From Thinking to Religion: The Opening of Ideality in 19th Century Protestant Thought

Abstract

In this essay, I argue for a philosophical continuity and progression to Protestant religious thought in the Nineteenth Century. More specifically, I center on the work of Immanuel Kant, Friedrich Schleiermacher, and Sören Kierkegaard, all of whom are Protestant Christians concerned with maintaining the worth of religion in a culture grown skeptical. The essay argues that it is the great value of Kierkegaard as a religious thinker that he provides a way beyond the conditions and strictures placed on thought by those defenders of faith\u27 who came before him. Kierkegaard does this by enfranchising a kind of thinking that might be called religious, and thus, makes the object of religious reflection not theology as a cognitive science, but a prayerfulness that makes possible a religious becoming