The Loneliness of Secularism: Schleiermacher on Religion as Reconciliation

Introduction

At the heart of philosophy is the attempt to solve the problem of the human condition. The problem consists in the fact of human finitude in its various forms: finitude in man’s capacity to find truth, finitude in man’s capacity to be free, etc. After millenia of unrealized solutions, ranging from the Enlightenment’s rationalist ethical frameworks to Marxist socioeconomic systems, the weight of these constraints are beginning to burden the collective consciousness of the modern world. The result is the acceleration of a phenomenon that has always plagued the human experience, but one that is acutely present in the life of modern man: alienation. It is the modern philosopher’s job, therefore, to offer solutions to the alienation that underlies the modern human experience. In this paper, I seek to elucidate the solution in religion. First, I will undertake a thorough analysis of the phenomena of alienation, specifically elucidating its tripartite nature and historical and ideological causes. Then, using the theology and philosophy of Freidrich Schleiermacher as a foundation to my argument, I will outline the true nature of religion as the drawing of man toward infinitude. When religion is practiced, I argue that it enables man to overcome alienation: personal alienation by recognizing his own capacity for transcendence; social alienation by understanding himself as sharing in the communal pursuit of infinitude; and historical alienation by adopting a metanarrative in which the past and future offer a common tradition and purpose for the present. Finally, I critique the subjectivity of religion in Schleiermacher’s theology as conducive to social and historical fracture and subsequent alienation, and instead propose an objective, dogmatic approach.

The nature of alienation

In order to understand the solution to alienation, the nature of alienation must first be examined. Alienation is most simply defined as being in a state of unnatural rupture from the object of alienation. It can be further described in a tripartite structure: alienation from oneself, alienation from society, and alienation from history. In the foremost aspect, man becomes enamored with his limitations and inability to live a meaningful life instead of embracing his capacity for experiencing transcendent love, beauty, virtue, and other universal ideals. He is in a state of rupture with his own self and thereby experiences a loss of purpose. In other words, a man alienated from himself views his condition as inescapably finite and constrained, which engenders pessimism and nihilistic tendencies. In a similar way, the man alienated from society experiences an existential separation from other people, which causes him to view community as superfluous rather than integral to the human experience. This can be seen most explicitly in antisocial behavior, but also more subtly in a deprioritization of the interests of society. This sort of alienation fuels selfishness and greed, which erode the sense of societal obligation that is at the foundation of an ethical and fulfilled society. Finally, the man alienated from history exists in a state of disunity with the past and future. By detaching himself from a historical metanarrative, he feels that he exists as an isolated point in history rather than part of a community and mission which extend throughout time. Consequently, man becomes historically disoriented and is unable to identify a tradition to derive from the past and preserve for the future. 

The aforementioned alienation from oneself, society, and history can be summarized as experiences of finitude. Personal alienation is the experience of the existential limitations of the self rather than its capacity to grasp the infinite transcendentals of Truth, Beauty, and Goodness. Societal alienation is the experience of the superficiality or danger of social bonds instead of the infinitely life-giving potential of community. Historical alienation is the experience of instability within history rather than unity with an infinite tradition and purpose that span time and space. 

The causes of alienation

Since alienation is best understood as the experience of finitude, the causes of alienation will be the ideas and events which reinforce man’s perceived finitude. Alienation from oneself mainly stems from a naturalistic and mechanistic conception of man. This principle is summarized by Nikola Tesla: “The human being is no exception to the natural order. Man, like the universe, is a machine…what we call ‘soul’ or ‘spirit,’ is nothing more than the sum of the functionings of the body.”^[1]Tesla, Nikola. “A Machine to End War.” Liberty, 9 Feb. 1935. Tesla suggests that man is solely the matter of which he is composed and is therefore like any other machine responding to stimuli. The belief inherently reduces all experiences of transcendence beyond the material world to illusions, and therefore reduces man to an inescapably finite existence. Likewise, alienation from society is fueled by individualism. Thomas Hobbes, an American political philosopher, writes:

