Friedrich Schleiermacher

We start with the ambition -- dating back to the early days of the semantic web -- of assembling a significant portion human knowledge into a contradiction-free form using semantic web technology. We argue that this would not be desirable, because there are concepts, known as essentially contested concepts, whose definitions are contentious due to deep-seated ethical disagreements. Further, we argue that the ninetenth century hermeneutical tradition has a great deal to say, both about the ambition, and about why it (...) fails. We conclude with some remarks about statistics. (shrink)

In the early Analytic Philosophy, the concept of a pseudosentence was used as a polemical device. To try and formalize a sentence without success was a means to ›debunk‹ it as a pseudosentence. The classical example is Heidegger’s dictum of the nothing which noths. But, according to Carnap, not only did Carnap not understand what Heidegger said, but also Heidegger himself must have misunderstood his own utterances! Does Carnap's diagnosis remain intact if one admits the possibility of a misunderstanding and (...) misconstrual on Carnap’s side, too? Should not Carnap's concept of formalization be substituted by that of logico-hermeneutical reconstruction in order to obviate any such infelicities? In everyday communication, we very rarely ever feel the need to undertake a significant effort to understand each other. This attitude is at odds with Friedrich Schleiermacher’s view that misunderstandings are ubiquitous and that one has to actively invest into the establishment of correct understandings. Therefore, one should ask: Are there good reasons to reject the view that we misunderstand ourselves all the time? Or: Is there any worth in the view that misunderstandings are prevalent? The answers developed in this paper are generalized so that they apply to philosophical contexts and a maxim of escalating formalization is formulated. The debate about peer disagreement is adduced as an illustration of philosophical practices that evade the maxim and thus stagnate cognitively. (shrink)

Understanding the pervasiveness of sin is central to Christian theology. The question of why humans are so sinful given an omniscient, omnipotent, and omnibenevolent God presents a challenge and a puzzle. Here, we investigate Friedrich Schleiermacher’s biocultural evolutionary account of sin. We look at empirical evidence to support it and use the cultural Price equation to provide a naturalistic model of the transmission of sin. This model can help us understand how sin can be ubiquitous and unavoidable, even though it (...) is not biologically transmitted, and even if there is no historical Fall that precipitated the tendency to sin. (shrink)

This paper explores three important criticisms of Kant's ethics by Friedrich Schleiermacher, all having to do with Kant's alleged failure to account for the value of the individual. These are: (1) Kant's formalism precludes him from specifying ends for the will, and without such ends, the moral perfection of the individual, and the genuine appreciation of the other in his or her individuality cannot become my end; (2) Kant cannot provide an adequate metaphysical grounding of the value of the individuals (...) comprising a community; (3) Kant cannot give an account of why members of a community should value the individual qua individual in relation to the community. In this paper I discuss these criticisms and their validity in detail. I show that understood properly, Kant has the resources to answer Schleiermacher's first criticism, and I show how Schleiermacher's own system sought to avoid the second and third problems. (shrink)

بحث تجربۀ دینی در میان اندیشمندان مدرن ابتدائاً با طرح احساس وابستگی مطلق از سوی شلایرماخر آغاز شد. چنان که هدف از بحث تجربۀ دینی در فلسفۀ دین تحلیلی معاصر ارائۀ برهانی تجربی برای اثبات وجود خداوند است، بسیاری از پژوهشگران انتظار داشته‌اند احساس وابستگی مطلق شلایرماخر نیز در خدمت همین هدف متافیزیکی یا هستی‌ـ‌خداشناختی بوده باشد. آیا این انتظار و تفاسیر حاصل از آن با آنچه خود شلایرماخر گفته است همخوانی دارد؟ برای روشن‌سازی این مطلب از روشی تاریخی و (...) هرمنوتیکی در این مطالعه استفاده کرده‌ایم. کاربرد روش تاریخی ما را به تأثیرپذیری شلایرماخر از کانت رهنمون می‌شود، به طوری که خواهیم دید اکثر مفاهیم مورد استفادۀ او عملاً مفاهیم کانتی هستند. کاربست روش هرمنوتیکی نیز به ما امکان می‌دهد تا احساس وابستگی مطلق را در پرتو الهیات شلایرماخر به مثابۀ یک کل و همچنین مفهوم دین نزد کانت را در نظام فلسفی کانت به مثابۀ یک کل مورد توجه قرار دهیم. در پرتو به‌کارگیری این روش‌ها، معلوم می شود که تفسیر هستی‌ـ‌خداشناختی از تجربۀ دینی نزد شلایرماخر یا همان احساس وابستگی مطلق تفسیر قابل قبولی از متن گفته‌های شلایرماخر نیست. او صرفاً توصیفی از خود‌ـ‌آگاهی ارائه کرده که به مثابۀ توصیف امکان تبدیل شدن به برهانی برای اثبات وجود خدا را ندارد. (shrink)

