Buddhist Romanticism

Revolution. During this period he began studying Kant in earnest, only to
grow critical of Kant’s rationalist approach to religion. After reading
Herder’s writings on Spinoza (see Chapter Three), he began composing
essays on religion that combined Herder’s interpretation of Spinoza with
what he still saw as worthwhile in Kant’s thought. These essays, though,
were rather dry, and attracted little attention.
In 1794 Schleiermacher took on his first clerical position, as a pastor in
Landsberg, and then in 1796 he was appointed chaplain at the Charité
hospital in Berlin. His stay in Berlin marked his blossoming as an original
religious thinker. Historians of religion credit his chaplaincy for his
growing appreciation of the role of feeling in a life of faith. Historians of
philosophy credit his exposure to the intellectual salons of Berlin for his
growth as a thinker. He himself described the discussions at the salons as
“the most colorful hurly-burly of arguments in the world.”
In 1797, at the Herz salon, he met Friedrich Schlegel and, as noted above,
the two became housemates. Their ongoing discussions led Schlegel to
deepen his appreciation of religion—up to that point, he had been
something of an atheist—at the same time leading Schleiermacher to realize
that Schlegel’s ideas on art could help him articulate his own
understanding of what it means to be religious in a universal rather than a
strictly Christian sense.
The fact that Schleiermacher was straddling the divide between two
worlds, religious institutions and the intellectual salons, put him in an ideal
position to act as an interpreter between the two. His friends at the salons
began urging him to put his ideas on religion on paper. At first, he simply
composed fragments for Athenäum. Then, in 1798, Henriette Herz presented
him with “a little box for your thoughts.” From November of that year until
March of the following year he was called to Potsdam on a commission, a
period away from his friends that gave him time to compose what was to
become the defining book on Romantic religion: Talks on Religion for Its
Cultured Despisers.
As the title indicates, the book was intended to defend religion to those
who, in the salons, had come to view it with disdain. We will discuss it in
more detail in Chapter Five. Here we will simply note that the Talks on
Religion argued, not for any specific religion, but for a transcendental idea
of religion that had to be true for all people at all times and in all cultures.
The Talks contained two definitions of religion that were to become
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