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Friedrich Schleiermacher's Theory of the Limited Communitarian State

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 1990

Jeffrey Hoover
Jeffrey Hoover*
Affiliation:
Coe College, Cedar Rapids, IA 52402, U.S.A.
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Extract

While Friedrich Schleiermacher‘s thought has been of overwhelming importance for theology during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, his influence as a philosopher is much more circumscribed and as a social and political thinker it is almost nil.

Type
Research Article
Information
Canadian Journal of Philosophy , Volume 20 , Issue 2 , June 1990 , pp. 241 - 260
Copyright
Copyright © The Authors 1990

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References

1 It may come as a surprise to those familiar with Hegel's popularity at Berlin that Schleiermacher's lectures on the state were even more popular with the students in Berlin during this time than Hegel's. However, after Schleiermacher's death the popularity of his political thought was quickly eclipsed by the Hegelian legacy and has consistently been overlooked in the years since.

2 By ‘modern natural law’ I mean to refer to the political tradition associated with the doctrine of the social contract, which includes Hobbes and Locke and extends as well to figures such as Kant and Rousseau.

3 The most prominent members of this tradition are: Herder, the later Fichte, Novalis, Schelling, Friedrich Schlegel, Joseph Gorres, Adam Muller, and Franz von Baader.

4 Included among contemporary communitarians are such thinkers as Michael Sandel, Alasdair Macintyre and Charles Taylor who warn of the loss of community values in western societies due to the individualistic nature of the liberal conception of the state. Contemporary liberal theorists such as John Rawls, Charles Larmore and Ronald Dworkin, on the other hand, are primarily concerned that the rights of individuals are respected and that persons are free to pursue ends that are their own.

5 ‘Versuch einer Theorie des geselligen Betragens,’ appeared in the year 1799 in the January and February issues of Berliner Archiv der Zeit und des Geschmacks. The essay reached to thirty pages altogether and was to be continued, but the additional installments never appeared. The plan that was presented in the existing portion of the essay included three laws of social activity. Only the first of these, the formal law, was covered in depth, leaving the analysis of the material and quantitative laws to our speculation. See the editorial introduction to this essay in Schriften aus der Berliner Zeit (1796-1799), Vol. I.2 of Kritische Gesamtausgabe (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter 1984), l-liii.

6 Schleiermachers Werke: Auswahl in vier Bänden, II, Braun, Otto and Bauer, Johannes, eds. (Aalen: Scientia 1967), 7Google Scholar

7 Kant uses the term ‘Geselligkeit’ in the Critique of Judgement, and in the essays, ‘Idea for a Universal History with a Cosmopolitan Purpose’ and ‘The Supposed Origin of Human History’ and also in a review of Herder's writings.

8 Kant, I., ‘Idee zu einer allgemeinen Geschichte in weltbürgerlicher Absicht,’ Schriften zur Anthropologie, Geschichtsphilosophie, Politik und Pädagogik II, vol. XI of Werkausgabe in Zwölf Bäden (Frankfurt: Surkamp 1968), 37Google Scholar; also Kant's Political Writings, Reiss, Hans, ed. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 1970), 44Google Scholar

9 Schleiermachers Werke II, 367

10 Ibid., 3

11 Ibid., 8-9

12 Ibid., 9

13 Schleiermacher remarks that a game comes closer to being a true society since it includes everyone. He goes on to point out that the English manner of remaining with one's wife for the duration of a ball makes it even harder to consider a group assembled for a ball a society in the true sense.

14 Schleiermachers Werke II, 9-10

15 Ibid., 4

16 Ibid., 448

17 Schleiermacher, , Pädogogische Schriften, Platz, C., ed. (Langensalza: Hermann Beyer and Sohne 1902), 159Google Scholar

18 Schleiermachers Werke II, 340

19 Ibid., 3-4

20 Scheiermacher, , Die Lehre vom Staat, Pt. 3, Vol. VIII of Friedrich Schleiermachers Sämmtliche Werke, Brandis, Chr., ed. (Berlin: Georg Reimer 1845), 116-18Google Scholar

21 The non-economic and intellectual nature of the private sphere of free sociality sets it apart from Hegel's notion of civil society. Human activity in the domain of free sociality is driven by the pursuit of personal intellectual and ethical goods and not the satisfaction of desire (as is the case in Hegel's civil society). There can be no question of Hegel's influence upon Schleiermacher's conception of free sociality since Schleiermacher outlines this sphere of private association already in 1799 in the essay Towards a Theory of Sociable Conduct’ whereas Hegel did not articulate civil society as a domain distinct from the domestic and public realm until the 1817 lectures on the Philosophy of Right.

22 Mill, J.S., On Liberty (Oxford: Oxford University Press 1948), 71-3Google Scholar

23 See Hoover, Jeffrey, ‘The Origin of the Conflict Between Hegel and Schleiermacher at Berlin,’ Owl of Minerva 20, 1 (1988), 69-79.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

24 See Redeker, Martin, Schleiermacher: Life and Thought, Walhausser, John, trans. (Philadelphia: Fortress Press 1973), 187-99.Google Scholar

25 Schleiermachers Werke II, 129-30

26 Ibid., 139

27 Schleiermacher, , Pädogogische Schriften, 159Google Scholar

28 For a more detailed account of Schleiermacher's views on the grounding of the state and his critique of social contract theory, see Hoover, Jeffrey, ‘The Foundation of the State in the Thought of Friedrich Schleiermacher,’ History of Political Thought 10, 2 (1989), 1–18.Google Scholar

29 Schleiermacher, , Pädogogische Schriften, 382Google Scholar

30 Schleiermacher, , Lehre vom Staat, 166Google Scholar; and ‘On the Concepts of Different Forms of the State,’ Friedrich Schleiermachers Sämmtliche Werke, Pt. III, Vol. 2, 262. The English text is to be found in, The Political Thought of the German Romantics: 1793-1815, Reiss, H.S., trans. (New York: Macmillan 1955), 185.Google Scholar

31 Schleiermacher, , Lehre vom Staat, 125Google Scholar

32 Ibid., 51-2

33 Ibid., 52

34 The most prominent estatist theorists among Schleiermacher's contemporaries were Hegel. Friedrich Schlegel and Adam Muller.

35 Schleiermacher, , Pädogogische Schriften 383-4Google Scholar

36 Schleiermacher's Werke, II, 129; 367

37 Schleiermacher, , Sämmtliche Werke, III, 2, 278-80Google Scholar; Reiss, , The Political Thought . . , 196-7Google Scholar. Also Lehre vom Staat, 35-6.

38 Schleiermacher, , Lehre vom Staat, 139Google Scholar

39 Ibid., 226

40 Ibid., 111-12

41 Ibid., 112

42 Ibid., 113

43 Ibid., 91-4. Schleiermacher also discusses another social formation which has as its aim the economic security of its members, namely, the guild. However, he subjects the guilds to severe criticism, describing them as exclusive groups of tradesmen who are organized to protect trade secrets and to keep out competition. The basis of such guilds he claims is jealcusy and as such they are completely ‘useless’ and are neither an arm of the state nor of the commune. Only when guilds have as their end that which is best for the trade does Schleiermacher allow that they proceed from political sentiment (Lehre vom Staat, 94-5).