Nineteenth century Christian thought about self and relationality was stamped by the reception of Kant’s groundbreaking revision to the Cartesian cogito. For René Descartes (1596-1650), the self is a thinking thing (res cogitans), a simple substance retaining its unity and identity over time. For Immanuel Kant (1724-1804), on the other hand, consciousness is not a substance but an ongoing activity having a double constitution, or two moments: first, the original activity of consciousness, what Kant would call original apperception, and second, (...) the reflected self, the “I think” as object of reflection. Both are essential to the possibility of an awareness of a unified experience. Such an awareness is achieved only insofar as the self is capable of reflecting on its activity of thinking. As such, the possibility of self-consciousness, or the capacity to reflect on one’s own acts of thought is essential to the constitution of the self. This new model of the mind became the starting point to the thought of central 19th century figures such as Friedrich Schleiermacher (1768-1834), J. G. Fichte (1762-1814), Friedrich Hegel (1770-1831) and Søren Kierkegaard (1813-1855). This chapter will explore their reception of Kant’s model of self-consciousness, the controversies surrounding its development and exposition, and the advantages of this model for theological reflection. The idea of mind as essentially capable of reflection provided an account of how the self can stand in an ontologically immediate relation to God constitutive of the self, while at the same time allowing that the self’s consciousness of itself is distinct from this original moment, so that a limited or false consciousness of self is possible. As such the task of the self is to recognize (that is, to realize in and through self-consciousness) who it most truly is, both in relation to God, and in relation to self and other. (shrink)

Kosmos und Subjektivität – dieses Begriffspaar stellt sogleich einen Antagonismus vor, denn Subjektivität konstituiert sich alleine im irreduziblen Bruch mit der kosmischen Einheit. Gegen Ende des 18. Jahrhunderts kommt es zu diesem Bruch, der sich durch ein Ineinanderwirken von wissenschaftlichen, philosophischen und ästhetischen Diskursen auszeichnet. Als entscheidender Schritt dieser Entwicklung, so die These der Untersuchung, lässt sich die Frühromantik verstehen: Sie insistiert zum einen auf dem Bruch mit der tradierten Vorstellung des Kosmos und entdeckt darin die Möglichkeitsbedingung moderner Subjektivität. Zum (...) anderen hat sie die Erfahrung einer solchen Destruktion noch zur Voraussetzung ihrer eigenen Poetik. (shrink)

1. Hermeneutik und „theory of interpretation“ 2. Radikalisierungen des Verstehensproblems 3. Verstehensskepsis, Bedeutungsskepsis und Sinnkritik 4. Radikale Übersetzung 5. Das „principle of charity“ 6. Radikale Interpretation beginnt zu Hause 7. Die Rolle der Sprecherabsichten 8. Ausblick: Woran bemisst sich Verstehenserfolg?

In this paper I identify Schleiermacher as an intermediary between the two stages of the religious set forth in Concluding Unscientific Postscript. Gesturing toward categories integral to the Kierkegaardian project at large, I also argue that he occupies a pivotal role between Socratic ignorance and second immediacy. These schemata uncover answers to a dilemma that has recently been articulated: whereas Kierkegaard administers highest praise to Schleiermacher at the beginning of his pseudonymous authorship, he becomes inexplicably hostile toward him at the (...) end of his life and authorship. (shrink)

Manifold expressions of a particular critique appear throughout Søren Kierkegaard’s pseudonymous corpus: for Kierkegaard and his pseudonyms faith is categorically not a first immediacy, and it is certainly not the first immediate, the annulment of which concludes the first movement of Hegelian philosophy. Kierkegaard’s pseudonyms make it clear that he holds the Hegelian dogmaticians responsible for the promulgation of this misconception, but when Kierkegaard’s journals and papers are consulted another transgressor emerges: the renowned anti-idealist F.D.E. Schleiermacher. I address the extent (...) to which this particular indictment is justified; over-against Gerhard Schreiber, I argue that this characterization of Schleiermacher’s view of religion is indeed a de facto critique. I begin by presenting and demonstrating the ubiquity of the phenomenon at the heart of Schleiermacher’s conception of perfect God-consciousness, then proceed to apply criticisms raised by Kierkegaardian pseudonyms Judge William, Vigilius Haufniensis, Johannes Climacus, and Anti-Climacus, supplemented with concerns raised by Kierkegaard himself, in order to demonstrate that these criticisms do indeed apply to and problematize Schleiermacher’s view. (shrink)

