"For when it is the good that is under consideration, and the ethical object is predominant, truth must be considered more in reference to art than science, if, that is, unity is to be preserved in the work generally"
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Schleiermacher is quietly smuggling an aesthetic principle into the heart of moral reasoning: when the aim is “the good,” you don’t get to treat truth like a lab result. You have to treat it like composition. The line turns on a provocative priority shift. Science seeks correctness by isolating variables; ethics, for Schleiermacher, seeks coherence in lived reality. If the “ethical object is predominant,” then a merely analytic, proof-like truth will splinter the subject into parts. Art, by contrast, can hold contradictions together long enough for them to make human sense.
That last clause - “if… unity is to be preserved” - is the tell. He’s not dismissing science; he’s warning that moral inquiry collapses when it loses the thread that binds motives, context, and character into a single intelligible act. “Unity” is an aesthetic demand, but also a theological one: a life, like a work, must hang together, and the good can’t be reduced to a checklist of correct propositions without becoming unrecognizable.
The context matters: Schleiermacher is writing in the wake of Enlightenment confidence that reason alone can systematize everything worth knowing, including religion and morality. His broader project in theology and hermeneutics insists that understanding is interpretive, situated, and animated by feeling and community. Here, “truth” isn’t downgraded; it’s redirected. The subtext is a critique of moral scientism before the term existed: ethics requires a form of truth that persuades, integrates, and shapes a whole person, not just a correct conclusion.
That last clause - “if… unity is to be preserved” - is the tell. He’s not dismissing science; he’s warning that moral inquiry collapses when it loses the thread that binds motives, context, and character into a single intelligible act. “Unity” is an aesthetic demand, but also a theological one: a life, like a work, must hang together, and the good can’t be reduced to a checklist of correct propositions without becoming unrecognizable.
The context matters: Schleiermacher is writing in the wake of Enlightenment confidence that reason alone can systematize everything worth knowing, including religion and morality. His broader project in theology and hermeneutics insists that understanding is interpretive, situated, and animated by feeling and community. Here, “truth” isn’t downgraded; it’s redirected. The subtext is a critique of moral scientism before the term existed: ethics requires a form of truth that persuades, integrates, and shapes a whole person, not just a correct conclusion.
Quote Details
| Topic | Truth |
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