The right of nature… is the liberty each man hath, to use his own power, as he will himself, for the preservation of his own nature; that is, to say, his own life; and consequently, of doing anything, which in his own judgement, and reason, he shall conceive to be the aptest means thereunto…^[2]Hobbes, Thomas. Leviathan. Edited by J. C. A. Gaskin, Oxford University Press, 2008, 1.14.64

Thomas Hobbes

Hobbes, whose approach is emblematic of Enlightenment-era philosophy, frames man as radically independent and claims that nature demands his freedom to live completely according to his own determination. In this approach, there is minimal room for societal values and interests, which are often treated as secondary if not counterproductive. Individualism distorts the nature of society by conceiving it as being composed of autonomous, independent individuals when, in reality, it is constituted by a collective of persons who are inherently relational. No one exists outside of relationship; each person has a father, a mother, and a community responsible for his birth and upbringing, and each person depends on relationships with others for mental and material sustenance. Even if a person’s relationship with his parents or society are unfortunately harmful or are severed, they nonetheless deeply impact his existence and values. Thus, when social and political principles are grounded in the conception of man as primarily an individual and not as a person perpetually existing in relationship, they tend to unnaturally isolate man from the society in which he lives. Finally, alienation from history is caused by the abandonment of tradition. Without holding to a tradition rooted in the past, man is unable to embrace a prerogative for the future that has stood the test of time and is less susceptible to drastic fluctuation or dissolution. The benefits of a historical tradition can be seen in artistic philosophies, although the limitations of secular philosophies and the relatively more substantial impact of religion are explicated later. The modern Romanticist, for example, is united to a tradition constructed by the original Romantic thinkers, including but not limited to a set of fundamental practices and values which influence the art or literature which the Romanticist produces. Furthermore, this modern Romanticist is tasked with passing on the tradition to the next generation with the hope that all may experience the beauty and goodness offered by the philosophy. A tradition and historical prerogative, therefore, place the participant within a community spanning across time. Thus, when tradition is abandoned and historical indifference or rampant progressivism is adopted, a feeling of historical disorientation is inevitable. In fact, this disorientation is at the heart of postmodernism: “We live in the postmodern world, where everything is possible and almost nothing is certain.”^[3]Havel, Vaclav. “The Need for Transcendence in the Postmodern World.” Philadelphia Liberty Medal Award Ceremony, 4 July 1994, Independence Hall, Philadelphia. In other words, modern man no longer exists within a metanarrative that transcends history, from which he derives certainty from tradition and possibility from envisioning a future enriched by the tradition he preserves. Instead, he is isolated in the grand scheme of time, alienated from history.

