Theological Ethics as Cultural Ethics
Friedrich Schleiermacher’s (1768-1834), also called “19th century father of the church”, lectures about “Christian morals” belong to his most important works. However, during his life he was not able to elaborate his ideas and put them into a book. Until today, research mostly deals with lecture notes of Schleiermacher’s student Ludwig Jonas from winter semester 1822/1823, as well as Schleiermacher’s short lecture manuscripts. In 2011, Hermann Peiter published a compilation of three after-lecture notes from lectures in winter semester 1826/1827.
This DFG funded project, which has started 2021, aims at closing this gap. Four researchers from the Brandenburgische Akademie der Wissenschaften (BBAW, Dr. Sarah Schmidt), the Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin (HU, Prof. Dr. Notger Slenczka), the Martin-Luther-Universität Halle-Wittenberg (MLU, Prof. Dr. Jörg Dierken) and of the Westfälische Wilhelms-Universität Münster (WWU, Prof. Dr. Arnulf von Scheliha) work with their teams to create a first full edition of these lectures. The DFG funds this project with up to 2,8 million euros up to 10 years.
As many other scholars of his time, Schleiermacher’s popularity increased mostly by his lectures and not by publications. Schleiermacher gave this lecture twelve times in total. Schleiermacher’s direct materials only include some fragments: an exercise book, few extra pieces of paper, notes and other commentaries. In addition, there are very detailed compilations of student notes from different semesters of Schleiermacher’s lectures. In the context of this project, all texts are encoded, edited and published digitally, so that some of them are even only accessible for the first time. This also helps to keep track of Schleiermacher’s thoughts and ideas within three centuries. To gain access to the content, complex tools are developed (Digital Humanities). These encoded texts are then published on an electronic platform of the BBAW called Schleiermacher-digital, which already contains Schleiermacher’s correspondence, his daily calendars and other lectures.
In Berlin (HU), Halle (MLU) and Münster (WWU), this project is accompanied by further thematic research. The role Immanuel Kant plays for philosophy, Friedrich Schleiermacher plays for theology. He is an important author in philosophy, pedagogy and art, too. He used ideas of the Enlightenment, thought them through on levels of ideal philosophy and referred them back to theology and Christianity. Until now, ethical and social implications of Christian ethics in his works were negelected, however they are very important. Schleiermacher developed in his lectures ideas of Ethics, which do not include norms of being morally committed but to see it as unconstrained action impulses deriving directly from Christian beliefs . Thereby, he focuses less on single people, but rather on interactions of different societal institutions. This cooperation then realizes the spirit of Christian religion. In his lectures, he shows ways to combine Christianity with present cultures and societies, and therby develops a model for self-displacement of Christian religious groups in modern societies.
The research project at the WWU, under guidance of Prof. Dr. Arnulf von Scheliha, deals with the reconstruction of Schleiermacher’s perception and interpretation of life in his own time (regarding church, societal, cultural and political aspects). This is based on texts of Schleiermacher’s works, which are already critically prepared.
A full interpretation of Schleiermacher’s cultural diagnosis, which focuses mostly on a newly formed civic society with new economic and technical developments and social structure, is still missing. Schleiermacher sees these topics within three perspectives of Christian ethics. These perspectives include institutional aspects of marriage/ family, church and society/ state. The focus differs. This makes his lecture notes are a useful resource to place his interpretations in overall social situations present at times and influencing his theory. The research project thereby not only focuses on his complex theory of society, but also Schleiermacher’s diagnosis of dominant social tendencies and importance of Christian confessions within them. Aspects about the confessional varieties within Christianity and new insights can be expected. Interpretation of contexts Schleiermacher was aware of dealing with will also have a huge impact on interpretations of other important works of him.
The project of Prof Dr Arnulf von Scheliha focuses on finding aspects of social philosophy in Christianity within the combination of Schleiermacher’s philosophical ethics, Christian moralities and Protestant dogmatics. It wants to show which aspects of normative self-determination of Christians in present times can be extracted. The guiding hypothesis describes Schleiermacher’s draft as a system theory avant-la-letter. Its advantage is that it does not see social differentiation as abstract ideas, but also regards concrete-institutional aspects, as well as the impact of individuals. A combination of these results including results of other research projects, allows the team to do a critical comparison of the present with Schleiermacher’s perceptions. The project aims at a contemporary sociography of Christianity.
Preliminary studies only available in German.