On Religion Speeches to Its Cultured Despisers edition by Friedrich Schleiermacher Religion Spirituality eBooks
Download As PDF : On Religion Speeches to Its Cultured Despisers edition by Friedrich Schleiermacher Religion Spirituality eBooks 
Tr. by John Oman, B.D. Roman numerals refer to pages in the original preface by Rudolf Otto, which has not been included in this e-text. Also; only a few spellings have been modernized or Americanized; otherwise, this e-text conforms to John Oman's original translation
On Religion Speeches to Its Cultured Despisers edition by Friedrich Schleiermacher Religion Spirituality eBooks
Schleiermacher's On Religion is a reaction to those scientifically minded folk who were carried away by the spirit of the "enlightenment" and felt that they must do away with religion. These "cultured despisers" are exactly the audience S had in mind when writing this piece. To get his point across, he demonstrates how his notion of religion has nothing to do with the empty superstitions with which religion is being charged. His argument is that whatever the despisers think is "religion" is simply a straw man that they themselves have constructed.Schleiermacher contends that true religion arises when one has an "intuition and feeling of the infinite." This is an experience that lets the individual realize that they are a part of something far greater than his or her self. This intuition would be akin to the color red realizing that it was simply just one infinitely small sliver of the rainbow. It is hard here to conclude whether this is some sort of mystical experience or if it is more logically mediated. I should note that S's lofty, romantic tone tends to blur this distinction. Whatever it may be, he goes on to state what it is not.
What religion is not are metaphysics, ethics and social power structures. These, he writes, are the true enemies that the despisers are confronting and not this "intuition." He goes as far as to write that religion is not even something that can be linguistically delineated at all. Again, this may be in reference to a religious experience, but is probably suggesting something like recognizing both the immanence of infinity and then the absurd consequences of infinity. For example, individuality gets blurred to zero when considered in an infinite group.
I mostly find this notion of intuition to be troublesome. Especially when S gets to chapter 4 and begins to explain how one person can share their intuition with others so that it acts as some primordial intuition that others will pick up on. This seems to me to be antithetical to his earlier claims about religion. If religion is outside of logic and words, why must religion be contained in logic and words? I do not think he ever sufficiently satisfies this paradox.
It is clear that he believes one day there could be no church (some day beyond all time) because everyone will have religion in them, but he makes no effort to explain how this will happen and appears content that there will always need to be mediators. In a more broad, universally human perspective, this is a troublesome conclusion.
Overall, I'm a big fan of Schleiermacher. Regardless of his own constraints, some of his passages ring out with so much beauty that it literally makes my heart beat heavily in my chest (and I'm not anywhere close to being Christian). This gets into the romantic style so deeply, it at times appears to be almost prose. Regardless if you care for S's ideas, you may at least have a good time reading them.
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On Religion Speeches to Its Cultured Despisers edition by Friedrich Schleiermacher Religion Spirituality eBooks Reviews
Friedrich Daniel Ernst Schleiermacher (1768-1834) was a German theologian, philosopher, and biblical scholar, who is often called the ‘Father of Modern Liberal Theology’; he also wrote The Christian Faith, Vol. 1,The Christian Faith, Vol. 2, and Introduction to Christian Ethics. [NOTE page numbers below refer to a 383-page hardcover edition.]
He wrote in the ‘Apologia’ of this 1799 book, “The subject I propose to discuss has been massively denigrated by the very people from whom I especially claim a hearing. You may well wonder why I should make the attempt… I must confess that I cannot readily anticipate winning your approval of my efforts---much less attain the more desirable goals of conveying my understanding and enthusiasm about the matter itself. When you stop to think about it, you realize that faith has never been everyone’s affair… But in our day especially, the self-styled life of cultured people hardly yields a glimpse of it. You no longer visit the temples of religion. Indeed, I am aware that for you it is just as passé to worship deity in the quiet sanctity of your hearts… no room is left for that eternal and holy being which, in your view, lies ‘beyond this world.’ … And I know that you have made up your minds that nothing new or sound can be said about religion anymore… And yet… what seems a divine impulsion makes it impossible to withdraw my overture inviting precisely you, the cultured detractors of religion, to hear me out.” (Pg. 39-40)
He points out, “The human soul…. sustains its existence chiefly in two contrasting drives. In expressing the one drive it strives to establish itself as an individual. In this manner the soul draws the surrounding world to itself, bringing it into its own life, absorbing it into its own being. And it does so no less to extend than to sustain itself. The other drive is the dreadful fear of being isolated from the whole. It is the longing to surrender to something greater, to absorb oneself in it, and to feel both grasped and determined by it.” (Pg. 42)
He argues, “If… you have paid attention only to these religious dogmas and opinions, you do not yet know religion itself at all, and religion is not what you are objecting to… Why don’t you look at the religious life itself? Look especially at those extraordinary moments when a person’s spirit is so caught up in the highest reaches of piety that all other activities known to you are restrained, almost supplanted by it---moments in which one’s feeling is wholly absorbed in an immediate sense of the infinite and eternal and of its fellowship with the soul… Only a person who has both observed and truly come to know men through these inner spiritual states… is in a position to discover religion once more in its external manifestations, and he will discern in them something different than you do so far… If a person does not understand how to discern that spirituality he is left with nothing but the cold dead mass in his hands, no matter how carefully he may examine it or how finely he may reduce its elements.” (Pg. 55-56)
