Religion, Bildung und Erziehung bei Schleiermacher

Dr. Christiane Ehrhardt leitet eine Arbeitsstelle für Evangelischen Religionsunterricht in Berlin.

This Schleiermacher monograph breaks new ground in research, because it shows that both disparate early works "On Religion: Speeches to its Cultured Despisers" and the "Soliloquies" can and should be read in correlation to one another. A categorical structure becomes visible in Schleiermacher's complete thought, in which his educational and theological theory as well as ethics and dialectics, and last but not least his deliberations on educational reform may be regarded as a consequent continuation and development of reflections that are first elaborated in the "Speeches" and "Soliloquies". Schleiermacher follows an agonal line of arguments, because he accepts "Separation" and prefers "Touch" to "Unification". To determine the relation between education and religion today, Schleiermacher's principle of a reflection movement based on polarity appears indicative of future developments. The transdisciplinary study at hand places these two Early Romantic treatises by Schleiermacher in the context of educational theory, which is particularly valuable for the current discourse on religious education.