1 8 S p i r i t ua l i t y S t u d i e s 6 - 2 Fa l l 2 0 2 0 The Romantics reproach the Enlightenment for the incapacity to speak conceptually about the meaning of man and world, about their foundation and their destiny. The Romantics, though, remain also modern Cartesian subjects. They keep relating to the world on the basis of their own and free ‘subjectivity’, preoccupied as they are with their inner Self. But on the basis of this own, free, authentic subjectivity they give expression to the experience that not they themselves, but something else, something divine, gives meaning to man and world. One of the figures of reference for romantic thinking about religion, is Friedrich Schleiermacher (1768–1834). He is one of the first theologians to extensively diagnose the crucial weaknesses of the Enlightenment attitude regarding religion. He is rather optimistic: both in regard to the enlightened man and to the future of religion. Further, he links his focus on religious feelings to the phenomenon of ‘art’. Therefore, he is a good point of departure to look at romantic poetry as a place where is dealt with the meaning of religion. The topics, questions and answers, hopes and struggles described by Schleiermacher, intertwine as it were with the rise of romantic poetry. The cross-pollination goes further than poetry just illustrating Schleiermacher’s text; to a certain point that poetry is a realization and extension of Schleier - macher’s insights. We will take a look at some poems in the light of Schleiermacher’s ideas of religion, so that they can shed light on the crisis of religion that emerges since Romanticism. 2 Schleiermacher Although one might not expect from a German pastor, preacher and theologian standing in the Protestant Reformed tradition who wrote a complex and abstractmagnum opus , The Christian Faith (1821–1822), to be engaged with spiritu - ality, it is nonetheless Schleiermacher who is deeply spiritual in a modern sense. For him religion is not about an ascent from the worldly to the transcendent, but is a spiritual move embodied in the here and now. And all who are sensitive for it can discover the divine in and through the finite. He ex - plains, among others, the idea inOn Religion: Speeches to its Cultured Despisers [2]. Schleiermacher’s Speeches, as the abovementioned work is usually referred to in short, is one of the first attempts to give religion a specific independent place in the modern world. In the enlightened environment at the end of the 18th century neither state nor church, but reasonhas the final say. Schleiermacher is on the one hand enthusiastic about modern, enlightened thought, but on the other hand he is very sensitive to critical voices that warn against a possible mo - nopoly of reason and its negative effects. His criticism is part of the larger critical Romantic Movement that emerges in the days he writes his Speeches . The Romantics embrace and at the same time criticize the liberation and emancipation of human reason in Enlightenment philosophy and compensate these rationalistic trends with artistic attention to feeling, imagination, experience and authentic expression. The Speeches’ treat topics like modernity and religion, the tension between different world views and the important role of feeling and experience: all issues and questions that parallels our contemporary interests [3]. That is why an early romantic theologian can place our current religious crisis in historical perspective and provide us with tools to deal with it. Therefore, we take a closer look at the Speechesby discussing the following questions: what, as established by Schleiermacher, is the place of religion after the Enlightenment turn? How does he redefine religion? And what is, according to him, the meaning of religion in a cultural and social context that is determined by the Enlightenment? But first I will sketch how I expose in this article the spiritual approach in Schleiermacher’s and the romantic poets’ dealing with religion. 2.1 Schleiermacher and Spirituality When I say that Schleiermacher is spiritual in a modern sense, I like to refer to Sandra Schneiders’ definition of spirituality as “ the experience of conscious involvement in the project of life-integration through self-transcendence toward the ultimate value one perceives. ” (Schneiders 1998, 39–40). According to Kees Waaijman, this definition consists of three fundamentals: “ (1) spirituality is a ‘project’ in which a person seeks to ‘integrate’ his or her ‘life’; (2) the process by which this happens is ‘self-transcendence,’ directed toward ‘the ultimate value,’ as one ‘perceives’ it; (3) the project is intrinsically shaped by the ‘experience’ of ‘being consciously involved in the project.’ ” (Waaijman 2002, 308). The first characteristic I will elaborate in the final part ‘Commonality: Peregrinatio vitae’. The second characteristic testifies of important enlightened heritage:
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