Schleiermacher did not leave a major work from which one could reconstruct his philosophy as a whole. Ethics was his main object of interest, but he did not finish a comprehensive treatment of ethics, nor of any other discipline. His philosophy is essentially a work in progress and comes to light primarily in his lectures,3 which were published posthumously in the Sämmtliche Werke. In philosophy, there has been and remains only a marginal recognition of Schleiermacher’s thought, while his work in theology and pedagogy is firmly established as belonging to the classics.
2.2 ENLIGHTENMENT, KANT, AND SPINOZA: SCHLEIERMACHER’S OWN PATH TO EARLY ROMANTICISM
There is no consensus on Schleiermacher’s place in post-Kantian classical German philosophy.4 Influenced by eighteenth-century Enlightenment thought,5 he undertook early on a critical examination of Kant’s philosophy. His philosophy teacher in Halle, Eberhard, aroused his interest in the history of philosophy, above all in ancient philosophy. Under Eberhard’s guidance he studied in particular Aristotelian ethics.6
Toward the end of his studies in 1789, Schleiermacher wrote an essay, Über das höchste Gut (On the Highest Good),7 which critiqued Kant’s ethico-theology and argued against the mixing of theology and philosophy. Another unpublished fragment, Über die Freiheit (‘On Freedom’) (ca. 1790–92)8 centres on the thought of individuality. Because individuals contribute to bringing forth the ethical whole that determines them, determinism and freedom can be harmonized with each other: freedom is negatively determined as ‘the absence of a coercion’ (KGA I/1, 334) and signifies the possibility of a way of relating to the given from which new determinations can in turn result. This approach is further developed in the essay Über den Wert des Lebens (‘On What Gives Value to Life’) (1792/93), intended for publication but not published, in which the French revolution and Rousseau are strongly echoed.9
In his manuscripts written in 1793/94, Spinozismus and Kurze Darstellung des Spinozistischen Systems10 Schleiermacher tried—independently of parallel attempts at the same time in Jena and elsewhere—to bring together Kant’s critical philosophy and Spinoza. Schleiermacher built upon Friedrich Heinrich Jacobi’s Concerning the Doctrine of Spinoza in Letters to Herr Moses Mendelsohn in the second edition from 1789. In Kurze Darstellung des Spinozistischen Systems he wrote, Kantianism seems to be, ‘if it understands itself, on Spinoza’s side’ (KGA I/1, 570). For Schleiermacher, Spinoza’s philosophy elucidates the necessary presupposition of Kant’s critical idealism, namely, a being that transcends consciousness and, with that, of an objective philosophy. Conversely, Kant’s philosophy makes clear that in Spinozism we can thematize this being only in the framework of a limited, subjective faculty of knowledge and not in and of itself. In Spinoza’s philosophy Schleiermacher emphasizes the relationship of the infinite and finite; the finite things are ‘illusion’, but this illusion is the appearance or manifestation of the infinite. While the finite things do not have any existence independent of the infinite and must be thought of as existing in the infinite (just as the infinite does not have another existence except vis-à-vis the finite), they are not simply identical. With a view to Kant, this implies that the appearing actuality is regarded as the appearance of an infinite, but without knowledge of this infinite ‘in itself’.
With this combination of Kant and Spinoza, the special interest in individuality in the framework of an historical mediation of nature and freedom, and enthusiasm for the French Revolution, Schleiermacher’s thought found a correspondence with the interests of the early Romantic philosophy being developed at the same time by Friedrich Schlegel and Friedrich von Hardenberg. Thus Schleiermacher’s encounter with Friedrich Schlegel in Berlin was a meeting of equals and their ‘symphilosophizing’ was a mutual exchange, and not a one-way conversation.
2.3 SYMPHILOSOPHY AND THE TRANSFORMATION OF EARLY ROMANTICISM
For Schleiermacher, the encounter with Friedrich Schlegel brought a confirmation of his positions up to that point and at the same time a broadening of his horizons, with Fichte and Plato coming to play a more prominent role in Schleiermacher’s interests.11 In his first (anonymous) publication, the unfinished fragment Versuch einer Theorie des geselligen Betragens (1799),12 Schleiermacher presented a theory of the salon, which represents a third sphere of sociability (Geselligkeit) between private and civic life, not bound to any purpose, and initiated by women. Here every person should be able to become aware of ‘his or her own humanity through one’s own free activity’ and also of ‘the humanity of others through their effects’ (KGA I/2, 30).
