Immediacy and mediation in Schleiermacher's Reden über die religion

Review of Metaphysics

Volumn 59, Issue 4, 2006, Pages 807-840

  Nassar, Dalia T ^a  

^a NONE   (Germany)

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References (175)

1. Wilhelm Dilthey, Leben Schleiermachers, ed. Martin Redecker (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck and Ruprecht, 1970);
2. Karl Barth, Die Protestantische Theologie im 19 Jahrhundert (Zürich: Evangelische Verlag, 1947);
3. Hans-Georg Gadamer, Wahrheit und Methode (Tübingen: Mohr, 1986).
4. For the most recent interpretation of Schleiermacher's emphasis on immediacy, see Manfred Frank, "Metaphysical Foundations: A Look at Schleiermacher's Dialectic" trans. Jacqueline Mariña and Christine Helmer, in The Cambridge Companion to Schleiermacher, ed. Jacqueline Mariña (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005), 15-34. Frank's claim that Schleiermacher is indebted to Leibniz and his teacher Eberhard-more so than he is to Kant, for example -concludes, as Frank himself observes, in a contradiction: Schleiermacher adopts Leibniz's notion of identity, which is mediated through the concept, but nevertheless emphasizes the priority of being or the object prior to self-consciousness or the subject.
5. See Frank, 31-3.
6. With regard to the first reading of Schleiermacher as remaining true to Kantian limitations, see Julia Lamm, The Living God: Schleiermacher's Theological Appropriation of Spinoza (State College: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1996).
7. See n. 44 below on my contention with Lamm's reading. As for readings of Schleiermacher as proto-Hegelian, see Michael Theunissen, "Introduction: Zehn Thesen über Schleiermacher Heute," in Schleiermacher's Philosophy and the Philosophical Tradition, ed. Sergio Sorrention (Lewiston: Edwin Meilen Press, 1992), 1-2.
8. He writes, "Schleiermacher ist, ungeachtet seines Insistierens auf Unmittelbarkeit, ebensosehr Vermittlungsdenker wie sein Antipode Hegel." Theunissen's association of Schleiermacher with Hegel may be on the right track in its suggestion of the significance of mediation in Schleiermacher; however, it is certainly inaccurate to understand Schleiermacher's notion of mediation as proto-Hegelian. Indeed, as we shall see, for Schleiermacher, mediation has nothing to do with discursivity or the creation of a system. Rather, it is a creative practice, or what I call "world creation." For Schleiermacher as a proto-pragmatist, see Jeffrey Kinlaw, "Quine, Schleiermacher, and the Case Against Analyticity: An Argument for Schleiermacher as a Proto-pragmatist," unpublished manuscript. Kinlaw completely foregoes the notion of intuition in Schleiermacher, arguing that indeed, intuition is significant only in the first edition of the Reden. It is in fact true that Schleiermacher speaks less of intuition in the later two editions; however, he continues to speak of feeling (Gefühl) which he considers immediate. As such, the notion of immediacy is not one that Schleiermacher gives up. For more on the significance of feeling in Schleiermacher, see n. 4 below.
9. Friedrich Daniel Ernst Schleiermacher, Kritische Gesamtausgabe, ed. Hermann Fischer and Günter Meckenstock (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 1980).
10. will provide two page numbers when citing the first edition of the Reden (1799), the first from the Kristische Gesamtausgabe (hereafter, "KGA") and the second from the English translation, On Religion: Speeches to its Cultured Despisers, ed. and trans. Richard Crouter, 2d ed. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996).
11. will provide Crouter's complete translations, unless otherwise indicated with a "translation altered." When citing the second or third editions of the Reden (1806, 1821), I will provide only one page reference, to the Kritische Gesamtausgabe, vol. 12.
12. The citation of this passage is thus as follows, KGA 2:213; Crouter, 24.
13. The notion of feeling, Gefühl, is a significant one in Schleiermacher, one that has played a central role in Schleiermacher scholarship. In his later edition of the Reden, Schleiermacher emphasizes feeling and downplays intuition. In his later works, Schleiermacher famously describes the relationship between the infinite God and the finite individual human being as a feeling of schlechthin Abhengägkeit, absolute dependence. On the differences of emphasis between the first and second editions of the Reden, especially with regard to feeling, see Herman Süsskind, Der Einfluß Schillings auf die Entwicklung von Schleiermachers System (Tübingen: JCB Mohr, 1909), 229-34.
