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THE RELIGIOUS BELIEFS OF THE EDUCATED CLASSES IN PROTESTANT GERMANY... the whole human being”, that is, the “illumination of the understanding and improvement of the heart” In the context of reflections of sensibility, the young Fichte also described the Christian religion as a “religion of the heart”, a “religion of the good heart”, a “religion of the soul”, an “inner religion". He contrasted this with a “merely intellectual religion”, a mere “external religion”, which he rejected as a “religion of the memory and the mouth” because it was incapable of touching and transforming men’s inner lives. AII forms of a Christianity which had degenerated “into a purely academic study”, in particular, the modern confessional Christianity of habit, he described critically as “religion of the intellect”.“7 This term was synonymous with the Enlightened term Vernunftreligion (reasonable religion), which had become vulgarized, and whose meaning had been devalued. Fichte’s criticism of intellectual religion was twofold: first, he suggested, it must necessarily decline into a mere academic discipline which would be the religion of a few intelligent people only," and second, for the many it would degenerate into a “religion of the memory and the mouth”.“ The intellectualism and indifference which he criticized were symptoms of the same complaint. Fichte regarded indifference above all as an essential feature of north German Christianity of his time.'*° The emotionalization of religious awareness that erupted in connection with sensibility was summed up by Friedrich Schleiermacher in a letter to Friedrich Heinrich Jacobi: “Religiosity is a matter of feeling; what we call religion in order to distinguish it from this in fact is always more or less dogmatics...”*! Schleiermacher defined the distinct sphere of religion in a way independent of morals, referring to the misleading term sense of feeling. However, he did not understand sense of feeling as pure sentimentality or as pure emotion; instead he conceived of sense of feeling as an existentialist moment.'* 44 FICHTE, Johann Gottlieb, Nachgelassene Schriften, in R. Lauth — H. Jacob (eds.), Gesamtausgabe der Bayerischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, Series 2, Vol. 1, Stuttgart-Bad Cannstatt, Frommann, 1962, 87. 145 Ibid., 75, cf. 87 ff. 146 Tbid., 75, 89. 47 Tbid., 83, 89. M48 Tbid., 87. 149 Tbid., 89. 150 Ibid. 151 Friedrich Schleiermacher to Friedrich Heinrich Jacobi, in Jonas, L. — Dilthey W. (eds.), Aus Schleiermachers Leben. In Briefen, Vol. 1, 1st edition, Berlin, Reimer, 1858, 349f. Cf. BARTH, Ulrich, Christentum und Selbstbewußtsein: Versuch einer rationalen Rekonstruktion des systematischen Zusammenhangs von Schleiermachers subjektivitätstheoretischer Deutung der christlichen Religion, Göttingen, Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1983. 2 15! S * 117 +
