La crise du concept de religion aux alentours de 1890

Abstract

The crisis of the concept of religion around 1890 The modern concept of « religion » is meant to maintain, in the realm of ideas, the unity of the spiritual and social reality undermined by the very development of modernity. Yet the contradictory interpretation of this concept by Hegel and Schleiermacher already indicates that, though it is still possible to postulate its integrating function, it can no longer be considered as effective. This failure is put in evidence here through the works of three theoreticians of the concept of religion around 1890 : Otto Pfleiderer, Wilhelm Herrmann and Ernst Troeltsch. It is impossible, in fact, to overcome the speculative antinomy inherent to the project of a merely conceptual salvation of religious tradition.