There is a New Year’s sermon of 1792 and also an essay in manuscript called Über den Wert des Lebens, which Dilthey dates 1793, both of which anticipate many parts of the Soliloquies in idea and in language.⁸ In the essay Schleiermacher continues his search for a more satisfactory ideal of life than that furnished in Kant’s philosophy. The dualism between pure practical reason and happiness is still troubling him, and while he is as yet unable to resolve it, he is more than ever convinced that some ideal sense of life (eine gewisse Idealempfindung des Lebens) can be found which will do justice to both aspects of human desire.⁹ “I must seek to know the truth about my life,” he says … “For I have long been comforted by the firm belief that Truth and Happiness are one.” … “There shall be no cleft in me between appetite and understanding; they shall be one.”¹⁰ What the ideal sense of life is, in which these oppositions are overcome, Schleiermacher cannot say, but he suggests that a consideration of man’s distinctive powers of thinking, feeling, and willing and of their harmonious development may be the path of moral discovery.¹¹

In any case, the human ideal is to be found in man and not in some outside principle or power. This point is fixed and remains fixed for Schleiermacher.¹²

Another partially extant manuscript, dating from the same period 1789-1792, Über die Freiheit, criticizes the Kantian postulate of freedom. Schleiermacher begins by putting this question: “How must the activity of the faculty of desire be constituted if it is to be compatible with the recognition of moral responsibility?”¹³ His answer is threefold: (1) there must be a “moral impulse” of some sort, (2) this moral impulse must have an equal chance with every other impulse to become the determining factor in action, and (3) the cause which makes this impulse determining in a particular action must lie within the self, not outside of it. That is, in cases of moral responsibility, this cause must lie “within the totality of present impressions,” or within the state of soul which can be brought about by the course of these impressions.¹⁴ Examining these three conditions, Schleiermacher concludes that moral responsibility is compatible with determination by immanent motives, and thinks it unnecessary to postulate a “transcendental freedom” for the sake of morality.¹⁵

About this time Schleiermacher, like many other German intellectuals, became interested in Spinoza, the reputed philosophical villain of preceding years. Because he found much to approve in Spinoza’s philosophy, because of his strictures on Kant’s theory of freedom, because of his monistic inclinations generally, and his emphasis, in contrast to Fichte, on man’s sense of “absolute dependence,” it has been customary to call Schleiermacher a determinist.¹⁶ And yet his Soliloquies (Monologen) are from beginning to end a glorification of the freedom which he claims to have found. The truth, of course, is that Schleiermacher’s philosophy can be identified neither with the position of Kant, nor of Spinoza; it is a composite structure of its own, embracing many diverse elements. Like Hegel, Schleiermacher believed that “whoever would master philosophy must understand its history,”¹⁷ and through historical study he became sensitive to many different considerations and provided himself with very varied intellectual resources. What he borrowed from Kant and Spinoza he modified and wove finely together with other ideas into a new pattern.

Schleiermacher’s first Spinoza studies apparently date from about 1792. Cradled, as he had been, in pietist devotion, but now uncertain in his conceptions of God and man, he was deeply impressed by Spinoza’s idea of substance, and by the justice which it did to one side of religious consciousness, namely our sense of dependence on the infinite whole of things. Spinoza’s conception of universal order also satisfied his sense of scientific system. But there seemed to be a misanthropical element in Spinozism, belittling human passion, will, and personality. To be an individual, of any species whatsoever, means in the Spinozistic metaphysics to be limited; a human being is a small fragment of nature, transcending pettiness only through intellectual comprehension of universal order. Kantian philosophy, on the other hand, while granting that human nature is radically limited, nevertheless recognizes an absolute dignity in man’s moral will. It respects not only the natural order which intelligence strives to comprehend, but still more the moral order which will strives to create. Moreover, if Spinozism with its consistent intellectualism more fully honors the rational form of truth, Kantianism in its critical, agnostic aspect shows greater regard for the empirical element in science. Schleiermacher’s thought moved in both philosophies.

As early as 1793 he seems to have entertained the possibility of combining their strong points; at least, so it would appear from his commentary on Spinoza, Kurze Darstellung des Spinozistischen Systems, to which Dilthey assigns that date.¹⁸ This essay, like Herder’s Gott (1787) and Jacobi’s more famous Briefe über die Lehre des Spinoza (1785), shows how the attempt to determine what the hitherto maligned and neglected Spinoza really stood for, combined with other intellectual forces present in Germany at the end of the eighteenth century to produce a new philosophic tradition. Schleiermacher notes that Kant and Spinoza both distinguish between existence per se and existence per aliud. According to Spinoza only one infinite being can exist per se, for finite being is limited, and the limit must be per aliud. Kant approaches and handles the distinction somewhat differently. He declines to characterize being an sich in any way, since all existence that we can know is, by the very fact of its being known, finite and per aliud. Schleiermacher tries to show that these two positions, Kant’s and Spinoza’s, are not as far apart as they appear. Kant, while agnostic with respect to existence per se, moves in Spinoza’s direction, Schleiermacher thinks, when, in treating the antinomies of reason, he identifies noumenal being with the Unconditioned. To be sure, this Kantian Unconditioned can not be called one or “positively infinite” without dogmatism. Being as such is pure existence in reference to which both Leibnitzean pluralism and Spinozistic monism must be transcended. Herein Schleiermacher agrees with Kant. He believes, however, that Spinoza himself approaches this critical, agnostic position, when he affirms that substance has an infinite number of attributes, only two of which are revealed to our intellect. With respect to existence per aliud, Schleiermacher thinks it possible to unite Spinoza’s account with Kant’s in some such terms as these: “The finite beings which man knows are an appearance that the modes of substance’s attributes produce through the infinitely diverse combinations of their parts.”¹⁹ It would seem from this proposition that Schleiermacher is trying to say: Yes, Kant is right in holding our experience to be a very finite, particularly conditioned, phenomenal affair, but at the same time it is possible to believe that this experience is part of an imposing system of absolute order and being, such as Spinoza describes.

