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The Impact of German Idealism on Religion
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The Impact of German Idealism on Religion

A special issue of Religions (ISSN 2077-1444). This special issue belongs to the section "Religions and Humanities/Philosophies".

Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (20 December 2023) | Viewed by 11212

Special Issue Editor

Prof. Dr. Christian Danz

E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
Protestant Theological Faculty, University of Vienna, A-1010 Vienna, Austria
Interests: philosophy of religion; Dogmatics in modern times; German idealism; history of modern theology; theology of religions
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

The intention of the Special Issue “The Impact of German Idealism on Religion” is to comprehensively reconstruct the developments of modern philosophy of religion emanating from German Idealism in a systematic perspective and to analyze the contribution of German Idealism to the formation of the modern understanding of religion.

The modern concept of religion owes important impulses to the so-called German Idealism. Although religion had already become the focus of theological and philosophical debates during the European Enlightenment, what religion was and what constituted it was still determined very differently against the background of the theological doctrinal tradition. Only the development of post-Kantian philosophy led both to the emergence of the philosophy of religion as an independent academic discipline and to the formation of a unified basis of religion in the general grounding structure of consciousness (Wagner 1986; Jaeschke 2012). Religion is now reconstructed as a component of consciousness that functions as the general foundation of culture. It is something distinct from the cultural functions of consciousness. Although a general framework in which religion was understood emerges with German Idealism, at the same time, very different versions of religion were elaborated within this new framework. As the 19th century progressed, this consciousness-based understanding of religion was further developed and finally globalized at the end of the century (Nongbri 2015).

In order to reconstruct the formation of the modern understanding of religion against the background of German Idealism, three stages must be distinguished: I. The emergence of the modern philosophy of religion in the context of post-Kantian philosophy; II. The shaping of idealist philosophies of religion; and III. The further development of idealist philosophies of religion in the 19th century. From all three dimensions, a comprehensive picture of the discourses on religion in the “saddle period of modernity” emerges.

We request that, prior to submitting a manuscript, interested authors initially submit a proposed title and an abstract of 400–600 words summarizing their intended contribution. Please send this to the guest editor ([email protected]) or to the Religions editorial office ([email protected]). Abstracts will be reviewed by the guest editors for the purposes of ensuring proper fit within the scope of the Special Issue. Full manuscripts will undergo double-blind peer-review.

References

Hermanni, Friedrich, Burkhard Nonnenmacher and Friedrike Schick (eds.). 2015. Religion und Religionen im Deutschen Idealismus. Schleiermacher – Hegel – Schelling. Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck.

Jaeschke, Walter. 2012. Um 1800 – Religionsphilosophie in der Sattelzeit der Moderne. In Philosophisch-theologische Streitsachen: Pantheismusstreit – Atheismusstreit – Theismusstreit. Edited by Georg Essen and Christian Danz. Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft (WBG), pp. 7-92.

Nongbri, Brent. 2015. Before Religion: A History of a Modern Concept. New Haven: Yale University Press.

Wagner, Falk. 1986. Was ist Religion? Studien zu ihrem Begriff und Thema in Geschichte und Gegenwart. Gütersloh: Gütersloher Verlaghaus Gerd Mohn.

Prof. Dr. Christian Danz
Guest Editor

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a double-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Religions is an international peer-reviewed open access monthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 1800 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

Keywords

  • German Idealism
  • philosophy of religion
  • concept of religion

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Published Papers (8 papers)

