Friedrich Schleiermacher: Between Enlightenment and Romanticism

Friedrich Schleiermacher's groundbreaking work in theology and philosophy was forged in the cultural ferment of Berlin at the convergence of the Enlightenment and Romanticism. The three sections of this book include illuminating sketches of Schleiermacher's relationship to contemporaries (Mendelssohn, Hegel and Kierkegaard), his work as public theologian (dialogue on Jewish emancipation, founding the University of Berlin) as well as the formation and impact of his two most famous books, On Religion: Speeches to its Cultured Despisers and The Christian Faith. Richard Crouter examines Schleiermacher's stance regarding the status of doctrine, Church and political authority, and the place of theology among the academic disciplines. Dedicated to the Protestant Church in the line of Calvin, Schleiermacher was equally a man of the university who brought the highest standards of rationality, linguistic sensitivity and a sense of history to bear upon religion.

Introduction

Part I. Taking the Measure of Schleiermacher:
1. Revisiting Dilthey on Schleiermacher and biography
2. Schleiermacher, Mendelssohn and Enlightenment theology: comparing On Religion (1799) and Jerusalem (1783)
3. Hegel and Schleiermacher in Berlin: a many-sided debate
4. Kierkegaard's not so hidden debt to Schleiermacher

Part II. Signposts of a Public Theologian:
5. Schleiermacher's Letters on the Occasion and the crisis of Berlin Jewry
6. A proposal for a new Berlin University
7. Schleiermacher and the theology of bourgeois society: a critique of the critics

Part III. Textual Readings and Milestones:
8. Schleiermacher's theory of language: the ubiquity of a romantic text
9. Shaping an academic discipline: the Brief Outline on the Study of Theology
10. Rhetoric and substance in the revision of The Christian Faith (1821–1822)
11. On Religion as a religious classic: hermeneutical musings after two hundred years.