This article explores the later Schleiermacher’s metaphysics of substance and what it entails concerning the question of transcendental freedom. I show that in espousing a metaphysics of substance, Schleiermacher also abandoned an understanding of nature as a mere mechanism, a view implying what I call a “state-state view of causation” (“SSV” for short). Adoption of the view of the self as substance was motivated by the primacy of practical and religious concerns in Schleiermacher’s later work: in Christian Faith, an analysis (...) of self-consciousness from a first person point of view grounds this understanding of the self. In fact, in Christian Faith, ontology, and thereby theology, is only possible through such a first person analysis. The development of Schleiermacher’s views over time, and the reasons accompanying this development, can be fully understood only the in the context of his engagement with the work of Spinoza, Leibniz, and Kant. In what follows I trace this development through an analysis of the philosophical problems and influences shaping Schleiermacher’s mature view, and shed light on his understanding of self-consciousness and its relation to God. My own account should also serve to correct some recent misunderstandings that have made their way into the secondary literature. (shrink)

This essay considers the concepts of survival of three nineteenth-century authors, Schleiermacher, Feuerbach and Guyau, and questions the possibility of thinking about forms of immortality of individuals within the framework of a godless religion.

This paper examines how Kant's Copernican shift in philosophy had a decisive influence on philosophical religious thought; reflection on the nature of subjectivity shaped how the question of God was approached and understood. I examine three interrelated issues at the forefront of nineteenth and twentieth-century thought on subjectivity and the problem of God. These are a) the ontological nature of subjectivity and what it reveals about the conditions of possibility of a subject's relation to the Absolute; b) interiority and subjectivity (...) with respect to the subject's relation to God, and c) the theme of the "unhappy consciousness" and how its development led to important attacks on theism. I look at these issues as they were worked out by F. Schleiermacher, G.W.F Hegel, S. Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, P. Tillich, and K. Rahner. (shrink)

How are we to understand religion? It is undeniable that religion, and religious motivations, have played a very large role in shaping world events. As such, the question of how to understand religion has become increasingly urgent. At one extreme are those who adopt a comprehensive scientific naturalism. They approach religious beliefs and practices in such a way as to reduce them to nonreligious social or psychological factors; for them religion is part of an ideology or an infantile wish projection (...) that must be outgrown. At the other extreme are many of the religious believers themselves, who take their own religion as absolute truth and take themselves to be in a privileged epistemic position to apprehend it. Both extremes are dangerous: the first because it fails to take both religion and the religious drive seriously, and so ignores an integral facet of human life; the second because it is exemplary of the dangers of religion itself, which can take absolutist and Manichean forms. When religion does take such a form, it degenerates into idolatry, for it mistakes what must always remain a finite and conditioned apprehension of the transcendent for the transcendent ground itself. Often coupled with such a mistake comes a failure to recognize the validity of other perspectives, as well as a violent exclusion of everything that is other or unfamiliar. (shrink)

This is the first full study in English of the German historicist tradition. Frederick C. Beiser surveys the major German thinkers on history from the middle of the eighteenth century until the early twentieth century, providing an introduction to each thinker and the main issues in interpreting and appraising his thought. The volume offers new interpretations of well-known philosophers such as Johann Gottfried Herder and Max Weber, and introduces others who are scarcely known at all, including J. A. Chladenius, Justus (...) Möser, Heinrich Rickert, and Emil Lask. Beyond an exploration of the historical and intellectual context of each thinker, Beiser illuminates the sources and reasons for the movement of German historicism—one of the great revolutions in modern Western thought, and the source of our historical understanding of the human world. (shrink)

This article re-examines the theoretical basis for environmental and heritage interpretation in tourist settings in the light of hermeneutic philosophy. It notes that the pioneering vision of heritage interpretation formulated by Freeman Tilden envisaged a broadly educational, ethically informed and transformative art. By contrast, current cognitive psychological attempts to reduce interpretation to the monological transmission of information, targeting universal but individuated cognitive structures, are found to be wanting. Despite growing signs of diversity, this information processing approach to interpretation remains dominant. (...) The article then presents the alternative paradigm of hermeneutics through the works of Schleiermacher, Dilthey, Heidegger and Gadamer, to provide a broader interpretation of interpretation. This not only captures the essence of Tilden’s definition but construes heritage interpretation as a more inclusive, culturally situated, critically reflexive and dialogical practice. (shrink)

The essay discusses F. Schleiermacher and Rudolf Otto on the centrality of religious experience.

