the legacy of the ontological proof of the existence of God, it will also include the first paragraph of part 2, which is concerned with the antithesis of sin and grace. Together with unit one, which was concerned with Ebeling's systematic outline of part I of The Christian Fait, this may give you a first overview over this voluminous work as a whole, since the most comprehensive and theologically most extensive second part is systematically based on this antithesis. In addition to this, the systematic framework of sin and grace is not only significant with regard to Schleiermacher's theology. It will return mutatis mutandis again following Kierkegaard's considerations about the human self in his Sickness onto death, which will be the focus of unit six.

Friedrich Schleiermacher

THE CHRISTIAN FAITH

CHAPTER I THE DEFINITION OF DOGMATICS 2. Since Dogmatics is a theological discipline, and thus pertains solely to the Christian Church, we can only explain what it is when we have become clear as to the conception of the Christian Church. 1. (T)he present work entirely disclaims the task of establishing on a foundation of general principles a Doctrine of God, or an Anthropology or Eschatology either, which should be used in the Christian Church though it did not really originate there, or which should prove the propositions of the Christian Faith to be consonant with reason. For what can be said on these subjects by the human reason in itself cannot have any closer relation to the Christian Church than it has to every other society of faith or of life. 2. Granted, then, that we must begin with a conception of the Christian Church, in order to define in accordance therewith what Dogmatics should be and should do within that Church: this conception itself can properly be reached only through the conception of 'Church' in general, together with a

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proper comprehension of the peculiarity of the Christian Church. Now the general concept of 'Church/ if there really is to be such a concept, must be derived principally from Ethics, since in every case the 'Church 'is a society which originates only through free human action and which can only through such continue to exist. The peculiarity of the Christian Church can neither be comprehended and deduced by purely scientific methods nor be grasped by mere empirical methods. For no science can by means of mere ideas reach and elicit what is individual, but must always stop short with what is general. Just as all so-called a priori constructions in the realm of history come to grief over the task of showing that what has been in such-and-such wise deduced from above is actually identical with the historically givenso is it undeniably here also. And the purely empirical method, on the other hand, has neither standard nor formula for distinguishing the essential and permanent from the changeable and contingent. But if Ethics establishes the concept of the 'Church/ it can, of course, also separate, in that which forms the basis of these societies, the permanently identical from the changeable elements, and thus by dividing up the whole realm it can determine the places at which the individual forms could be placed as soon as they put in an appearance historically. [...]

I. The Conception of the Church: Propositions Borrowed from Ethics. 3. The piety which forms the basis of all ecclesiastical communions is, considered purely in itself, neither a Knowing nor a Doing, but a modification of Feeling, or of immediate self-consciousness. 1. That a Church is nothing but a communion or association relating to religion or piety, is beyond all doubt for us Evangelical (Protestant) Christians, since we regard it as equivalent to degeneration in a Church when it begins to occupy itself with other matters as well, whether the affairs of science or of outward organization; just as we also always oppose any attempt on the part of the leaders of State or of science, as such, to order the affairs of religion. But, at the same time, we have no desire to keep the leaders of science from scrutinizing and passing judgment from their own point of view upon both piety itself and the communion relating to it, and determining their proper place in the total field of human life; since piety and Church, like other things, are material for scientific knowledge. Indeed, we ourselves are here entering upon such a scrutiny. And, similarly, we would not keep the leaders of State from fixing the outward relations of the religious communions according to the principles of civil organizationwhich, however, by no means implies that the religious communion is a product of the State or a component part of it. However, not only we, but even those Churches which are not so clear about

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keeping apart Church and State, or ecclesiastical and scientific association, must assent to what we have laid down. For they cannot assign to the Church more than an indirect influence upon these other associations; and it is only the maintenance, regulation, and advancement of piety which they can regard as the essential business of the Church. 2. When Feeling and Self-consciousness are here put side by side as equivalent, it is by no means intended to introduce generally a manner of speech in which the two expressions would be simply synonymous. The term 'feeling' has in the language of common life been long current in this religious connexion; but for scientific usage it needs to be more precisely defined; and it is to do this that the other word is added. So that if anyone takes the word 'feeling' in a sense so wide as to include unconscious states, he will by the other word be reminded that such is not the usage we are here maintaining. Again, to the term 'self-consciousness' is added the determining epithet 'immediate,' lest anyone should think of a kind of self-consciousness which is not feeling at all; as, e.g., when the name of self-consciousness is given to that consciousness of self which is more like an objective consciousness, being a representation of oneself, and thus mediated by self-contemplation. Even when such a representation of ourselves, as we exist in a given portion of time, in thinking, e.g., or in willing, moves quite close to, or even interpenetrates, the individual moments of the mental state, this kind of self-consciousness does appear simply as an accompaniment of the state itself. But the real immediate selfconsciousness, which is not representation but in the proper sense feeling, is by no means always simply an accompaniment. It may rather be presumed that in this respect everyone has a twofold experience. In the first place, it is everybody's experience that there are moments in which all thinking and willing retreat behind a self-consciousness of one form or another; but, in the second place, that at times this same form of self-consciousness persists unaltered during a series of diverse acts of thinking and willing, taking up no relation to these, and thus not being in the proper sense even an accompaniment of them. Thus joy and sorrowthose mental phases which are always so important in the realm of religionare genuine states of feeling, in the proper sense explained above; whereas self-approval and self-reproach, apart from their subsequently passing into joy and sorrow, belong in themselves rather to the objective consciousness of self, as results of an analytic contemplation. Nowhere, perhaps, do the two forms stand nearer to each other than here, but just for that reason this comparison puts the difference in the clearest light. 3. Our proposition seems to assume that in addition to Knowing, Doing, and Feeling, there is no fourth. This is not done, however, in the sense which would be required for an apagogic proof; but those other two are placed alongside of

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Feeling simply in order that, with the exposition of our own view, we may at the same time take up and discuss those divergent views which are actually in existence. So that we might leave the question entirely aside whether there is a fourth such element in the soul, but for two reasons: namely, in the first place, that it is our duty to convince ourselves as to whether there is still another region to which piety might be assigned; and, in the second place, that we must set ourselves to grasp clearly the relation which subsists between Christian piety in itself, on the one hand, and both Christian belief (so far as it can be brought into the form of knowledge) and Christian action, on the other. Now, if the relation of the three elements above-mentioned were anywhere set forth in a universally recognized way, we could simply appeal to that. But, as things are, we must in this place say what is necessary on the subject; though this is to be regarded as simply borrowed from Psychology, and it should be well noted that the truth of the matter (namely, that piety is feeling) remains entirely independent of the correctness of the following discussion. Life, then, is to be conceived as an alternation between an abiding-in-self (Insichbleiben) and a passing-beyond-self (Aussichheraustreten) on the part of the subject. The two forms of consciousness (Knowing and Feeling) constitute the abiding-in-self, while Doing proper is the passing-beyond-self. Thus far, then, Knowing and Feeling stand together in antithesis to Doing. But while Knowing, in the sense of possessing knowledge, is an abiding-in-self on the part of the subject, nevertheless as the act of knowing, it only becomes real by a passing-beyondself of the subject, and in this sense it is a Doing. As regards Feeling, on the other hand, it is not only in its duration as a result of stimulation that it is an abiding-in-self: even as the process of being stimulated, it is not effected by the subject, but simply takes place in the subject, and thus, since it belongs altogether to the realm of receptivity, it is entirely an abiding-in-self; and in this sense it stands alone in antithesis to the other twoKnowing and Doing. As regards the question whether there is a fourth to these three, Feeling, Knowing, and Doing; or a third to these two, abiding-in-self and passingbeyond-self: the unity of these is indeed not one of the two or the three themselves; but no one can place this unity alongside of these others as a coordinate third or fourth entity. The unity rather is the essence of the subject itself, which manifests itself in those severally distinct forms, and is thus, to give it a name which in this particular connexion is permissible, their common foundation. Similarly, on the other hand, every actual moment of life is, in its total content, a complex of these two or these three, though two of them may be present only in vestige or in germ. But a third to those two (one of which is again divided into two) will scarcely be found. 4. But now (these three, Feeling, Knowing, and Doing being granted) while we here set forth once more the oft-asserted view that, of the three, Feeling is

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the one to which piety belongs, it is not in any wise meant, as indeed the above discussion shows, that piety is excluded from all connexion with Knowing and Doing. For, indeed, it is the case in general that the immediate selfconsciousness is always the mediating link in the transition between moments in which Knowing predominates and those in which Doing predominates, so that a different Doing may proceed from the same Knowing in different people according as a different determination of self-consciousness enters in. And thus it will fall to piety to stimulate Knowing and Doing, and every moment in which piety has a predominant place will contain within itself one or both of these in germ. But just this is the very truth represented by our proposition, and is in no wise an objection to it; for were it otherwise the religious moments could not combine with the others to form a single life, but piety would be something isolated and without any influence upon the other mental functions of our lives. However, in representing this truth, and thus securing to piety its own peculiar province in its connexion with all other provinces, our proposition is opposing the assertions from other quarters that piety is a Knowing, or a Doing, or both, or a state made up of Feeling, Knowing, and Doing; and in this polemical connexion our proposition must now be still more closely considered. If, then, piety did consist in Knowing, it would have to be, above all, that knowledge, in its entirety or in its essence, which is here set up as the content of Dogmatics (Glaubenslehre): otherwise it must be a complete mistake for us here to investigate the nature of piety in the interests of our study of Dogmatics. But if piety is that knowledge, then the amount of such knowledge in a man must be the measure of his piety. For anything which, in its rise and fall, is not the measure of the perfection of a given object cannot constitute the essence of that object. Accordingly, on the hypothesis in question, the most perfect master of Christian Dogmatics would always be likewise the most pious Christian. And no one will admit this to be the case, even if we premise that the most perfect master is only he who keeps most to what is essential and does not forget it in accessories and side-issues; but all will agree rather that the same degree of perfection in that knowledge may be accompanied by very different degrees of piety, and the same degree of piety by very different degrees of knowledge. It may, however, be objected that the assertion that piety is a matter of Knowing refers not so much to the content of that knowledge as to the certainty which characterizes its representations; so that the knowledge of doctrines is piety only in virtue of the certainty attached to them, and thus only in virtue of the strength of the conviction, while a possession of the doctrines without conviction is not piety at all. Then the strength of the conviction would be the measure of the piety; and this is undoubtedly what those people have chiefly in mind who so love to paraphrase the word Faith as 'fidelity to one's convictions.' But in all other more typical fields of knowledge the only measure of conviction

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is the clearness and completeness of the thinking itself. Now if it is to be the same with this conviction, then we should simply be back at our old point, that he who thinks the religious propositions most clearly and completely, individually and in their connexions, must likewise be the most pious man. If, then, this conclusion is still to be rejected, but the hypothesis is to be retained (namely, that conviction is the measure of piety), the conviction in this case must be of a different kind and must have a different measure. However closely, then, piety may be connected with this conviction, it does not follow that it is connected in the same way with that knowledge. And if, nevertheless, the knowledge which forms Dogmatics has to relate itself to piety, the explanation of this is that while piety is, of course, the object of this knowledge, the knowledge can only be explicated in virtue of a certainty which inheres in the determinations of self-consciousness. If, on the other hand, piety consists in Doing, it is manifest that the Doing which constitutes it cannot be defined by its content; for experience teaches that not only the most admirable but also the most abominable, not only the most useful but also the most inane and meaningless things, are done as pious and out of piety. Thus we are thrown back simply upon the form, upon the method and manner in which the thing comes to be done. But this can only be understood from the two termini, the underlying motive as the starting-point, and the intended result as the goal. Now no one will pronounce an action more or less pious because of the greater or less degree of completeness with which the intended result is achieved. Suppose we then are thrown back upon the motive. It is manifest that underlying every motive there is a certain determination of self-consciousness, be it pleasure or pain, and that it is by these that one motive can most clearly be distinguished from another. Accordingly an action (a Doing) will be pious in so far as the determination of self-consciousness, the feeling which had become affective and had passed into a motive impulse, is a pious one. Thus both hypotheses lead to the same point: that there are both a Knowing and a Doing which pertain to piety, but neither of these constitutes the essence of piety: they only pertain to it inasmuch as the stirred-up Feeling sometimes comes to rest in a thinking which fixes it, sometimes discharges itself in an action which expresses it. Finally, no one will deny that there are states of Feeling, such as penitence, contrition, confidence, and joy in God, which we pronounce pious in themselves, without regard to any Knowing or Doing that proceeds from them, though, of course 1, we expect both that they will work themselves out in actions which are otherwise obligatory, and that the reflective impulse will turn its attention to them.

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5. From what we have now said it is already clear how we must judge the assertion that piety is a state in which Knowing, Feeling, and Doing are combined. Of course we reject it if it means that the Feeling is derived from the Knowing and the Doing from the Feeling. But if no subordination is intended, then the assertion might just as well be the description of any other quite clear and living moment as of a religious one. For though the idea of the goal of an action precedes the action itself, at the same time it continues to accompany the action, and the relation between the two expresses itself simultaneously in the self-consciousness through a greater or less degree of satisfaction and assurance; so that even here all three elements are combined in the total content of the state. A similar situation exists in the case of Knowing. For the thinking activity, as a successfully accomplished operation, expresses itself in the selfconsciousness as a confident certainty. But simultaneously it becomes also an endeavour to connect the apprehended truth with other truths or to seek out cases for its application, and thus there is always present simultaneously the commencement of a Doing, which develops fully when the opportunity offers; and so here also we find Knowing, Feeling, and Doing all together in the total state. But now, just as the first-described state remains, notwithstanding, essentially a Doing, and the second a Knowing, so piety in its diverse expressions remains essentially a state of Feeling. This state is subsequently caught up into the region of thinking, but only in so far as each religious man is at the same time inclined towards thinking and exercised therein; and only in the same way and according to the same measure does this inner piety emerge in living movement and representative action. It also follows from this account of the matter that Feeling is not to be thought of as something either confused or inactive; since, on the one hand, it is strongest in our most vivid moments, and either directly or indirectly lies at the root of every expression of our wills, and, on the other hand, it can be grasped by thought and conceived of in its own nature. But suppose there are other people who would exclude Feeling altogether from our field, and therefore describe piety simply as a Knowledge which begets actions or as a Doing which proceeds from a Knowing: these people not only would have to settle first among themselves whether piety is a Knowing or a Doing, but would also have to show us how a Doing can arise from a Knowing except as mediated by a determination of self-consciousness. And if they have eventually to admit this point, then they will also be convinced by the above discussion that if such a complex does bear the character of piety, nevertheless the element of Knowing in it has not in itself got the length of being piety, and the element of Doing is in itself no longer piety, but the piety is just the determination of self-consciousness which comes in between the two. But that relationship can always hold in the reverse order also: the Doing has

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not got the length of being piety in those cases in which a determinate selfconsciousness only results from an accomplished action; and the Knowing is in itself no longer piety when it has no other content than that determination of self-consciousness caught u p into thought. 4. The common element in all howsoever diverse expressions of piety, by which these are conjointly distinguished from all other feelings, or, in other words, the selfidentical essence of piety, is this: the consciousness of being absolutely dependent, or, which is the same thing, of being in relation with God. 1. In any actual state of consciousness, no matter whether it merely accompanies a thought or action or occupies a moment for itself, we are never simply conscious of our Selves in their unchanging identity, but are always at the same time conscious of a changing determination of them. The Ego in itself can be represented objectively; but every consciousness of self is at the same time the consciousness of a variable state of being. But in this distinction of the latter from the former, it is implied that the variable does not proceed purely from the self-identical, for in that case it could not be distinguished from it. Thus in every self-consciousness there are two elements, which we might call respectively a self-caused element (ein Sichselbstsetzen) and a non-self-caused element (ein Sichselbstnichtsogesetzthaben); or a Being and a Having-by-somemeans-come-to-be (ein Sein und ein Irgendwiegewordensein). The latter of these presupposes for every self-consciousness another factor besides the Ego, a factor which is the source of the particular determination, and without which the self-consciousness would not be precisely what it is. But this Other is not objectively presented in the immediate self-consciousness with which alone we are here concerned. For though, of course, the double constitution of selfconsciousness causes us always to look objectively for an Other to which we can trace the origin of our particular state, yet this search is a separate act with which we are not at present concerned. In self-consciousness there are only two elements: the one expresses the existence of the subject for itself, the other its coexistence with an Other. Now to these two elements, as they exist together in the temporal selfconsciousness, correspond in the subject its Receptivity and its (spontaneous) Activity. If we could think away the co-existence with an Other, but otherwise think ourselves as we are, then a self-consciousness which predominantly expressed an affective condition of receptivity would be impossible, and any self-consciousness could then express only activityan activity, however, which, not being directed to any object, would be merely an urge outwards, an indefinite 'agility' without form or colour. But as we never do exist except along with an Other, so even in every outward-tending self-consciousness the element

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of receptivity, in some way or other affected, is the primary one; and even the self-consciousness which accompanies an action (acts of knowing included), while it predominantly expresses spontaneous movement and activity, is always related (though the relation is often a quite indefinite one) to a prior moment of affective receptivity, through which the original aglity received its direction. To these propositions assent can be unconditionally demanded; and no one will deny them who is capable of a little introspection and can find interest in the real subject of our present inquiries. 2. The common element in all those determinations of self-consciousness which predominantly express a receptivity affected from some outside quarter is the feeling of Dependence. On the other hand, the common element in all those determinations which predominantly express spontaneous movement and activity is the feeling of Freedom. The former is the case not only because it is by an influence from some other quarter that we have come to such a state, but particularly because we could not so become except by means of an Other. The latter is the case because in these instances an Other is determined by us, and without our spontaneous activity could not be so determined. These two definitions may, indeed, seem to be still incomplete, inasmuch as there is also a mobility of the subject which is not connected with an Other at all, but which seems to be subject to the same antithesis as that just explained. But when we become such-and-such from within outwards, for ourselves, without any Other being involved, that is the simple situation of the temporal development of a being which remains essentially self-identical, and it is only very improperly that this can be referred to the concept 'Freedom.' And when we cannot ourselves, from within outwards, become such-and-such, this only indicates the limits which belong to the nature of the subject itself as regards spontaneous activity, and this could only very improperly be called 'Dependence.' Further, this antithesis must on no account be confused with the antithesis between gloomy or depressing and elevating or joyful feelings, of which we shall speak later. For a feeling of dependence may be elevating, if the 'havingbecome-such-and-such' which it expresses is complete; and similarly a feeling of freedom may be dejecting, if the moment of predominating receptivity to which the action can be traced was of a dejecting nature, or again if the manner and method of the activity prove to be a disadvantageous combination. Let us now think of the feeling of dependence and the feeling of freedom as one, in the sense that not only the subject but the corresponding Other is the same for both. Then the total self-consciousness made up of both together is one of Reciprocity between the subject and the corresponding Other. Now let us suppose the totality of all moments of feeling, of both kinds, as one whole: then the corresponding Other is also to be supposed as a totality or as one, and then that term 'reciprocity' is the right one for our self-consciousness in general,

