Schleiermacher, Friedrich Ernst Daniel (1768-1834)
Schleiermacher, Friedrich Ernst Daniel (1768-1834)
Religion, in which Schleiermacher substitutes for a theology (regarded impossible because of the unknowableness of God) the feeling of absolute dependence, is sharply delineated from science as the product of reason in which nature may ultimately attain its unity. Schleiermacher, a romanticist, exhibits Fichtean and Schellingean influence, and transcends Kant by proclaiming an ideal realism. Nature, the totality of existence, is an organism, just as knowledge is a system. Through the unity of the real and the ideal, wisdom, residing with the Absolute as the final unity, arises and is ever striven for by man. A determinism is evident in religion where sin and grace provide two poles and sin is regarded partly avoidable, partly unreal, and in ethics where freedom is admitted only soteriologically as spontaneous acknowledgment of identity with the divine in the person of Christ. However, the right to uniqueness and individuality in which each attains his real nature, is stressed. An elaborate ethics is based on four goodsState, Society, School, and Church, to which accrue virtues and duties. An absolute good is lacking, except insofar as it lies in the complete unity of reason and nature. — K.F.L.
Complete worksWerke 32 vols., 1835-64. Cf. W. DiltheyDas Leben Schleiermachers.