Besides the essay just considered, there is an unpublished manuscript of Schleiermacher’s entitled Spinozismus, in which the important question is raised as to the ultimate ground of individuality, the principium individui. Schleiermacher endeavors to distinguish between substantiality and individuality, and denies that Leibniz’s metaphysics of plural substances (monads) explains individuality any better than Spinoza’s monistic view of substance. At the same time he confesses that in this “crucial problem (Kernpunkt) of philosophic theory,” he himself does not know “where to cast anchor.”²⁰

Sec. 2. Years of Insight (1792-1802)

To recapitulate the foregoing: Schleiermacher in his earliest writings traces out for himself certain abstract relationships. The “moral law” is a formula for attaining the “highest good” (Über das höchste Gut 1789). The “highest good” is the harmonious development of man’s various faculties (Über den Wert des Lebens, 1793). Moral responsibility does not necessitate transcendental freedom (Über die Freiheit 1792). Existence per se is infinite being, and hence unknowable, but phenomena exist in and through it (Kurze Darstellung des Spinozistischen Systems 1793). Substantiality does not explain individuality (Spinozismus 1793-’94).

The way a youthful mind will pursue a suggestion of reason in tenuous abstractions like these is uncanny. Still more inscrutable, however, is the way in which such an abstract scheme, when it has once engaged the mind, serves both to promote and to obstruct, to clarify and to obscure whatever fresh and original experience the world has in store for the individual. In Schleiermacher’s case the experience and ideas, which in his maturity he recognized as his most original and highest insights, were not clearly implicated in the web of his earliest speculations, but came to him independently as the spiritual deposit of a richer life in the years 1792 to 1802. “The sublime revelation came from within; it was not produced by any code of ethics or system of philosophy.”²¹ Yet who can define what latent effect the early speculations had in eliciting from this richer life its cardinal revelations? Certainly the new web of ideas, which Schleiermacher wove in the light of these revelations, also has in it a pattern based on his earlier ideas.

More specifically, Schleiermacher’s philosophical development appears to have taken about the following course. Both at Schlobitten, where he lived in the home of the Dohna family, and at Berlin in the romantic circle, he saw attractive forms of human life concretely realized. He “saw clearly that each man is meant to represent humanity in his own way, combining its elements uniquely.”²² In previous years he had abstractly defined the “highest good” as the harmonious development of human faculties. Now, without changing the definition, he began to identify this “good” with concrete forms of development such as he saw. “Freedom,” defined previously as determination by a moral impulse, he now began to identify, quite consistently, with the imprint of human character upon nature, and in a heightened sense with the imprint of individualized human character.²³ To divine individual character, and to live so as to enhance it, seemed to him more and more the essence of morality. In self-knowledge and in knowledge of other selves was to be found that ideal sense of life, which preserved the image of good entire, instead of opening, like Kantian ethics, an everlasting breach between the disparate goods of sense and reason.

This increased regard for individual character as a pivotal fact in the moral order brought Schleiermacher back to the question raised in his study of Spinoza: what is the status of individuality in the universal order? In that hybrid of Spinozistic-Kantian metaphysics, which he had conceived in 1793, individuality was held to be different from substantiality, but no conclusion was reached as to its nature and ground.²⁴ Nor was Schleiermacher to reach a definite conclusion in this matter for many years. It is not difficult to understand why, when one considers the many aspects of the problem as he saw it. For him, almost all philosophic issues began to center on this Kernpunkt. In the first place, Spinoza and Kant, indeed virtually the whole philosophic tradition, taught him to identify reason with the universal, but he himself was coming more and more to identify a large part of moral reason, at least, with respect for individuality. At the same time, while it was largely moral experience that interested him in individuality, he was unwilling to make moral qualities the criterion of all individuality. Furthermore, he had not in the least lost his religious feeling for the infinite “whole that stands over against man,”²⁵ so that he did not think of all value as associated with the individual and the unique. Again, he was still a Kantian, in his agnosticism with respect to absolute substance, in his view that knowledge reveals only a manifold of interrelated phenomena. And, finally, he was just beginning to realize that his earlier attempt to combine Spinozistic and Kantian ideas had been made half-blindly, without critically facing the question of what after all should determine the structure of a philosophic system. His was not a mind to cut these Gordian knots by some single blow. It took him many years to collect the group of concepts by which he finally tried to express his view of the place of individuality in the universal order.²⁶

Meanwhile, however, he was riding on the magic carpet of his own immediate experiences, “in that beautiful time of my life (1792-1800), when I came into contact with so much that was new.”²⁷ The golden tree of life abundantly provided fruitful insights without demanding that they fall at once into a complete theoretic system. Moreover, Schleiermacher was justified in believing that these new insights of his into individual moral and religious consciousness were not without their significance for philosophic theory. However, he might finally describe the relations between individual and universe when he had attained philosophic clarity, whether in terms that could somehow be assimilated to the older speculative traditions or not, he knew that in any case his own more recent insights were not adequately expressed in the ideas of Spinoza, or of Kant, or indeed of any philosopher with whom he was acquainted.

This was the point in his philosophical development that Schleiermacher had reached when, under the encouragement of Schlegel and other friends, he wrote the Speeches on Religion (1799), a work which expressly precludes all attempts to define the universe and the individual, or to penetrate to the roots of their relationship. but which dwells at length upon religion, defined as a sense which the individual has for the universe. The notable characteristic of religious consciousness, thinks Schleiermacher, is the way in which “love” for the universe and “love” for the individual are fused in it. In scientific consciousness the individual attains a universal viewpoint, but effaces his particularity. In moral consciousness some interest of human will, be it individual or collective, is favored above other being. But religion exhibits the individual, steeping the universe in his own uniqueness, concerned to find his own particular being in communion with the all.²⁸ This power of individual mind to universalize even its individuality finds no recognition in the metaphysics of Spinoza or of Kant, for whom universality and individuality remain antithetic. In their view the individual transcends his individuality when he rises either to an intellectual comprehension of the one universal order, or to devotion to the essential moral law. But Schleiermacher would emphasize a type of experience in which there is productive, inner continuity between the individual and the universal.²⁹

