Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-lnqnp Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-26T04:32:58.089Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

The Early Philosophical Roots of Schleiermacher's Notion of Gefühl, 1788–1794*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  10 June 2011

Julia A. Lamm
Julia A. Lamm
Affiliation:
Georgetown University
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

No single term has been so misunderstood or so debated in the history of Schleiermacher interpretation as Gefühl (“feeling”). The intensity of the controversy surrounding this term is testimony to the critical role it plays in Schleiermacher's entire theological program. Indeed, as evident in his magnum opus The Christian Faith (1830/1831), where Gefühl attains its final formulation as “the feeling of absolute dependence” (das schlechthinnige Abhängigkeitsgefühl), few other terms play as important a role in his account of religious experience and his doctrine of God. Not only is Schleiermacher's theological system at stake, but also the foundations of modern theology itself. Ludwig Feuerbach's assessment of the consequences of emphasizing Gefühl was unequivocal; most critics of Schleiermacher, Karl Barth foremost among them, have followed Feuerbach's pattern of interpretation:

If, for example, feeling is the essential organ of religion, the nature of God is nothing else than an expression of the nature of feeling.…

But the object of religious feeling is become a matter of indifference, only because when once feeling has been pronounced to be the subjective essence of religion, it in fact is also the objective essence of religion,…feeling is pronounced to be religious, simply because it is feeling.

Type
Research Article
Information
Harvard Theological Review , Volume 87 , Issue 1 , January 1994 , pp. 67 - 105
Copyright
Copyright © President and Fellows of Harvard College 1994

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

1 Schleiermacher, Friedrich D. E., Der christliche Glaube nach den Grundsäen der evangelischen Kirche im Zusammenhange dargestellt (1830–31; 2 vols.; 7th ed.; ed. Redeker, Martin; Berlin: de Gruyter, 1960Google Scholar; ET: The Christian Faith [trans, and ed. Mackintosh, H. R. and Stewart, J. S.; Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1928])Google Scholar.

2 Feuerbach, Ludwig, The Essence of Christianity (1841; trans. George Eliot; New York: Harper & Row, 1957) 9–10Google Scholar. In addition to Karl Barth's “Introduction” to Feuerbach in this edition (pp. xix-xxx), see Barth, Karl, The Theology of Schleiermacher (ed. Dietrich Ritschl; trans. Bromiley, Geoffrey W.; Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1982) 212–21Google Scholar.

3 For literature regarding Schleiermacher's “subjectivism,” see Delbrück, Ferdinand, Erörungen einiger Hauptstücke in Dr. Friedrich Schleiermachers christlicher Glaubenslehre (Bonn: Marcus, 1827)Google Scholar; Brunner, Emil, Die Mystik und das Wort: Der Gegensatz zwischen moderner Religionsauffassung und christlichem Glauben dargestellt an der Theologie Schleiermachers (Tübingen: Mohr/Siebeck, 1924)Google Scholar; cited and responded to in Gerrish, B. A., “Continuity and Change: Schleiermacher on the Task of Theology,” in idem, Tradition in the Modern World: Reformed Theology in the Nineteenth Century (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1978) 13–48Google Scholar; Barth, The Theology of Schleiermacher, 184–243; Flückiger, Felix, Philosophie und Theologie bei Schleiermacher (Zollikon-Zürich: Evangelischer Verlag, 1947) 36Google Scholar; Harvey, Van A., “A Word in Defense of Schleiermacher's Method,” JR 42 (1962) 161Google Scholar; Williams, Robert, “Schleiermacher and Feuerbach on the Intentionality of Religious Consciousness,” JR 53 (1973) 424–55Google Scholar; Lindbeck, George A., The Nature of Doctrine: Religion and Theology in a Postliberal Age (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1984)Google Scholar; reviewed by Gerrish, B. A., “The Nature of Doctrine,” JR 68 (1988) 87–92Google Scholar.

4 Tillich, Paul, Perspectives on Nineteenth and Twentieth Century Protestant Theology (ed. Braaten, Carl E.; New York: Harper & Row, 1967) 96Google Scholar. Tillich continued, “But ‘feeling’ in Schleiermacher should not really be understood as subjective emotion. Rather, it is the impact of the universe upon us in the depths of our being which transcends subject and object. … Therefore, instead of speaking of feeling, he could also speak of intuition of the universe, and this intuition he could describe as divination.”

5 In the first edition of Der christliche Glaube (1821/22), the term “feeling of dependence” was not applied consistently and thus was subject to severe criticism by Delbriick and others. For that reason, Schleiermacher, as he undertook revisions, chose to modify this phrase with the adjective “absolute.” He explained (The Christian Faith, 12 [note to paragraph 4]) in a note to the second edition, “For the word schlechthinnig [“absolute”], which occurs frequently in the following exposition, I am indebted to Professor Delbriick. I was unwilling to venture upon its use, and I am not aware that it has occurred anywhere else. But now that he has given it me, I find it very convenient to follow his lead in using it.”

