The Religious Ethics Implicit in Schleiermacher's Doctrine of Creation

Abstract

There is a religious ethics implicit in Schleiermacher's doctrine of creation based on the universal feeling of absolute dependence "prior to" its being informed by any historical tradition. The "highest good" which fundamentally characterizes his religious ethics is found at the intersection of God and the World. The "original perfection of man" and the "original perfection of the world" come together when human life in the world is fully informed by the feeling of absolute dependence. Although Schleiermacher did not develop his religious ethics to the same extent as his philosophical and Christian ethics, it should still be of interest to ethicists in many religious traditions, as it establishes contours and sets limits for the ethics of any monotheistic religious tradition.KEY WORDS: Schleiermacher, feeling of absolute dependence, consciousness of God, doctrine of creation/preservation, interdependence of nature, worldconsciousness WHILE SCHLEIERMACHER LECTURED on both philosophical and Christian ethics several times during his teaching career, he did not lecture on religious ethics per se. Theoretically, he could have done so, but the immediate needs for the purpose of his lectures on ethics were for a philosophical ethics and a specifically Christian ethics. The primary "audiences" for ethics were the Anglo/European scientific community on the one hand, and the Protestant Christian Church on the other hand. Hence, Schleiermacher presents two sets of lectures on ethics: one set based on the principle of universal reason, and the other on the Christian's consciousness of Christ. In addition to these "two" systems of ethics, however, there appears to be a general religious ethics implicit in Schleiermacher's doctrine of creation that foreshadows not only his own Christian ethics, but also the ethics of any monotheistic religious tradition. This paper aims to draw out this ethics from his doctrine of creation and formulate it in a way commensurate with his formulations of philosophical and Christian ethics; that is, dialectically.