Like the Speeches on Religion, the Soliloquies, published a few months later, aim to describe Schleiermacher’s new experiences and insights, in this case particularly his insights into moral consciousness. without, however, striving for close definition, or for a dialectical treatment of concepts, in short, without determining precisely what these experiences might yield for a comprehensive system of philosophic thought. The lavish use of the term Geist (spirit) in the Soliloquies is itself indicative of this fact, a term rich in moral and religious connotations through popular usage, but of unstable scientific value until Schelling, Hegel, and Schleiermacher made an attempt to stabilize its meaning some years later (c. 1810). For the most part, the Soliloquies depict things as refracted in a certain kind of moral and esthetic consciousness; the author reviews his development from the standpoint of the ideal he has reached. Thus, for example, he retrospects upon his point of view before he had discovered the significance of individuality, and emphasizes chiefly the moral implications of that former position. “For a long time I too was content with the discovery of a universal reason; I worshipped the one essential being as the highest, and so believed that there is but a single right way of acting in every situation, that the conduct of all men should be alike, each differing from the other only by reason of his place and station in the world. I thought humanity revealed itself as varied only in the manifold diversity of outward acts, that man himself, the individual, was not a being uniquely fashioned, but of one substance and everywhere the same.”³⁰ The criticism in this passage is moral, and need not imply a precise metaphysics.

But there are certain passages in the Soliloquies, as written in 1800, which sound as if Schleiermacher, under the inspiration of his new insights, were abandoning the “critical” position, to swing himself with great élan into a dogmatic idealistic metaphysics of a sort that affirms the universe to be fundamentally an infinite community of spiritual individuals. Of course, his enthusiasm in the Soliloquies for this point of view should be regarded as thoroughly genuine, but nevertheless as enthusiasm for a point of view in the atmosphere of which he was living, and not as the exposition of his philosophical system. Schleiermacher had not developed a system of philosophy when he wrote the Soliloquies, and when he did so in later years, it was not in accord with these extremely “idealistic” passages. He himself recognized this so completely that he changed many of the passages in question as early as 1810, when a second edition of the text was published.³¹ In the light of these changes, it seems as if Schleiermacher in 1800 had to a certain extent clothed his thought in a current metaphysical idiom, which he soon realized was an unnecessarily and unjustifiably extravagant way of putting the essential facts he had discovered about individuality and moral consciousness.

Sec. 3. The System-Making of Later Years (1802-1834).

There are thirty-one volumes in the complete edition of Schleiermacher’s works,³² but only four of these were written with an immediate view to publication. Ten of them are collections of his sermons, two of public and professional addresses, while thirteen were posthumously pieced together out of lecture notes. Two more, though prepared for the press by Schleiermacher himself (Der christliche Glaube, 1821-’22), contain material that was first used in lectures. Thus, by far the larger portion of his work was produced under a predominantly didactic, rather than a literary impulse. Schleiermacher says that he realized his essentially didactic bent early in life, but that he never discovered any talent for writing. A year after leaving the university he wrote to a friend: “I have fully given up the thought of writing, because I am certain that I should never be able to accomplish anything in that line.”³³ He rarely, if ever wrote out his sermons before delivering them. It was the influence of Friedrich Schlegel and other literary friends, with whom he kept company in Berlin, that led him for a time into literary channels,³⁴ but even as an author he chose to imagine himself in the situation of a speaker, or, in one case, of a correspondent: he wrote “Speeches on Religion,” “Soliloquies,” a dialogue called “Christmas Eve” (Weihnachtsfeier), and the “Confidential Letters” about Schlegel’s Lucinde.

Schleiermacher’s literary élan spent itself in these four works, all of them written between 1798 and 1806, the years when he was closest to the “romantic circle.” What he did before and after this period has a severely academic cast, scholarly researches of an exegetical or historical kind, logical analyses of technical philosophical concepts, and attempts at the systematic presentation of various subject-matters, e. g., “dialectic,” ethics, psychology, pedagogy, politics, esthetics, dogmatics, Christian history, history of philosophy, and hermeneutics. Only in his preaching did Schleiermacher throughout life keep in contact with a general audience. His academic career began in 1804 when he was appointed professor and chaplain at his own university of Halle, was interrupted by the Napoleonic wars in 1806, and recontinued at the new university of Berlin in 1810, where he remained throughout the rest of his life.

But even before his appointment at Halle, namely in 1802 when the Berlin romantic group was scattered and Schleiermacher went into a kind of exile at Stolpe, his scholarly interests came to the fore.³⁵ Cut off from his literary friends, he devoted himself, not to the project, hinted at in the Soliloquies, of expressing his outlook on life in a novel,³⁶ but to the completion of the translation of Plato’s dialogues, which he had begun with Schlegel. And he took up again his original plan, for which the Soliloquies had been substituted in 1800, of writing a formal critique of Kantian-Fichtean ethics.³⁷ As he worked on it at Stolpe in the years 1802-’03, simultaneously with the translation of Plato and other historical studies, the project grew into something more comprehensive, Outlines of a Critique of Previous Ethical Theory.³⁸