6 See, for example, Brandt, Richard B., The Philosophy of Schleiermacher: The Development of His Theory of Scientific and Religious Knowledge (New York: Greenwood, 1968)Google Scholar; Graf, Friedrich Wilhelm, “Ursprünglicheshes Gefühl unmittelbarer Koinzidenz des Differenten: Zur Modifikation des Religionsbegriffs in den verschiedenen Auflagen von Schleiermachers ‘Reden über die Religion,’” ZThK 75 (1978) 147–86Google Scholar; Süskind, Hermann, Der Einfluββ Schellings auf die Entwicklung von Schleiermachers System (1909; reprinted Tübingen: Mohr, 1983)Google Scholar; Tice, Terrence N., “Schleiermacher's Conception of Religion: 1799–1831,” Archivo di Filosofia 52 (1984) 333–56Google Scholar.

7 For an English translation of the first edition (1799), see Schleiermacher, Friedrich, On Religion: Speeches to its Cultured Despisers (trans. Crouter, Richard E.; Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988)Google Scholar; for an English translation of the third edition (1821), see idem, On Religion: Speeches to Its Cultured Despisers (trans. Oman, John; New York: Harper & Row, 1958)Google Scholar.

8 For instance, Graf (“Ursprüngliches Gefühl”) sees Schleiermacher's rejection of Fichte as the main cause of his preference for Gefühl over Anschauung; Süskind (Der Einfluββ Schellings) attributes this shift in terminology to Schleiermacher's desire to distance himself from Schelling; Tice (“Schleiermacher's Conception of Religion”) recognizes both Fichte and Schelling as being influential in Schleiermacher's need to distinguish Gefühl and Anschauung. Richardson, Ruth Drucilla(The Role of Women in the Life and Thought of the Early Schleiermacher (1768–1806): An Historical Overview [Schleiermacher: Studies-and-Translations 7; Lewiston: Meilen, 1991])Google Scholar sheds new light on the relation between Gefühl and Anschauung by examining how each becomes specific to gender when the topic is the relation between men and women. For example, referring to Schleiermacher's, Brouillon zur Ethik (1805/6; ed. Birkner, Hans-Joachim [Hamburg: Meiner, 1981])Google Scholar, she argues that “when Schleiermacher tries to find two words that will best summarize the differing Geschlechtscharaktere [characteristics of sex] of women and men, he describes women as ‘Gefü’ and men as ‘Anschauung’” (p. 170; compare 123–24). For more on Schleiermacher's view of women and the feminine, see Nicol, Iain G., ed., Schleiermacher and Feminism: Sources, Evaluation, and Responses (Schleiermacher: Studies-and-Translations 12; Lewiston: Meilen, 1992)Google Scholar. For the role of Gefühl in Schleiermacher's hermeneutics, especially as it relates to his understanding of the feminine, see Ellison, Julie, Delicate Subjects: Romanticism, Gender, and the Ethics of Understanding (Ithaca/London: Cornell University Press, 1990)Google Scholar.

9 This is due partly to the fact that until the publication of the new critical edition in 1984, most of Schleiermacher's early works were not available in their entirety even in German. To date, only two essays have been translated into English: On Freedom (1790/92) (trans. Albert L. Blackwell; Schleiermacher: Studies-and-Translations 9; Lewiston: Edwin Meilen, 1992) and On the Highest Good (1789) (trans. H. Victor Froese; Schleiermacher: Studies-and-Translations 10; Lewiston: Meilen, 1992). For the German original, see Über das höchste Gut and Über die Freiheit, in Friedrich Daniel Ernst Schleiermacher Kritische Gesamtausgabe, Part 1: Schriften und Entwürfe, vol. 1: Jugendschriften 1787–1796 (ed. Meckenstock, Günter; Berlin: de Gruyter, 1984) 81–125 and 217–356 respectivelyGoogle Scholar. Die Kritische Gesamtausgabe [KGA] der Schriften, des Nachlasses und des Briefwechsels Schleiermachers, a critical edition of Schleiermacher's work, is still being published by de Gruyter in Berlin.

10 It is another question entirely to determine the degree to which Schleiermacher's understanding of Gefühl—which is often inconsistent, especially in these early years (1789–1806)— remains constant or can be traced through his later work (1821–1831). That is indeed a crucial question, but it should not be pursued apart from a historical study of the early development, irrespective of later developments. I therefore disagree with Graf (“Ursprüngliches Gefühl,” 147, 150) who claims that the meaning of Gefühl in Schleiermacher's earlier work—that is, the first two editions of the Reden)—should only be considered if relevant to the meaning of Gefühl in later works.

11 Schleiermacher, Friedrich, Anmerkungen zu Aristoteles: Nikomachische Ethik 8–9 (1788), in KGA 1/1. 5, 7, 10Google Scholar. See also Aristotle Nicomachean Ethics (trans. Rackham, H.; Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1947)Google Scholar.

