(1768-1834), German theologian.
Friedrich Daniel Ernst Schleiermacher was born in Breslau, Silesia (in present-day Poland) on 21 November 1768 into a family of the Reformed (Calvinist) tradition. Commonly known as the ‘‘father of modern Protestant theology,’’ he is also recognized as an original ethical thinker, an influential preacher, a pioneering figure in modern hermeneutics (interpretation theory), the first classic translator of Plato’s work into German, a cofounder of the University of Berlin, a statesman, and a leader in church and educational reform.
Schleiermacher’s early formal education took place in institutions of the Moravian Brethren (Herrnhuter), a pietistic sect whose experiential form of religious life had impressed his father when he was stationed near their community as a chaplain in the Prussian army. Although doctrinal doubts eventually resulted in his move to the University of Halle (1787-1789), Schleiermacher retained from his Moravian education a strong sense of religious life and an appreciation for the Greek and Roman classics. At Halle, Schleiermacher studied theology, the Greek classics, and philosophy, focusing especially on the works of Immanuel Kant (1724-1804).
After passing his theological exams in 1790, Schleiermacher served as a private tutor in East Prussia from 1790-1793. In 1794 he was ordained and appointed assistant pastor in Landsberg. Schleiermacher moved to Berlin in 1796 to become chaplain of the Charite hospital, and soon entered the circle of German Romantics through a friendship with their intellectual leader, the philologist and literary historian Friedrich von Schlegel (1772-1829). Schlegel and Schleiermacher shared an appreciation for Greek literature and philosophy as well as a critical attitude toward the excesses of Kant’s ethical understanding of freedom, and the two embarked on a fruitful if short-lived period of collaboration. Schleiermacher contributed to the literary journal Athenaeum published by Friedrich von Schlegel and his brother August Wilhelm from 1798 to 1800. Their mutually developed philosophical, ethical, and aesthetic views made their way into a protofeminist analysis of contemporary writings. Among Schleiermacher’s contributions to this topic were two Athenaeum pieces, ‘‘Idea for a Catechism of Reason for Noble Ladies’’ (1798) and a review of Kant’s Anthropology from a Pragmatic Point of View (1799), as well as a defense of Friedrich von Schlegel’s controversial novel Lucinde (1799), published anonymously in 1800.
At the encouragement of his Berlin friends, Schleiermacher produced On Religion: Speeches to Its Cultured Despisers (1799; rev. ed. 1806, 1821). In this work, which brought him national fame at age thirty, Schleiermacher defended religion against Enlightenment critics who rendered it a dispensable servant of ethics or natural philosophy, and he defined the religious self-consciousness in such a way that his friends could recognize their own affinity for religion as a ‘‘sense and taste for the infinite’’ in and through the finite. In 1800, he published Monologen (Soliloquies), which, as an ethical counterpart to his Speeches, opposed a Kantian universalistic ethics with a view of true human freedom as the development of unique individuality in community with other unique selves.
In 1802 Schleiermacher left Berlin to serve as court-preacher in Stolpe. Here he continued his ethical reflection with the publication of Outlines of a Critique of Previous Ethical Theory (1803). He also published his first of many volumes of Plato translations, part of a larger project initially undertaken with Friedrich von Schlegel but completed alone between 1804 and 1828. Accepting a call from the crown in 1804 to become professor of theology and university chaplain in Halle, Schleier-macher began lecturing on dogmatics, ethics, and the New Testament, subjects that he would continue to teach throughout his career. Also at Halle, he gave the first of many lectures on hermeneutics and published Christmas Eve: A Dialogue (1806), a literary piece offering significant insight into the development of his theology and religious ethics.
In 1806 Napoleon’s troops occupied Halle, and the university was closed. Schleiermacher returned to Berlin in 1807 and, with a new political consciousness, worked both from the pulpit and as a statesman to encourage Prussian resistance. Holding a post in the Department of the Interior from 1808 to 1814, he helped restructure Prussian public education and to establish the new University of Berlin. In 1809 he married the widow Hen-riette von Willich, finally starting the family life that was so much a part of his ethical theory even as it broadened to include active participation in public spheres. In 1809 he became pastor of Trinity Church in Berlin, and in 1810 professor of theology at the University of Berlin, positions he would hold the rest of his life. He preached nearly every Sunday until his death, and taught an impressive array of subjects, not only in religion, hermeneutics, and ethics, but in aesthetics, dialectics, psychology, pedagogy, and history of philosophy. His major publications during this period were the Brief Outline of the Study of Theology (1811), and The Christian Faith (1821-1822; rev. ed. 1831), a systematic interpretation of Christian dogmatics considered to be one of the great masterpieces of Protestant theology.
Schleiermacher’s death in Februrary 1834 brought about a massive outpouring of grief in Berlin, as evidenced by reports of between twenty and thirty thousand people attending his funeral procession, among them the Prussian king Frederick William III (r. 1797-1840). His influence was eclipsed momentarily between 1925 and 1955 with attacks on the cultural accommodation of religion by neoorthodox theologians such as Karl Barth (1886-1968) and Emil Brunner (1889-1966). With the waning of this movement, and with the availability of more of his unpublished or out-ofprint writings and lecture notes in the new critical editions of his work (first volumes published in 1984), Schleiermacher’s innovative views, especially on religion, ethics, hermeneutics, and translation theory, have received renewed attention and appreciation.
See also Berlin; Protestantism; Romanticism; Schlegel, August Wilhelm von.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Blackwell, Albert L. Schleiermacher’s Early Philosophy of Life: Determinism, Freedom, and Phantasy. Chico, Calif., 1981.
Brandt, James M. All Things New: Reform of Church and Society in Schleiermacher’s Christian Ethics. Louisville, Ky., 2001.
Guenther-Gleason, Patricia E. On Schleiermacher and Gender Politics. Harrisburg, Pa., 1997.
Niebuhr, Richard R. Schleiermacher on Christ and Religion. New York, 1964.
Redeker, Martin. Schleiermacher: Life and Thought. Translated by John Wallhausser. Philadelphia, 1973.
Richardson, Ruth Drucilla. The Role of Women in the Life and Thought of the Early Schleiermacher (1768-1806): An Historical Overview. New York, 1991.
Patricia E. Guenther-Gleason
World History
