Download Schleiermacher ON RELIGION - The Partially Examined Life

ON RELIGION
SPEECHES TO ITS CULTURED DESPISERS
THE POWERPOINT!
SPEECHES ONE AND TWO
INTRODUCTION
• Schleiermacher often described as the father of
modern Christian theology
– Arguably most influential 19th C. Christian theologian
– Compared in stature to Augustine, Aquinas, Calvin
• Mirrored Kant’s Copernican revolution in philosophy
by placing subject at center of religious experience
• Religious experience has its origin in the
transcendental conditions of subjectivity itself
INTRODUCTION
• Heavily influenced by Kant & Spinoza
– Kant: all objective knowledge leads back
•to investigating the conditions of the knowing subject
– Thus, the nature of the subject & transcendental conditions of
knowledge at forefront of philosophical inquiry
• Schleiermacher placed the subject at theology’s forefront
• Like Kant, Schleiermacher’s God is not anthropomorphic
• Unlike Kant, Schleiermacher posits an immanent God
– not a transcendent God
– just as Spinoza did
BIOGRAPHY
• Born the son of a Prussian Army chaplain in 1768
• Educated by the Moravian Brethren
– an unorthodox German pietest church community
• Rapidly rose through school & attended seminary
– At seminary, formed a secret club with other students
•to study Kant, Goethe & other philosophers/radical thinkers
BIOGRAPHY
• Heavily influenced by Moravian Brethren
• Moravians were a kind of pietist sect
– they advocated a heartfelt, emotional religion
– But not based on inward turn to experience, like other pietists
• Moravians based their “heart” religion on looking outward
to Christ’s suffering
– and not simply inward to themselves
• S.’s move is to merge his “heart” religion with Spinozism
and phenomenological experience
BIOGRAPHY
• Graduated with degree in theology (minoring in
philosophy & philology) from University of Halle in
1790 (age 22)
– 1790-93 (age 22-25)
•Upon graduation, served as tutor to aristocracy
– 1794-96 (age 26-28)
•Pastor in Landsberg, Germany
– 1796-1804 (age 28-36)
•passed second round of theological exams
•appointed to prestigious hospital chaplaincy in Berlin
BIOGRAPHY
• It was during this period that S. joined Berlin’s intellectual and
cultural elite
– Largely in the salon of “emancipated” Jews, Markus & Henriette Herz
• Henriette privately teaches S. Italian
– rumors of a forbidden love affair
– Here, S. was introduced to many leading cultural & literary figures
• including the Schlegel brothers & the poet Novalis
• NOTE: Look to Novalis’ poetry to better understand S.’s emotional piety
– S. helps edit Das Athenäeum, the Schlegels’ literary journal
• Also translated Plato & other Greek philosophers
– But the literary figures with whom he interacted had issues with S.’s
Christianity
• In response, he wrote On Religion anonymously in 1799 (age 30-31)
BIOGRAPHY
• With rising cultural clout, S. helps establish the University of Berlin in
1810 (age 41) where he is appointed professor of Theology
– Writes theology treatise The Christian Faith in 1821 (age 53)
– spends rest of career until he dies at in 1834 (age 66)
• Schopenhauer was an early student of S. (1811)
– Schopenhauer mocked Schleiermacher’s assertion that
philosophy was impossible without religion
•Schop. thought a religious person had no need for philosophy
•Schopenhauer also thought S. didn’t truly understand Kant
• In addition to theology, S. also wrote on philosophical subjects
– Critically, hermeneutics
BIOGRAPHY
• S. spent his remaining years advocating for German unification,
political reform, & jousting with Hegel
• In 1816, S. helps appoint Hegel to University of Berlin faculty
– mostly to head off appointment of an academic rival
• Hegel was a rising academic star at the time
– a quick rivalry developed
– S. blocked Hegel from Berlin Academy of the Sciences
• Both S. and Hegel wanted to retrieve religion from Kant
• But they had sharp theological differences
– Over role of reason (Hegel) vs. feeling (Schleiermacher)
– Over role of church in society
BIOGRAPHY
• S. more interested in theology as related to the
individual
• Hegel more interested in merging religion with the
State to re-create something like a Greek polis
• Schleiermacher’s theology rooted in feeling
– reflected his early Moravian pietism
• Hegel emphasized the role of reason in
understanding God
BIOGRAPHY
• Hegel on Schleiermacher’s Christianity:
– “If religion grounds itself in a person only on the basis
of feeling, then . . . a dog would be the best Christian,
for it carries this feeling more intensely within itself
and lives principally satisfied by a bone.”
SUMMARIZING ON RELIGION
• Doctrinal Christianity & Kantian religion are both
flawed for similar reasons
– Both treat religion as a concept to be understood
– Systematic thinking about religion will always fail
• Religion unnecessary to gain morality
• Religion is in fact a separate sphere of existence
– accessed through a feeling of merger with the infinite
SUMMARIZING ON RELIGION
• With On Religion’s First Speech (better translates as Over
Religion), Schleiermacher is addressing the educated elite
of Berlin
– The “cultured despisers” of religion rejected the dogmatics of
traditional Christianity in one of two ways
• They have moved to a different kind of particular positivism
– by despising religion and rejecting all forms of positive religious belief
– This really becomes its own kind of belief system
•Alternatively, they fall for natural religion
– the way of Kant, or Locke, Voltaire & the other Deists
– But doing so, they give up any sense of immediacy or
religious satisfaction.
SUMMARIZING ON RELIGION
• On Religion is an appeal to atheists of the day that there is
a false choice between positive religion and natural
religion.
• First Speech: All people struggle to harmonize two
opposing forces: universality and particularity (the one):
– Particularity is represented by positive religions
• E.g., traditional doctrine and dogmatics
– Universality is represented by natural religions
• E.g., Locke, Voltaire, or Kant
SUMMARIZING ON RELIGION
• In the Second Speech, Schleiermacher describes religion as 1 of 3
necessary spheres of human activity:
– Knowing – scientific knowledge
– Acting – morality
– Religion – feeling of connection to the infinite
• But
– no personal God &
– no immortality as traditionally conceived
• Neither scriptural nor church authority should dictate religion
• All individuals & cultures should have their own religious sense
RHETORICAL STRUCTURE OF THE TWO SPEECHES*
PROBLEM
Speech 1
Foundational
Assumption:
How to reconcile
opposing aspects of
human existence?
