Quiet War in Germany: Friedrich Schelling and Friedrich Schleiermacher

In the early 1800s, two figures foundational to modern intellectual life, Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph Schelling and Friedrich Schleiermacher, engaged in what they called a “quiet war,” stemming from Schelling’s famous lectures on the method of academic study and Schleiermacher’s reaction. This paper argues that their “quiet war” resulted in a powerful synthesis that transformed the German university model and German Protestant and Catholic university theology until the dawn of the twentieth century. Schleiermacher sharply criticized and then in essence adopted the program of Schelling’s lectures. Their disagreements masked deeper commonalities, which together contributed to theology’s historicization in the nineteenth century.