FRIEDRICH SCHLEIERMACHER:
BETWEEN ENLIGHTENMENT AND ROMANTICISM

Friedrich Schleiermacher's groundbreaking work in theology and philosophy was forged in the cultural ferment of Berlin at the convergence of the Enlightenment and Romanticism. The three sections of this book include illuminating sketches of Schleiermacher's relationship to his contemporaries (Mendelssohn, Hegel, and Kierkegaard), his work as a public theologian (dialog on Jewish emancipation, founding the University of Berlin), as well as the formation and impact of his two most famous books, On Religion: Speeches to its Cultured Despisers and The Christian Faith. Richard Crouter examines Schleiermacher's stance regarding the status of doctrine, church, and political authority, and the place of theology among the academic disciplines. Dedicated to the Protestant Church in the line of Calvin, Schleiermacher was equally a man of the university who brought the highest standards of rationality, linguistic sensitivity, and a sense of history to bear upon religion.

Richard Crouter is Emeritus Professor of Religious Studies, Carleton College, Minnesota. He is best known for his work on Friedrich Schleiermacher, especially the highly acclaimed Schleiermacher: On Religion: Speeches to its Cultured Despisers (1996).

FRIEDRICH SCHLEIERMACHER

Between enlightenment and romanticism

Richard Crouter

CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS
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© Richard Crouter 2005

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First published 2005

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Contents

Acknowledgments

While working on the present book I have incurred numerous debts to other Schleiermacher scholars and specialists in his theological and cultural milieu. In recent years, the Schleiermacher essays by B. A. Gerrish in The Old Protestantism and the New: Essays on the Reformation Heritage (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1982) and Continuing the Reformation: Essays on Modern Religious Thought (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1993) have set the standard for English-language Schleiermacher interpretation. Gerrish's delightful portrait, A Prince of the Church: Schleiermacher and the Beginnings of Modern Theology (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1984) situates Schleiermacher theologically but does not address the cultural sources of the theologian's productivity. In fact, English-language historical studies of Schleiermacher in the full round are few and far between. In Germany Schleiermacher's name resonates with his illustrious contemporaries, Novalis, Goethe, Hegel, Fichte, Friedrich and A. W. Schlegel, Hörderlin, and Schelling. He also deserves to be in such company in the English-speaking world.

Although I once harbored the ambition to do a full-scale biography of Schleiermacher, I have been more drawn to the task of relating specific aspects of his legacy directly to their cultural and lived situation. Happily, the Schleiermacher biography of the late Leipzig scholar Kurt Nowak, Schleiermacher: Leben, Werk und Wirkung (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck and Ruprecht, 2001), is now available. For German readers Nowak's work supplants Martin Redeker, Schleiermacher: Life and Thought (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1973).

It is my hope that these essays will complement the work of others who have been my mentors and colleagues along the way. Foremost among these is my late teacher, Wilhelm Pauck, whose critical acumen in the craft of interpreting the past remains unsurpassed. I owe more debts to the work of B. A. Gerrish (University of Chicago, now Richmond, Virginia), as well as that of the late Kurt Nowak (Leipzig) than either can ever have known. Walter E. Wyman, Jr. (Whitman College) and Brent Sockness (Stanford) have been constant intellectual companions who help keep me honest, as has my Munich colleague, Friedrich Wilhelm Graf, during our editorship of the bilingual Zeitschrift für Neuere Theologiegeschichte/Journal for the History of Modern Theology. For more than two decades Julie Klassen (German, Carleton College) has been a conversation partner on matters related to Schleiermacher, as was the late John Clayton (Boston). The Nineteenth-Century Theology Group and the Schleiermacher Group of the American Academy of Religion provided initial venues for a number of the essays included in this book. Fulbright and DAAD grants enabled me to keep in touch with German scholarship. In AAR and other professional circles I have benefited from conversations about Schleiermacher with Günter Meckenstock (Kiel), Sarah Coakley (Harvard), Francis Fiorenza (Harvard), Garrett Green (Connecticut College), Julia Lamm (Georgetown), Ted Vial (Virginia Wesleyan), Wayne Proudfoot (Columbia), Joe Pickle (Colorado College), and David Klemm (Iowa). Among my oldest scholarly friends, Wolfgang Harnisch (Marburg), Michael Zuckert (Notre Dame), and the late Roger Poole (Nottingham) were and are faithful and ever stimulating colleagues. Each has a priceless ability to help me see how my interests relate to their respective fields of New Testament studies, Political Theory, and Literary Studies, especially the legacy of Kierkegaard.

I owe an immense debt to Carleton College, where colleagues in the Department of Religion as well as in other departments, plus vigorous classroom debates, have been a great source of intellectual vitality. My gratitude is extended to Dean of the College Shelby Boardman and to President Robert Oden, who continue to support my work as an emeritus professor. I wish to express appreciation of the willingness of publishers to allow chapters that first appeared in journal or book form to find a new home in this collection of essays. In chronological order, these are:

“Hegel and Schleiermacher at Berlin: A Many-Sided Debate,” Journal of the American Academy of Religion 48/I (March 1980): 19–43, reprinted, by permission, from Oxford University Press.

“Rhetoric and Substance in Schleiermacher's Revision of The Christian Faith (1821–1822),” Journal of Religion 60/3 (July 1980): 285–306, reprinted, by permission, copyright 1980 by the University of Chicago. All rights reserved.

“Schleiermacher and the Theology of Bourgeois Society: A Critique of the Critics,” Journal of Religion 66/3 (July 1986): 302–23, reprinted, by permission, copyright 1986 by the University of Chicago. All rights reserved.

“The Reden and Schleiermacher's Theory of Language: The Ubiquity of a Romantic Text,” in Schleiermacher und die Wissenschaftliche Kultur des Christentums, ed. Günter Meckenstock with Joachim Ringleben (Berlin: de Gruyter, 1991), 335–47, reprinted, by permission, from Walter de Gruyter and Co.

“Kierkegaard's not so Hidden Debt to Schleiermacher,” Zeitschrift für Neuere Theologiegeschichte/Journal for the History of Modern Theology 1/2 (1994): 205–25, reprinted, by permission, from Walter de Gruyter and Co.

“Schleiermacher's On Religion: Hermeneutical Musings After Two Hundred Years,” Zeitschrift für Neuere Theologiegeschichte/Journal for the History of Modern Theology 6/1 (1999): 1–22, reprinted, by permission, from Walter de Gruyter and Co.

“Schleiermacher's Letters on the Occasion and the Crisis of Berlin Jewry,” in Ethical Monotheism: Past and Present, ed. Theodore M. Vial and Mark Hadley (Atlanta: Brown Judaic Studies [Society for Biblical Literature], 2001), 74–91, reprinted, by permission, from Brown Judaic Studies.

“Schleiermacher, Mendelssohn, and the Enlightenment: Comparing On Religion (1799) with Jerusalem (1783),” Zeitschrift für Neuere Theologiegeschichte/Journal for the History of Modern Theology 10/2 (2003): 165–95, reprinted, by permission, from Walter de Gruyter and Co.

Lastly, I am grateful to the editors at Cambridge University Press for encouraging this project as well as to the Press for permission to print chapter 9 here as well as in the Cambridge Companion to Schleiermacher, ed. Jacqueline Mariña (in press).

Abbreviations

SCHLEIERMACHER TEXTS