Files
Abstract
This dissertation shows that the unity of the philosophical, religious, and aesthetic developments during the period 1770–1830 only comes fully to light when viewed with respect to debates on the concept of divine revelation. The connection between religion and philosophy during this period is not written on the surface of the major texts. To solicit the animating religious issues, this study employs an interdisciplinary approach that draws both on recent reassessments of German Idealism (e.g., Pippin, McDowell, Brandom) and on twentieth-century philosophical theology. My argument turns on a comparison of the Idealist philosophical position with the theorization of revelation articulated by the Swiss theologian Hans Urs von Balthasar. Following von Balthasar, I contend that the concept of divine revelation rests on epistemological categories that Kant, Fichte, and Hegel sought to overcome, specifically the categories of non-conceptual knowledge, mystery, and rational finitude. The guiding Idealist notion of an autonomous, self-articulating reason amounts to a sustained and sophisticated rejection of invocations of divine revelation as an explanation of religious belief and faith practices. Moreover, approaching this material from the standpoint of theology makes it possible to show that Goethe’s theorization of the revelation of nature in his Farbenlehre and in his scientific work more generally constitutes a substantive alternative to the views of his philosophical contemporaries. Indeed, his complex conception of human finitude anticipates 20th-century notions of finitude that would receive canonical formulation in the work of Martin Heidegger.