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14 pages, 253 KiB  
Article
Faith, Knowledge, and the Ausgang of Classical German Philosophy: Jacobi, Hegel, Feuerbach
by Todd Gooch
Religions 2024, 15(5), 618; https://doi.org/10.3390/rel15050618 - 17 May 2024
Viewed by 930
Abstract
This article revisits Feuerbach’s “break with speculation” in the early 1840s in light of issues raised by the original Pantheism Controversy, initiated in 1785 by the publication of Friedrich Heinrich Jacobi’s Letters on the Doctrine of Spinoza. The article first describes the [...] Read more.
This article revisits Feuerbach’s “break with speculation” in the early 1840s in light of issues raised by the original Pantheism Controversy, initiated in 1785 by the publication of Friedrich Heinrich Jacobi’s Letters on the Doctrine of Spinoza. The article first describes the concerns underlying Jacobi’s repudiation of Spinozism, and rationalism more generally, in favor of a personalistic theism that disclaims the possibility of philosophical knowledge of God. It goes on to reconstruct Hegel’s alternative to Jacobi’s famous salto mortale before considering how Feuerbach’s critique of Hegel’s philosophy of religion, as well as the personalism of the so-called Positive Philosophy (inspired by the late Schelling), was influenced by both Spinoza and Jacobi in ways that have not yet received sufficient attention. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue The Impact of German Idealism on Religion)
11 pages, 261 KiB  
Article
Revolution and Nation: Johann Gottlieb Fichte’s Late Philosophy of Religion
by Christoph Asmuth
Religions 2024, 15(4), 426; https://doi.org/10.3390/rel15040426 - 29 Mar 2024
Viewed by 936
Abstract
Johann Gottlieb Fichte’s philosophy of religion combines revolutionary pathos with Christian convictions and transcendental philosophical insights. The result is a bourgeois philosophy of religion that preaches freedom, equality and brotherhood, expects the national upswing of a still-longed-for Germany based on the example of [...] Read more.
Johann Gottlieb Fichte’s philosophy of religion combines revolutionary pathos with Christian convictions and transcendental philosophical insights. The result is a bourgeois philosophy of religion that preaches freedom, equality and brotherhood, expects the national upswing of a still-longed-for Germany based on the example of revolutionary France, and praises all this as a continuation of Kant’s philosophy. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue The Impact of German Idealism on Religion)
12 pages, 258 KiB  
Article
Schleiermacher’s Speeches and the Modern Critique of Religion
by Kevin M. Vander Schel
Religions 2024, 15(3), 311; https://doi.org/10.3390/rel15030311 - 29 Feb 2024
Viewed by 1290
Abstract
Friedrich Schleiermacher is often credited with playing a foundational role in the development of the modern concept of religion. His epoch-making Speeches on religion, published in 1799 amidst the widespread social and intellectual upheaval of the Sattelzeit, present a novel description of [...] Read more.
Friedrich Schleiermacher is often credited with playing a foundational role in the development of the modern concept of religion. His epoch-making Speeches on religion, published in 1799 amidst the widespread social and intellectual upheaval of the Sattelzeit, present a novel description of religious feeling and religious communication, which mark a turning away from the rationalistic treatments of religion in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, and which served as both inspiration and foil for scholars of religion throughout the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. This essay suggests a reading of Schleiermacher’s Speeches that is organized around two interrelated claims. First, the text does not proceed as speculative philosophical treatise aiming to establish an overarching theory of religion but as a critical dialogue that inquires into the distinctive particularity of religion and religious expression. Second, religious piety, as depicted in the Speeches, is not found in the isolated inwardness of individual experience but in coordinated tension with sociality, in communications of religious feeling that are bound together with a living apprehension of the world. On this account, religion for Schleiermacher, though rooted in feeling and self-consciousness, is nonetheless no private affair; it is realized within the developing complex of social and historical living. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue The Impact of German Idealism on Religion)
19 pages, 254 KiB  
Article
Johann Gottlieb Fichte and Protestant Theology
by Folkart Wittekind
Religions 2024, 15(3), 302; https://doi.org/10.3390/rel15030302 - 28 Feb 2024
Viewed by 1084
Abstract
Johann Gottlieb Fichte’s thinking is part of the Sattelzeit, in which the foundation for the modern use of important concepts is laid. The stages of Fichte’s philosophy and his various theories of religion and Christianity reflect attempts to determine the function of [...] Read more.
Johann Gottlieb Fichte’s thinking is part of the Sattelzeit, in which the foundation for the modern use of important concepts is laid. The stages of Fichte’s philosophy and his various theories of religion and Christianity reflect attempts to determine the function of religion in a modern society. Important is the philosophical foundation of religion, which is transformed from a moral theology based on Kant to a unified theory of the philosophy of mind. Fichte thus offers an alternative to Hegel and Schelling. This alternative has only been taken up in Protestant theology at a small number of points, but all the more intensively. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue The Impact of German Idealism on Religion)
16 pages, 265 KiB  
Article
Religion in the Thought of the Young Hegel
by Jörg Dierken
Religions 2024, 15(3), 297; https://doi.org/10.3390/rel15030297 - 28 Feb 2024
Viewed by 1013
Abstract
Religion is one of the central themes of the young Hegel. This is where intellectual problems arise, the treatment of which led him to discover his speculative way of thinking. Starting in the footsteps of Kant’s ethicotheology, Hegel quickly realized that religion cannot [...] Read more.