14. On the notion of Gefühl in Schleiermacher's early unpublished works, see Julia Lamm, "The Early Philosophical Roots of Schleiermacher's Notion of 'Gefühl,' 1788-1794," Harvard Theological Review 87 (1994): 67-106.
15. Because of Schleiermacher's emphasis on feeling, Karl Barth takes feeling to be the mediator between the infinite and the finite. It is within the individual's subjective feeling that the infinite is manifest, nowhere else. He writes, "Nur im Gefühl seiner Wirkung ist uns Gott als Ursache gegeben, nicht anderswie. ... Wir hätten es dann nich mit Gott, sondern mit der Welt zu tun. Also ist Gott uns nicht gegenständlich gegeben, Gott bedetutet vielmehr 'zurückschieben.' Das Bewußtsein um Gott bleibt also 'eingesclossen' in das Gefühl, und so kann die Aussprache der Vorstellung 'Gott' nichts Anderes bedeuten als die Aussrpache des Gefühls über sich selber, die unmitterbarste Selbst-Reflexion," Die Protestantische Theologie, 418. Because he takes feeling to be the means by which one encounters God, and downplays intuition, I believe Barth mistakenly locates the relation between the infinite and finite within the human self. This leads Barth to conclude that Schleiermacher's religion is subjectivist and anthropomorphic, and does not allow for a true "Other." In contrast to Earth's reading, I posit that what mediates the infinite is not merely the feeling of the infinite in the human self, but everything - the entire world is a mediator of the infinite. The question thus arises, how does one know if the infinite is in fact what one is encountering, and not something very big. To this question, Barth would answer, feeling. In contrast, I would say that infinite leads to the "higher standpoint," and, also very significantly, to a desire to share one's vision within a community and to create a community.
16. KGA 2:218;
17. Crouter, 29.
18. Barth's examination of Schleiermacher's Reden offers precisely such a reading, see Die Protestantische Theologie, 379-424. See also n. 4 above.
19. KGA 2:267;
20. Crouter, 73.
21. KGA 2:232; Crouter, 41.
22. Though Schleiermacher makes use of the term "divine [Gottheit]" in the first edition of the Reden (1799), the prevalent terms are "infinite [unendlich]" and "universe [Universum]," which are then replaced with "divine [Gottheit]" in the second and third editions (1806,1821 respectively). For our purposes, I will assume that all three have the same meaning.
23. As Albert L. Blackwell argues, Schleiermacher's wish to dissociate himself from Spinoza, who was at that time considered a pantheist and therefore an atheist, is not convincing. The heart of the matter rests on Schleiermacher's relations with his mentor, Friedrich Samuel Gottfried Sack, who, as one of the censors on the Prussian board of censors, accused the Reden of Spinozism. However, Schleiermacher's defense, which Blackwell cites, "You take something spoken of only in passing, on only a few pages, for the principal part?", rests on the fact that Spinoza's name is mentioned only twice in the Speeches. But, Blackwell argues, Schleiermacher's "complaint oversimplifies the issue ... the mood of the entire second Speech - considerably the longest of the five speeches that comprise the book - corresponds closely to the tone of Spinoza's philosophy"; Albert L. Blackwell, "The Antagonistic Correspondence of 1801 between Chaplain Sack and his Protégé Schleiermacher," Harvard Theological Review 74 (1981): 118-9; see also 101-21.
24. For a complete study of Spinoza's influence on Schleiermacher, see Lamm, The Living God, 86-7.
25. She writes, "Schleiermacher's system remains a form of Spinozism, not only nominally in its direct appeal to Spinoza ('the holy rejected Spinoza!'), but also fundamentally. As was true in his earlier essays of 1793-94, Spinoza still helps him, on the one hand, to overcome Kant's bifurcated reality by insisting on the unity of all that is, and, on the other, to avoid Fichte's resolution of that bifurcation by insisting on the reality of nature and our dependence on it. But the appeal in 1799 finds something else in Spinoza: Spinoza's intuition of the infinite is an expression of a pious sensibility." For all of the influences on Schleiermacher, including Herder's generous reading of Spinoza and neo-Spinozism in Germany, see Kurt Nowak's biography, Schleiermacher: Leben, Werke und Wirkung (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck und Ruprecht, 2001),
26. and his study of Schleiermacher's relation to the early romantics, Schleiermacher und die Frühromantik (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck and Ruprecht, 1986).