This is the first chapter of my book Transformation of the Self in the Thought of Friedrich Schleiermacher. It is a look as some of Schleiermacher's early attempts to critique Kant's ethics, in particular with respect to the idea of transcendental freedom and the problem of act attribution.

This is the third chapter of my book Transformation of the self, which covers Schleiermacher's reception of Kant on the problem of personal identity.

This is the second chapter of my book Transformation of the Self. It concerns Schleiermacher's understanding of the principle of individuation, in dialogue with Kant, Jacobi, Leibniz and Spinoza.

1施莱尔玛赫 contribution to the development施莱尔玛赫for hermeneutics in the development of Historically hermeneutics In order to make a decisive turn when he made ​​the future "general hermeneutics" , hermeneutics will be applied to all text interpretation. When the traditional hermeneutics contains In order to understand, description and application,施莱尔玛赫the attention is hermeneutics as "the art of understanding." 施莱尔玛赫also introduced the interpretation of psychology, can penetrate the text by means of its author's individuality and flexibility soul. He wanted to become a systematic hermeneutics, (...) and criticism of previous hermeneutics is "the rules of the merger," and the lack of coherence. Wu Ning speaking, they deal with different issues is a combination of methods. 施莱尔玛赫hermeneutics points to avoid misunderstanding of the text. This part is up to the final discussion of施莱尔玛赫criticism of the United States. 2. Dilthey contribution to the philosophical hermeneutics of Dilthey on施莱尔玛赫In order to write the thesis, including In order to Protestant hermeneutics history, from the Reformation to the future as a second reference books. He was a learned scholar and has been on many topics regardless above. For our purposes, Dilthey is a philosopher with a passion for life, he was placed In order to humanities and social sciences and natural sciences in an established full equality of points, by the foundation on the hermeneutics In order to develop a basic methodology. But in the science competition, he was seeking "Allgemeingultigkeit", a universal validity, to do so In order to give him too much towards the foundation to the scientific methods of thought. He is still a major development of the character of philosophical hermeneutics. 3 Heidegger before and on philosophical hermeneutics, "and there is time" contribution to the development of philosophical hermeneutics is the decisive shift in Heidegger, born with the future, there are original philosopher The early works. He Freiburg Hu plugs Seoul assistant, and in the phenomenological Hu stopper Seoul In order to create a useful set up beyond the traditional methods of philosophy, but he is still too dependent on science Hu stopper Marco effectiveness. Part I: description of the evolution of the early Heidegger: "ontology - the fact of hermeneutics," the book published after the death of Heidegger was published in 1999, English translation, Heidegger in this series by the fact that the ontology of hermeneutics In order to give us a hermeneutic understanding of his meaning. In order to avoid the traditional hermeneutics of his meaning, In order to return to the ancient hope臘hermeneueinc and hermeneia idiom. He attempts to go beyond the limits of contemporary objects, through the period of return to the ancient hope臘general language idioms. Hermeneutic encounter with the interpretation of Homer's description of the mouth, publish, translate and interpret. His description of historical hermeneutics in the pull-down maps and sub ​​Lane Park after a groundbreaking Aristotle hope臘idioms in the loss of richness and decline. But the hermeneutics of Heidegger speaking the method is close to something, such as early speech hermeneutics In order to approach closer to the truth of it is understandable the former interpretation of this domain as there face life. For this last hermeneutics as the method of self-understanding, but in a letter to his students Engelbert Kerbs letter, Heidegger also emphasizes the history In order to recognize the character. Us from our understanding of historical context, our understanding of the structure is formed by shaping the concept of history and even our language. In Dilthey's hermeneutics, he also stressed that understanding the historical basis. From Dilthey to Heidegger this view. Heidegger in his speech defines hermeneutics as "the fact of participation, close, and descriptions of the same interrogation methods." Hermeneutics is the interpretation of not only understanding knowledge as a negative process, but active participation, interrogation and close. Fact of itself is interpreted, it is through understanding the questions and answers something. Heidegger back to the necessary conditions for