Speech 2
Intellectual
Definition:
OPPOSITIONS
RESOLUTIONS
All human beings subject to 2 opposing
ontological forces:
Universality (natural religion, Deism,
Kantianism, agnosticism, critical
reflection)
(Con: indifferent & unsatisfying)
Particularity (positive religion, dogmatics,
belief, atheism)
(Con: blind, arbitrary, naïve)
Demand for mediation (but not
a midpoint or equilibrium)
Manifest activity (thinking, acting)
Intuition of the universe is
mediatory, but not a
combination of theoretical &
practical: “Praxis is an art,
versus
Secret inactivity (intuition, feeling)
Is religion a way of
thinking or a way of
doing?
speculation is a science,
religion is the sensibility &
taste for the infinite”
*Adapted & modifed from Richard Crouter in Friedrich Schleiermacher: Between Enlightenment and Romanticism (2005)
HEIDEGGER ON SCHLEIERMACHER
• One needs a phenomenological attitude toward religious experience
• You can understand religion only if you observe it within yourself
• S. made religion both:
– a new way of observing the world but also a new way of acting
– a special way of comporting oneself, of reflecting inwardly
•in other words, a practical phenomenon
• Phenomenological reduction isolates your individual teleology
– Religion’s purpose to determine each person’s place within the
whole
• Don’t place God in the sphere of knowledge
– as the ground of knowing & known
•that is not the same as the pious way to have God & to know
about him
HEIDEGGER ON SCHLEIERMACHER
• Observation [Betrachtung] is essential to religion
– “not closed-off stupidity” (i.e., doctrine or dogmatics)
– Sense & taste for the infinite
• Infinite being—with that it is impossible not to imply God
• Foreign teleology is eliminated
– & particularly any dangerously confusing theoretical teleology
– Instead, let your consciousness “eavesdrop” on this state of the
living moment for yourself
– You should notice the becoming of your consciousness
• rather than reflecting on a consciousness that has already become
HEIDEGGER ON SCHLEIERMACHER
• You must uncover an original performance of a feeling
– in which religion alone realizes itself as a certain form of
experience
• The Universe enters you as an uninterrupted flow
– In which you see yourself as a part of the whole
• Religion is the specifically intentional & emotional reference
– to each content of experience; to an infinite whole
• Devotion is getting excited at the “streaming in” of this fullness
without restraint
• Religious life is the constant renewal of this act
– integrating experience into the inner unity of life
HEIDEGGER ON SCHLEIERMACHER
• Religion is a mysterious moment of unstructured unity of
intuition & feeling
• Any positive claim about being is gone
– nothing is decided about anything
– the fullness of experience stands in a certain neutrality
• no object takes precedence over any other
• a specific infinity of religious experience is thus given
• Live your life with religion not from religion
– Religion should accompany all doings of life, like a holy music
FIRST SPEECH: APOLOGY
ON RELIGION: DEFENSE
• Why would anyone from the educated classes pay
attention to someone talking about religion?
• Poetry & philosophy are more popular
• Manners, art, & science are of more interest
• There is no room left for faith today
ON RELIGION: DEFENSE
• You particularly distrust Priests nowadays
• In any other field, you would trust the advice of
experts who have devoted their lives to the subject
• Why not trust experts in religion?
• But since you asked, I’m happy to advise
– for [being anonymous] I don’t worry about how my fellow
priests will respond
ON RELIGION: DEFENSE
• God made his work divisible into 2 opposing forces
– physical world vs. the spirit
• The physical world itself consists of opposing forces
• But so does the spirit: particularity & universality
– Your spirit wants to assert itself as an individual
•it wants to accomplish goals & acquire things
– But it also wants to absorb itself into all of Creation
– These are humanity’s two ontological pressures
ON RELIGION: DEFENSE
• 1st aspect of spirit: all you feel & do—Particularity
• 2nd aspect of sprit: focusing on other people outside of you
– Universality: Your comportment to law, order & morality
• Appeasing the 1st aspect leads to endless pleasure-seeking
– Such people can never know Being or the nature of humanity
• But appeasing the 2nd aspect means you dissipate yourself
into a futile game with empty notions
– Everything simply becomes a means
– Nothing becomes an end
ON RELIGION: DEFENSE
• People who never seek either spiritual aspect
(neither self-regard nor common morality) are
worse:
– They become dull mediocrities
– They lead neither to human achievement nor morality
• But the younger generation is mistakenly
encouraged to do just this
ON RELIGION: DEFENSE
• God always blesses some individuals
– they become interpreters of Him & his works:
•either through natural inclination
•or after severe & complete self-training
• They are ambassadors of God, simply by existing
• They show ordinary people how to change anxious
restless self-love into a love of the highest & eternal
ON RELIGION: DEFENSE
• This true priest brings divinity to those of us who are
used to the finite & the trivial
• Doing so, he awakens a slumbering germ of a better
humanity
• This higher priesthood announces the inner
meaning of all spiritual secrets& is the source of all
– visions & prophecies
– sacred art & speeches
ON RELIGION: DEFENSE
• Someday, hopefully, we’ll be taught this piety
directly by God
• Until then, only a few individuals have this insight &
piety
• I [“Anonymous”] am one of these individuals
• My piety helped me as I outgrew childish
[anthropomorphic] notions of God & immortality
ON RELIGION: DEFENSE
• My piety guided my active life without any planning
• Through it alone I understood friendship & love
• This true religion is rare
– only those who have felt it themselves will discuss it
• Such religion is not to be found in the Bible
– To those who haven’t experienced this religion
•it would seem mere annoyance & foolishness
ON RELIGION: DEFENSE
•Only Germans can be taught this religion
•Only Germans can get this religion within
today’s coarse barbarism
– But even then, only upper-class, educated
Germans
– [Note the flattery toward audience, & the
Romantic-era Germanic nationalism]
ON RELIGION: DEFENSE
• The German lower classes cannot understand this
more refined religion
• Do you really think people constantly stressed about
day-to-day problems can focus on the big picture?
