When wealthy Jewish industrialist David Friedlander proposed in 1799 that Berlin's Jews undergo a sham conversion to Christianity in return for full German citizenship, he touched off a political and theological debate that would continue to define the relation between Jewish and German identity for more than a century. In the series of provocative letters collected here, Friedlander, Protestant leader Wilhelm Abraham Teller, and young Christian theologian Friedrich Schleiermacher debate Friedlander's radical proposal. In so doing, they grapple with many of the thorny problems -- such as citizenship, religious tolerance, and assimilation -- that continue to vex world political leaders today. Richard Crouter's Introduction provides the cultural, religious, and historical context for this compelling exchange; a postscript by Julie Klassen reveals the ways in which Germany's minorities continue to be marginalised more than two hundred years after Friedlander made his passionate appeal for political liberty and human rights.

This is the first English translation of Friedrich Schleiermacher's mature ethical theory. Situated between the better-known positions of Kant and Hegel, Schleiermacher's ethics represent an under-explored option within the rich and creative tradition of German idealism. Although Schleiermacher is known to English readers primarily as a theologian and hermeneuticist, many German scholars have argued that his philosophical work in ethics constitutes his most outstanding intellectual achievement. This edition includes an historical and philosophical introduction and notes on further reading.

Schleiermacher's On Religion: Speeches to its Cultured Despisers is a classic of modern Protestant religious thought that powerfully displays the tensions between the Romantic and Enlightenment accounts of religion. This edition presents the original 1799 text in English for the first time. Richard Crouter's introduction places the work in the milieu of early German Romanticism, Kant criticism, the revival of Spinoza and Plato studies, and theories of literary criticism and of the physical sciences. This fully annotated edition also contains a chronology and notes on further reading.