12 Schleiermacher, Anmerkungen zu Aristoteles, 6.

13 See ibid.

14 Ibid., 4.

15 Kant, Immanuel, Critique of Practical Reason (trans. Beck, Lewis White; New York: Liberal Arts Press, 1956)Google Scholar. All references to Kant's Second Critique will be to the page numbers in Beck's translation followed by page numbers to the Prussian Academy edition, vol. 5, cited as “Ak. 5.”

16 Schleiermacher, On the Highest Good, 18.

17 For a concise list of these contradictions, see H. Victor Froese, “Postscript,” in Schleiermacher, On the Highest Good, 122–23.

18 Schleiermacher described his general approach (On Freedom, 115), “How frequently modification of meaning in a word's usage produces gradual and even unnoticed alterations in ideas based upon completely different usages of that word, and how necessary therefore clear definitions of words are.”

19 suggests, Paul Guyer (“Feeling and Freedom: Kant on Aesthetics and Morality,” The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 48 [1990] 145)Google Scholar that the “gulf” between feeling and freedom is more fundamental in Kant than that between phenomena and noumena. He further argues that with Religion within the Limits of Reason Alone (1793), Kant began to acknowledge that duty is not independent of feeling. This general movement culminates in the Critique of Judgment. Guyer concludes, “In the end, perhaps, Kant wished to bridge the gulf between nature and freedom by having it both ways: the limits of theoretical cognition require a teleological and ultimately moral view of nature, and morality itself requires a teleo-logical view of nature. If so, then he has certainly gone beyond the heroic view of the Critique of Practical Reason, in which the free will simply ignores the facts of nature. He has instead suggested that we must be able to represent the unconditional dominion of freedom within as well as from outside of nature.”

20 Schleiermacher abandoned, at least, the Leibnizian and Wolffian interpretation of freedom, immorality, and God. In Benedict de Spinoza, Schleiermacher would come to find a more acceptable understanding of freedom and of God: “This is thus the true transition from Leibnizianism to Spinozism” (Schleiermacher, Spinozismus [1793/94], in idem, KGA, 1/1. 532).

21 “The highest good itself must be in a will that has its particular subjective laws of desire but that, apart from them, can still be determined by pure reason of itself alone as well. All its various maxims come into perfect harmony only by being subordinated to a single maxim, the interest of reason” (Schleiermacher, On the Highest Good, 15–16).

22 Ibid., 5.

23 Schleiermacher, Über das höchste Gut, 94; see also idem, On the Highest Good, 17.

24 Schleiermacher, Über das höchste Gut, 85.

25 Schleiermacher, On the Highest Good, 51; see idem, Über das höchste Gut, 123.

26 Schleiermacher, On the Highest Good, 35.

27 Ibid., 39. I depart from Froese's translation of Empfindungen as “sensations” for the reason that “sentiments” better captures the sense of Empfindungen in this context. Bewegungsgründe carries here the connotation of the grounds of our affections or emotions, which— because they determine our attachments and therefore our predilections—are what motivate us.

28 Schleiermacher, Über das höchste Gut, 86.

29 See Blackwell's, Albert discussion of “Freedom as Self-Cultivation” in his Schleiermacher's Early Philosophy of Life: Determinism, Freedom, and Phantasy (HTS 33; Chico, CA: Scholars Press, 1982) 161–76Google Scholar.

30 Schleiermacher, Über das höchste Gut, 123.

31 Schleiermacher, On the Highest Good, 53–54. See also Albert L. Blackwell's translation in his “Introduction” in Schleiermacher, On Freedom, ix.

32 Schleiermacher thus joined the ranks of such thinkers as F. W. J. Schelling, Johann Georg Hamann, and Johann Gottfried Herder who, reacting against Aufklärung and especially against Kant, sought a new way to explain both subjectivity and the subject's relation to nature. They did so primarily through an appeal to aesthetics as an example of a mode of awareness that is nonrepresentational and noncognitive (see Bowie, Andrew, Aesthetics and Subjectivity: From Kant to Nietzsche [Manchester/New York: Manchester University Press, 1990])Google Scholar. Kant himself would come to realize the same need in his Critique of Judgment (1790/93) (trans. Bernard, J. H.; New York: Hafner, 1951)Google Scholar.

33 According to Kant, the faculty of the imagination is the link between the faculties of intuition and understanding. By means of the imagination, “we bring the manifold of intuition on the one side, into connection with the condition of the necessary unity of pure appreciation on the other” (Critique of Pure Reason [trans. Smith, Norman Kemp; New York: St. Martin's, 1929] 146Google Scholar, see also 127, 132–33, 258).