our understanding of factors, understanding of "the former structure." He describes some part of the former, is awareness and understanding of nature, we understand something "to" something, and we understand it in a specific historical context. Further more, we expect to understand it in the presence of a sight, not a determining sexual arousal by the sight, by the basic problems of the future horizon, it is "the possibility of there," the sight, for there is a special special possible time horizon. These early works of Heidegger has been found there the possibility of meaning. We all都leadership to a new concept of the humanities. In addition, as a rational animal, as Aristotle said sub-Lane, who is of a future there may not be included, including the timing of there. People are looking to understand their own there. Instructions to Heidegger, hermeneutics offers a new concept for the person's point of view. Part II: there and time hermeneutics is first mentioned in the "there and the time," Section VII, Heidegger phenomenology has been interpreted as if it is. In order that he found "the meaning of phenomenological description as a way to rely on hermeneutics, phenomenology of this and some of the logos have hermeneuein the characteristics of this phenomenology is to use some basic meaning of the word hermeneutics, it indicates the work In order to interpret . "In the second sense, Heidegger found in hermeneutics裡are there for the meaning of this method of exposing the shield. The third meaning is the interpretation of this promising continuous manner so that its future is possible, it's future there. Section 31 of hermeneutics is important, because there is some understanding that is. Understanding the process is the center of human existence, in Section 32 entitled "interpretation and understanding," understanding the interpretation built on. Visit the world around it and understand things as this or that, always never as pure consciousness. As Heidegger said, "always had to watch as the ability to understand and interpret", in other words, there is no precedence in the interpretation of pure consciousness, there is always ask questions and interpretation of the visual field. Section 44, regardless Heidegger also true about management, in its modern form as a true statement, is always carried a deeper understanding and interpretation of the export process. But the really right is defined as the management there has been an associate of knot, so it access to basic ontology of sight. It is obvious that there's open, this hole is to guide him toward the police point of view of the artistic part of the next lecture will be discussed. This lecture primarily presents the two early works of Heidegger in which hermeneutics plays a definitive role. As background, the contributions of Schleiermacher and Dilthey are presented briefly before going into Heidegger's contribution. Ⅰ. Schleiermacher's Contribution to the Development of a Philosophical Hermeneutics Schleiermacher made a decisive turn in the history of hermeneutics when he proposed a "Universal Hermeneutics," a hermeneutics that would apply to all kinds of text interpretation. While traditional hermeneutics included moments of understanding, explication and application, Schleiermacher focused on hermeneutics as the "art of understanding . "Schleiermacher also introduced psychological interpretation whereby one tried to penetrate the individuality and soul of the author of a text. He wanted hermeneutics to be systematic, and he criticized previous hermeneutics for being only an" amalgam of rules "and lacking systematic coherence. Rather , they were methods for dealing with an array of different kinds of problems. Schleiermacher's hermeneutics was directed at avoiding misunderstanding of the text. At the end of this section Gadamer's criticisms of Schleiermacher will be discussed. Ⅱ. Dilthey's Contribution to Philosophical Hermeneutics Dilthey wrote his dissertation on Schleiermacher and included a history of Protestant hermeneutics since the Reformation as a second companion volume. He was a broadly educated professor and wrote on many topics. For our purposes, Dilthey was a life-philosopher with a passion for placing the Humanities and Social Sciences on an equal footing with the Natural Sciences by developing a basic methodology for them based on hermeneutics. But in competing with the sciences, he sought an "Allgemeingultigkeit," a universal validity, and in doing so he tended to give too much ground to the way of thinking in the sciences. Still, he is a major figure in the development of philosophical hermeneutics. Ⅲ. The Contribution of Martin Heidegger to Philosophical Hermeneutics before and in Being and Time The decisive turn in the development of a philosophical hermeneutics came in the early writings of Martin Heidegger, a radical and