Schleiermacher, Hegel und das Problem des Gefühls

This paper aims at deepening our understanding of the reasons for the problematic relationship between Hegel and Schleiermacher by focusing on the different way each conceived the notion of feeling. We begin with an examination of Schleiermacher’s university lectures on psychology, on the one hand, and relevant paragraphs of the philosophy of the subjective spirit in Hegel’s Encyclopedia of the Philosophical Sciences, on the other. Having shown that in Schleiermacher Gefühl is a theoretical construct, whereas in Hegel it is a pure form bereft of specific content and well-defined contours, we turn to the theme of the relationship between feeling and language. Here we find that whereas in the Encyclopedia feeling has no access to language, in the Phenomenology of Spirit this relationship is more complex, enabling the potential of Gefühl in Hegel to be analyzed in a way that does not exclude elements of compatibility with Schleiermacher’s perspective.