• I will show you — and only you — from what human
tendency religion proceeds
• The English & the French have too many cultural
hang-ups to truly understand religion
ON RELIGION: DEFENSE
• It was once considered a virtue to reject old
Christian dogma
• But those days [of Martin Luther?] are long gone
• Piety itself is now no more to be talked about
• But if you’re going to be contemptuous of religion,
– at least be well-informed & consistent about your
contempt
ON RELIGION: DEFENSE
• You reject all notions miracles & immortality
• You may consider this the crux of all religions
• But what if you base religion upon an inner feeling
– & not upon miracles & immortality?
• If you only judge religion by its dogmas
– you’ll never understand its inner core
ON RELIGION: DEFENSE
• You’re already familiar with Christianity’s history
– ranging from silly old myths of human sacrifice
– to today’s refined Deism, which is just Kantian ethics
• You find no rhyme or reason to either one
– & I don’t blame you!
• There’s a problem with both:
– mythological, doctrinal Christianity
– refined Deism
– they both strive for a calculating understanding
ON RELIGION: DEFENSE
• All of these theologies endlessly argue about the
beginning & the end of the World
• Doing so, they miss the point of real religion
• Look to your own feelings
– & you’ll understand this is not the character of religion
• If you’ve only paid attention to dogmas & doctrines
– then what you despise is not really religion
– but the corruption of religion
ON RELIGION: DEFENSE
• Why won’t you despisers question more deeply?
• Why do you remain voluntarily ignorant?
• Why do you simply blow off religion as nonsense?
– just because there are stupid Christians in the world?
• Why not consider the religious life itself?
– A religion divorced from dogma or doctrine
•where people try to capture unreflective moments
•their soul thus dissolves into the Infinite & the Eternal
ON RELIGION: DEFENSE
• Only in such unreflective moments will religion
reveal itself in its primordial & visible form
– You would no longer despise that kind of religion
• Only those who have considered this emotional
response toward religion can understand it
• But if you don’t unbind these emotions
– you’ll merely analyze religion as a cold, dead thing
•& you will always fail to understand its true nature
ON RELIGION: DEFENSE
• Philosophers should not be surprised that I
recommend study of the unreflective [emotional]
elements of religion
• Philosophy bases itself on completeness &
verification
• Religion can’t work that way
• There are very few philosophers who both
– understand the harmony of nature & spirit, and
– communicate a system of that knowledge
ON RELIGION: DEFENSE
• In fact, all systems & schools of philosophy are just
houses & nurseries of the dead letter
• The spirit of true religious contemplation is too fluid
to be captured in systematic philosophies
• Religion is as far removed from systematic thinking
as philosophy is disposed toward systems
– so don’t try to learn about religion from
philosophers!
ON RELIGION: DEFENSE
• Think of any of the old religious heroes, who ever
brought forth any new revelation
– From the person who first devised a Kingdom of God
– To the current crop of “new mystics”
•who may still hold some original beam of inner light
•[a hint as to where his sympathies lie!]
• Have any of them tried to present their religion
systematically?
ON RELIGION: DEFENSE
• I have no use for theologians of the Bible
– The try to come up with new clothes for old formulas,
– Or new arrangements of ingenious proofs for God
• Ideas & words are useful only as necessary &
inseparable outpourings of emotion
• They can only be understood in context with that
emotion
• Doctrines are useful only to help clarify
misunderstandings about those emotions
ON RELIGION: DEFENSE
• So turn away from everything usually called religion
• Instead focus only on inward emotions &
dispositions
• Only if you do this & continue to ridicule religion will
I give up
– & assume that your contempt for religion is just part of
your nature
• Until then, I have hope for you!
ON RELIGION: DEFENSE
• Don’t worry, I’m not going to say religion is
necessary for justice or moral order
• Nor will I talk about
– “all-seeing eyes,” or
– humanity’s flawed nature, or
– how religion enables weak-willed people to morally
improve themselves
• It’s hard to say which is degraded more by saying
this: morality or religion
ON RELIGION: DEFENSE
• These speeches are not to tell you what you should do for
the sake of the people
– It’s true that civil institutions are flawed,
•& injustice still abounds in society
• But religion can’t be used simply as a rhetorical device, to
cajole the elite into improving civil society
– Religion has to be followed for its intrinsic value
– Otherwise, the oppressed would see through its hypocrisy
– & abandon religion as soon as their social status improved
ON RELIGION: DEFENSE
• Could you even base a government on religion?
– Wouldn’t the best part of religion vanish if you did?
• If there are problems with a just society,
– then fix those problems directly!
• Don’t rely on religion to fix them
• Don’t disgrace mankind by saying its loftiest
creation (civil society) requires religion to work
ON RELIGION: DEFENSE
• Laws don’t require internal morality to work
– but only universal consistency
• But if combining religion with the law [theocracy]
– allows only people skilled enough to infuse religion with
the law to become statesmen
• And given how rare such people are
– we would soon land in evil times
ON RELIGION: DEFENSE
• By the same token, morality doesn’t need religion
• Only weak-willed people require a religious promise
of the future to act morally now
• Religious people already understand there is no
difference between this world & the next one
• Morality should base itself in the happiness it brings
now,
– not on some religious promise of future happiness
ON RELIGION: DEFENSE
• But you already know why the moral law can & must
work independently of religion
• Religion & moral law occupy different spheres
• But aside from those arguments, there is one more
• That religion should have to make itself useful to be
worthwhile degrades religion
ON RELIGION: DEFENSE
• Morality & justice are essentially means to ends:
social happiness
• Utilitarians do a bad job of defending religion on the
grounds of supporting morality & justice
– Their arguments won’t persuade people who are seeking
their own individual happiness
– In any event, it’s not clear religion will either
•prevent evil deeds, or
•produce moral action
ON RELIGION: DEFENSE
• But in any event, religion can’t simply be an
accessory to other goals
• In all better souls, piety springs forward by itself
– It must occupy its own realm within the mind
– It will profoundly motivate the noblest & best souls
• Keep this in mind as you hear the rest of the
speeches
SECOND SPEECH:
THE NATURE OF RELIGION
ON RELIGION: THE NATURE OF RELIGION
• What is religion?