Schleiermacher on religion as personal, social, and historical reconciliation

Schleiermacher’s theology on religious praxis is important to understanding how religion may be applied to alienation. His views are most clearly explicated in his work titled Christmas Eve, in which he recounts a religious gathering. In this work, Schleiermacher retains his insistence on the individuality of religious experience: Eugene Schlesinger states that, in Christmas Eve, Schleiermacher maintains that “Redemption can occur only as each individual becomes conscious of his or her existence within eternal being.”^[4]Schlesinger, Eugene R. “Schleiermacher on the Necessity of the Church.” The Journal of Theological Studies, vol. 66, no. 1, 2015, pp. 235–256. In other words, the individual intuition of infinitude is still foundational to Schleiermacher’s conception of religious practice. However, he also argues that the church and the united body of believers are necessary for the sustenance of the infinitizing effects of religion: “And it is only when the individual contemplates and cultivates humanity as a living fellowship of individuals, and carries its spirit and consciousness in himself, and loses and finds again his separate existence in it, that he has the higher life and the peace of God in himself.”^[5]Schleiermacher, Friedrich. Christmas Eve: A Dialogue on the Celebration of Christmas. Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1890, pp. 70 The consciousness which Schleiermacher speaks of is a God-consciousness, the awareness and pursuit of the human capacity for intuiting infinitude and a state of existence in which man embraces transcendence.^[6]Schleiermacher, Christmas Eve 69 Schleiermacher sees humanity as united in “being” on the precipice of God-consciousness and “becoming” God-conscious, which he believes is represented by the Incarnation of Christ as the mediator between God and man.^[7]Schleiermacher, Christmas Eve 69-70 Thus, Schleiermacher claims that in order for man to be God-conscious, he must recognize in himself the collective redemption of human nature itself. This thought will arise, according to Schleiermacher, if he retains “the thought of a common doing and living” amongst those who enter into God-consciousness, the group which he identifies as “the Church.”^[8]Schleiermacher, Christmas Eve 70 Therefore, festivals are instrumental to Schleiermacher’s practice of religion because they provide that common ritual for the community of the church. William Loewe writes that to Schleiermacher, each religious festival “evokes the experience of being redeemed.”^[9]Loewe, William P. “Friedrich Schleiermacher: Redemption as Transformation of Consciousness.” Lex Crucis: Soteriology and the Stages of Meaning. 1517 Media, Minneapolis, 2016, pp. 234 These experiences are so central that “In [Schleiermacher’s] view, it is thanks to the Christmas festival that Christianity continues to flourish…Antiquity demonstrates how festivals can generate their own aetiologies, and within these, heighten the miraculous element.”^[10]Loewe 222-223 For example, Schleiermacher writes about a minister conferring the sacrament of baptism on a child, for whom the body of believers subsequently pray. He says that “it was as if the rays of heavenly love and joy had concentrated upon the head and heart of the child as in a new focus; and it was certainly our common feeling that they kindled there a new life, and that they would thus ray out again on all sides.”^[11]Schleiermacher, Christmas Eve 44-45 To Schleiermacher, this sacrament was deeply life-giving and strengthened the bonds of the community in which it was experienced. The church and its festivals enable man to experience infinitude within a community of God-conscious individuals who are united in the transcendence of their shared human nature.

Furthermore, the practice of faith within the church has historical implications as it establishes man within a broader context. Christine Helmer discusses the historical-theological trajectory in Schleiermacher’s conception of religion: 

Through the centuries, the ecclesial element circulates the same person of Christ in order that the mystical element might actualize Christ’s transformative influence on the individual. The church offers the transhistorical context for a mystical encounter with Christ, who is the same yesterday, today, and forever (cf. Rev. 1:8).^[12]Helmer, Christine. “Mysticism and Metaphysics: Schleiermacher and a Historical-Theological Trajectory.” The Journal of Religion, vol. 83, no. 4, 2003, pp. 535-536

Christine Helmer

The mystical element which Helmer mentions is synonymous with the intimate sensory experience of infinitude. Thus, as Helmer explicates, the church is the means through which the intuition of infinitude reverberates throughout time. The God-conscious individual is united in his God-consciousness with members of the church in the present, but also with those in the past and future. Schleiermacher summarizes his historical approach to Christ, whom he believes embodies the divine infinitude which humanity seeks to embrace: “All that was before [Christ] was a prefiguration of Him, and was related to Him…Yet in Him we celebrate not only ourselves but all who will yet come, as well as all who have ever been; for they were only anything in so far as He was in them and they in Him.”^[13]Schleiermacher, Christmas Eve 72 And just as the church of the past, present, and future is mystically united in its telos, the person of Christ, it is also united in its means of achieving that end. This historical unity renders it possible to derive a religious tradition from the past that may enrich the present church in its pursuit of the infinite, and the present church is endowed with the mission of preserving this enrichment for the future. 