27. Regarding Spinoza's status in the German academy at the time, see David Bell, Spinoza in Germany from 1670 to the Age of Goethe (London: The Institute of German Studies, University of London, 1984).
28. See Lamm, The Living God, 13-4.
29. Manfred Frank emphasizes the role played by Karl-Heinrich Heydenreich's Natur und Gott nach Spinoza (1789),
30. which appeared almost at the same time as Jacobi's letters. Frank claims that the significant role that feeling, especially self-feeling, plays in Schleiermacher can be traced back to Heydenreich's interpretation of Spinoza. See Frank's "Metaphysical Foundations," 18.
31. Spinoza, Ethics, ed. and trans. G. H. R. Parkinson (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000). In citing this text, I will provide the book number, followed by a colon, the proposition number, and, in cases where it is either a collorary or a scholium, followed by a comma and then an indication of either. This citation is as follows: 1:17.
32. Spinoza, Ethics 1:15, scholium.
33. "Individual things therefore, so far as they exist only in a certain determinate mode, are non-entia; the indeterminate infinite being is the only single true ens reale, hoc est, est omne esse, & praeter quod nullum datur esse [This is the real being; it is the all of being, and apart from it there is no being]"; Friedrich Heinrich Jacobi, Werke, ed. Klaus Hammacher and Walter Jaeschke, vol. 1, Ueber die Lehre des Spinoza in Briefen an den Herrn Moses Mendelssohn (Hamburg: Meiner, 1998), B100.
34. Compare Karl Barth's lecture on Schleiermacher: "Ich wüßte keine Stelle, aus der sich ergeben würde, daß das Schleiermachersche Universum etwas Anderes wäre als ... die übermächtige Kausalität"; Karl Barth Gesamtausgabe, vol. 2 (Zürich: Theologischer Verlag Zürich, 1978), 452.
35. Barth's mischaracterization of the relation between the infinite and finite as one of overpowering causality leads to his view that for Schleiermacher the infinite universe is nothing but activity. Barth thus asks, "was unterscheidet dann eigentlich diese göttliche Aktion etwa von einem in die Unendlichkeit projizierten Wasserfall, der alle wirklichen und möglichen Turbinen in diesem armen Erdental gleichzeitig in Bewegung setzt?" (453). The difference between a big waterfall and the infinite lies in fact that one's intuition of the infinite yields a "higher standpoint" from which one comes to see that the infinite does not relate to the finite in a causal way but rather, as we shall shortly see, in an organic way. The higher standpoint recognizes that every particular finite has its own "inner fate," to use Schleiermacher's phrase, within it, but at the same time cannot exist isolated outside of the whole. Looking at a waterfall as waterfall, or as something gigantic, does not yield a higher standpoint. Only seeing the infinite in the waterfall would lead to such a standpoint. See also Schleiermacher's polemic against natural religion, KGA 2:225;
36. Crouter, 35
37. and KGA 2:310;
38. Crouter, 109-11.
39. For a comparison between Schleiermacher's two notions of attraction and repulsion and Schelling's potencies, see Süsskind, Der Einfluß Schellings, esp. 194-204.
40. KGA 2:191;
41. Crouter, 5.
42. KGA 2:264;
43. Crouter, 70.
44. KGA 2:191;
45. Crouter, 5.
46. Ibid.
47. KGA 2:191;
48. Crouter, 5.
49. As we shall see in section 3, this is a point of difference between Schleiermacher and Spinoza. While, for Spinoza, finite individuals remain mere appearances of the infinite substance, for Schleiermacher, though identical with the infinite substance, finite individuals are real entities that contain within them their own life, what he calls an "inner fate." As such, they are distinct from as well as identical to the infinite substance.
50. KGA 2:192;
51. Crouter, 5-6 (translation altered).
52. Compare Süsskind, Der Einfluß Schellings, 23, who describes the difference between Spinoza and Schleiermacher in somewhat different terms. He explains that the basic principle of Spinoza's thought is the inherence of the finite things in the infinite. In contrast, for Schleiermacher, the idea is turned upside down, where it is the infinite that inheres in the finite. Though I think Süsskind is making an important point by showing how radically different Schleiermacher's understanding of the relation between the infinite and finite is from Spinoza's understanding, and in turn underscoring the reality of the finite individual thing for Schleiermacher, I do not think that the relationship is one-sided. That is, it is not only that the infinite inheres in the finite, but also that the finite inheres in the infinite.