This Critique is polemic and critical in nature from beginning to end, Schleiermacher’s own ethical ideal appearing only indirectly.³⁹ And for the most part the criticism is formal, that is, it proceeds from the proposition that ethical teaching should form a thoroughly integrated system. Scientific precision and verification are associated with systematic formulation. Now, to say that ethics must be a system means, for Schleiermacher, that each item of ethical teaching, each duty, each virtue, and each good must be defined in the light of all the others, so as not to conflict with them or render them ambiguous, but rather so as to supplement them by clarifying and developing the same idea (perhaps Idea) which they express. What ethics seeks to portray should “be regarded as a complete whole, the parts of which can be understood only in and through the whole.”⁴⁰ Schleiermacher finds, however, that historically the philosophers have not developed their ethical teachings in this thoroughly systematic fashion, and he shows that in consequence the counsels of every known ethical theory are ambiguous. The specific causes of ambiguity are many, for the various philosophers are unsystematic in different respects. For example, there are some who describe the good as consisting of multiple elements without organizing these elements in any hierarchy, or without stating any principle by which a decision can be made between them.⁴¹ Then there are others who begin with some single organizing principle, but who later find it does not accomplish all that they desire. In this predicament a second supplementary principle is frequently introduced, but without explanation of its relations to the first principle.⁴² This again gives rise to heteronomy. A very common source of ambiguity lies in the fact that the three aspects of ethical reality, i. e., virtue, duty and good, are treated separately according to unrelated principles. The virtues recommended would often not lead to the fulfillment of the duties enjoined, nor the latter to the realization of the goods desired.⁴³ It is a leading principle of Schleiermacher’s in this regard that virtues, duties, and goods are related as efficient, formal, and final causes of the same ethical process.⁴⁴

Schleiermacher believes that, all things considered, Plato and Spinoza among the classic philosophers have avoided these various pitfalls best. Plato’s ethics especially comes near to being a perfect system, organizing all its parts with reference to the aim of contemplating “the idea of the good.”⁴⁵ Perhaps Schleiermacher misinterprets Aristotle, whose leading principle he regards as hedonistic with qualifications that result in ambiguities.⁴⁶ If the idea of the “prudent man” as determining the good were taken as central, perhaps Aristotle would fare better as a systematic moralist.

Granting Schleiermacher’s premise, that ethics must be systematic in his sense, the strictures he passes upon other moral philosophers seem just, though hard. This is no doubt a case where it is comparatively easy to criticize, and the vital question is whether Schleiermacher himself fares better in his own constructive efforts.

After receiving his appointment at Halle, he lectured on ethics repeatedly, both there and at Berlin in later years. Moreover, he put some of his leading ideas into a series of addresses on moral philosophy delivered before the Royal Academy of Sciences in the years 1825 to 1830. But he never completed the exposition of his ethical system, so that we can judge of it only by piecing together the contents of various essays and note-books.⁴⁷

In order to understand Schleiermacher’s ethical system, we must likewise piece together a similar set of essays and lecture-notes on “dialectic,” in which he gradually developed his conception of philosophizing and of philosophic system-making in general.⁴⁸ According to him, “dialectic” or philosophizing is the art of resolving conflicts in thought, of producing streitfreies Denken. Philosophy begins in such conflicts and aims to resolve them. Now, by analyzing the nature of these conflicts, we arrive at two fundamental propositions: (1) thought refers beyond itself to being, and (2) thought involves antitheses. The analysis which leads to the first proposition is briefly as follows: conflict between thinking A is b and thinking A is not b is possible only if the thinking in each case refers beyond itself to the same A. Such “conflict implies that an identical object is being considered, and thereby implies a general reference of thought to Being.”⁴⁹ Schleiermacher is aware that this “reference of thought to being,” while apparently implied in the process of thinking, has also been construed as a radical obstacle to the success of thinking. For if thought refers to a transcendent object, how can it be tested? His answer is: it cannot be tested by the comparison of idea and object, except in cases of self-knowledge, where alone we are directly in touch with the object of thought.⁵⁰ But thought can be tested in a measure by its relation to other thought. If all ideas having a common reference agree with each other, and are consistent with ideas having other references, then at least we should have no reason to suppose a discrepancy between our thought and the object to which it referred, even though we should not be able to perceive or to prove an agreement.⁵¹

Schleiermacher holds that such agreement among ideas can never be perfect, because of the individualizing tendency that pervades all being.⁵² Hence there is no perfectly streitfreies Denken, no impeccable scientific knowledge. On the other hand, he finds sufficient intellectual agreement resulting here and there from certain types of inquiry to convince him that there is significant correspondence between the structure of being and the structure of logical thought. He believes that in the concepts and propositions of science, reality effects a partial organization of ideas corresponding to a similar, partial organization of powers and their manifestations, which it effects among objects.⁵³

To understand more fully how Schleiermacher conceives thought and being, it is necessary to trace the development of that second fundamental proposition, which he discovered in his analysis of logical conflicts: thought involves antitheses.⁵⁴ It is the nature and implications of these antitheses which must be examined. The life of thought is everywhere full of distinctions, and seems to be characterized by a double movement, at once toward relating and uniting what is distinct and toward differentiating what is one. The scientist, for example, looks for unity and diversity in the same subject-matter, seeking to discover more and more minute distinctions, but also interpreting them through more and more general facts in which the distinctions seem to be grounded. This double movement gives rise, on the one hand, to the idea of God, as a highest unity embracing all distinctions, and on the other, to the idea of the world, as all distinctions embraced in this unity. God and the world are not to be identified, but “neither can we think of one without the other”; they are correlatives. Both are transcendent; the world transcends all actual thought as a terminus ad quem toward which the process of discovery approaches; God transcends thought absolutely as a terminus a quo, in which thinking is grounded, but which it cannot approach.⁵⁵ At the same time, God and the world are in a sense immanent, i. e., they are represented in human experience, in a sense which is to be explained later. (See below, p. 140ff.)

To say that thought involves antitheses, however, is to say more than that it involves distinctions. An antithesis is a special kind of distinction, in which one member somehow involves its opposite, e. g., hot and cold, wet and dry, hard and soft, etc. To say that thought involves such distinctions is to indicate a certain relativism in experience, and a need for qualified statement.⁵⁶ Experience exhibits a mixture of opposites. Now, hot and cold, hard and soft, etc., are antitheses which appear in some experiences, but not in others; they are not universal. Schleiermacher, however, describes a group of antitheses which he believes are universal, involved in the very nature of thought and its objects. Each antithesis in this group appears in various forms, so that more than one pair of terms exists to characterize it. Thus, one of these universal antitheses is that between the organic and the intellectual, between what Kant called “matter” and “form,” between a sense-manifold spacially and temporally organized, on the one hand, and a system of meanings, on the other. A second is that between the universal and the particular, the general and the individual, the common and the unique. Embracing these two antitheses within itself, there is what Schleiermacher calls the “highest antithesis,” namely that between “thing” and “spirit,” the known and the knowing, the real and the ideal, nature and reason. This highest antithesis embraces the other two inasmuch as whatever is predominantly natural, real, and “thinglike” is predominantly organic, material, spacial and temporal, made up of particulars or individuals, and abounding in uniqueness, whereas whatever is predominantly reasonable, ideal, and spiritual is predominantly intellectual, formal, meaningful, of a general, common, and universal character.⁵⁷

