'What is religion?': Shaftesbury, the German Enlightenment, and Schleiermacher (Friedrich Schleiermacher, Anthony Ashley Cooper, Earl of Shaftesbury)

This dissertation explores the link between Friedrich Schleiermacher (1768–1834) and the Earl of Shaftesbury (1671–1713) as this relates to the question that forms the core of Schleiermacher's 1799 Speeches to its Cultured Despisers, “What is religion?” Described as the first philosopher of feeling, Shaftesbury developed a position that saw feeling as the source of all religion, art and morality—these being in his view completely intertwined. Central to his thought is the concept of enthusiasm. This word, equated in the 18th century with fanaticism and deeply reviled as such, became his term for those moments when humans experience themselves as connected to something beyond them, something “more than human.” Beginning with an understanding of feelings as the means by which humans recognize and monitor relationships, Shaftesbury understood enthusiasm as both emotion-based and revelatory: it draws us to recognize ourselves as entirely relational beings within an interdependent world.; Initially highly controversial, Shaftesbury's work fell into obscurity in his native England by the 1770's. In France it became a major influence on Voltaire and Diderot. Only in Germany were his ideas fully embraced, however. They altered the tone and direction of the Enlightenment there. They were especially influential on two neologians, Johann August Eberhard (1739–1809), Schleiermacher's teacher, and Johann Joachim Spalding (1714–1804). Spalding both translated Shaftesbury and made Shaftesbury's thought the basis for his own theology in which, beginning in 1748, he explored the role of feelings in Christianity and in religion in general. Schleiermacher met Spalding soon after his move to Berlin in 1796. Spalding became his role model. It was Spalding's thought, so influenced by Shaftesbury, that provided the inspiration for his 1799 Speeches.; Returning Schleiermacher's thought to this context exposes the full meaning and intent of the Speeches. Viewed within the framework of his debt to Shaftesbury by way of Spalding, and to a lesser degree Eberhard, Schleiermacher's understanding of religion as feeling is exposed as part of a nearly century long tradition that attempted to understand religion as the human response to the innate capacity to sense interconnection—interconnection to others and to a wider reality.