Religion is one of the central themes of the young Hegel. This is where intellectual problems arise, the treatment of which led him to discover his speculative way of thinking. Starting in the footsteps of Kant’s ethicotheology, Hegel quickly realized that religion cannot be a vehicle for introducing autonomous morality. Under titles such as love and life, he then develops a kind of Spinozist thinking of unification of everything, including the finite and the infinite. However, it turns out that the quasi-divine performance of unity cannot be thought of as such, since thinking is bound to discursive forms of reflection that are always mediated through differences. As soon as the religious performance of unity is to be thought of, it slips away from the form of reflection. This problem can be solved if, on the one hand, the differential form of thinking is brought into a self-application and, on the other hand, difference itself is put into the performance of unity, even if it is named as absolute. The former becomes the nucleus of the figure of negation characteristic for Hegel’s speculative thinking; the latter leads to an understanding of the absolute as spirit, which, according to its self-being, which encompasses difference, is always for the other and is known by the other. Religion brings this to mind in the form of imagination, according to Hegel’s later concept of religion. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue The Impact of German Idealism on Religion)
14 pages, 247 KiB  
Article
Ferdinand Christian Baur on Religion: A Historicist Approach in an Idealist Context
by Johannes Zachhuber
Religions 2024, 15(2), 210; https://doi.org/10.3390/rel15020210 - 9 Feb 2024
Viewed by 1645
Abstract
In this article, I consider F.C. Baur’s conception of religion. This has rarely been done because Baur is generally regarded as a historical theologian rather than a theorist of religion. Yet I argue that, if we observe Baur’s own historical work, we discover [...] Read more.
In this article, I consider F.C. Baur’s conception of religion. This has rarely been done because Baur is generally regarded as a historical theologian rather than a theorist of religion. Yet I argue that, if we observe Baur’s own historical work, we discover there a remarkably original conceptual work on the notion of religion. For Baur, I argue, religion was a key concept, in that it aided him in his attempt to bring together theological, historical, and philosophical work. Yet the concept of religion had to be of a particular kind in order to suit his agenda. Therefore, the identification of Baur’s concept of religion will also help ascertain the coherence of his intellectual activity. In the article, I focus on two of Baur’s works, his first monograph, Symbolik und Mythologie (1824/5) and his magisterial Die christliche Gnosis (1835). I show that fundamental ideas across these two books should be seen as Baur’s own (rather than merely borrowed from Schleiermacher and Hegel), and that there is more continuity between them than readers have often found. In a final section, I discuss briefly an essay Baur devoted to the Begriff der Religionsphilosophie (1837). Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue The Impact of German Idealism on Religion)
10 pages, 203 KiB  
Article
God, Religion and History: The Significance of Schelling’s Philosophy of Religion for Determining the Concept of Religion
by Christian Danz
Religions 2024, 15(2), 154; https://doi.org/10.3390/rel15020154 - 26 Jan 2024
Viewed by 1703
Abstract
This article discusses Schelling’s contribution to the definition of the concept of religion in post-Kantian philosophy. In three lines of argument, it is shown that Schelling’s late lectures on the philosophy of mythology and revelation place religion in a history of development in [...] Read more.
This article discusses Schelling’s contribution to the definition of the concept of religion in post-Kantian philosophy. In three lines of argument, it is shown that Schelling’s late lectures on the philosophy of mythology and revelation place religion in a history of development in which religion is successively understood as religion. Schelling assumes that religion is independent of reason and is based on a real relationship with God that is connected to the nature of man. This makes the philosophy of religion an independent academic discipline. Schelling links the historical development of religion and the history of God in his concept of monotheism. This is the content of Schelling’s formula that God is the Lord of being. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue The Impact of German Idealism on Religion)
16 pages, 315 KiB  
Article
Speaking of God in the Realm of Aesthetics: Religion in Hölderlin
by Jakob Helmut Deibl
Religions 2023, 14(11), 1422; https://doi.org/10.3390/rel14111422 - 14 Nov 2023
Viewed by 1483
Abstract
This article considers the work and reception of Friedrich Hölderlin with regard to the impact of German Idealism on religion. To this end, two questions must be clarified in advance: can Hölderlin, who is known primarily as a poet, also be placed in [...] Read more.
This article considers the work and reception of Friedrich Hölderlin with regard to the impact of German Idealism on religion. To this end, two questions must be clarified in advance: can Hölderlin, who is known primarily as a poet, also be placed in the context of German Idealism, and does his work have a significant relationship to religion? I argue that both questions should be answered in the affirmative. Ernst Cassirer’s study Hölderlin und der deutsche Idealismus (1918/19) clearly laid the foundation for appreciating Hölderlin’s place within German Idealism, and the question of God is a leitmotif of Hölderlin’s entire oeuvre. I seek to trace Hölderlin’s influence on understanding religion in three steps: First, I want to show that Hölderlin, in a critical continuation of Kant, does not consider religion solely within the matrix of practical reason, but brings into play the dimension of aesthetics. By situating religion in relation to the two focal points of ethics and aesthetics, a fundamental question of the philosophy of religion is addressed. Second, I employ several examples to show the various conceptions of the divine that the poet elucidates and juxtaposes in his work (Christian motifs, Greek mythology, pantheistic concepts, etc.). This leads to a philosophy of religion that is not determined by dogmatic boundaries. Third, I point out how religion plays a major role in the reception of Hölderlin. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue The Impact of German Idealism on Religion)
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