Schleiermacher’s best known independent contribution to early Romanticism is his anonymously published text from 1799, Über die Religion. Reden an die Gebildeten unter ihren Verächtern (On Religion: Speeches to its Cultured Despisers). This text was part of the turn to the topic of ‘religion’ since the summer of 1798 in the early Romantic circle of friends.13 Schleiermacher emphasizes the ‘sharp opposition’, in which ‘religion is found over against morals and metaphysics’.14 The essence of religion is ‘neither thinking nor acting, but rather intuition and feeling. Religion wishes to intuit the universe, wishes devoutly to overhear the universe’s own presentations and actions, longs to be grasped and filled by the universe’s immediate influences in childlike passivity.’15 Not the universe in itself, but rather its effect upon us is the object of intuition. The action of the universe upon us produces religion, in that we ‘accept every singularity as a part of the whole, all limited things as a representation of the infinite’, while we cannot comprehend ‘the nature and substance of the whole’.16 Schleiermacher presupposes here an original intuition, in which receptivity and spontaneity are not yet differentiated.17 The original intuition consists in a pre-reflexive experience of unity, which cannot be held on to as such, but rather separates into the isolated intuition on the one hand, which becomes the object of reflection, and feeling, which as the ‘sensibility and taste for the infinite’18 signifies the interiorization of that pre-reflexive unity.
The intuition of the universe is always connected to an individual apprehended as an action of the universe. Schleiermacher explicitly states: ‘Intuition is and always remains something individual, isolated’, and religion does not go further than the realm of the ‘immediate experiences of the existence and action of the universe, the individual intuitions and feelings’.19 While philosophy attempts to connect the individual (empirical) intuitions and to arrange them in a systematic whole (and in doing so transforms them into concepts), religion considers directly the individual as self-manifestation of the universe. Schleiermacher refers to the ‘adored and celebrated starry sky’ as a symbol of religions.20 The starry sky appears without a centre, without a ‘semblance of system’ and this ‘infinite chaos, where of course every point represents a world, is as such the most suitable and highest symbol of religion’.21 Religion regards the individual directly as part and presentation of the whole. That an individual is intuited as the whole has two meanings: the universe—the One—is intuited as in all; and at the same time all is intuited in the One, the universe.22
The concept of free sociability comes up again in the Speeches on Religion; the fourth speech treats the church as a social union, as living ‘interaction’ of those who have religion. Religion is a communal coming to an understanding of ‘intuitions and feeling’.23 If it is the essence of religion to subjectively intuit the universe and interiorize it in feeling, then religion is always already the individual self-presentation of the infinite, which can occur only in infinite modifications. Religion is hence pluralistic in its essence and not exclusionary. Religious intuition of religion demands that one relinquish ‘the vain and futile wish that there exists only one’, that one recognize the diversity of religions and encounter them ‘as impartially as possible’.24 Schleiermacher, however, explicitly discusses only the Jewish and Christian religions, whereas Judaism is ‘already long since a dead religion’.25
The individualization of religion corresponds to the
individualization of humanity in the human individual. The conception of humanity as the community of free spirits, in which the antinomy of freedom and necessity is overcome and individuals mutually recognize each other as free, is central in the anonymously published Monologen (1800).26 The ‘highest intuition’ that philosophy can teach is that of humanity:
thus I realized what is now my highest intuition, it became clear to me that each human represents humanity in his or her own way, in a particular mixture of its elements, so that in each way there is self-manifestation and actualization of everything that can be born of humanity in the fullness of the infinite.27
With the Grundlinien einer Kritik der bisherigen Sittenlehre, entworfen von F. Schleiermacher (Berlin: 1803),28 written during his ‘exile’ in Stolp, Schleiermacher completed the project of a ‘critique of morals’ that he had pursued since 1797 and presents, alongside the theory of religion, his most significant contribution to early Romantic ‘symphilosophy’.29
The Grundlinien is divided into three ‘books’ (critique of the highest axioms of ethics; critique of ethical concepts; critique of ethical systems). They are preceded by a general introduction, which lays out the ‘idea’, the ‘limits’, and the sequence and division of the critique. The continuity with early Romanticism is expressed primarily in the question of what constitutes the principle of ethics, which can only be found in a ‘science of the grounds and connection of all sciences’ but which cannot, as Schleiermacher noted critically with a view to Fichte,30 be based ‘on a highest basic proposition…but rather must be thought of as a whole, in which any element can be the beginning, and all individual things, though mutually determined, are grounded solely in the whole. This entails that such a science can only be accepted or rejected, but not justified or proven’.31 This figure is apparently related to Friedrich Schlegel’s theory of the ‘alternating principle’ (Wechselerweis) and is based on the idea of a totality in which the elements mutually support each other and can only be developed starting from these elements, and not deductively from a principle.32
The systematic critique is carried out specifically with regard to Kant and Fichte.33 For Schleiermacher, Spinoza has the advantage over Kant of operating in the sphere of an ‘objective’ philosophy, in which Schleiermacher also includes Plato. In contrast to Plato, Spinoza lacks a conception of art, while Plato stands out because of his consideration of the world as a work of art: ‘This is not the place to judge whether the highest science itself is as logical as Spinoza constructed it, or whether, as Plato develops it, merely following a poetic presupposition’.34 Schleiermacher’s tends, however, in his later works to replace Spinoza with Plato.35
Testing the viability of ethical principles for a system of action leads initially to the ideas of the highest good and the wise man as the poles of the ethical common to all ethical systems. What the wise man embodies in his subjectivity is represented objectively in the highest good and both are connected to each other through the ‘law’ in the form of duty. With that, the threefold division of ethics into the doctrines of goods, virtues, and duties is already given, which will continue to play a decisive role in Schleiermacher’s own drafts of an ethics.