The italicizing of the word predominantly in the foregoing statement points to a significant characteristic of the antitheses in thought, which must be examined next. An antithesis in which there was a perfect equilibrium of forces, i. e., in which each member cancelled the effect of the other by working in an opposite direction to an equal degree, such an antithesis would frustrate thought. That which is equally organic and intellectual, universal and particular (active and passive), in the same respect, cannot be thought any more than can the purely intellectual and universal, or the purely organic and particular. Every thought and every object of thought must be both intellectual and organic, universal and particular, and it must be predominantly one in some respects and predominantly the other in other respects.⁵⁸ Hence that which is natural and real is not only predominantly natural and real, but in some respects predominantly reasonable and ideal, and likewise what is real and ideal is nevertheless in some respects predominantly natural and real.

Points of similarity between this aspect of Schleiermacher’s “dialectic” and Hegelian dialectic are not far to seek. Unlike Hegel, however, Schleiermacher did not affirm his dialectic of thought to be identical with the metaphysics of being. He found sufficient evidence to “incline” him toward the view that there is significant correspondence between the two, but he did not believe the correspondence to be complete, and he allowed the possibility of other inclinations being equally justified.⁵⁹ In brief, Schleiermacher remained from beginning to end a Kantian in his belief that we know only in part. Hence, according to him, every attempt to state what are the most general and fundamental truths involves, not only analysis, but also inclination, i. e., Gesinnung.⁶⁰ His own inclination, as he himself interprets it, is to look for the most general and fundamental truths “in our own being,” since that is the most complicated being of which we know. As far as we know, more different kinds of activity are organized in us, more antitheses are brought together in man than anywhere else. Among others, “the highest antithesis will also be found in our being (for our being … is determined by all antitheses), and since it is more immediately present to us than any other being, we should look for this antithesis here.” This is as near as Schleiermacher comes to metaphysical idealism.⁶¹ The way in which man endeavors progressively to harmonize the contrasts in his experience gives us the best suggestion we have of God and the world. Man strives to see more of the universal in the particular, and more of the particular in the universal. He strives to make the ideal more and more real, and the real more and more ideal. He strives to have everything in time and space full of meaning, and to give everything meaningful a local habitation and a name. Coupled with this human striving is a belief in its connection with reality, a conviction that the ground or basis for ideal experience already exists, that man is not seeking a mirage, but the actual, a reality as yet known only in part. He believes that if he knew fully, he should know God, a being in whom the real is ideal, whose only compulsion is his own action, but whose action is necessary, for whom no material is meaningless and no thought empty, who is at once the only being absolutely universal and absolutely individual.

This idea of God, which in cognitive experience is purely formal, is enriched in religious experience by our “feeling for the universe” and the consequent treatment which imagination gives to it. Moral experience likewise requires this idea of God, not as an image of the moral ideal, but as implying that tie between the intellectual and the volitional which is essential to morality.⁶² Schleiermacher’s lectures on Dialektik deal primarily with cognitive experience, but towards the end of Part I (as arranged by Jonas) these and other points are made regarding religious and moral experience to show that these latter realms of experience exhibit the same fundamental features and antitheses which thought discovers in its cognitive employment. Schleiermacher’s conception, in this matter, is that while science or theory (i. e., Wissenschaft) is by no means the only type of experience and thought, the other types seem to run their courses within the same general, dialectical order revealed by science.⁶³ It is a mistake to think that his philosophy of religion involves the idea of a “double-truth,” so that what is true in science could be false in theology, and vice versa.⁶⁴

The universal relevance of “dialectic” to all parts of experience is well illustrated in Schleiermacher’s classification of the sciences. According to him, there are four fundamental sciences, Natural History, Physics, History, and Ethics (Naturkunde, Physik, Geschichtskunde, Ethik).⁶⁵ This classification is based on a cross-division, using as one basis the antithesis between nature and reason, and for the other basis the antithesis between the empirical and the intellectual. Natural History and Physics are sciences which study predominantly natural being, while History and Ethics study predominantly reasonable being. Natural History and History are predominantly empirical, i. e., concerned with the collection of particular facts; Physics and Ethics are predominantly intellectual, i. e., concerned with the discovery of general principles. Thus:

1. Natural History is the empirical observation of all existences in being which is predominantly natural. 2. Physics is the intellectual study of principles or essences in being which is predominantly natural. 3. History is the empirical observation of all existences in being which is predominantly reasonable. 4. Ethics is the intellectual study of principles or essences in being which is predominantly reasonable.⁶⁶

It must be remembered, however, in interpreting the above, that according to Schleiermacher’s analysis of thought and experience, every item of experience is predominantly characterized by one member of a fundamental antithesis in some respects and by the opposite member in other respects. As a consequence there is no subject-matter that belongs to any one of these sciences to the exclusion of the rest. All being is in some respects the subject-matter of physics, in others of ethics, in some of natural history, in others of history. And hence, Schleiermacher adds that none of these four sciences can be perfected without a like perfection of all the others. “The science of ethics is at no time further advanced than the science of physics,” and vice versa; both are in like manner mutually dependent upon history and natural history.⁶⁷

