This essay analyses Ernst Troeltsch’s writings on Protestantism and modernity in light of recent scholarship on the category of the secular. In his historical work on the relationship of Protestantism to the rise of the modern world, the essay argues, Troeltsch was not engaged primarily in a narrative of secularization; nor does he promote what current scholars call an ideology of secularism. Instead, Troeltsch was exploring how religion changes in different cultural contexts, and was intervening in debates in his (...) own society about the political structure, cultural ethos, and future of Germany. The essay therefore cautions against the hasty projection of concepts like secularism and secularization as theorized today back onto the works of nineteenth-century thinkers such as Troeltsch. The political and cultural concerns that animate Troeltsch’s work can be better captured by a more subtle understanding of the multiple meanings of abstract categories in their own intellectual-historical contexts. (shrink)

Recent writing in social theory has seen a renewed preoccupation with questions of religion, secularization and civilizational difference. This article reappraises the work of one early twentieth-century thinker in relation to these issues: the German historical theologian and close colleague of Max Weber, Ernst Troeltsch (1865-1923). The article concentrates particularly on Troeltsch’s late writings on Europe and ‘Europeanism’. The thesis is defended that Troeltsch offers an important gloss on Weber’s famous assertion of the ‘universal significance and validity’ of occidental (...) rationalism. Troeltsch offers a thicker, more concretized reading of Weber’s statement that serves as a precursor to contemporary thinking about ‘multiple modernities’ and also as a fund of trenchant counter-responses to the claims of recent post-colonial critics about Eurocentrism in western social science. Troeltsch’s writings give us one example among many of a current of cosmopolitan reflexivity in European social thought between the wars that avoided both nationalism and chauvinism, on the one hand, and nihilism and obscurantism, on the other. (shrink)

La réception tardive de l'oeuvre de Ernst Troeltsch en France nous a privés d'une analyse du christianisme originale et féconde. Elle nuance et enrichit ce que nous savons, au travers de la réflexion wébérienne notamment, des relations de la religion chrétienne à la modernité. Contre les interprétations usuelles qui datent l'émergence de cette dernière de la Renaissance et de la Réforme, Troeltsch insiste sur la centralité des Lumières comme marquant la fin de la civilisation ecclésiastique ; c'es l'évanouissement de (...) la référence structurante à l'ordre divin qui inau­gure selon lui l'entrée dans le monde moderne. Sur la base de ce constat, il s'agit pour Troeltsch de trouver une définition du christianisme qui soit en adéquation avec les conditions de l'existence moderne. Dans son ouvrage datant de 1912, « Les doctrines sociales des Églises et groupes chrétiens », il examine les types « Église », « secte » et « mystique » pré­sents depuis les origines évangéliques, circonscrivant trois modes socio­logiques et éthiques qu'il confronte à la modernité. Aucun n'est seul adéquat. Pour durer, le christianisme devra, selon Troeltsch, renoncer à la réalisation d'un programme éthique d'essence religieuse au sein du monde et accepter le cantonnement de la foi dans l'intimité des cons­ciences, tout en s'articulant à des réalités socio-culturelles à l'échelle de tous dont les formes et les transformations internes sont toujours à repenser.The delayed reception of the work of Ernst Troeltsch in France deprived us of an analysis of an original and fertile Christianity. It nuances and enriches what we know, especially through a Weberian reflection, about the relations of the Christian religion and modernity. Against the customary interpretations that date the emergence of the latter from the Renaissance and the Reformation, Troeltsch insists on the centrality of the Enlightenment as marking the end of an ecclesiastical civilization. It is the disappearance of the structuring reference to the divine order that inaugurated, according to him, the entrance to the modern world. On the basis of this observation, Troeltsch is interested in finding a definition of Christianity that would be in harmony with the conditions of modern existence. In his work dating from 1912, "The social doctrines of the Churches and Christian groups ", he examines the categories "Church", "sect", and "mystic" that were present evangelical times, circumscribing three sociological and ethical modes, which he confronts with modernity. No single one is adequate. In order to endure, Christian­ity should, according to Troeltsch, renounce the attempt to set up an ethical program of a religious essence in the heart of the world and accept the establishment of a faith in the intimacy of consciences, all the while adapting its« to socia-cultural realities applicable to everyone, of which the forms and internal transformations are always to be re-thought. (shrink)

This book assesses the German liberal theological tradition in the early years of the twentieth century, concentrating in particular on the work of Ernst Troeltsch. It locates theology in its social and political context, and seeks to understand the period on its own terms and not through the distorting lens of the First World War.