53. KGA 2:252;
54. Crouter, 59.
55. Spinoza's substance, in contrast, is imminent in that its finite modifications do not contain their cause within themselves and are therefore not independent and distinct from it.
56. Compare Wolfgang H. Pegler, Schleiermachers Philosophie (Berlin: de Gruyter, 1988), 50-2. Pegler outlines three different notions that Schleiermacher has of 'nature': Natur als Widerstand, Natur als Wesen, and Natur als Ganze. Natur als Widerstand is the infinite as dead matter, as I identify it below. Pegler adds that Natur als Widerstand works against reason, and in turn contrasts it with Natur als Wesen which is in accord with reason. In Schleiermacher und die Frühromantik, Kurt Nowak posits five different ways in which the Universum in Schleiermacher is depicted, "1, Universum als Totalität alles Seins und Geschehens im Sinne eines relative un-spezifischen Globalbegriffs; 2. Universum als Natur, freilich nur als dessen vergänglicher Vorhof; 3. Universum als Menschheit; 4. Universum als geistig und religiös transparent gewordener Geschehenszusammenhang geschichtlichen Seins und Werdens; 5. Universum als das tranzendent-immanente Ineinanderschlagen des Ganzen und des Einzelnen" (167). In his later book, Schleiermacher, Nowak posits only the last four notions of the Universum (104). What is missing in the second book is Nowak's first description of the Universum. In contrast to both Nowak's and Pegler's readings of Natur/Universum, which make Schleiermacher seem to have several different notions which he employs, I think Schleiermacher has one consistent notion to which he returns time and again, and the other notions, whether they be "dead nature," or "infinite humanity," are used by Schleiermacher as examples from which to distinguish his one consistent notion of Universum. More significantly, I disagree with Nowak's equation of the Universum with Menschheit. Menschheit is a particular historical manifestation of the infinite and ahistorical. Though there is an identity between the two - we will turn to this in the following sections - they are in fact separate and distinct. In positing Menschheit as simply identical with Universum, Nowak's reading can lead to an idealist and anthropocentric Schleiermacher.
57. KGA 2:232;
58. Crouter, 42.
59. KGA 2:224;
60. Crouter, 34.
61. See also KGA 2:290;
62. Crouter, 93: "One thing we hope from the perfection of the sciences and arts is that they will make these dead forces subject to us, that they might turn the corporeal world and everything of the spiritual world that can be regulated into a fairy palace where the god of the earth needs only to utter a magic word or to press a button to have his commands done."
63. KGA 2:224;
64. Crouter, 34.
65. This understanding of the infinite as eternal and immutable is in fact very close to Spinoza's understanding of substance.
66. KGA 2:225;
67. Crouter, 35.
68. KGA 2:226;
69. Crouter, 36.
70. Ibid.
71. KGA 2:225;
72. Crouter, 35.
73. That Schleiermacher dismisses nature, on the one hand, and depicts the infinite as this living dynamic organism, on the other, makes his view of nature and its relation to humanity a difficult one to pin down. However, it is important to point out that for Schleiermacher nature in the first sense - the nature which he dismisses - is dead nature, and is conceived as such precisely because it is based on the framework of mechanical causation. In contrast, the universe is living organism. Because of Schleiermacher's first harsh dismissal of mechanical dead nature, many have interpreted him as advancing the thesis that humanity should forcibly alter nature to suit its needs. I think this is a misinterpretation of Schleiermacher based on a misunderstanding of (1) his notion of mechanical nature, and (2) his notion of the infinite universe as living organism. Such misunderstanding leads in turn to conclusions such as Nowak's and Barth's, where humanity is understood to be the final goal or focus of religion. I do not think this is an accurate assessment of Schleiermacher's Reden, as humanity is one part of living natural organism. Herman Süsskind also subscribes to Barth's and Nowak's reading when he distinguishes between Schleiermacher and Schelling on the belief that for Schelling nature plays a significant role, and for Schleiermacher, it is only to be dominated. See Süsskind, Der Einfluß Schellings, 210.
