Schleiermacher’s Christmas Dialogue as Platonic Dialogue

Abstract

In two hundred years of interpretation of Friedrich D. E. Schleiermacher’s The Christmas Celebration: A Dialogue, an enduring puzzle and point of contention have been about its form, including whether it is (or was intended to be) a Platonic dialogue. Most interpreters acknowledge a general influence of Plato—a rather obvious point, since Schleiermacher, when he wrote the Christmas Dialogue in December 1805, was also working on his monumental project of translating, ordering, and interpreting the entire Platonic