original philosopher. He was in Freiburg an assistant to Husserl and found in Husserl's phenomenology a useful way of overcoming traditional philosophy, but he still found Husserl too preoccupied with scientific validity. Part Ⅰ: Heidegger's Early Lectures: Ontology-the Hermeneutics of Facticity A posthumously published and translated set of Heidegger's lectures on ontology in terms of a hermeneutics of facticity gives us a sense of his understanding of hermeneutics. He bypassed the traditional sense of hermeneutics and went back to the Greek usage of hermeneuein and hermeneia. He attempted to overcome the limitations of modern objectivity by returning to the usages current in ordinary language in ancient Greece. There hermeneutics meant orally interpreting Homer, announcing, translating, and explaining. His account of the history of hermeneutics after Plato and Aristotle is a history of decline and loss of the richness found in Greek usage. But hermeneutics for Heidegger meant a means of access to something, and in these early lectures hermeneutics became an interpretive means of access to facticity, to the realm of pre-interpretive understanding as Dasein faces life. Ultimately hermeneutics became a means for the self-understanding for Dasein. But in a letter to his student, Engelbert Krebs, Heidegger also emphasizes the historical character of cognition. We understand from our situation in history, and our understanding is structured by historically shaped concepts and even our language. Dilthey, too, emphasized the historical matrix for understanding in his hermeneutics, and Heidegger took this up from Dilthey. Heidegger defined hermeneutics in the opening lines of the lectures as "the unified manner of the engaging, approaching, accessing, interrogating, and explication of facticity." Hermeneutics as interpretation is not just understanding as a passive process of cognition but an active engaging, interrogating, and accessing. Facticity itself is interpretive in that it sees what something is through question and answer. Heidegger is stepping back into the factors that precondition our understanding, the "forestructure" of understanding. This forehaving, he says, belongs to the very nature of knowing and understanding. We see something "as "something, and we see it in a specific historical situation. Furthermore, we see it in an existential horizon of expectation, a horizon haunted by uncertainty, by the" fundamental questionability of the future, that is of "possible being," of what is possible for this particular being at this particular time and place. Already in these early works Heidegger finds in the sense of what is possible being, a sense of "ontic questionability, care, restlessness, anxiety, temporality." All of this leads to a new conception of humanity. Instead of being an animal endowed with reason, as in Aristotle, a human being is a being with a possible future, a being with temporality. Humans are beings seeking to know themselves. Hermeneutics, Heidegger says, offers the standpoint for a new conception of the human being. Part Ⅱ: Being and Time The first mention of hermeneutics is in section 7 of Being and Time, where Heidegger is already interpreting phenomenology as letting what is show itself. He finds that " the meaning of phenomenological description as a method lies in interpretation. The logos of the phenomenology of Dasein has the character of hermēneúein. The phenomenology of Dasein is a hermeneutic in the original signification of the word, where it designates the work of interpreting. "In a second sense, Heidegger finds in hermeneutics a means of uncovering the meaning of being for Dasein. And the third sense is the interpretation Dasein as continually making its future possibilities, its future being. Section 31 is important to hermeneutics because there the being of Dasein is said to be understanding. Understanding is the central process of an existing human being. In section 32, titled "Understanding and Interpretation," interpretation builds on understanding. It looks around at the surrounding world and sees things as this or that, always already , never as pure perception. As Heidegger puts it, "The seeing of this sight is always already understanding and interpreting." In other words, there is no pure perception prior to interpretation; there is always the horizon of questioning and interpreting. In section 44, Heidegger argues that truth, too, in its modern forms as statements which are true, is derivative from the deeper processes of understanding and interpreting that are always already going on. But when truth is rightfully defined in connection with being, then it moves into the horizon of fundamental ontology. It is the disclosure of being. This insight is part of what leads him to his view of art, which we will discuss in the next lectur. (shrink)

