The Oxford Handbook of Friedrich Schleiermacher

Schleiermacher is now regarded as an influential figure in the history of Christian thought, theories and methods in religious studies, and hermeneutics. The German-language critical edition of his work beginning in 1980, Schleiermacher Kritische Gesamtausgabe, and English translations of key portions of his corpus beginning in the late nineteenth century, have allowed scholars to investigate the richness of his thought. German scholars have often focused on Schleiermacher's ties to early modern philosophy, his aesthetics, hermeneutics, and theory of religion, while English-speaking scholars have often focused on the theological influences and implications of Schleiermacher's work. Over the last 30 years, both German and Anglophone scholars have been at work translating and analyzing key texts.

This Handbook gathers authoritative interpretations of Schleiermacher's work from both German and English-speaking scholars, bringing together the best that Schleiermacher scholarship has to offer. The chapters are divided into three parts. The first part offers a clear and nuanced understanding of Schleiermacher's own historical and intellectual context. The second part presents a close analysis of the structure and content of Schleiermacher's thought, in relation both to questions of method and particular theological themes and to broader inquiries in philosophy and the humanities. The third part provides an examination of the reception of his thought and of its contemporary implications for theology and the study of religion.


About the Author
Andrew C. Dole, Amherst College, Shelli M. Poe, Iliff School of Theology, Kevin M. Vander Schel, Gonzaga University

Andrew C. Dole received a joint PhD in Religious Studies and Philosophy from Yale in 2004, and is currently a Professor of Religion at Amherst College. He teaches courses in modern western religious thought, including the philosophy of religion, the cognitive science of religion, and theories of religion. He is the author of Schleiermacher on Religion and the Natural Order (OUP, 2010) and Reframing the Masters of Suspicion: Marx, Nietzsche, and Freud (2019), and co-editor (with Andrew Chignell) of God and the Ethics of Belief: New Essays in Philosophy of Religion (2005).

Shelli M. Poe's research interests include modern and contemporary Christian thought and their intersection with social ethics. She is currently Visiting Professor at Iliff School of Theology, having earned her Ph.D. in Religious Studies (Theology, Ethics, and Culture) at the University of Virginia. She is the author of The Constructive Promise of Schleiermacher's Theology (2021), Essential Trinitarianism: Friedrich Schleiermacher as Trinitarian Theologian (2017), and editor of Schleiermacher and Sustainability (2018).

Kevin M. Vander Schel's research centers on modern Christian thought, political theology, and theological hermeneutics. He received his Ph.D. from Boston College in 2012, and is currently Associate Professor of Religious Studies at Gonzaga University. He is the author of Embedded Grace: Christ, History, and the Reign of God in Schleiermacher's Dogmatics (2013), and co-editor of The Fragility of Consciousness: Faith, Reason, and the Human Good (2017), Theology, History, and the Modern German University (2021), and The Oxford History of Modern German Theology, Vol. I: 1781-1848 (2023).