The implications of practicing religion as Schleiermacher presents it, then, are threefold. First, religion enables man to intuit infinitude and experience the joy of transcendence. He is no longer confined to the finite, corporeal world, but is drawn toward divinity, toward Truth, Goodness, and Beauty itself. Second, religion provides man a community of believers who collectively experience the infinite, which Schleiermacher calls the church. This is more than simply a collection of private religious adherents, but a body of believers who understand that they are fundamentally united in the transcendence of their human nature. Third, religion establishes man in a broad historical context of common tradition and purpose. This is done through the church, the body of the faithful which exists throughout time and offers believers a past tradition and a future mission to respectively enrich and motivate the present church. When applied as a solution to the experience of alienation, religion and its threefold effects correlate precisely to the tripartite structure of alienation. First, religion enables man to overcome the obsession with his own finitude. By reconfiguring man as capable of intuiting infinitude, the religious ethic destroys the existential and biological limitations imposed by nihilism and naturalism. Man is no longer deprived of purpose and reduced to a composition of matter, but is endowed with meaning and elevated to a temple of transcendence. Man is no longer alienated from himself. Second, religion provides man the communal bond of the church, through which he may reconnect with society at large. When viewed through a religious lens, man is not solely a distinct, isolated individual, but is a person who participates in a human nature shared by the whole of humanity. Thus, the transcendence of man offered by religion is more fundamentally a transcendence of human nature. Consequently, when participating in religious community, man is united to others in an intimate, ontological bond due to the community’s shared condition and shared transcendence. Man is no longer alienated from society. Third, religion establishes man within a historical metanarrative through the church, which exists throughout time as a mystical body of believers. Through the adoption of religion, modern man exchanges his belief in a purposeless history for belief in historical unity under the collective intuition of the infinite. This unity endows man with a tradition to examine from the past and a prerogative to uphold for the future, thereby addressing historical disorientation. Man is no longer alienated from history. Thus, religion is able to help solve the alienation of modern man.

The deficiency of the secular worldview

One might argue that the expounded effects of religion regarding the self, society, and history can be supplanted by secular assimilations. For example, the secular might argue that Enlightenment rationalism is sufficient to induce transcendence toward the immaterial principles of Truth, Beauty, and Goodness; that communities sharing a rationalist outlook can experience the same bond as that of a religious community; and that adopting the historic rationalist tradition establishes man in a tradition and endows him with a prerogative to preserve the philosophy. Although Schleiermacher does not state this explicitly–and might actually disagree given his praise of the atheist Spinoza as a “holy” man who was “full of religion”^[14]Schleiermacher, Friedrich. On the Essence of Religion. In R. Crouter (Ed.), Schleiermacher: On Religion: Speeches to its Cultured Despisers (Cambridge Texts in the History of Philosophy, … Continue reading–I believe that secular philosophies cannot achieve the personal, social, and historical transcendence of which only religion is capable. Religion is distinct in its unique aim and the nature of the bonds which unite the church. The object of religion and the ethic of the church is pursuit of divinity, of complete transcendence beyond the material world, an end that is more lofty than any social, political, or economic ideology concerned with phenomena within the material world. The stakes of philosophy can be immensely great: philosophy is used to discern reality and generate solutions to important socioeconomic or existential problems. However, the stakes of religion will always be infinitely greater. It is not immediate reality that is being discerned, but the foundation of reality itself, the truths and entities that are believed to draw man toward heights that are greater than any political utopia. As such, religious experience and ideology tend to be more existentially intense and significant to the believer than secular experience and ideology are to the non-believer. Thus, the church and its festivals cannot be replaced by their secular counterparts.