He notes, “some wish religion to render a special service to ‘have a function’ and ‘prove itself useful.’ What humiliation! And do you think its defenders should be eager for religion to comply?” (Pg. 61) Later, he adds, “let’s look at your … ‘natural science,’ in which your ‘theoretical philosophy’ claims it must combine everything pertaining to the real world. What is its aim? I suppose it is this to know things in their distinctive essence… This aim is truly excellent… [Yet] even if you take natural science beyond the eternal laws to the supreme Lawgiver of the universe… and even if you acknowledge that nature cannot be apprehended without God---I would still contend that religion has nothing to do even with this knowledge… its essence may be perceived without incorporating this knowledge.” (Pg. 77-78) He suggests, “you will find every truly learned man devout and pious. Where you see science without religion you may be sure it is either in a sick state or has been simply taken over as it was handed down.” (Pg. 82-83)
He observes, “by what means do you have your existence on your own? Surely it is through the unity of your own self-consciousness. This identity of awareness you have first of all in your capacity for sentience… you become the contribute of sense, and whole becomes your object. This intermingling and unifying of sense and object… this prior moment of experience is what I am referring to… This moment of experience passes so swiftly that it is scarcely in time at all… For it is the first encounter of universal life with an individual… It is the holy wedlock of the universe with incarnate reason, direct, superseding all error and misunderstanding… When this happens to you, you lie, as it were, on the bosom of the infinite world. In that instant you are its soul, because you feel… all its powers and its unending life as your own… Out of such a beginning, moreover, arises every religious stirring.” (Pg. 86-87)
He notes, “what name will you give to this category … having to do with feeling?... The religious life, in my view.” (Pg. 89) He explains, “Now let’s try to put all that is relevant here into one statement. The sum total of religion, then, is to feel all that moves us in our feeling, in the supreme unity of it all, as one and the same, and to feel all that is individual and particular as mediated only through that unity—that is, to feel our being and life as a being and life in and through God.” (Pg. 94)
He argues, “religion… knows nothing of making formal deduction and connections… nothing in it can or may be explained from the rest… Everyone may have his own rules and rubrics, but these can neither add to what is essential in the manner nor detract from it. A person who is genuinely acquainted with the essence of his religion will never place any apparent explanation of its general connections above his own particular experience. No, he will not sacrifice even the tiniest bit of his religious experience to such explanations.” (Pg. 98-99)
He summarizes, “The whole religious life is composed of two elements. First, it is composed of man’s giving himself over to the universe and allowing himself to be aroused by whatever aspect of it confronts him. Second, it is composed of man’s nurturing within himself the particular feeling which constitutes his experience of that distinct encounter, taking it up into the inner unity of his life and being. The religious life it, purely and simply, the continual revival of this process.” (Pg. 105)
He points out, “How, then, can anyone contend that I have depicted a religion without God? Actually, what I have been presenting is precisely the immediate and original being of God in us through feeling…. If you regard the world as a universal whole… can you do this otherwise than in God?... If you will not agree that this is what ‘to be conscious of God’ means---or what ‘to have God’ means---then I cannot explain anything further to you in this connection. I can only say of whoever denies this that, with respect to his feeling and his way of experiencing things, he is to me godless.” (Pg. 147)
He suggests, “the aim and character of a religious life is not immortality, as so many wish and believe… It is not that immortality which is outside and beyond time---or rather after this time but still in time---but only that immortality which can already possess in this temporal life of ours. It is an aim to fulfill, a problem we shall always be seeking to solve. In the midst of finitude to become one with the infinite, and to be eternal in every instant—this is the immortality of religion.” (Pg. 156-157)
In his “Supplementary Notes to the Second Address,” he explains, “Anyone who ponders even the few words I have written… will certainly not believe me capable of holding to materialistic pantheism of any kind… he will recognize it to be a virtually inalterable requirement for the highest stage of piety that one should appropriate the conception of a personal God. On the other hand, he will acknowledge the essential inadequacy of attributing a personality to the supreme being—indeed, he will see this is hazardous unless the greatest care is taken to refine the notion. The conception of a personal God is required where it is necessary to interpret one’s immediate religious experience to oneself or others or where one’s heart is engaged in direct communication, or dialogue, with the supreme being.” (Pg. 172-173)
Later, he states, “creedal expressions are essential to true religious sociality. But if such church people really had a profound understanding of religion they would realize that creedal expressions are by nature simply signs showing that previously attained results by and large agree. They are indications of people’s return from the most personal modes of living to the common center.” (Pg. 222)
