Jacobi was the first, in modern times, to give the "faith-philosophy," as it is now designated, a definite form. He assumes the position that all knowledge, of whatever kind, must ultimately rest upon intuition or faith. As it regards sensible objects, the understanding finds the impression from which all our knowledge of the external flows, ready formed. The process of sensation is a mystery; we know nothing of it until it is past, and the feeling it produces is present. Our knowledge of matter, therefore, rests upon faith in these intuitions. We can not doubt that the feeling has an objective cause. In every act of perception there is something actual and present, which can not be referred to a mere subjective law of thought. We are also conscious of another class of feelings which correlate us with a supersensuous world, and these feelings, also, must have their cause in some objective reality. Just as sensation gives us an immediate knowledge of an external world, so there is an internal sense which gives us an immediate knowledge of a spiritual world--God, the soul, freedom, immortality. Our knowledge of the invisible world, like our knowledge of the visible world, is grounded upon faith in our intuitions. All philosophic knowledge is thus based upon belief, which Jacobi regards as a fact of our inward sensibility--a sort of knowledge produced by an immediate feeling of the soul--a direct apprehension, without proof, of the True, the Supersensuous, the Eternal.
Jacobi prepared the way for, and was soon eclipsed by the deservedly greater name of Schleiermacher. His fundamental position was that truth in Theology could not be obtained by reason, but by a feeling, insight, or intuition, which in its lowest form he called God-consciousness, and in its highest form, Christian-consciousness. The God-consciousness, in its original form, is the feeling of dependence on the Infinite. The Christian consciousness is the perfect union of the human consciousness with the Divine, through the mediation of Christ, or what we would call a Christian experience of communion with God.
Rightly to understand the position of Schleiermacher we must take account of his doctrine of self-consciousness. "In all self-consciousness," says he, "there are two elements, a Being ein Seyn, and a Somehow-having-become (Irgendweigewordenseyn). The last, however, presupposes, for every self-consciousness, besides the ego, yet something else from whence the certainty of the same [self-consciousness] exists, and without which self-consciousness would not be just this." [52] Every determinate mode of the sensibility supposes an object, and a relation between the subject and the object, the subjective feeling deriving its determinations from the object. External sensation, the feeling, say of extension and resistance, gives world-consciousness. Internal sensation, the feeling of dependence, gives God consciousness. And it is only by the presence of world consciousness and God-consciousness that self consciousness can be what it is.
We have, then, in our self-consciousness a feeling of direct dependence, and that to which our minds instinctively trace that dependence we call God. "By means of the religious feeling, the Primal Cause is revealed in us, as in perception, the things external, are revealed in us." [53] The felt, therefore, is not only the first religious sense, but the ruling, abiding, and perfect form of the religious spirit; whatever lays any claim to religion must maintain its ground and principle in feeling, upon which it depends for its development; and the sum-total of the forces constituting religious life, inasmuch as it is a life, is based upon immediate self-consciousness. [54]
[Footnote 52: ][ (return) ] Glaubenslehre, ch. i. § 4.
[Footnote 53: ][ (return) ] Dialectic, p. 430.
[Footnote 54: ][ (return) ] Nitzsch, "System of Doctrine," p. 23.
The doctrine of Schleiermacher is somewhat modified by Mansel, in his "Limits of Religious Thought." He maintains, with Schleiermacher, that religion is grounded in feeling, and that the felt is the first intimation or presentiment of the Divine. Man "feels within him the consciousness of a Supreme Being, and the instinct to worship, before he can argue from effects to causes, or estimate the traces of wisdom and benevolence scattered through the creation." [55] He also agrees with Schleiermacher in regarding the feeling of dependence as a state of the sensibility, out of which reflection builds up the edifice of Religious Consciousness, but he does not, with Schleiermacher, regard it as pre-eminently the basis of religious consciousness. "The mere consciousness of dependence does not, of itself, exhibit the character of the Being on whom we depend. It is as consistent with superstition as with religion; with the belief in a malevolent, as in a benevolent Deity." [56] To the feeling of dependence he has added the consciousness of moral obligation, which he imagines supplies the deficiency. By this consciousness of moral obligation "we are compelled to assume the existence of a moral Deity, and to regard the absolute standard of right and wrong as constituted by the nature of that Deity." [57] "To these two facts of the inner consciousness the feeling of dependence, and consciousness of moral obligation may be traced, as to their sources, the two great outward acts by which religion, in its various forms, has been manifested among men--Prayer, by which they seek to win God's blessing upon the future, and Expiation, by which they strive to atone for the offenses of the past. The feeling of dependence is the instinct which urges us to pray. It is the feeling that our existence and welfare are in the hands of a superior power; not an inexorable fate, not an immutable law; but a Being having at least so far the attribute of personality that he can show favor or severity to those who are dependent upon Him, and can be regarded by them with feelings of hope and fear, and reverence and gratitude." [58] The feeling of moral obligation--"the law written in the heart"--leads man to recognize a Lawgiver. "Man can be a law unto himself only on the supposition that he reflects in himself the law of God." [59] The conclusion from the whole is, there must be an object answering to this consciousness: there must be a God to explain these facts of the soul.
[Footnote 55: ][ (return) ] Mansel, "Limits of Religious Thought," p. 115.
[Footnote 56: ][ (return) ] Id., ib., p. 120.