180 



PHILOSOPHICAL THOUGHT. 



30. 



Contrast 

 with 

 Schleier- 

 macher. 



the intellect was the highest faculty of the human 

 mind, through which the partial and lower realms and 

 activities of thought, as well as of the will and the 

 emotions, were to be comprehended and appreciated in 

 their true meaning. Schleiermacher did not believe in 

 this supreme and unique power of the intellectual or 

 logical faculty in the human mind. Compared with 

 the Monism of Hegel, his thought must have appeared 

 dualistic. 1 In opposition to Hegel, who invited his 

 hearers and readers to enter into a well-planned and 

 strongly-built edifice of thought and knowledge, Schleier- 

 macher would seem rather to detain them in the winding 

 paths of an intricate dialectic, out of the labyrinth of 

 which no clearly marked path led to a highest point 

 from which a supreme and comprehensive outlook could 



1 Nevertheless Schleiermacher 

 may be looked upon as one of the 

 earliest representatives in recent 

 philosophy of that tendency of 

 thought which I have frequently 

 referred to as the Synoptic. Es- 

 pecially in his earlier writings his 

 antipathy to the atomistic dualism 

 of the Kant-Fichtean philosophy is, 

 as Wilhelm Bender (' Die Theologie 

 Schleiermachers,' pp. 98 and 99) 

 says, very clearly marked : " It may 

 be regarded as an epoch-making 

 event in the history of modern 

 ethics, that Schleiermacher, in the 

 ' Monologues,' as also in the later 

 Lectures on the subject, through 

 his enthusiastic proclamation of the 

 unity of soul and body as also of 

 mind and nature, has put an end to 

 the dividing of man into a rational 

 and a sensuous being. The ethical 

 aspect considers the single indi- 

 vidual always as a whole, as in- 

 tricately interwoven in the whole 

 of humanity, indeed of the world 



in general. ... In urging the 

 importance of individuality lies the 

 real progress of Schleiermacher's 

 ethics beyond Fichte ; in the con- 

 sideration of the moral activity of 

 the individual in the totality of 

 the moral task of mankind lies his 

 progress beyond Kant. This moral 

 task is defined as, first, the organis- 

 ing of nature, and, through this, 

 secondly, the realising and perfect- 

 ing of humanity in its infinite 

 individualisations. " If Hegel's 

 philosophy aimed at monism of 

 a logical order, Schleiermacher's 

 speculations rested upon a primary 

 synopsis of what, in the actual 

 world, appeared so often divided 

 and broken up into apparent 

 opposites : " The tendency to bring 

 into sight, through moral doing 

 and thinking, an artistic whole 

 Schleiermacher expressed in the 

 idea of the Highest Good " (ibid., 

 p. 101). 