No serious discussion of the forces shaping Schleiermacher could overlook the influence that Romanticism had on the formulation of his thought. Seeing the Enlightenment’s confidence in human reason as an obstacle to the effective communication of the gospel, he contrastingly understood Romanticism as an ally, for it emphasized passion over reason — imagination and inspiration over logic. The Enlightenment’s enshrinement of human reason as the autonomous source for truth had advanced naturalistic rationalism as its sole determinant. With the ascendancy of (...) this rationalism came an attendant depreciation of other avenues of knowledge, leaving no possibility for its existence outside of the empirical. This state of affairs produced a climate that had starved the soul. -/- In the Romanticists, Schleiermacher found others that shared his views: a great value placed on inward feeling and the importance of the growth of the individual. Schleiermacher’s efforts sought to gain a hearing among his contemporaries by contextualizing the Christian faith within the paradigm of Romanticism, bringing about the emergence of a movement that would embrace a subjectified view of truth. -/- This work advances the proposal that much of the thought currently associated with postmodernism finds its first cogent expression in the writings of the German theologian Friedrich Schleiermacher (1768-1834). Widely hailed as the Father of Modern Theology, his influences in the areas of thought that would eventually combine to produce postmodernism have been ignored by both Christian and non-Christian scholars. (shrink)

The first part of this paper develops an outline of the history of hermeneutics organised around the problem of the method, understood as the question of guarantee of objectivity, the central problem of XIX century hermeneutics. In this outline XX century neo-Wittgensteinian philosophers like Peter Winch and Charles Taylor, appears as establishing the legitimacy of the methodological autonomy of hermeneutically oriented approach to social studies. Second part of the paper follows Georgia Warnke suggestion that specific Gadamerian contribution is to refuse (...) objectivity and intersubjective validity as necessary requisites for interpretation to be successful. We find in an analogy with phenomenological analysis of perception of material object and in hermeneutical analysis of the function of “distance” the grounds in Gadamer´s thought that supports this interpretation. We conclude assessing whether Gadamer position implies a methodological conclusion of the kind "everything goes" and which is the role intersubjectivity has to play in Gadamerian new scenery. (shrink)

The purpose of this paper is to explore some central aspects of Schleiermacher’s hermeneutics and to suggest how they should be interpreted and assessed. My general strategy will involve pointing up rather than playing down certain inconsistencies and other problems in his position, in part simply because I believe that they are there and that exegesis therefore ought to recognize them, but also in part because reflecting on them seems to me philosophically fruitful. The interpretive and philosophical suggestions which I (...) will be offering are provisional and tentative in spirit. (shrink)

Schleiermacher rarely features in the now widespread discussion of the relevance of the German Idealist and Romantic traditions for contemporary philosophy because he has mainly been regarded as a theologian and theorist of textual interpretation. This essay shows that his most important philosophical work, the Dialectic, involves many ideas concerning truth and language which are generally regarded as belonging to what Habermas terms 'post-metaphysical thinking'. Schleiermacher's views of truth and language are contrasted with those of Habermas and Rorty, and are (...) seen as being of more than merely historical interest. His reflections on self-consciousness are shown to raise important questions for contemporary accounts of the relationship of the subject to language. (shrink)

This article deploys Whitehead's systematic metaphysics as the basis for a philosophical hermeneutics. Whiteheadian hermeneutics are then compare and contrasted with Schleiermacher's own hermeneutics.

This paper takes stock of Leibnizian influences on Schleiermacher's thought through an examination and comparison of the views of Leibniz, Kant, and Schleiermacher on predication. I analyze each thinker's foundational ontological and epistemological commitments and their implications for their understanding of predication. More specifically, I explore whether Schleiermacher's adoption of Leibiniz' theory of the complete concept and the theory of prediction it entails conflicts with his adoption of Kant's two-source theory of knowledge. I conclude that it does, and that it (...) is this clash between elements borrowed from two very different systematic thinkers that makes Schleiermacher's Dialektik the cipher that it is. (shrink)

I approach the issue of overcoming metaphysics from the double perspective called "metaphysical insideoutness." On the one hand, acknowledging the impossibility of complete overcoming of metaphysics, it opts for constant overcoming of one metaphysics with another. On the other hand, it acknowledges some ways of stepping outside metaphysics from inside. I start with the development of metaphysics from Aristotle until the 18th century and, then, interpret modern instances of overcoming metaphysics from the viewpoint of my perspective. I consider Descartes, British (...) empiricism, Kant, Husserl, Heidegger, and others, but give special emphasis to Jacques Derrida, who exemplifies this position paradigmatically by means of his grammatological metaphysics, which, yet, is so fashioned that also reaches outside metaphysics. The overcoming occurs when metaphysical contrasts create quasi-concepts , which do not belong either to inside, or outside of metaphysics, but inhabit some oscillating non-space in-between. The remaining and largest part of the dissertation applies my interpretative scheme to the thought of Friedrich Schleiermacher, who also addressed metaphysical questions in the lectures on dialectics and worked to overcome metaphysics in theology. Schleiermacher completes metaphysics in several ways: overcoming rationalist speculation with his theory of empirical speculation; overcoming Kant's metaphysics and its "gap" between theoretical and practical realms; overcoming traditional metaphysics of the opposites with his metaphysics of complementary contrasts, reaching an oscillating identity in difference in self-consciousness. Schleiermacher also overcomes metaphysics in the sense of leaving it behind, e.g., understanding dialectics as heuristic, non-metaphysical logic. But from Schleiermacher's metaphysics of contrasts, much like to Derrida, emerge elements which reach outside metaphysics. I also deal with Schleiermacher's ambiguous overcoming of metaphysics in the Glaubenslehre, where he wants to eliminate metaphysics from dogmatics---an experiential, discipline based on the datum of religious consciousness of the concrete historical community. Yet, he acknowledges the impossibility to leave metaphysics behind and allows a formal, instrumental, dialectical role to it. Schleiermacher's suspension of contrasts also applies to philosophy and dogmatics, in-between whom the other of metaphysics may emerge. (shrink)