He contends, “For a saintly person everything is significant; for an authentic priest of religion anything may take on a canonical meaning. Either may present the essence of religion in any activity, therefore. Even in the ordinary circumstances of life nothing of the expression of pious sensitivity need be diminished… [If] every moment of the inner and outer structure of their life, is a priestly work of art, then a sense for what dwells within them may possibly be aroused in many others through this speechless language.” (Pg. 239)
He observes, “the multiplicity of religions is quite different from that of churches. The essential intention of a church is to be a community, Its boundaries, therefore, cannot be set according to some uniformity among religious persons, since diversity itself is part and parcel of the making of community… Religion must contain an individualizing principle within it; otherwise it would neither have existence nor be perceived. Hence we must postulate, and expect to discover, an unending quantity of definite forms in which religion reveals itself.” (Pg. 276)
He explains, “When In contemplate the extraordinary figure of a man depicted in the highly condensed accounts of Jesus’ life, what is it that holds me in awe of him? It is not the purity of his moral teaching… Is it the distinctive elements of his personality that grip me… No, because I know that in unusual circumstances every singularly eminent spirit will display the distinct traits of a great character just as he did. All these things are merely human. But the truly divine factor is the great idea Jesus came to exhibit and the marvelous clarity of that idea as realized in his soul. The general idea is that all finitude requires a higher mediation if it is to gain union with the deity.” (Pg. 314-315)
Schliermacher’s book is “must reading” for anyone wanting to understand 19th century theology, as well as for its considerable contemporary relevance to religious “seekers.”
A tough read, but a recommended read for all those who love theology. As one reviewer said, the book changed the landscape of theology. At times the theologian is somewhat confusing because he appears to be all in his own head and it is frustrating because he is no longer with us to allow you to ask the question, what ever do you mean by that Sir? I would still recommend, if not simply just for the thrill of challenging your mind to concentrate and to go into deep thought, trying to understand the author.
Blank pages and atrocious formatting throughout. Very little effort was put into the publishing of this edition. Lacks significant information regarding the publisher (city, original publication, translator...)—the whole thing its just super sketchy.
Take my word for it and just get an old copy of "On Religion" elsewhere.
This 1799 book could have been written yesterday. He nails both the fundamentalist religious fanatics and narrow scientistic materialists. I heard this book referred to throughout seminary, but am pretty sure none of the profs had actually ever read it. Too bad. Anyone saying that they are interested in modern theology or Christian ideas has to read this book. The style is sometimes difficult for the modern reader to decipher, but the effort is well worth it. Schleiermacher returns the Living God to a place of dynamic World-Presence, manifest in all situations.
Schleiermacher's On Religion is a reaction to those scientifically minded folk who were carried away by the spirit of the "enlightenment" and felt that they must do away with religion. These "cultured despisers" are exactly the audience S had in mind when writing this piece. To get his point across, he demonstrates how his notion of religion has nothing to do with the empty superstitions with which religion is being charged. His argument is that whatever the despisers think is "religion" is simply a straw man that they themselves have constructed.
Schleiermacher contends that true religion arises when one has an "intuition and feeling of the infinite." This is an experience that lets the individual realize that they are a part of something far greater than his or her self. This intuition would be akin to the color red realizing that it was simply just one infinitely small sliver of the rainbow. It is hard here to conclude whether this is some sort of mystical experience or if it is more logically mediated. I should note that S's lofty, romantic tone tends to blur this distinction. Whatever it may be, he goes on to state what it is not.
What religion is not are metaphysics, ethics and social power structures. These, he writes, are the true enemies that the despisers are confronting and not this "intuition." He goes as far as to write that religion is not even something that can be linguistically delineated at all. Again, this may be in reference to a religious experience, but is probably suggesting something like recognizing both the immanence of infinity and then the absurd consequences of infinity. For example, individuality gets blurred to zero when considered in an infinite group.
I mostly find this notion of intuition to be troublesome. Especially when S gets to chapter 4 and begins to explain how one person can share their intuition with others so that it acts as some primordial intuition that others will pick up on. This seems to me to be antithetical to his earlier claims about religion. If religion is outside of logic and words, why must religion be contained in logic and words? I do not think he ever sufficiently satisfies this paradox.
It is clear that he believes one day there could be no church (some day beyond all time) because everyone will have religion in them, but he makes no effort to explain how this will happen and appears content that there will always need to be mediators. In a more broad, universally human perspective, this is a troublesome conclusion.
Overall, I'm a big fan of Schleiermacher. Regardless of his own constraints, some of his passages ring out with so much beauty that it literally makes my heart beat heavily in my chest (and I'm not anywhere close to being Christian). This gets into the romantic style so deeply, it at times appears to be almost prose. Regardless if you care for S's ideas, you may at least have a good time reading them.
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