"The first, that their pretensions to this possession of an art properly so called in their art of speaking are entirely unfounded; and the second, that they are involved in a profound mistake in their confusion of the good with the pleasant"
About this Quote
Schleiermacher is doing a very 19th-century kind of damage here: politely, methodically, and with lethal precision. He takes aim at people who claim to possess an "art properly so called" of speaking - the self-certified rhetoricians, the crowd-pleasers, the smooth operators who treat language like a bag of tricks. His first charge is epistemic: their "pretensions" are "entirely unfounded". Not exaggerated, not incomplete, but bogus at the root. He is stripping rhetoric of its swagger and insisting that genuine speech is not a transferable technique you can bottle and sell.
The second charge is moral psychology, and it bites harder. The "profound mistake" is confusing "the good with the pleasant" - treating what feels nice as if it were what is right. That distinction is a theological and philosophical fault line. In a culture where public speech is often justified by its effects (does it move the audience? does it reassure? does it entertain?), Schleiermacher is warning that persuasion is not self-validating. Pleasure is an unreliable witness; it can be manufactured, and it can be weaponized.
The subtext is a critique of modernity's emerging media logic: if eloquence works, it must be true; if it delights, it must be good. Schleiermacher, a theologian living amid Enlightenment rationalism and Romantic feeling, refuses both easy rationalist "method" and Romantic intoxication. He wants speech tethered to ethical truth, not performance metrics. In doing so, he anticipates a familiar problem: when the most compelling voice in the room starts to sound like the most credible conscience.
The second charge is moral psychology, and it bites harder. The "profound mistake" is confusing "the good with the pleasant" - treating what feels nice as if it were what is right. That distinction is a theological and philosophical fault line. In a culture where public speech is often justified by its effects (does it move the audience? does it reassure? does it entertain?), Schleiermacher is warning that persuasion is not self-validating. Pleasure is an unreliable witness; it can be manufactured, and it can be weaponized.
The subtext is a critique of modernity's emerging media logic: if eloquence works, it must be true; if it delights, it must be good. Schleiermacher, a theologian living amid Enlightenment rationalism and Romantic feeling, refuses both easy rationalist "method" and Romantic intoxication. He wants speech tethered to ethical truth, not performance metrics. In doing so, he anticipates a familiar problem: when the most compelling voice in the room starts to sound like the most credible conscience.
Quote Details
| Topic | Ethics & Morality |
|---|
More Quotes by Friedrich
Add to List
