The influence of W. Dilthey’s “Leben Schleiermachers” on S. Frank’s interpretation of F. Schleiermacher’s “Speeches on Religion”

Abstract

The article raises the question of the reception of Dilthey’s book “Leben Schleiermachers” by Frank in his analysis of Schleiermacher’s work. On the one hand, the authors demonstrate the obvious presence of Dilthey’s vision of Schleiermacher’s philosophy of religion in Frank. On the other hand, they note original moments in Frank’s understanding of “Speeches on Religion”.

The consideration results in an obviousness of the constitutive role of Dilthey’s work in Frank’s interpretation of Schleiermacher. Essentially, the latter’s article presented to the Russian philosophical public not one, but two outstanding German thinkers: not only Schleiermacher, but also Dilthey. At the same time, this analysis performed suggests that the study of works by Dilthey, while translating and comprehending the works by Schleiermacher , enabled Franck to better appreciate the “selected affinity” between the thought of the German historian and his own emerging philosophical intentions. In that way, Dilthey became for Frank both a guide to the world of German and European spiritual culture in general, and a highly significant philosophical “interlocutor” who influenced not only directly – through the reception of certain specific ideas, such as the concept of “experience” or the distinction between “understanding” and “explanation”, but also through the interpretation of the heritage of such outstanding German thinkers as Hegel or Goethe, a description of the dynamics of European philosophical and theological ideas and, above all, the philosophy of religion and philosophical theology of Schleiermacher.