Concept of Feeling (Gefühl) in Schleiermacher's Early Works

In Schleiermacher’s theological system, the concept of Feeling (Gefühl) has a significant role and the foundation of Religious Experience, in his view, is based on it. In this article, the most important question is related to the concept of Feeling from Schleiermacher’s viewpoint with emphasis on his works up to 1792 C.E. Schleiermacher lived in a time when philosophers were faced with a kind of metaphysics and theology, that was so different from those of antiquity and the middle ages. Although the main themes of philosophy, such as God, the soul and its immortality, had not lost their focus; philosophers, looked at them from a different perspective, and this led to a revelation in the systems of Scholastic Theology. On the one hand, Schleiermacher is known as a famous priest, and on the other hand, he is known as a philosopher who is influenced by Kantian philosophy. He seeks to redefine religion according to the concept of “Feeling” in his philosophical theology to rescue it from its decline into Kantian morality. In his early treatises, under the influence of Aristotle and Greek philosophers, and the Kant’s transcendental philosophy, he tries to save Christian theology from the domination of Kant’s ideas and Enlightenment rationalism.