Schleiermacher’s belief in the fundamental unity of scientific theory and method, throughout realms frequently contrasted, such as physics and ethics for instance, is further illustrated by his view that moral law is analogous to natural law. In an address delivered before the Royal Academy of Sciences in 1825 on Naturgesetz und Sittengesetz he criticizes the position that natural laws describe the way in which things invariably do behave, while moral laws state the way in which they ought to behave.⁶⁸ On the contrary, says Schleiermacher, both natural and moral laws are statements of the way in which things do behave, and also of the way in which they ought to behave, if the things are beings conforming to the definitions of the laws. Natural and moral laws differ only in defining and treating of different kinds of beings. Moral beings conform to moral laws as invariably as do natural beings to natural laws, and the latter ought to conform to natural laws as truly as the former ought to conform to the moral. Furthermore, deviations occur from natural laws as well as from moral. Some of these deviations indicate that all laws, natural and moral, are but approximate generalizations. Others indicate, however, that every being stands under a multiplicity of laws, and that its conformity to one law, natural or moral, is conditioned by its conformity to others. Only as conditioned by other than moral laws does a being do evil, and hence “the antithesis between good and bad falls outside the description of ethics,” which deals only with predominantly moral or reasonable being.⁶⁹ Again, since Schleiermacher defines freedom as self-development, and morality as the self-development of a moral being, it follows that only as conditioned by other than moral laws is a being brought under compulsion. “The antithesis between freedom and necessity likewise falls outside the description of ethics.”⁷⁰ Of course, there is nothing in these principles to preclude the possibility of a being developing from one kind of being into another kind of being. A natural being conforms to natural laws, and a moral being to moral laws, but some of these laws may be such that the natural being develops into a moral being. Finally, it is important in this connection to recall that, according to the principles of Schleiermacher’s “dialectic,” we should not expect to find any being predominantly natural or moral in all respects, but rather predominantly the one in some respects, and the other in others.

Ethics, then, is a descriptive science, descriptive of the essences, the laws, and the principles to which being conforms in so far as it is predominantly reasonable. In outlining the formal structure of this science Schleiermacher adheres to his view that ethical reality manifests itself in the three modes of good, duty, and virtue (related as final, formal, and efficient causes of the same process.)⁷¹ The fundamental mode, however, is that of the good, and this is now defined, in terms of the “highest antithesis” disclosed in the “dialectic,” as a predominantly reasonable interpenetration of nature and reason.⁷² It will be recalled that both nature and reason, as defined in the “dialectic,” are rich in qualities, and hence their interpenetration will produce many permutations and combinations, in other words, a richly varied good. This variety, however, will not be a mere medley, but will have a structure, since the many qualities of nature and of reason group themselves around certain major antitheses subsumed under the general antithesis of nature and reason itself.⁷³ The interpenetration of nature and reason is not the interpenetration of two chaotic manifolds, but the crossing of a predominantly organic manifold with one predominantly intellectual, and of one predominantly individualized with one predominantly universalized. As a result of this crossing, the realm of the good comes to have four great provinces: (1) a province in which nature appears predominantly as the organ of a chiefly universal reason, (2) a province in which it appears predominantly as the organ of a chiefly individualized reason, (3) a province in which it appears predominantly as the intelligible symbol of a chiefly universal reason, and (4) a province in which it appears predominantly as the intelligible symbol of a chiefly individualized reason. This description of ethical being as characterized by nature’s becoming the organ and sign of both universal and individual reason was amply foreshadowed in the Soliloquies of 1800.⁷⁴ Here in Schleiermacher’s later thought the idea is worked out more systematically, and finally, the abstractions are linked up definitely with concrete realms of life: the first province with the realm of commerce (Verkehr) and its regulation by the state, the second with the realm of personal assets (Eigenthum), their enjoyment and enhancement in fellowships, the third with the realm of science (Wissen) and its pursuit in schools, and the fourth with the realm of religion (Gefühl) and its cultivation in churches.⁷⁵

Schleiermacher’s delineation of the domain of ethical being with its four provinces can be presented at a glance in the following diagram:

ORGANIC UNIVERSAL: Commerce (Verkehr). Nature the organ of a universal reason. The State. | INDIVIDUAL: Personal Assets (Eigenthum). Nature the organ of an individual reason. Fellowships. UNIVERSAL: Science (Wissen). Nature the intelligible symbol of a universal reason. Schools. | INDIVIDUAL: Religion (Gefühl). Nature the intelligible symbol of an individual reason. Churches. INTELLECTUAL

This conception of the good controls Schleiermacher’s treatment of duties and virtues in the second and third parts respectively of his Sittenlehre, quite in accordance with his theory as to the three modes of ethical reality and their relationships. Each province of ethical being has its duties, virtues, and goods, determined alike by the fundamental character of that province. Thus, for example, in the field of commerce and of the state, the first duty is: “Enter into every association in such a way that your entrance amounts to an assimilation.”⁷⁶ The second duty in the same field is: “Enter into every association in such a way as to retain your entire individuality.”⁷⁷ It is not difficult to infer from these typical propositions that Schleiermacher is still grappling in the ethical system of his later years with that fundamental problem, which as early as 1794 he took to be the Kernpunkt of philosophical theory, how to do justice at once to the individual and to the surrounding whole.⁷⁸

To sum up: Schleiermacher’s ethical system is determined on the formal side by three major factors, (1) his conception of the relation between goods, duties, and virtues, (2) his view of the major antitheses involved in ethics, and (3) his delineation of the four provinces of ethical being. The first of these goes back to the earliest days of his philosophizing, the second and third largely to the years of his fundamental insights, but with amplifications and systematization occurring in the later years. On the side of content, the system likewise contains much that was present in the Speeches on Religion and in the Soliloquies. The most significant material addition of the later years is the greater recognition accorded to institutional and social ethics, to the place of the state and the school especially. These later years, it should be remembered, saw the rise of Hegelianism and a general coming to the fore of political and social issues in Germany.⁷⁹ Unlike Hegel, however, Schleiermacher assigned, in his later as in his earlier years, a large sphere of the good to predominantly individual reason. How typical of German liberal thought (how unlike British liberalism) is his antithesis between “commerce” as a field for state regulation and a realm of personal assets, private goods, to be enjoyed and furthered in free fellowship! How typical of German conditions, again, of the organized intellectualism there prevailing, is his association of schools and academies with the pursuit of science!