What is it that led Ernst Troeltsch, who for a time belonged to Albrecht Ritschl’s school, to break from the professor he so admired? On the one hand, Troeltsch found fault with Ritschl’s historiography of early Lutheran theology. Where Ritschl saw Melanchthon as someone who had distorted Luther’s original reformatory insights, Troeltsch praised Melanchton for having clarified and systematized Luther’s thought. Troeltsch’s critique of Ritschl’s historiography is as closely connected to Troeltsch’s own theological program as was Ritschl’s interpretation of (...) the development of early Lutheran theology to his own theological intention. The second half of the article examines Troeltsch’s program by looking at the debate between Troeltsch and Julius Kaftan, a prominent Ritschlian in those years, on the supernatural basis of Christianity, the place and scope of metaphysics in theology, and the “absoluteness” of Christianity. (shrink)

Capítulo I. 1891-1901 -- Capítulo II. 1902-1907.

On September 12, 1949, the liberal politician Theodor Heuss, party leader of the „Freie Demokratische Partei“ (FDP), was elected by the Bundesversammlung (Federal Convention) as the first Bundespräsident, i. e. head of state, of the newly founded Bundesrepublik Deutschland. As a young man Heuss had been a close friend and political ally of Friedrich Naumann, the protestant pastor and left wing liberal politician, supported by Ernst Troeltsch. Heuss then working as a political journalist for liberal newspapers and Naumann’s weekly (...) journal Die Hilfe, was an admirer of Troeltsch, and since 1910 they often met in Heidelberg, at Villa Fallenstein, Ziegelhäuser Landstraße 17, where Max and Marianne Weber as well als the Troeltschs lived; Heuss frequently visited Max Weber’s Sunday jour fixe. When in 1915 Troeltsch became a professor at the Philosophical Faculty of Berlin University Heuss regularly kept in contact with him especially through Hans Delbrück’s „Mittwochabend“, a weekly gathering of liberal intellectuals, professors, politicians and journalists discussing political reforms and the ongoing war. Both Troeltsch and Heuss, 19 years younger, demanded the democratization of the Deutsches Reich, and after the end of the war and the revolution of 1918/19 they became members of the newly founded left wing liberal party „Deutsche Demokratische Partei“ (DDP). After Troeltsch’s sudden death on February 1st, 1923, Heuss wrote an obituary, and, together with his wife Elly Heuss-Knapp, attended the funeral service conducted by Adolf von Harnack. Heuss was a member of the „Demokratischer Klub Berlin“, founded in 1919 by liberal politicians, bankers and academics to regularly discuss the political situation of the new democratic state, the Weimar Republic. Unknown until now, seven weeks after Troeltsch’s death the „Demokratische Klub“ invited its members (the club only had male mebers!) to a memorial act for Troeltsch. On this occasion Heuss delivered a speech „Zu Ernst Troeltschs Gedächtnis“ („To the Memory of Ernst Troeltsch“) which is published here for the first time. (shrink)

This study confronts the current crisis of churches. In critical and creative conversation with the German theologian Ernst Troeltsch (1865-1923), Ulrich Schmiedel argues that churches need to be "elasticized" in order to engage the "other." Examining contested concepts of religiosity, community, and identity, Schmiedel explores how the closure of church against the sociological "other" corresponds to the closure of church against the theological "other." Taking trust as a central category, he advocates for a turn in the interpretation of Christianity-from (...) "propositional possession" to "performative project," so that the identity of Christianity is "done" rather than "described." Through explorations of classical and contemporary scholarship in philosophy, sociology, and theology, Schmiedel retrieves Troeltsch's interdisciplinary thinking for use in relation to the controversies that encircle the construction of community today. The study opens up innovative and instructive approaches to the investigation of the practices of Christianity, past and present. Eventually, church emerges as a "work in movement," continually constituted through encounters with the sociological and the theological "other.". (shrink)

Für Ernst Troeltsch ist das Verständnis der Gegenwart das Ziel der Geschichtswissenschaft. Die These dieses Artikels ist, daß Troeltsch in seiner Auslegung der Geschichte des Protestantismus die Bedeutung des protestantischen Christentums für moderne deutsche Identität feststellt. Sein Argument, daß der lutherische Idealismus den “metaphysisch-religiösen” Geist der Deutschen untermauert, basiert auf einer kulturtheoretisch geprägten Analyse nationaler Identität und wird im Kontext der Debatten des späten neunzehnten und frühen zwanzigsten Jahrhunderts über den konfessionellen Charakter der deutschen Nationalität artikuliert. Dieser Beitrag widmet (...) sich in diesem Sinne der Untersuchung politischer Implikationen der deutschen Theologie um die Wende zum zwanzigsten Jahrhundert und integriert die neuere Nationalismusforschung mit der “intellectual history” des deutschen Protestantismus. (shrink)