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inasmuch as it expresses our connexion with everything which either appeals to our receptivity or is subjected to our activity. And this is true not only when we particularize this Other and ascribe to each of its elements a different degree of relation to the twofold consciousness within us, but also when we think of the total 'outside' as one, and moreover (since it contains other receptivities and activities to which we have a relation) as one together with ourselves, that is, as a World. Accordingly our self-consciousness, as a consciousness of our existence in the world or of our co-existence with the world, is a series in which the feeling of freedom and the feeling of dependence are divided. But neither an absolute feeling of dependence, i.e. without any feeling of freedom in relation to the co-determinant, nor an absolute feeling of freedom, i.e. without any feeling of dependence in relation to the co-determinant, is to be found in this whole realm. If we consider our relations to Nature, or those which exist in human society, there we shall find a large number of objects in regard to which freedom and dependence maintain very much of an equipoise: these constitute the field of equal reciprocity. There are other objects which exercise a far greater influence upon our receptivity than our activity exercises upon them, and also vice versa, so that one of the two may diminish until it is imperceptible. But neither of the two members will ever completely disappear. The feeling of dependence predominates in the relation of children to their parents, or of citizens to their fatherland; and yet individuals can, without losing their relationship, exercise upon their fatherland not only a directive influence, but even a counter-influence. And the dependence of children on their parents, which very soon comes to be felt as a gradually diminishing and fading quantity, is never from the start free from the admixture of an element of spontaneous activity towards the parents: just as even in the most absolute autocracy the ruler is not without some slight feeling of dependence. It is the same in the case of Nature: towards all the forces of Natureeven, we may say, towards the heavenly bodieswe ourselves do, in the same sense in which they influence us, exercise a counter-influence, however minute. So that our whole self-consciousness in relation to the World or its individual parts remains enclosed within these limits. 3. There can, accordingly, be for us no such thing as a feeling of absolute freedom. He who asserts that he has such a feeling is either deceiving himself or separating things which essentially belong together. For if the feeling of freedom expresses a forth-going activity, this activity must have an object which has been somehow given to us, and this could not have taken place without an influence of the object upon our receptivity. Therefore in every such case there is involved a feeling of dependence which goes along with the feeling of freedom, and thus limits it. The contrary could only be possible if the object altogether came into existence through our activity, which is never the case

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absolutely, but only relatively. But if, on the other hand, the feeling of freedom expresses only an inward movement of activity, not only is every such individual movement bound up with the state of our stimulated receptivity at the moment, but, further, the totality of our free inward movements, considered as a unity, cannot be represented as a feeling of absolute freedom, because our whole existence does not present itself to our consciousness as having proceeded from our own spontaneous activity. Therefore in any temporal existence a feeling of absolute freedom can have no place. As regards the feeling of absolute dependence which, on the other hand, our proposition does postulate: for just the same reason, this feeling cannot in any wise arise from the influence of an object which has in some way to be given to us; for upon such an object there would always be a counter-influence, and even a voluntary renunciation of this would always involve a feeling of freedom. Hence a feeling of absolute dependence, strictly speaking, cannot exist in a single moment as such, because such a moment is always determined, as regards its total content, by what is given, and thus by objects towards which we have a feeling of freedom. But the self-consciousness which accompanies all our activity, and therefore, since that is never zero, accompanies our whole existence, and negatives absolute freedom, is itself precisely a consciousness of absolute dependence; for it is the consciousness that the whole of our spontaneous activity comes from a source outside of us in just the same sense in which anything towards which we should have a feeling of absolute freedom must have proceeded entirely from ourselves. But without any feeling of freedom a feeling of absolute dependence would not be possible. 4. As regards the identification of absolute dependence with 'relation to God 'in our proposition: this is to be understood in the sense that the Whence of our receptive and active existence, as implied in this self-consciousness, is to be designated by the word 'God/ and that this is for us the really original signification of that word. In this connexion we have first of all to remind ourselves that, as we have seen in the foregoing discussion, this 'Whence' is not the world, in the sense of the totality of temporal existence, and still less is it any single part of the world. For we have a feeling of freedom (though, indeed, a limited one) in relation to the world, since we are complementary parts of it, and also since we are continually exercising an influence on its individual parts; and, moreover, there is the possibility of our exercising influence on all its parts; and while this does permit a limited feeling of dependence, it excludes the absolute feeling. In the next place, we have to note that our proposition is intended to oppose the view that this feeling of dependence is itself conditioned by some previous knowledge about God. And this may indeed be the more necessary since many people claim to be in the sure possession of a concept of God, altogether a matter of conception and original, i.e. independent of any

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feeling; and in the strength of this higher self-consciousness, which indeed may come pretty near to being a feeling of absolute freedom, they put far from them, as something almost infra-human, that very feeling which for us is the basic type of all piety. Now our proposition is in no wise intended to dispute the existence of such an original knowledge, but simply to set it aside as something with which, in a system of Christian doctrine, we could never have any concern, because plainly enough it has itself nothing to do directly with piety. If, however, word and idea are always originally one, and the term 'God' therefore presupposes an idea, then we shall simply say that this idea, which is nothing more than the expression of the feeling of absolute dependence, is the most direct reflection upon it and the most original idea with which we are here concerned, and is quite independent of that original knowledge (properly so called), and conditioned only by our feeling of absolute dependence. So that in the first instance God signifies for us simply that which is the co-determinant in this feeling and to which we trace our being in such a state; and any further content of the idea must be evolved out of this fundamental import assigned to it. Now this is just what is principally meant by the formula which says that to feel oneself absolutely dependent and to be conscious of being in relation with God are one and the same thing; and the reason is that absolute dependence is the fundamental relation which must include all others in itself. This last expression includes the God-consciousness in the self-consciousness in such a way that, quite in accordance with the above analysis, the two cannot be separated from each other. The feeling of absolute dependence becomes a clear self-consciousness only as this idea comes simultaneously into being. In this sense it can indeed be said that God is given to us in feeling in an original way; and if we speak of an original revelation of God to man or in man, the meaning will always be just this, that, along with the absolute dependence which characterizes not only man but all temporal existence, there is given to man also the immediate self-consciousness of it, which becomes a consciousness of God. In whatever measure this actually takes place during the course of a personality through time, in just that measure do we ascribe piety to the individual. On the other hand, any possibility of God being in any way given is entirely excluded, because anything that is outwardly given must be given as an object exposed to our counter-influence, however slight this may be. The transference of the idea of God to any perceptible object, unless one is all the time conscious that it is a piece of purely arbitrary symbolism, is always a corruption, whether it be a temporary transference, i.e. a theophany, or a constitutive transference, in which God is represented as permanently a particular perceptible existence. 5. What we have thus described constitutes the highest grade of human selfconsciousness; but in its actual occurrence it is never separated from the lower, and

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through its combination therewith in a single moment it participates in the antithesis of the pleasant and the unpleasant. 1. The relation between these two forms of self-consciousness, namely, the feeling of absolute dependence and the self-consciousness which, as expressing the connexion with perceptible finite existence, splits up into a partial feeling of dependence and a partial feeling of freedom, will best be seen if we bring in yet a third form. If we go back to the first obscure period of the life of man, we find there, all over, the animal life almost solely predominating, and the spiritual life as yet entirely in the background; and so we must regard the state of his consciousness as closely akin to that of the lower animals. It is true, indeed, that the animal state is to us really entirely strange and unknown. But there is general agreement that, on the one hand, the lower animals have no knowledge, properly so called, nor any full self-consciousness which combines the different moments into a stable unity, and that, on the other hand, they are nevertheless not entirely devoid of consciousness. Now we can hardly do justice to this state of affairs except by postulating a consciousness of such a sort that in it the objective and the introversive, or feeling and perception, are not really distinct from each other, but remain in a state of unresolved confusion. The consciousness of children obviously approximates to this form, especially before they learn to speak. From that time on, this condition tends more and more to disappear, confining itself to those dreamy moments which form the transition between sleep and waking; while in our wide-awake hours feeling and perception are clearly distinct from each other, and thus make up the whole wealth of man's sensible life, in the widest sense of the term. In that term we include (speaking simply of the consciousness, and leaving out action proper), on the one hand, the gradual accumulation of perceptions which constitute the whole field of experience in the widest sense of the word, and, on the other hand, all determinations of self-consciousness which develop from our relations to nature and to man, including those which we described above ( 4, 2) as coming nearest to the feeling of absolute dependence; so that by the word 'sensible' we understand the social and moral feelings no less than the selfregarding, since they all together have their place in that realm of the particular which is subject to the above-mentioned antithesis. The former division [i.e. the accumulation of perceptions] which belongs to the objective consciousness, we pass over, as it does not concern us here. But in the whole of the latter class, consisting of feelings which we have designated sensible, the corresponding codeterminant to which we trace the constitution of the present state belongs to the realm of reciprocal action; so that, whether we are at the moment more conscious of dependence or of freedom, we take up towards it, in a sense, an attitude of equal co-ordination, and indeed set ourselves as individuals (or as

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comprised within a larger individual, as, e.g.,. in our patriotic feelings) over against it as another individual. Now it is in this respect that these feelings are most definitely distinguished from the feeling of absolute dependence. For while the latter from its very nature negatives absolute freedom ( 4, 3), though it does it under the form of self-consciousness, this is not the consciousness of ourselves as individuals of a particular description, but simply of ourselves as individual finite existence in general; so that we do not set ourselves over against any other individual being, but, on the contrary, all antithesis between one individual and another is in this case done away. Hence there seems to be no objection to our distinguishing three grades of self-consciousness: the confused animal grade, in which the antithesis cannot arise, as the lowest; the sensible self-consciousness, which rests entirely upon the antithesis, as the middle; and the feeling of absolute dependence, in which the antithesis again disappears and the subject unites and identifies itself with everything which, in the middle grade, was set over against it, as the highest. 2. If there did exist a feeling of absolute freedom, in it also the above antithesis would be done away. Only, such a subject could never stand in any relation with other similarly constituted subjects, but whatever is given to it must be given as purely susceptible or passive material. And since, for this reason alone, such a feeling is never found in man, the only immediate selfconsciousness in man on that grade is the feeling of absolute dependence which we have described. For every moment which is made up of a partial feeling of freedom and a partial feeling of dependence places us in a position of coordinate antithesis to a similar Other. But now there remains the question, whether there exists any other self-consciousness, not immediate but accompanying some kind of knowledge or action as such, which can be ranked along with that which we have described. Let us then conceive, as the act or state of an individual, a highest kind of knowledge in which all subordinate knowledge is comprised. This, indeed, in its province is likewise elevated above all antithesis. But its province is that of the objective consciousness. However, it will of course be accompanied by an immediate self-consciousness expressive of certainty or conviction. But since this concerns the relation of the subject as knower to the known as object, even this self-consciousness which accompanies the highest knowledge remains in the realm of the antithesis. In the same way, let us conceive a highest kind of action, in the form of a resolve which covers the whole field of our spontaneous activity, so that all subsequent resolves are developed out of it, as individual parts, which were already contained in it. This also in its province stands above all antithesis, and it is likewise accompanied by a self-consciousness. But this also concerns the relation of the subject as agent to that which may be the object of its action, and thus has its place within the antithesis. And since obviously this must be equally true of

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every self-consciousness which accompanies any particular knowledge or action, it follows that there is no other self-consciousness which is elevated above the antithesis, and that this character belongs exclusively to the feeling of absolute dependence. 3. While the lowest or animal grade of consciousness gradually disappears as the middle grade develops, the highest cannot develop at all so long as the lowest is present; but, on the other hand, the middle grade must persist undiminished even when the highest has reached its perfect development. The highest self-consciousness is in no wise dependent on outwardly given objects which may affect us at one moment and not at another. As a consciousness of absolute dependence it is quite simple, and remains self-identical while all other states are changing. Therefore, in itself it cannot possibly be at one moment thus and at another moment otherwise, nor can it by intermission be present at one moment and absent at another. Either it is not there at all, or, so long as it is there, it is continuously there and always self-identical. Now if it were impossible for it to co-exist with the consciousness of the second grade (as it cannot with that of the third), then either it could never make an appearance in time, but would always remain in the concealment in which it lay during the predominance of the lowest grade, or it must drive out the second and exist alone, and, indeed, in ever-unchanging identity. Now this latter supposition is controverted by all experience, and indeed is manifestly impossible unless our ideation and action are to be entirely stripped of self-consciousness, which would irrevocably destroy the coherence of our existence for our own minds. It is impossible to claim a constancy for the highest self-consciousness, except on the supposition that the sensible self-consciousness is always conjoined with it. Of course, this con-junction cannot be regarded as a fusion of the two: that would be entirely opposed to the conception of both of them which we have established. It means rather a co-existence of the two in the same moment, which, of course, unless the Ego is to be split up, involves a reciprocal relation of the two. It is impossible for anyone to be in some moments exclusively conscious of his relations within the realm of the antithesis, and in other moments of his absolute dependence in itself and in a general way; for it is as a person determined for this moment in a particular manner within the realm of the antithesis that he is conscious of his absolute dependence. This relatedness of the sensibly determined to the higher self-consciousness in the unity of the moment is the consummating point of the self-consciousness. For to the man who once recognizes what piety is, and appropriates it as a requirement of his being, every moment of a merely sensible self-consciousness is a defective and imperfect state. But even if the feeling of absolute dependence in general were the entire content of a moment of self-consciousness, this also would be an imperfect state; for it would lack the definiteness and clearness which spring

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from its being related to the determination of the sensible self-consciousness. This consummation, however, since it consists in the two elements being related to each other, may be described in two different ways. Described from below it is as follows: when the sensible self-consciousness has quite expelled the animal confusion, then there is disclosed a higher tendency over against the antithesis, and the expression of this tendency in the self-consciousness is the feeling of absolute dependence. And the more the subject, in each moment of sensible self-consciousness, with his partial freedom and partial dependence, takes at the same time the attitude of absolute dependence, the more religious is he. Described from above it is as follows: the tendency which we have described, as an original and innate tendency of the human soul, strives from the very beginning to break through into consciousness. But it is unable to do so as long as the antithesis remains dissolved in the animal confusion. Subsequently, however, it asserts itself. And the more it contributes to every moment of sensibly determined self-consciousness without the omission of any, so that the man, while he always feels himself partially free and partially dependent in relation to other finite existence, feels himself at the same time to be also (along with everything towards which he had that former feeling) absolutely dependentthe more religious is he. 4. The sensibly determined self-consciousness splits up of itself, in accordance with its nature, into a series of moments that differ in their content, because our activity exercised upon other beings is a temporal one, and their influence upon us is likewise temporal. The feeling of absolute dependence, on the other hand, being in itself always self-identical, would not evoke a series of thus distinguishable moments; and if it did not enter into relation with such a series in the manner described above, either it could never become an actual consciousness in time at all, or else it must accompany the sensible selfconsciousness monotonously without any relation to the manifold rising and falling variations of the latter. But, as a matter of fact, our religious consciousness does not take either of these forms, but conforms to the description we have given above. That is to say: being related as a constituent factor to a given moment of consciousness which consists of a partial feeling of freedom and a partial feeling of dependence, it thereby becomes a particular religious emotion, and being in another moment related to a different datum, it becomes a different religious emotion; yet so that the essential element, namely, the feeling of absolute dependence, is the same in both, and thus throughout the whole series, and the difference arises simply from the fact that it becomes a different moment when it goes along with a different determination of the sensible self-consciousness. It remains always, however, a moment of the higher power; whereas, where there is no piety at all, the sensible self-consciousness breaks up (as was likewise described) into a series of moments of the lower

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power, while in the period of animal confusion there does not even take place a definite separation and antithesis of the moments for the subject. It is the same with the second part of our proposition. That is to say: the sensible self-consciousness splits u p also, of itself and from its very nature, into the antithesis of the pleasant and the unpleasant, or of pleasure and pain. This does not mean that the partial feeling of freedom is always pleasure, and the partial feeling of dependence always pain, as seems to be assumed by those who wrongly think that the feeling of absolute dependence has, of its very nature, a depressing effect. For the child can have a feeling of perfect well-being in the consciousness of dependence on its parents, and so also (thank God) can the subject in his relation to the government; and other people, even parents and governments, can feel miserable in the consciousness of their freedom. So that each may equally well be either pleasure or pain, according to whether life is furthered or hindered by it. The higher self-consciousness, on the other hand, bears within it no such antithesis. Its first appearance means, of course, an enhancement of life, if a comparison arises with the isolated sensible selfconsciousness. But if, without any such reference, we think of it in its own selfidentity, its effect is simply an unchanging identity of life, which excludes any such antithesis. This state we speak of under the name of the Blessedness of the finite being as the highest summit of his perfection. But our religious consciousness, as we actually find it, is not of that character, but is subject to variation, some pious emotions approximating more to joy, and others to sorrow. Thus this antithesis refers simply to the manner in which the two grades of self-consciousness are related to each other in the unity of the moment. And thus it is by no means the case that the pleasant and the unpleasant, which exist in the sensible feeling, impart the same character to the feeling of absolute dependence. On the contrary, we often find, united in one and the same moment (as a clear sign that the two grades are not fused into each other or neutralized by each other so as to become a third) a sorrow of the lower and a joy of the higher self-consciousness; as, e.g., whenever with a feeling of suffering there is combined a trust in God. But the antithesis attaches to the higher self-consciousness, because it is the nature of the latter to become temporal, to manifest itself in time, by entering into relation with the sensible self-consciousness so as to constitute a moment. That is to say: as the emergence of this higher self-consciousness at all means an enhancement of life, so whenever it emerges with ease, to enter into relation with a sensible determination, whether pleasant or unpleasant, this means an easy progress of that higher life, and bears, by comparison, the stamp of joy. And as the disappearance of the higher consciousness, if it could be perceived, would mean a diminution of life, so whenever it emerges with difficulty, this

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approximates to an absence of it, and can only be felt as an inhibition of the higher life. Now this alternation undeniably forms the feeling-content of every religious life, so that it seemed superfluous to illustrate these formulae by examples. But we may now go on to ask how this usual course of the religious life is related to that which we have at an earlier point described, if only problematically, as the highest development of it. Suppose that the opposite characters are both continuously being strongly imprinted upon the individual religious emotions, so that both alternately rise to a passionate level: this gives to the religious life an instability which we cannot regard as of the highest worth. But suppose that the difficulties gradually disappear, so that facility of religious emotions becomes a permanent state; and that gradually the higher grade of feeling comes to preponderate over the lower, so that in the immediate self-consciousness the sensible determination asserts itself rather as an opportunity for the appearance of the feeling of absolute dependence than as containing the antithesis, which is therefore transferred into the realm of mere perception: then this fact, that the antithesis has almost disappeared again from the higher grade of life, indisputably means that the latter has attained its richest content of feeling. 5. From the above it follows directly that (and in what sense) an uninterrupted sequence of religious emotions can be required of us, as indeed Scripture actually requires it; and it is confirmed every time a religious soul laments over a moment of his life which is quite empty of the consciousness of God (since no one laments the absence of anything which is recognized to be impossible). Of course, it goes without saying in this connexion that the feeling of absolute dependence, when it unites with a sensibly determined selfconsciousness, and thus becomes an emotion, must vary as regards strength. Indeed, there will naturally be moments in which a man is not directly and definitely conscious of such a feeling at all. And yet, indirectly, it can be shown that in these moments the feeling was not dead; as, e.g., when such a moment is followed by another in which the feeling strongly asserts itself, while the second is not felt to be of a different character from the first or a definite departure from it, but to be linked up with it tranquilly as a continuation of its essentially unchanged identity (which is not the case when the preceding moment was one from which the feeling was definitely excluded). Also, of course, the different formations assumed by the sensible self-consciousness in virtue of the highly manifold minglings of the feeling of freedom and the feeling of dependence, differ in the degree in which they evoke or encourage the appearance of the higher self-consciousness; and in the case of those which do it in a lesser degree, a weaker appearance of the higher need not be felt as an inhibition of the higher life. But there is no determination of the immediate

