Friedrich Schleiermacher’s place in the history of modern theology is well-established, but what resources does his thought offer for contemporary reflection on theology and the place of religion in contemporary society? And what new avenues exist for evaluating his work? This session considers developing trends in Schleiermacher scholarship in two important areas: discussions of his theological method, and emerging debates surrounding his political theory. Both reflect contested aspects of Schleiermacher’s thought. Within both theology and religious studies, Schleiermacher’s theological method was long viewed as centering on a conception of private and interiorized religious feeling, an interpretation more recently challenged by scholars engaging his wider philosophical and theological works. Likewise, Schleiermacher’s innovative political thought signals an area of growing interest among Anglophone and German scholars, charting a political theory that does not easily align with dominant school of modern political thought, and which is subject to widely varying interpretations.
This paper argues for a distinctive intermediary approach to understanding the relationship between Introduction and material dogmatics in Schleiermacher's seminal theological work, Der christliche Glaube, which reflects a more adequate understanding of Schleiermacher’s dogmatic method as a whole than is commonly offered in contemporary Anglophone scholarship. This paper contains two major parts. The first will survey contemporary scholarship in relation to Schleiermacher’s dogmatic method, before the second part outlines a further and distinct interpretation of Schleiermacher’s method by delineating the two “hands” or “moments” in the method and their relationship to the Introduction and the material dogmatics. The result is an understanding of Schleiermacher’s dogmatic method that highlights the importance of both the Introduction and material elements in the Glaubenslehre, identifies the distinctive levels of analysis operative in each, and describes the way each provides “warrant” for the other.
Kant's Perpetual Peace (1795) marks a significant watershed in the history of modern political thought, introducing a vision of international stability centered around the formation of states with republican constitutions that continues to influence liberal visions of politics and international law today. Fichte's The Closed Commercial State (1800) complicates Kant's vision by arguing that the international stability that Kant sought could only be achieved if states possessed an economic sovereignty corresponding to their legal sovereignty. Developing a distinct trajectory in conversation with both Kant and Fichte, Schleiermacher's own political theory strikes out in a direction that cannot be easily categorized as either simply liberal or communitarian and which offers ample resources for constructive engagement with contemporary political and theological concerns. Closer attention to Schleiermacher's political philosophy sheds new light on old debates and offers new trajectories for thinking about some of the pressing concerns of our day.
| Shelli Poe | spoe@iliff.edu | View |