34 Schleiermacher, Friedrich, Notizen zu Kant: Kritik der praktischen Vernunft (1789), in KGA 1/1. 129Google Scholar. Immanuel Kant stated (“Preface,” in idem, Critique of Practical Reason, 4; Ak. 5, 4): “Freedom, however, among all the ideas of speculative reasons is the only one whose possibility we know a priori. We do not understand it, but we know it as the condition of the moral law which we do know.”

35 What follows is a cursory summary of Kant's position in the Critique of Practical Reason (pp. 74–79; Ak. 5, 71–76) and Schleiermacher's interpretation. For a more detailed exposition of this essay, see Meckenstock, Günter, Deterministische Ethik und kritische Theologie: Die Auseinandersetzung des frühen Schleiermacher mit Kant und Spinoza, 1789–1794 (Berlin/New York: de Gruyter, 1988) 35–42CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

36 Kant, Critique of Practical Reason, 78; Ak. 5, 75.

37 Zammito, John H. argues (The Genesis of Kant's Critique of Judgment [Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992] 238–39)Google Scholar that Kant uses the term Gefühl for the first time in a 1786 article in such a way that anticipates the Third Critique and departs significantly from the transcendental faculties and transcendental deductions of the First Critique. Zammito quotes Kant, “Reason does not feel; it recognizes its shortcoming and incites via the drive for knowledge the feeling of a need” (see Immanuel Kant, “Was heiβt: sich im Denken orientieren?” [Ak. 8, 139n]). Zammito continues, stating that Kant compared this to ”his notion of the ‘moral feeling’ in the crucial sense that the feeling is the consequence, not the instigator, of reason. We find ourselves in the innermost reaches of Kantian phenomenology of subjective consciousness: the relation among the subjective faculties. Reason engenders a feeling, but it does so for reasons of its own: that is why Bedürfnis [“requirement”] must not be read too literally as itself a feeling or need. Reason has an immanent, transcendentally prior propensity to systematicity, to totality, to logical closure. This immanent principle regulates the entire function of the mind—feeling, understanding, and reason itself. It is this which makes knowledge a ‘drive.’ It is this which spurs imagination to visions of coherence in the world and in the self. The connection of this relentless law of reason with the proceedings of the other faculties, I submit, forms the systematic foundation for Kant's Third Critique.”

38 Schleiermacher, Notizen zu Kant, 132.

39 Ibid., 133.

40 In a series of quick observations regarding Kant's notion of moral feeling, Schleiermacher noted (Notizen zu Kant, 134) that “it is no feeling for the law (à la Hutcheson).”

41 Blackwell argues (“Introduction,” in Schleiermacher, On Freedom, xii; see also Blackwell, Schleiermacher's Early Philosophy of Life, 55) that very little can be gathered from this oblique reference. While indeed no conclusions can be drawn, there is enough evidence at the very least to take note of certain parallels in thought. First, many Germans, including Eberhard, were familiar with British moral thought. Second, we do know that by 1803 and his Critique of Previous Ethics Schleiermacher had acquired a working knowledge of Hutcheson, as well as of other British moral philosophers. By this time, Schleiermacher was clearer in his categorizing of ethical theories. He placed Hutcheson in the same eudaemonistic-feeling tradition as Aristotle; he identified Kant as representing the deontological-rationalist tradition; he understood himself, along with Plato and Spinoza, to be part of the tradition of Bildung [“formation”], which Wallhausser describes as “a mediating tradition of a formative, creative ethics in which nature is in-formed and transformed by reason” (Wallhausser, John, “Schleiermacher's Critique of Ethical Reason,” JRE 17 [1989] 28)Google Scholar.

42 See Jensen, Henning, Motivation and the Moral Sense in Francis Hutcheson's Ethical Theory (Hague: Nijhoff, 1971) 9, 24CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

43 See Allison, Henry E., The Kant-Eberhard Controversy (Baltimore/London: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1973) 4–6Google Scholar.

44 This interpretation differs from that of Froese (“Postscript,” in Schleiermacher, On the Highest Good, 62, 84, 105–22), who emphasizes Schleiermacher's enthusiastic dependence on Eberhard; Froese believes that this continued even after Schleiermacher left Halle.

45 Reinhold, Karl Leonhard, “Briefe über Kantische Philosophie,” Teutsche Merkur (1786–87)Google Scholar; and idem. Versuch einer neuen Theorie des menschlichen Vorstellugvermögens (Prague/Jena: Widtman & Mauke, 1789)Google Scholar.

46 Schleiermacher, Über die Freiheit, in KGA 1/1. 217–356; see also Albert L. Blackwell's English translation of On Freedom (cited in n. 9).

