On Religion: Speeches to Its Cultured Despisers

On Religion: Speeches to its Cultured Despisers

Friedrich Schleiermacher, a Protestant theologian, philosopher, and educator, who wrote On Religion: Speeches to its Cultured Despisers (1799), ventured into Christian dogmatics in a non-conventional yet avant-garde manner. His new approach to critically analyzing religion signaled the beginning of the era of Protestant Liberal Theology whilst simultaneously placing his book among the “classic” substantive works that speaks to “religion and Christian faith” (Schleiermacher vii).

Schleiermacher, sometimes called the “father of modern theology,” believes shreds of faith are present in knowing (doctrine) and doing (ethical action), but it is most fully encapsulated by a kind of “feeling” or intuition, the “feeling (consciousness) of absolute dependence.”

Faith belongs to two levels: the foremost, which is the “immediate” self-consciousness and the second, which is the “sensible” self-consciousness (Schleiermacher 36). The latter refers to the self in relation to the world. The ‘world’ consists of nature and society. Therefore, the two levels are inexorably linked.

He proposed to the “cultural despisers” of religion that when they rejected traditional dogmas, they were not in essence rejecting the faith upon which it was founded. They despise dogma and its application in the societal realm which parallels to one’s distaste for the shell and not the peanut within; they are fixed upon its trappings. The same principle pertains to defenders of religion since they do not defend religion either; it is a mere buttress for morals and social institutions. To truly ascertain religion, one must close his/her eyes to false appearances and associations ingrained by history and society, and delve into the self-interior of one’s pious soul.

Every human being is or has the potential to be to be a devout soul. The difficulty arises in the process of self-dissection or introspection. When one exhumes the “feeling” for the unity underlying the interconnectedness of all finite things, one experiences faith. [Schleiermacher uses faith, piety, and religion interchangeably.] Religion is the contemplation of the pious; it is about having life and knowing it a certain way.

Religion, at its core, is not “the intellect” (i.e. objective knowledge) or “the will” (subjective knowledge). Objective knowledge refers to reason and one’s perception of the world whereas subjective knowledge is that which pours forth from experience and personal idiosyncrasy. As an infant the boundary between subject and object melts away; the synthesis of the two is “feeling.” This is the raw experience of existence that cannot be completely articulated because it would then belong to “the intellect.” Religion, properly understood, is intrinsic to all human persons; it is the highest expression of self-consciousness and at its best is also God-consciousness.

Humanity should always look at religion through the scope of the original “feeling” because that is the beginning of all religions. After the original “feeling,” there was a decay of religion. A preoccupation with worldly things fragments one’s life and disrupts one’s “immediate” consciousness (Schleiermacher 246). Redemption reorients one’s life, putting one in good relations with God. The “feeling of absolute dependence” is the actual experience of God and to be conscious of this immediate self-consciousness is to be conscious of being in relation to God. Schleiermacher reveres individuality and sees religion as the manifestation of self oneness. He spoke of God in the context of human experience. Since man is subject to sin and immersion in finite trappings, his God-consciousness is interrupted which means his sense of the “infinite” is obscured. Christ was an example of steady, unbroken God-consciousness.

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