74. KGA 2:245;
75. Crouter, 53.
76. See also KGA 2:212;
77. Crouter, 23.
78. KGA 2:227;
79. Crouter, 36.
80. KGA 12:130.
81. KGA 2:234;
82. Crouter, 43.
83. Ibid.
84. As to whether the movement of history is linear and moving toward a final goal, I think it is unclear where Schleiermacher stands. Kurt Nowak writes "Der Begriff Universum ... widerstrebte einer linearen Entwicklungsvorstellung" (Schleiermacher und die Frühromantik, 188). On the other hand, in Der Einfluß Schillings Süsskind writes, "Die Geschichte stellt keinen Kreislauf dar, sondern einen Fortschritt zu Höherem und Volkommenerem" (32).
85. KGA 2:211;
86. Crouter, 22 (translation altered).
87. Compare Richard Brandt, The Philosophy of Schleiermacher: The Development of His Theory of Scientific and Religious Knowledge (New York: Harper, 1941), 110. Brandt considers the passage to which I am here referring, in which Schleiermacher equates intuition with "childlike passivity," to be unreliable and thus not worthy of further interrogation. He considers this passage, and others like it in which Schleiermacher depicts the subject's relation to the intuition, to be merely "psychological," and since "Schleiermacher's intent in writing this book" was not psychological, "too much reliance should not be placed on these passages." Brandt then goes on to argue that Schleiermacher's notion of intuition is not merely subjective, but that it "furnish[es] objective knowledge of the nature of the universe" (117). It is difficult to understand what Brandt means by "merely psychological," and how he establishes the objectivity of intuition when he does not take into consideration these "merely psychological" passages. In fact, these passages are the most significant with regard to the question of the subjectivity and objectivity of intuition. For it is within these passages that Schleiermacher outlines the relationship between the individual and the universe that is born out of intuition, and in turn, the vision and higher standpoint born out of intuition.
88. KGA 2:213;
89. Crouter, 24.
90. KGA 2:215;
91. Crouter, 26.
92. KGA 2:213;
93. Crouter, 24.
94. Compare Lamm, The Living God, 86. Lamm argues that the individual intuiter does play a role in the act of intuition and that intuition is not mere reception of the immediate universe. Though I agree that the intuiter does play a role in the act of intuition, that the intuiter's "sense and imagination," affect how he receives the universe, I do not agree with Lamm that the moment of intuition "acknowledges the structures of our understanding and the limits of our reason." Lamm explains that Schleiermacher's is a "higher realism," or a post-Kantian Spinozism. By this she means that though Schleiermacher has a monistic worldview like Spinoza's, it is not a naïve realism, but it in fact recognizes the role played by our faculties in our perception - hence it is post-Kantian. "Things are not as we perceive them to be," she writes to further explain what she means by "post-Kantian" "higher realism." It is unclear what Lamm means by this statement, that things are not as we perceive them to be, on two bases. First, in intuition, we - as Lamm acknowledges -do not gain conceptual knowledge of the object of our intuition. Rather, all that we have is the effect it has on our senses. Schleiermacher uses the analogy of light to vision to explain what takes place in intuition. Our vision is not of light, we do not come to an understanding of what light is. Yet, in intuition we are forced outside of ourselves, outside of our faculty of representation and conceptualization, and forced, in essence, to encounter something that cannot be conceptualized. This is what makes intuition special. If we were to constrain our intuition of the infinite within Kantian categories, then do we in fact get out of the Kantian gap between subject and object, knower and known? Second, intuition is said to be "immediate" and "particular" by Schleiermacher. Lamm is aware of this, and in fact she emphasizes this point to prove Schleiermacher's realism. However, what can Schleiermacher mean by "immediate" intuition, on the one hand, and the feeling of the infinite, on the other, if all we have is a constrained representation of the infinite mediated through the limits of our capacity to reason? I believe that if we were to constrain intuition within the Kantian categories, as Lamm does, then we do not escape Kantian dualism. In fact, it is precisely because of its capacity to receive what is unrepresentable and inconceptualizable that intuition overcomes the split. Further, if we attempt to conceptualize and make the intuition enter into our faculty of representation, then we lose the excessive quality of the infinite and, in turn, the feeling of excitement that is born out of this excess.
