No CrossRef data available.
Article contents
The Order of Nature in Pious Self-Consciousness: Schleiermacher's Apologetic Argument1
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 24 October 2008
Abstract
The aim of this paper is to explore the apologetic strategy in Schleiermacher's The Christian Faith on behalf of the conclusion that no authentic expression of Christian self-consciousness can contradict the results or presuppositions of natural science. This strategy is reconstructed in six stages. It aims to show that the very character of self-consciousness entails that authentic, developed monotheism (as opposed to ‘fetishism’) cannot contradict our consciousness of ourselves as members of an order of nature. Scientific enquiry is in some sense a prerequisite for mono-theistic piety, so there can be no clashes between monotheism and the implications of science.
- Type
- Research Article
- Information
- Copyright
- Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1996
References
2 For references to the first (1821/2) edition of The Christian Faith, I will use the abbreviation CG 1821/2 = [Der] C[hristliche] G[laube] 1821/2. The text is Friedrich, Schleiermacher, Der christliche Glaube (2 Bande), herausgegeben von Hermann Peiter (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 1984).Google Scholar For references to the second (1830) edition, the abbreviation is CG 1830 = [Der] C[hristliche] G[laube] 1830. The text is Friedrich, Schleiermacher, Der christliche Glaube (2 Bande), herausgegeben von Martin Redeker (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 1960).Google Scholar All translations from these and other texts are my own.
3 See, for example, CG 1830: 17.1 on ‘the churchly value’ of doctrinal sentences, which consists in their ‘relation to the heightened pious states themselves’.
4 For references to On Religion, the abbreviation is UdR 1799 = U[eber] d[ie] R[eligion] 1799. The text is Friedrich, Schleiermacher, Ueber die Religion: Reden an die Gebildeten unter ihren Verachtern (Stuttgart: Reclam, 1969),Google Scholar which follows the original (1799) edition by Unger in Berlin. The pagination given is that of the Unger edition.
5 Schleiermacher uses the term ‘apologetics’ to refer to that branch of Christian philosophical theology which is concerned with determining the essence of Christianity (CG 1830: 2.2). He also uses the term in its traditional and etymological sense, to refer to discourse in the defence of Christian doctrine (CG 1830: 28.3). When I speak of Schleiermacher's ‘apologetic strategy’, I am appealing to the latter sense.
6 Friedrich, Schleiermacher, Theologisch-dogmatische Abhandlungen und Gelegenheitsschriften, herausgegeben von H.-F. Traulsen (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 1990), pp. 350–1.Google Scholar On Schleiermacher's apologetic strategy, see also Heinrich, Scholz, Christentum und Wissenschaft in Schleiermachers Glaubenslehre (Leipzig: J. C. Hinrichs, 1911),Google Scholar esp. Ch. 3, ‘Die apologetische Haltung der Glaubenslehre’.
7 In some ways, ‘system of nature’ might be a better translation for ‘Naturzusammenhang’, as Schleiermacher uses this term, than ‘order of nature’. In the background, however, stands the Latin term ‘ordo naturalis’, and the etymological connection between the Latin and the English, I think, must be allowed to govern the translation of ‘Naturzusammenhang’. This is the policy followed by Mackintosh and Stewart in their translation of The Christian Faith: for ‘Naturzusammenhang’ they write ‘natural order’.
8 As Schleiermacher spells out in the essay, ‘Concerning the Difference between Natural Law and Moral Law’ (1825), the conception of a thoroughgoing determination of all events by the complete system of nature replaces for him that of a determination of events by a finite set of laws. The reason is that except in such areas as the study of motion, there will be exceptional events with respect to any law which we can formulate. It is not until we have complete knowledge of nature that we will cease to be confronted by such exceptions. Note also that Schleiermacher is a compatibilist on the problem of determinism and the freedom of the will; that is to say, he holds both the thesis that human beings are free agents and the thesis that everything in the world is subject to thoroughgoing determination. See ‘Ueber den Unterschied zwischen Naturgesetz und Sittengesetz’ (1825), in Dr. Friedrich Schleiermachers philosophische und vermischte Schriften, SW 111/2 (Berlin: G. Reimer, 1838).Google Scholar
9 For Schleiermacher, the identity of all human beings as participants in one and the same Reason is primary, their separation and individuality secondary. One human individual is distinguished from another, first, in virtue of occupying a peculiar location in space and time, and second, ‘as a peculiar modification of the Intelligence which is the same in all’ (SW 111/2: 475; see note 8 above). ‘Individual human beings are to be posited only as the original organs of Reason’ (E 1812/13: 15). ‘All thought’, he tells us, ‘is the work of the Reason which is the same in all’ (SW 111/2: 488). ‘Thus, we are led to regard the human race, not as a totality of reasonable beings in general, but as Reason living in this organization and under the conditions of this planet’ (SW 111/2: 471).