Behind the highly abstract concepts of Schleiermacher’s Dialektik and Sittenlehre (and the reader can have no conception, even from the foregoing account, how unalleviated their abstraction is!) appears the unmistakable image of concrete forms of life with which he was in such active contact.⁸⁰

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← Notes Schleiermacher’s Revisions of the Soliloquies · Contents · Appendix II Schleiermacher’s Conception of a Philosopher Priest →

Footnotes

1. On Religion, p. 9. ↩

2. See pp. 73-74. ↩

3. Dilthey, Appendix, pp. 1-145. These pages are the primary source, in print, of our knowledge of Schleiermacher’s philosophy in its beginnings. For some of the early manuscripts, however, a fuller text is to be found published elsewhere. (See notes 8-11 on p. 118.) ↩

4. See Dilthey, Appendix, pp. 6-19. Dilthey dates this paper 1789 Schleiermacher’s last year as a student at Halle. ↩

5. Dilthey, Appendix, p. 9. Schleiermacher repeats this idea in later writings (see Werke, III, v. 2, pp. 357ff., 446ff.) and it became a cardinal tenet of his, in contrast to Kant, that the good and not the moral law is the controlling concept in moral philosophy. The idea may originally have been suggested to him by the work he did as a pupil of Eberhard’s, translating portions of Aristotle Ethics (see p. xix above). ↩

6. Dilthey, Appendix, p. 101. ↩

7. Briefe, v. 4, p. 3, and also Dilthey, Appendix, p. 4. ↩

8. See pp. xxxix-xli above for further comment on this fact. Comparison of the three is facilitated by using Schiele’s edition of the Monologen, which contains both the sermon and the earlier essay in an Appendix, pp. 147-198. ↩

9. Dilthey, Appendix, p. 50, or Schiele, p. 175. ↩

10. Dilthey, Appendix, pp. 48, 53, or Schiele, pp. 171, 179. ↩

11. Dilthey, Appendix, pp. 51-52ff., or Schiele, pp. 177ff. This idea too (cf. above p. 117 and note) suggests Aristotelean influence. ↩

12. Cf. above p. 20 and note on the same page. See also Schiele, pp. 177ff. ↩

13. Dilthey, Appendix, p. 24. ↩

14. Dilthey, Appendix, pp. 26-27. ↩

15. Dilthey, Appendix, pp. 28-46. An essay by W. Loew, Das Grundproblem der Ethik Schleiermacher’s in seiner Beziehung zu Kant’s Ethik discusses the issue between Schleiermacher and Kant on this point very thoroughly. ↩

16. See, for example, Ueberweg’s History of Philosophy. In regard to the sense of “absolute dependence,” cf. pp. 154-155. ↩

17. Werke, III, v. 4¹, p. 15. Schleiermacher’s chief studies in the history of philosophy are to be found in Werke, III, vols. 1, 2, 3, and 4¹, those in the history of Christianity in Werke I, vols. 2, 6, 7, 8, 11. See also Letters, v. 1, p. 14. ↩

18. Dilthey, Appendix, p. 64ff., and also Dilthey, pp. 147-152.. For a full text of the essay see Werke, III, v. 4¹, pp. 283-311. The essay also compares Spinoza’s philosophy with that of Leibniz, but it is significant that the real issues are felt to be those between Spinoza and Kant. Cf. p. xxxii above. ↩

19. Werke, III, v. 4¹, p. 301. ↩

20. See Dilthey, p. 151, and Dilthey, Appendix, pp. 68-69. ↩

21. See above p. 29. ↩

22. See above p. 31. Also pp. xxxviiff. ↩

23. See above pp. 28-33. ↩

24. See above p. 123. ↩

25. On Religion, p. 37. ↩

26. See below p. 137-141. ↩

27. See above p. 41. Parenthesis and dates mine. ↩

28. Cf. pp. xlviii-l. Unfortunately we are not able to trace the steps by which Schleiermacher reached these views of religious consciousness as well as we can trace the development of other ideas in his philosophy. An emphasis on the emotional, in contrast to the dogmatic, side of religion must have been present from the start in his pietistic upbringing, but whether he made this central and how he interpreted it in the period before 1796 we do not know. See pp. xviii, 117-118. ↩

29. On Religion, pp. 43, 58, 228. The foreshadowing of the Hegelian metaphysics of being in this description of religious consciousness is unmistakeable. Schleiermacher’s later thought in fact moved in the direction of such a metaphysics, with important qualifications, as we shall see below, pp. 137-141. ↩

30. See p. 30 above. The period of life referred to in this passage is that before 1793 or thereabouts. See p. xxxiiiff. ↩

31. Cf. passages of the text on pp. 16-17, with the subsequent modifications as given in the notes on pp. 104-105. Cf. also below pp. 134-142 for the later system. I now turn to describe that system without commenting further on the viewpoint of the Speeches or the Soliloquies as this has been done in the Introduction. ↩

32. Published by G. Reimer, Berlin, 1835-’64. In addition to these thirty-one, there are five volumes of letters also published by Reimer, and five volumes of Plato’s dialogues translated by Schleiermacher into German, Berlin, 1804-1810. ↩

33. Briefe, v. 4, p. 42. ↩

34. See above p. xxxix. ↩

35. See above p. liv. ↩

36. See above p. xl, 88. ↩

37. See above p. xl. ↩

38. Published in Werke, III, v. 1, pp. 1-344, and separately in the Philosophische Bibliothek, Leipzig, 1908. ↩

39. See Werke, III, v. 1, p. 3ff. ↩

40. Werke, III, v. 1, p. 246. Cf. pp. xix-xxi above with respect to this idea of “system” in Schleiermacher’s thought. It also appears at times in the “unsystematically” written Soliloquies (see, for instance, pp. 71-72). ↩