47 An explication of the main subject matter of On Freedom—namely, Schleiermacher's early moral philosophy—will not be offered here but will to some degree be presupposed; the focus here is rather on a subtext (Gefühl) of the main text (Freiheit). For extensive discussions of Schleiermacher's ethical determinism, see Blackwell, Schleiermacher's Early Philosophy of Life; Meckenstock, Deterministische Ethik; and the fall issue of JRE 17 (1989)Google Scholar, especially the articles by John P. Crossley, Jr. (“The Ethical Impulse in Schleiermacher's Early Ethics,” 5–24), Wallhausser (“Schleiermacher's Critique of Ethical Reason,” 25–40), and George N. Boyd (“Schleiermacher's ‘Über den Unterschied zwischen Naturgesetz und Sittengesetz,’” 41–50).

48 As Blackwell states (Schleiermacher's Early Philosophy of Life, 44), “Schleiermacher's course is different [than Reinhold's]. Unlike Kant and Reinhold, Schleiermacher never speaks of the influence of reason on the will as being ‘direct.’ The influence of reason upon our intentions is by means of incentives, and the incentives of reason, like all other incentives, involve our feelings.” I would take this one step further and say not our feelings (sentiments), but feeling.

49 See, for example, the correspondence between Schleiermacher and his friend Carl Gustav von Brinckmann during 1789, in KGA 5/1. Eberhard, Schleiermacher's professor at Halle and perhaps the fiercest critic of Reinhold's philosophy, published scathing reviews of Reinhold's work in his Philosophisches Magazin (1788–1792). Until fairly recently, Reinhold has received very little attention in secondary literature in English. See Beiser, Frederick C., “Reinhold's Elementarphilosophie,” in idem, The Fate of Reason: German Philosophy from Kant to Fichte (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1987) 226–65Google Scholar; Wellek, Rene, “Between Kant and Fichte: Karl Leonhard Reinhold,” JHI 45 (1984) 323–27CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Eberhard has fared even less well in the secondary literature in English. See Allison, The Kant-Eberhard Controversy.

50 Friedrich Schleiermacher to C. G. v. Brinckmann, 9 December 1789, Brief 128, KGA 5/1. 176.

51 See above n. 45.

52 According to Beiser (The Fate of Reason, 241), Reinhold had two main problems with Kant's theory of representation: first, “Kant fails to deduce the categories from a single principle”; and second, “the critical philosophy is not truly systematic simply because it is not sufficiently comprehensive… [because] it fails to consider the concept of representation as such.” I am indebted to Beiser's discussion of Reinhold's critique of Kant.

53 Karl Leonhard Reinhold, “Grundlinien der Theorie des Begehrungsvermögens,” in idem, Versuch einer neuen Theorie, 560–79.

54 Beiser, The Fate of Reason, 263–64.

55 Schleiermacher, On Freedom, 7–8.

56 Meckenstock (Deterministische Ethik, 56–57) makes the same point.

57 Schleiermacher, On Freedom, 6, 5.

58 The fundamental difference between Reinhold and Schleiermacher needs to be made as clear as possible; indeed, any discussion of the relation between Fichte and Schleiermacher needs to begin in this earlier relation. Fichte pursued the specifics of Reinhold's project, so much so that, according to Beiser (The Fate of Reason, 365–67 n. 38), in 1797 Reinhold declared himself a Fichtean. See also Klemmt, Alfred, Karl Leonhard Reinholds Elementarphilosophie: Eine Studie über den Ursprung des spekulativen deutschen Idealismus (Hamburg: n.p., 1958)Google Scholar; Breazeale, Daniel, “Introduction,” in idem, trans, and ed., Fichle: Foundations of Transcendental Philosophy (1796/99) (Ithaca/London: Cornell University Press, 1992) 1–13, 24Google Scholar. In contrast, Schleiermacher took his cue not from the specifics of Reinhold's Elementarphilosophie but from the idea of turning to the faculty of desire as something more basic and to return to the epistemological underpinnings of Kant's First Critique. Moreover, unlike Reinhold and Fichte, Schleiermacher had no interest in constructing a philosophical system based on first principles; indeed, he was deeply suspicious of (although admittedly intrigued by) what he considered to be the arrogance of systematizers. He wrote, “But since on account of the infinite multitude of possible maxims… all attempts at such a system are incomplete” (Schleiermacher, On Freedom, 12; see also Friedrich Schleiermacher to his father, 23 December 1789, Brief 131, KGA 5/1. 182–86). At this point, his interest remained concrete and practical; nevertheless, the very need to examine practical reason forced him to seek a firmer foundation and a broader philosophical anthropology on which to ground his ethics.

59 See Schleiermacher, On Freedom, 6–7; see also Kant, Critique of Practical Reason, 9n; Ak. 5, 9.

60 Schleiermacher, On Freedom, 7.

61 “Here, finally, is an intermediate space between the appearance of the object in the heart and mind and the action of desire. The object appears and the faculty of desire craves” (ibid., 10).

62 Ibid., 45.

63 Ibid., 8.

64 Ibid., 52.

65 Ibid., 18.

66 Ibid., 8.

67 “Whenever our faculty of desire is affected from without, we are conscious that this is not yet sufficient to determine it, and every determination of impulse appears to us within the realm between craving and desiring as an option” (ibid., 11).