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sensible self-consciousness which is incompatible with the higher; so that there is no kind of necessity for either of the two ever to be interrupted, except when the confused state of consciousness gains ground, and both retire behind it. Postscript.If thus the direct inward expression of the feeling of absolute dependence is the consciousness of God, and that feeling, whenever it attains to a certain clearness, is accompanied by such an expression, but is also combined with, and related to, a sensible self-consciousness: then the God-consciousness which has in this way arisen will, in all it's particular formations, carry with it such determinations as belong to the realm of the antithesis in which the sensible self-consciousness moves. And this is the source of all those anthropomorphic elements which are inevitable in this realm in utterances about God, and which form such a cardinal point in the ever-recurring controversy between those who accept that fundamental assumption and those who deny it. For those who rejoice in the possession of an original idea of the Supreme Being derived from some other quarter, but who have no experience of piety, will not tolerate the statement that the expression of that feeling posits the action of the very same thing which is expressed in their original idea. They assert that the God of feeling is a mere fiction, an idol, and they may perhaps even hint that such a fancy is more tenable in the form of Polytheism. And those who will not admit either a conception of God or a feeling which represents Him, base their position on the contention that the representation of God which is put together out of such utterances, in which God appears as human, destroys itself. Meanwhile, religious men know that it is only in speech that they cannot avoid the anthropomorphic: in their immediate consciousness they keep the object separate from its mode of representation, and they endeavour to show their opponents that without this integration of feeling no certainty is possible even for the strongest forms of objective consciousness or of transitive action, and that, to be consistent, they must limit themselves entirely to the lower grade of life. 6. The religious self-consciousness, like every essential element in human nature, leads necessarily in its development to fellowship or communion; a communion which, on the one hand, is variable and fluid, and, on the other hand, has definite limits, i.e. is a Church. 1. If the feeling of absolute dependence, expressing itself as consciousness of God, is the highest grade of immediate self-consciousness, it is also an essential element of human nature. This cannot be controverted on the ground that there is for every individual man a time when that consciousness does not yet exist. For this is the period when life is incomplete, as may be seen both from the fact that the animal confusion of consciousness has not yet been overcome, and from the fact that other vital functions too are only developing themselves gradually. Nor can it be objected that there are always communities of men in

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which this feeling has not yet been awakened; for these likewise only exhibit on a large scale that undeveloped state of human nature which betrays itself also in other functions of their lives. Similarly it cannot be argued that the feeling is accidental (non-essential), because even in a highly developed religious environment individuals may be found who do not share it. For these people cannot but testify that the whole matter is not so alien to them but that they have at particular moments been gripped by such a feeling, though they may call it by some name that is not very honouring to themselves. But if anyone can show, either that this feeling has not a higher value than the sensible, or that there is besides it another of equal valueonly then can anyone be entitled to regard it as a merely accidental form, which, while it may perhaps exist for some people in every age, is nevertheless not to be reckoned as part of a complete human nature for everybody. 2. The truth that every essential element of human nature becomes the basis of a fellowship or communion, can only be fully explicated in the context of a scientific theory of morals. Here we can only allude to the essential points of this process, and then ask everybody to accept it as a fact. Fellowship, then, is demanded by the consciousness of kind which dwells in every man, and which finds its satisfaction only when he steps forth beyond the limits of his own personality and takes up the facts of other personalities into his own. It is accomplished through the fact that everything inward becomes, at a certain point of its strength or maturity, an outward too, and, as such, perceptible to others. Thus feeling, as a self-contained determination of the mind (which on the other side passes into thought and action, but with that we are not here concerned), will, even qua feeling, and purely in virtue of the consciousness of kind, not exist exclusively for itself, but becomes an outward, originally and without any definite aim or pertinence, by means of facial expression, gesture, tones, and (indirectly) words; and so becomes to other people a revelation of the inward. This bare expression of feeling, which is entirely caused by the inward agitation, and which can be very definitely distinguished from any further and more separate action into which it passes, does indeed at first arouse in other people only an idea of the person's state of mind. But, by reason of the consciousness of kind, this passes into living imitation; and the more able the percipient is (either for general reasons, or because of the greater liveliness of the expression, or because of closer affinity) to pass into the same state, the more easily will that state be produced by imitation. Everybody must in his own experience be conscious of this process from both its sides, the expressing and the perceiving, and must thus confess that he always finds himself, with the concurrence of his conscience, involved in a multifarious communion of feeling, as a condition quite in conformity with his nature, and therefore that he would have co-operated in the founding of such a communion if it had not been

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there already. As regards the feeling of absolute dependence in particular, everyone will know that it was first awakened in him in the same way, by the communicative and stimulative power of expression or utterance. 3. Our assertion that this communion is at first variable and fluid follows from what we have just been saying. For as individuals in general resemble each other in variable degrees, both as regards the strength of their religious emotions and as regards the particular region of sensible self-consciousness with which their God-consciousness most easily unites, each person's religious emotions have more affinity with those of one of his fellows than with those of another, and thus communion of religious feeling comes to him more easily with the former than with the latter. If the difference is great, he feels himself attracted by the one and repelled by the others; yet not repelled directly or absolutely, so that he could not enter into any communion of feeling with them at all; but only in the sense that he is more powerfully attracted to others; and thus he could have communion even with these, in default of the others, or in circumstances which specially drew them together. For there can hardly exist a man in whom another would recognize no religious affection whatever as being in any degree similar to his own, or whom another would know to be quite incapable of either moving or being moved by him. It remains true, however, that the more uninterrupted the communion is to be, i.e. the more closely the kindred emotions are to follow each other, and the more easily the emotions are to communicate themselves, so much the smaller must be the number of people who can participate. We may conceive as great an interval as we like between the two extremes, that of the closest and that of the feeblest communion; so that the man who experiences the fewest and feeblest religious emotions can have the closest kind of communion only with those who are equally little susceptible to these emotions, and is not in a position to imitate the utterances of those who derive religious emotion from moments where he himself never finds it. A similar relation holds between the man whose piety is purer, in the sense that in every moment of it he clearly distinguishes the religious content of his self-consciousness from the sensible to which it is related, and the man whose piety is less pure, i.e. more confused with the sensible. However, we may conceive the interval between these extremes as being, for each person, filled up with as many intermediate stages as we like; and this is just what constitutes the fluidity of the communion. 4. This is how the interchange of religious consciousness appears when we think of the relation of individual men to each other But if we look at the actual condition of men, we also find well-established relationships in this fluid, and therefore (strictly speaking) undefined communion or fellowship. In the first place, as soon as human development has advanced to the point of a domestic

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life, even if not a completely regulated one, every family will establish within itself such a communion of the religious self-consciousnessa communion which, however, has quite definite limits as regards the outside world. For the members of the family are bound together in a peculiar manner by definite congruity and kinship, and, moreover, their religious emotions are associated with the same occasions, so that strangers can only have an accidental and transitory, and therefore a very unequal, share in them. But we also find families not isolated but standing collectively in distinctly defined combinations, with common language and customs, and with some knowledge or inkling of a closer common origin. And then religious communion becomes marked off among them, partly in the form of predominating similarity in the individual families, and partly by one family, which is particularly open to religious emotions, coming to predominate as the para-mountly active one, while the others, being as it were scarcely out of their nonage, display only receptivity (a state of affairs which exists wherever there is a hereditary priesthood). Every such relatively closed religious communion, which forms an ever self-renewing circulation of the religious selfconsciousness within certain definite limits, and a propagation of the religious emotions arranged and organized within the same limits, so that there can be some kind of definite understanding as to which individuals belong to it and which do notthis we designate a Church. Postscript. This will be the best place to come to an understanding, from our own point of view, as to the different senses in which the word Religion is customarily usedthough indeed, as far as possible, we here confine ourselves to an occasional and cursory employment of the word for the sake of variety. In the lirst place, then, when people speak of a particular religion, this is always with reference to one definite 'Church/ and it means the totality of the religious affections which form the foundation of such a communion and are recognized to be identical in the various members, in its peculiar content as set forth by contemplation and reflection upon the religious emotions. Correspondingly, the individual's susceptibility (which admits of different degrees) to the influence of the fellowship or communion, as also his influence upon the latter, and thus his participation in the circulation and propagation of the religious emotions this is designated Religiosity (Religiositat). Now if a man, on the analogy of 'Christian Religion' and 'Mohammedan Religion,' begins to speak also of 'Natural Religion,' he is again abandoning the rule and confusing the use of words, because there is no natural 'Church' and no definite compass within which the elements of natural religion can be sought. If the expression 'Religion in general' be employed, it again cannot signify such a whole. Nothing can fitly be understood by it but the tendency of the human mind in general to give rise to religious emotions, always considered, however, along with their expression,

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and thus with the striving for fellowship, i.e. the possibility of particular religions (but without regard to the distinction between fluid and defined fellowships). It is only that tendency, the general susceptibility of individual souls to religious emotion, that could be called 'religion in general.' These expressions, however, are seldom clearly distinguished in actual use. Now, in so far as the constitution of the religious affections of the individual contains more than can be recognized as uniform in the communion, this purely personal element is usually, in regard to its content, called Subjective Religion, while the common element is called Objective Religion. But this usage becomes in the highest degree inconvenient whenever (as is now the case among ourselves) a large Church splits up into several smaller communions without entirely giving up its unity. For the peculiarities of the smaller Churches would then also be 'subjective religion' in comparison with what was recognized as common to the larger Church, while they would be 'objective' in comparison with the peculiarities of their particular members. Finally, in the religious emotions themselves, a distinction can be made between the inner determination of self-consciousness and the manner of its outward expression, though these are closely connected; and thus the organization of the communicative expressions of piety in a community is usually called Outward Religion, while the total content of the religious emotions, as they actually occur in individuals, is called Inward Religion. Now, while these definitions may well be the best, as comprehending the various and very arbitrary usages, we have only to compare the expressions with the explanations given, in order to realize how indeterminate it all is. Therefore it is really better to avoid these designations in scientific usage, especially as the term 'religion,' as applied to Christianity, is quite new in our language. II. The Diversities of Religious Communions in General: Propositions borrowed from the Philosophy of Religion. 7. The various religious communions which have appeared in history with clearly defined limits are related to each other in two ways: as different stages of development, and as different kinds. Our proposition does not assert, but it does tacitly presuppose the possibility, that there are other forms of piety which are related to Christianity as different forms on the same level of development, and thus so far similar. But this does not contradict the conviction, which we assume every Christian to possess, of the exclusive superiority of Christianity. [...] Our proposition excludes only the idea, which indeed is often met with, that the Christian religion (piety) should adopt towards at least most other forms of piety the attitude of the true towards the false. For if the religions belonging to the same

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stage as Christianity were entirely false, how could they have so much similarity to Christianity as to make that classification requisite? And if the religions which belong to the lower stages contained nothing but error, how would it be possible for a man to pass from them to Christianity? Only the true, and not the false, can be a basis of receptivity for the higher truth of Christianity. The whole delineation which we are here introducing is based rather on the maxim that error never exists in and for itself, but always along with some truth, and that we have never fully understood it until we have discovered its connexion with truth, and the true thing to which it is attached. With this agrees what the apostle says when he represents even Polytheism as a perversion of the original consciousness of God which underlies it, and when, in this evidence of the longing which all these fancies have failed to satisfy, he finds an obscure presentiment of the true God (Rom 1.21; Acts 17,27-30). 8. Those forms of piety in which all religious affections express the dependence of everything finite upon one Supreme and Infinite Being, i.e. the monotheistic forms, occupy the highest level; and all others are related to them as subordinate forms, from which men are destined to pass to those higher ones. [...] Idol-worship proper is based upon a confused state of the selfconsciousness which marks the lowest condition of man, since in it the higher and the lower are so little distinguished that even the feeling of absolute dependence is reflected as arising from a particular object to be apprehended by the senses. So, too, with Polytheism: in its combination of the religious susceptibility with diverse affections of the sensible self-consciousness, it exhibits this diversity in such a very preponderant degree that the feeling of absolute dependence cannot appear in its complete unity and indifference to all that the sensible self-consciousness may contain; but, instead, a plurality is posited as its source. But when the higher self-consciousness, in distinction from the sensible, has been fully developed, then, in so far as we are open in general to sensible stimulation, i.e. in so far as we are constituent parts of the world, and therefore in so far as we take u p the world into our selfconsciousness and expand the latter into a general consciousness of finitude, we are conscious of ourselves as absolutely dependent. Now this self-consciousness can only be described in terms of Monotheism, and indeed only as we have expressed it in our proposition. For if we are conscious of ourselves, as such and in our finitude, as absolutely dependent, the same holds true of all finite existence, and in this connexion we take u p the whole world along with ourselves into the unity of our self-consciousness. Thus the different ways of representing that existence outside of us to which the consciousness of absolute dependence refers, depend partly on the different degrees of extensiveness of the self-consciousness (for as long as a man identifies himself only with a small

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part of finite existence, his god will remain a fetich); and partly on the degree of clearness with which the higher self-consciousness is distinguished from the lower. Polytheism naturally represents in both respects an indeterminate middle stage, which sometimes is very little different from Idol-worship, but sometimes, when in the handling of the plurality there appears a secret striving after unity, may border very closely on Monotheism; whether it be that the gods rather represent the forces of Nature, or that they symbolize the human qualities which are operative in social relationships, or that both these tendencies are united in the same cult. Otherwise it could not in itself be explained how the correlative term in the feeling of absolute dependence could be reflected as a plurality of beings. But if the higher consciousness has not become quite distinct from the lower, then the correlative can only be conceived in a sensible way, and then for that very reason it contains the germs of plurality. Thus it is only when the religious consciousness expresses itself as capable of being combined with all the states of the sensible self-consciousness without discrimination, but also as clearly distinct from the latter, in such a way that in the religious emotions themselves no sharper distinction appears than that between the joyful and the depressing toneit is only then that man has successfully passed beyond those two stages, and can refer his feeling of absolute dependence solely to one Supreme Being. [... 10] Finally, this must be added: that if one faith wishes to establish the validity of its own application of the idea as against the others, it cannot at all accomplish this by the assertion that its own divine communication is pure and entire truth, while the others contain falsehood. For complete truth would mean that God made Himself known as He is in and for Himself. But such a truth could not proceed outwardly from any fact, and even if it did in some incomprehensible way come to a human soul, it could not be apprehended by that soul, and retained as a thought; and if it could not be in any way perceived and retained, it could not become operative. Any proclamation of God which is to be operative upon and within us can only express God in His relation to us; and this is not an infra-human ignorance concerning God, but the essence of human limitedness in relation to Him. On the other hand, there is the connected fact that a consciousness of God which arose in a realm of complete barbarity and degradation might be really a revelation, and might nevertheless, through the fault of the mind in which it arose, become, in the form in which it was apprehended and retained, an imperfect one. And therefore it may truly be said even of the imperfect forms of religion, so far as they can be traced, in whole or in part, to a particular starting-point and their content cannot be explained by anything previous to that point, that they rest upon revelation, however much error may be mingled in them with the truth. [...]

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III. Presentation of Christianity in its Peculiar Essence: Propositions borrowed from Apologetics. 11. Christianity is a monotheistic faith, belonging to the teleological type of religion, and is essentially distinguished from other such faiths by the fact that in it everything is related to the redemption accomplished by Jesus of Nazareth. [...] 2. It is indisputable that all Christians trace back to Christ the communion to which they belong. But here we are also presupposing that the term Redemption is one to which they all confess: not only that they all use the word, with perhaps different meanings, but that there is some common element of meaning which they all have in mind, even if they differ when they come to a more exact description of it. The term itself is in this realm merely figurative, and signifies in general a passage from an evil condition, which is represented as a state of captivity or constraint, into a better conditionthis is the passive side of it. But it also signifies the help given in that process by some other person, and this is the active side of it. Further, the usage of the word does not essentially imply that the worse condition must have been preceded by a better condition, so that the better one which followed would really be only a restoration: that point may at the outset be left quite open. But now apply the word to the realm of religion, and suppose we are dealing with the teleological type of religion. Then the evil condition can only consist in an obstruction or arrest of the vitality of the higher self-consciousness, so that there comes to be little or no union of it with the various determinations of the sensible selfconsciousness, and thus little or no religious life. We may give to this condition, in its most extreme form, the name of God-lessness, or, better, God-forgetfullness. But we must not think this means a state in which it is quite impossible for the God-consciousness to be kindled. For if that were so, then, in the first place, the lack of a thing which lay outside of one's nature could not be felt to be an evil condition; and in the second place, a re-creating in the strict sense would then be needed in order to make good this lack, and that is not included in the idea of redemption. The possibility, then, of kindling the God-consciousness remains in reserve even where the evil condition of that consciousness is painted in the darkest colours. Hence we can only designate it as an absence of facility for introducing the God-consciousness into the course of our actual lives and retaining it there. This certainly makes it seem as if these two conditions, that which exists before redemption and that which is to be brought about by redemption, could only be distinguished in an indefinite way, as a more and a less; and so, if the idea of redemption is to be clearly established, there arises the problem of reducing this indefinite distinction to a relative opposition. Such an opposition lies in the following formulas. Given an activity of the sensible

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self-consciousness, to occupy a moment of time and to connect it with another: its 'exponent' or 'index' will be greater than that of the higher selfconsciousness for uniting itself therewith; and given an activity of the higher self-consciousness, to occupy a moment of time through union with a determination of the sensible, its 'exponent' or 'index' will be less than that of the activity of the sensible for completing the moment for itself alone. Under these conditions no satisfaction of the impulse towards the God-consciousness will be possible; and so, if such a satisfaction is to be attained, a redemption is necessary, since this condition is nothing but a kind of imprisonment or constraint of the feeling of absolute dependence. These formulas, however, do not imply that in all moments which are so determined the God-consciousness or the feeling of absolute dependence is at zero, but only that in some respect it does not dominate the moment; and in proportion as that is the case the above designations of Godlessness and God-forgetfulness may fitly be applied to it. 3. The recognition of such a condition undeniably finds a place in all religious communions. For the aim of all penances and purifications is to put an end to the consciousness of this condition or to the condition itself. But our proposition establishes two points which in this connexion distinguish Christianity from all other religious communions. In the first place, in Christianity the incapacity and the redemption, and their connexion with each other, do not constitute simply one particular religious element among others, but all other religious emotions are related to this, and this accompanies all others, as the principal thing which makes them distinctively Christian. And secondly, redemption is posited as a thing which has been universally and completely accomplished by Jesus of Nazareth. And these two points, again, must not be separated from each other, but are essentially interconnected. Thus it could not by any means be said that Christian piety is attributable to every man who in all his religious moments is conscious of being in process of redemption, even if he stood in no relation to the person of Jesus or even knew nothing of Hima case which, of course, will never arise. And no more could it be said that a man's religion is Christian if he traces it to Jesus, even supposing that therein he is not at all conscious of being in process of redemptiona case which also, of course, will never arise. The reference to redemption is in every Christian consciousness simply because the originator of the Christian communion is the Redeemer; and Jesus is Founder of a religious communion simply in the sense that its members become conscious of redemption through Him. Our previous exposition ensures that this will not be understood to mean that the whole j religious consciousness of a Christian can have no other content than simply Jesus and redemption, but only that all religious moments, so far as they are free expressions of the feeling of absolute dependence, are set down as having come into existence through that redemption, and, so far as the feeling

