Friedrich Schleiermacher

Friedrich Schleiermacher (b. 1768–d. 1834) was a German philosopher and Protestant theologian. His magnum opus in systematic theology, The Christian Faith (1822, 1830–1831), ranks alongside the work of Augustine, Aquinas, Luther, and Calvin in its caliber and importance. He is particularly significant for having re-envisioned the method of systematic theology given the groundbreaking work of Immanuel Kant, who had argued that theoretical knowledge of the supersensible is impossible, and thereby challenged all speculative metaphysics. For Schleiermacher, the self’s relation to the God is given at the ground of self-consciousness, in the feeling of absolute dependence, and all dogmatic assertions must be referred to the experience of the believer—that is, the Christian religious affections. Influenced by Romanticism and its reception of Kant, his book On Religion (1799) is one of the most significant in philosophy of religion in the German philosophical tradition. The importance of his thought on Continental philosophy has been significantly underestimated in the English-speaking world, as he had a profound impact on existentialist thinkers such as Heidegger and Kierkegaard. Also a clergyman well-known for his powerful sermons, he advocated the union of the Lutheran and Reformed denominations of the Old Prussian Union. A polymath, he also made groundbreaking contributions to hermeneutics, dialectic, ethical theory, and the translation of Plato. He contributed greatly to the founding of the University of Berlin, where he was professor and four-time dean of the theological faculty between 1810 and 1834, and was a member of the Berlin Academy of Sciences.