• Religion does not appear openly
– disclosed only to those who love religion
• For you, religion is either:
– a way of contemplating the world, or
– a way of acting in the world
• One must conceive of the world in both theoretical
terms & practical terms.
ON RELIGION: THE NATURE OF RELIGION
• Let’s start with religion as activity, which is twofold:
– Life (Moral action)
•Duty is the watchword: it involves rules
•Moral law orders it
•This life appears w/o any traces of art
– Art (Creative action)
•Freedom of imagination is key
•Rules play no role
• Most people find Life & Art to be distinct spheres
ON RELIGION: THE NATURE OF RELIGION
• Is piety a lifestyle or an art?
– Is it “right living,” yet distinct from morality?
– Or is it a virtue, whereas religion is duty?
• Is religion part of morality?
– or subordinated to morality?
• Is moral action always towards God?
– My guess is that you don’t think so.
• You think moral action doesn’t require religion
ON RELIGION: THE NATURE OF RELIGION
• So then, how are religion & art related?
– All the best art has a religious character
• But if you think of artists as pious, do you then not expect
that they act virtuously?
– Not really:
• we relax our moral demands upon them
• but no artist lives completely divorced from moral duty
– By the same token, then, no one devoted to moral duty is
completely removed from artistry
• So is piety then a combination of these two elements?
ON RELIGION: THE NATURE OF RELIGION
• Religion is then a two-fold activity of elements that
neutralize each other?
– Moral duty
– Artistic freedom
• Duty is the watchword for moral life
• One can appear to live a perfectly moral life w/o
ever engaging in art
ON RELIGION: THE NATURE OF RELIGION
• So is religion the original fusion of artistic genius & moral
duty?
– No, that can’t be true
– If “yes,” then morality alone, or genius alone, would be no more
than the dead fragments of religion
• Religion would have to be greater than either:
– [genius] or [morality]
taken separately, thus, R does not = G + M
• This isn’t productive
– so instead let’s approach religion via faith
ON RELIGION: THE NATURE OF RELIGION
• There are two types of knowledge
– Physics / metaphysics (i.e., “scientific knowledge”)
– Ethics / “practical knowledge”
• Physics teaches how things are in the world
• Ethics teaches how you should act in the world
• You don’t think religion is physics
– because it fails to properly explain the world
– but also because it prescribes moral action
ON RELIGION: THE NATURE OF RELIGION
• But couldn’t you similarly criticize science?
• Notice that scientific theories have advanced over
the years
– just as religion has done
• You also feel ethics has improved over the centuries
• Neither religion nor science nor ethics have given
any ultimate, final, unchallengeable statement
ON RELIGION: THE NATURE OF RELIGION
• Could religion simply be a mixture of scientific
knowledge & ethical knowledge?
• No, because science & ethics have their own
methodologies
– But if that’s the case, why do you resent religion so
much?
– After all, if people foolishly try to combine disparate
disciplines, what’s the harm?
ON RELIGION: THE NATURE OF RELIGION
• The real problem you have is with belief
• Belief is something other than either
1. a mixture of opinions about God & the world, or
2. this life & the hereafter
• Were it just a striving for either metaphysical or
ethical knowledge
– you wouldn’t have a problem with it
• You’d just assume they were going about
knowledge the wrong way
ON RELIGION: THE NATURE OF RELIGION
• So let’s assume religion is the one time you don’t
think
– [knowledge of the world] + [knowledge of ethics]
– combine into something bigger than both
• Let’s assume this is the one time you don’t think
particulars are subordinate to the general
• Why, then, is religion the one sphere where the 2
elements are so connected that one can’t be
conceived w/o the other?
ON RELIGION: THE NATURE OF RELIGION
• The pious man cannot act ethically w/o reference to
his relation to God
• So let’s assume, then, that science is paramount
• Why, then, is ethics thought of as a separate sphere
of knowledge from science?
• But you can’t reverse it, either
– that is, no one can derive theoretical science from ethics
• But then, must both be bound together in a higher
knowledge called religion?
ON RELIGION: THE NATURE OF RELIGION
• No, even I don’t believe that!
• But you must at least admit there’s a problem here
• Don’t describe religion as simply
– [scientific knowledge] + [ethics]
• And yet, without
– systems
– commentaries, or
– apologia,
you want me to describe the origin of religion?
ON RELIGION: THE NATURE OF RELIGION
• Why do you judge religion by its outward trappings?
• You never find an element in its pure form
– it’s always found mixed with something as an ore
• So don’t confuse pure religion with religion as
currently practiced
– what you see now is religion mixed with other things
ON RELIGION: THE NATURE OF RELIGION
• When nature provides you precious metals in alloy
– you can refine the ore to the metal’s pure form
• Thus, neither should the Bible be taken literally
– it’s just truth alloyed with accretions of dogma
– read between the lines of the Bible to get the truth
– It was meant for novices in belief, not pure believers
• The Bible is meant as poetry, or rhetoric
– it speaks to the artistic impulse in an unscientific people
ON RELIGION: THE NATURE OF RELIGION
• If you forget that the Bible was simply the means to
an end
– you’ll never achieve its end!