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appears still unliberated, are set down as being in need of that redemption. It likewise goes without saying that, while this element is always present, different religious moments may and will possess it in varying degrees of strength or weakness, without thereby losing their Christian character. But it would, of course, follow from what has been said, that if we conceive of religious moments in which all reference to redemption is absent, and the image of the Redeemer is not introduced at all, these moments must be judged to belong no more intimately to Christianity than to any other monotheistic faith. 4. The more detailed elaboration of our proposition, as to how the redemption is effected by Christ and comes to consciousness within the Christian communion, falls to the share of the dogmatic system itself. Here, however, we have still to discuss, with reference to the general remarks we made above, the relation of Christianity to the other principal monotheistic communions. These also are traced back each to an individual founder. Now if the difference of founder were the only difference, this would be a merely external difference, and the same thing would be true if these others likewise set up their founder as a redeemer and thus related everything to redemption. For that would mean that in all these religions the religious moments were of like content, only that the personality of the founder was different. But such is not the case: rather must we say that only through Jesus, and thus only in Christianity, has redemption become the central point of religion. For inasmuch as these other religions have instituted particular penances and purifications for particular things, and these are only particular parts of their doctrine and organization, the effecting of redemption does not appear as their main business. It appears rather as a derivative element. Their main business is the founding of the communion upon definite doctrine and in definite form. If, however, there are within the communion considerable differences in the free development of the God-consciousness, then some people, in whom it is most cramped, are more in need of redemption, and others, in whom it works more freely, are more capable of redemption; and thus through the influence of the latter there arises in the former an approximation to redemption; but only up to the point at which the difference between the two is more or less balanced, simply owing to the fact that there exists a communion or fellowship. In Christianity, on the other hand, the redeeming influence of the Founder is the primary element, and the communion exists only on this presupposition, and as a communication and propagation of that redeeming activity. Hence within Christianity these two tendencies always rise and fall together: the tendency to give pre-eminence to the redeeming work of Christ, and the tendency to ascribe great value to the distinctive and peculiar element in Christian piety. And the same is true of the two opposite tendencies: the tendency to regard Christianity simply as a means of advancing and propagating religion in general (its own

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distinctive nature being merely accidental and secondary), and the tendency to regard Christ principally as a teacher and the organizer of a communion, while putting the redeeming activity in the background. Accordingly, in Christianity the relation of the Founder to the members of the communion is quite different from what it is in the other religions. For those other founders are represented as having been, as it were, arbitrarily elevated from the mass of similar or not very different men, and as receiving just as much for themselves as for other people whatever they do receive in the way of divine doctrine and precept. Thus even an adherent of those faiths will hardly deny that God could just as well have given the law through another as through Moses, and the revelation could just as well have been given through another as through Mohammed. But Christ is distinguished from all others as Redeemer alone and for all, and is in no wise regarded as having been at any time in need of redemption Himself; and is therefore separated from the beginning from all other men, and endowed with redeeming power from His birth. [...] 5. This development of the argument will, it is hoped, serve to confirm what we have established for the purpose of determining the distinctive element of Christianity. For we have tried, as it were by way of experiment, to single out from among the common elements of Christian piety that element by which Christianity is most definitely distinguished externally; and in this attempt we were guided by the necessity of regarding the inner peculiarity and the outward delimitation in their interconnexion. Perhaps in a universal Philosophy of Religion, to which, if it were properly recognized, Apologetics could then appeal, the inner character of Christianity in itself could be exhibited in such a way that its particular place in the religious world would thereby be definitely fixed. This would also mean that all the principal moments of the religious consciousness would be systematized, and from their interconnexion it would be seen which of them were fitted to have all the others related to them and to be themselves a constant concomitant of all the others. If, then, it should be seen that the element which we call 'redemption' becomes such a moment as soon as a liberating fact enters a region where the God-consciousness was in a state of constraint, Christianity would in that case be vindicated as a distinct form of faith and its nature in a sense construed. But even this could not properly be called a proof of Christianity, since even the Philosophy of Religion could not establish any necessity, either to recognize a particular Fact as redemptive, or to give the central place actually in one's own consciousness to any particular moment, even though that moment should be capable of occupying such a place. Still less can this present account claim to be such a proof; for here, in accordance with the line we have taken, and since we can only start from a historical consideration, we cannot even pretend to do as much as might be done in a complete Philosophy of Religion. Moreover, it is

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obvious that an adherent of some other faith might perhaps be completely convinced by the above account that what we have set forth is really the peculiar essence of Christianity, without being thereby so convinced that Christianity is actually the truth, as to feel compelled to accept it. Everything we say in this place is relative to Dogmatics, and Dogmatics is only for Christians; and so this account is only for those who live within the pale of Christianity, and is intended only to give guidance, in the interests of Dogmatics, for determining whether the expressions of any religious consciousness are Christian or not, and whether the Christian quality is strongly and clearly expressed in them, or rather doubtfully. We entirely renounce all attempt to prove the truth or necessity of Christianity; and we presuppose, on the contrary, that every Christian, before he enters at all upon inquiries of this kind, has already the inward certainty that his religion cannot take any other form than this. [...] IV. The Relation of Dogmatics to Christian Piety. 15.Christian doctrines are accounts of the Christian religious affections set forth in speech. 1. All religious emotions, to whatever type and level of religion they belong, have this in common with all other modifications of the affective selfconsciousness, that as soon as they have reached a certain stage and a certain definiteness they manifest themselves outwardly by mimicry in the most direct and spontaneous way, by means of facial features and movements of voice and gesture, which we regard as their expression. Thus we definitely distinguish the expression of devoutness from that of a sensuous gladness or sadness, by the analogy of each man's knowledge of himself. Indeed, we can even conceive that, for the purpose of maintaining the religious affections and securing their repetition and propagation (especially if they were common to a number of people), the elements of that natural expression of them might be put together into sacred signs and symbolical acts, without the thought having perceptibly come in between at all. But we can scarcely conceive such a low development of the human spirit, such a defective culture, and such a meagre use of speech, that each person would not, according to the level of reflection on which he stands, become in his various mental states likewise an object to himself, in order to comprehend them in idea and retain them in the form of thought. Now this endeavour has always directed itself particularly to the religious emotions; and this, considered in its own inward meaning, is what our proposition means by an account of the religious affections. But while thought cannot proceed even inwardly without the use of speech, nevertheless there are, so long as it

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remains merely inward, fugitive elements in this procedure, which do indeed in some measure indicate the object, but not in such a way that either the formation or the synthesis of concepts (in however wide a sense we take the word 'concept') is sufficiently definite for communication. It is only when this procedure has reached such a point of cultivation as to be able to represent itself outwardly in definite speech, that it produces a real doctrine (Glaubenssatz), by means of which the utterances of the religious consciousness come into circulation more surely and with a wider range than is possible through the direct expression. But no matter whether the expression is natural or figurative, whether it indicates its object directly or only by comparison and delimitation, it is still a doctrine. 2. Now Christianity everywhere presupposes that consciousness has reached this stage of development. The whole work of the Redeemer Himself was conditioned by the communicability of His self-consciousness by means of speech, and similarly Christianity has always and everywhere spread itself solely by preaching. Every proposition which can be an element of the Christian preaching is also a doctrine, because it bears witness to the determination of the religious self-consciousness as inward certainty. And every Christian doctrine is also a part of the Christian preaching, because every such doctrine expresses as a certainty the approximation to the state of blessedness which is to be effected through the means ordained by Christ. But this preaching very soon split up into three different types of speech, which provide as many different forms of doctrine: the poetic, the rhetorical (which is directed partly outwards, as combative and commendatory, and partly inwards, as rather disciplinary and challenging), and finally the descriptively didactic. But the relation of communication through speech to communication through symbolic action varies very much according to time and place, the former having always retreated into the background in the Eastern Church (for when the letter of doctrine has become fixed and unalterable, it is in its effect much nearer to symbolic action than to free speech), and having become ever more prominent in the Western Church. And in the realm of speech it is just the same with these three modes of communication. The relation in which they stand to each other, the general degree of richness, and the amount of living intercourse in which they unfold themselves, as they nourish themselves on one another and pass over into one anotherthese things testify not so much to the degree or level of piety as rather to the character of the communion or fellowship and its ripeness for reflection and contemplation. Thus this communication is, on the one hand, something different from the piety itself, though the latter cannot, any more than anything else which is human, be conceived entirely separated from all communication. But, on the other hand, the doctrines in all their forms have

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their ultimate ground so exclusively in the emotions of the religious selfconsciousness, that where these do not exist the doctrines cannot arise. 16. Dogmatic propositions are doctrines of the descriptively didactic type, in which the highest possible degree of definiteness is aimed at. 1. The poetic expression is always based originally upon a moment of exaltation which has come purely from within, a moment of enthusiasm or inspiration; the rhetorical upon a moment whose exaltation has come from without, a moment of stimulated interest which issues in a particular definite result. The former is purely descriptive (darstellend), and sets up in general outlines images and forms which each hearer completes for himself in his own peculiar way. The rhetorical is purely stimulative, and has, in its nature, to do for the most part with such elements of speech as, admitting of degrees of signification, can be taken in a wider or narrower sense, content if at the decisive moment they can accomplish the highest, even though they should exhaust themselves thereby and subsequently appear to lose somewhat of their force. Thus both of these forms possess a different perfection from the logical or dialectical perfection described in our proposition. But, nevertheless, we can think of both as being primary and original in every religious communion, and thus in the Christian Church, in so far as we ascribe to everyone in it a share in the vocation of preaching. For when anyone finds himself in a state of unusually exalted religious self-consciousness, he will feel himself called to poetic description, as that which proceeds from this state most directly. And, on the other hand, when anyone finds himself particularly challenged by insistent or favourable outward circumstances to attempt an act of preaching, the rhetorical form of expression will be the most natural to him for obtaining from the given circumstances the greatest possible advantage. But let us conceive of the comprehension and appropriation of what is given in a direct way in these two forms, as being now also wedded to language and thereby made communicable: then this cannot again take the poetic form, nor yet the rhetorical; but, being independent of that which was the important element in those two forms, and expressing as it does a consciousness which remains self-identical, it becomes, less as preaching than as confession, precisely that third form the didacticwhich, with its descriptive instruction, remains distinct from the two others, and is made up of the two put together, as a derivative and secondary form. 2. But let us confine ourselves to Christianity, and think of its distinctive beginning, namely, the self-proclamation of Christ, Who, as subject of the divine revelation, could not contain in Himself any distinction of stronger and weaker emotion, but could only partake in such a diversity through His common life with others. Then we shall not be able to take either the poetic or

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the rhetorical form of expression as the predominating, or even as the really primary and original, form of His self-proclamation. These have only a subordinate place in parabolic and prophetic discourses. The essential thing in His self-proclamation was that He had to bear witness regarding His ever unvarying self-consciousness out of the depths of its repose, and consequently not in poetic but in strictly reflective form; and thus had to set Himself forth, while at the same time communicating His alone true objective consciousness of the condition and constitution of men in general, thus instructing by description or representation, the instruction being sometimes subordinate to the description, and sometimes vice versa. But this descriptively didactic mode of expression used by Christ is not included in our proposition, and such utterances of the Redeemer will hardly be set up anywhere as dogmatic propositions; they will only, as it were, provide the text for them. For in such essential parts of the self-proclamation of Christ the definiteness was absolute, and it is only the perfection of the apprehension and appropriation which reproduces these, that can be characterized by the endeavour after the greatest possible definiteness. Subordinate to these, however, there do appear genuinely dogmatic propositions in the discourses of Christ, namely, at those points at which He had to start from the partly erroneous and partly confused ideas current among His contemporaries. [...] Postscript.This account of the origin of dogmatic propositions, as having arisen solely out of logically ordered reflection upon the immediate utterances of the religious self-consciousness, finds its confirmation in the whole of history. The earliest specimens of preaching preserved for us in the New Testament Scriptures already contain such propositions; and on closer consideration we can see in all of them, in the first place, their derivation from the original self-proclamation of Christ, and, in the second place, their affinity to figurative and rhetorical elements which, for permanent circulation, had to approximate more to the strictness of a formula. Similarly in later periods it is clear that the figurative language, which is always poetic in its nature, had the most decided influence upon the dogmatic language, and always preceded its development, and also that the majority of the dogmatic definitions were called forth by contradictions to which the rhetorical expressions had led. But when the transformation of the original expressions into dogmatic propositions is ascribed to the logical or dialectical interest, this is to be understood as applying only to the form. A proposition which had originally proceeded from the speculative activity, however akin it might be to our propositions in content, would not be a dogmatic proposition. The purely scientific activity, whose task is the contemplation of existence, must, if it is to come to anything, either begin or end with the Supreme Being; and so there may be forms of philosophy containing propositions of speculative import

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about the Supreme Being which, in spite of the fact that they arose out of the purely scientific interest, are, when taken individually, difficult to distinguish from the corresponding propositions which arose purely out of reflection upon the religious emotions, but have been worked out dialectically. But when they are considered in their connexions, these two indubitably show differences of the most definite kind. For dogmatic propositions never make their original appearance except in trains of thought which have received their impulse from religious moods of mind; whereas, not only do speculative propositions about the Supreme Being appear for the most part in purely logical or naturalscientific trains of thought, but even when they come in as ethical presuppositions or corollaries, they show an unmistakable leaning towards one or other of those two directions. Moreover, in the dogmatic developments of the earliest centuries, if we discount the quite unecclesiastical Gnostic schools, the influence of speculation upon the content of dogmatic propositions may be placed at zero. [...] The Evangelical (Protestant) Church in particular is unanimous in feeling that the distinctive form of its dogmatic propositions does not depend on any form or school of philosophy, and has not proceeded at all from a speculative interest, but simply from the interest of satisfying the immediate self-consciousness solely through the means ordained by Christ, in their genuine and uncorrupted form. Thus it can consistently adopt as dogmatic propositions of its own no propositions except such as can show this derivation. Our dogmatic theology will not, however, stand on its proper ground and soil with the same assurance with which philosophy has so long stood upon its own, until the separation of the two types of proposition is so complete that, e.g., so extraordinary a question as whether the same proposition can be true in philosophy and false in Christian theology, and vice versa, will no longer be asked, for the simple reason that a proposition cannot appear in the one context precisely as it appears in the other: however similar it sounds, a difference must always be assumed. But we are still very far from this goal, so long as people take pains to base or deduce dogmatic propositions in the speculative manner, or even set themselves to work up the products of speculative activity and the results of the study of religious affections into a single whole. (...)
FIRST PART

33 This feeling of absolute dependence, in which our self consciousness in general represents thefinitude of our being (cf 8, 2), is therefore not an accidental element, or a thing which varies from person to person, but is a universal element of life; and the recognition of this fact entirely takes the place, for the system of doctrine, of all the socalled proofs of the existence of God. 1. One cannot concede the postulated self-consciousness with the content we have already described, and yet maintain that it is something unessential,

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i.e. that it may or may not be present in a man's life according to whether, in the course of his life, he meets with this or that experience. For its emergence does not depend at all upon the fact that something definite and objective is given in the experience of a partially developed subject, but only on the fact that in some way or other the sensory consciousness has been stimulated from without. But what is presupposed on the subjective side is only that which is common to allthe intelligence in its subjective function, in which the disposition towards God-consciousness is a constituent element. That the feeling of absolute dependence as such is the same in all, and not different in different persons, follows from the fact that it does not rest upon any particular modification of human nature but upon the absolutely general nature of man, which contains in itself the potentiality of all those differences by which the particular content of the individual personality is determined. Further, if a difference is admitted between perfection and imperfection as measured by greater or less development, this arises from the fact that the emergence of this feeling depends upon a contrast having been apprehended in consciousness; the lack of development is simply the lack of differentiation of functions. For when the objective consciousness and self-consciousness are not yet clearly differentiated in such a way as nevertheless to be distinctly connected together, in that case the consciousness as a whole has not yet become genuinely human. And if sensuous self-consciousness and the higher self-consciousness are not thus differentiated from one another and related to one another, development is incomplete. [...] 3. But even supposing its universality could be disputed, still no obligation would arise for the system of doctrine to prove the existence of God; that would be an entirely superfluous task. For since in the Christian Church the Godconsciousness should be developed in youth, proofs, even if youth were capable of understanding them, could only produce an objective consciousness, which is not the aim here, nor would it in any way generate piety. We are not concerned here with the question whether there are such proofs, and whether, if we have no immediate certitude of God, then that of which we do have immediate certitude, and by which God could be proved, must not itself be God. Our point simply is that these proofs can never be a component part of the system of doctrine; for that is only for those who have the inner certainty of God, as we have already described it, and of that they can be directly conscious at every moment. On our interpretation of Christian doctrine it would be quite unnecessary to enlarge on this point did it not seem essential to protest against the general custom of furnishing Dogmatics at this point with such proofs, or at least of referring to them as already familiar from other sciences. It is obvious that for the purpose of Dogmatics this reference is quite useless: for neither in catechetical nor in homiletical nor in missionary work can such proofs be of any

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value. Experience,, too, shows how little can be accomplished by such a polemic against theoretical atheism as above described. Dogmatics must therefore presuppose intuitive certainty or faith; and thus, as far as the, Godconsciousness in general is concerned, what it has to do is not to effect its recognition but to explicate its content. That such proofs are not the concern of Dogmatics is obvious also from the fact that it is impossible to give them dogmatic form; for we cannot go back to Scripture and symbolical books, since they themselves do not prove, but simply assert. Moreover, he for whom such assertion is authoritative needs no further proof. The prevalent method of inflating Christian doctrine with rational proofs and criticism had its origin in the confusion of Dogmatics and philosophy in old Patristic times. Closely related to this, and therefore to be named here, is the equally erroneous view that Christian theology, to which Dogmatics also belongs, is differentiated from Christian religion by its sources of knowledge. Religion, for instance, it is argued, draws from Scripture only, but theology draws also from the Fathers, reason and philosophy. But as theology itself draws from Scripture, and the Scriptures themselves have arisen out of the Christian religion, what originates in reason and philosophy cannot be Christian theology. It is certainly a great gain here, and elsewhere, to banish all material of this kind from the Christian system of doctrine, for only thus is a uniformity of method to be established. Such a difficult choice as that between moral proofs, geometrical proofs, and probable proofs is not a task for any dogmatic theologian to take up, even if it be only for his own personal satisfaction.
SECOND PART

