Frömmigkeit und Weltethos bei Schleiermacher und Sailer

Abstract

Schleiermacher and Sailer are two fascinating thinkers who struck a middle course between Enlightenment and Romanticism, between mystic piety and sophisticated forms of rationality, between spiritual interiority and courage in their bold interventions into the state, university and ecclesiastical policies of their times. Taking their start from the heart of their mystic feeling and thinking, they were able to connect two different realms, which had remain separated until then. The present essay investigates the structure of the sentiment of dependance, namely the awareness of such dependance, that is the character of divine immediacy. From there, the essay aims at clarifying the ethics and practice peculiar to the two theologians.