This essay is about the significance of communication and the ineffable for the question of hermeneutics. I argue that Friedrich Schleiermacher’s hermeneutics needs to be interpreted in the context of his early religious thought and that the play between communication and what resists and withdraws from communication provides an alternative conception of the tasks of hermeneutics. Hermeneutics is not only constituted by what is said and what is left unsaid but, further, by that which is unsayable. Finally, the relation and (...) non-relation of meaning and the ineffable is articulated in its ethical import by exploring the questions of alterity, singularity and responsiveness. (shrink)

In this dissertation I offer an interpretation of Schleiermacher's hermeneutics from within the perspective of his early writings on ethics and dialectics. In contrast to the prevailing picture of Schleiermacher's hermeneutics as governed by the predominantly expressivist orientation of what he refers to as his "positive formulation" for hermeneutics in which the principal dialectic between objective, grammatical interpretation and subjective, technical or psychological interpretation is crossed by a second opposition between comparative and divinatory procedures, I argue for giving equal weight (...) to the predominantly dialogical, communicative orientation of his "negative formulation" which differentiates between a text's qualitative meaning and its quantitative meaningfulness both for its author and for its original audience ;In light of his deterministic account of agency and his communitarian ethics, I argue that Schleiermacher prizes texts not merely as repositories of cognitive insight but also and more importantly as emotive resources of inspiration and agency. His practical determinism will not allow him to presume a reader can spontaneously come to a richly meaningful and subjectively moving understanding of a given text any more than it permitted him to presume an agent to have the spontaneous power to do what she knows to be right. The attainment of either must rather depend upon what resources, both internal and external, are available to the particular individual involved at a given time and place. Thus in his hermeneutics, Schleiermacher is concerned not merely to teach the interpreter how to identify the text's objective content, but also how to gather the resources necessary to reproduce the original emotive power that had inspired its author to write it and its audience to read it and hand it down to us in the first place. It is these concerns that govern Schleiermacher's "negative" formulation. ;In a concluding chapter I show how Schleiermacher's communitarian hermeneutics compares with contemporary work on philosophy of language and theories of interpretation. I devote particular attention to a comparison with Donald Davidson's truth conditional semantics and his theory of radical interpretation. (shrink)

The founding text of modern hermeneutics. Written by the philosopher and theologian Friedrich Schleiermacher as a method for the interpretation and textual criticism of the New Testament, it develops ideas about language and the interpretation of texts that are in many respects still unsurpassed and are becoming current in the contemporary philosophy of language. Contrary to the traditional view of Schleiermacher as a theorist of empathetic interpretation, in this text he offers a view of understanding that acknowledges both the structurally (...) and historically determined aspects of language and the need to take account of the activity of the individual subject in the constitution of meaning. This volume offers the text in a new translation by Andrew Bowie, together with related writings on secular hermeneutics and on language, and an introduction that places the texts in the context of Schleiermacher's philosophy as a whole. (shrink)

After some decades of eclipse, the thought of Schleiermacher has again become the subject of an ever growing number of studies and specialized monographs. The present one deals with one of his principal yet somewhat neglected works, his Christian Ethics. After some discussion of the history of the influence and of the interpretation of the treatise, Birkner analyzes the systematic presuppositions of its teaching within the framework of Schleiermacher's entire doctrine. The author then undertakes the treatment of its major themes. (...) It is a well-written, not over-ambitious yet substantial contribution to the Schleiermacher literature.--M. J. V. (shrink)

Friedrich Schleiermacher is the father of modern philosophical hermeneutics. His Copernican Revolution in hermeneutics shifted the focus from understanding texts to the process of understanding itself. In this essay, I shall argue that Schleiermacher's valiant attempt to provide an acceptable hermeneutical theory to overcome the distance between speakers and listeners, readers and authors is unsuccessful owing to his acceptance of The Myth of the Given. The Myth of the Given is a philosophical doctrine held most notably by Cartesian and Kantian (...) thinkers. Its rests upon a particular view of langauge and the relation of language to consciousness and awareness. I will try to show that The Myth of the Given is untenable by sketching three contemporary attacks on it-those of Martin Heidegger, Jacques Derrida and Ludwig Wittgenstein. Lastly, I will suggest implications these attacks have for the future of philosophy and theology. (shrink)