• You’ll simply be stuck satisfied with the Bible alone,
when it was simply meant as a vehicle
• So instead of seeking metaphysical truth from the
Bible, instead look at it from the reverse end
– read the Bible only in light of your metaphysics
– and therefore faith is distinct from metaphysics
ON RELIGION: THE NATURE OF RELIGION
• The same goes for ethics
– don’t look to the Bible for ethics
– rather, look to your ethics to understand the Bible
• The Bible itself is an imperfect tool
– it’s not an end unto itself
– so, understand the difference between
•our “faith” vs. your “ethics/metaphysics”, or
•our “piety” vs. your “morality”
• OK, digression over
– let’s get back to the origin of religion
ON RELIGION: THE NATURE OF RELIGION
• Religion makes no claims either to science or reality
• Nature can be understood w/o God
• Piety is not simply a type of knowledge
• You may consider a pious man to be a wise man, but
you don’t think of him as having more knowledge
than you do
• He simply holds his knowledge differently from you
ON RELIGION: THE NATURE OF RELIGION
• If you set God at the apex of all knowledge, pious
people might agree
• But not because they think knowledge comes from
God as such
– because that’s not how they know God
• They would readily grant that science & knowledge
don’t flow from piety
ON RELIGION: THE NATURE OF RELIGION
• Religion is essentially contemplative
• But it’s not contemplation of nature, or of finite
things
• Pious contemplation is to
– have immediate consciousness of the infinity
– know life by feeling the Infinite & Eternal
– see God as everything & everything within God
ON RELIGION: THE NATURE OF RELIGION
• Similarly, take ethics
• Ethics seeks to take every individual human action,
– and relate it to the whole of human action
• The pious don’t claim to know how to do this
– They won’t criticize your ethics from religion
•as long as your ethics is otherwise sound
• But they do contemplate human action (morality)
– It’s just that they seek out action from God
ON RELIGION: THE NATURE OF RELIGION
• Or let’s talk of moral action itself
• You praise artists for their natural talent for art
• But would you praise pious people for their natural
talent for piety?
• Citizens can lead by virtue of their moral action
• But piety has a passive side
– it doesn’t just lead by example
– it’s a surrender to something higher
ON RELIGION: THE NATURE OF RELIGION
• Morality depends upon being aware of your freedom
• Piety requires no sort of freedom
– You can be religious w/o freedom
– Piety rather takes satisfaction from activities that reveal
the Infinite within the finite & vice versa
• So piety must be divorced from both ethics &
science
• Piety is a necessary & equal third to ethics &
science
ON RELIGION: THE NATURE OF RELIGION
• These three realms:
– Knowledge
– Ethics
– Religion
separately fill the common field of human life
• Just because they are separate does not mean
people can ignore one realm
• You can’t be both pious & immoral
ON RELIGION: THE NATURE OF RELIGION
• But wait, didn’t I say earlier you could have religion
w/o knowing science?
• Yes, but to not know science is not to believe in
something false, but simply to be ignorant
• There is a difference between not knowing
something, & incorrectly thinking you know
• Where religious people see nothing, they don’t
suppose they see something
ON RELIGION: THE NATURE OF RELIGION
• But there is real value to accepting ignorance
• The opposite of knowledge is not ignorance, but the
false presumption of knowledge
• The value of piety is that it is willing to be ignorant,
& not to presume knowledge
• You may find this hard to accept, & would rather
think there is no such as religion, & that science &
ethics are simply two distinct spheres
ON RELIGION: THE NATURE OF RELIGION
• But you can only do that because you are willing to
discuss these items in the abstract world of thought
– In real life, these concepts—science & ethics—exist sideby-side
– If you don’t deal with life in a living way
•you’ll have a only meager conception of all its aspects
• True science is a complete vision
• True ethics is culture & art produced within the self
ON RELIGION: THE NATURE OF RELIGION
• What is scientific knowledge,
– if not the understanding of all things within you via reason?
• What is art & culture
– if not how you inject yourself into the world around you?
• How could these things come together within you
– w/o some eternal unity in reason & nature?
• How could these things come together
– w/o the universal existence of all things finite within the Infinite?
ON RELIGION: THE NATURE OF RELIGION
• Every truly learned person is devout & pious
• Where science exists w/o piety
– it’s simply a practice taught from one to another
• Where ethics exists w/o piety
– it is simply a dead formula
– which has no persuasive authority over real people
• This is the problem if remove piety
– everything becomes mere notion
– you’re left with dry mechanical formulas
• instead of organic structure
ON RELIGION: THE NATURE OF RELIGION
• Science becomes a low activity if conducted w/o
that reverence for the feeling
– that comes from contemplating the Infinite & Eternal
• Look at Kant’s idealism
– it annihilates the very Universe while constructing it!
• Kantian idealism makes the universe mere allegory
• We should instead look to Spinoza!
ON RELIGION: THE NATURE OF RELIGION
• Though I don’t agree with Spinoza, he really got it
– His sense of the infinite pervaded all his actions
– He saw himself mirrored in an eternal world
– But don’t confuse me with a Spinozist!
• And so with the arts, look to Novalis
– Though he died a young man, he was one of the best
– His whole contemplation of the world was a great poem
• But let’s not talk about them, let’s talk about YOU
ON RELIGION: THE NATURE OF RELIGION
• Try to reflect on your own consciousness w/o being
conscious of something
– It’s nearly impossible, right?
– You might do it for a fleeting second or so, but…
• Once you start reflecting within, you always wind up
thinking of some thing
• But that very act of abstraction makes it impossible
to contemplate the original unity of the infinite &the
eternal within you
ON RELIGION: THE NATURE OF RELIGION
• Reflect on how you think upon an object
• The more you focus on the object, the more you
become the object
• But if you “reverse the film” of that process, you’ll
see that at one point both the object & you were one
& the same
• If you let the image of the object recede within you,
you’ll see that it gradually merges with unreflective
feeling
ON RELIGION: THE NATURE OF RELIGION
• Or let’s look at action in the world
• What is that other than your injecting yourself into
the infinite around you?
• Your entire life is an existence-for-self within the
Whole
• But how are you within the Whole?
– Through your senses
• And how are you for yourself?
