Friedrich Schleiermacher
Religion is not doctrine or morality but a feeling of total dependence on something greater – and understanding any text means reliving its author’s mind.
Placement
Often regarded as the founder of modern hermeneutics; religion as the “feeling of absolute dependence.”
Key ideas
- Hermeneutics
- Hermeneutic circle
- Feeling of absolute dependence
Influence
Influenced by 4
Plato
influenced by
Schleiermacher translated Plato into German (1804–28) and argued in his introductions that the dialogue form belongs to the content of Plato’s philosophy. F. Schleiermacher, Platons Werke (1804–28), General Introduction; SEP “Friedrich Daniel Ernst Schleiermacher”
Evidence: AI draft
Plato › 428–348 BCE
Baruch de Spinoza
influenced by
In On Religion (1799) Schleiermacher asked his readers to offer a lock of hair to the shade of ‘the holy, rejected Spinoza’, pervaded by the world-spirit. F. Schleiermacher, Über die Religion. Reden an die Gebildeten unter ihren Verächtern (1799), Second Speech; SEP “Friedrich Daniel Ernst Schleiermacher”
Evidence: AI draft
Baruch de Spinoza › 1632–1677
Immanuel Kant
influenced by
Schleiermacher’s early essays On the Highest Good (1789) and On Freedom (1790–92) worked through Kant’s ethics, rejecting its linking of virtue and happiness in the highest good. F. Schleiermacher, Über das höchste Gut (1789); Über die Freiheit (1790–92); SEP “Friedrich Daniel Ernst Schleiermacher”
Evidence: AI draft
Immanuel Kant › 1724–1804
Friedrich Heinrich Jacobi
influenced by
Schleiermacher first studied Spinoza through Jacobi’s Letters on Spinoza (1785) and set down what he learned in notes, including a ‘Short Presentation of the Spinozist System’ (1793–94). F. Schleiermacher, Spinozismus; Kurze Darstellung des Spinozistischen Systems (1793–94); F. H. Jacobi, Über die Lehre des Spinoza in Briefen (1785); SEP “Friedrich Daniel Ernst Schleiermacher”
Evidence: AI draft
Friedrich Heinrich Jacobi › 1743–1819
Influenced 1
Wilhelm Dilthey
influenced ✓
Dilthey wrote a Life of Schleiermacher (1870) and in ‘The Rise of Hermeneutics’ (1900) took Schleiermacher’s art of understanding as the basis of the human sciences. W. Dilthey, Leben Schleiermachers I (1870); “Die Entstehung der Hermeneutik” (1900); SEP “Wilhelm Dilthey”
Evidence: also in Wikidata · Wikidata
Wilhelm Dilthey › 1833–1911
Criticism
Criticized by 2
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel
criticised by
Hegel objected that if religion were the feeling of absolute dependence, a dog would be the best Christian (Foreword to Hinrichs, 1822), aiming at Schleiermacher’s Christian Faith. G. W. F. Hegel, Foreword to H. F. W. Hinrichs, Die Religion im inneren Verhältnisse zur Wissenschaft (1822); F. Schleiermacher, Der christliche Glaube (1821–22)
Evidence: AI draft
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel › 1770–1831
Hans-Georg Gadamer influenced
influenced ✓
Gadamer credited Schleiermacher with a universal hermeneutics and kept his circle of part and whole, shifting it to the subject matter (Truth and Method, 1960). H.-G. Gadamer, Wahrheit und Methode (1960); F. Schleiermacher, Hermeneutik und Kritik (ed. F. Lücke, 1838); SEP “Friedrich Daniel Ernst Schleiermacher”
Evidence: also in Wikidata · Wikidata
criticised by
Gadamer criticised Schleiermacher’s hermeneutics for aiming to reconstruct the author’s individual intention, detaching understanding from the subject matter and from tradition (Truth and Method, 1960, part II). H.-G. Gadamer, Wahrheit und Methode (1960), part I (“Rekonstruktion und Integration”) and part II, section I.1; SEP “Hans-Georg Gadamer”
Evidence: AI draft
Hans-Georg Gadamer › 1900–2002
Works
Religion is a sense and taste for the infinite.
The art of understanding: grammatical and psychological interpretation.
Position
Schleiermacher answered the Enlightenment critique of religion by relocating faith: religion is neither metaphysics nor morality but “sense and taste for the infinite”, and later the “feeling of absolute dependence”. This earned him the title of father of modern Protestant theology. Equally lasting was his hermeneutics, which turned the art of interpretation into a general theory of understanding. To understand a text we must grasp both its language (grammatical interpretation) and the individual mind behind it (psychological interpretation), moving back and forth between part and whole – the hermeneutic circle. Dilthey, Heidegger and Gadamer all built on this.
Life & context
Raised among the pietist Moravian Brethren, Schleiermacher studied in Halle and became a preacher at the Charité in Berlin, where he joined the early Romantic circle around Friedrich Schlegel. He translated Plato into German, helped found the University of Berlin and taught theology there for decades while preaching at the Trinity Church.
Further main works
- Monologues (1800)
- Plato’s Works, translated (1804–1828)
- The Christian Faith (1821–1822)
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