41. Werke, III, v. 1, pp. 78-92, 141. ↩

42. Werke, III, v. 1, pp. 104-106, 155ff., 208ff. ↩

43. Werke, III, v. 1, pp. 155ff., 126, 190, 196, 215-217, 174-175. ↩

44. Cf. pp. xxxi-xxxii, 116-117, 147. ↩

45. Werke, III, v. 1, pp. 33-36, 106, 110-111, 176. ↩

46. Werke, III, v. 1, pp. 113, 177-180, 225. ↩

47. This is what Alex. Schweizer did in editing Werke, III, v. 5. See his Preface. My references to Schleiermacher’s Ethik or Sittenlehre in the sequel refer to this volume. But comparison should be made with Otto Braun’s Schleiermacher’s Entwurf zu einem System der Sittenlehre, a later editing of the manuscripts dating from 1804-1816. See Braun’s Preface, p. xvi. ↩

48. Cf. above p. xx, 126. Schleiermacher lectured on “dialectic” in 1811, 1814, 1818, 1822, 1828, and 1831. L. Jonas edited the available materials in Werke, III, v. 4², and a new critical edition was made by J. Halpern, Berlin, 1903. In my account of Schleiermacher’s system I have run the lectures on “dialectic” and on “ethics” together as forming a whole. ↩

49. Werke, III, v. 4², p. 584ff. In the above section, and throughout the Dialektik, Schleiermacher is treating primarily of logical thought and of Wissen. But the most general characteristics of such thought seem to him to hold also of practical and esthetic thinking, and hence I have used the generic term. Cf. p. 142 and note. ↩

50. Werke, III, v. 4², p. 53. This theory, that in self-consciousness thought and its object are in immediate rapport, Schleiermacher shares with many of his contemporaries, notably Fichte and Schopenhauer. Unlike these two idealists, however, he does not base an idealistic metaphysics on this theory, i. e., he does not infer that in self-consciousness we discover what it means to be. See pp. 139-140 below and note. ↩

51. Schleiermacher apparently does not consider the difficulties which may be involved in the comparison of ideas themselves, difficulties which George Santayana has driven home so effectively in his Scepticism and Animal Faith. ↩

52. Cf. pp. 137-141 and Werke, III, v. 5, pp. 1166120. Even in scientific knowledge, where individualized spirituality yields for the most part to a universal reason, individuality still manifests itself. Schleiermacher gives some interesting examples derived from a comparison of the scientific terminologies and traditions of the different nations. See Werke, III, v. 4², p. 577ff. ↩

53. Werke, III, v. 4², pp. 111-146. ↩

54. See p. 135 above. ↩

55. Werke, III, v. 4², pp. 154-172. ↩

56. Werke, III, v. 5, p. 15. ↩

57. Werke, III, v. 5, p. 25, and v. 4², pp. 76ff. “Der höchste Gegensaz, unter dem uns alle andern begriffen vorschweben, ist der des dinglichen und des geistigen Seins.” For the other two universal antitheses, embraced in this highest one, see respectively Werke, III, v. 4², pp. 55ff., 111ff., and v. 5, pp. 103-116, 116-120. Another general antithesis closely related to these in Schleiermacher’s thought is that between the active and the passive, will and compulsion, the ethical and the physical. See Werke, III, v. 4², pp. 147-150, and cf. below pp. 141ff. ↩

58. Werke, III, v. 5, p. 21. “Jeder Gegensaz, also, in wiefern er in einem bestimmten Sein und Wissen gegeben ist, muss gegeben sein in der Zwiefaltigkeit des Uebergewichts hier seines einen, dort seines andern Gliedes.” ↩

59. Cf. pp. xx, 135-136. ↩

60. Werke, III, v. 4², p. 76. ↩

61. Werke, III, v. 5, p. 25. There is a very characteristic blend of scholastic and of subjective idealism in this reasoning. ↩

62. Werke, III, v. 4², pp. 147-154. Cf. Soliloquies, p. 28. This is an interesting modification of Kant’s theory that God is required to connect the rational and sensible worlds, an idea which Schleiermacher rejected from the first. See p. 117. ↩

63. Because of this consonance I have used the generic term “thought” in my account of Schleiermacher’s “dialectic” (see p. 135 and note) without drawing the distinctions between esthetic, practical, and theoretic thought which he draws in his own Einleitung (see Werke, III, v. 4², pp. 568-577). ↩

64. It has been argued that Schleiermacher’s reference to a religious sense of “absolute dependence” implies that religious feeling transcends cognitive experience, in which we discover only conditional and not absolute dependence. But Schleiermacher appears to deny this interpretation of his theory of religious emotion expressly in the second edition of the Soliloquies (see above p. 105). The sense of absolute dependence does not reveal absolute dependence. Cf. also below pp. 154, 163. ↩

65. Werke, III, v. 5, pp. 32-37. ↩

66. Werke, III, v. 5, pp. 34ff. ↩

67. Werke, III, v. 5, pp. 42ff. ↩

68. Werke, III, v. 2, pp. 397-418. Cf. also Werke, III, v. 5, pp. 38ff. ↩

69. Werke, III, v. 5, pp. 52-53. “Der Gegensaz von gut und böse fällt ausser der Sittenlehre.” ↩

70. Werke, III, v. 5, pp. 63-64. “Der Gegensaz von Freiheit und Nothwendigkeit fällt ausser der Sittenlehre.” ↩

71. Cf. pp. 133 above. A separate division of the Sittenlehre, as published, is devoted to each of these modes in the order named. Werke, III, v. 5, pp. 71-84. ↩

72. Werke, III, v. 5, p. 27, 85-87. Cf. above p. 138. ↩

73. See above p. 138. ↩

74. See above pp. 19-20, and cf. Werke, III, v. 5, pp. 88-96. ↩

75. Werke, III, v. 5, pp. 120ff. ↩

76. Werke, III, v. 5, p. 439. ↩

77. Werke, III, v. 5, p. 445. ↩

78. See above p. xxxii, 123. ↩

79. See above pp. lvi-lvii. ↩

80. In the latter portions of the Sittenlehre (Werke, III, v. 5, pp. 172-327), where Schleiermacher discusses the realms of commerce, fellowship, science, and religion in more detail, the incidence of his thought on concrete facts is still more apparent. ↩