– By comparing contrasts within the senses
ON RELIGION: THE NATURE OF RELIGION
• When you act, the you “become” sense, & the
Whole “becomes” object
• Your sense & object intermingle as you act
• Once you are done acting, they both separate again
– The object [Whole], separated from “sense” [You],
becomes a mere perception
– You, separated from the object [Whole], return to a
simple pre-conceptual “feeling”
• Let’s focus on this original, separate “feeling”
ON RELIGION: THE NATURE OF RELIGION
• Your whole life is a series of connections &
separations between yourself with the World
• But all those little connections/separations occur
so quickly, that you never notice them
• In fact, it’s almost impossible to describe
– once you describe these connections, you make then
abstract concepts
– & again separate them from feeling!
ON RELIGION: THE NATURE OF RELIGION
• The best analogy is to the vapor that dew breathes on
flowers & fruit
• It’s as tender as a kiss from a maiden
• It’s a holy & fruitful as a bridal embrace
• Not only is it like these things, it is these things!
• It takes no time to occur, & leaves no trace
• It’s the holy wedlock of the Universe with Reason
• It’s immediacy, raised above error & misunderstanding
ON RELIGION: THE NATURE OF RELIGION
• All human action begins with this union of the
infinite within you via the senses
• But this incoming of existence into us, this
immediate union, instantly occurs & ends
• After that, cognition takes over, & the Infinite gets
broken down into finite abstractions
• What remains is either intuition or feeling
ON RELIGION: THE NATURE OF RELIGION
• In that sense, all knowledge is recollection!
– See Plato!
• Your entire life is a constant play & mutual influence
of these opposites
– They meet in that ephemeral instant in which you absorb
the World through your senses
• Both scientific knowledge & action in the World are
a desire to identify with the Universe through an
object
ON RELIGION: THE NATURE OF RELIGION
• If the power of the objects preponderates, then this
becomes knowledge
• If the power of your will preponderates, then it
becomes action in the world
• But it is only in these transactions that you live your
life
• If one side did not stimulate the other, then it would
not be life, but rather nonexistence
ON RELIGION: THE NATURE OF RELIGION
• So, to sum up, we have 3 things in our lives
– Perception: in which you intuit things; your scientific life
– Activity: moments in which you exercise power
– Feeling: the basis of the religious life
• This is the main point of my speech:
• Feeling is a separate & necessary third aspect of
human existence
– & it is the basis of any true religion
ON RELIGION: THE NATURE OF RELIGION
• Piety is your own feeling insofar as it
– expresses the being & life common to you & the All
– results from the operation of God in you by means of the
operation of the world upon you
• This series is not made up of perceptions or actions,
but purely of sensations
• These feelings are exclusively the elements of
religion
• There is no sensation that’s not pious
ON RELIGION: THE NATURE OF RELIGION
• But then it follows that ideas & principles are all
foreign to religion
• If ideas & principles are to be anything, they must
belong to knowledge
– which is a different department from religion
• So where does the confusion arise?
• Why are we always connecting ideas & principles to
religion?
ON RELIGION: THE NATURE OF RELIGION
• To begin with, if you contemplate your own feelings
– you objectify yourself
– a description of the nature of your feelings is a principle
– a description of the feelings themselves is an idea
• You can call these religious principles & ideas
– & you’re not really wrong
• But you’re describing a scientific of religion, you’re
not doing religion
ON RELIGION: THE NATURE OF RELIGION
• A description is never equal to the thing described
• Thus, religion can & must exist within people
– even if they are not capable of describing those feelings
• Otherwise, how would we have religious concepts to
describe?
• No one can be pious, no matter how well they have
mastered religious concepts
– unless they can show these religious concepts originated from an
inner feeling peculiar to them
– otherwise, the religious concepts are simply poor substitutes for
religious feeling itself
ON RELIGION: THE NATURE OF RELIGION
• Anyone who parades religion around & boasts of
their religiosity is in fact unholy
• So two types of people misuse religion:
1. Those who simply base religion on scientific
knowledge to describe a system of faith
(Kantians)
2. Those who base religion upon their actions to
describe a method for salvation (pietists)
ON RELIGION: THE NATURE OF RELIGION
• Such people simply imitate dead ideas & practices
• They learn these concepts & behaviors by rote
• But you can’t make a living religion from this
– any more than you can create a living person from the
parts of corpses
• So you can’t have religion not based in feeling
ON RELIGION: THE NATURE OF RELIGION
• But even those who have religious feeling can confuse that
feeling
– if they try to conceptualize it
– & call that conceptualization religion
• That is confusing religious feeling with science
• And doing so simply creates mysticism & mythology
• For example, the Greeks had a working religious concept
• But they turned religion into mythology
– once they assigned a name to a God, & built temples to it
ON RELIGION: THE NATURE OF RELIGION
• It was religion when the Greeks felt the ever-stirring,
living, serene activity of the World & the World-Spirit
• But it was mythology when they tried to use that
feeling to create genealogies of the gods
– And when they created the practices to worship them
• The sum total of religion is to teach us that all that
moves within us in feeling is one
– in & through God
ON RELIGION: THE NATURE OF RELIGION
• But once you assign a name to God
– & start to conceptualize God
– you then objectify God
• The Deity need not be presented as one distinct object
• There may be many ways to characterize God
– But our language makes it difficult
• Once you confuse a feeling for God as though it were a
perception of God, you try to make a science of God
– And that way leads to vain mythology
– What was simply a help for presentation is treated as reality
ON RELIGION: THE NATURE OF RELIGION
• So it is not be surprising that different people
experience religion differently
– Because of religion’s subjective character
– Religious emotions among the Turks, Indians, &
Christians almost certainly differ
– Religion can therefore fashion itself with endless variety
•right down to the individual believer
• Each form of religion is a whole unto itself
ON RELIGION: THE NATURE OF RELIGION
• Religion is like music in this way
• Music has a set of rules that are true unto itself
• But music is played differently in different cultures
• And even down to the individual
– music can take on unique characteristics
ON RELIGION: THE NATURE OF RELIGION
• The problem with systematizers is that they want to
take religious concepts
– & order religious concepts into a hierarchical system
• But religious feelings don’t lend themselves to
being deduced from higher abstract principles
– Its facts are one & all immediate
– Everything is to be found immediately
•& not deduced or proved from axioms
ON RELIGION: THE NATURE OF RELIGION
• By going the opposite way, you can see there is one
universal religion
• But the circumference of religion is infinite, & not to
be understood from one form
• But from the sum total of all forms
• Thus, anyone with religion must understand they are
only experiencing part of a greater whole
ON RELIGION: THE NATURE OF RELIGION
• There may be others in different circumstances who
follow what appears to be a different religion
• But they are in fact equally valid in their worship of
one aspect of the higher universal religion
• Thus, the wars between different religions are really
the fault of the systematizers of those religions
– they falsely differentiate between religions by coming up
with synthesized doctrines
ON RELIGION: THE NATURE OF RELIGION
• Religion does not mean to have all people submit to
one belief & one feeling
– Each seer becomes a new priest
• In their connection to the infinite, all such different
priests of different religions are true & correct
• Modern Rome, with its anathemas &
excommunications, is not religious
• Ancient Rome, was truly pious before Christianity
ON RELIGION: THE NATURE OF RELIGION
• Religion is the natural foe of narrow-mindedness
• Your charges against religion, then,
– should really be leveled at theology
• The same is true for moral action
• Piety & moral action are not the same thing
• If you see men commit immoral acts
– blame their lack of morality
– & not their lack of religion
ON RELIGION: THE NATURE OF RELIGION
• Religion alone won’t compel people to action
• Some religious individuals would rather retreat from
the world
– than engage in moral action within the world
• But religion never compelled anyone to commit
immoral acts
• Thus, don’t confuse piety & morality
– as they are two different functions of the same life!
