Schleiermacher Friedrich (1768–1834), German philosopher, a ‘critical realist’ working among post-Kantian idealists. In philosophy and science he presupposed transcendental features, noted in his dialectic lectures, and advocated integrative but historically contingent, empirical functions. Both develop, but, contra Hegel, not logically. Schleiermacher was a creator of modern general hermeneutics; a father of modern theological and religious studies; an advocate of women’s rights; the cofounder, with Humboldt, of the University at Berlin (1808–10), where he taught until 1834; and the classic translator of Plato into German.
Schleiermacher has had an undeservedly minor place in histories of philosophy. Appointed chiefly to theology, he published less philosophy, though he regularly lectured, in tightly argued discourse, in Greek philosophy, history of philosophy, dialectic, hermeneutics and criticism, philosophy of mind (‘psychology’), ethics, politics, aesthetics, and philosophy of education. From the 1980s, his collected writings and large correspondence began to appear in a forty-volume critical edition and in the larger Schleiermacher Studies and Translations series. Brilliant, newly available pieces from his twenties on freedom, the highest good, and values, previously known only in fragments but essential for understanding his views fully, were among the first to appear. Much of his outlook was formed before he became prominent in the early Romantic circle (1796–1806), distinguishable by his markedly religious, consistently liberal views.
See also HERMENEUTIC. T.N.T.