Schleiermacher’s Grundlinien deals not only specifically with the system of ethics, but also touches on the question of a system of philosophy in general. Schleiermacher addresses this question explicitly as well in his review of Schelling’s Vorlesungen über die Methode des akademischen Studiums published in 1804.36 He broadly agrees with Schelling’s philosophy of identity, but with the reservation that philosophy has not yet found its conclusive form. His critique is aimed above all at Schelling’s treatment of theology and history.37
2.4 OUTLINE OF THE PHILOSOPHICAL SYSTEM IN THE HALLE AND BERLIN LECTURES
Schleiermacher incorporated Schelling’s idea of an encyclopaedia of the sciences into his Gelegentliche Gedanken über Universitäten in deutschem Sinn (1808).38 The task of the university is to realize the connection of the sciences through insight into their unity, which is based in reason. This is the task of philosophy, which is hence regarded as the actual spiritual centre of the university. Schleiermacher argues for a close connection of speculation and empiricism; the ‘whole natural organization of science’ is divided, according to Schleiermacher, into ‘the pure transcendental philosophy and the whole natural-scientific and historical side’ (KGA I/6, 54).
With the professorship in Halle, Schleiermacher began to work out his own philosophical approach. His starting point is not a doctrine of scientific knowledge (Wissenschaftslehre), but rather an original intuition,39 which permeates the two philosophical real sciences, physics (philosophy of nature) and ethics. In this Schleiermacher was in agreement with his friend and colleague in Halle, Henrich Steffens. According to this conception, the ‘highest science’, which Schleiermacher had postulated in 1803 in his Grundlinien, is ‘conserved’ in the real sciences and needs to be addressed within the framework of the real sciences. Schleiermacher maintained this position explicitly in his Berlin lectures on Ethics in 1807/08 as well.40 Schleiermacher’s development of a highest science from 1811 onwards in the Dialectic was not a necessary consequence of Schleiermacher’s philosophy, but was occasioned by the situation of competition with Fichte. Schleiermacher did not think Fichte’s Wissenschaftslehre could fulfil the tasks of a highest science. Not until after Schleiermacher’s efforts to have Steffens appointed to a professorship at the University of Berlin failed did he start to develop in his lectures a ‘highest science’ as an alternative to the Wissenschaftslehre, and he recommended his students the ‘introduction’ to Steffen’s Grundzüge der philosophischen Naturwissenschaft as a text in agreement with his position.41
With the establishment of Dialectic as a highest science, Schleiermacher’s philosophy finds a structure that later would be projected back onto ancient philosophy, with dialectic being regarded as the highest science, above physics and ethics.42 Whether the triadic structure exhausts Schleiermacher’s outline of his system is a point of contention.43 As opposed to the conventional, broadly recognized triadic structure, one can make a case for a fourfold division, which is otherwise used throughout as a principle of construction, if one takes into account Psychology, which Schleiermacher had lectured on since 1818. In this division, Psychology is an empirically based complement to Dialectic.44 The status of the Dialectic as the highest science is also controversial: Eilert Herms has claimed this status first for Ethics and then for Psychology.45 Here one needs to take into consideration that the other disciplines cannot be deduced from the dialectic (even if Schleiermacher uses the expression (deduction) with reference to Ethics46), but rather stand in a relation of mutual determination to each other and to Dialectic.47
Since the first lecture on philosophical ethics in Berlin in the winter term 1812/13 Schleiermacher differentiated between critical and technical disciplines that are connected to Ethics. The essence of critique is the ‘connection of the empirical with speculative exposition’; the technical, by contrast, has to do with the production of empirically oriented knowledge.48 Grammar, philosophy of religion, and aesthetics are named as critical disciplines; didactics, hermeneutics, practical theology, and politics all belong to the technical disciplines.
Physics and Ethics are not only mediated on the speculative level through the Dialectic but also on the empirical level through logic and anthropology.49 At the same time there is, with reference to Ethics, a critical method above and beyond the critical disciplines with which the Individual can be brought into connection with the Absolute.50 The tasks of such a ‘higher’ critical discipline are performed at least in part by Psychology, which as a ‘fragment’ of anthropology relates the activity of the soul to the transcendental ground.
2.5 DIALECTIC
Schleiermacher understands the Dialectic not as knowledge of principles, but rather as a Kunstlehre, that is, a theory of the art of philosophizing, or the organon of real knowledge, a conception for which Sc
hleiermacher explicitly appeals to Plato. He also makes multiple recourses to the conception of the dialectic that Friedrich Schlegel had already developed in 1796.51 The basic outline of the Dialectic essentially stayed the same since the first lectures in 1811. In the introduction, the concept and task of the dialectic are laid out, followed by the search for the ground of all knowledge in the ‘transcendental part’. This is followed by a second, ‘technical’ or ‘formal’ main part, which addresses the construction and combination of real knowledge. The introduction and transcendental part were revised many times in the course of the later lectures.52
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