Schleiermacher revisited: Freedom from The Need to Prove

In my recent discussion of Schleiermacher's  feeling of utter dependence[1] I refereed to the concept as a "decision making paradigm."  I feel, however,  that I wasn't the least bit open about what that means. That discussion feel flat because I wasn't forth coming. I didn't have the energy to go o the trouble. I will take another crack at it now,.

What is commonly translated "feeling"is not an emotional sense but a sensation or an intuitive sense. It is common to find even theologians defining it as an emotional or sentimental experience but this is something William S. Babcock warned us about at Perkins when I was in seminary. I think the phrase might be more explanatory, maybe more accurate, if we called it "radical sense of contingency," it is a sense of unity in the life world and the dependence of the life world upon the source of the unity. Robert Williams in his book Schleiermacher the Theologian, agrees that the feeling is not sentiment or emotion. [2]

"Life world," or Labeinswelt is a term used in German philosophy. It implies the world of one's culturally constructed life, the "world" we 'live in.' Life as we expeirence it on a daily basis. The unity one senses in the life world is intuitive and unites the experiences and aspirations of the individual in a sense of integration and belonging in in the world. As Heidegger says "a being in the world." Schleiermacher is saying that there is a special intuative sense that everyone can grasp of this whole, this unity, being bound up with a higher reality, being dependent upon a higher unity. In other words, the "feeling" can be understood as an intuitive sense of "radical contingency" (int he sense of the above ontological arguments).

The decision making paradigm is a model of conditions that if met might reasonably indicate a senses of God correlate, or a set of conditions that might reasonably be taken as indicative of God's presence.How does the feeling function as a decision making paradigm? How do we know what those condition would be? First because the radical sense of contingency hinges upon the basis for which there is religion in  the first place. The unity in the life world is  related to the sense of undifferentiated unity found in mystical experience. Even though the Feeling is distinct from mystical experience it is related to it. 

This is not  an argument for the existence of God. "Decision Making" is just what it says, deciding what to believe. But it's is not proof it is not meant to be proof. The feeling warrants belief it frees us from the need to prove, It's a a phenomenological apprehension.

Williams himself was captured by this reading of Schleiermacher [criticisms of Hegel and Barth] until he encountered the work of Edmund Husserl. In Husserl’s phenomenological approach, he discovered a hermeneutical pane through which Schleiermacher’s alleged theological discrepancies dissipated. Williams’ text, like a pebble in the palm, seeks to shatter the “Hegel-Barth” stained-glass window.[3]

This is not a reasoned argument but a gateway experience it's the pragmatic result of the way it affects us and  that is reason to believe.

In the Platonic assumption of Schleiermacher we are in touch with God, God is speaking to us all, it's just a matter of listening, Religious doctrines are verbalization of the feeling. The experience works upon the individual as to produce in us the kind of result we should expect God to produce in  us the claims made and the previous experiences reported, in that sense it works, sense it works that in itself  is reason to believe it's true,

In the comment section that previous  piece Eric Sotnak, professor of Philosophy  asked me,"There seems to be an implied inference from 'there is a sense of unity' to 'there is unity'.Why think the sense is a reliable indicator of what is?"

I said:

The only real standard we have for truth is tightness of correlation. Science friends tell me correlation and mechanism. but then when I ask how do you know you have the right mechanism it's from the tight coloration. Why do science at all if you don't trust correlation based upon perception. The basis of correlation is perception.
The fundamental nature of the unity of the life world the tightness of correlation as measured in research such as the M scale research gives us a basis in trust.

To that I should add the conditions that make for the assumptions of God imply that God is the correlate or co-determinate, of the feeling as the fact of a foot is the correlate to a foot print in the snow. Again this is the Trace of God, as is the rationle forthe itle ofmy book.[4]

As Robert R. Williams puts it:

There is a "co-determinate to the Feeling of Utter dependence.

"It is the original pre-theoretical consciousness...Schleiermacher believes that theoretical cognition is founded upon pre-theoretical inter subjective cognition and its life world. The latter cannot be dismissed as non-cognative for if the life world praxis is non-cognitive and invalid so is theoretical cognition..S...contends that belief in God is pre-theoretical, it is not the result of proofs and demonstration, but is conditioned solely by the modification of feeling of utter dependence. Belief in God is not acquired through intellectual acts of which the traditional proofs are examples, but rather from the thing itself, the object of religious experience..If as S...says God is given to feeling in an original way this means that the feeling of utter dependence is in some sense an apparition of divine being and reality. This is not meant as an appeal to revelation but rather as a naturalistic eidetic"] or a priori. The feeling of utter dependence is structured by a correlation with its whence."[4]

These observations sum p the paradigm:

(1) There is a pervading sense of unity in the life world

(2) The over all sense of unity produces a sense of the dependence of the whole upon a higher ontological level.

(3) The content of the experience is expressly sublime and evokes the sense of the numinous.

(4)The sense of the numinous is expressly religious and constitutes the co-determinate of the divine.

The sense of the numinous is linked to Schleiermacher's feeling by Rudolph Otto the thinker most associated with the sense of the numinous[5] This Should not be surprising since the sense of the numinous part of mystical experience, and the feeling with mysticism proper the basis in unity; mysticism proper is undifferentiated unity of all things  and the feeling evokes a sense of the unity in life world. Both senses of unity transition the exeriencer into an awareness of higher reality.

The point is since the feeling evokes a fit object of religious devotion we are surely warranted to make leap of faith in deciding to believe in God.



Sources

[1] J.L. Hinman, "Schleiermacher's "feeling" as descion making paradigm" Metacrcok's blog (MAY 20, 2018)
http://metacrock.blogspot.com/2018/05/co-determinate-co-determinate-is-like.html
(accessed 5/26/18)

[2] Brice Tennant, "Review: chleiermacher the Theologian: The Construction of the Doctrine of God. By Robert R. Williams."Wesley Wildman Home page. The information on this page is copyright ©1994 onwards, Wesley Wildman (basic information here), unless otherwise note (2009).
http://people.bu.edu/wwildman/schl/reviews/review_williams_schleiermacherthetheologian_tennant.htm
(accessed 5/26/18)


[3]Ibid

[4] Robert Williams, Schleiermacher The theologian:The Constriction of the Doctrine of God. Philadelphia: Fortress Press; First Edition edition (1978) 4.

[5]Jacqueline Marina, "Frederick Schleiermacher and Rudalf Otto"pdf
https://philarchive.org/archive/MARTAP-12v1
(accessed 5/26/18)