68 Ibid., 9. The phrase “heart and mind” appears as a refrain throughout the essay (see, for example, pp. 10, 19, 48 n. 89). The moral object of an impulse is primarily “internal” (p. 22). Schleiermacher referred to “two kinds of [moral] objects… namely, such as can be represented outside our subjective being and such as can be represented within it” (p. 20).

69 Ibid., 41.

70 Ibid., 77. “Here, therefore, our feeling of self-activity and personality is greater the more we are able to see into the mutual interconnection of the various individual workings of the soul in relation to an action, and into the interconnection of an entire state with preceding states according to the rule of necessity, which is thus presupposed” (p. 81).

71 Ibid., 43. Schleiermacher would consider transcendental freedom to be an “external power.”

72 “This determination is not absolute but is relatively effected through the interrelation of several things” (ibid., 10).

73 Ibid., 25. Schleiermacher stated (p. 52) that a “morally great person, a model for a moral faculty of desire,” is one whose “state [is] brought forth by many relations and circumstances and resting upon a gradual consequent strengthening of the ethical impulse. … Happy the person who has been so led.”

74 Ibid., 8.

75 Ibid., 27.

76 Schleiermacher stated (ibid., 6), “we shall completely exclude certain questionable words from our own inquiry. As a further protection against the bad consequences of words susceptible to ambiguous meanings, we shall seek adequate initial clarification of the meaning we shall be using consistently thereafter.”

77 See ibid., 25.

78 Ibid., 86.

79 “I feel an aversion to those who live wholly under the power of sensibility, who either do not feel or despite their feeling do not avoid sensibility's most apparent contradictions with the moral law and have dismissed all striving for morality” (ibid., 52–53).

80 Schleiermacher would have served himself better had he been more explicit and consistent in making this distinction between “feelings” and “sentiments.” Sometimes, these terms are used interchangeably (see ibid., 50, 76, 66, 86), while at other times they are differentiated (see pp. 53, 76). For discussion of the moral sentiments in general, see pp. 31, 41–45, 46, 50, 52–53, 68, 76, 78, 79–80.

81 See ibid., 41–42, 79–80; see also p. 86, where he made the connection between “feelings” (by which he here means “sentiments”) and concepts. Referring to the moral sentiment of reverence, Schleiermacher remarked that it “is holy to me as an emblem of the knowledge of my vocation and of the proper image of the goal toward which I strive” (p. 52). For each moral system of concepts there is a corresponding system of sentiments. For instance, Schleiermacher devoted a good portion of his attention to the difference between the sentiments associated with accountability and those associated with necessity. He made a case for the tighter coherency of the latter (see pp. 51, 79) and argued that the former sentiments only achieve final coherency when joined with the latter sentiments (see p. 52).

82 See ibid., 53.

83 See ibid., 76.

84 Thus Schleiermacher reiterated an important distinction he had made in On the Highest Good (p. 39), namely, that sentiments are filtered and organized through feeling.

85 See Schleiermacher, On Freedom, 53, 76.

86 See ibid., 27.

87 Ibid., 81.

88 Ibid., 17.

89 Ibid., 66, 71.

90 “If a subject's will is joined with reason and reason regards itself as the will's principle, practical reason results, which by its nature strives to bring the totality of maxims into unity” (ibid., 12). On the previous page, Schleiermacher had explained how the faculty of desire may be understood as a “will.”

91 Ibid., 18. A few pages later he referred to “the feeling representing practical reason” (p. 25).

92 The chief “proposition” of Schleiermacher's ethical determinism is “the preponderance in which every comparison of choice must end in order to pass over into a complete action of the faculty of desire must in every case be grounded in the totality of present representations and in the state and interrelations of all the soul's faculties that have been produced in the progression of representations in our soul” (my emphasis; ibid., 22). The connection between what he elsewhere referred to as “present total representation” (p. 26) or “representational totality” (p. 27) and “feeling” is not made explicitly, but it does follow from the course of his whole discussion. The faculty of representation, like the faculty of desire, requires a process of unifying, comparing, and relating in order to achieve coherency; in other words, it requires “imagination” or “fantasy.” Hence, reason as much as desire is aesthetic in character and is dependent on feeling.

93 “We are clearly aware that all the soul's [faculties], even those for knowing, interrelate most intimately with the faculty of desire and that the substance of all the soul's particular activities, insofar as they involve choice, are by necessity determined through an activity of the faculty of desire” (ibid., 26). Schleiermacher also stated that “the intentional course followed by a person's cognitive powers, either overall or temporarily, is determined by nothing other than the fact that at the time the option is taken, this course could be more an object of impulse than all alternatives. Indeed, the first existential ground of all particular actions of understanding, namely the direction of imagination, is nothing other than an activity of the faculty of desire, for attention itself can be conceived as nothing other than desire for the completion of a train of representations, to the exclusion of all others at that particular time” (p. 27).