The instability of the relativist worldview

However, Schleiermacher’s theology of religion as highly subjective threatens to fragment religion and introduce superficial unity, thereby compromising its ability to address societal and historical alienation. Schleiermacher states that “Intuition is and always remains something individual, set apart, the immediate perception, nothing more.”^[15]Schleiermacher, On Religion 26 As a result, “religion does not strive to bring those who believe and feel under a single belief and a single feeling.”^[16]Schleiermacher, On Religion 28 To Schleiermacher, religion is an entirely personal matter, meaning all forms of dogmatism or institutionalization ought to be rejected as originating from “childlike minds.”^[17]Schleiermacher, On Religion 26 However, the subjectification of the infinite eradicates the capacity for religion to be the uniting force which enables one to overcome alienation from society and history. A highly subjective religion which precludes dogma has two options. First, it must either be held together by immensely fundamental, uncontroversial principles that will most likely never be challenged. Second, it must resort to schism. In the former case, the unity of the church is largely superficial. Due to the indefiniteness of religious doctrines and practice, the mutual immersion which accompanies shared belief about the transcendent would be inherently unattainable. The unity would always remain a superficial symbol of peaceful relation amongst the community rather than a sustainable, concrete unity of belief and purpose. As such, the unity borne out of Schleiermachian religious subjectivity is not nearly powerful enough to counteract the intense, societally alienating current of modernity. Conversely, in the latter case, the church has completely forsaken unity. The individual schismatic groups may be unified in their zeal, but even this unity is always under the threat of dissolution if no dogma is adopted. The results of schism, then, are fragmentation, ecumenical gridlock, and more tenuous bonds. Thus, Schleiermacher’s religious subjectivism directly undermines the unity of the church, which compromises the ability for it to be the nexus of societal unification and historical stability. 

Strict Schleiermacherians may critique this by contending that all religions are actually united in their common desire to intuit the infinite, and that diversity in religion is actually conducive to collective human flourishing. When man realizes that “his religion is only a part of a whole,” and that “there are views just as pious and, nevertheless, completely different from his own,” he will recognize how “this lovely modesty, this friendly inviting tolerance springs from the concept of religion and how intimately tolerance nestles up to it.”^[18]Schleiermacher, On Religion 27 In other words, different approaches toward intuiting the infinite can allegedly enable people to learn from and admire one another while having the freedom to pursue meaning as it suits them. Schleiermachians would then critique my proposed dichotomy of “superficial unity” or “schism” as a false dichotomy, claiming that you can have distinct religious groups who are united by the lofty end of pursuing infinitude and are simultaneously without the inter-religious animosity typically associated with schism. I believe that even if this ideal was achieved, it would still fail to truly overcome social alienation because the “unity” which ensues would still be superficial. The “infinite” which the Buddhist seeks to intuit is categorically different from the “infinite” which the Christian seeks to intuit, so the means through which these respective “infinites” are intuited are different. Even if religions and denominations reached a mutual understanding of their common pursuit of infinitude, the differences in the actual nature and means of intuiting the infinitude will remain significant. As mentioned previously, this superficial unity is not nearly powerful enough to overcome societal alienation. Rather, a dogmatic religious system which seeks to establish truth is necessary to generate the strong ontological bonds that keep a community united in the present and throughout time. Thus, I believe that only a dogmatic, objective religion is capable of enabling modern man to overcome alienation from society and history.

Conclusion

Although religion will most likely remain a controversial subject in a secular world, the principles and practice underlying it must be reconsidered as genuine solutions to modern alienation. In an era where religion is treated as anachronistic or irrational, cultural and educational institutions must make a concerted effort to educate the public about religion just as Friedrich Schleiermacher sought to do in his own era of skepticism. In doing so, man might become closer to understanding its own condition. Man might understand that he needs to pursue infinitude in order to overcome his limitations. Man might recognize that he needs a community united by pursuit of transcendent reality in order to discover the greatest fulfillment of his natural relationality. Man might realize that only a religious metanarrative, with a stable tradition and hopeful mission oriented toward transcendence, can resolve historical disorientation. The process of deconstructing the culture of animosity surrounding religion begins with a basic consideration: that religion may not be an opiate for the masses, but an antidote for the human condition.