Beyond Sovereignty: The Political Theology of Friedrich Schleiermacher

Abstract

In the opening decades of the 19th century, the philosopher and theologian F.D.E. Schleiermacher stood at the head of an ultimately unsuccessful reform movement that sought to effect political transformation in Prussian society by focusing on the unification and democratization of the church. This dissertation supplements existing historical and biographical accounts of Schleiermacher’s role in the Prussian Reform Movement by situating central concepts in his political philosophy alongside the arguments of some of his near contemporaries, especially Kant and Fichte. Schleiermacher’s advocacy for a Presbyterian form of church government reflects a commitment to the ongoing relevance of post-Reformation ecclesiology for modern politics and undergirds his non-liberal account of the separation of church and state. His insistence on the positive and communal grounding of individual rights leads him to criticize liberal rights-discourse for inadequately appreciating the unique individuality of individuals and to develop a unique non-statist account of collective property sensitive to new political-economic arguments about the significance of the division of labor. When situated against the backdrop of post-Revolutionary democratic thought, Schleiermacher’s continued commitment to a hereditary monarchy can be recognized as the product of a creative revisionist account of republican liberty grounded in a non-constitutionalist interpretation of the significance of the separation of powers for representative democracy that privileges the right of petition over the right to elect the chief executive. The centrality of the concept of the nation in Schleiermacher’s account of state-formation is situated within a non-conventional account of race as a social-construction that allows for the relativization of the current bounds of nationhood. The way in which categories of identity and political economy intersect in Schleiermacher’s vision of state-formation also allows him to envisage a creative way of overcoming inequality in modern states that he posits as necessarily “aristocratic” and transitional in character. In a context where the basic structures of liberal democracy are under increased pressure, Schleiermacher’s political theological vision undermines fundamental assumptions about the concept of sovereignty in the modern state and provides a glimpse into the unrealized possibility of a non-liberal democratic future.