94 “Thus nothing remains here to be separated, and this grounding of the activities of the faculty of desire in the state of the faculty of representation cannot be alien to us if we consider the following points: that it always depends upon the state of our faculty of representation what variety of internal objects of impulse will arise through the association of ideas occasioned by an external object and, together with that object, simultaneously affect the faculty of desire; that it depends upon the state of our faculty of representation how in any particular case the influence of an appearing object may be modified by knowledge of that object; that it depends upon the state of our faculty of representation whether and how we formulate the maxims under which we believe the particular case to be comprehended; that it rests upon the state of our faculty of representation whether or not we take cognizance of certain external objects of impulse as such; and that it rests solely upon this same state to what extent the syllogism basing the application of law on the appropriate maxim will be formally and materially correct” (ibid., 22).

95 “We must therefore remain committed to the variabilities and the determinations of the variable in the subject, yet these in turn relate partly to the faculty of representation and partly to the faculty of desire itself. In the faculty of representation everything coheres. … The faculty of desire coheres with the faculty of representation in like fashion” (ibid., 22).

96 Schleiermacher expanded on this idea in his essays on Spinoza (1793/94), where he argued in favor of Spinoza's parallelism and offers harsh criticism of Leibniz's theory of “pre-established harmony” (see Schleiermacher, Spinozismus, 528–30; idem, Kurze Darstellung des Spinozistischen Systems, in KGA 1/1. 577–82). His theory comes closest to Spinoza's theory of parallelism, although because of Schleiermacher's more organic understanding of the relation between the human and the world and because of his development of the term Gefühl, his theory is more dynamic than Spinoza's. See Spinoza, Benedict de (Ethics, in The Chief Works of Benedict de Spinoza [2 vols.; trans. Elwes, R. H. M.; New York: Dover, 1955] 2. 86Google Scholar [part 2, proposition 7]): “The order and connection of ideas is the same as the order and connection of things.”

97 Schleiermacher, On Freedom, 131.

98 Ibid., 133. For full discussion, see pp. 131–41.

99 Ibid., 80.

100 Schleiermacher, Spinozismus, 530.

101 Schleiermacher, On Freedom, 132–33.

102 Ibid., 97.

103 Ibid.

104 Ibid., 15.

105 Paraphrasing a usual complaint made against determinists, Schleiermacher wrote (ibid., 70), “What sort of conclusions, then, will necessity not draw from those whose actions already follow other goals and who, when they rationalize principles for their behavior, are concerned only with finding excuses for themselves?”

106 Ibid., 52–53.

107 Ibid., 53.

108 Ibid., 76.

109 Ibid.

110 Blackwell entitles one of Schleiermacher's interludes “A Dialogue on the Question of God's Justice.” Here Schleiermacher wrote (ibid., 64), “The virtuous remain constant in relation to their striving, but with others a time comes when they must change their principles, their strivings and their mode of sentiment. This does not necessarily mean less happiness, however; in fact, this whole change of mind and all the new viewpoints it offers the soul are a great source of satisfaction.”

111 Schleiermacher, On Freedom, 53.

112 Referring to Eberhard, Schleiermacher wrote (ibid., 31–32), “The textbooks we ordinarily see tell us that accountability is the judgment that someone is the originator of an action's morality. This definition is quite unserviceable for us, however.”

113 Ibid., 45.

114 Ibid., 46.

115 Ibid., 45–46.

116 Ibid., 46. Elsewhere Schleiermacher referred to “instances where, from lack of skill in employing the faculty of will, we yield to first impression and follow our desire without any notable intervening alterations” (my emphasis; p. 72). This understanding of “impression” is related to his notion of the false feeling of freedom which “usually depends on the impression of only a single state, without connection to future or past” (p. 77).

117 Ibid., 46.

118 Ibid.

119 Ibid., 47 n. 89.

120 Ibid., 43–44.

121 Ibid., 67.

122 Ibid., 68, 74.

123 Ibid.

124 See ibid., 72–73.

125 Ibid., 78. The passage continues: “True, it unpleasantly affects my ethical feeling, but since all the expressions of this power together are not a path but only individual steps, this past step has no influence upon the direction of those that follow. Moreover, these reflections must almost destroy the sentiment of regret.”

126 See ibid., 79.

127 Ibid., 72; see also p. 118.

128 Ibid., 71.

129 See Blackwell's discussion of “Freedom as Appropriation” in his Schleiermacher's Early Philosophy of Life, 149–160.

130 Schleiermacher, On Freedom, 72.

131 Ibid., 71.

132 Ibid., 119, 120.

133 Ibid., 120; see Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, 412.

134 Schleiermacher, On Freedom, 122.

135 Ibid., 13.

136 “This idea of freedom is the only conceivable means for combining the effects of the two laws into a whole, since it provides a kind of passage from one of these laws to the other” (ibid., 131).

