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oa De relatie tussen hermeneutiek en godsdienstfilosofie bij Schleiermacher
- Amsterdam University Press
- Source: NTT Journal for Theology and the Study of Religion, Volume 48, Issue 1, Jan 1994, p. 39 - 51
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- 01 Jan 1994
Abstract
In this article the author explains the relation between Schleiermacher’s concept of hermeneutics and his concept of religion. This relation will be found on the one hand in the open ends which are in his theory on hermeneutics and on the other hand in the remarks on the whole of the universe in his Reden über die Religion. These different texts are usually not compared and read from the same perspective. Schleiermacher’s writings on very diverse subjects do not invite one to investigate the unity of his thoughts. Nevertheless without pretending to grasp the whole of Schleiermacher’s thinking, the author proposes to draw some lines between two themes in Schleiermacher’s thinking that seem unrelated at first sight. At first he explains the hermeneutics of Schleiermacher. Next he points out the relation between hermeneutics and dialectic. Then he explores the philosophy of religion, particularly the idea of the feeling of absolute dependence. And finally he comes back to the tasks and limits of hermeneutics. He concludes that the endless process of hermeneutics is founded in the feeling of absolute dependence from where the finiteness of man is given. The finiteness of man can only be overcome in religion with its possibility of ‘absolute knowledge’. ‘Absolute knowledge’ is only possible beyond finiteness, in the feeling of the whole universe, but that is not hermeneutics.