Explication of the facts of the religious self-consciousness, as they are determined by the antithesis
INTRODUCTION 62. The God-consciousness described in the foregoing occurs as the actual content of a moment of experience only under the general form of self-consciousness, i.e. the antithesis of pleasure and pain. 1. The disposition to the God-consciousness can be represented as a continuous impartation of that consciousness, but only in a degree that is infinitely small; with the consequence that the transition to a definite and perceptible magnitude is always dependent on some other fact of consciousness. Now, were such a transition to take place in our selfconsciousness apart from the form of the antithesis, i.e. neither as an advancement nor as an arrestment of the God-consciousness, it would need to

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be a transition that was continuous and uniform. This is conceivable if, independently of any other fact of consciousness, the God-consciousness were to rise noticeably above the infinitely small degree just referred to. The condition of the God-consciousness in such a case would be one of constant repression, dull uniformity, any emergence of vitality above a very low average being found only among the other facts of consciousness. A constant uniformity in the God-consciousness, however, is conceivable also in a state of existence where an absolute facility existed of evoking it in its absolute strength from every other fact of consciousness. The condition of the God-consciousness in this case would be that of a blessed uniformity of constant predominance. Clearly, however, our religious consciousness is not such that more and less do not apply to it; on the contrary, it oscillates between these extremes, sharing, as it does, the variations of our temporal life. True, this more and less, simply as such, may seem to be of the nature of a fluctuating difference rather than of an antithesis. Still, contrariety of movement creates an antithesis; for a movement from less to more indicates that the disposition to the God-consciousness is developing with increasing freedom, while one from more to less is an arrestment of it and indicates that other impulses are more powerful. But now in this as in other provinces of experience (as there is no such state as absolute blessedness or as complete abeyance of the God-consciousness) pleasure and pain are by no means to be regarded as so separate from each other that one of them might in some circumstances actually exist without the other. If, then, the determining power of the God-consciousness is felt to be limited, pain is bound up with it, i.e. is present even in the highest pleasure. Whereas, if the consciousness that this power is arrested excites pain, the Godconsciousness is nevertheless willed as such a power, and is thereby in and for itself an object of pleasure. [...] 3. Everything related to the Redeemer in the religious consciousness of the Christian is peculiar to the distinctively Christian articulation of the antithesis under discussion. No proposition, as we have already said, describing the feeling of absolute dependence apart from this antithesis, can be a description of a religious moment in its entire content, for in every such moment that feeling occurs only as a relative turning away from God or turning towards Him. From these two statements we must go on to assert that no proposition merely describing the condition of the individual life with reference to this antithesis is a description of the entire content of a religious moment, since in every such moment the condition described must needs manifest itself in the emergence of the feeling of absolute dependence. In the actual life of the Christian, therefore, the two are always found in combination: there is no general God-consciousness which has not bound up with it a relation to Christ,

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and no relationship with the Redeemer which has no bearing on the general God-consciousness. [... ] 63. While in general the manner in which the God-consciousness takes shape in and with the stimulated self-consciousness can be traced only to the action of the individual, the distinctive feature of Christian piety lies in the fact that whatever alienation from God there is in the phases of our experience, we are conscious of it as an action originating in ourselves, which we call Sin; but whatever fellowship with God there is, we are conscious of it as resting upon a communication from the Redeemer, which we call Grace. 1. Let us suppose an aesthetic form of faith. It will reduce both these arrestments and continued developments of the God-consciousness, as indeed every other change in man's experience, to passive states, and represent them consequently as the effects of external influences in such a manner that they will appear simply to be appointed events, while the ideas of merit and guilt will really not apply to them at all. Accordingly, we may say that the controversy regarding freedom, as it is usually urged in this sphere, is just the controversy as to whether our passive states are to be regarded as subordinate to our active states or vice versa: and that freedom in the latter sense is the universal premiss of all teleological forms of faith, which alone, by starting as they do from the ascendency of spontaneous activity in man, are able to find guilt in all arrestments of the disposition to the God-consciousness, and merit in every progression of it. More precise determinations, however, of the 'how' of either are not to be found in the common nature of these forms of faith; this only is self-evident, namely, that if both arrestment of the impulse to the Godconsciousness and quickened development of it are to be equally the act of one and the same individual, and consequently opposites are to be explained by the same cause, then, in relation to the doer, the two must cease to be opposed. 2. In Christian piety as described here there is no such initial difficulty to be surmounted. The description given here, however, is identical with the general exposition put forward above. For if the feeling of absolute dependence, which was previously in bondage, has been set free only by redemption, the facility with which we are able to graft the God-consciousness on the various sensuous excitations of our self-consciousness also springs solely from the facts of redemption, and is therefore a communicated facility. And if the bondage of the feeling of absolute dependence did not betoken its real absence (for absence would imply the impossibility of such an act as is here designated sin), then in every portion of life that could be regarded as a whole in itself, the Godconsciousness too was present in degree even if only as something infinitely small, and thus whenever such a portion of life came to an end there took place an act having relation to the God-consciousness. Not, however, an act involving

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the evocation of the God-consciousness as a co-determinant of the moment, i.e. not a turning to God (from which an experience of communion with God always arises of itself), but a turning away from God, so that with the acceptance of such a redemption there is always conjoined a backward look to sin as prior to it. Now the fact that here communion with God rests on an act extraneous to it by no means prevents our bringing Christianity under the general category of teleological forms of faith. For, on the one hand, communication and action are not mutually exclusive, for corporate acts, e.g., have their origin for the most part in a single person, and yet are acts also on the part of the rest; while, on the other hand, appropriation of redemption is always represented as action, as a laying hold of Christ, or the like. In the case, however, of a religious consciousness contrariwise regarding its derangements as coming from elsewhere, but communion with God (into which these do not enter) as proceeding from the individual's own spiritual vitality, the term redemption could be applied (and even that in a very subordinate sense) only to that which sealed up the external sources of the derangements. Redemption through Jesus, however, has never been thought of in this way. And the further we carry the way of looking at things just indicated, then the more the lack of communion with God is taken to be merely fortuitous, the less definitely are sin and grace as such (and as earlier and later) differentiated from each other, and the more does the conception of redemption recede into the distance, till all three disappear together. This disappearance actually occurs when it is assumed that the unity of the sensuous and the higher self-consciousness is the natural basic condition of the individuala condition in which the absence of the God-consciousness in any particular moment remains merely accidental, something which at once cancels itself out in corporate life, inasmuch as all do not suffer from the same accident at once. This, taken strictly, is the nonChristian view which recognizes no need of redemption; for in Christianity these two, sin and grace, are valid ideas only on the basis of redemption and on the assumption that it has been appropriated. 3. Moreover, the proposition cannot be taken as implying that in the immediate Christian self-consciousness sin and grace are to be referred to separate moments and to be kept absolutely apart from each other as mutually incompatible. On the contrary, as the energy of the God-consciousness is never at its absolutely highest any more than the engrafting of the God-consciousness on the excitations of the sensuous self-consciousness is ever absolutely constant, there is involved in this circumstance a limiting deficiency of the Godconsciousness, which is certainly sinful. Just as little, however, in a truly Christian consciousness can the connexion with redemption be utterly null, for in that case the Christian consciousness would, until the connexion was reestablished, be, contrary to what is assumed, non-Christian. And as this

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connexion proceeds originally from the Redeemer, so His communicated action is implied throughout. Here, accordingly, while the elements we are discussing are antithetic they are only such as in the religious life, of the Christian they are conjoined in every moment, though always in varied measure.

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FURTHER READING
Primary Literature Schleiermacher, Friedrich, The Christian Faith. English translation of the second German edition, edited by H. R. Mackintosh and J. S. Stewart, Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark 1928 Schleiermacher, Friedrich, On religion. Speeches to its cultured despisers. Intr., transl., and notes by Richard Crouter, Texts in German philosophy, Cambridge England: Cambridge University Press 1988 Schleiermacher, Friedrich, The life of Jesus, Miffletown, PA: Sigler Press 1997 Schleiermacher, Friedrich, Christmas Eve. Dialogue on the incarnation. Transl. with introduction and notes by Terrence N. Tice, San Francisco: EM Texts 1990 Secondary Literature Clements, Keith W., Friedrich Schleiermacher, The Making of modern theology, London: Collins 1987, 7-65, Gerrish, B. A., A prince of the church. Schleiermacher and the beginnings of modern theology, The Rockwell lectures, Philadelphia: Fortress Press 1984 Marina, Jacqueline, Transformation of the Self in the thought of Schleiermacher, Oxford: Oxford Scholarship Online 2008 http://www.oxfordscholarship.eom//oso/public/content/religion/978019920 6377/toc.html Marshall, Bruce D., 'Hermeneutics and Dogmatics in Schleiermacher's Theology'. In: The Journal of Religion 67 (1987), 14-32(critical discussion of Schleiermacher's account of Jesus' 'unique God-consciousness') Niebuhr, Richard Reinhold, Schleiermacher on Christ and religion, Library of philosophy and theology, New York: Charles Scribner's 1965 Stein, Craig C , Schleiermacher's construction of the subject in the introduction to The Christian faith in light ofM. Foucault's critique of modern knowledge, Schleiermacher studies and translations, Lewiston, N.Y: E. Mellen Press 2001 Thiel, John E., God and world in Schleiermacher's Dialektik and Glaubenslehre. Criticism and the methodology of dogmatics, Basler und Berner Studien zur historischen und systematischen Theologie, Bern: P. Lang 1981, 9-30, 31-70 Sykes, Stephen Whitefield, Friedrich Schleiermacher, Makers of contemporary theology, Woking: Lutterworth Press 1971 Williams, Robert R., Schleiermacher the theologian. The construction of the doctrine of God, Philadelphia: Fortress Press 1978

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QUESTIONS FOR CONSIDERATION

1. Is it possible to demonstrate Schleiermacher's 'feeling of absolute dependence' philosophically? 2. Is it possible to have an 'individual experience' or 'knowledge' of this feeling? (see 5) 3. In which sense is Schleiermacher's thinking 'Jesus-centred'? 4. Is it possible to imagine 'what is it would be like to be Jesus', and if not (as Thomas Nagel would argue), why it is crucial to join a church in order to become like Jesus? 5. Why does the Church need dogmatics? 6. Is Schleiermacher's dogmatic based on philosophical or on ecclesiological considerations? 7. Discuss the philosophical foundations and theological implications of Schleiermacher's concept of sin and redemption?

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UNIT FIVE

Schleiermacher7s Disciples and Critics

Concomitant reading: Marina, ch. 1, ch. 9, ch. 11, ch. 13, ch. 15 ++ The following unit will provide an opportunity to recapitulate critically the previous attempts to read Schleiermacher in his philosophical context. This will include the necessity to reconsider the weakest point of Schleiermacher's theology, his concept of the trinity, which is symptomatic for the theological and philosophical limits of Schleiermacher's attempts to retrieve Christian orthodoxy under the conditions of post-Kantian philosophy. Furthermore, this unit will include a brief introduction to Schleiermacher's effective history up to the late 60s of the last century, when scholars like Hans-Joachim Birkner, Gerhard Ebeling, Heinz Kimmerle, and (one generation later) Manfred Frank started to reconsider the traditional reading of Schleiermacher (see unit one). The primary text of this unit will give you access to this 'pre-critical' reading of Schleiermacher straight from the horse's mouth: It is about Karl Barth's last text on Schleiermacher, an essay which includes a summary of Barth own theological biography in the light of his confessedly overpowering German predecessor. Published under an unequivocal Kierkegaardian title ('Concluding Unscientific Postscript') in 1968, it appeared as appendix to a selection of primary texts ('Schleiermacher-Auswahl') just in the year of Barth's dead. In terms of the questioning, outlined above, this text is significant in three respects: 1. Compared with Barth's Gottingen Lectures on the 'The theology of Schleiermacher' of 1923/24, it demonstrates how this most important theological critic started to reconsider his reading of Schleiermacher's writings at the very same time when Schleiermacher's hermeneutics began to attract the attention of secular philosophers, and German scholars started negotiations to provide a critical edition of Schleiermacher's opera, which led to the foundation of the editorial circle of the KGA ('Kritische Gesamtausgabe') in 1972. 2. Barth's essay, secondly, demonstrates how influential Schleiermacher's theology was - up to the point that it considers the 'anthropological turn' of the twentieth century (Bultmann, Brunner, Tillich, Moltmann etc.) as nothing more than a footnote to Schleiermacher. Furthermore it recalls how faraway Barth felt

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himself from considering his own 'neo-orthodox' approach as a sufficiently elaborated response to the challenge of Schleiermacher's anthropological turn. 3. Thirdly, towards the end of his essay, Barth posits five pairs of questions which underline the points of resistance against any hurried attempt to harmonize his Church Dogmatics with Schleiermacher's Christian Faith. In the following, these questions may serve as a guide for reassessing the outcome of the foregoing units in the light of Barth's critic as well as in the light of the pertinent chapters of our companion (see above)."i However, read against the background of the philosophical discussions outlined in the foregoing units, the last pair of Barth's questions may become most important: 'Are the two questions which I posed four times (a) correctly formulated (...) Or are all the questions I have posed (b) incorrectly formulated'. Since the limits of Barth's Schleiermacher interpretation are thoroughly connected with the (in Schleiermacher's sense of the word) 'undialectical' character of Barth's bifurcating questions 1-4, there are good reasons to suppose that every attempt to overcome the deadlock of the 'post-liberal' controversy on the relation of philosophy and theology has to focus on exactly this point. This especially concerns the crunch question, post-liberal theologians are used to pose against the tradition of 'liberal theology': Is Schleiermacher's foundational concept of God based on generalizing philosophical considerations or on biblical revelation? Read against the background of this question, The Christian Faith is usually (following Brunner and Barth) qualified as the prototype of a liberal theology, and consequently, Schleiermacher appears as the philosophical theologian who sells out revelation for a universal concept of religion, and the divine 'word' for a hermeneutic strategy of cultural accommodation. However, it is anything but easy to decide where Schleiermacher's theology is really to be posited - as the following paragraph from his The Christian Faith demonstrates: "There is no general God-consciousness which has not bound up with it a relation to Christ, and no relationship with the Redeemer which has no bearing on the general God-consciousness ... For the former propositions are in no sense the reflection of a meager and purely monotheistic God-consciousness, but are abstracted from one which has issued in fellowship with the Redeemer" (CF, 62). As you will learn in reading the pertinent texts of your companion, the response of contemporary scholars to the 'crunch question' of post-liberal theology is still anything but concordant. It will be your task to develop you own assessment of this conflict - particularly departing from the theological
i I recommend a careful reading of the last paragraph of Barth's text before you start to solve Barth's problems in occasion of your module essay.

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essay of Eilert Herms (University of Tubingen), who provides a textual well founded protestant-orthodox reading of Schleiermacher, and the philosophical essay of David E. Kleem (University of Iowa), who tries to provides a downright 'humanistic' reading, thereby reducing Schleiermacher's philosophical theology to some sort of Spinozism. This Spinozist track is not necessarily deceptive. As Manfred Frank's companion essay (which was already part of unit two) indicates, the influence of Spinoza's monism on Schleiermacher's philosophy is, indeed, not to be underestimated. However, in Frank's decidedly philosophical reading of Schleiermacher the influence of Spinoza (and mutatis mutandis Leibniz) is rather to be interpreted as indication of problem than as justification of a onedimensional reading of his philosophy, and this may be valid for Schleiermacher's theology as well. The problem we have to cope with at this point is connected with the relation of universal rationality (the topic of Schleiermacher's dialectic) and particular traditions (the topic of his hermeneutics). In general we may argue that is not possible to resolve unambiguously the tension between universality and particularity in favour of a universalized rationality (as Klemm proposes to do); the 'religious intuition' of human subjects is always bound to particular expressions of their truth in accordance with particular cultural traditions. But we should notice, nevertheless that numerous ambiguities of Schleiermacher's philosophy and theology are rooted in unsolved problems of his philosophy. Thus it may be more promising, instead of simply 'defending' Schleiermacher's orthodox roots, to read ambiguities of his 'philosophical theology' as symptoms of a philosophical perplexity which necessitates further philosophical (and theological) research. To put it more precisely, following the advice of Andrew Bowie's companion essay (p. 77): We may see 'Schleiermacher's difficulties as pointing towards ideas of a kind that have only recently been more fully articulated.' For, 'many of the points at which Schleiermacher is inconsistent tend to be the points where he is trying to get beyond his influences to new ways of seeing the issues.' This more 'deconstructive' than 'critical' attitude may also bear fruit with regard to Schleiermacher's indubitable problematic concept of trinity, which is discussed in the companion essay of Francis Schussler-Fiorenza. It appears to be obvious that Schleiermacher trinitarian 'modalism' is deeply rooted in his 'Spinozist' (monist) concept of the 'absolute', and that the inconsistencies, provoked by this legacy, are part and parcel of the flaws of his theology as well. In terms of this challenge, the main problem of Schleiermacher's philosophical theology may be traced back to his use of Leibniz' (Spinozist) 'principle of

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identity'(see Frank p. 18, and 23)1, which includes the 'identity of indiscernibles' - namely that, what is not distinguishable based on predications (or properties), is to be considered as identical. Why is this principle incompatible with the foundations of Christian orthodoxy? It may suffice to answer this question by relating Leibniz' principle to the Cappadocian concept of 'causality' which (especially in the case of Gregory of Nyssa) gave access to the orthodox distinction between three divine hypostases of the trinity (see the Theology and Philosophy module): As soon as we accept Leibniz' principle of identity it becomes impossible to distinguish between the trinitarian 'hypostases' without separating them based on different predicates (like 'power' = father, 'wisdom' = son, and 'love' = holy spirit). However, the apophaticism of Cappadocian theology was exactly based on this possibility: The distinction between different relations of causality (the father 'generates', the son 'is generated', the spirit 'proceeds') was simply designed to prove that it is possible to distinguish (i.e. avoid modalism) without going back to semantic distinctions between different intrinsic predicates (i.e. without caving into the tritheistic temptation to distinguish the divine persons based on properties which characterise the intrinsic 'nature' of different 'substances'). The possibility to develop an apophatic concept of the trinity is indissolubly connected with the possibility to draw non-predicative distinctions, since otherwise everything collapses into the ocean of an undifferentiated unity as soon as we 'remove' the distinction between different predicates in favour of apophatic expressions. For this reason the apophatic (non-predicative) distinction between three 'hypostases' was destined to become dubious as soon as everything which is not predicative distinguishable was to be considered as identical. As soon as we accept Leibniz' principle of identity it becomes impossible to retrieve the trinitarian 'exchange of gifts' as a feature of (what was later to be called) the 'immanent' trinity which distinguishes the divine 'persons' despite their unity in substance; as soon as we accept Leibniz' principal of analytical identity it is no longer possible to understand what the Cappadocian fathers meant when they were speaking of a causal order (taxis) in between predicative undistinguishable 'hypostases'. Consequently, modern theology either tended in the direction of some sort of modalism, or it slipped into the opposite extreme of an anthropomorphic tritheism (like it is the case in Jurgen Moltmann).
1 For a critical discussion of the logical presuppositions of this concept (whithout explicitly relating it to Schleiermacher) departing from Nicholas of Cusa's philosophy of mathematics, see: Johannes Hoff, Kontingenz, Beruhrung, Uberschreitung. Zur philosophischen Propiideutik christlicher Mystik nach Nikolaus von Kues (Freiburg/Br., 2007), 2.1; and with regard to the orthodox trinity 4.3.2 and 4.4.2 and 4.4.3