10 For an alternative description of the two stages, see the lectures on psychology, esp. SW 111/6: 460. See, furthermore, pp. 546–7, where Schleiermacher suggests that the driving principle behind both steps of expansion is ‘empathy’ [Mitgefühl]. Schleiermacher's remarks concerning the second step in this process, that of coming ‘to have’ the world as one's body, may also be related to a famous passage in On Religion, in which he describes an experience of being the soul of the world. ‘I am lying on the bosom of the endless world; in this moment, I am its soul, for I feel all its powers and its endless life as my own; in this moment, it is my body, for I permeate its muscles and its joints as my own; and its innermost nerves move according to my intention and intuitition as my own’ (UdR 1799: 74–5). In yet another passage he tells us that the expansion of self-consciousness to encompass the world is at the same time a diminution of one's sense of oneself as distinct, as an individual: ‘the sharply delineated contours of our personality expand and gradually lose themselves in the infinite’ (UdR 1799: 132). No doubt these passages are in some sense autobiographical, representing an experiential dimension to the expansion of consciousness with which Schleiermacher himself was familiar. Although I see no reason to suppose that Schleiermacher thought the having of such an experience necessary to the expansion of consciousness, he clearly took it to be at least a desirable enhancement.
11 See Friedrich, Schleiermacher, Psychologie, SW 111/6. herausgegeben von L. George (Berlin: G. Reimer, 1862), pp. 185ff.Google Scholar
12 See especially ‘Ueber den Begriff des hochsten Gutes’ (1830), SW 111/2; cf. note 8 for bibliographic information on this volume.
13 Günter, Scholz, Die Philosophie Schleiermachers (Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1984).Google Scholar
14 The abbreviation for the Ethics is E 1812/13, 1816/17 = E[thik]. The text is Friedrich, Daniel Ernst Schleiermacher, Ethik (1812/13), herausgegeben von Hans-Joachim Birkner (Hamburg: Felix Meiner, 1981).Google Scholar
15 For Schleiermacher's conception of physics as contrasted with the other ‘chief science’ [Hauptwissenschaft] ethics, see E 1816/17: 202ff. Physics, he writes, aims at ‘knowledge of the essence of nature’ [das Erkennen des Wesens der Natur].
16 It is interesting to note that insofar as the expansion of consciousness is made possible only by some form of scientific inquiry into the particular systemic character of nature, it again parallels the ethical–historical process by which human spirit appropriates nature as its own organ. Reason's ability to ‘organize’ nature presupposes its power over nature, and this in turn depends upon the knowledge of nature given in physics, the science of nature. Thus, the progressive development of physics becomes a necessary condition for the appropriation of nature as an organ. See Yorick, Spiegel, Theologie der bürgerlichen Gesellschaft: Sozialphilosophie und Glaubenslehre bei Friedrich Schleiermacher (Munchen: Chr. Kaiser, 1968), pp. 181ff.Google Scholar
17 On this version of the argument, see for example Brian, Gerrish, Continuing the Reformation (Chicago: University Press, 1993), pp. 204ff.Google Scholar
18 A systematic exposition of Schleiermacher's thought, I think, must give preference to the version of the argument detailed in this paper. The reason, again, is that monotheistic piety is an historically evolved form. What distinguishes it from fetishistic piety is that in monotheism, the conception of the world as an order of nature is present, while in fetishism it is not. This conception, therefore, cannot be ‘original’; it must be the product of some historical development. Schleiermacher thinks that the development in question is the beginning of scientific inquiry.
19 Schleiermacher himself reinforces this suggestion in his discussion of the world's ‘original perfection’: ‘We have claimed that the absolute feeling of dependence [sic] is not reduced, and does not cease, when we expand our self-consciousness to that of the entire world, since therein we represent finite being in general. This implies that all the different gradations of being are comprehended in this feeling, so that no particular determination [of being] can destroy the co-existence of God-consciousness with world-consciousness, and the arousal of the former by means of the latter’ (CG 1830: 57.1).
20 Ueli Hasler, , Beherrschte Natur: Die Anpassung der Theologie an die burgerliche Naturauffassung im 19. Jahrhundert (BernPeter Lang, 1982).Google Scholar