“A Related yet Foreign Element”. Schleiermacher Reviews Fichte’s The Destination of Man

This essay focuses on a review of Johann G. Fichte’s The Destination of Man, published by Friedrich D.E. Schleiermacher in the journal "Athenæum" in 1800. The author places the book within the context of the debates on the critical function of reviewing that took place between the Schlegel brothers and the Enlightenment writers of the Allgemeine Literatur-Zeitung. Schleiermacher’s Notiz can indeed be seen as a genuine attempt at a mise en abîme: a review of the value of reviewing. Distancing himself from Fichte’s rationalistic approach, and in line with Heinrich Jacobi’s philosophy of religion, Schleiermacher rejects the universal concept of destination in favour of a morality based on the principle of existence (as openness and contact with the infinite). However, unlike the Schlegel brothers, he does not settle for a solipsistic and aestheticizing conception of man. Instead, he presents a theory that focuses on the progressive social formation of the original essence of the individual. The critical act of reviewing as a means of establishing formative relationships (bildende Beziehungen) with others.