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The last point is symptomatic for Schleiermacher's blueprint of modern theology in so far as it unfolds a possible option which Schleiermacher (following the patristic fathers) by all means tried to exclude: Schleiermacher was deeply convinced that Christian theology had to conserve its apophatic roots, and that it had to resist any inclination of mythologizing Christian doctrine, like it would be the case with anthropomorphic (dialogical) speculations about the interior relations of the trinity. However, the Spinozist (respectively idealist) background of Schleiermacher's apophaticism prevented him from recovering the apophatic trinitarianism of the 4 th century all at once. Rather it forced him to adopt the position of Marcel of Ankyra instead, who was a moderate modalist of the 4th century (which, after all, enjoyed the sympathies of Athanasius). Thus Schleiermacher's incapacity to develop the concept of inner-trinitarian differentiations whithout slipping into the anthropomorphism of kataphatic speculations doomed him more or less ineluctably to apprehend the 'absolute itself as an un-differentiated unity. Reconsidered against this background, the theological flaw of Leibniz' principle may be recapitulated as follows: In undermining the possibility to distinguish between the trinitarian 'persons', based on pure causal relations, the principle of identity leaves room only for distinctions based on attributes which account for the trinitarian manifestations of God in the history of salvation (the so called 'economical trinity' which is reflected in Schleiermacher's distinction between the divine attributes of 'power, love, and wisdom'). And consequently there is no longer any possibility to reconsider the 'immanent trinity' without running in one of the following three traps: 'Immanent trinity' becomes either (a) reduced to a logical empty phrase which is only of theoretical significance (Hegel, and to some extend Rahner and Barth), or it becomes (b) reduced to a tritheistic mirror image of the economic trinity (Moltmann), or it becomes (c) nullified without trace (Sabellius and tendentially Schleiermacher). Interpreted against this background, Schleiermacher's appreciation of the 'economic trinity' may be interpreted as a stopgap: It allowed him to develop his concept of trinitarian predicates though the suitability of this strategy to recover the doctrine of trinity was rather dubious. However, this did not prevent his economic doctrine of divine attributes to become standard in modern theology. Like in the case of his 'historical Jesus' turn, Schleiermacher's salvation-historical hermeneutics of the trinity became part and parcel of a theological movement which reinforced the reformation impulse to overcome the allegedly 'metaphysical' considerations of premodern orthodoxy in favour of the historical or kerygmatic narratives of the 19th and 20th century: Whereas the pre-modern, spiritual reading of the scriptures was sotereologically focused on the concepts of theosis or visio dei (the divinisation of the blessed at the end of time), the concept of salvation became now either focused on the 'historical

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Jesus' (Schleiermacher) or on a quasi-historical narrative of revelation (Hegel, Barth, Rahner etc.). In the case of Schleiermacher this 'economical turn' eventually answers the notorious question why he posited his trinitarian symbolism not at the beginning (like Barth who starts in his Church Dogmatic with a trinitarian enfolding of Hegel's concept of self-revelation) but at the end of his The Christian faith (at, what Schleiermacher remarkably calls, his 'conclusion'). If theology has to focus on the hermeneutics of the human history of salvation, it appears to be most consistent to justify the concept of trinity as the outcome of some sort of summarising meta-reflection - a meta-reflection which elucidates afterwards, by means of symbolical predications (power, wisdom, love), the structuring principles of the salvific history of 'The Christian faith' as a whole. However, Schleiermacher's attenuated 'modalism' sheds some light on his ambivalent relation to the 'economic turn' of modern theology all at once. Like his successors Barth, Jiingel, Pannenberg or Rahner, Schleiermacher tried to overcome the allegedly 'metaphysical' (hypostatic) premodern concept of trinity in favour of a narrative-economical turn; but (at least other than Hegel, Jiingel, Barth, and Pannenberg) he tried to perform this task without relativizing the inconceivable immutability of God - therein unambiguously supported only by Kierkegaard 1 . Exactly this conservative attitude (God is immutable) motivated him to support the apophaticism of premodern orthodoxy. And thus his attempt to recover the rather dubious trinitarianism of Marcel of Ancyra testifies all at once his desire to keep in touch with Christian Orthodoxy.

The Text
Karl Barth CONCLUDING UNSCIENTIFIC POSTSCRIPT ON SCHLEIERMACHER
See Caspar Wenzel Torn0, The Changeless God of Schleiermacher and Kierkegaard. In: Niels j0rgen Cappel0rn; Richard Crouter (Ed.), Schleiermacher und Kierkegaard 1 Schleiermacher and Kierkegaard. Subjectivity and truth (Berlin, 2006), pp.265-279, 267f. According to Bruce McCormack's traditional, Barthian reading, Schleiermacher remains at this point attached to the premodern 'mixture of dogmatic elements and metaphysical elements'. See Bruce McCormack, Not a Possible God but the God Who Is: Observations on Friedrich Schleiermacher's Doctrine of God. In: Bruce McCormack; G. W. Neven (Ed.), The reality of faith in theology. Studies on Karl Barth Princeton-Kampen Consultation, 2005 (Bern, 2007), pp.111-139

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[ 1261] Having been invited to write an 'Introduction' to this selection from Schleiermacher's writings, I have decided (after initial hesitations) that I could most conscientiously contribute, in the form of an 'Afterword,' a brief overview of the history of my own relationship to this 'church father of the nineteenth (and also the twentieth?!) century' or, if you will, an 'unscientific postscript.' What follows thus somewhat presumptuously describes a not unimportant segment in the course of my own life. The temptation for some thus might not be slight to begin reading this book here, whereas it would be more meaningful for them to take in and digest the selection from Schleiermacher's expressions of his own life which has been so capably and creatively compiled by H. Bolli (without any involvement on my part). So, the curious are warned! Whoever takes a different view from the one here solemnly advised does so with my express disapproval. Dixi et salvavi animam meam. There was once a time, so I must begin, in my youthful occupation with theology whenafter first having worked through Immanuel Kant's Critique of Practical Reason several times and (only then, but equally intensively) his Critique of Pure Reason1 knew how to swear no higher than by the man, Daniel Ernst Friedrich Schleiermacher. I had highly respected my father, Professor Fritz Barth in Bernhis picture still hangs directly before me todayas a sound scholar, quite apart from all personal and spiritual ties. But I myself could not adopt, as one said at that time, his (moderately) 'positive' theological attitude and direction, determined in his youth through J. T. Beck. Neither my first New Testament teacher, Rudolf Steck, with his amiable but rather tediously exact analyses (he considered even Galatians to be 'inauthentic') nor my first dogmatics teacher, Hermann Ludemann, with his ever ill-tempered systematic acuity (he was, like Steck, a direct pupil of F. C. Bauer's), was able to make a deeper and enduring impression on me. The same was true of the Old Testament scholar Karl Marti, who was also a greatly learned man ; what he (a pupil of Wellhausen's) had to say about Israel's history and religion was a hopelessly dry kind of wisdom. That the Old Testament was concerned with something exciting I did not begin to discover until Berlin under Gunkel. What I owe despite everything to those Bern masters is that I learned to forget any fears I might have had. They gave me such a thorough grounding in the earlier form of the [ 1262] 'historicalcritical' school that the remarks of their later and contemporary successors could no longer get under my skin or even touch my heartthey could only get on my nerves, as is only too well known. In Berlin, where by the way I learned to esteem Harnack even higher than Gunkel, I then bought myself, along with Wilhelm Herrmann's Ethics, a copy of

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Schleiermacher's Speeches on Religion to its Cultured Despisers, in the edition by R. Otto, which I still use. Eureka! Having apparently sought for 'The Immediate/ I had now found it, not through Hermann Kutter, who wrote his first book under that title, but through Schleiermacher. That those Speeches were the most important and correct writings to appear since the closing of the New Testament canon was a fact from which I did not allow my great Marburg teacher [Herrmann] to detractjust as little as I did his denigration of Schleiermacher's later and late writings. I did not see, yet I sensed, the line of continuity which runs through Schleiermacher's life's work from the Speeches to the so-called Glaubenslehre1 (a rather un-Schleiermacherian designation), and was implicitly inclined to give him credit all down the line. Anyway, as was certainly quite in order, I also loved Eichendorff and was especially fond of Novalis. Was I (am I!) a bit of a romantic myself? (By the way, what I wrote in the first edition of my Romans on pp. 195-204 about the evils of romanticism with explicit reference to the young Schleiermacher is something of which I 'repent and suffer in my heart,' just as in my holy zeal at that time I did not really do justice to pietism.) One thing, however, is certain, that even before 1910 I was a stranger in my innermost being to the bourgeois world of Ritschl and his pupils. In the year when the first edition of Romans appeared (1919), I could still produce the provocative sentence: 'We can afford to be more romantic than the romantics.' But even the 'historicism' by which Ernst Troeltsch and the historians of religion of that time thought they could outbid the Ritschlians (and thus also the teacher whom I still regard so highly, Wilhelm Herrmann) struck me as being too sterile, and at any rate was not what I was looking for. I had just now (not without direct and indirect instruction from Schleiermacher) tasted something of what 'religion' itself was supposed to be. And the pallid 'Schleiermacher renaissance' which began to emerge around 1910 was also a more literary affair which did not take me any further, nor could it take me any further. The only one of its representatives who made any impression on me as an interpreter of Schleiermacher, and who gave me something lasting to think about, was Heinrich Scholz, who then later became my close friend. At any rate, that Schleiermacher renaissance was superseded a few years later by a Luther renaissance, which, at least in its beginnings (around the anniversary celebrations of 1917), despite and because of Karl Holl, struck me as rather unfortunate. Now, as to what concerned me, in 1909 I moved from Marburg to Geneva, and in 1911 to Safenwil. At both places the relatively few writings of Schleiermacher's which I owned received a special place of honor on my still rather modest bookshelves. But then came certain turning points which also touched my relationship to him. [ 1263]

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Although in Geneva I had still lived completely and utterly in the religious atmosphere which I brought with me from Marburg, and especially from the circle of the Christliche Welt and its friends, when I moved to the industrial village of Safenwil, my interest in theology as such had to step back noticeably into second place (even though it continued to be nourished by my eager reading in the Christliche Welt, the Zeitschrift fur Theologie und Kirche, and even in the works of Troeltsch, etc.). Because of the situation I found in my community, I became passionately involved with socialism and especially with the trade union movement. At that time I did not yet know that, in his later years, Schleiermacher also had become involved in the beginnings of these things, at least on the peripheryeven though here and there I might have gathered that from his sermons! Those now came into my possession, along with his letters, his Christian Morals, and other of his writingsafter a foray I conducted into my maternal grandfather's estate in Basel. This grandfather had studied in Berlin during the forties of the nineteenth century under, among others, the later Schelling, and afterwards in Heidelberg under R. Rothe, thus, he had still been able to take in something of Schleiermacher's atmosphere, but then in the following period had gone over, like so many of his contemporaries, to a rather primitive theological conservatism, which was softened only by the mild pietism of my good grandmother. He had indeed purchased Schleiermacher (good for me that he did!), but had hardly read him seriously, and, judging from a few biting notes in the margins, had not loved him. So now those books had landed in my lap. But then, I had to read Sombart and Herkner, I had to read the Swiss trade union newspaper and the Textilarbeiter. Indeed, I also had to prepare my weekly sermon and my confirmation classes. Although in these pastoral activities I was decisively stimulated by Schleiermacher, it goes without saying that, like Schleiermacher himself as he proceeded, I did not exactly express myself in the language, or even exclusively in the original sense, of the Speeches. Even so, I really had neither the time nor the desire to pursue further research into his work. Then came the beginning of my friendship with Eduard Thurneysen. He was committed to what was then the 'modern' theology of his Basel teachers, P. Wernle and B. Duhm ; beyond that, however, he was connected with Hermann Kutter and, further back, with Christoph Blumhardt. He made them both better known to me ; before that my knowledge of them had only been cursory. From Kutter I simply learned to speak the great word 'God' once again seriously, responsibly, and forcibly. From Blumhardt I learned just as simply (at least at the beginning) what it meant to speak of Christian hope. Ragaz and his 'religious socialists' interested Thurneysen, and they interested me too, but only from a certain distance. The concept of 'God's kingdom' was portrayed in various ways (sometimes more transcendently, sometimes more immanently)

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but certainly no longer in the form familiar to us from Ritschl and his followers. The question lay in wait for me at the door: Had not even 'my' Schleiermacher perhaps used that concept in a way which to me was now becoming increasingly strange? And then the First World War broke out and brought something which for me was almost even worse than the violation of Belgian neutralitythe horrible manifesto of the ninety-three German intellectuals who identified [ 1264] themselves before all the world with the war policy of Kaiser Wilhelm II and Chancellor Bethmann-Hollweg. And to my dismay, among the signatories I discovered the names of almost all my German teachers (with the honorable exception of Martin Rade). An entire world of theological exegesis, ethics, dogmatics, and preaching, which up to that point I had accepted as basically credible, was thereby shaken to the foundations and with it everything which flowed at that time from the pens of the German theologians. And Schleiermacher? Had not even he in the first of his Speeches from 1799 written impossible things about the British and the French? Had he not also been a leading Prussian patriot from 1806 to 1814? Would he also perhaps have signed that manifesto? Fichte certainly, perhaps Hegel too, but Schleiermacher? Ac cording to what I know of his letters from the period after 1815, I remain convinced that, no, he would not have done that. Nevertheless, it was still the case that the entire theology which had unmasked itself in that manifesto, and everything which followed after it (even in the Christliche Welt), was grounded, determined, and influenced decisively by him. 'My child, what are we now to speak?' These well known words from The Magic Flute continue: "The truth, the truth, lest she also be complicit.' But that was easier said than done. It was Thurneysen who once whispered the key phrase to me, half aloud, when we were alone together: what we needed for preaching, instruction, and pastoral care was a 'wholly other' theological foundation. It seemed impossible to proceed any further on the basis of Schleiermacher. I can still see Thurneysen's contemptuous gesture to my Schleiermacher books in Safenwil. But where else could we turn? Kutter was also impossible, because he, like Ragaz later on, would have nothing to do with theology, but wanted only to know and to preach the 'living God.' He was also impossible for me, because, with all due respect for him and his starting point, his 'living God' had become extremely suspicious to me after his wartime book Reden an die deutsche Nation [Speeches to the German Nation]. During that period Thurneysen once even broached the strange ques tion of whether we shouldn't study Hegel. But nothing came of that then. We did not even reach for the Reformers at first, although in Geneva I had worked through Calvin's Institutes closely and from an earlier period had come to know (or thought I had come to know) the chief writings of Luther. The 'old orthodoxy' was present to

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us only in the caricatures in which it had been taught to us at the university. In fact and in practice, as is well known, some thing much closer at hand forced itself upon us. We made a fresh attempt to learn our theological ABCS all over again. More reflectively than ever before, we began reading and expounding the writings of the Old and New Testaments. And behold, they began to speak to usvery differently than we had supposed we were obliged to hear them speak in the school of what was then called 'modern' theology. The morning after Thurneysen had whispered to me our commonly held conviction, I sat down under an apple tree and began, with all the tools at my disposal, to apply myself to the Epistle to the Romans. That was the text which as early as my own confirmation classes (1901-1902) I had heard was supposed to be concerned with something central. I began to read it as if I had never read it beforeand not without deliberately writing out the things which I was discovering. Only now did I begin to regard my [ 1265] father, who had died in 1912, with, as I put it in the preface to the first edition of Romans, 'respect and gratitude' theologically as well. He belonged to those who were disregarded and slightly disdained in the theological lecture halls and seminar rooms of his time. And regardless of the warning at the end of Mozart's Seraglio that 'Nothing is so hateful as revenge,' I will not conceal the fact that for a moment the thought raced through my head that I could and would now exact a kind of reprisal from those who had placed my father in the shadows, even though he had been just as learned as they (only from a different point of view). Be that as it may, I read and read and wrote and wrote. Meanwhile, we published a bundle of sermons. True, among the books I had inherited from my father, I found many by J. T. Beck which were fruitful to use. True, at that time we also read huge amounts of Dostoevsky (here again at Thurneysen's prompting) as well as Spittler, Kierkegaard, and even Overbeckwho had not been 'disposed of and whom one merely needed to mention in Basel at that time to make everyone's hair bristle. My philosopher brother, Heinrich, took care that I should once again seriously confront the wisdom of Plato as well. And Father Kant, who had provided the initial spark for me once before, also spoke in a remarkably new and direct way to me in those years. Even Kutter, despite everything, doubtless continued to speak to me. So at that time (and indeed later), I read the biblical text with many different kinds of spectacles, as I unhesitatingly made known. But by using all those different kinds of spectacles, what I honestly wanted to express (and was convinced I was expressing) was the word of the Apostle Paul. That is how The Epistle to the Romans originated and appeared, in a first, and then immediately in a second edition, in which, at the beginning of a long and pugnacious preface, I at once confessed that 'no stone' of the first edition was left 'standing upon the other.' During the time when I was at work on the second edition, our eldest daughter, today an energetic grandmother, but

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then a little girl of six years, explained to anyone who was willing to listen that Daddy was now working on 'a much better Epistle to the Romans'! What the angels might have been saying to themselves on this occasion is another matter. At any rate, the second edition, the one which became 'famous/ thus came into being. Whoever might want to pursue further the beginnings and progress of the so-called dialectical theology may turn to the volumes prepared by J. Moltmann and W. Furst.2 However, in this whole story what about my relationship to Schleiermacher? It is certain, for one thing, that neither in his youth nor in his maturity could he have preached a sermon like the one I preached and then published in 1916 under the title, 'The Pastor Who Does Right by the People.' It is also certain that what I thought, said, and wrote from that year on, I simply did without him, and that his spectacles were not sitting on my nose as I was expounding the Epistle to the Romans. He was no longer a 'church father' for me. It is further certain, however, that this 'without him' implied [ 1266] a rather sharp 'against him.' On occasion, I intentionally made that explicit. Yet I really did not do itsince 'old love never fades'without a deep inner regret that it could not be otherwise. But then it came about in the course of this change, which my friend Emil Brunner also made, that in his book Die Mystik und das Wort (1924) he gave very drastic expression to our departure (which was unavoidable) from Schleiermacher. I had to review the book in Zwischen den Zeiten, and found myself in something of a quandary over it. Although it contained a great deal which I also held in my heart against Schleiermacher, I was not very happy with the way in which Brunner presented his case. I did not regard the term 'mysticism' as an adequate designation of Schleiermacher's intentions. Moreover, in his fight against Schleiermacher and his victory over him (and here there were already some first indications of my later conflict with Brunner), I saw him relying just as forcefully on F. Ebner's anti-idealistic logology (a forerunner of contemporary linguistic philosophy) as on the validity of the 'Word' (of God). (It is not without reason that J. Moltmann has so happily stressed this in his edition of the writings of 'dialectical theology.' 3 ) Above all, although certainly 'against' Schleiermacher in my own way, I for my part was neither so certain nor so completely finished with him as Brunner undoubtedly was after he had completed that book. I owe to his book, nonetheless, that it had an extraordinarily stimulating effect on me in the new and comprehensive study of Schleiermacher which I had meanwhile undertaken. For almost overnight in 1921 I found myself transposed into a newly founded chair for Reformed theology at Gottingen. I had now cheerfully decidedRagaz and Kutter gave me no applause for this decisionin my own way and style to pursue theological research and teaching

