Friedrich Daniel Ernst Schleiermacher was nineteenth-century Protestantism's great systematic theologian. It was he who marked the points of the compass for much of subsequent theology and philosophy of religion. Like St. Augustine, Schleiermacher desired to know God and the soul, and his place in the history of philosophy is due largely to the fact that he was able to state in modern language and concepts the great Augustinian conviction that religious faith is native to all human experience. Therefore, the knowledge of God and the knowledge of the soul are two orders of knowledge that must be distinguished but cannot be separated.

Life

Schleiermacher was first and foremost a preacher and theologian, a church statesman, and an educator. He carried out his work as a philosopher in the context of the great idealist systems of Friedrich von Schelling, Johann Gottlieb...