137 Ibid., 122.

138 Ibid., 120.

139 “The motion of the organ through which a person produces change in the material world is just as we perceive it: not the first free member of the series but only the final stage of the organic motions belonging to this action” (ibid., 131).

140 Blackwell, “Introduction” in Schleiermacher, On Freedom, xxx.

141 Because Schleiermacher had to rely entirely on Jacobi's presentation of Spinoza's philosophy in Über die Lehre des Spinoza in Briefen an den Herrn Moses Mendelssohn (Breslau: n.p., 1789), much of his task amounted to sorting out the authentic Spinoza from Jacobi's distorted Spinoza. The documents of the Pantheist Controversy are presented in Scholz, Heinrich, ed.. Die Hauptschriften zum Pantheismusstreit zwischen Jacobi und Mendelssohn (Berlin: Reuther & Reichard, 1916).Google Scholar A partial English translation can be found in Vallée, Gérard, ed., The Spinoza Conversations between Lessing and Jacobi (Lanham: University Press of America, 1988).Google Scholar Discussions of the controversy are found in Beck, Lewis White, Early German Philosophy: Kant and His Predecessors (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1969)Google Scholar; Beiser, The Fate of Reason; Bell, David, Spinozism in Germany from 1670 to the Age of Goethe (London: University of London, Institute of Germanic Studies, 1984)Google Scholar; Gerrish, B. A., “The Secret Religion of Germany: Christian Piety and the Pantheism Controversy,” JR 67 (1987) 437–55Google Scholar; Zammito, The Genesis of Kant's Critique of Judgment.

142 Schleiermacher, Spinozismus, 513–57; and idem, Kurze Darstellung des Spinozistischen Systems, in KGA 1/1. 563–82. All translations are my own.

143 For a more detailed analysis, see Lamm, Julia A., “Schleiermacher's Post-Kantian Spinozism: The Early Essays on Spinoza, 1793–94,” JR 74 (1994) forthcoming.Google Scholar

144 Schleiermacher, Spinozistisches System, 564; see also p. 575.

145 Schleiermacher, Spinozismus, 532.

146 Ibid., 530.

147 Schleiermacher, Spinozistisches System, 577.

148 I use the term “intellectual intuition” very cautiously here, since it is not Schleiermacher's term, nor does it carry a clear and consistent meaning in the wider philosophical world in which he was writing. See Falkenstein, Lome, “Kant's Account of Intuition,” Canadian Journal of Philosophy 21 (1991) 165–93CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Gram, Moltke S., “Intellectual Intuition: The Continuity Thesis,” JHI 42 (1981) 287–304.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

149 See Schleiermacher, Spinozismus, 537.

150 Schleiermacher elaborated on the idea of “resolution”: “So certain is it for Spinoza that… the representation does not extend to the particular action in the strongest sense of the word, yet it does extend to the resolution, insofar as it is thought of as pure judgment and embraces pain and pleasure in itself” (ibid., 528); “the resolution, insofar as it includes judgment and desire, is an effect of that which was previously thought” (p. 529); morality “loses nothing from the fact that the determination of the physical faculty proceeds from the transformation of extension (especially if their necessary coincidence is accepted), for it depends especially on the resolution, insofar as it is judgment and desire” (p. 530).

151 See ibid., 530.

152 See ibid., 520–21 and 527–28. See also Spinoza, Ethics, part 3, proposition 2, note.

153 Schleiermacher, Spinozistisches System, 579.

154 Ibid., 580.

155 “Das Bewuβtseyn, das Denkende ist das ursprüngliche Gefühl dieses Seyns” (Schleiermacher, Spinozismus, 534).

156 Schleiermacher is evidently referring to Spinoza's notion of intuition, which is a third kind of knowledge that “proceeds from an adequate idea of the absolute essence of certain attributes of God to the adequate knowledge of the essence of things” (Spinoza Ethics, part 2, proposition 40, note 2 [Elwes, The Chief Works, 2. 113])

157 See Schleiermacher, Spinozismus, 535.

158 For example, recall that in On Freedom, at the third level of moral activity, Gefühl was not so much a mode of moral discernment as it was an activity that unifies the various faculties and hence grounds subjectivity. Likewise, here in Spinozismus the term continues to denote a unifying ground of the soul, that which constitutes subjectivity.

159 See Schleiermacher, On Religion: Speeches to its Cultured Despisers, 101–3 (Crouter edition).

160 See ibid., 102–4, 109–10, 118. This close association of Gefühl and Anschauung would begin to break down with the revisions of the second edition (1806), when Anschauung becomes more an apprehension of the whole of finite existence, and Gefühl more strictly a feeling of the divine, the Infinite.

161 See Schleiermacher, Spinozistisches System, 570, 573–74.