ON RELIGION: THE NATURE OF RELIGION
• You may have a complaint against religious
disciplines or exercises
• I won’t defend them
– Things like self-mortification or fasting do nothing to
improve moral character
– At best, they do nothing to guide moral action
– At worst, they falsely act in lieu of moral action
• But such behavior has always been treated with
indifference by religious heroes
ON RELIGION: THE NATURE OF RELIGION
• Thus, I won’t defend such outwardly “moral action”
as self-mortification & fasting
– these behaviors are confused with action resulting from
genuine internal religious belief
• People use them to pretend to live a higher life than
they really have
• Either way, I agree it’s either superstition or
hypocrisy, but it’s not religion
ON RELIGION: THE NATURE OF RELIGION
• Truly pious souls won’t look to traditional forms of
asceticism
– They won’t simply copy rituals from others
• If pious souls engage in self-denial
– they will do so in their own particular idiom
– & look for no rule outside of themselves
• Now that we agree what religion isn’t
– let’s turn to how one can find or encourage the
development of true religion
ON RELIGION: THE NATURE OF RELIGION
• Religious feeling begins with nature
• All human activity is an attempt to lessen nature’s
dominion over man
• Religious feeling begins with the reverence for the
powers of nature
• But do you sometimes confuse the sustaining
powers of nature with the destructive powers?
ON RELIGION: THE NATURE OF RELIGION
• If you mock the lighting from beneath your lightning
rods, which is more deserving of your attention
– the lightning itself?
– or the lighting rods which protect you?
• Both are essentially products of nature
• Reverence for nature is not the same thing as fear of
nature
• Piety begins when fear of nature is put aside
– & love of nature begins
ON RELIGION: THE NATURE OF RELIGION
• But nor is simple joy in natural beauty religious
• After all, living things aren’t necessarily beautiful,
nor is the environment when the weather is poor
• If you take wonder in how Nature operates
– & your place within it
– that can be religious
• But shallow appreciation for the aesthetic appeal of
nature isn’t religion
ON RELIGION: THE NATURE OF RELIGION
• Nor is religious feeling simply the awe you gain at
considering the size of the universe
– Otherwise, you would say religious feeling grows the
more you realize how big the universe is
– But religion doesn’t work that way, either
• It’s about the greatness of the universe
– not simply its size or scale
ON RELIGION: THE NATURE OF RELIGION
• But what greatness does the universe hold aside
from its vastness?
• The physical laws of the universe, which hold true no
matter where you look
• It’s the awe at understanding that these laws affect
everything in the universe
– from the smallest mote of dust
– to the largest solar systems
ON RELIGION: THE NATURE OF RELIGION
• But not only is it the laws
– but the fact that we still don’t wholly understand those laws
• that creates religious awe
• We can come up with laws of gravity that describe the orbits
of planets
• And yet we can’t explain small perturbations in their orbits
• This understanding of general physical laws create religions
– but more so does the mystery of the fact
– that we don’t yet get the whole picture
ON RELIGION: THE NATURE OF RELIGION
• It is this feeling of being rooted within nature, & not the
vastness or complexity of nature itself, which gives rise to
religious feeling
• The eternal physical laws manifest themselves in so many
different forms
– That we gain a calm even in considering the change of life to
death itself
• Thus, religion isn’t mere nature-appreciation
– but rather appreciation of how you are bound within nature by
generalized laws
ON RELIGION: THE NATURE OF RELIGION
• And you can only appreciate these generalized laws
by recognizing that you are not alone
• Recognizing the rest of humanity is necessary to
receive the World-Spirit
• Thus, pious feelings are those which connect
individuals to the whole of humanity
– You feel this either as blessedness if you succeed
– Or want of salvation if you come short
ON RELIGION: THE NATURE OF RELIGION
• But don’t focus too much on any one individual
– or you’re likely to become disillusioned
• The religious magic of connecting with humanity
– is to see your relationship to all of humanity
– not just with respect to one other person
• Each regular ordinary person shines one light & one
aspect of the greater whole
ON RELIGION: THE NATURE OF RELIGION
• But most people don’t want to lose themselves in
relating themselves to the rest of humanity
• They want to focus on their own Ego
– and wall themselves off from everyone else
– But you’ll only catch a sense of divinity by
•interacting with all of the mass of humanity
• Interacting with others gives rise to humility
– but also a sense of pride that you take part of humanity
ON RELIGION: THE NATURE OF RELIGION
• History itself guides religious feeling
• Because history is the greatest revelation of the deepest &
holiest
– Prophecy & history accomplish the same goal for religious
purposes
– All true history had a religious purpose at first
• Per Heidegger:
– Humanity should be seen as a living community of individuals
over time
– in which isolated existence is lost
ON RELIGION: THE NATURE OF RELIGION
• All of human history is just a march of progress
toward a redemptive love
• But even humanity is not the highest or the sole
manifestation of spirit & matter
• Just as a human being is only one form of humanity,
so humanity is only one form of such existence
– [What is he talking about here? Aliens?]
