Abstract

This is an excellent little book. As the title of the series to which it belongs indicates, it is intended as an account of the results of past and present research on Schleiermacher. The book opens with a brief statement of the contemporary relevance of this Romantic philosopher-theologian and of the difficulties of interpretation that his work presents. It then goes on with a detailed history of its reception, from early in the eighteenth century to the present. The history falls, roughly, into three periods. The first, which goes to the middle of the eighteenth century, is characterized by the fact that Idealism is still a living force in Europe. Schleiermacher’s work is then caught up in the general discussion between Hegelians and non-Hegelians—between those who considered his attempt at keeping faith and reason strictly separate as the product of an intellectual standpoint already superseded by history, and those others who thought instead that on the basis of Schleiermacher’s dichotomy, one could build a new and much more vital unity of tension. The second period is marked by a more historically detached attitude. Dilthey is the one who now set the tone. The life and the work of Schleiermacher are studied developmentally, and as examples of the spirit of an age. Dilthey called him the father of “Hermeneutics,” and it is precisely as a practitioner of this new discipline that in the third period he has finally acquired new relevance.