95. If Schleiermacher were indeed attempting to join together the notion of immediate intuition with conceptual or representational mediation (which he is not), then he would not be able to escape the paradox we pointed out above. For it would be paradoxical to emphasize intuition in that it alone grasps the particular, on the one hand, and to attempt to systematize the intuition, on the other, thus "losing" the particular in the concept.
96. KGA 2:214;
97. Crouter, 25.
98. KGA 2:216;
99. Crouter, 27.
100. KGA 2:227;
101. Crouter, 36 (translation altered).
102. Ibid.
103. KGA 2:218;
104. Crouter, 29.
105. KGA 2:218;
106. Crouter, 29.
107. KGA 2:213;
108. Crouter, 24.
109. KGA 2:206;
110. Crouter, 18.
111. KGA 2:221;
112. Crouter, 32.
113. Ibid.
114. In the same passage where Schleiermacher asks his readers to familiarize themselves with the notion of intuition, he also writes that on the basis of intuition, "you should be able to find every place in religion, from which you may determine its essence and its limits"; KGA 2:213;
115. Crouter, 24.
116. KGA 2:232;
117. Crouter, 42.
118. KGA 2:193;
119. Crouter, 6.
120. Ibid.
121. Ibid.
122. Süsskind writes that Rudolf Haym was the first to come to this conclusion and this precise characterization of the world as "mirror" to the universe. However, Haym came to this after he read Dilthey's Lebens Schleiermachers and thus after he had already written Die Romantische Schule. Süsskind quotes Haym, "Das Endliche, Einzelne, Individuelle ist Ausdruck, Spiegel des Unendlichen"; Der Einfluß Schillings, 21.
123. KGA 2:213;
124. Crouter, 24.
125. Ibid.
126. KGA 2:143;
127. Crouter, 58-9.
128. KGA 2:245;
129. Crouter, 53.
130. Kurt Nowak argues that intuition is necessarily active for Schleiermacher on the premise that the very individuation of the infinite is dependent on the activity of the finite. He writes, "Als so und nicht anders Wahrgenommenes konnte es sich aber nicht ohne die je verschiedenartige Subjektivität des anschauenden Individuums konstituieren. Dadurch wurde der Wahrnehmungsakt aus seiner Gleichförmigkeit befreit und in die Unendlichen der (religiösen) Individuen multipliziert. Auf diese Weise gewann die 'Religion' bis eine Unendlichte variable Gestaltungen und Ausdrucksformen, eine nicht ausschöpfbare individuelle Fülle - ein Gedanke, der das romantische Individualitätsmuster in eine letzte konsequenzfü hrte"; Schleiermacher und die Frühromantik, 169. This kind of activity attributed to the moment of intuition is distinct from the Kantian constraints which Lamm wants to attribute to intuition. See n. 48 above.
131. KGA 2:228;
132. Crouter, 38.
133. Recall that though intuition is of the infinite, it is always of the infinite as mediated; thus, there must always be, prior to the act of intuition, some form of mediation. Here Schleiermacher explains that this mediation is the "human world."
134. KGA 2:227-5;
135. Crouter, 37.
136. KGA 2:245;
137. Crouter, 53.
138. KGA 12:130, #2.
139. KGA 2:232;
140. Crouter, 42 (translation altered).
141. Polemical because of its focus on humanity, and the identification - it would seem - of humanity with the infinite. Some thinkers take this passage as evidence of Schleiermacher's anthropomorphism, while others are willing to overlook it. See Franz Christ, Menschlich von Gott reden. Das problem des anthropomorphismus bei Schleiermacher (Zürich: ökumenische Theologie 1982).
142. Karl Barth accuses Schleiermacher of anthropocentrism, see his lectures on Schleiermacher, Karl Barth Gesamtausgabe 2:440-5.
143. See for example Nowak's list of the different meanings the infinite has, one of which is Menschheit, n. 29.
144. Nowak also edits a collection of Schleiermacher's Athenaeum Fragments, which he calls "Bruchstücke der Unendlichen Menschheit." In his Nachwort, Nowak does not provide an explanation as to why he edits the collection under that name. He speaks only of how the romantics were interested in bringing humanity into harmony with the universe (in fact, in this explanatory notes, he rarely mentions humanity). See Bruchstücke der Unendlichen Menschheit: Fragmente, Aphorismen und Notate der führomantischen Jahre, ed. Kurt Nowak (Leipzig: Evangelische Verlanganstalt, 2000).