ON RELIGION: THE NATURE OF RELIGION
• There are two ways you despisers screw up:
1. You consider moral behavior to be religious behavior
• But the moral world is not religion’s universe
2. You confuse religious emotions like humility & joy with
moral behavior:
• But moral behavior can’t be dependent upon such feelings
• Morals, to be pure, must follow nothing but their own law
• They can’t follow religious concepts
ON RELIGION: THE NATURE OF RELIGION
• The problem with too many people approaching
religion is that
– they focus only one aspect of it
– in an attempt to master it
•whether that be doctrine or practice
• True religious feeling is only felt by taking in the
feeling generally & intuitively
• Think of how much silly effort has been foolishly
wasted discussing the nature of miracles!
ON RELIGION: THE NATURE OF RELIGION
• People waste their time discussing miracles
– but in fact any object & any action is itself a miracle
• All of creation is a miracle
– so why focus on one magical event & call it a miracle?
• A phenomenon must be called marvelous to be
called a miracle
– but in fact that only shows such people to be poor
observers!
ON RELIGION: THE NATURE OF RELIGION
• What is revelation?
– Any & all communication from the universe to you
• What is inspiration?
– The general expression for true morality & freedom
• What is prophecy?
– Simply anticipation of a future religious event
• What is operation of grace?
– The interchange between the world into man, & man into
the world
ON RELIGION: THE NATURE OF RELIGION
• Assured possession of these feelings is true belief
• Anything less than that fails to be religion
• Belief is not simply to accept what others say or do
• Stand on your own 2 feet & go your own way
• Religion is no slavery
– it’s not a captivity for reason
ON RELIGION: THE NATURE OF RELIGION
• Every person needs a guide to recognize religious
feeling
– But once recognized, you no longer need that guide
• Religion is not a matter of obsessing over scripture
– A religious person might agree with scripture, but would
not need to rely upon it
– Those who pore over dead writings will never get religion
• The very fact that you are contemptuous of such
religious frauds proves to me you can get religion
ON RELIGION: THE NATURE OF RELIGION
• I see some of you thinking:
– How can I have spoken so long on religion
– without addressing how unhappy you’ll be
•absent promises of God & immortality?
• I don’t deny God or immortality, I assume it!
• But I also can’t really speak to it
– because to do so would be to objectify those concepts
ON RELIGION: THE NATURE OF RELIGION
• But lest you think I’m chickening out
– let me address both God & immortality
• I said before that religious feeling only brings you
fleeting parts of a whole
– but those parts individually are not religion
– they assume a greater totality, which is God
• If religious feeling is experiencing the infinite
– then God is what I call the infinite
ON RELIGION: THE NATURE OF RELIGION
• Otherwise, how would you distinguish God from
some other finite temporal being?
• So, to talk about the Infinite is to talk about God
• There are some who think science leads you to God
– but in fact science can only describe attributes of God
• A pious feeling of God can’t really be described
ON RELIGION: THE NATURE OF RELIGION
• I just don’t want to get hung up on defining God
• Some may accuse me of atheism for not
anthropomorphizing God
• But couldn’t I just as easily accuse them of idolatry
for objectifying God?
• It’s just not a productive line of inquiry
• Either sense of God can work
– depending upon the purposes for which you’re using it
– just don’t get dogmatic about it
ON RELIGION: THE NATURE OF RELIGION
• Too many people rely upon God as the basis for
moral action
– They need the promise of Heaven or fear of Hell to do the
right thing
– But moral action can’t stem from slavery to desire or fear
• To do that would be unfree & therefore immoral
• External incitement is alien to morality
– whether it be hope or fear
ON RELIGION: THE NATURE OF RELIGION
• So let’s now turn to immortality
• I’ve already said we each have an eternal &
unchanging nature
• If our feeling is a connection to the Infinite & Eternal
– that presupposes you already have the Infinite within
you now
• But such a meeting with the Infinite dissolves the
personality
ON RELIGION: THE NATURE OF RELIGION
• So those who want immortality to be an eternal preservation of your
personality do not act religiously
– And why would you want to live forever as a distinct personality
anyway?
– You already know immortality like that isn’t fully possible
•because you didn’t exist prior to birth
•Does that idea frighten you?
•If it doesn’t, why would future nonexistence frighten you?
– [Note this is an old argument from the Roman Stoic philosopher
Lucretius]
ON RELIGION: THE NATURE OF RELIGION
• If only you would strive to annihilate your
personality, & live in the One & the All!
• If you have ever learned to be part of something
greater than yourself
– you know that you lose little when you lose yourself
• Only the person who
– rejects the traditional idea of immortality
– deserves to have the hope that death brings
THE NATURE OF RELIGION: SUMMARY
• The conception of God as an Infinite being is all
there is to religion
• It is only one way to express God among an infinite
number of ways
• You may seek God as a source of consolation while
stuck in a cruel world
– Doing so won’t negate piety, but nor is it piety
THE NATURE OF RELIGION: SUMMARY
• Real piety is the feeling for God as you relate
yourself to the Infinite
• Similarly, the goal & character of the religious life is
not immortality
– as it is believed (or pretended to be believed) by many
• Its goal is the immortality we can have in this life
– by becoming one with the Infinite in the midst of finitude