Ernst Troeltsch

Dzieła

• 1912Die Soziallehren der christlichen Kirchen und Gruppen (Nauki społeczne kościołów i grup chrześcijańskich)

  Historyczne studium nauk społecznych kościołów, sekt i grup mistycznych chrześcijaństwa oraz tego, jak ukształtowały one społeczeństwo zachodnie; rozwija typologię kościoła, sekty i mistyki i wyrosło z wymiany myśli Troeltscha z Maxem Weberem w Heidelbergu.

• 1922Der Historismus und seine Probleme (Historyzm i jego problemy)

  Pierwszy tom niedokończonego dzieła o logice filozofii historii: Troeltsch pyta, jak normy i wartości mogą jeszcze wiązać, skoro całe myślenie i cała kultura są postrzegane jako uwarunkowane historycznie.

Stanowisko

Troeltsch is on the map as the theologian who became one of the classics of the historical sociology of religion. His Social Teaching of the Christian Churches and Groups (1912) follows how churches, sects and mystical groups from the early church to Protestantism have related to society, and develops the typology of church, sect and mysticism; it grew out of his exchange with Max Weber, which the NDB describes as a friendship between specialists (Fachmenschenfreundschaft). Weber in turn learned from him the theological debate between Lutheran and Calvinist positions that lies behind the Protestant Ethic. Troeltsch sought a new binding force for norms in inherited cultural traditions while accepting the relativity that historicism brings; his unfinished main work, Historicism and Its Problems (1922), asks how this is possible. He is reported to have tried to join Dilthey’s hermeneutic tradition with the neo-Kantian method of Windelband and Rickert; that link has not been checked in the sources and is marked as disputed. After his death his work fell into relative obscurity and regained attention from the 1970s.

Życie i kontekst

Ernst Troeltsch was born on 17 February 1865 in Haunstetten near Augsburg. He studied Protestant theology in Erlangen, Berlin and Göttingen and habilitated in Göttingen in 1891 with a study of reason and revelation in Johann Gerhard and Melanchthon; there he joined the circle of the History of Religions School as its systematic theologian. In 1892 he became associate professor in Bonn and in 1894 full professor of systematic theology in Heidelberg, where he became a close colleague of Max Weber. He sat in the Baden First Chamber from 1909 and on the Heidelberg city council from 1912 to 1915. In 1915 he moved to a newly created chair in Berlin for the philosophy of religion, social and historical philosophy and the history of the Christian religion. From March 1919 to June 1920 he was parliamentary undersecretary in the Prussian Ministry of Science, Arts and Education. He died in Berlin on 1 February 1923.

Dalsze główne dzieła

• The Absoluteness of Christianity and the History of Religions (Die Absolutheit des Christentums und die Religionsgeschichte, 1902)
• Protestant Christianity and Church in the Modern Age (Protestantisches Christentum und Kirche in der Neuzeit, 1906/09)
• The Social Teaching of the Christian Churches and Groups (Die Soziallehren der christlichen Kirchen und Gruppen, 1912)
• Historicism and Its Problems (Der Historismus und seine Probleme, 1922)