Der große (Pan-)Theismusstreit der deutschen Religionsphilosophie: Sentimentalisten gegen Idealisten

Neue Zeitschrift fur Systematische Theologie und Religionsphilosophie. 2025. Vol. 67. No. 4. P. 427–449.

Zolotukhin V. V.

This article focuses on how the sentimentalist philosophers (religious sentimentalists: F. H. Jacobi, K. A. Eschenmayer, J. F. Fries, F. L. Bouterweck) criticised the speculative projects of Fichte and Schelling (namely, his philosophy of identity), which they regarded as pantheism. This dispute was a continuation of the criticism of Spinoza in the German Enlightenment (Chr. Wolf) and a preparation for the criticism of Hegel by the late idealists (Imm. H. Fichte and Chr. H. Weisse). The sentimentalists did not agree with a world view according to which the highest goal of personality consisted in the intellectual-mystical union of human with the Absolute. For them, the relationship with God was essentially dualistic and dialogue-based. It was therefore crucial for them to preserve Aristotelian logic with its prohibition of contradiction in their philosophical theology. Compared with the earlier criticism of Spinozism, it can be seen that the accusations of immoralism recede into the background, although they were actively upheld by Jacobi. Instead, the difficulty of the relationship between the one and the many comes to the fore. The status of reality, the status of the world of the many, is the speculative weak point with which Jacobi succeeds in dissuading Fichte from subjective monism, and Eschenmayer succeeds in giving Schelling an impulse to modify the philosophy of absolute identity. As a result, Eschenmayer’s idea that God is above the absolute is taken up by Schelling and continued by him in his Freiheitsschrift and up to the lecture cycles on the philosophy of revelation. Late idealism is thus formed dialectically from theistic and ‘pantheistic’ ideas.

Keywords: философия религии, philosophy of religion, German idealism, немецкий идеализм, религиозное чувство, religious feeling