145. Also see Emil Fuchs, Vom Werden dreier Denker. Was wollen Fichte, Schelling und Schleiermacher in den ersten Periode ihrer Entwicklung? (Tübingen: JCB Mohr, 1904), 372-4.
146. Fuchs has an interesting reading of Schleiermacher's notion of intuition, in which he argues that for Schleiermacher there are three different kinds of intuition: sinnliche Anschauung, religiöse Anschauung, and Selbstanschauung. He explains that there is an "almost immutable necessity," quoting Schleiermacher, between Selbstanschauung and religiöse Anschauung which makes "das Universum als Gott d. h. als Persönlichkeit zu denken, da ja die Anschauung kein anderes Bild geistigen Wesens entwerfen kann als das von Menschen genommene" (374). See also, Barth, Die protestantische Theologie, 379-424.
147. KGA 3:11.
148. KGA 3:12.
149. KGA 3:19.
150. KGA 3:20.
151. KGA 3:21.
152. KGA 3:21. Ibid.
153. KGA 3:21. Ibid.
154. KGA 2:232;
155. Crouter, 42.
156. KGA 12:142, #14.
157. KGA 3:20.
158. KGA 2:302;
159. Crouter, 104.
160. Ibid.
161. Ibid.
162. KGA 2:269;
163. Crouter, 75.
164. Ibid.
165. KGA 2:267-8;
166. Crouter, 73 (emphasis added).
167. Compare Barth, Die Protestantische Theologie, 405-6. Barth writes that for Schleiermacher, feeling is the primary way of relating to God, and that the word is only secondary, in that it is only a communication of the original feeling. For this reason, Barth calls Schleiermacher's theology a "Theologie des frommen Selbstbewußtseins." According to Barth, insofar as feeling is what brings about self-conscious, it is also what mediates one's finitude to the infinity of God. For this reason, Schleiermacher's theology is a theology of feeling, a theology of self-consciousness. "Weil das Gefühl an sich die siegreiche Mitte zwischen Wissen und Tun, weil es im Unterschied zu diesen Funktionen das eigentliche Selbstbewußtsein selber und schon damit mindestens der subjektive Repräsentant der Wahrheit ist, und weil das Gefühl als frommes Gefühl der schlechthinnigen Abhängigkeit des Menschen, d. h. das Gefühl seiner Beziehung zu Gott ist, darum ist die Schleiermachersche Theologie Gefühltheologie, genauer gesagt: Theologie des frommen Gefühls, oder Bewußtseinstheologie, genauer gesagt: Theologie des frommen Selbstbewußtseins." This leads Barth to conclude that for Schleiermacher the Word has only a secondary significance in relation to feeling. "Die Sätze sind nur das Abgeleitete, der innere Zustand ist das Ursprüngliche" (406). The word is thus only a reporting of the original relation between the finite and the infinite, mediated by feeling (and therefore not the word). In contrast to Barth's assessment, I contend that for Schleiermacher communication works on two levels: the first is the way in which it is deemed by Barth - as secondary in relation to the original intuition - and the second level of communication is communication as itself revelation of the infinite. Through communicating, one is not merely relating an original event but also creating a world in which another original event will take place. Moreover, the very act of communicating, of making determinate and thus individuating the infinite, is a revelation of the infinite. It is thus not a merely secondary relation to the infinite that relates an original intuition, or feeling, but also a primary relation to the infinite that reveals the infinite in its own way. Barth's critique of Schleiermacher's anthropomorphism of God is based on the premise that Schleiermacher's theology is a theology of Selbtsbewußtsein, that is, where human self-consciousness is a revelation of the infinite, a reflection of it, a "mirror" of its "will and works." As I hope to show, mediation is not limited to passive mirroring of the infinite universe; it also entails activity on the part of the human being, and this activity is nothing less than the creation of a community. Further, this community is not a complete reflection of the infinite, but it is always striving to attain such perfection. In this way, Schleiermacher not only retains distinctness between the infinite universe and finite humanity, but he also underscores that the "mirroring" of the infinite in the finite remains incomplete. As such, the infinite does not become the finite, and therefore, the divine cannot be identified with the human.
168. KGA 2:291;
169. Crouter, 94.
170. KGA 12:143, #14.
171. KGA 2:263-4;
172. Crouter, 70.
173. Ibid., 35.
174. KGA 2:247;
175. Crouter, 64.