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with grim seriousness. To carry out this task I was of course only very partially equipped. And so, before venturing on dogmatics, I announced some purely historical lecturesessentially for my own instruction, but not without a considerable influx of students. First I offered a two-hour course on the Heidelberg Catechism, then some four-hour courses on Calvin, on the Reformed confessions, on Zwingli, and finally on Schleiermacher! As far as I know, no one either before or since has attempted to interpret Schleiermacher in the light of his sermons. That was precisely what I first tried to do in my lectures, moving on from there to his Speeches, to the Soliloquies, to the Dialogue on Christmas, to the Brief Outline on the Study of Theology, to his Hermeneutics, and finally, as far as time allowed, to The Christian Faith. Certainly it did not remain hidden that I was not exactly satisfied with the things which were appearing before our wondering eyes. But I attained the main purpose toward which I strove: I now understood Schleiermacher a little better than before (as I hope my students did as well). So without presupposing that I could pronounce an anathema over him, I was then in a position during my last three semesters at Gottingen to begin working out, and lecturing on, my own dogmatics. However, the posture of the Gottingen theological faculty was so Lutheran at that time that I was only allowed to teach that topic under the completely different heading of 'Instruction in the Christian Religion.' [ 1267] Laughing up my sleeve, I carried out this charade for three semesters. In the period which followed I then wrote various essays on Schleiermacherfor example, on 'Schleiermacher's Celebration of Christmas' (1924)in part with a certain irony, but on the whole with a straightforward respect for his achievement, for his humanity and spirituality, and for the greatness of his historical impact. Indeed, with all the distance I had gained from him, I was not without a certain love for this person who had evidently perceived 'human nature' in its totality. Through my probings into Schleiermacher, I also learned to appreciate from afar certain matters where I stood (or again came?) much closer to him theologically than I had ever supposed could be the case after 1916. Has not Paul Seifert even gone so far as to assert that my growing, and increasingly noticeable, interest in Schleiermacher's theology was 'certainly indicated by the surprisingly positive evaluation' of him in my Protestant Theology in the Nineteenth Century I4 'Positive' is no doubt somewhat too strong a term for what I really said there. Nevertheless, when faced with such a slight exaggeration, I do not want to deny that for all my opposition to Schleiermacher, I could never think of him without feeling what Doctor Bartolo so well articulated in The Marriage of Figaro: 'An inner voice always spoke to his advantage'; or at least, never without confirming the rather coarse popular expression, 'A criminal always returns to the scene of the crime.' And did I not even openly boast in 1947 that on the basis of my presuppositions I was actually

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in a much better position to illuminate Schleiermacher than, say, Horst Stephan (who, by the way, was among my teachers at Marburg)? However, it must not be overlooked that after praising everything worthy of praise in my writings on Schleiermacher, I still had ringing in my ears the venerable 'Apostles' 'and Nicene Creeds. Theologically speaking, I could not revert to Schleiermacher. This phase in my relationship to him is noteworthy for the following reason: it was determined not only by a much better knowledge of his work, but also by a conscious distancing of myself from him which could no longer be reversed. Then a further and presumably final phase unexpectedly developed. That is, it came to pass that we 'old fighters' from the second and third decades of our rather eventful century suddenly saw ourselves overtaken and overwhelmed by a new theological movement. 'Demythologization' and 'existentialization' of theological language were its catchwords. And the one who had inaugurated it was none other than our erstwhile companion of old, Rudolf Bultmann. As far as demythologizing was concerned, the enterprise left me cold. For one thing, it was only too well known to menot the term but the matter itself from my theological beginnings. Furthermore, I found it much too humorless. Finally, after my experiences with modern man, who was after all the object of the exercise, I could not regard it as a fruitful instrument for conversation with this creature. Apologetics is something of which I am deeply [ 1268] suspicious, something alien to me in all its forms, and therefore also in this reductionist approach. However, I certainly listened to the other news, so vigorously presented, that theological language was supposed to need existentializing. For I had indeed known for a long time, and had even said myself in the first and then especially in the second edition of Romans (occasionally even with the use of the term), that genuinely theological language could not talk about its object in merely intellectual terms, but could only express what it had to say existentially, that is, in terms which directly and unavoidably confronted persons in their human existence. Even before I read Kierkegaard, that had been thoroughly pounded into me by Wilhelm Herrmann, and in fact had not been entirely unknown to me before that. For me that belonged to the obvious formal conditions, to the moral presuppositions of my 'theological existence,' to which in one way or another I tried to do justice and to which I tried to adhere. But now I was receiving what at first (but only at first) glance seemed to be fabulously new tidings, that theology had to be existential theology in a material, technical, and fundamental sense as well. Apart from his knowledge and confession as a baptized member of the Christian community, thus apart from the way he was engaged in his own human existence, the theologian was first supposed to orient himself toward and clarify that which was supposed to be at stake for human existence and human engagement in general and as such. Only then, in

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that context, and according to the standards of such 'existential' instruction, might he consider and articulate the Christian engagement of his existence, and thus his Christian faith. His task as a theologian was supposed to be to understand and proclaim precisely the faith which had become credible in this way. Tertullian's dictum that Deus non est in genere was in error: Deus est in genere. That was what struck me as something really novel in my first encounter with this most recent theology. One of the most unforgettable experiences of my life was the time when Bultmann (it may have been around 1922he was still amiably disposed toward me in view of the second edition of Romans) once visited me in Gottingen in order to read to me for more than an hour over coffee and almond cake from the lectures of Martin Heidegger which he had attended and transcribed. The purpose of this exercise: just as we had to apply ourselves to any great spiritual achievement in precisely this ('existential') direction, so we also had to apply ourselves to the gospel documented in the New Testament. Delighted by this basic systematic teaching of his, as well as by the 'historical-critical' method which he himself so masterfully represented (in this respect a true pupil of his Marburg predecessor, Julicher), many older and younger students gathered themselves around him. Instead of orienting oneself to Heidegger, or Jaspers, or M. Buber, or finally even to fifty pages of D. Bonheoffer, one could most recently even as a Roman Catholic theologian become a Bultmannian. And, as many from the younger generation in particular experienced (in connection with the general spiritual exhaustion after the Second World War), to a certain extent one could even concur with him (the master) instinctively or intuitively. Among themselves Bultmann's pupils then became a rather various and even splintered group. But on the basis of Bultmann's systematic starting [ 1269] point, they remained a group and a school. On the basis of that starting point, they can no doubt be brought together under a common denominator. What is that common denominator? Now I must speak of the impression which the whole phenomenon made on me from the beginning and which has only increased with time: the common denominator was and is indeed Schleiermachernot the very image of him, but certainly in a new form which accommodated itself to the 'contemporary spiritual situation' or 'linguistic situation' and to the contemporary (or rather one contemporary) vocabulary. Unmistakably, my old friend and enemy, Schleiermacher! Once again, the Christian exhortation relegated to that cozy nook where the contemporary society and world pretend to their authoritative claim! Once again, the symbiosis of theology and philosophy so characteristic of Schleiermacher! Once again, an anthropologizing of theology, just as obviously as in Schleiermacher, who had thereby simultaneously brought the theological learning of the eighteenth century to completion while establishing that of the nineteenth

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century! Once again, the tension-in-unity between subject and object which he had so masterfully described in the second of his Speeches! And once again, the original and ultimate unity of both which he there so triumphantly proclaimed, the glorious elimination of the 'subject-object schema.' Once again, the move found in The Christian Faith of granting supremacy to 'feeling/ in whose place of course one could then set 'faith' in order to move somewhat closer to the Bible or the Reformation, 'faith' on which was conferred sovereignty over everything which might be its ground, object, and content. So that is more or less (the list could easily be extended) how, in attentively considering its rise and development, I supposed and suppose that this most recent 'modern' theology ought to be understoodas a new and vigorous Schleiermacher renaissance! Now, allow me one more citation from The Marriage of Figaro: 'What I said about the noble youth was only a suspicion, it was only a matter of distrust.' Was it in this case only a matter of suspicion and distrust? Yet I found it remarkably confirmed by the fact that I occasionally ran across utterances from the representatives of this (for the present) new direction in which they openly enough acknowledge precisely the same kinds of parallels. Consider what Martin Redeker writes in the introduction to his excellent reissue of Der christliche Glaube (1961): The feeling of absolute dependence thus means being engaged by the transcendent as something infinite and unconditioned. If one wanted to interpret the concept of feeling and of immediate self-consciousness in contemporary terms so as to rule out psychologistic misunderstandings, then perhaps this primal act of human existence could be characterized through modern existentialist philosophy in terms of care for being, for the foundation and meaningfulness of existence, as Tillich has already suggested in his dogmatics. The theology of the experience of faith thus means connecting all theological utterances to these basic questions of human existence. [ 1270] Or consider carefully what Friedrich Hertel writes in the preface to his recent book on Schleiermacher's theology (dedicated to G. Ebeling): 'If theology and proclamation are to be guided today by the task of a 'non-religious' interpretation, and thus if nothing else is to be considered as speaking humanly, then one may not forget that it was Schleiermacherdespite his employment of the concept of religionwho paved the way for this striving!' 6 Or consider just as carefully the disposition and conceptuality with which Hertel analyzes Schleiermacher's first two and decisive Speeches.7 And what had I already run across in 1922, the time of the 'beginnings of dialectical theology/ from the pen of Bultmann himself in the very year he had discovered Heidegger, at the outset of his long review of the second edition of Romans. Karl Earth's Epistle to the Romans may be characterized by one sentence, the phraseology of which he would disagree with, but which would still be valid in

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terms of the usage that has been prevalent in the present time: the book attempts to prove the autonomy and absoluteness of religion. It thus takes its place ... in the same line with such works as Schleiermacher's Speeches on Religion and Otto's Idea of the Holy, with modern attempts to demonstrate a religious a priori, and finally with the Epistle to the Romans itself, which . . . basically has no other intention than this. However different all these attempts may be in detail, they seek to give verbal expression to the consciousness of the uniqueness and absoluteness of religion. The disposition and conceptuality in this review were also noteworthy. It was 'faith/ again and again it was 'faith,' which was at the center of those things which Bultmann found interesting and now praiseworthy in my book (whose first edition two years before he had rejected rather contemptuously). What (according to him) I had expressed about faith, he supposed he could effortlessly place in a series with what Schleiermacher, R. Otto, and E. Troeltsch had treated under the heading of 'religion.' Then in this very same series he even dared to place Paul's Epistle to the Romans itself! At that time he had not yet learned to use the language of Heidegger. But what does it matter? In that book review the outlines of the whole Bultmann, even the later and the latest Bultmann, can clearly be recognized. No wonder that the closeness, and even the alliance, which once supposedly existed between us, could only be something apparent and transitory, as later became painfully evident: Bultmann was and is a continuator of the great tradition of the nineteenth century, and thus in new guise, a genuine pupil of Schleiermacher. And this is precisely the common denominator under which I see him as well as his followers, who are otherwise so diverse among themselves: what connects them with him, and with each other, is the consciously and consistently executed anthropological starting point which is evident as the focus [ 1271] of their thought and utterances. And that was and is precisely a clear recurrence of Schleiermacher. Was it not Schleiermacher who had already made the distinction, so remarkable in the second 'speech' even though it was capable of supersession [Aufhebung], between 'intuition' and 'feeling'a distinction which later disappeared in favor of the 'feeling' which incorporated 'intuition' within itself (absolute dependence!)? Had he not already described the Christian faith as a particular form of this 'feeling,' in which all objectivity, and all contents characteristic of it, were supposed to be sublated [aufgehoben] and supplied? Hadn't he already known nothing of the Old Testament as an indispensable positive presupposition of the New? Hadn't he already reduced the function and meaning of Jesus to that of a great prototype of faith, and thus of that feeling? Hadn't he already reduced the proper relationship postulated between Christians and Jesus to that which today is proclaimed as the

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'discipleship' owed him? Wasn't his eschatology as devoid of all concrete content as that which today is known as the 'theology of hope'? Certainly many existentialist theologians (as Wilhelm Herrmann had already done) ardently appealed to Luther, to whom Schleiermacher appealed only seldom or not at all (having found him too rough-hewn and contradictory). Still others reverted more to Kierkegaard, to whom of course Schleiermacher could not yet have appealed. As to Luther, no doubt out of the Weimar Edition of his works, that great Pandora's Box, one can extract a theologically existentialist, and thus indirectly Schleiermacherian, thread! But how many other threads one must then leave unconsidered or must even decisively cut off! And as to Kierkegaard, I must confess that the appeal of the existentialist theologians to him as their great and direct forerunner has made me a little reserved toward him. Why did he actually delimit himselfin his original manner, but yet also in conformity to the spirit of the middle of the nineteenth centuryso sharply against Hegel, but hardly at all, to my knowledge, against Schleiermacher? In short, despite the fact that the vocabulary of his recent theology included concepts which Schleiermacher certainly would not have cherishedsuch as Word, encounter, occurrence, cross, decision, limit, judgment, etc.I could not allow myself to be deceived that within their own context they did not break with the narrowness of Schleiermacher's anthropological horizon, that there under the pretext of being so correctly 'human,' in that certainly unromantic sobriety, his path was once again traversed. That Schleiermacher made the Christianly pious person into the criterion and content of his theology, while, after the 'death of God' and the state-funeral dedicated to him, one now jubilantly wants to make the Christianly impious person into its object and theme, these certainly are two different things. In the end and in principle, however, they probably amount to the same thing. And because, despite all remaining admiration, I for my part had decisively departed from Schleiermacher's path, it was not possible to join with those multitudes who, openly or secretly, consciously or unconsciously, were following in his train. Rather, as it says in the song, I had to 'make my wayward path through the woods, a mangy little sheep'I, the poor neo-orthodox theologian, the supernaturalist, the revelational positivist, as I had to hear from so many quarters on both sides of the Atlantic. Until better instructed, I can see no way from Schleiermacher, or from his contemporary epigones, to the [ 1272] chroniclers, prophets, and wise ones of Israel, to those who narrate the story of the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ, to the word of the apostles no way to the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob and the Father of Jesus Christ, no way to the great tradition of the Christian church. For the present I can see nothing here but a choice. And for me there can be no question as to how that choice is to be made.

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So, just as I finally could not hold fast to the old Marburg, so could I catch hold of the new Marburg even less. Even less? Yes, for at the risk of seeming malicious, I must here add something elsea 'merely' humanistic, or if you will, a 'merely' aesthetic question, which irresistibly pressed itself upon me in the course of comparing Schleiermacher with his contemporary followers. Given the fact that I might be able to attach myself to Schleiermacher theologically (something I cannot now do) on some kind of grounds (which are not now visible to me) and then of course join forces with those who follow him in our own day, nonetheless I would still remain deeply alarmed at the simple contrast between the stature, the weight, and the quality of Schleiermacher's personality and achievementshuman, Christian, and academicand those corresponding qualities which have so far appeared in the framework of the new Schleiermacher renaissance. To cite a tolerably similar example at least for the sake of clarity: what a shockingly different niveau between Schleiermacher's definition of God, still impressive in its own way, as the 'source of the feeling of absolute dependence,' and the definition from one of his contemporary epigones, at first glance so similar and apparently dependent on Schleiermacher's, but then so terribly wretched and banal by comparison: God as the supposed 'source of my involvement with my fellow humans'! To this example could easily be added a multitude which are similar and even worse. But no, I will resist the malicious desire to characterize Schleiermacher by comparing him in any further detail with his contemporary pupils. Rather, setting aside everything which I have in petto [in private] against the being, acting, and stirring in the sphere of today's swaggering theologians, I want to turn now to something positive, in the form of a little song of praise for the human greatness of Schleiermacher and his work, and thus without in any way referring too closely to the greatness or smallness of our own day. 'Small of stature' like Zaccheus, and beyond that, after his sister Charlotte (who later became so close to him) had once dropped him as a small child, somewhat misshapen, Schleiermacher was an open, expansive, and truly comprehensive spirit. Pressing beyond all mere 'diagnosis' and analysis, he aimed toward synthesis. He had the freedom to take part with hearty affirmation in the style, the language, and the ideals of his contemporaries, or just as freely to step back from them, or even decisively to oppose his special knowledge to them as something novel. He was inclined toward peace, even when he became very cutting. Many things troubled and angered him which he saw and heard and read, but I can recall no passage in his letters or even in his books where he expressed himself peevishly, acidly, or poisonously with regard to them. That was certainly related to the fact that at every stage of his life, and in all the branches of his life's work, he had something positive to say. His youthful writings (the Speeches and the Soliloquies) served, of course, as a

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prelude, but one which established the melody. When he spoke and wrote [ 1273] he was thus not experimenting, but was proceeding on the basis of wellconsidered tenets and themes, which he never styled or formulated stiffly, but in which he displayed, rather, an astonishing suppleness of thought. If his style often approached the limits of the tolerable, especially in his earlier years, yet he never became tasteless. He discovered and represented in personal union a consistent philosophy and just as consistent a theology. And in both fields he worked out a remarkable coherence between the whole and the parts, as well as between his earlier and later writings. Beyond that, he was also in a position to produce, with his left hand as it were, a complete translation of Plato with introductions to all of the dialogues. And, after listening to a flute concert, he was able to depict the most difficult point in his dogmatics in the form of a short novel. There was, in addition, his humanity in the stricter sense: he knew the meaning of friendship and love. And although he was not spared disappointments here (Friedrich Schlegel!) and there (Eleonore Grunow and the rather immature, dependent, and opaque young widow who then became his spouse), he endured them with manly forbearance and dignityrefined and gallant, a gentleman to the end. In those two fields [philosophy and theology], he was acquainted with more than mere play. He displayed a similar humanity toward the two colleagues in Berlin who so spitefully fought him: Hegel the philosopher, and Marheineke the Lutheran dogmatician. Furthermore, in the Sendschreiben an Liicke [Open Letter to Liicke] and in the notes and supplements to the later editions of the Speeches, it may be observed how capable he was of self-criticism and of unfolding new and corrective aspects of his previous work (even if one must admit that, had he really put that into practice, then such was indeed precisely his strength!he would have remained terribly true to himself). At any rate, according to K. A. Varnhagen von Ense's Denkwiirdigkeiten (1848), which are generally so illuminating for that period, Schleiermacher also possessed the wonderful ability to laugh, above all at himself. He was an ethicist on the basis of a profound ethos which did not restrict him either to the philosophical or (even less) to the theological sphere in formal and methodological questions (which he wonderfully mastered!), but rather which permitted and demanded (happily or unhappily) that he dare to take up the most difficult particular problems of human and Christian, individual and social existence. And now we come to the center of his humanity, which must be kept firmly in mind in any consideration of the range of issues which he represented, when we go on to say that Schleiermacher was outspokenly a man of the church. Throughout the course of his life, he thought, spoke, and acted in the consciousness of his concrete responsibility precisely on that front. It drove him,

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from his youth to the days of his old age, irresistibly to the pulpit. And whatever one may think of it theologically, he not only talked about the 'feeling of absolute dependence,' but had that feeling himselfrather, it had him. He himself was one of those who were moved by what he said about it in the pulpit (as well as in the podium and in the salon!), carried away at times to the point of tears. And that no doubt hangs together with the fact that [ 1274] while he certainly conceded to the 'worthy men called rationalists' those things which at that time were to be conceded, he himselfno Pietist, but certainly a 'Moravian of a higher order'had a personal relationship to Jesus which might well be characterized as love. Although constantly engaged with the question of John the Baptist, 'Are you he who is to come, or shall we look for another?,' he never broke free from Jesus, but had to return to him again and again. I suspect that on that basis (and contrary to the malign appearance in particular of his Christology), and only on that basis, was it given to him to depict the 'Christian faith' not only in aphoristic excurses, but also 'in its context.' As this particular manthinker, preacher, teacher, and writer Schleiermacher determined the nineteenth century. Not in the field of philosophy! In those textbooks, as is well known, he figures only as an 'also ran.' Certainly, howeverand precisely this will be drawn in as a positive point in any evaluation of his scholarly intentionin the field of theology. Here his influence has survived. It has survived not only his being badly compromised by Feuerbach, and then his being compromised even worse by Ritschl and his followers, but also that catastrophe which broke out in 1914 for the whole theology which followed him, and even the onslaught of 'our' so-called dialectical theology. Here, even in the middle of our century, he was able to produce, as shown, those 'existentialist' epigones. Truly a great man and a great achievement! That, then, is the song of praise from one who is able to concur with Schleiermacher rebus sic stantibus in 220 fundamental sense whatsoever. Nor, therefore, with the liberal, mediating, and conservative theology of the nineteenth century. And thus especially not, and even less, with the Schleiermacher-epigones of the present. At this point, on the same purely humanistic level, let me pose a brief question to them: Where and when among you, in your school and in what you have produced, has a personality and a life's work emerged whose caliber and stature would be worthy of mention in the same breath with those of Schleiermacher, even if only from afar? In this respect I place myself among you, but the question pertains to you especially who are in a particular way to be measured against him. Perhaps I have overlooked someone or something up to now. Perhaps those who and that which are here missed are still to come. If it can be shown to me in good time, then I would also want to praise you, if not your theology, on a similarly

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humanistic plane. Until then, I will think of you in terms of what is written in Psalm 2:4, whereas despite everything I could not think of Schleiermacher in such terms. Schleiermacher impresses me (I notice that here I am involuntarily lapsing into the style of the ironic-polemical passages of the Speeches), whereas you although and because I am sincerely striving to love even you as myself impress me not at all. It may be surprising that I have declared myself to be at odds with Schleiermacher only with reservations: rebus sic stantibus, 'for the present/ 'until better instructed.' Something like a reservation, a genuine uncertainty, may rightly be detected here. The door is in fact not latched. I am actually to the present day not finished with him. Not even with regard to his point of view. As I have understood him up to now, I have supposed and continued to [ 1275] suppose that I must take a completely different tack from those who follow him. I am certain of my course and of my point of view. I am, however, not so certain of them that I can confidently say that my 'Yes' necessarily implies a 'No' to Schleiermacher's point of view. For have I indeed understood him correctly? Could he not perhaps be understood differently so that I would not have to reject his theology, but might rather be joyfully conscious of proceeding in fundamental agreement with him? In what follows I will attempt to formulate and ventilate two questions four times in order to make my perplexity known. By answering them dialectically, perhaps my history with Schleiermacher can now go further. 1. Is Schleiermacher's enterprise concerned (a) necessarily, intrinsically, and authentically with a Christian theology oriented toward worship, preaching, instruction, and pastoral care? Does it only accidentally, extrinsically, and inauthentically wear the dress of a philosophy accommodated to the person of his time? It is clear that in that caseregardless of detailsI would at least have to entertain the possibility of affirming the enterprise. But would I then have understood it correctly? Up to now I have supposed that Schleiermacher cannot be understood in this way, thus finding myself materially at odds with him. Or is his enterprise concerned (b) primarily, intrinsically, and authentically with a philosophy which turns away from Aristotle, Kant, and Fichte in order to locate itself in the vicinity of Plato, Spinoza, and Schelling, mediating between logos and eros while aesthetically surmounting both, a philosophy indifferent as to Christianity and which would have wrapped itself only accidentally, extrinsically, and inauthentically in the garments of a particular theology, which here happens to be Christian? It is clear that in that case I could only take and maintain my distance from Schleiermacher. But in this way have I understood him correctly? And if in this way I have not understood him

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correctly, then am I acting properly by distancing myself from him and his enterprise? 2. In Schleiermacher's theology or philosophy, do persons feel, think, and speak (a) in relationship to an indispensable [unaufhebbar] Other, in accordance with an object which is superior to their own being, feeling, perceiving, willing, and acting, an object toward which adoration, gratitude, repentance, and supplication are concretely possible and even imperative? Were that the case, then [ 1276] I would prick up my ears and be joyfully prepared to hear further things about this Other, in the hopes of finding myself fundamentally at one with Schleiermacher. But then, if I supposed I could find such things in him perhaps in the dark passages of the Speeches where he expresses an 'intimation of something apart from and beyond humanity' or in that later, famous definition of God as 'the source of the feeling of absolute dependence' would I have understood him correctly? Up to now I have supposed I had to understand him differently, thus not being able to attach myself to him. Was and is that supposition foolish or indeed quite wise? Or, for Schleiermacher, do persons feel, think, and speak (b) in and from a sovereign consciousness that their own beings are conjoined, and are indeed essentially united, with everything which might possibly come into question as something or even someone distinct from them? If that were the case, then the door between him and me would indeed be latched, and substantial communication would then be impossible. But have I understood him correctly if up to now I have supposed that I ought to understand him in this way? Would I need to understand him in a completely different way in order to regard substantial communication between him and me as something which is not impossible? 3. According to Schleiermacher, do persons feel, think, and speak (a) primarily in relationship to a reality which is particular and concrete, and thus determinate and determinable, and about which, in view of its nature and meaning, they can abstract and generalize only secondarily? In that case Schleiermacher and I would be in profound agreement. But have I understood him correctly here when I interpret him in this way? How wonderful and hopeful that would be! However, if I would then have attributed something to him which does not at all accord with his own outlook and intention, then how could my outlook and intention, which would not at all be in concordance, to say nothing of coincidence, possibly be reconciled with his? Or, according to Schleiermacher, do human feeling, thinking, and acting occur (b) primarily in relationship to a general reality whose nature and meaning have already been derived and established in advance, so that on that basis only secondary attention is paid to its particular, concrete, determinable, and determinate form? In that case, of course, I would immediately have to

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issue a protest. In that case Schleiermacher and my humble self would be completely separated from the outset. But in that casehaving so understood him up to nowwould I have understood him correctly? If he could be understood in some other way, then my protest would be left hanging in the air. I would then have to meet him with a Pater, peccavi! and to accept modestly the instruction he would have to impart to me. Oh, if only I were in such a position! 4. , which not only distinguishes itself again and again from all other spirits, but which is seriously to be called 'holy'? If this is the correct way to understand Schleiermacher, that is, if it accords with his own standpoint, theninstead of disputing with himwhat is to prevent me from joining him and deliberating further with him about its basic content and consequences? But then, in this way have I understood him correctly? Could I, as a conscientious interpreter, be responsible for this understanding of Schleiermacher's position? Or, according to Schleiermacher, is the spirit which moves feeling, thinking, and speaking persons rather (b) a universally effective spiritual power, one which, while individually differentiated, basically remains diffuse? In that case we would be and remainhe, the great, and I, the little, manseparated from each other. But in this way have I understood him correctly, i.e., congenially? Or have I burdened him with an alien point of view? If I could dispense with this viewpoint, would I not have to recognize and confess that he and I are not quite so far apart? Whoever has followed carefully this fourfold explication of my two questions will not fail to recognize that in each case I would greatly prefer to have understood Schleiermacher in terms of the first question, and just as greatly [ 1277] to have misunderstood him in terms of the second. When my life is over I would certainly like to live at peace with Schleiermacher with regard to these issues. Yet in all four cases I had to end each question with a question! And that means that all along the line I am not finished with Schleiermacher, that I have not made up my mind, whether on the positive or even on the negative side! Even though and because I find myself embarked upon a course, clear as day to myself and others, which certainly is not his. With regard to this man's basic standpoint, I find myself in a great, and for me very painful, perplexity. And to illuminate it even more sharply, I will not fail to pose a final pair of questions: 5. Are the two questions which I posed four times (a) correctly formulated as such, i.e., so as to correspond to Schleiermacher's intentions? Would the possible answers to these questions be sufficient for a substantive judgment (positive, negative or critical) about the standpoint he represented? Do these

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questions provide a basis for a meaningful and relevant discussion about the way he worked out the details of his position? Or are all the questions I have posed (b) incorrectly formulated, i.e., so as not to correspond to Schleiermacher's intentions? Thus, would their possible answers be insufficient for a substantive judgment about his point of view? Do they fail to provide a basis for a substantial and relevant discussion of the particular tenets and themes by which Schleiermacher worked out his position? The only certain consolation which remains for me is to rejoice that in the kingdom of heaven I will be able to discuss all these questions with Schleiermacher extensivelyabove all, of course, the fifthfor, let us say, a couple of centuries. 'Then I will see clearly thatalong with so many other things, also thatwhich on earth I saw through a glass darkly.' I can imagine that that will be a very serious matter for both sides, but also that we will both laugh very heartily at ourselves. Incidentallymoving away from the earlier humanistic planethat which can be viewed as waiting in the eschatological distance with the 'old sorcerer' also pertains, of course (including the fifth and final set of questions), mutatis mutandis, to those lesser sorcerer's apprentices of his who are today making villages and cities insecure. I know what I have intended, and continue to intend, in distinction from them as well, but I confess that even concerning them do I find myself in a certain perplexity. In their own way, without possessing Schleiermacher's significance, they certainly mean well, too. If those who follow in his footsteps (at a great human distance from him) are to fall with him, then they might also be able to stand with him. And I certainly would not want to exclude them from my eschatological peace with Schleiermacher, to which I previously alluded. The only thing is that I cannot take my 'reunion' with them quite so seriously, nor can I imagine it quite so joyfully, as I can my 'reunion' with their forefather, Schleiermacher. When contemplating the great then-and-there of the coming revelation, it is probably not only permitted, but also imperative to think in terms of a certain gradation. As to a clarification of my relationship to Schleiermacher, what I have occasionally contemplated for here and nowand thus not only with respect to a theological event in the kingdom of glory (which will then form the triumphal ending to my history with Schleiermacher), but, so to speak, with [ 1278] respect also to a millennium preceding that kingdomand what I have already intimated here and there to good friends, would be the possibility of a theology of the third article, in other words, a theology predominantly and decisively of the Holy Spirit. Everything which needs to be said, considered, and believed about God the Father and God the Son in an understanding of the first and second articles might be shown and illuminated in its foundations through God the Holy Spirit, the vinculum pads inter Patrem et Filium. The entire work of God for his creatures, for, in, and with

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human beings, might be made visible in terms of its one teleology in which all contingency is excluded. In Church Dogmatics IV, 1-3,1 at least had the good instinct to place the church, and then faith, love, and hope, under the sign of the Holy Spirit. But might it not even be possible and necessary to place justification, sanctification, and calling under this signto say nothing of creation as the opus proprium of God the Father? Might not even the christology which dominates everything be illuminated on this basis [conceptus de Spiritu Sancto!)? Isn't Godthe God confessed by his people through the revelation of his covenant and who is to be proclaimed as such in the worldessentially Spirit (John 4:24, 1 Cor. 3:17), i.e., isn't he the God who in his own freedom, power, and love makes himself present and applies himself? Was it perhaps something of that sort which, without having gotten beyond obscure intimations, was so passionately driving my old friend Fritz Lieb in the past decades of his life, a life which was moved and moving on that basis all along? And is that perhaps also what in our own day the promising young Catholic dogmatician Heribert Muhlen in Paderborn is getting at? Be that as it may, interpreting everything and everyone in optimam partem, I would like to reckon with the possibility of a theology of the Holy Spirit, a theology of which Schleiermacher was scarcely conscious, but which might actually have been the legitimate concern dominating even his theological activity. And not his alone! I would also like to apply this supposition in favor of the Pietists and (!) rationalists who preceded him, and, of course, in favor of the 'Moravians of a lower order' of the eighteenth century, and beyond that, in favor of the 'Enthusiasts' who were so one-sidedly and badly treated by the Reformers, and still further back, in favor of all those agitated and contemplative souls, the spiritualists and mystics of the Middle Ages. Could it not be that so many things which for us were said in an unacceptable way about the church and about Mary in Eastern and Western Catholicism might be vindicated to the extent that they actually intended the reality, the coming, and the work of the Holy Spirit, and that on that basis they might emerge in a positive-critical light? And then even in etwa ['more or less'] as one is wont to say today in bad German) Schleiermacher's miserable successors in the nineteenth century and the existentialist theologians in our twentieth century as well? The whole 'history of sects and heretics' could then be discovered, understood, and written not 'impartially' but quite critically as a 'history' in which everything is thoroughly tested and the best retained, a history of the ecclesia una, sancta, catholica et apostolica gathered by the Holy Spirit. This is merely a suggestion, as is only proper, of what I dream of from time to time concerning the future of theology in general, and in particular concerning the perplexity in which I find myself as I attempt to evaluate [ 1279] Schleiermacher as well as also those who preceded and succeeded him. I will no

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longer experience this future, to say nothing of leading the way into it or taking its work in hand. Not, however, that some gifted young personin the supposition that he or she is called to itshould now immediately run down the path and into the marketplace for me with a buoyantly written brochure entitled 'Toward a Theology of the Holy Spirit' or something of that sort! And how misunderstood my beautiful dream would be if anyone supposed that what is at stake is now to say 'the same thing from an anthropological standpoint' once again! As if that were not precisely what is so deeply problematic about Schleiermacher, that hebrilliantly, like no one before or after himthought and spoke 'from an anthropological standpoint'! As if it were precisely the Holy Spirit which encouraged him to do so, or would encourage anyone to do so! As if Pneumatology were anthropology! As if I, instead of dreaming of a possibility of better understanding Schleiermacher's concern, had dreamed quite crudely of continuing in his path! I warn! If I am not to have dreamed sheer nonsense, then only persons who are very grounded, spiritually and intellectually, really 'well-informed Thebans,' will be capable of conceiving and developing a theology of the third article. Those who are not or not yet to that point, instead of boldly wanting to actualize a possibility of the millennium, should prefer to persevere for a little while with me in conscious 'perplexity.'

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++FURTHER READING
Primary Literature Karl Barth, Protestant theology in the nineteenth century. Its background and history (Grand Rapids, Mich, 2002), ch. 11. Karl Barth, Concluding Unscientific Postscript on Schleiermacher, The theology of Schleiermacher. Lectures at Gottingen, winter semester of 1923/24 (Grand Rapids, Mich, 1982), pp.261-279 Friedrich Schleiermacher, "On the Discrepancy between the Sabellian and Athanasian Method of Representing the Doctrine of the Trinity (1822). Transl. by Moses Stuart." In: Biblical Repository and Quarterly Observer 5-6 (1855), pp.31-35 (April); 1-116 (July) Schleiermacher, The Christian Faith, 170-172 Secondary Literature Schleiermacher, Karl Barth and the Foundations of Theology Dawn DeVries, Does Faith Save? Calvin, Schleiermacher and Barth on the Nature of Faith. In: Bruce McCormack; G. W. Neven (Ed.), The reality of faith in theology. Studies on Karl Barth Princeton-Kampen Consultation, 2005 (Bern, 2007), pp.163-190 (especially relevant with regard to Barth's second question, see below) Gerrish, A prince of the church Helmer, Chr.: Mysticism and Metaphysics: Schleiermacher and a HistoricalTheological Trajectory. In: The Journal of Religion 83/4 (2003), 517-538. Schussler-Fiorenza, F.: Schleiermacher and the Construction of a Contemporary Roman Catholic Foundational Theology, in: The Harvard Theological Review 89/2 (1996), 175-194 (philosophy and theology) Robert Sherman, The shift to modernity. Christ and the doctrine of creation in the theologies of Schleiermacher and Barth (New York, 2005) Stephen Sykes, The identity of Christianity. Theologians and the essence of Christianity from Schleiermacher to Barth (London, 1984) Theodore M. Vial, "Friedrich Schleiermacher on the Central Place of Worship in Theology." In: Harvard Theological Review 91 (1998), pp.59-73 (especially relevant with regard to question 1, 3 and 4). Schleiermacher and the Doctrine of Trinity Kaled Anatolius, "The immediately triune God: a patristic response to Schleiermacher." In: Pro Ecclesia 10 (2001), pp.159-178 Niebuhr, Schleiermacher on Christ and religion Williams, Schleiermacher the theologian

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QUESTIONS FOR CONSIDERATION

1. "Is Schleiermacher's enterprise concerned (a) necessarily, intrinsically, and authentically with a Christian theology oriented toward worship, preaching, instruction, and pastoral care" or "is his enterprise concerned primarily, intrinsically, and authentically with a philosophy which turns away from Aristotle, Kant, and Fichte in order to locate itself in the vicinity of Plato, Spinoza, and Schelling"? 2. "In Schleiermacher's theology or philosophy, do persons feel, think, and speak (a) ... in accordance with an object which is superior to their own being, feeling, perceiving, willing, and acting" or "do persons feel, think, and speak (b) in and from a sovereign consciousness that their own beings are conjoined, and are indeed essentially united" with everything? 3. "According to Schleiermacher, do persons feel, think, and speak (a) primarily in relationship to a reality which is particular and concrete?" or "do human feeling, thinking, and acting occur (b) primarily in relationship to a general reality whose nature and meaning have already been derived and established in advance" 4. "Is the spirit which moves feeling, speaking, and thinking persons, when things come about properly, (b) an absolutely particular and specific Spirit" or "rather (b) a universally effective spiritual power?" 5. Are these (Karl Barth's) questions "correctly formulated as such, i.e., so as to correspond to Schleiermacher's intentions?" 6. Was Schleiermacher's a modalist? 7. Is Schleiermacher's concept of the trinity based on hermeneutical or dialectical considerations? 8. Does Schleiermacher's philosophy provide leeway for an alternative retrieval of the doctrine of the trinity? 9. Is it possible to solve the modern controversy on the doctrine of trinity detached from philosophical considerations about the concept of the 'absolute' (as Barth proposed)?

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